One Spirit

PRAYER PRACTICE

Spoken Prayer - Out loud pray for God to speak to you through your reading. Praise God for giving us His Word. Ask the Spirit to help you read with faith, and to live out what you hear from God through the passage.

DAILY READING

Ephesians 2:11-22

DEVOTION/REFLECTION

One Spirit

By David Thompson

In Ephesians 2:11-22, you find a clash between two groups, the Jews and the gentiles. This was seen in the practice of the Jews being circumcised and the gentiles not being circumcised. There were other areas of conflict such as food practices (Galatians 2). But to the more legalistic Jews, many issues were important but the biggest issue was circumcision. The Jews wanted all new gentile Christians to get circumcised, or in the Jews' belief, the gentiles could not be Christians.

It reminds me of a story by one of my favorite authors, Dr. Seuss. In his book, The Sneeches, there were two groups of large yellow birds. The only difference was the one group had a star on their stomachs and the other group did not. The star group was the important group and they did not think the non-star group was equal. A businessman came along with a machine that for $2 each could put a star on the non-starred birds. All the non-starred birds paid their $2, got their stars and now were equal to the starred group. This upset the original starred birds, so they found the businessman and sure enough the original stars could be removed for $10 each. Well as you can imagine, the original no-star group, when seeing the original star group removing their stars, that group also had their stars removed. The two groups of birds kept doing this over and over until neither group was quite sure who was who. They realized that it did not really matter about the stars and what did matter was that they were all birds. Being birds was what was special about these yellow creatures and they lived happily ever after.

So how does this story relate to Ephesians 2:11-22? It does in a number of ways. In verse 11, it is talking about the two groups of humans as the "uncircumcised" (the gentiles) and the "circumcised" (the pious Jews). The practice of circumcision differs from the Sneeches in that no money changed hands. Further, the process could not be reversed. However circumcision is done by human hands and this practice does not impact our hearts. It does not give us self-worth as expressed in verse 10, "We are God's work of art." Or His relationship with us as seen in verse 13, "We have been brought near to God." 

This brings us to what Jews and gentiles needed to do to become true believers in Christ. Verse 13b states that we were far away, but now we are brought near "by the blood of Christ." When we hear the Gospel, God tells us, "Christ died for you, and by His blood, you are saved." We respond by asking "forgiveness for our sins." Through first hearing and receiving this truth, many of us know a date when we were saved. On the other hand, for those that grew up in the church like my wife, Carla, who may not remember having a "conversion" experience, you too know you were saved by Christ. If I may go one step farther, it is important to know that when you are saved, you have the spirit. In verse 18, it states that we have access to God "by one Spirit." 

Do you have assurance today of your standing with Jesus Christ, God and the Holy Spirit? If not you have a whole group of pastors, your small group or good Christian friends that would love to talk to you about the assurance of your standing with God.