Ephesians 2:11-13 • Lost Labels and Found Identities
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Would you turn with me in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 2, Ephesians chapter 2, as we will be looking at verses 11 through 13. William Faulkner once wrote, "Memory knows
before knowing remembers." "Memory knows before knowing remembers." Our past context, what we have lived, so informs our thought, the way in which we form our thought, that memory is outracing conscious thought itself. At times that's very good. You want your instincts well formed for reflex purposes at times. When you're at a ballgame and there's a foul ball and someone sells, "Duck!" You don't want to think about that, you just want to do it. You want your instincts to take over. But instincts formed by memory can be wrong as well, be very damaging. As when pain
or prejudice so forms our context that we cannot rationally think of present realities at all.
It's really that that the Apostle Paul is addressing here. He has just said we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works that he prepared in advance for us to do. And having made that declaration of a reality, he now begins to deal with the memories that work against it. Dealing with them squarely, though they are painful and prejudicial, so that we will fully apply the gospel to our true identities. This is what Paul says in Ephesians 2, 11, "Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision, that done in the body by the hands of men,
remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope and without God in the world.
But now in Christ Jesus, you who are once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." She has dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, an Indian shawl over her shoulders, and she looks squarely in the camera and says, "I am an American." Next clip, he has a cowboy hat, dark mustache, Hispanic features, and says, "I am an American."
Then one wearing a fireman's hat, wisps of red hair showing out from beneath, his cheeks are windburned, and when he speaks it's with a bit of an Irish lilt, and he says, "I am an American."
And then one with olive skin and a turban looks in the camera and says, "I am an American." You recognize the public service announcement that aired many times since September 11,
as very powerfully the creators of that announcement deal with our pain and our prejudices
to make us face a greater identity. Above all those differences, as real as they are, there can be this common denominator still threaded through us an American identity. Of course, what that commercial is powerfully trying to do is to overcome certain prejudices and pain. The apostle is not doing something so different in this passage as he writes to the Ephesians, and with unblinking, steely clarity simply reminds them of awful memories so that they will nonetheless face squarely the reality of their new identity in Christ. The words were addressed to those at Ephesus, but they are no less applicable to us as the pain and prejudices of our past can so orient our thought at times that we need the identity of the gospel. To overcome the labels that our pain, our prejudice, and our memories to easily put upon one another so that we will face what we need. The apostle first deals with those memories. He says simply first, "You need to remember the nature of your past." He calls the Ephesians to do that by telling them to remember their roots. Verse 11, "Remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth." Just reminding them that they are Gentiles by birth. But the language is gentle in our English. It's really that you are pagans in the flesh. That in the flesh language is reminding these who are now religious at Ephesus that they have a past they are not proud of because in Ephesus there was such not only great idolatry but great immorality. That must have touched those who have now become Christians and he is saying to them, not only were you pagans by birth but it touched your very bodies. In the flesh you have been polluted. In the flesh you are impure. And anybody who is a Christian now but can remember the past in which they use their bodies for impurity or had their bodies used by others for impurity begins to feel the tinge of the shame that the apostle is bringing to mind for those at Ephesus. You were pagans in the flesh. It affected your very nature. And he doesn't want them just to remember their roots. He wants them to remember the rejection that was a consequence of those roots. He says not only were you Gentiles by birth you were called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision. And this is one of those rare places in Scripture where you find words that you can hardly believe are there. Somewhat again cleaned up for our English translations. This is a a crudity even for its time that a reference here is made to the male foreskin that was removed in circumcision and people were identified by this crudity labeled that way by those who thought of themselves religious that they could do that. If you've ever experienced a racial slur if you've ever been made fun of for some consequence of your birth for your intellect or your looks or your height or your gender you get some feeling of what the apostle is calling to mind. You remember not only that you were in the flesh pagan but you were hated for it. You were looked down upon for it simply as a consequence of your birth. You were treated
shamefully. I can think I can remember the the time when I was in my junior high years that struck me so much what this verse must be about at least at the emotional level. When I walked in on my younger brother in my mother's arms he was crying inconsolably. My younger brother is mentally handicapped and about the time in his life when he discovered that he was different from other children other children discovered they could taunt him with the label retard and I can remember the day that he came home from school having been taunted by children the first time and saying mommy they called me retard. Simply as a consequence of his birth no no fault of his own.
