1165. The Basis of Grace Relations

Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program features sermons from chapel services at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today on The Daily Platform, we're beginning a three-part series called Grace Relations. Today's message will be preached by Dr. Sam Horn, who is a BJU seminary professor and is also pastor at Palmetto Baptist Church in Piedmont, South Carolina. Let me ask you to take your Bible to the book of Ephesians chapter 2. And the topic of our week is Grace Relations. I thought about how to address this and maybe the best way to do that is to tell you a story.

And I trust the story will be an encouragement to you and I'll set the stage for what we're going to talk about today out of Ephesians chapter 2. The story began in 1785, in fact on December 7th. of that year when a young minister of Parliament, a member of the House of Commons, went by night to have a secret meeting with an old pastor in London. The pastor was named John Newton. He had come to see Newton because he had grown deeply convicted as a young minister of Parliament that he had squandered the first years, the early years of his time in Parliament. And he was in anguish about what he should do with the remaining years should the Lord give him as a public servant in the House of Commons.

We're not real sure what Newton said to him in that meeting, but whatever Newton said, it made an indelible impact on the life of this young man. This lady has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners and morals. Within weeks of writing that statement in his journal, he presented a motion in the House of Commons for the abolition of the slave trade. Later he would introduce a second motion that would go beyond just abolishing the slave trade, but rather would make slavery itself in England illegal. It would abolish slavery in England.

This would be a battle that would rage for the remaining 46 years of his career. His motion to abolish slave trading, that first motion, was defeated 11 times before it finally passed in 1807. It wasn't until 1833 that his motion to abolish owning slaves in England finally passed three days before his death.

By now I'm sure you know who I'm talking about because his name is on the screen. William Wilberforce gave his entire life to these two things, the abolition of the slave trade in England and the reforming of morals among professing Christians in England. He was born from Africa and whose skin was a different color than his own.

He saw this, and rightly so, as a great moral evil before God. And all you have to do is go back and look at the history of that unfortunate and wicked trade and for economic reasons more than 12 million Africans would be sold to European slave traders who under the harshest and most inhuman conditions transported them across the world. Across the Atlantic Ocean to both Europe and the Americas and resold them who had not died in the process. That's called the transatlantic slave trade. There was an additional nine million Africans who suffered the same horrific treatment in faith by those who transported them across the Sahara to the nations that we now know as the Arab world.

They were captured and then sold by other African tribal leaders who were either at war with each other or who considered other tribes less valuable than their own. It doesn't take very long for us to hear something like this and there's something that rises up in us and we would look at this and say this is an unbearable brokenness and an unspeakable moral evil that was committed by every people group involved. It is that many of those who were involved in this were professing Christians who would have considered themselves to be in good standing before God. They were so horrifically and inexcusably ignorant of what God actually said about what they were doing that they saw no incompatibility in what they professed to believe about God and what they actually were doing to his image bearers who were created in the image of the very God. At the heart of all of this we could say was the sinful belief that the color of a person's skin, the ethnic people group to which a person belonged either enhanced or diminished his value in standing as a human being created in God's image. This wasn't limited to Wilberforce's time and to the evil that he saw happening in the continent of Africa. This has been going on in human history.

for a long time. Let me give you some examples. During World War II six million Jews were exterminated simply because they were Jews. 1.2 million Armenians were killed in the genocide of 1915. 3.3 million people from different ethnicities in the Soviet Union died under the brutal regime of Joseph Stalin.

These Koreans, Malaysians, Indonesians, Filipinos, Indochinese perished at the hands of the Japanese military between 1937 and 1945. And more recently 1.1 million Rwandans lost their lives in the brutal genocide of 1994 and it hasn't stopped. The battle that has broken and fractured human relationships has been going on since Genesis 4 when one brother rose up against another brother and slew him. The idea in our day that has come to stand for all of this hostility and enmity that results in such brutality is this.

The belief that the ethnicity, the nationality and the skin color of a person either enhances or devalues their intrinsic worth as a human being created in the image of God and therefore becomes the basis of either including or excluding them. So let's be clear as we consider grace relations this morning if I don't value you as an image bearer of equal worth and standing before God or I fail to give you the respect God demands we give to image bearers created in his image then I have sinned against you and more importantly I have sinned against God. And while we can lament all of the genocides that we just listed and all of the things that have happened there are many many ongoing expressions of this hostility and this enmity that has broken and divided and shattered human relationships.

And so how are we going to resolve this? What are we to do as recipients of the grace of God? As we live and have our being in the cultures and societies and among the nations of the day. And I would suggest to you that that's really the topic of the week, grace relationship. How does grace impact all of this? And I think before we can answer that question well and by well I mean thoughtfully, intentionally and biblically before we can answer that question well I think we have to understand 4 things. The first thing we have to understand, this was not how God designed humanity to function. When we consider divine design and we go all the way back to creation we discover that all humans are the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.

