It is human nature to build walls. The Chinese built what is known today as the Great Wall of China over a period of over 2,000 years to try to keep out invaders. Beginning in 1961 the East Germans began construction on the Berlin Wall, which was built to keep people from fleeing from East to West Germany. Our country has a wall on our border with Mexico in several places. Even when we build our houses, we build them with walls and then we build another wall around the house for additional privacy and protection.
While we build walls for all kinds of reasons, one thing that all walls have in common is that they cause separation. Sometimes that separation is good and useful, but other times the separation is actually harmful. And in those cases, in order to overcome that harm, those walls have to be torn down.
On June 12, we will be observing the 20th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s famous speech in front of the Berlin Wall where he uttered these words:
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
A little over two years later, on November 9, 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall began. By October 1990, not only was the demolition of the wall complete, but the two Germanys that had been separated by the wall became one.
As we continue our study of Ephesians, Paul writes about tearing down some walls. Let’s read our passage together:
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
Ephesians 2:14-18 (NIV)
As we read this passage, it becomes apparent quite quickly that the main theme in these verses is peace. Paul writes that Jesus “is our peace”, He “made peace”, and “He came and preached peace.” Unfortunately, the way most of us view “peace” today is quite different from what the word meant to Paul and his readers. After looking at several dictionaries this week, the most common definition of peace I found was “the absence of war or conflict.”
But the word “peace” in both the Old and New Testaments has a much deeper meaning. The word denotes a sense of well-being or wholeness and often referred to the salvation offered to man by God. The word is used to refer both to the vertical relationship between God and man and the horizontal relationships among men. And as Paul very clearly points out in this passage, there were walls that separated men from God and also walls that separated men from each other. But Jesus is the peace who tears down those walls and makes it possible for us to have real peace in our lives.
Although there is some debate among biblical scholars, I’m convinced that Paul uses the picture of a dividing wall in this passage as a result of his own personal experiences. It is very likely that Paul was writing the letter to the Ephesians from a prison cell in Rome. In Acts 21 we learn that just a short time before that Paul had gone into Jerusalem to deliver the offerings from the Gentile churches to the Jewish Christians there. While in the Temple one day, he was dragged out by an angry mob of Jews who accused him of taking a Gentile into the part of the Temple that was off limits to non-Jews.
The Temple of that day, known as Herod’s Temple, had two courts, one intended for the Israelites only, and the other, a large outer court, called "the court of the Gentiles," intended for the use of people of all nations. The Jewish historian Josephus records that these two courts were separated by a low wall, some 4 1/2 feet high, with thirteen openings. Along the top of this dividing wall, at regular intervals, were placed pillars bearing in Greek an inscription to the effect that no stranger was, on the pain of death, to pass from the court of the Gentiles into that of the Jews. In fact, several of these inscriptions have been discovered in the past 150 years. An entire inscription was unearthed in 1871 and is now in a museum in Istanbul. It bears the following inscription in Greek capital letters:
"No stranger is to enter within the balustrade [dividing wall] and embankment around the sanctuary. Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his death which follows."
That dividing wall in the Temple was a physical symbol of the great hostility that existed between the Jews and the Gentiles of Paul’s day. Although that wall would be physically torn down several years after Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians, Jesus had already come to tear down what that wall represented. But as we’ll see this morning, that’s not the only wall Jesus came to tear down.
Although the hostility between the Jews and the Gentiles, especially the Arabs is still quite evident in the world today, I think there is a tendency on our part to think that this passage doesn’t apply a whole lot to us. But the kind of enmity that existed between the Jews and Gentiles in Paul’s day still touches all of our lives today. If we’re honest, we have to admit that we all have walls in our lives that separate us from God and from others.
There are some of you here this morning who have walls in your marriage. Sure, you still live together with each other and maybe even put up with each other, but you don’t have the kind of peace and wholeness in that relationship that God wants you to have.
There are some of you here this morning that have erected walls between parents and children. You live under the same roof, but you no longer respect each other nor do you have any kind of meaningful relationship.
Some of you have built walls with other family members. There are people in your family that you refuse to even talk to. If you saw them waking down the street, you’d cross over to the other side so you wouldn’t have to engage them.
Some of you have put up walls at work. Those of you who are supervisors don’t treat your employees with respect and those of you who are employees constantly badmouth your bosses and don’t honor them.
And all of those walls are just as harmful to your peace as the walls that existed between the Jews and the Gentiles in Paul’s day. And if you’re going to have the kind of peace in your life that God wants you to have, then you’re going to have to let God tear down those walls. So let’s look at how we can do that.
