Jesus and reconciliation

This month, we’ve been looking at the diversity within the church. God has made each of us a little different than others – different in spiritual gifting, different in physical appearance, different in cultural background, and even though we are all different, we are called to be joined together. We are united by blood, by all of us being members of the same human family, and we are united by faith, by our union to Jesus Christ.

The apostle Paul explain it in Ephesians, chapter 2, starting in verse 17. He begins by talking to the Gentiles:

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— ¹² remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. ¹³ But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

In other words, when we Gentiles were separated from Israel, we were cut off from salvation; we had no relationship with God. But Jesus has changed that, because he has brought us near. The book of Hebrews says that Christ gives us permission to enter the Holy of Holies, which is something that not even the Jews could do. Jesus has brought us near by his blood, by his death on the cross for us.

It used to be that we were enemies of God, but Jesus has made peace between us, as Paul explains in verse 14:

^{Eph 2:14} For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one…

What “two” is Paul talking about here? It is the circumcision and the uncircumcision, the Jews and the Gentiles – two categories of people, but now Jesus has merged these two categories into one. How did he do it? Let’s look at verses 14 and 15

Paul says that he “…has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, ¹⁵ by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.

OK, there was some barrier between the Jews and the Gentiles, some wall that divided these people, and Jesus has destroyed that barrier. How did he do it? He did it by setting aside some laws.

Now, what laws were these? Were these God’s laws, or were they the traditions that the Jews had invented to keep the people separate? Well, Jesus did not need to die to do away with human laws, because those laws never had any validity in the eyes of God, anyway, and Paul is talking here about spiritual realities, not cultural separations. And in the context here, Paul has distinguished the Jews and the Gentiles by whether or not they were circumcised, by whether or not they kept one of the laws that God had given the Jews.

And Jesus removed that distinction between peoples by getting rid of the law regarding circumcision. But that’s not all – he got rid of, as it says here, the law with its commandments and regulations. He got rid of all the entire law of Moses, with all its rules and regulations, because those laws divided Israelites from Gentiles. Israelites had to keep those laws, but Gentiles did not, and to make the two people one, Jesus did not tell the Gentiles to start keeping Jewish laws. Rather, he got rid of the law that divided them.

The law was good, but it had served its purpose, and it was time to get rid of it. So Jesus, in his death on the cross, set aside that law.

Why? Verse 15 tells us that “his purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶ and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.

So, in his death on the cross, Jesus got rid of the barrier that defined the difference between Jews and Gentiles – he got rid of the old covenant law, and the result was that we are one people. Jesus not only made peace between us and God, he also made peace between Jews and Gentiles, and in Christ we are now one humanity, united by the cross of Christ.

We are brothers and sisters, no matter whether our ancestry is Native American, English, Pilipino, Hispanic, or African. We are one people, and in the church we should not have barriers between the peoples. We do not have one rule for the Jew and another for the Gentile. We do not have one rule for the Philipinos and another for the Hispanics. There are no privileged classes, and there are no substandard peoples. We are made equal by the cross of Christ. We should give everyone the same respect.

Now, respect is given and is received in different ways by different cultures, and if we really want to respect someone from a different culture, we need to learn something about that culture in order to see how to respect the people. That’s what we have been doing this month, and there’s still a lot for us to learn about each other. But the main point I want to make here is that theologically, we are one people in the eyes of God, and sociologically, we ought to act like it. We are all part of the same family.

Now, part 2. Jesus was ahead of his time. He knew what the results of the cross were going to be, and even before he died, he broke down barriers between people. He treated everyone alike, whether they loved Rome or hated Rome, whether they were big on rituals or not, whether they were adult or child, whether they were male or female, whether they were Jew or Gentile – or even worse, Jew and Samaritan.

That brings me to the parable of the Good Samaritan, and we can look at it in Luke 10, starting with verse 29. The parable actually starts in verse 30, but I wanted to look at verse 29 because it sets the scene for the meaning of the parable: It all began with the question, “who is my neighbor?” The law says that I should love my neighbor, so who is it that I’m supposed to love?

And Jesus tells the story of a man who ignored ethnic differences and helped the person who needed to be helped, and Jesus said, Go and do likewise. Have mercy on people who need mercy. He didn’t say, Go join the Samaritan religion, but he did say that we should treat Samaritans – and every other ethnic group – the way that we would want to be treated ourselves.

You probably know the story already, but let me summarize it: There was a man beaten up and left to die on the road. Along comes a priest, the ancient equivalent of a pastor, and he passed by on the other side without helping the poor victim. And the next guy who comes is a Levite, the equivalent of a deacon in the church, and he passed by on the other side. But eventually a Samaritan came by, and helps the wounded man, anointing his wounds with wine and oil, and bandaging him, and taking him to a hotel and paying for the hotelier to take care of him.

Now, the point that Jesus was making is that we should be like the Samaritan, not like the religious leaders who avoided the problem. And I wonder how often we religious people today “pass by on the other side.” How often do we fail to help when our help is needed? How often do we fail to give money, when money is needed? How often do we leave that to someone else, to someone who has more to give, when the Bible says that each person should give according to ability? We don’t have very much oil and wine to share, so we just pass by on the other side.

Or how often do we fail to give time, when time is needed? We just hope that someone else will do it instead of us. Never mind that the nursery needs more volunteers, or children’s church needs more teachers – we just pass by on the other side, making the excuse that we wouldn’t be very good at that anyway. Or do we take our talents and hide them, saying that we are afraid, sometimes even refusing to see the need because we have passed by on the other side?

My point here is that we are all guilty, in one form or another, of passing by on the other side. We all fail to help people who need to be helped. And yet, as Paul was saying, they are the same people as we are, and we need to respect them, and help them. We all have room for improvement in this, for the simple reason that we are crippled by sin. Satan is the thief and the robber who beat us up and left us for dead by the side of the road. Religion rituals won’t help us, but Jesus can. He is the one who has crossed the ethnic barriers, helps us with our wounds, and pays for our recuperation. He crosses the barriers to help, and he tells us to “go and do likewise.”

Whether it comes to racial reconciliation, serving in the church, or helping in society, we need to stop passing by on the other side, and we need to follow the example of Jesus. Jesus broke the barriers for us, so that we can do it for others.