We get used the smell the longer we live in it and assume that’s just the way life is.  We accept the broken parts of our lives, limping along, because we don’t know how to heal.  We live like this until the day comes when we discover a place where the air is different, sweeter without the stench which we have become accustomed.  We take a deep breathe to fill our lungs with this new smell of fresh, pure air, and suddenly come alive!

We see, hear, and feel stronger. We are drawn to stay where the air is cleaner and more refreshing.  This new air is healing to our souls.  Broken parts are mended and made whole.  We are attracted to the fragrance of others who are breathing in this fresh air.  The freshness of this air causes us to be kinder and gentler, more loving, and less judgmental, humbler, and less arrogant.  So, we linger in the life-giving air.  We take another deep breath of this fresh, pure air and decide right then and there to never leave.  This place is called Truth, the Way to real Life—Forever! 

Ephesians 2, The Message

He Tore Down the Wall

2 ^1-6 It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

^7-10 Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

^11-13 But don’t take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God’s ways had no idea of any of this, didn’t know the first thing about the way God works, hadn’t the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God’s covenants and promises in Israel, hadn’t a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ—dying that death, shedding that blood—you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.

^14-15 The Messiah has made things up between us so that we’re now together on this, both non-Jewish outsiders and Jewish insiders. He tore down the wall we used to keep each other at a distance. He repealed the law code that had become so clogged with fine print and footnotes that it hindered more than it helped. Then he started over. Instead of continuing with two groups of people separated by centuries of animosity and suspicion, he created a new kind of human being, a fresh start for everybody.

^16-18 Christ brought us together through his death on the cross. The Cross got us to embrace, and that was the end of the hostility. Christ came and preached peace to you outsiders and peace to us insiders. He treated us as equals, and so made us equals. Through him we both share the same Spirit and have equal access to the Father.

^19-22 That’s plain enough, isn’t it? You’re no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You’re no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone. God is building a home. He’s using us all—irrespective of how we got here—in what he is building. He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation. Now he’s using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together. We see it taking shape day after day—a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.

WHAT DO WE LEARN?  HOW DO WE RESPOND?

First, take a deep breath.  Inhale God’s Holy Spirit, the clean, pure air of Life everlasting.  Exhale the impurities of our souls that does not give or sustain Life in Jesus.  Christ in us is our daily breath of fresh air.  Jesus who saved us is the air we breathe!  And Jesus who resides in us, working in and through us, is the fragrance that attracts others who seek Him.

“For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.  2 Corinthians 2:15-17 ESV

Paul goes to work to encourage the Ephesians.  What was once broken can be healed.  What the believers accepted as “that’s just the way life is” is no longer a valid way to live.  Jesus tore down the wall between Jews and non-Jews by His sacrifice, redeeming all of us “once and for all for all the sins of the world!  Jesus set free all who believe making us free to love each other like He loves us.  We are all equals!  All who believe are “joint heirs” with Jesus who died and rose again for us.  What a breath of fresh air! 

“…we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Hebrews 10:10, NIV

Paul shows how Jesus, the Messiah, is eternally and tirelessly bringing everything and everyone together!  And we are invited to be participants in the God’s work in the Name of Jesus! 

“Now that we know what is going on, that the energy of reconciliation is the dynamo at the heart of the universe, it is imperative that we join in vigorously and perseveringly, convinced that every detail in our lives contributes (or not) to what Paul describes as God’s plan worked out by Christ; ‘a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in Him, everything in deepest heaven; everything on planet earth.’” –Peterson, Introduction to Ephesians, The Message Bible

Lord,

Breath by breath, brick by brick, you are teaching us to daily breathe in your fresh air as you build our faith.  You are teaching us to be more like you, having the same fragrant aroma of your love which attracts others to your saving grace.  You truly are the air I breathe.  When this life offers something else, something that doesn’t smell right, lead me to take a deep breath of pureness as I remain in you and you abide in me.  Make yourself at home in me.  You are a breath of fresh air.  You are life to me.

In Jesus Name, For Your Glory, Amen