Bo Wagner: The wall is gone forever

My newest book, Ephesians: The Treasures Of Family, is now live on Amazon and available through many bookstores. And having spent many months last year teaching through the book of Ephesians before writing it, I now really regret not having done so many years earlier. Mind you, like all preachers, I have preached and taught many individual messages from the book of Ephesians throughout my ministry, but it took me until now to do a verse-by-verse exposition of it.

Again, I wish I had done so years earlier; Ephesians, properly understood and applied, would make a lot of modern people problems disappear.

There is such a weird disconnect between media and social media’s portrayal of modern life than what I see in everyday life, especially here in the Bible Belt. I do not remember a day for the last several years now when I did not wake up to some new video of racial strife; it truly gives the appearance that no one anywhere is getting along and that we need to be dividing up into tribes to defend our own. We seem to be moving headlong toward an American balkanization, a discarding of the melting pot in favor of random disparate Tupperware dishes.

One force in the history of humanity, though, has consistently shown the power to break down barriers and bring people together: the saving gospel of Jesus Christ.

When Paul put pen to parchment in around AD 63 to write the epistle to the Ephesians, he was writing to a church that he had put years of effort into, a good church, a thriving church. But it was also a surprising church in the world of that day; it was a church made up of both Jews and Gentiles, but primarily Gentiles. It had begun with a few converts gained from the local synagogue, moved from there into the school of Tyrannus, and after two years of that, Acts 19:10 tells us that everyone in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.

Somewhere along the line, though, it seems that some strife developed between those two factions. Thus, Paul wrote this letter to remind everyone that the believing Gentiles had been predestined to be on equal plane in the household of faith with believing Jews. They were not merely tolerated in the Beloved (Christ) since they were just Gentiles; they were accepted, absolutely adored in the Beloved because they were in Christ!

As Paul began to unfold this truth, God gave him a powerful word picture to convey it:

Ephesians 2:14-19 “For he [Christ] is our peace, who hath made both [Jew and Gentile] one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God.”

Jesus broke down the middle wall of partition. The theological barrier, for so long represented by a physical barrier in the temple, was obliterated in Christ. Jesus did not tweak the wall; he did not make a little opening in the wall; he wrecked the wall. So much so that Paul could say, “he is our peace, who hath made both one.”

Absolutely nothing brings people together and puts people on even ground better than the gospel. When a person gets saved, no matter their skin color, background, or nationality, they are given a higher identity, one that supersedes all others. And lest you wonder whether all of this is merely theoretical theology, I can conclusively assure you that it is not. My church is made up of Whites, Blacks, Lebanese, Puerto Ricans, Hawaiians, Mexicans, Costa Ricans, Grenadians, and who knows what else. And every last one of them walks in each week as a child of the King, just as accepted and adored as everyone else.

This is what is afforded to us by Christ dying, taking away the handwriting of ordinances that was contrary to us (Colossians 2:14), and breaking down the middle wall of partition.

We will never all have the same skin color, so skin color will never, ever be able to unify us. We will never all have the same accent, y’all, so accent will never, ever be able to unify us. We will never all have the same backgrounds, so background will never, ever be able to unify us. Even the American flag, which actually did somewhat unify us for a good while, has lost much of its unifying power due to years of attacks from people who hate America and wish to see it implode. But the gospel will never lose its power, the wall of partition, decimated by Christ, will remain in ruins, and whosoever will may still come.

I went into the gym a while back, and when I was in the locker room, a black gentleman came in. I had never seen him before. I greeted him, and he responded in kind. And within seconds, we were both talking about the Lord and the goodness of God. Anyone who would have walked in over the next ten minutes would have felt like they were walking into a revival meeting; we were rejoicing, praising God, and ended up praying together before we left.

I am so glad the wall is forever gone.