Ephesians 2:14

"For He is [Himself] our peace (our bond of unity and harmony). He has made us both [Jew and Gentile] one [body], and has broken down (destroyed, abolished) the hostile dividing wall between us." Ephesians 2:14

So many mysteries about life are revealed in the study of God's Word. The first and most obvious one learned is that the key to being able to understand His Word was, to have Him (The Holy Spirit Of God) inside of me in order to interpret it (Himself, The Word).

Even still, a mere passing through His Word without a desire to find more of Him, really doesn't reveal what we need. But for the person truly seeking God's face when he reads passages such as these before us today, great mysteries about the world around us are illuminated!

In the same way man longs to love and be loved, he also desires to find this thing he calls, Peace. And just like we learned of love... Peace is never going to be present until Jesus is in an individual's life. Until a man has received God's grace, he will never know His peace. Paul is more specific here in verse 14, but we buzzed right past his hint to this truth in His salutation...

"Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Eph 1:2

History reveals a great irony in mans quest for peace. We (as a society of mostly people apart from God), pretend to know what peace is. We may believe for the moment we are at peace with our neighbor, or a neighboring country, but let one find a resource that the other wants, and you'll see that peace was an illusion all along.

We, no differently than many Jewish people, look for Christ to come and do something that will bring this thing called peace. God says that Christ IS THE PEACE we are looking for! You see, the first thing that must be received is God's grace. God's grace is what Christ does to a us, within us, for us, and through us, that which we can't do ourselves. God came down. Man could not ascend.

He tried that in Genesis 11, and that's where the Gentile nations came from in the first place. God came down as He told Nicodemus in John 3. He came down to die for our sin. The greatest picture of grace in all of Scripture is Jesus coming to die for our sin and shedding His blood and loose us from the shackles of sin. When man receives God's grace, then and only then can he be at peace with the God and his fellow man, whom he has been estranged from since The Fall in Genesis.

And so, the enigma we find throughout history in man's effort to work out these differences between his brother and neighbor, to somehow appease his Creator, when all along the answer was to work out his differences between himself and his Creator! That brings us back to Christ! The work of Christ was to restore our relationship with God, and that brings the peace which He so desires for us. Jesus is the essence of God's peace, the essence of our peace with God... for, God so Loved the World.

Before we move on, Paul uses Jew and Gentile in this verse, but he is not saying that we will live in a peaceful surrounding at any time prior to His return. This would contradict other scriptures. Paul is still referring to those whom are "in Christ", whether Jew or Gentile. In Christ, we are both, one body. Christ has broken down and destroyed... abolished the hostile dividing wall between us in the body.

Christ has made it so that Jews in Christ and Gentiles in Christ now share in God's peace, even while our nations continue to play around with an idea of peace which does not exist in the world. Because of God's love for the nation of Israel, we too love them, while those in Israel, whom abide in Christ love the Gentile, also.

And so, we share in the peace which is in Christ, no matter what happens in the make-believe efforts toward a false sense of peace between our governments. Do you see the difference? That is only by and through God's love! Amen?

Let's pick up with Ephesians verse 2:15-16 next time.

I love you.