This morning we continue our reading in Paul's letter to the Ephesians. We hope to focus on verses 14 and 15 together, but we're going to read 11 through 18 Ephesians 6, starting at verse 11, see with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. From now on let no one cause me trouble for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen. And our text is verses 14 and 15. But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, do you believe it's important to have good self-esteem? Maybe the answer to that question depends on what self-esteem is, how you define it. One resource describes self-esteem as, quote, your subjective sense of overall personal worth or value. End quote. So self-esteem, your subjective sense of overall personal worth or value. And of course, from that perspective, it is important for everyone to know, to have the sense that they are valued. Teenagers and pre-teens especially can really struggle sometimes with a sense that they don't matter, that they're not valued, that the world would be no different without them. And sometimes people never grow over that feeling. And that can lead them to make poor decisions in life. Now, we don't look at these things from a secular perspective. The secular perspective affirms you regardless of who you are or of what you are. There's this real fear. in our culture of low self-esteem as something that is a big problem. But from a Christian perspective, the issue is not that we have a problem with overall personal worth or value. In fact, Christianity is the only religion in the world which says that human life is the very crown of God's creation. Jesus died to redeem sinners. That's how much God desired to redeem the crown of His creation. So, Christians do not deny that we, or all human beings for that matter, have overall personal worth or value. Remember the definition of self-esteem, your subjective sense of overall personal worth or value. We are not disputing that the last half of that sentence, the overall personal worth or value, but we are disputing that word subjective. The issue is not that we deny overall personal worth or value, the issue is how do you decide? How do you decide the basis of that value? Who gets to decide that? What do you base it on? The only way you can really give a coherent answer to that question is through faith. Apart from faith, the answer to that question is always going to be subjective. And if it is subjective, you have no certainty to base that on other than your own beliefs about yourself. Sometimes people think faith is just another way to teach you to be a good person. And if you think you're a good person already, then probably faith is not that important. And that belief is surprisingly common. Our text this morning talks about faith very differently. Paul writes, the cross is the only way that you can relate to anything at all. The cross is central to our understanding of life, and therefore central to our understanding of ourselves. Through faith, we understand what the cross means. And faith is therefore a matter of death and life, not life and death. but death and life. Faith is a matter of death and life, death through the cross of Christ, life as a new creation in Christ. It's hard for us to imagine how strange Paul's words must have sounded to people who read this letter for the first time. Crucifixion. remains one of the most horrible ways ever devised of putting another human being to death. The Roman Empire reserved this punishment only for the lowest of the low. It was illegal to do it to citizens. There were a couple of exceptions, but normally crucifixion was not something that they performed on citizens. Slaves and traitors. We don't understand the horror of crucifixion because we've never seen one taking place. If you hear the word cross, what do you think about? You don't think about an instrument of torture. You probably think about the silver cross that many of you are wearing on a little chain around your neck right now. And it's fine. There's nothing wrong with wearing that. As long as you remember what the cross represented to the people in Paul's time period, it represented unspeakable trauma and shame. Crucifixion was the ultimate in dishonor. Crucifixion was something, therefore, that you never spoke about in polite company. Imagine now that you're someone from that Greco-Roman culture. You've maybe seen a few crucifixions. And you read this letter for the first time. You're new to Christianity. Then you read something like, far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, maybe this doesn't make sense to us here today. It would have made a whole lot less sense to the people back then. How can you have someone who was crucified and call him your Lord? How does that make any sense? How can he be your master? the weight of that title, our Lord Jesus Christ. How does that make any sense at all? And it doesn't. if you try to understand it by nature from the perspective of unregenerate man. The message of the cross is always going to be impossible for us to understand by nature. And Paul writes about that in his first letter to the Corinthians. He says, the message of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. Those who are perishing are people who are dying in their sin. They hear the message of the cross. It makes no sense to them. By nature, sinful man is unable to understand the message of the cross. And Paul goes on to write, we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who were called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Why is it a stumbling block? Because people are not willing to accept the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ because they are not willing to accept what it says about them. Think of the contrast between those words, cross, and our Lord Jesus Christ. That is how evil sin is. It took the death of the very Son of God Himself to die for sinners, to take away their guilt. When you look at the cross, you're looking at the verdict, God's verdict over sin. You're looking at the ugliness of sin. You can, in some sense, measure the ugliness of sin by its punishment. And if sin then can be measured by the ugliness of its punishment, then sin is very terrible indeed. But here's the thing that we need to remember. When you look at the cross, you're also looking at the grace of God, because Christ bore that punishment