God's Grace Produces Reconciliation
Ephesians 2:11-22

1. The unnatural unity of God's people demonstrates the power of God's grace!

2. Jews and Gentiles have a new BELONGing that is great-er than their identity as Jew or Gentile, they are Christian.

• Romans 11:17
• Galatians 3:7-9, 14

3. God's power is displayed in His early church by the way they laid down prejudice, and sought reconciliation with their brothers and sisters who were different than them.

• Acts 11 & 15

4. Our identity as God's holy church should unite us more than any one of these issues divide us.
5. God's plan is for His diverse church to model diverse unity to a broken world!

Next Steps:
1. Pray that God will bring unity to Cedar Hills, the RCA, the American church, and His global church!
2. Pick one issue or person and seek reconciliation that week?
3. Instead of making an insulting, divisive post on social media, have a civil conversation about that issue.
4. Instead of assuming those who disagree with you are un-educated or unkind, believe the best about them. Listen to them instead of judging their motives, you may find you have more in common than you thought.
5. Ask God to change our hearts, and help us to love those who are different.

Ephesians 2:11-22
11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call them-selves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were sep-arate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and for-eigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its com-mands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.
17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together

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