A Sinful History
Studying history helps us remember the past so that we can understand the present. Living wisely and winsomely in the world requires some level of understanding where we’ve come from. History stops being boring when we understand its purpose.
Our country has a checkered history in many areas. There are bright spots and there are dark spots. There is much good in our history, and there is much that is bad. The history of the United States of America, just like our own personal histories, reveals much to be proud of and much to be ashamed of. There is grace and there is sin.
One of the darkest aspects of our cultural history is in the area of race relations. The very existence of our country is the result of Caucasian Europeans deciding that this land belonged to them rather than the Native Americans who already lived here. The prosperity of our country, at least in the early days, is largely the result of the African slave trade. Our country was built, literally, on the backs of men and women who were stolen from their homes and families, sold like livestock, and forced to work without pay under the harshest of conditions.
White people like me need to understand that the racial dynamic of our country cannot be understood apart from the evil of slavery that lived and thrived here for two hundred years. What makes it worse is that many of our forefathers in the faith justified slavery using really bad hermeneutics. Preachers and theologians argued that slavery was biblical and that it was a blessing because it allowed so many people to hear the gospel who wouldn’t have otherwise.
The church in America, like the nation itself, was split over the issue of slavery. The Southern Baptist Convention, of which we’re a part, was formed because white Baptists in the South protested slave-holders being denied service on the mission field. Thankfully, our denomination has repented and is repenting.
The Civil Rights Movement
After slavery, and the Civil War that it produced, the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s has affected the racial environment of our country more than anything else. Some of you were there. Many of us were not. Those of us who weren’t there need to remember that just fifty to sixty years ago, during the lifetime of our parents and grandparents, our country had laws that mandated the separation of races. Black people had to go to separate schools, stay in separate motels, use separate swimming pools and hospital waiting rooms and restrooms and water fountains, and sit in separate seats on buses. Even churches enforced segregation.
The mantra of the white people who made and enforced these laws was, “Separate but equal.” This way of rationalizing the sin of segregation was largely unquestioned by white people. But, praise God, there were many African-Americans who were willing to be a “voice in the wilderness” of American culture.
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Chief among these voices was Martin Luther King, Jr. King was born in 1929 and was killed fifty years ago this month in Memphis, Tennessee. He was thirty-nine years old. King didn’t start the civil rights movement, and he didn’t sign up to be its leader. He was thrust into the spotlight when, as a twenty-six-year-old pastor, a lady in his city decided to not give up her seat on a bus to a white man. In 1955, Rosa Parks ignited a firestorm by disobeying the segregation laws of Montgomery, Alabama. Through this, Martin Luther King, a young pastor in Montgomery, became the spokesperson for the movement. Over the next thirteen years, no one spoke with more influence than King.
Scholars think that the clearest expression of his goals is in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” On Good Friday in April of 1963, King led a peaceful, nonviolent demonstration in Birmingham, Alabama to protest segregation. The state-court had prohibited him from leading any demonstrations, but King decided that going to jail was a cost worth paying to protest the injustice of segregation.
He and all the demonstrators were thrown in jail. A few days later, someone showed King a letter written to him publicly in the Birmingham News. Eight Christian and Jewish clergymen, all white, criticized King for the demonstration. In response, King wrote what’s known as “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Listen to part of his response to his white detractors:
“It is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say ‘wait.’ But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, ‘Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?’; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading ‘white’ and ‘colored’; when your first name becomes ‘nigger’ and your middle name becomes ‘boy’ (however old you are) and your last name becomes ‘John,’ and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title ‘Mrs.’; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodyness’ – then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.”
Toward the end of the “Letter,” King challenged the church in America to regain its prophetic ministry in the culture. He said, “There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society…But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.” These were prophetic words then, and now, fifty-five years later.
