The Dividing Wall Demolished

Today's Scripture

Ephesians 2:13-14 — "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility."

Galatians 3:28 — "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

John 17:20-21 — "I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you... so that the world may believe that you have sent me."

The Big Idea

The cross did not just save individuals. It demolished the wall between peoples and created one new family out of old enemies. That is not a goal the church is working toward. Paul says it is a fact the cross already accomplished — which means a divided church is not failing at a project. It is refusing a gift.

Reflection

A real wall with real signs

When Paul wrote about "the dividing wall of hostility," his first readers did not hear a metaphor. In the Jerusalem temple there was an actual stone barrier separating the outer Court of the Gentiles from the inner courts. Posted on it were warning signs — archaeologists have dug up two of them — telling any non-Jew that to step further was to die. Imagine being a Gentile believer who had stood at that wall, close enough to hear the worship you were not allowed to join.

Paul's readers knew that feeling from the inside. Then they heard this read aloud: Ephesians 2:13-14 — "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility."

Notice the verbs. Not "the wall should come down." Not "one day it will." Broken down. Past tense. And notice where it happened: "in his flesh." The moment Jesus died, Matthew 27:51 says, "the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom." From the top — God's side. The whole architecture of insiders and outsiders ripped open in a single afternoon, and no one on earth pulled the thread.

We still build smaller versions of that wall everywhere. The velvet rope at the club. The gate code. The school district line. The unspoken sense, walking into certain rooms, of who actually belongs there. Every culture has its courts of the Gentiles. Paul's claim is that at the cross, God went to the original wall — the one between his own presence and the nations — and tore it down in person. Every other wall lost its foundation that day.

One new man

What did God build where the wall used to be? Paul's answer is stranger and bigger than "tolerance." Ephesians 2:15-16 — Christ's purpose was to "create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility." Not two groups politely sharing space. One new humanity. The early Christians' pagan neighbors actually noticed this and coined a label for them: a third race — neither Jew nor Greek, but something new walking around in the old world. Peter embraced the strangeness: 1 Peter 2:9-10 — "you are a chosen race... Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people."

So the family resemblance in this new family is not skin or language. Galatians 3:28 — "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." And Colossians 3:11 stretches the list to the edges of the map: "Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all." A Scythian was the Roman world's stock image of the terrifying foreigner. Paul puts him at the family table.

Be careful, though: Paul does not say the differences are erased. A Greek does not become a Jew. The colors are not bleached out — Revelation will show every nation still visibly every nation at the end. What dies is the hostility, the ranking, the wall. The differences remain; they just stop deciding who belongs.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer — writing in the 1930s, while the church around him was being sorted by blood and race — insisted on Paul's tense:

"Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Read that twice. Christian unity across racial lines is not a dream to achieve. It is a reality to step into — or to refuse. And Tim Keller explains why this family works when others fracture:

"The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope." — Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage

At the foot of the cross, every ethnicity arrives equally bankrupt and leaves equally beloved. No group brings a superior résumé. That double humbling — all sinners, all treasured — is the only ground level enough to build one family on.

The final apologetic

Why does this matter so much? Because Jesus staked his reputation on it. The night before he died, he prayed for us — "for those who will believe in me through their word" — and what he asked for was not our success or safety. John 17:20-21 — "that they may all be one... so that the world may believe that you have sent me." Our visible unity is the evidence Jesus chose to leave with the jury of the watching world.

Francis Schaeffer called this by a memorable name. An apologetic is a defense, an argument for the faith:

"Our relationship with each other is the criterion the world uses to judge whether our message is truthful — Christian community is the final apologetic." — Francis Schaeffer, The Mark of the Christian

Turn that around and feel its edge. Eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, segregated by long habit, is also an apologetic — an argument handed to the world that the cross did not really work. When churches split along the very lines the cross announced dead, we are not just being unfriendly. We are preaching, with our seating charts, against our own sermon. And the world, which is better at reading seating charts than sermons, has taken notes. Martin Luther King Jr. said the stakes were total:

"We must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools." — Martin Luther King Jr., commencement address at Oberlin College, 1965

So what do we do — launch a diversity campaign by Friday? Bonhoeffer adds a warning here that sounds strange until you need it:

"He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

You can idolize a picture of the perfect multiethnic church and bulldoze actual people to get it. The way forward is not a dream or a quota. It is nearer and slower: receiving actual brothers and sisters, across actual differences, at an actual table — because Christ has already made you one family, whether or not you have met.

And it is a ministry with your name on it. 2 Corinthians 5:17-18 — "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away... All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation." Reconciled people become reconcilers. That is the whole job description.

Practicing the future

Where is all this heading? John was shown the end, and he heard the new family singing to the Lamb. Revelation 5:9 — "Worthy are you... for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation." Every tribe. Every language. Purchased at the same price, singing the same song. Jonathan Edwards described that destination simply:

"Heaven is a world of love; for God is the fountain of love, as the sun is the fountain of light." — Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits

Here is the question that should keep a church up at night: if that is where we are going, why would we wait until we get there to start? N.T. Wright argues that waiting is precisely what the resurrection forbids:

"Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about." — N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

A church where old dividing lines have lost their power is a colony of heaven — a small, imperfect early sample of Revelation 5, planted in the middle of a divided world as evidence of what is coming. It will be awkward sometimes. The music will not suit everyone. The potluck will be confusing. That is not failure; that is what a future this large feels like when it starts arriving early.

So end where Paul ends. Ephesians 2:18-19 — "For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God." One Spirit. One Father. One front door. The wall is already down; Jesus left it in rubble on Good Friday. The only question Ephesians 2 leaves us is whether we will keep meeting each other in the rubble — or quietly stack the stones back up, one comfortable Sunday at a time.

Going Deeper

This Sunday, look around your congregation and ask Paul's question honestly: does this room look like the wall came down, or like it is still standing with the warning signs politely removed? Then take one concrete step into the reality Christ already created: greet, invite to a meal, or genuinely befriend one believer across a line — ethnic, economic, political — that normally functions as a wall in your week. Not as a project. As family you had not met yet.