Restoring the Relationship

Ephesians 2:11-18

June 7, 2009 – ©Rev. Dr. Linnea E. Carnes

Introduction

It is a privilege to be able to come here and meet the people of Grace Covenant Church and serve with Pastor Ryan this morning. I have been at Immanuel for ten years, and have seen the pastors change and churches change. God is at work in our churches.

This is Trinity Sunday. If you ask people what the Trinity is they will usually say it’s God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God is three but really one. Pastors say, “it’s a mystery;” we can’t adequately explain it. Theologians write books about it, but it’s still a mystery.

The Trinity: A Relationship of Love

However, the Trinity, while it is a mystery, is also amazing. God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, work together in a relationship of perfect harmony.

Do you know any 3-way human relationship that works in harmony? How can a 3-way relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit reflect such unity? The answer relates to who God is.

First John 4:16 says, “God is love.” In 1 John 4:7-8, we read, “Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God. Everyone who loves had been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” God the Father is love.

The Father’s ultimate act of love was to give of himself – God the Son, Jesus.

God the Son is love. Ephesians 5:1-2 says, “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

The Father loves us and calls us to be his children. Jesus’ ultimate act of love was to give his life for us, and became the perfect offering for our sins.

God the Holy Spirit is love. Romans 5:5 tells us that “hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” The Holy Spirit is a channel of God’s love to us and lives in us.

The Trinity is bound together by love because God is love. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are One God, united in a relationship of love. God has been trying to show us this love from the beginning of time.

Restoring Broken Relationships

God created humans to be in relationship with God.

God also created us to be in relationship, a loving relationship with one another.

God knew “it is not good for the man to be alone,” [Ge2:18] so God created woman – a helper, a person to be in relationship with the man and with God.

Then this ideal relationship that man and woman had with God in the Garden of Eden was broken by their rebellion, sin. Leonard Sweet, wrote, “Sin is not a breaking of commands; sin is a breaking of relationships. When we sin we do not break stone-bound laws, but heart-carved love.” [Leonard Sweet, Out of the Question … Into the Mystery (Colorado Springs, CO: Water Brook Press, 2004) 145].

Think about that. When we sin it usually affects another person – gossip, lying, criticism, name-calling, stealing, murder, adultery – and so many more. We live in relationship with others, so our words and actions can hurt others.

Even in the church, the body of Christ, we find examples of broken relationships, sin. The church is at times a place of exclusion, rather than inclusion. People look for love and instead find rejection and hurt.

The cure for sin, for broken relationships, is a relationship with Jesus Christ. We need to remember who we were before Christ.

Ephesians 2:12 tells us that, like the Gentiles,

· we were at one time “separate from Christ” – without a relationship with God.

· We were excluded from God’s family.

· We “were without hope and without God.”

Then Jesus came and included us by taking away our sin by his death on the cross. “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.” [Eph2:14].

When Christians don’t reflect the love of Christ in them, they deny the truth that Christ has “destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” between people. [Eph2:14].

The dividing wall of hostility is our sin, our rebellion against God. Sin not only separates us from God, but also from one another. When our sins are forgiven our relationship with God is restored. We are at peace with God. [Eph2:14]. We are also at peace with one another.

· We are able to “follow God’s example and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” [Eph5:1-2].

· We are able to love one another “for love comes from God.” [1Jn4:7].

· We are able to love “because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” [Rom5:5].

Loving others is easier said than done. Most Christians want to show the love of Christ through their words and examples, but they really don’t know how to do it. It requires a change of heart.

In the last ten years Immanuel has changed from a mostly white church, with a handful of immigrants, to a church with immigrants from fifteen or more countries, in which white Americans now make up only about 25%. It is socially, culturally and ethnically diverse.

I have had to change and give up my ways for the sake of the body of Christ. The people God has brought to Immanuel have taught me much about what it means to them to be a Christian, and about loving others.

Love for one another includes listening to one another, remembering someone’s name, sitting to eat with a new person. Every person who walks in the door is a gift from God. As God’s people, we are to humbly “value others above ourselves, not looking to our own interests but each of us to the interests of the others.” [Php2:3b-4].

Leonard Sweet writes that “we are judged by the world not on the basis of how ‘right’ we’ve gotten what we believe but on how well we’re living it—on how we love God and people. … The test, according to Jesus, is that his disciples are known not by how well they defend orthodox propositions, but by how well they ‘love one another.’” [Sweet, 21].

The body of Christ, the church, is meant to be the dwelling place of God, the home of love. [Eph2:22].

We are Christians because of what God has done for us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” [Jn3:16].

Loving God and Others

The Bible is God’s love story to us, and so the Bible “is best read as a love letter from God” [Sweet, 73].

Ephesians 2:4-5 says, “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”

“God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” [Rom5:8].

God, who is Love, sacrificed everything that we could know Love.

God gives us a new heart, a heart of love. Then God asks us to show his love to the world. God calls us to step outside of ourselves, reach out to someone who is different: a stranger, a foreigner, a homeless person, an angry person, a person who angers us, a broken person. And that’s not always easy.

But Jesus tells us to love our enemies, to love the unlovable, to love the stranger, to love the sinner. In fact, Jesus commands us to love one another.

Former President Jimmy Carter wrote that after a personal witnessing experience with Eloy Cruz, a wonderful Cuban pastor who had surprising rapport with very poor immigrants from Puerto Rico, Carter asked him for the secret of his success. He was modest and embarrassed, but finally said, “Senor Jimmy, we only need to have two loves in our lives. For God, and for the person who happens to be in front of us at any time.” Carter said that in essence, the whole Bible is an explanation of those two loves. [PreachingToday.com, “Jimmy Carter on Loving God and Others”].

Our God who is love: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, calls us into a relationship of love with God and others.

Conclusion

Jesus came to show people God’s love.

· He touched the untouchables to heal them.

· He offered forgiveness and restoration to the family.

· He raised the dead and returned them to loved ones.

· He invited people to follow him and be his disciple.

Jesus entered into a relationship with each person he met. Jesus offered them a restored relationship with God. Also, often, “Jesus used meals as a means of introducing people to God and inviting them to join him. … When people dine with Jesus, bread is always on the menu, the Bread of Life,” writes Leonard Sweet [Sweet, 128].

Today, Jesus, the Bread of Life, invites us into a restored our relationship with God and others.

Jesus invites us to share his body and blood, and then sends us out to share his love with others. Amen.

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This sermon is copyright ©2009 by Rev. Dr. Linnea E. Carnes, Immanuel Evangelical Covenant Church, Chicago, Illinois.