He knew what it was and a number of you know what it is to be judged simply by the condition of your birth rather than by the content of your character. And Paul is surfacing those deep pains and those deep scars and those deep awful memories to say remember not only your roots not only your rejection finally says I want you to remember your rejectors. You were called uncircumcised by those who called themselves the circumcision that done in the body by the hands of men. Now that in the body is the in the flesh phrase again in the Greek. You were pagans in the flesh but you were made fun of by those who called themselves religious but the very reason they thought themselves religious was simply by something done with human hands in the flesh.
People who were really no different than you they were just in the flesh too and yet they made fun of you and ostracized you and called you unworthy of the covenants of life. Remember
what the apostle is doing is he is looking to those pagan those made religious by their own ritual and saying they're really all in the flesh. The common denominator among us all is that we're just flesh. We're all remarkably human however much we may think to distinguish ourselves. You may try to escape it. You may think there is some place you can go some society that that it wouldn't be that way. You know you can have the the Margaret Mead or the Paul Gauguin experience where you try to escape civilization to find that place untainted by human sophistication but you're there long enough and you find out it's just flesh operating in Tahiti or Africa or wherever you go. Or you can go the opposite way. You can think that somehow you can so control the front the flesh that its consequences would be removed but whether you're Karl Marx or the Commeruge you find that what is done by humanity to control the flesh actually brings out the worst atrocities of the flesh. Even if you look around in the church where there can be the the veneer of religiosity ultimately the flesh shows through in our gossip, in our quarrels, in our addictions, in our ambitions. We look all around and everyone everywhere is just flesh. Everywhere there's the smell of rotten flesh. We're the same. I think of that because my son has just gone to college and so we talk about things that he's facing and I can remember when I was in college one of the books that impressed me was a a small book that was a collection of letters from a Christian father to his son and among those letters was the correspondence for a time when the young man got to college and discovered the the immorality of so many people including his friends around him and even though it repulsed him he wrote to his dad I find myself strangely attracted. How can this be? I thought I was different and his father writing back to him with such honesty and saying isn't it disillusioning to find out you're just like everyone else?
The flesh just shows through. How can it be that as I listen and talk to my son about the things that he faces in a new experience that I find not only they were the things that I struggled with back then but I still struggle with. How is it that I'm still just flesh? Because I have to know it that I'm still remarkably fundamentally human just like everyone else and not only am I to remember that that past nature that still shows through I have to remember the the consequences of that past and so the apostle keeps pushing forward into painful memory telling us to remember the consequences of our past. We are alienated from our community. Remember at that time he says in verse 12 you were separate from Christ excluded from citizenship in Israel. That separate from Christ languages saying you are separated you were as as Gentiles separated from the promises of the covenant people. The Christ language is of course the messianic language. It's reminding that there was a people of promise and you Gentiles were not those people. You were alienated from the covenants of promise that God himself provided to his people. You were alien from that and that destroyed you from being not only a part of that covenant community but you were you were excluded from citizenship. There's the real language of hatred and bigotry. You were excluded from citizenship and the citizenship is not just reminding you of the covenant of promise the coming messiah but is reminding you of that theocratic state where there was by God's character the provision of justice and mercy and worship so that community could function together according to the to the standards of God. And the apostle saying by your fleshly nature you were alienated from community with other people. As we think about what that means some of you know better than I because you you come here to covenant seminary from different nations
and when you're not a citizen you know the vulnerability of wondering if justice will apply to you if you step out of line if you get removed from future and career and the ability to relate to each other and the ability to worship and lead others in worship and it's all a consequence of your citizenship being denied or at least far away from you at the moment.
And not only is there the alienation from community but the apostle keeps coming in closer by our memories and saying and remember not only did your paganness isolate you from community it alienated you from intimacy with others. You were excluded from citizenship in Israel and
foreigners to the covenants of promise. Most of the commentators make much of that plural on covenant.
