Cruciformity - How does the cross change and shape our lives? How does it connect us with God? - PART 3

* A lot of this post as well as the other 2 in this series was taken from and built around some INCREDIBLE talks by Tim Keller. They are here.


Ephesians 2:11-22

How does the cross connect to each other?

Jesus brings us together, unity where there was fragmentation, and the key to that, seen here in Ephesians, is the cross. We are told repeatedly that the cross is the key to making new relationships in the body of Christ.

Verse 11 - Starts with Therefore. Chapter 1 and the first verses of chapter 2 in Ephesians are all about the power of God... and then verse 11 says THEREFORE the church. Power of God, therefore, the church...

Tim Keller, a pastor in New York City, has pointed to statistics and talked about his own experience, in the last 10 - 15 years, basically saying that: Americans have shown at least 2 trends, they are more interested in spirituality, divine connection, and faith, and they are less and less interested in doing that through an institution (especially the church). When you talk about Christ people are more interested and when you talk about the church people are less interested then ever. The majority believe that you can believe and be a really strong Christian without going to church. And that is true, you do not have to be a member of a church to be saved. But this passage is saying that if you want the surpassing power of God to be working in your life, without deeply, deeply involved with the church, it will never happen. The power of God will not be evident in your life without being deeply grafted and deeply involved in the life of a real community of people who also believe in Christ. (just remember, this community does not have to take place in a really old building with traditional western "church" characteristics)

Can we hear this? Bad experiences within a church scar us, but we must fight to not let that keep us apart from God. Keep searching, find another one, God will be faithful, because it is not an option (at least that is what Ephesians is saying). Why? Well the man-centered option has already been stated, ‘if you want the power of God to be in your life...’ But there is a very God-centered to it also: Why is the church a necessity? The hint, I think, comes in the triune character of God you see in this passage. 



Verse 17: through Him, access to the Father, by one Spirit

Verse 22: In Him, God, Spirit

Paul is talking about the church, the church, and then he brings up the church of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Christianity is absolutely unique among the religions of the world in this regard: some religions believe that there is an impersonal God, others one God, others many Gods... but only Christianity teaches that there is an infinite God in a community of three persons. One God who Himself is a community of love and relationship. From all eternity God has been a community and a friendship.

I have already wrote about St Augustine’s take on the Trinity, but here it is one more time very quickly: Do you believe that love, friendship, and community is at the very essence of reality? Only if you believe in the triune God can you believe that. Only then can love, friendship, and community, harmony, diversity, and unity, be at the very essence of reality. Otherwise love would have come in later and would be peripheral... How could you know a God like this individualistically? How could you know a God like that while only showing up amongst a community of believers every so often? The very essence of God is community and friendship and the only possible way of knowing a God like that would be through community. If you were truly to get to know a God like that it would inevitably draw you into deep oneness and community with other people. It cannot just be me and God. It has to be us and God.

When the disciples asked, ‘How do we relate to God? Teach us to pray.’ Jesus taught, “OUR Father, who art in Heaven...” You cannot relate to a God who is a community without praying “Our Father...” There is no alternative to knowing God... it MUST be done in a community of others.

How involved does a person need to be within a community of believers to know this God?

Verse 19 to the end, Paul uses three series of images, metaphors that are increasingly intense: (1) fellow citizens with God’s people - When you become a Christian you become a part of a new humanity, a new nation. When you become a Christian, that means you are a Christian first, and you are from New York or California second, you are white or black second, you are Chinese or Latin American second, you are rich or poor second, you are Republican or Democrat second, Conservative or Liberal second... All of those divisions that are decisive outside of the church, inside of the church they are relatively minor, because the main thing between people within is belief and hope in Christ. (2) members of God’s household - A King relates and lives among His citizens, but a Father lives within the same house. The image of the family speaks of a more intimate bond. It is a more intense metaphor for oneness. (3) in Him, a Holy Temple, built together, a dwelling for God who is a Spirit - We are building blocks built and cemented together in which God’s Spirit dwells. This is the most intense metaphor. It speaks of the Spirit inhabiting the Temple like blood inhabits a body.

