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Preacher: Jerry Cisar

I’d like to suggest that Paul’s goal in Ephesians 2, is for God’s newly adopted children to reimagine warfare, to reimagine the basis of our hostility. In His great mercy, God has rescued us out of our rage and disobedience, He has broken down the walls of hostility, and He has designed us to be his agents of good works—world transforming works.

We do have an enemy, but we must rightly identify the enemy and understand how he works. Until then, we are apt to fall right into the traps the enemy sets. Hostility will only increase. And we are prone to such traps because we were born with a nature of impulsive anger.

The Gospel is the story about how God bears all the hostility which humanity could give him (Jews and Gentiles alike band together to crucify Jesus) and forgives us. He doesn’t retaliate. It is more than that, but not less. As Paul puts it to the Corinthians, God is not holding their sins against them (2 Cor. 5:19). Ephesians 2 is about what God has done to reconcile the world to Himself, and humans, whether Jew or Gentile, to one another.

Join us in worship as we continue our series, “Imagining the Kingdom.” As we worship together, may our imaginations be reshaped to see the world as God is remaking it!

Handout: https://gccc-recordings.s3.amazonaws.com/handouts/20230730.pdf