It's not just a reference to the redemptive covenant of God but a reminder that there was a promise of the coming messiah but there were a whole series of covenants that led to that and what we immediately think of as of course the historic covenants. There was Adam and Noah and Abraham and David. There were these covenants that led to the promise but Paul has more in mind when he's talking about the alienness the foreignness of people to those covenants. There was among the covenant people a fabric of life that was involved in being in covenant with God. There was a covenant among the people for who got what land. There was covenant between people and priests and priests and people so that they could know God closely and relate to one another and worship. There were marriage covenants and covenants between parent and child and child and parent in the old age. There were the covenants of a covenant keeping people and you were alien from that. You couldn't relate to one another as God himself intended. Of course we know that Paul is talking here about ethnic gentiles and ethnic Israel but what he's driving toward is a spiritual understanding that we're to know that when you are outside the covenant, when you're outside living the life that God intends, that fabric of covenants that he intends, you're not just alienated from community, you're alienated from those most dear to you. Everything comes apart. As I was preparing this message I couldn't help think but of an article that Dr. Richard Winter gave me some years ago as I was helping someone in a counseling situation. It is a remarkable article, some of you may read it when you're in a doctor of ministry program, where a pastor writes autobiographically about his struggle with pornography. And it's remarkable in its darkness as well as what he identifies as the consequences in his life by living outside the covenants, what it did to his intimacy. He writes this.
Midway through the article he says, "I have not mentioned the effect of lust on my marriage.
It did not destroy my marriage, did not push me out to find more sexual excitation and an adulterous affair or with prostitutes, did not even impel me to put unrealistic demands on my wife's sexual performance. The effect was far more subtle. Because I have gone over every inch of Miss October as well as the throng of beauties that Madison Avenue and Hollywood recruit to tantalize the masses. I start to view my wife in that light. I begin to focus on my wife's minor flaws. I lose sight of the fact that she is a charming, warm, attractive woman and that I am fortunate to have found her. Lust affected my marriage in such a subtle and pernicious way. Sexually we performed okay. But passion, that was something different.
Passion I never felt in my marriage. We never talked about this, yet I am sure that she sensed it. I think she began to view herself as a sex object, not in the feminist sense of being the object of a husband's selfish greed, but an object in the deprived sense of being only the object of my physical necessity and not of romance and not of passion.
It just almost makes you shiver to read the account of one who says so honestly that when I lived outside the covenant obligations I was robbed of intimacy with that most precious to me. Here are the pernicious effects of sin and the apostle drawing to the memory of the Ephesians and to us. Remember, remember what it does to you to live in a way that is not in accord with the covenants of God. Remember the darkness of this. As he begins to go through these memories of how remarkably human we are and how alienated we are from community and intimacy through those consequences we recognize that ultimately what the apostle is driving at is saying what this all leads to is by living outside the covenants you're alienated from God. He actually uses that kind of language when he says that we were, the end of verse 12, without hope and without God in the world. Now you want to theologically start debating with Paul. Well you can't be without God in the world. God is God. He's everywhere. But not his reality, not in our hearts. That whole phrase ought to be read together. Though in the darkness of the world that we see so clearly from all these memories we should recognize that apart from this covenant relationship that we have walking with him that we walk alone and that's hopeless. You say well how could we walk alone if God is everywhere? I think again of that article of the pastor who wrote about his continued addiction to pornography and he described it. That was like he said not only did it not drive him out of his marriage, it just corroded it. He said it didn't drive him out of the ministry. He continued to minister to people and watched them cry in his sermons and talked about the wonders of the gospel to people who would be terribly moved by it but he said the reality began to move away from his own heart because he could speak about things so important and see it move people but it wasn't affecting him, wasn't affecting his life. So the very things he was talking about were in another room somewhere and not the room in which he was living. It was this pastoral schizophrenia that ultimately makes us wonder which is the true reality, the one that I'm living apart from God or the one that I'm talking about as though God is real. You know you really can't be in ministry and avoid this pastoral schizophrenia at times. You know, nobody who's a teacher, a counselor, a pastor has failed I think to be in those moments such as when you just had an argument with your wife and you walk right from that into a counseling session with a couple to tell them how to improve their marriage. You know and you live this bifurcation at times but if you get caught in one world
God ceases to be real to you and everything that you give yourself to and say is important begins to be questioned and you find yourself without hope and without God in the world.
