Peace Beyond Barriers: How Christ Builds His Church

Why is Jesus called the Prince of Peace? It is not simply because He had the ability to arbitrate disputes between human beings and effect through His love and example reconciliation among estranged people, but more importantly because He is the champion of peace between God and man. He is our peace because He made atonement by the shedding of His blood and removed the distance that once separated us from God (see Eph. 2:16).

I once had a conversation with a Jewish man whose great fear of Christianity was anti-Semitism. He looked back to the terrible Holocaust of World War II and to other periods in church history when those who were part of the Christian church had used violence and bloodshed to express their anti-Semitism. Far from being apostles of peace between Jew and Christian, too often zealous members of the Christian church have become apostles of discord, hatred, and persecution.

Christ, while wanting us to be reconciled to God, also wants us to be reconciled to other people. The means of reconciling man to God, and man to man, is the same. It is through the cross that this hostility can be put to death.

And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father (Eph. 2:17–18). Notice that access is given to Jew and gentile into the family of God, so that Jewish and gentile Christians both say “Abba” to the same person, by the Holy Spirit. They are both adopted into the family of God.

In Ephesians 2, Paul mentions that Christ had broken down the wall of partition and has become our peace for the gentiles as well as for the Jews, having accomplished redemption for both saying, “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19). Paul is obviously addressing gentiles in saying that you are no longer strangers. If you are in Christ, however, it’s not only that you’re no longer a stranger to Old Testament ritual but that you’re no longer a stranger to God Himself. That strangeness and foreignness of God is no longer a part of your life. We are now fellow citizens
with the saints and members of the household of God.

There’s a phrase here that’s important. In Ephesians, Paul gives great attention to the doctrine of the church. The church is called by many different names in Scripture (for example, “the body of Christ”). But here the chief metaphor that Paul uses is that of a building. He says that we are all now part of the household of God. We’re part of the household in the sense that we have been adopted into God’s family, which is another image that the Scriptures use to describe the church—namely, as the family of God. But here the accent is not so much on the family initially as it is on the house.

Paul continues to develop the metaphor of the house of God in Ephesians 2:20 saying this house is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.” We sing in the hymn that “the church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord,” but the central image in the New Testament regarding the foundation of the church is not that it is Christ. The New Testament does say that “no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11), but the chief metaphor of the foundation of the church is the apostles and prophets. In the Old Testament, the prophets were the spokesmen for God. In the New Testament, the Apostles served as agents of revelation by which God spoke to His people. The Apostles and prophets were the means by which God delivered His Word. Another way of saying this is that the church is founded or established on the Word of God.

Attacks against the integrity, authority, sufficiency, and trustworthiness of sacred Scripture are assaults not on one of the alcoves of this church or aimed at putting a dent in the roof but on the very foundation of the church. To have a church without Apostolic authority, without the Word of God as its foundation, is to build a church on sand rather than the rock on which Christ said He would build His church. Paul uses the image of the foundation because what is necessary for the entire structure to stand securely is the foundation of the prophets and the Apostles. Where does Christ fit in? He is the cornerstone. The cornerstone is the hinge, as it were, on which the foundation itself hangs together. Take out the cornerstone and everything falls apart.

In Ephesians 2:21 Paul mixes his metaphors a little bit. He’s talking about the new temple. The old temple would soon pass away and the new temple is about to be established, but it’s a temple not made with hands. It is a temple built in Christ, by Christ, and for Christ. He is the cornerstone of the temple, and His church is the new temple.

Notice that Paul is referring not only to the whole congregation of Jews and gentiles added together but to every individual believer. He is showing that the individual believer is a person in whom God the Holy Spirit dwells. Elsewhere, Paul says that our bodies are the temple of God (2 Cor. 6:16). Just as God dwelt by His Spirit in the temple in the Old Testament, so now He dwells in us. That is extremely significant in the dispute between Jew and gentile because the Jew could not look at the gentile convert and regard him as second-class. The Jewish believer has to look at the gentile convert and recognize the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Paul, in using the metaphor of a building, is not saying that the church is made out of mortar and brick (see Eph. 2:22). Rather, we are the building stones. Each Christian is part of this edifice, just as each stone is part of a building. Every day new stones are added to the church of Christ. This new temple will not be finished until the consummation of the kingdom in heaven. Christ is still building His church, not by adding cement, but by adding people, who are the pieces that come together in Him.

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