Part 4| “God’s Answer to Our Alienation”

The book of Ephesians is the Christians’ roadmap for life in a world that’s not our home. We are strange to this world. We are not of this world. This book repeatedly calls us to think of ourselves as different. For that is what we are. And we rejoice in that fact because HE has made us that way. Christian, instead of focusing on how the world may not welcome you, rejoice that heaven embraces you. You are blessed in the heavenly places with every spiritual blessing in Christ. You are “Blessed Strangers.”

From Ephesians 2:11-22

makes you to you into the .

Having a “ with Jesus” is not the of the Gospel. The of the Gospel is to you into the of .

1.SYMPTOM: tends to .

📖 Ephesians 2:11 (ESV) Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—

2.DIAGNOSIS: because we are from .

📖 Ephesians 2:12 (ESV) remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

3.MEDICATION: Christ’s Death to and to .

📖 Ephesians 2:14-17 (ESV) For he himself is our peace…

1.Christ in the .

📖 Ephesians 2:14 (ESV) (He) has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility

2. Christ divisions in the .

📖 Ephesians 2:15 (ESV) abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances

A. We do practice the law of Israel.

B. We do practice the law.

C. We practice a law.

📖 Ephesians 2:15 (ESV) that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

TRUTH: Christ had to shed for … and that makes me no better than .

4. PROGNOSIS: Christ and through .

📖 Ephesians 2:19-22 (ESV) So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.