You know as the apostle kind of lists all these consequences of our past, our flesh, it's almost as though he is letting the memories roll over us like we're standing in a surf that's at storm and the waves keep hitting us of one memory after another and we get pushed down further and further into hopelessness below the water of this is what life is like, this is what our past was like, and this is what the consequences are like, and these are the consequences we still know all too well. And you begin to say why is the apostle doing this? Why is he making us hate our past and in some measure hate our flesh so much? Surely one of the reasons he is doing this is because of what has just preceded this passage. Remember here's the words that we like so much in Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, "It's by grace that you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it's the gift of God not of works lest anyone should boast." Here's the the wonderful statement of the grace of God that makes us right with him,
and lest we believe that that would give us license to live apart from the covenant relationship with God, he begins to remind us what it was like. Yes, here is the grace that's available, here's what makes you right with God. Now if you think that would lead you to license, if you think that would give you permission to indulge the flesh, remember, you remember the darkness that came and what it was like to live according to the flesh. And so he pushes us so far beneath the water that we cannot but think how horrible is the drowning of the darkness of the flesh. But at the same time something else is happening. We begin to gasp for air. I gotta have air, I gotta have relief, I gotta have some way out of here. And so the apostle uses those dark memories now to push forward, and he says no longer about memory but now, verse 13, "But now in Christ you were once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ." Here's no longer remembrance but declaration, not what was but what is by the work of Christ. Having remembered the horror he says now breathe again. Now you be God's workmanship. Live out the promise that is yours by knowing this in Christ you, in Christ you, once you were in the flesh, imprisoned to your human nature, but now you are united to Christ. And so that we'll begin to feel the fullness of that he begins to explain what it means to be united to Christ. These words are so simple and yet so profound. "You in Christ were once far away but now have been brought near." Now it's just initially a spatial referent far away and now near. But the people of the book know what's being talked about.
There was a time when God exhibited his presence in the temple of Israel, and there was Israel near and then there were the nations far. And now the apostle is saying, "You who were the nations far, you're near. You can come near to God. You are in Christ Jesus."
And that does something. I mean first of all there's simply the vertical reference, you are near to God. But something else happens too. I mean if you could just think of it visually, maybe in that analogy of Jesus when he looked over Jerusalem before his crucifixion and he said, "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to gather you under my wings like a hen gathers her chicks." And you would not. If they had actually come close, if they had come near, they would be near to him all those chicks, but who else would they be near to? They'd be near to each other near to him. There is in this nearness not only a vertical relationship being maintained, there's a horizontal relationship that's being renewed. So he's saying, "You are near." And that does something to community when you recognize that those who were far away by their ethnicity, by their flesh, whether it is their sin or their forness to the culture, whatever, they're all near. They're together. I think of how the Westminster Confession says this just about what the church is.
The visible church, which is also Catholic or universal under the gospel, that's the spread,
consists of all those throughout the world who profess the true religion and of their children. And is the kingdom of God and the house and family of God. Isn't that interesting? All the nations throughout the world and all the peoples of them who profess the true religion are part of the kingdom, but they're also part of the family. They are near to each other. And you think of what that means for us not only as we think of those Christians and other nations who may experience the prejudice of our culture, but we even think within our own nation of Christians who so struggle with the labels of our culture.
I am Caucasian American. I am African American. I am Asian American.
Beyond all of those labels, the Apostle is saying, "You are brothers and sisters in the family of Christ." And it's not just affecting community, it's to be affecting intimacy. You think of where we were before, of those relationships in which a man and a woman in a marriage begin to be separated and hurt by sin between them. And so much there is the tendency to say that I am the one who is okay and you're the one who failed. I am the one who did right and you are the one who did wrong. I am the respected and you are the despicable. And here the Apostle is saying, "Remember you were both flesh and now you are both in Christ,
both in Christ, even as you were both flesh." How can that be? He says, "through the blood."