In this sense there is only one race on the planet, the human race. We read in Genesis 1 26 and 27 that Adam was made in the image of God and that Adam's sons and daughters were born in his likeness in Genesis chapter 5 verses 1 and 3. And because they were born in Adam's likeness and Adam was in the likeness of God all of his children, all of his descendants, all humans on the planet are image bearers who are equal in worth and standing before God and therefore must be treated with appropriate respect by all humans.

All other image bearers. This is the point to Genesis chapter 9 verses 5 and 6. Furthermore by the time you get to Noah and his three sons all the different ethnicities and nationalities and languages are likewise comprised of image bearers who have descended from Noah and his sons from whom all the nations and the tribes and the ethnic groups are descended. That's the point of Genesis 9 18.

It sums it up this way in Acts 17. And he, that is God, made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place. When you start looking at God's original design, when you go back to creation what you discover is that in the marvelous plan and stunning design of God humanity would exhibit a common unity. From the same man, the same ancestor Adam and a beautiful diversity. Many languages, many nations, many tribes.

So that brings us to the question, what happened? And the short answer to that but the profound answer to that is sin. Sin alienated man from God in Genesis 3 and it alienated man from man in Genesis 4. By the time you get to Psalm 2 all of the nations on the earth are raging against God and they're raging against each other. And so what happened to this beautiful design of unity and diversity was sin, the fall. There's the second piece of our world view. Sin created deep enmity between God and sinners and between sinners and sinners.

And this alienation and hostility is evident in every direction. Vertically with God, horizontally with others at every level between nations and ethnicities and people groups and languages and even individuals. And by the time we get to the New Testament truly there is no peace on earth and there is no good will among men.

So that's the first thing we need to understand. Secondly, this is not how God will leave matters. In Psalm 5 verses 9 and 10 the unity, the beautiful unity and the magnificent diversity is represented by all of image bearers who have been gathered and summoned around the throne and are praising God. Listen to their praise as they stand around the throne and they worship the one who created them and purchased them and redeemed them. The third thing we need to understand, this hostility and alienation on earth is only a symptom and a result of a much deeper and more devastating alienation in heaven. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1 and 2 and 3 say it this way, you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world. Following the prince of the power of the air and the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom you are. In whom we all once lived, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and we were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

The real problem between the broken relationships on this planet comes from a massive alienation and a massive brokenness in our relationship with God. And all of this enmity and all of this alienation on earth and in heaven through the work of an anointed appointed champion, a messiah, his messiah and by the time Paul writes in the book of Ephesians he knows who that messiah is and his name is Jesus. Listen to how Paul describes the work of messiah. There is purpose which he set forth in Christ. What purpose? A plan.

At the end of time, at the fullness of time. To do what? To unite. The idea there is to regather, to reunite all things in him. Things in heaven and things on earth. And Ephesians chapter 2 is the story of how God did this through Christ. The alienation that happens between man and God by triumphing over the powers, the evil powers, this prince of the power of the air that you read about early up in chapter 2. God has triumphed over him and put him to open shame and transferred people out of his realm into the realm, into the kingdom of his son. He has resolved the alienation between God and man and you find out about that in chapter 2 verses 1 through 10. You discover that messiah didn't just solve the broken relationship and alienation between God and man, he resolved the relationship, the horrifically broken relationship between the sons of Abraham and Moses and the sons of Adam and Noah. He resolved the relationships that were hostile between the sons of Abraham and Noah or Moses rather, the Jews and everybody else. All the nations of the world, the Gentiles, the peoples. And that's the story of what we see in Ephesians chapter 2 verses 11 through 13 and he did it in three ways. The first thing he did, and if we're going to understand how the gospel resolves all this, we have to recognize that Christ dealt with the actual reality and true reason for the hostility between the two groups.

Look at verse 11. Paul says, Remember that you were, and then he lists five things. And we can take all five of those things and use one word, alienated. You were excluded. You were the ultimate outsiders. And the reason you were ultimate outsiders was because of a wall that had been erected.

Listen to how he talks about it. You were separated from Christ. Alienated by God. Divided from the commonwealth of Israel. Strangers to the covenants, having no hope and without God in the world.

Why? Because there was, in verse 15, a law of commandments expressed in ordinance. The law of Moses. And this law was a dividing wall of hostility. God had given to Moses and that belonged to you and anybody outside of your tribe.