for sinners. When you confess your sins to God, when you ask for forgiveness in Jesus' name, when you believe that all those who come to Him will never be turned away, then you can be sure that He died for you too. Then you can be sure that things are right between you and God, so there is hope in this cross. But in order for you to have the hope, you need to accept what it says about you. And people are simply not willing to do that, to accept the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's why the false teachers prefer to focus on circumcision. See, in their eyes there was a sense of virtue associated with circumcision. Remember what it meant to be circumcised. Whoever accepted circumcision placed himself under the whole law of God. He writes about that in Galatians 5 verse 3. There was a kind of a heroic virtue in that. You get this Greco-Roman culture which is profoundly immoral, full of pedophilia and homosexuality and idolatry. And then people come out of that culture and they place themselves under the Jewish law. The men get circumcised and they're completely separate from that culture. And there's a kind of a heroic virtue in that to say, I'm going to be different from everyone else. And you don't get that same sense of virtue when you hear the message of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. So it's easy to avoid it. And people still avoid it today. There are people who have a thorough knowledge of the Bible and preach many good things from it. And you hear them maybe on the radio or on podcasts or other places, but here's the question. Are they preaching the cross? Are they preaching the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ? Is that front and center in the preaching or is it left out? Because it's easy to miss. Sometimes you might hear preaching from a well-known internet celebrity or a radio preacher. They might have a deep knowledge of the Bible. They might say many things that are true. They might say many things that are even helpful. But what have they left out? What have they left out? And who's in the center? Is man in the center? Man with his problems and man with his solutions to those problems? Or is it God? And if it is God in the center, Is it God as He revealed Himself in the cross? If what you hear could have been preached in any other religious setting from any other religion, then it's not the gospel because it left out the cross. Now, Paul doesn't apologize for the cross at all. In fact, he says, far be it from me to preach anything else. This phrase, far be it from me, is It's a very strong expression in Greek. The idea is, God forbid, God forbid that I preach anything else. And not only that, but he's going to boast in it. It's not that he says, well, this is something that I have to do. No, he's going to boast in it. I know some of you children might wonder, isn't it wrong to boast? Right, kids, your parents teach you not to boast. And your parents are right. because even the ancient Greeks, who were a heathen and boastful people, knew that it was dangerous to boast because they said, look, in their culture, boasting about yourself to have a high self-esteem, essentially, and to put yourself forward on the basis of your virtues was a good thing, but not too far forward. Because if you put yourself too far forward, then the gods begin to notice you. They come in the crosshairs of the God, so to speak, and that's a dangerous thing. Bad things happen to people that are proud, and Greek literature also has many examples of that. And the Bible makes a point even more strongly. Think of the words of Psalm 75, verses four and five. I say to the boastful, do not boast, and to the wicked, do not lift up your horn. Do not lift up your horn on high, or speak with a haughty neck. So boasting in human accomplishments is wrong. But here's the thing, Paul is not writing about human accomplishments here. The whole point of the cross is that humans have nothing to say anymore. Humans have nothing to say. All human boasting is based on an illusion whether people acknowledge it or not. The illusion is that we think we can compare ourselves to each other based on our accomplishments as if that makes any difference in our ultimate standing before God. And Paul writes about that in his first letter to the Corinthians as well. He had a church here, a new church with people that came from this boastful culture, and they became Christians, and of course it takes, sanctification is a process, right? So it takes time to become sanctified. And so they took the remnants of this heathen way of thinking into their church life, and you have a church here of people that boast. They found all sorts of things to boast about. And Paul wrote to them, he says, look, who sees anything different in you? What have you got that you didn't receive? And if you received it, then why are you boasting as if you didn't receive it? He says, everything you have was given to you. Why are you taking credit for something that was given to you? So the kind of boasting that Paul has in mind here has nothing to do with human accomplishments. He was not that kind of a preacher. His point is to highlight the grace of God. Grace, by definition, will always highlight your own sin. It will highlight your own weakness because grace means that you received something that was undeserved. So anytime that you talk about grace, you also, in a sense, acknowledge that you did not deserve it and that there's reasons for that. So Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11 verse 30, if I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. And that word weakness applies across the board. You remember in this letter in a previous place, Galatians 4, 13 and 14, he spoke about this health issue that he had and we saw at the time it's not completely certain what that was. He writes about something similar, maybe the same issue, maybe a different health issue in 2 Corinthians 12. He writes, three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me, but he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness, therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. You see, People who boast in this way want to see God magnified, so they will boast about anything that advances His work, including their own suffering. Paul is saying, look at how incredible God is that He can do all of these things through