Our immediate reaction when we hear those words "through the blood" is to remember the cleansing of the sacrifices, right? The notion of the blood washing away the sin. But in the verse it hasn't even richer meaning because if we are in Christ, united to Him, His being, our being, then through the blood is not simply talking about our receiving the benefits of His death, it's talking about our receiving the riches of His life. His blood, His life courses through our veins. I'm in union with Christ. And what that means is through the blood, whether respected or despicable, whether it's a matter of race or ethnicity or demographics or sin. I'm identified as Christ. Above all things, I am a Christian. We take the labels we put on each other and call each other, the names of the culture, the slurs of race and gender and sexuality. And we say above them all is written in blood another label that says, "Christian, if that person professes Christ." And we look at ourselves and we think of the labels that we put on ourselves. Failure, liar, hypocrite, slut, homo, queer,
failure in every way I can remember. And even above all those labels that we put on ourselves, the Apostle has said, "Christian, written in the blood of Christ,
as His identity has become more and more our own."
I think of a pastor that I know, a PCA pastor. He was once the director of student services here, Larry Dawn. A few years ago he took an historic church in Iowa, his hometown church, and let it out of a denomination that had gone faithless in terms of its adherence to scripture and led it to faithfulness into another denomination. Because it was an historic church, I will tell you that what sounds very good, it was a very painful process. As people in his own town who knew his birth, who knew who he was, unleashed upon him the slurs and the gossip and the antipathy that they would launch only toward one that they wanted and knew so well to feel the pain of what they were saying. But he knew that wasn't his identity. His identity was Christian, one who named the name of Jesus and had that identity, despite what people would say about him. It sounds so courageous, but I will tell you, the greater courage is what he is experiencing now. Some of you know, Larry, you nodded when I said the word, his name. Larry Dawn has struggled with epilepsy for years. And in the last years, it has been a struggle that has come where seizures have come upon him not just occasionally, but at times, multiple times every day. It got to be so debilitating that about a half year ago, he went to the Mayo Clinic for some risky and scary surgery to try to correct things.
That epilepsy had to be changed. He said it to me one point, "It robs me of me
because I can't preach. It's happened in the pulpit. I can't drive. I can't take my kids to sports events. At times I can't talk. At afterwards I can't remember."
And it had the surgery, and it was successful until about a month ago. And then a seizure came again.
I talked to him the day after that. And of course, he was just totally wiped out, not only from the effects of the seizure, but from the contemplation of what might be ahead all over again. Are we going to go through this all over again? All the pain in my family, all the hurt, but at some point he said, "Brian, though the seizures rob me of me, they are not me.
I'm still a father. I'm still a husband. I'm still a pastor. That's who I am. And beyond all of those things, I am a child of God. If it's not corrected in this life, there will come a time when it is, because despite all the things that have happened to me, I am a Christian. It is your identity and mine. As we think back over the horrors of the past, the things that separate us as communities, the things that we deeply regret of prejudice and pain and sin, we know the labels that people put on us and that we put on ourselves. But we ultimately fulfill being God's workmanship according to the message of the gospel that makes us his church, all of us, his family, when we say, "Above all the labels is written in blood this pronouncement of my identity and yours in Christ. I am a Christian. That is who I am by the grace of Jesus Christ. And despite the failures and the pain, this is who I shall be. Praise God he has made me so." Pray with me. Heavenly Father, we recognize that so much in our past and present would rob us of our identity.
And so we need the declaration of the gospel that gives us strength, true knowledge of who we are. Oh Father, bring it home again this day. That we might, through the blood of Christ, cleansing our sin and coursing through our veins, acknowledge the life and the identity of Christ in us that we might know in our failure as well as in our successes against our despair and against our arrogance who we truly are. By your grace we are made Christian. This is our hope and this is our strength because of Jesus who is our all in all. Make him our identity for the glory of his name we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Let me stand. Let you stand and we'll have the benediction.
"Now may the God who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus make you perfect to do his will working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight for the glory of his name you who are in Christ Jesus now and forever. Amen." Go in peace.