Do I have to Love THAT GUY at Church?

Do you love everyone in your church?

It seems that many churches tend to reflect certain commonalities depending on the demographics and social and economic classes of their location. Most people are alike socially, economically, educationally and racially. Some of that is just natural because we live in communities that are relatively homogenous in these categories.

Increasingly, though, our cities and larger towns are changing demographically. Churches are changing as Christians from other nations come in, looking for a Bible preaching place to worship God. Our church has changed in that way. We currently have members or attenders from every continent except Australia and Antarctica (not expecting anyone from that last location). The influx of people from all over the world has happened in the last five years (and continues with new people visiting every week, it seems). We have embraced all these folks and turned our Thanksgiving into an opportunity to celebrate a cultural feast of food from all over. (I ask them to “bring the hot stuff” but so far, they have gone easy on me.)

What is your church like? Are you learning to love a wide variety of cultures and educational backgrounds? I hope so. All of this is the fruit of something Paul describes in Ephesians about the marvel of the church in putting Jews and Gentiles together. I recently preached a message on this topic from Ephesians that forms the article below.

But before we get into it, I want to ask a question. When you meet someone from Africa, Asia, South America, or Europe whose culture is so very different from your own, you know that God calls you to love that person, that family and embrace them in your assembly.

There is another category of differences we should think about, however, which I bring up in the title of the article. It’s THAT GUY who just seems to always be so different from you. Maybe he’s too loud. Maybe he seems to have an attitude against you. Maybe he’s socially awkward. Whatever it is, you have a hard time loving him in Christ. (And maybe it’s THAT LADY, too… but… it does often seem to be THAT GUY, doesn’t it?)

What are we going to do about THAT GUY? I think Paul addresses that question in the passage we are going to discuss below. I hope the Lord uses this to help you in your walk.

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The passage before us today is Ephesians 2:14-15, a remarkable text that speaks to something fundamental about what God accomplished in salvation. The title may sound academic, but the truth contained here is anything but dry theology. This passage reveals exactly what God was doing among humanity by bringing Jews and Gentiles together in Christ.

The Barrier That Divided

To understand what God accomplished, we first need to grasp the reality of the division that existed. Between Jews and Gentiles in the first century, there stood a barrier that seemed utterly impassable.

The vocabulary Paul uses here is striking. He speaks of “the barrier of the dividing wall.” The word for barrier refers to a wall that separates one part of a house from another. Think of a duplex with two separate units. Modern construction techniques call for two sets of wall studs in that joining wall, with drywall attached to each set and insulation in between. The result is meant to be soundproof, and critically, there is no door between the two sides. If you want to meet someone on the other side, you must go outside. You cannot stay in your own house and somehow reach them.

This captures the reality between Jews and Gentiles. The Gentiles could not go through the wall to meet the Jews. The Jews could not go through the wall to meet the Gentiles. They both had to come outside of their respective houses and meet somewhere else entirely. They had to meet in Christ.

The second term Paul uses, “dividing wall,” refers to a fence that creates a barrier. We can think of the famous walls built between nations: the Great Wall of China, designed to keep people out and keep people in, or the contested barriers being constructed between countries today. These are real, intentional separations.

Most of us do not encounter this specific division in our daily lives unless we happen to interact with ultra-orthodox Jews. But in the first century, this barrier was everywhere in the Roman Empire, and it was deeply felt on both sides.

The law required the Jews to be holy and separate. They could not eat with Gentiles or intermarry with them. The law of circumcision marked a real separation between Jews and Gentiles. This often led to hostility from Jews toward Gentiles and was a cause of Gentile hatred of the Jews. It wasn’t just the Law of Moses. The rabbis added many minute applications of the law and taught that it must be strictly observed by the Jews. This practice of separation offended the Gentiles, thus causing hostility on both sides. The wall of partition Paul speaks of was not a literal wall but a metaphorical wall that divided Jews and Gentiles. Often an attitude of superiority crept in that in turn engendered hostility.

Consider what happened during the trial of Jesus. The Jewish officials stood outside the palace of Pilate so that they could bring their accusations against Jesus. They would not go inside where Pilate normally held court. Instead, Pilate came out to the balcony to accommodate the Jews. The law of the Jews, or at least their understanding of it, said they should not go under a Gentile roof. They stayed outside.

If you are trying to negotiate with people and they will not even darken your door, you are not going to think much of them. If you are on the other side, somebody who is so pure and holy that you would not dare go inside that home or building, you think those people are below you. That was what was going on between Jews and Gentiles in the first century.

The problem was not the law itself. The stipulations of the law were meant to keep Israel from the practices of the world. Israel was to be a kingdom of priests as a testimony to God. They were to keep the law, which should have become a testimony to their Gentile neighbors of God’s grace. Rather than using the law as a witness, however, it became the wall and barrier that kept Jews and Gentiles apart and led the Jews to look down on the Gentiles, whom they considered sinners.

Due to the tenacity with which they practiced their law, the Gentiles considered them prideful and stubborn. Their observance of regulations was well known. Even Julius Caesar exempted the Jews from Roman military service because they would not work on the Sabbath nor eat the normal rations of the soldiers. It was not the law that was hostile but the wrong conception and use of the law, which resulted in hostility on both sides.

He Himself Is Our Peace

Into this divided world comes the stunning declaration of verse 14: “He himself is our peace.”