The church, in large part, has failed to play an active role in addressing the sin of racism in our culture over the last several decades. By the grace of God, that is starting to change. But what’s even more distressing is that the church is actually complicit in perpetuating a culture that elevates one race over another. As our culture has grown more and more diverse, our churches still tend to divide over racial and ethnic lines. This is not only wrong, but it’s also anti-gospel. One of God’s intentions in the gospel of Jesus Christ is the breaking down of all racial and ethnic barriers in order to create a new humanity in Christ. The church, of all places, is no place for racism and ethnic division.
Ethnic Tensions in the Church at Ephesus
Ethnic tensions in the church are not new. They’ve been around since the very beginning. The church at Ephesus was started when Paul preached the gospel there, starting in the synagogue. Some Jews were converted to Christ. But after three months, the Jews kicked Paul out of the synagogue. So he started teaching in a public place, the hall of Tyrannus, for two years. Luke says in Acts 19:10, that this “continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.” The church grew, and as it grew, it became increasingly Gentile. This created ethnic tension in the church.
To understand this tension, we need to understand the open hostility that existed between Jews and Gentiles two thousand years ago. One commentator describes the alienation between Jew and Gentile in the following way:
“The Gentiles, said the Jews, were created by God to be fuel for the fires of hell. God, they said, loves only Israel of all the nations that he had made…It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile mother in her hour of sorest need, for that would simply be to bring another Gentile into the world. Until Christ came, the Gentiles were an object of contempt to the Jews. The barrier between them was absolute. If a Jewish boy married a Gentile girl, or if a Jewish girl married a Gentile boy, the funeral of that Jewish boy or girl was carried out. Such contact with a Gentile was the equivalent of death.”
Ephesians 2:11-22
It was this ethnic reality that Paul addresses in Ephesians 2:11-22. This is one of his clearest statements on how the work of Christ unites people from different ethnic backgrounds. We’ll study these twelve verses over the next three weeks. As we do, I pray that God would help us to see the pride of racism in our hearts and that the grace of the gospel would change us.
Verses 11-22 follow the same patter as verses 1-10. They describe our situation apart from God, God’s response to our plight, and the implications that God’s response to our situation has on our lives. These sections are also fundamentally different from one another. Verses 1-10 describe all people everywhere. Verses 11-22 are addressed specifically to Gentiles. Verse 1-10 addresses our vertical problem, our standing in relation to God. Verses 11-22 address our horizontal problem, our standing with people. One effects the other. A right relationship with others results from a right relationship with God.
Remember Where You Were
We’ll begin by looking at verses 11-13. Verses 11-12 describe where Gentiles once were, far from God. Verse 13 tells them where they are now, near to God. Paul is saying, “Remember where you were, and look at where you are.” These are our two points this morning.
First, he tells them to remember where they were (vv. 11-12). Verses 1-3 say that all people were dead in sin and by nature deserving of God’s wrath. But these verses say that the Gentiles were at a special disadvantage. They should therefore appreciate God’s grace all the more.
Paul describes what the Gentiles were in two ways. In verse 11, he explains how Jews defined them. He says that Gentiles didn’t have the physical mark of circumcision that distinguished Jews from Gentiles.
In verse 12, he describes the privileges that they were excluded from since they didn’t belong to Israel. Because the Gentiles were excluded from Israel, they were deprived of five things. They were “separated from Christ,” literally “outside Christ.” Obviously Christ hadn’t appeared in Old Testament Israel. He’s referring to the promise of the Messiah in Israel’s Scriptures. The Gentiles were “separated” from the hope that the Jews had in a coming Messiah.
What a terrible place to be! To long for a Savior but to have no promise of One. This is one reason, I think, our culture is increasingly drawn to superhero movies. We long for a Savior. We long to be rescued. But we haven’t heard of or embraced the appearance of Christ, so we scratch the itch of the desire for a Savior through movies with Savior-like figures.
Second, Gentiles are “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.” Israel, as a nation, was distinguished by its unique way of life. It had its own laws and regulations, such as the Sabbath or the food laws. Unbelieving Gentiles were excluded from this way of life.