Anybody outside of your ethnic group was far. And there was a wall in the very place where God had chosen to represent his presence on earth in the temple that told every single Gentile, you cannot come near. In fact, if you cross this wall, the temple police, the Levites, will slay you. So when a Jew walked by you and said to you, Shalom, there was no Shalom for a Gentile because of that wall. And what's stunning is that the Jew never really understood that that wall also created a massive alienation between him and God.

The whole world, including them, will be guilty before God. In other words, there is a massive, unscalable wall, not just between Jew and Gentile, but between God and his image bearers. And until we realize that, we will never understand how grace relations work. And the minute we understand that, we understand that it doesn't matter if we're Jews who think we're near or if we're Gentiles who the Jews think are far, we're all in the same boat.

We are all alienated from God. By the very same thing, by a wall of hostility, a law of ordinances and expectations that condemns us and that we could never fulfill. And that brings us to the second thing that God did and that is this. He restored Shalom through the work of Messiah. He resolved the enmity and removed the hostility. Messiah did what neither group could do. He removed the enmity and broke down the wall of hostility.

How did he do this? He did it by perfectly meeting every ordinance, every expectation, every demand. He rendered a perfect obedience for his entire life. That's what the scriptures mean when he says he experienced, he learned obedience. A perfect righteousness. And all of that obedience and all of that righteousness was credited to us.

And then he did something else. He didn't just tear down the wall of hostility and the dividing wall that kept us away from God. He broke that wall down and removed the hostility that exists between us and condemnation by becoming our sacrifice.

A solitary, substitutionary sacrifice that produced an atonement that fully satisfied the wrath of God. And now there is nothing between us that can separate us. That's why Paul said in Romans chapter eight, who or what will ever be able to separate us from God?

Nothing. The wall of hostility has been removed. And if the wall of hostility has been removed, the third thing that happens in verses 19 to 22 is Messiah now extends Shalom to an entirely new group of people. As you start looking in Ephesians chapter two, verses 11, all the way down through verse 17, we see two groups of people. We see a group of people that are near and those are the Jews. And we see a group of people that the Jews think are far off from God.

They're outsiders. They are all the other nations. They are the nations in Psalm two that were raging against God and his Messiah.

All of these nations are outside. And Paul says now let's look at both groups. Let's look at the Jews and look at all of these nations, the Gentiles, and they are all outsiders. They are all alienated by God. And Messiah came and he tore down the wall of hostility and he removed the alienation. And now God is taking people from this group and he's taking people from this group and he is making a new group. Peace, Shalom, to this group and to this group. Listen to how Paul says it, verse 17, and he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

For through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father. Look at verse 15. He abolished the law of commandments expressed in ordinances in order that he might create in himself one new man in place of two. It's not that he took the Jews and the Gentiles and melded them together so there isn't any more Jewish nation or Gentile nations.

He's saying something very different. He's saying I'm taking people who were in this ethnic group and people in these ethnic groups and I'm bringing them together and I'm actually creating a second race. And in order to be in that race, you have to be born again. You get in that race just like you got in the first race. You got in the first race because you were born as the son of Adam. You get in the second race because now you were born again as the son of the second Adam. But these people who were far off when they were members of Adam's race have been brought near through the second Adam.

And they're described in amazing ways. Look at verse 19 through 22. These people now have the responsibility to reflect their new humanity, their new race created by Christ where ethnic enmity and hostility have no place. There's a horizontal peace between men from every ethnicity and there is a brand new blood-bought community formed by peace belonging to the prince of peace who modeled peace to the nations.

And they are described as fellow citizens and members of the household of God and they are a holy temple in which the very presence of God now dwells. So if you want to know the basis for grace relations, it's not what William Wilberforce did in legislating what he was able to legislate as wonderful as that was. The real reason why relations are transformed by grace is because of what Messiah did. So how does that show up in your life?

Let me give you three things as we close that you should take home with you from a message like this. First of all, determine to display this wonderful peace that God has given and made for you in every corner of your life. Just determine to let that peace reign. Secondly, determine to cultivate and display this gracious peace by loving and respecting every image bearer you encounter throughout your life.

Exclusion of other image bearers based on their ethnic origin or the skin color of their skin, you should reject that. And you should render loving respect and gracious kindness to every image bearer you encounter in the relationships of your life. And promote and advance the peace that Messiah made and that you now enjoy.

Truly grace relationships are a wonderful thing and you know what they feel like because you have them from God. We come to Ephesians 2 and all of those ideas take a back seat to the amazing thing that you did when you sent your son, the prince of peace, to make a peace. And you've extended that peace to the nations. And we sit here today from every nation, every ethnic background, every language, every tribe, commonly bound together in our love for you and in the future.

And the faith once delivered to the saints that we enjoy. So Lord, help us to reflect that peace. Help us to enjoy that peace. And help us to remote that peace to those who need it. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.