Christ Has Brought Peace to Us

Meditations on the Book of Ephesians

May 21, 2020

Christ Has Brought Peace to Us

But now you have been united with Christ Jesus. Once you were far away from God, but now you have been brought near to him through the blood of Christ.

Ephesians 2:13

Read: Ephesians 2:11-16

From Paul’s Jewish background, he saw all of the world’s people divided into two groups: Jews and Gentiles. The Jews were the people of God and the Gentiles were everybody else. In today’s passage, Paul affirms that by uniting all believers to Christ, God has created a new people, Christianoi, the people of Christ. Paul is emphatic that this was made possible through Jesus’ shed blood on the cross. I believe it is very important that we never lose sight of the high cost God paid to unite us with Jesus.

In just about every town where I served as a pastor, we had a ministerial association. And always, there were two or three denominations that did not participate; they didn’t associate with people outside of their denomination. One exception was when I served in a small county-seat town. Our ministerial association covered all the bases and for the three First churches, Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist, their members pretty much considered their pastors interchangeable. I remember sitting in a both at a café across from the Post Office at lunchtime. A woman came in who I recognized from the Baptist church. She looked around then came to my booth. “Have you seen Troy?” (Her pastor). “Yes, I saw him earlier. He’s not here. He had to go and make a hospital visit.” “Oh, well you’ll do.” And she promptly sat down in the booth and shared with me as if I was her pastor. As I remember this moment from almost thirty years ago, I believe I can sense Jesus and Paul smiling.

My Takeaway: Because of what Christ has done, I can take very seriously Paul’s urging in Romans 12:18, “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” (NIV)

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Copyright © 2020 by Alex M. Knight

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

• Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

• The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.