In all of these metaphors, intimacy with each other is the way to intimacy with God. Can we square these images with going to church every Sunday, taking notes, and THEN JUST going home? Is being there every Sunday good enough? What if you also go to Sunday School... every single week? Nothing is wrong with this routine in itself, it just does not align with the kinds of images that Paul presents here. You have not gotten deeply enough involved with a church or a community of believers until you have gone beyond just attending.

Here are, I think, two helpful tests that can gauge whether you are involved within the church enough: (1) You have to go to the point of personal accountability and (2) corporate spirituality.

There is accountability within a family that is not there among any other sort of relationship. I am not able to not come home to Dani one night. I am going to call her when I land in San Diego (I am currently on a plane flying across the country right now) to tell her I made it safe. I am going to all my mom and tell here I made it safe.... Only when you find that you are NO longer a person who is able to make independent decisions are you involved enough in your church. In Hebrews 3:13 it says, “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”. How many people in your church or community of believers know your most intimate sins so well because you have told them or that they have spent so much time with you that they can see them? And who have you given the permission to talk to you about those sins? Who have you in a sense given a hunting license to come after you? And who have you made yourself available enough to relationally that they can talk to you about them constantly? Do you have a number of people in your church like that that are talking to you and you are talking to them? Are you personally accountable to your community? One of the problems we have in our culture is that we are not willing to get to this point of accountability, get to this point of intimacy. We do not want our daily decisions, our daily independence to be impeded upon, to be taken away from us.

Until you are able to get to this point of accountability will you actually be in a ‘family’, be a ‘temple’... If anyone moves under you as building blocks you fall. And the blocks over you are depending on you will fall. The metaphor of the wall speaks of incredible accountability... Maybe people will miss you if you stop going once a week to a church service and Sunday School class, but it honestly does not come close to the images that Paul uses for the church. The core structure would still remain in tact.

I think it is pretty neat that it is saying in Ephesians 2:22, "In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." The Spirit does not indwell the individual building block. It only indwells the building blocks as they are built together. It is together we are inhabited by the Spirit. It is only together... When I say corporate spirituality I mean that we are talking to people about God. We are praying with people. We are letting people see our relationship with God. And most importantly I think, we are letting people see our heart toward God... We all have a problem with this. I am speaking of situations that are too intimate for us. We don’t want to pour our hearts out in front of each other, we don’t want others to see how much we are learning everyday, and what are prayer life is like... And past bad experiences of living within this call feel forced and void of love because we were never able to really show a deep part of our self to another. We lied half-lies to make ourselves look as good as we could to each other. We were too worried about secrets that nobody else knows about getting out, we were worried about our daily independent life and decisions being judged. All we really worried about in the end was getting a pat on the back for a spiritual life we portrayed that we had, but in reality only wished we had...

In the Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis, C.S. talks about a group of friends he bonded very close with (a community of believers he poured himself into). He talks of his two great friends Ronald (J.R.R. Tolkien) and Charles (Charles Williams, also a significant writer like the other two). Tragedy struck with the death of Charles. And when he died, C.S. said, ‘As awful as that is, at least, in some sense, I will have more of Ronald.’ Because now there was no ‘rival’, there was no ‘other best friend’ there was just C.S. But to his shock he found out that he did not have more of Ronald, but he had less of his friend because he had lost a part of Ronald that only Charles could bring out. And when he realized that, he realized that if it is true, that no one human being can bring out all of another human being, that it takes a community, a whole circle of friends to know an individual, he then thought, how much more would that be true of Jesus Christ???