Third, Gentiles are “strangers to the covenants of promise.” Paul is probably referring to the covenant God made with Abraham, David, and the new covenant. These covenants revealed God’s saving purposes in the world. Because the Gentiles didn’t have Israel’s scriptures, they didn’t have clear access to the saving purposes of God.
Fourth, the Gentiles “had no hope.” Because of their position outside of Israel, with no access to Israel’s scriptures, no access to the promises of the covenants or the promise of a Messiah, they were literally hopeless. Before the gospel came to them, they lived in hopelessness.
They lived without hope because they lived without God. This is the fifth thing Paul says, they were “without God in the world.” Paul says that the Gentiles are atheos, without God. The Gentiles would use this word to describe Jews and Christians who refused to worship all their gods. People worshipping statues and images said that Christians were the atheists!
This verse echoes verses 1-3, as it describes the desperate situation that the Gentiles are in prior to the coming of the gospel. Before the gospel, only those within Israel could hope for salvation from God’s wrath. Uncircumcised Gentiles were excluded from God’s promises and hopeless. Because they lived apart from God in the present, they would live apart from him in the future.
Remembering Helps Us to Love
Paul is reminding these Gentile Christians who they were and where they were. They were separated from God. He wants them to remember who they were because he knows that only when we understand who we were and where we came from will we truly appreciate where we are now. He knows that the ethnic divisions occurring in the church can only be remedied by the gospel. And he knows that the gospel only has power in our lives when we own who we were before it came to us.
We have to feel the weight of our situation before we can experience the power and grace of the gospel. Only broken people will see their need for Jesus. And only broken people can truly love people who’re different than them. Gospel-centered racial reconciliation starts with flat-out honesty about who we are outside of Christ. And the Bible says we’re all the same: “having no hope and without God in the world.” Paul is saying, for love’s sake, remember who you were.
Look at Where You Are
The gospel commands us to own who we were, to acknowledge where we were: far from God. But it doesn’t leave us there. If we embrace the gospel, it repositions us, both now and forever. This is the second thing Paul says in this passage. He says, “Look at where you are” (v. 13). “But now,” because of the blood of Jesus, you’ve been “brought near.” Near to what? Near to God. You were far from God when you lived outside of Christ. Deep down you sensed his existence, but you had no relationship or fellowship or intimacy or joy in him. You may’ve feared him, but you didn’t love him.
“But now” God has called you home through Jesus Christ. The Jewish Messiah came to bring Gentiles into the family of God. Jesus came to bring us back to the God who made us and who we’ve lived in rebellion against. We were born under the curse of sin, spiritually dead and unable to make ourselves alive, and deserving the wrath of God because we’ve broken his law. But, in his mercy, he sent Jesus to live a perfect life, die on the cross to absorb the punishment that we deserve, and raise from the dead on the third day, so that everyone, both Jew and Gentile, who turns from themselves and puts their trust in him will be saved.
We Gentiles were a long way from God (“far off”) and we had no intention of making the journey back to him. So, in love, God came to us. He came to his enemies, to those who lived outside of his ways, to those who were attempting to save themselves through good works, and to those who were worshipping false gods. We were “far off,” but God came to us and “brought us near” to him through Christ.
God Drew Near to Us So That We Would Draw Near to Others
Paul’s point is simple. If God drew near to people unlike him, we should draw near to people unlike us. If God gave us grace despite our desperate condition, then we need to repent of our racism, of every impulse in us that tells us that we’re better than someone simply based on the color of their skin. The point of this text is clear: no we’re not. We’re all the same.
Racism is a symptom of the much greater sin of pride, of thinking that we’re better than we really are. Of thinking that we’re better than others because of some outward thing. The gospel kills racism because it kills pride. It tells us the truth about us. It says we’re all the same. It says we’re all far from God. It says we all need grace. And it says that grace and mercy is freely offered to everyone in the same way: though Jesus Christ.
May we never forget what the sin of racism has done, and is doing, to our country. May we never forget the desperate condition we were in outside of Christ. And may we never forget that God came near to us even though we didn’t want to come near to him. May his grace compel us to draw near to people who’re far from us ethnically.