The Greek text makes this even more emphatic than our English translation suggests. Normally, you do not need to put a pronoun into a Greek sentence to say “he.” The verb ending itself indicates the subject. But here, the pronoun appears as the very first word in the sentence, before even the connecting particle. The text essentially reads: “Himself, for…” Our translation captures this emphasis with: “He himself is our peace.”¹

What does it mean that Jesus is our peace? Peace in the Jewish concept is expressed by the word shalom. Shalom does not mean simply the absence of hostilities. It means wholeness. It means everything is right with your life. When you wish someone shalom, you are saying, “May all things in your life be right with you. May all things work out for you. May there be harmony in your home, prosperity in your business, warm relations with your contacts.” That is shalom.

This peace equals the state of the kingdom, the millennium that is to come. In that future age, people will not be at war. We have those famous passages in Isaiah and elsewhere that speak of beating swords into pruning hooks. There will be no more war. It will be a time of the greatest prosperity the world has ever known. That is the peace of the millennium.

When Paul says Jesus himself is our peace, he is speaking of peace both with men and peace with God. Both dimensions are present in this text, though the first thing he addresses is peace with men.

Verse 14 continues: “who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall.” Here we see the first dimension of peace: peace between people.

The Lord did an amazing thing. He abolished the law of commandments. By “abolished,” Paul means he rendered it inoperative. The law is no longer operative. The Jew has nothing left to make him feel superior. His traditions may bolster his sense of superiority and self-righteousness, but in fact, those feelings are based on nothing. The traditions are not even really based on the Old Testament. They represent a misunderstanding of the Old Testament. And, beyond that, in Christ, the law is no longer a barrier, “Christ is the end of the law” (Rm 10.4). Gentiles and Jews are in Christ, one new man.

A New Creation

But there is more happening here than simply the removal of a barrier. Verse 15 speaks of something even more profound: “so that in himself he might make the two into one new man.”

The word translated “make” is the word for “create.” In the New Testament, this word always has God as the subject. Only God creates. Just as God spoke the universe into existence, just as he breathed into the first man and he became a living soul, so in saving people, he created one new man. The body of the Lord Jesus Christ, the spiritual body, the church, is what Paul is talking about here: one new man. This is a whole new race that is formed, a new race that is raceless, the body of Christ, the church.

We are talking here about Jews and Gentiles, but there are divisions like this between people of all ages and all places. We are so arrogant as human beings that we can find something to make us look down on others.

Think about your own background and the things you were raised with, whatever area you were raised in. In certain Asian cultures, there are other Asian cultures that are looked down upon. The same is probably true in Africa. It is probably true everywhere.

Growing up on the Western Canadian prairies, there was an attitude toward French Canadians, a certain hostility. I don’t recall my parents ever giving voice to this, but it was “in the air” in that little town in Alberta. Years later, I met a fine Christian young man who happened to be French Canadian. I wondered at the kind of inner shock I felt to be talking to a Quebecer who was also a Christian. Here was a brother in Christ, yet in the back of my mind there lurked some vestiges of this old prejudice.

People carry similar attitudes toward First Nations peoples. In the American South, there remains a huge divide between black and white. Years ago, while preaching from this very passage in a retirement home somewhere in South Carolina, there were white folks present and black folks present. A couple of little older black ladies in that congregation loved this passage. Why? Because white and black can be one new man. There is no white or black. There is only Christ.

That is what happened when Christ created the new man. That is what is supposed to happen in a church.

Living in Light of This Truth

The proposition of this passage, then, is this: All Christians, now made near to God, are united with one another with no hostility because of the cross. Or, at least, they should be.

This truth has profound implications for how we live together in the body of Christ. We may have differences of opinion about certain issues. We may disagree on non-scriptural matters. We may have immutable physical characteristics that make us differ. But we should be willing to love one another despite these differences.

We might remember the early days of the COVID pandemic, when people held strong and differing opinions about what churches should do. In our church, we kept admonishing one another: You are going to have different opinions. We have got to love each other anyway. Our opinions are not the gospel.

The point is that we are a body. We have different points of view, but we have got to love one another.

This does not mean there are no boundaries. This applies to orthodox believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and his Word. But among those who share that foundation, disagreements about secondary matters should never become barriers between us. There should be no huge disagreements that divide us, no walls that separate us from fellow believers.

The dividing wall has been broken down. God has created one new man. He has reconciled us together and reconciled us to himself. The proof of his reconciliation of us to himself is the expression of our reconciliation with one another.

When we come to THAT GUY who I mentioned in the introduction, if he is a believer, and you are a believer, you are one new man with him. You are in the body of Christ with him. Whatever differences you have, you have this one powerful truth in common. The dividing wall and the barrier have been broken down. You need to ask God to give you a heart of love, get to know the guy that is different, and build the local church for the glory of God.

This is a tremendous concept: a new man, a new body, the body of Christ. It is a wonderful truth that God has accomplished this work through the cross of Christ. As we consider this truth, may we fully embrace the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of the saints, for the glory of God and as a testimony in our world for Jesus Christ.

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Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.

This article reproduces a sermon preached on Nov 9, 2024. We used Claude.AI to turn the transcript into the article. Pastor Johnson has reviewed and approved the final form of this article.

1. I’ve put “himself” in bold to add emphasis. [↩]