This week we continue our study of our purpose in Christ with the crucial statement made in Ephesians 2:15-16:
and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.
The Jews and the Gentiles are the "two" that Paul is talking about making into "one new man." One of the critical issues of our time is understanding how this is going to happen.
Many are beginning to understand that the modern church’s foundation is based more in Rome than in Jerusalem. For many this is certainly not a bad thing, but it is not what was intended. There is a reason why the Lord chose the Jewish people to bring forth Christ. There is also a reason why He laid the foundation of His church in Jerusalem, and why all of the writers of the Bible were Jewish. Understanding His reasons for this will be critical for entering into the full purpose of God before the end of this age. Even so, there is a ditch on both sides of the path of life, and very few have been able to find the path of life on this issue without falling into either side of it.
When many begin to comprehend the importance of understanding the Jewish roots they swing back too far, and try to return to the "Law that is contained in ordinances" as a basis for their standing with God. As these verses in Ephesians declare, Jesus abolished this in His own flesh. He abolished it as a source of righteousness by becoming our righteousness at the cross. We therefore no longer seek to keep the Law for righteousness, but we embrace the cross and seek to abide in the Lord who is our righteousness. To really understand the true Jewish roots we actually have to go back before the Law, which was added because of transgressions. As we are most gravely warned in Galatians 5:4-9:
For we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness.
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love.
You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?
This persuasion did not come from Him who calls you.
A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough.
As we are warned, if we turn to the Law itself we are in danger of being "severed from Christ." I have watched many who began to understand the need to recover the Jewish roots of the church tend to embrace the very leaven that Jesus warned about when He said in Matthew 16:6, "…Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." This leaven is why we are also told that the Law is "the ministry of death," and the "ministry of condemnation" (II Corinthians 3:7,9). However, as the same writer, Paul, also asserted in Romans 3:31, "Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law."
Neither did Jesus come to abolish the Law as the standard of God’s righteousness. He came to fulfill it so that He could become our righteousness. As Paul also explained to the Romans, without the Law there would have been no transgression because there would have been no understanding of God’s standards of righteousness. In this way the Law was our schoolteacher which led us to Christ. It led us to Him because of one certainty that every true seeker of God will come to realize—we cannot keep the Law by our own strength, which casts us completely upon the atonement of the cross for our forgiveness and reconciliation to God, which is explained in Romans 7:7-13
But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead.
And I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive, and I died;
and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me;
for sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me.
So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Therefore did that which is good become a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
One serious problem that we have in the church is a lack of the proper use of the Law, which is to reveal sin. This is often the tragic result of the gospel having been changed from Jesus having come to deliver us from sin to Him coming to deliver us from troubles. We will not cast ourselves upon the cross for forgiveness of our sin, and as the only basis for our reconciliation to God, if we do not realize that we are transgressors who need forgiveness and reconciliation. However, even though the Law is given to reveal sin, it is a deadly trap to embrace it as the remedy for sin in place of the cross.
So the Law is good if used as it was intended and is an ultimate deception and a "ministry of death" if used wrongly. Some use it rightly, and are compelled by it to go to the cross for reconciliation to God, but then return to the Law to try to keep its ordinances as a basis for continuing in God’s approval, which is exactly the trap that Paul wrote the book of Galatians to warn about. This is the original heresy that the first century apostles had to fight, and one that is rising up again at the end. Ultimately, this is the choice between the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil versus the Tree of Life.
As we read in our Scriptures for this week from Ephesians, only the cross can abolish the enmity between Jew and Gentile, and bring the two together into one new man as will happen before the end. This will bring forth a tree with Jewish roots and Gentile branches, both of which need each other to survive and bear fruit. Jewish believers in Messiah will never be made complete without Gentile believers, and vice versa. Before the end comes, this will happen, but at the present time neither side has crawled out of their ditch to be joined on the road that is between them, the path of life.