me, even though I have so many limitations. But the focus is on God. Now, obviously, you can't boast in this way without having to rethink your whole identity. You have to break with this entire worldly system of thinking and evaluating. And that's exactly the point that he makes in the second half of verse 14. See, he's saying it's not just about Christ's death in the world, it's not just about His cross, it's also about my death in the world. Look at what he says, far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, so we've looked at that, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. What does he mean when he refers to the world? Well, if you run a search on the word, you see that it can refer to creation in general, and he uses it that way in Romans 1 verse 8, but that's not what he means here, because the issue is not creation. The word world here is being used as the place where sin happens. The word flesh in Paul often refers to our sinful state, then world refers to our collective sinful opposition to God as it's expressed in human behavior, in human culture, in this place in which we live. So Paul refers to being crucified to the world, crucified to all that is opposed to him, to God. Crucifixion here refers to a total separation, a total opposition. The dividing line between the believer and the world is not a man-made ritual. It's not anything we've done. It's the cross. The cross, the cross is the dividing line between the believer and the world. Our identification with Christ as our crucified Savior. The world has been crucified to me. That means I am totally separated from it. And I have been crucified to the world. That means that the world also regards me as belonging to Christ. The world identifies me with Christ. That's what that means. Now we need to continue to maintain the separation. This is a matter of faith. Faith is a matter of death and life, after all. If our faith means anything, it will show in that we are dead to the world. We live as those who have been crucified to the world. And there's an old word that our forefathers used a whole lot more than we did. That word is antithesis. The antithesis is the age-old dividing line between the church and the world. It was first drawn by God in paradise after the fall into sin when He promised that the Messiah would come. And that line has now been drawn in blood, the blood of Christ. The line of the antithesis is drawn in the blood of Christ. Now, we believe in the antithesis as a concept, but do we maintain it practically? We should not confuse maintaining the antithesis with maintaining our way of life. There are certain discussions in which the separation between people falls along political lines. We should never confuse those political lines with that line drawn by the blood of Christ. Perhaps the lines may correspond from time to time, but it's not the same line. And if we speak and act as if it is, we cheapen the cross of Christ. So dear brother, dear sister, where are you at with your faith? Is your faith a matter of death and life to you? Has the world been crucified to you? Have you been crucified to the world? The quickest way to answer that question is to ask yourself, what am I boasting in? What are the sorts of things that you put forward in conversations with people? What do you want people to know about you? What do you want people to notice about you? If you are in a group of friends and the line, the line of the antithesis, that line drawn in the blood of Christ is crossed, Are you going to point that out? Sometimes you might be the only one who was willing to make a stand. That's reflected in our text as well. This is actually really striking. If you think about it, you look at this passage and most of the pronouns are in the plural. They, them, their, we, us. But when it comes to Verse 14, suddenly Paul switches to the singular. Far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. He could have said us, by which the world has been crucified to us and we to the world, but he didn't do that. It's singular here. That's striking. And it also, in a sense, reminds us that sometimes, that this crucifixion, in a sense, is a very individual thing, and that sometimes when you make a stand, you do so completely alone. It's not a bad thing to be put in that position. It's not bad because it forces you to think through the question, how much does my faith actually mean to me? Is it a matter of death and life? How much of a difference does that faith actually make? What are the consequences of Christ's crucifixion in your life? If the crucifixion had never happened, would your life be any different than it is now? Faith is a matter of death and life. We've paid attention to death through the cross of Christ. Let's now pay attention to life as a new creation in Christ. So we move on to verse 15, and in verse 15 of our text, the apostle refers to the ritual of circumcision. Remember, in Galatia, they had this issue with false teachers, teachers who were teaching these new Christians that the essence of religion is not faith, but obedience to God's commandments. And they said, if you really want to be obedient, then you need to submit to the ritual of circumcision. So, this is a faith which is not only based on works instead of grace, but it's also based on ritual, highly ritualized, the ritual of circumcision. Now, what is a ritual? The dictionary definition of ritual, one dictionary definition is that it is the established form for a ceremony. Now, in and of itself, there's no problem with having an established form for a ceremony. We have rituals as well, right? We have, for example, our order of worship. It has an established form. You get the handshake at the beginning of the service, a handshake at the end, the five psalms or hymns, the votum, the salutation, all of these things in a very, it's a simple order, but it's highly structured. It is, in that sense, it has an aspect of ritual. It is an established form. And the sacraments, of course, are rituals as well. And that's not bad. A ritual can be deeply meaningful. It's an amazing thing to know that we worship in the same way as our ancestors did. It's amazing to know that the ritual of baptism goes all the way back to the early church. It's amazing to know that the ritual of Lord's Supper is connected to Passover, which goes back all the way to the book of Exodus. And it's