“In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all of his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically [Charles'] joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him "to myself" now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald... In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the great multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in their own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all of the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah’s vision are crying ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ to one another (Isaiah 6:3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.” -- C.S. Lewis, Four Loves, Pages 61 and 62

The only way to know God intimately is know a lot of other Christians intimately. Because every single Christian is going to see a part of God that you won’t see. And if you are trying to know God alone you are not going to know much about Him. And the more Christians you know intimately, and the more you are deeply involved with, and the more Christians you open your heart up to: the more of who God is you will see... And if you want to know Jesus in a way you never knew Him before, get to know a mature Christian from a different race or class very well... And only as you are experiencing God, praying, and worshiping God with a diversity of intimate friends, will you ever be able to know this God who Himself is the essence of unity and diversity - the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

What causes this dynamic in the church? the cross

Looking back at the passage in Ephesians, it is saying that “the Law” divides us and keeps us from being the church the way we should be. Why does Paul pick the Law as being the divider? Martin Lloyd-Jones exposition of Ephesians helped me see this. The Law was the thing dividing Jews and Gentiles at that time. But isn’t the Law a good thing, is it not important, is not the pride and joy of the Jews? Yes... Paul is saying that the big problem dividing us from each other is NOT our gifts. It is our PRIDE in our gifts... If you are a part of a cultural or an ethnic group that is much warmer and friendly than another you will look down on that other group as cold-hearted. And if your group is well-educated... and if your group is on time... and more conservative... you will look down and label the group that is not. And feel a sense of hostility towards them for not being more like you...

And what is the remedy? the cross. It takes those who are near and those who are far and it “killing [their] hostility”. If you want to have the cross get rid of the pride that divides you from other people and keeps you from incredible relationships that God has designed you to have and thrive in, then you have to allow the cross to tell you that we are all the same because we are sinners. 'Those who were near and those who were far' is talking about the pagans being far and the Jews being near having the very Law of God and who were obeying the Commandments... and the cross shows that they ALL were sinners. The first thing the cross does is to show you that you are a sinner and that you are lost.

There are 2 ways to be your own savior and lord: (1) to be really bad and to break all of the rules and (2) to be very good, keeping all of the moral rules, reading your Bible everyday, doing everything you can to be good and then saying, ‘God! You now have to take me to Heaven.’ A person who thinks they have put God in their debt has become their own savior and Jesus is not their savior. And people who are living the way they want, breaking all of the rules, are being their own savior... Do you see that EVERYBODY is being their own savior? Everybody is lost! The cross comes in and says, ‘You are all sinners, you are all lost, you are all on your way to Hell. It does not matter how good you are or how bad you are, whether you are white or black, rich or poor, Asian or European, loving and relational or rational and empirical... We are all lost because we are all so proud of our gifts. And we are trying to be our own savior and our own lord. And it is destroying our world, and it is leading to war, conflict and strife, it is leading to broken marriages and poverty. Our self-centeredness is destroying the very fabric of our relationships and the only hope we all have is the cross...

Do you believe that? I don’t think that you can ever be a part of the church, that is spoken in the Bible, until you believe that, that we are all lost...

The other thing you have to see is that on the cross He “killed our hostility”. What’s that mean? There is only one thing that died on the cross: Jesus. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” This does not mean that God made Him sinful. Jesus Christ did not become selfish, hostile, or proud. He was treated as sin. In other words, our hostility, our pride, our self-centeredness was slain on the cross, the very same things that are ruining our lives and ruining the lives of your neighbors and ruining the world... Jesus Christ was punished for that! When you see that your hostility was slain on the cross, that will slay the hostility in your heart. When you see that Jesus Christ took what He took in your place, that will humble you. Our pride be damned!! And if our pride was damned and judged on the cross, because it was so objectively, as you understand that it will become more and more subjectively destroyed n your heart. And that will lead to this incredible community relationship, an incredible oneness that you can know with other human beings, that can be as different to you as anyone, but who are now your brothers and sisters in Christ. And through them you can know this God who Himself is a community. All through the cross.