HOW TO LET GOD TEAR DOWN THE WALLS IN MY LIFE
1. Let God tear down the wall that separates me from Him
Let’s look at the beginning and end of this passage first:
For he himself is our peace…
For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
When we look at those two phrases together, it becomes obvious that the primary reason that people don’t have peace in their lives is because their relationship with God, their vertical relationship, isn’t right. We’ve seen in Ephesians what our lives were like without Jesus. We were dead in our sins, dominated by the world, Satan and our own flesh and doomed to face the wrath of God.
Without Jesus in our lives, our sin erects a dividing wall, a barrier, between us and God. God is a holy God, so when we sin, we separate ourselves from His holiness. And as we’ve seen, there is nothing that we can do on our own to tear down that wall.
But fortunately for us, Jesus is our peace. He himself has torn down that wall so that we can experience the peace, the wholeness, of a personal, intimate relationship with God.
At the very moment that Jesus breathed His last breath on the cross, God gave a visual symbol of the fact that Jesus had torn down that wall that separated us from God.
The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
Mark 15:38 (NIV)
The curtain that is referred to here is the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple. The Holy of Holies is the place where the Ark of the Covenant resided and it was recognized as the part of the Temple where the presence of God was made manifest. No one, except the High Priest, could enter the Holy of Holies. And even he could only enter there once a year on the Day of Atonement.
But when Jesus died on the cross, that curtain was ripped in two. And notice how that happened. It was torn from top to bottom, which is an indication that it was God, and not any man, that did the tearing. And that was a picture of exactly what Paul writes about here in Ephesians. Through Jesus, those who have committed their lives to Him all have access to the Father.
And Paul makes it really clear here that that kind of peace is available to everyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re Jew or Gentile, white or black, rich or poor, male or female, Catholic or Baptist. That peace is God’s gift to everyone who will choose to accept it through faith in Jesus Christ.
And as we’ll see in greater detail in a moment, it is impossible to tear down the other walls in our lives until we first address this one. I think that’s the point Paul is making in another of his letters:
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
2 Corinthians 2:14, 15 (NIV)
The fact is that we will never have true peace with others who have not addressed their own relationship with God. However, that does not give us an excuse to erect walls that separate us from others. Listen to another of Paul’s letters:
If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
Romans 12:18 (NIV)
Notice the key phrase there: “as far as it depends on you.” You can’t do anything about the other person’s relationship with God. And you can’t do anything about whatever walls that they might put up. But you can make sure that you’re not erecting unnecessary barriers.
There is no doubt that sometimes we have to put up walls between us and unbelievers. Because they are not followers of Christ, they aren’t going to act like His followers should. And so there will be times when we just can’t take part in some of the thing they might choose to do. But let’s make sure that we don’t put up unnecessary dividing walls that might keep those people from being introduced to Jesus Christ and having the opportunity to allow Him to tear down the wall that separates them from God.
2. Let God tear down the wall that separates me from others
Paul leaves absolutely no doubt that I am incapable on my own of breaking down the walls that separate me from others. Only God can do that. All the action that is taking place in these verses is done by God. And God is only able to do that in our lives after we have taken care of the wall that separates us from Him. But it does seem to me that there are some things that we can do in our own lives that make it more likely that God will be able to tear down those walls. While we can’t tear down the walls on our own, we can certainly impact how God works in our lives by our actions.
• Find my identity in Christ
It’s interesting that when Jesus tore down the walls between the Jews and the Gentiles, He didn’t do that by trying to transform one of the two groups to be like the other. To me, it seems logical that since Israel was God’s chosen people, Jesus would just transform the lives of the Gentiles so that they would be like the Jews.
But Jesus did something radically different. Paul tells us that he actually created a “new man”. The word for “create” that Paul uses here is the same one he has used earlier in his letter. It is a word that means to create something new that never existed before. Paul wrote about that new creation in some of his other letters as well:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV)
Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation.
Galatians 6:15 (NIV)
That verse seems particularly relevant to our passage in Ephesians. Paul makes it clear that God doesn’t really care about what group someone belonged to before their faith in Christ. All that really matters is that Jesus has made them into a new creation.
Throughout this passage Paul makes it clear that Jesus has made the two into one. God no longer looks upon them as Jews or Gentiles. He sees them all only as followers of Jesus Christ. And if we’re going to allow God to break down the walls that separate us from others, we need to have that same perspective.
We live in a world today where most people identify themselves based on some characteristic or distinguishing feature. We have people who find their identity in their race – African-Americans, Native-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanics and Whites. We have people who find their identity in their political beliefs – Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. Even in the church, we have people who find their identity in their denomination or their theology – Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists; Calvinists and Armnians. No wonder we’re so divided!