amazing to know that all of these rituals contain the gospel which goes back to the very beginning of Genesis. So rituals provide a continuity in worship. They connect us to those who have worshiped before us. They put us in a sense in harmony with a church of all ages. A ritual is a beautiful, precious thing to have and this trend that you find in some places today to upend rituals and to reinvent what we already do to keep it new and interesting is a terrible thing. should not be done in the global church at large. To experiment, to constantly reinvent the wheel, no. Rituals provide continuity in worship that can be solemn, tremendous, deeply joyful, but the problem is that rituals can become empty, and that's what circumcision had become to the false teachers. See, they're making a lot about this ritual, but look at verses 12 and 13 again. Look at what he says here. It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. So these people are pragmatists. And he says, even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. So he's calling the motives into question. And maybe some of them were sincere. Sure. but they had collectively lost sight of what the ritual of circumcision meant. It was a visualization of God's promises. It represented life and communion with him through faith in those promises. Those promises came to their fullest expression in Jesus Christ and in his cross and through faith in him, you have everything that God promised in circumcision and for that matter, everything that he promised in baptism and everything that he continues to promise through the Lord's Supper. So, it's the content of the ritual that matters the most, and it's meant to strengthen our faith. Through faith in Christ, you become a new creation. That phrase, new creation, in verse 15, that doesn't just refer to regeneration. That's the beginning, of course, when God works, when God makes us spiritually alive so that when we hear the gospel, we respond to it in faith. And he uses the gospel to do that as well. The gospel is the seed of regeneration. Peter writes about that. But God has to work in us first before we can respond to that gospel in faith. But then the new creation doesn't stop there, right? If you think about the word new creation, it can't stop there because creation is such a big thing. It includes everything. So that word new creation, It includes regeneration, it includes the sanctification that comes out of that. It refers to everything that comes out of our faith, and it refers ultimately to the complete and total renewal that every believer will experience. It doesn't mean you become perfect right away, but it does mean that through faith you become conscious of what God is doing in your life. You literally begin, you literally become a new creation, and you are in the process of being renewed, and this whole life is just the beginning to that. Think about that, because so often we get stuck into this life, and we see things in such a temporal context, and then you have to understand this is just the beginning. This is just the beginning. God has promised to complete a renewal in the life to come, a new creation, with people on a new earth. And that's why faith is a matter of death and life. Yes, death through the cross of Christ, but life through a new creation in Christ. Now hopefully the order makes sense. And that new creation in its entirety, the world that is to come with all of God's people, renewed people on it, is the only thing that will remain. We are called to keep ourselves unstained from this world because it stands under God's judgment. Scripture says, do you not know? Don't you know? Friendship with the world is enmity with God. Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. And in the first letter of John, we are warned, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father, but from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. It is a matter of death and life. So should we be preoccupied with the cult of self-esteem? Well, if you look at it from the perspective of our text, God is busy with something much bigger than ourselves, and he's been busy with that for a long time. In Isaiah 65 already, 3,000 years ago, he said, for behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. but be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create. See, that which I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy and her people to be a gladness. That's where your ultimate security lies, in Christ, in the life that we have through him, in what God is doing and will one day bring to completion. So at the beginning of the sermon, we saw that one definition of self-esteem is your subjective sense of overall personal worth or value. And we also saw that Christianity is the only religion in the world that says that Jesus died to redeem sinners. That takes away any ground of boasting in ourselves. but it gives us something much more profound in exchange. Yes, something gets taken, but something much bigger is given in return. It says we have been crucified to the world. The world has been crucified to us. Believers now already experience a new creation in Christ, and that's something totally different, much bigger, much more significant than self-esteem. The problem with self-esteem is that you never rise above yourself. That's the problem. You never rise above yourself. You never rise above your own opinions. You never rise above your own value system. You never rise above your own way of looking at things. You just get a somewhat better version of that over time, but you never become more than that. What God has done for us is something much greater. Look at what Paul wrote about that in Ephesians chapter two. I'll quote it to you. We won't look it up right now, but it's Ephesians 2, verses four through nine. He says, but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of work so that no one may boast. God has raised us up so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus, age after age after age after age. Forever and ever God will show us his kindness and his grace. We have nothing to boast about compared to that. So you see, faith is a matter of death and life, death through the cross of Christ, life as a new creation in Christ, loved in Christ, esteemed in Christ, and in Him, and able to love and esteem each other, far be it from us to boast in anything else. Amen.