Our identity as followers of Jesus should remove racial barriers because all races are included in His kingdom as part of His church...

This week, we have been looking at a section of a letter that is recorded for us in the Bible called the book of Ephesians, where we have seen a man named Paul reveal for us the reality that our identity as followers of Jesus should remove racial barriers. Wednesday, we discovered that our identity as followers of Jesus should remove racial barriers because Jesus has removed the barrier of the Law. We discovered that our identity as followers of Jesus should remove racial barriers because of Jesus message. And we discovered that our identity as followers of Jesus should remove racial barriers because we all have access to God the Father the same way. Today, we will see Paul reveal for us a fourth reason why our identity as a follower of Jesus should remove racial barriers in Ephesians 2:19:

 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

Now verse 19, if communicated in the language we us in our culture today, would have sounded something like this: “So you who were Gentiles that are following Jesus are no longer living your lives as outsiders who are unfamiliar with God. Instead you are now insiders with your fellow Jewish followers of Jesus as part of the kingdom of God and are a part of the family of God living under the same roof as part of God’s house the church.”

And it is here that we see Paul reveal for us the reality that our identity as a follower of Jesus should remove racial barriers because all races are included in His kingdom as part of His church. Every follower of Jesus, regardless of ethnicity or culture, is now a saint in God’s sight that is part of His family and part of His new movement called the church. And as Paul reveals in verse 20, God has been building His church for over 2,000 years and is actively at work to build His church. The phrase, having been built, is past tense and conveys the sense of building on something that has already been built.

So even in the first century, Paul wanted to let the members of the church at Ephesus know that God had built His church and was at work to continue to build His church. Now a natural question that arises here is “well Dave how does God build His church? And what is the church anyways?” As we talked about earlier in this series, the church is not somewhere we go, the church is something that we are. The church is the vehicle that Jesus uses to reveal Himself to the world.

When we become followers of Jesus, we are united in Christ by the Holy Spirit and become part of His body. And as part of His body, we experience God as we come together as the called out community called the church. And Jesus, by His Spirit, uses the church, which is His body, as a vehicle to reveal Himself to the world. In verse 20, we see Paul explain that the church was built, and is being built, on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone. But what does that mean?

Now to understand what Paul is communicating here we first need to understand who the Apostles and Prophets were. The Apostles and Prophets were a specific group of people who lived in a specific time in history that were given a specific spiritual gift. An Apostle was a person who had seen Jesus after He had been resurrected from the dead and who was given a specific spiritual gift by Jesus to supervise and authorize the special work of laying the foundation of the church.

A prophet was a person who received the spiritual gift to receive and communicate new truth about God and the kingdom of God by direct revelation from God during the founding of the church. A prophet, by definition reveals things about God that could not be known by another means and that was new. That is why we do not have Apostles and Prophets today. Apostles and Prophets were a specific group of people who lived in a specific time in history that were given a specific spiritual gift to do something new, which was to launch the church.

Now that leads to another question that we need to answer, which is what Paul means when He says that Jesus Christ is the cornerstone? Paul here is giving us a word picture to help us wrap our minds around the truth the he is trying to convey. In ancient building practices, the cornerstone was the principle stone that was placed at the corner of a building. The cornerstone was usually one of the largest, strongest, and most carefully constructed of any in the building. The cornerstone sets the standard for the building.

 

The cornerstone is important since all other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure.  If the cornerstone is off, then the entire building will be off.  Paul’s point here is that Jesus Christ and His message and teachings set the standard for the foundation of the church. Jesus proclaimed God’s message of rescue to self righteous religious Jewish people who considered themselves insiders when it came to God and to irreligious Gentile people who considered themselves outsiders when it came to God.

 And now, the apostles and prophets, who had seen Jesus and had been given Jesus message of rescue, were also proclaiming that message as they established new churches that were setting the foundation for what was to follow. And Jesus message that set the standard that these Apostles and Prophets were now communicating was new: that Jews and Gentiles had access to God the same way and were equally included in His kingdom as part of His church. The Apostles and Prophets were communicating God’s new message that the church was not for insiders but for outsiders of every culture and ethnicity.

And some 2,000 years later, Jesus is still building His church on the foundation that was laid by His new message that was communicated by the Apostles and Prophets and that continues to be communicated today as we read the message and teachings of Jesus, through the Apostles and Prophets, that has been preserved for us by God in the Bible. And as we have seen, as God continues to build His church and advance His kingdom, He has a desire for His followers when it comes to how we live out our identity as followers of Jesus.

And that desire is that our identity as followers of Jesus should remove racial barriers. Our identity as followers of Jesus should remove racial barriers because Jesus has removed the barrier of the Law. Our identity as followers of Jesus should remove racial barriers because of Jesus message. Our identity as followers of Jesus should remove racial barriers because we all have access to God the Father the same way. And our identity as followers of Jesus should remove racial barriers because all races are included in His kingdom as part of His church.

So here is a question for us to consider: Are you living out of your identity as a follower of Jesus when it comes to how you view and engage other races? Or are you still measuring the value and worth of other races and cultures by purely external standards. Do you still feel a sense of ethnic superiority as a result of externals that have nothing to do with one’s heart and character?