But Jesus came to tear down all those walls. His desire is that we find our identity not in any of those groups, but in Him.
Let me ask you a question this morning that will help you to determine where you find your identity. It’s the kind of question that someone might ask you if you went for a job interview: “Tell me about yourself.” Be honest, what are the first things that come to your mind? Because how you answer that question says a lot about where you find your identity. And if the answer is anything other than “I’m a follower of Jesus Christ” then you can be pretty sure that there are some dividing walls in your life that you need to let God deal with.
• Beware of self-righteousness
Although there was much that divided the Jews and the Gentiles, Paul points to one particular barrier that seemed to be the hardest to overcome – the law with its commandments and regulations.
Probably the greatest cause of hostility between the Jews and the Gentiles was the way the Jews used the Law. The Law itself was not a bad thing – after all it had been given to the Jews directly by God. But when the Jewish religious leaders began to add their own interpretations and definitions to the Law, it became nothing more than a self-righteous, holier-than-thou demand upon others, without any admission of guilt on their part. What God created for the benefit of his people had been turned into a dividing wall.
The Jews, especially their leaders, had become so self-righteous that it alienated them from the Gentiles. They demanded that others change their own behavior without recognizing their own need to change, too. They needed for Jesus to remove the dividing wall between them and God just as much as the Gentiles. They just didn’t realize it. And the Gentiles despised the Jews because they knew they lived in self-righteous hypocrisy.
Jesus’ solution was to take this self-righteous application of the Law, out of the equation and to show both the Jews and the Gentiles that they needed forgiveness and grace. In effect, Jesus leveled the playing field and removed the greatest source of their hostility toward each other.
I’m convinced that self-righteousness is one of the greatest sources of hostility and conflict in our own relationships. As long as one person insists that the other is all wrong, and there is nothing at all he or she needs to change, then of course hostility and resentment remain. That’s true in our marriages, in our relationships between parents and children, with our friends, at work, and even in our relationships with others in the body of Christ.
I learned this very early on in my marriage. When Mary and I first got married and we had any kind of conflict, I was always convinced that I was right and she was wrong. And so my goal was always to win the argument rather than to resolve the conflict. But all I was doing was putting up dividing walls.
Fortunately, God very clearly revealed to me the error of my self-righteous ways. He’s allowed me to see that I’m not always right, that sometimes I just need to admit that I’m wrong and say “I’m sorry” and ask for forgiveness. And when I do that, it allows God to tear down those walls. I still don’t get it right all the time, but at least I’m getting better.
I want to encourage you to think about how your own self-righteous attitudes may be erecting walls in your relationships with others and consider what you can do to help tear down those walls.
• Obey the words of Jesus
Paul writes that Jesus had come and preached peace to both those who were far away, the Gentiles, and to those who were near, the Jews. But what exactly is Paul referring to? It’s interesting how many different ideas that different commentators have about what Paul meant by the preaching of Jesus.
But it seems to me that if we just take this in its simplest sense, it would refer to everything that Jesus had said while he ministered here on earth.
Certainly the entire Bible is profitable for us. It is all God’s Word. But there is also a great benefit to focusing on the specific words of Jesus. And when it comes to allowing God to break down the walls that separate us from others, that seems to be particularly true. I’m sure you can find many applicable passages, but here are just a couple that seem to be particularly relevant:
"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
Luke 6:27, 28 (NIV)
"Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.
Matthew 5:23, 24 (NIV)
Jesus had a lot to say about my relationships with others and as I obey those teachings, God can use them in my life to break down the walls that separate me from others.
This is one of those messages where I can’t imagine that all of us don’t need to respond to God in some way this morning. For some of you, there is still a wall between you and God. You’re separated from Him because you’ve never committed your life to Jesus Christ. This morning, you need to say to Jesus, “Jesus, tear down this wall.” You need to accept God’s gift of an intimate, personal relationship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ.
And for the rest of us who have already let God tear down that dividing wall, we need to think about our relationships with others. Reflect on any of the relationships in your life where there are dividing walls that separate you from others – your spouse, your children, your parents, other family members, your co-workers, your friends, your neighbors. This morning you need to say to Jesus, Jesus, tear down this wall.” And then consider what you can do to allow God to do His work. Maybe you need to make sure that you find your identity in Christ, and not in some other group. Maybe you need to quit being so self righteous and admit your own guilt and ask forgiveness. Maybe you need to listen again to the words of Jesus and put them into practice in your life.
