Walls

Walls are everywhere. They separate apartment units, hold up roofs and even allow the winning run to score as homerun balls sail over them. Walls keep out loud freeway noise from disturbing others living in the houses that were built near them. They also keep people out of dangerous areas like airports, gun ranges and active volcanoes while keeping violent, dangerous criminals separated from the general public. 

Some physicists even believe that there is a wall at the outer edge of our universe. They hypothesize that our universe is but one gigantic bubble in a much larger expanse of space. However I can’t think about that right now as it hurts my brain to ponder vast distances before my morning cup of coffee. 

The Great Wall in China, one of the biggest walls on earth, can even be seen from an orbiting spaceship. The Berlin Wall, which now has been torn down, split the German nation in half trapped behind rigid differences in political ideologies. Even the most southern end of California has a partial wall that was erected, intending to manage illegal immigration from Mexico.

Walls are going up everywhere. There are even invisible walls that we can build around our relationships with others. In the course of time these walls can turn into fortresses that cut off our hearts and minds to family, friends as well as strangers.  Soon these invisible force fields become impenetrable barriers that keep others out and back at a distance.  These walls must come down.

In the Old Testament God outlined that men and women could only approach Him in a very specific way. From the very beginning of time, by covering Adam and Eve with animal skins, God demonstrated that without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness from our sin. Later, after the law was given to Moses, God commanded His people could only approach Him through sacrifices offered by the tabernacle priesthood.

In time God’s laws were corrupted and the temple became a place where people capitalized off of required sacrifices. Priests charged to inspect sacrifices, sold animals and required payment with Temple currency that was exchanged at a higher rate of interest.

Christianity was originally built upon the foundation that Christ Jesus laid. Jesus came to teach us that God loves us and wants a relationship with us. In return we are to love others. Jesus simply stated that the greatest commandments are that we should love the Lord God with all our hearts, mind and strength and then to love others as ourselves.

Unfortunately, from the very beginning, even Christ’s disciples argued and disputed with each other about what He taught. Then, as time went on, men began to add and change God’s New Covenant in ways that alienated us from each other.  As generations passed rigid religious practices were built up into high walls of separation; denominations. These walls served only to divide the family of Christ into fragmented factions.  

I have witnessed these, in my own life, divisions and splits inside churches of the same denomination. Some have suggested the root cause of this corruption is a lack of teaching through the entire books of canonized scripture.  This coupled with man’s desire to rule over one another is at the heart of the present disunity in the church. There is only one church and Jesus is the head so let us put away childish arguments and tell others how much God loves them.

When Jesus turned over the tables in the courts of the Temple, chasing out the money changers, He was making a clear statement.  Jesus is now our High Priest and demonstrated that there is now only one mediator between God and man and that is the God-man Christ Jesus. Jesus said that He was the way, the truth and the life and that no man would come to the Father except through accepting-receiving His sacrifice for forgiveness.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, he wrote about Jesus “For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances,”. 

There were walls separating gentiles, women and Jews from entering certain areas of the Temple complex. Jesus came to tear down those walls of separation. But more importantly, when Jesus gave up His spirit on the cross, it’s recorded that the veil-curtain in the Temple’s Holy of Holies was torn from top to bottom. 

The final wall separating a Holy God from sinful people was now torn down. There was no need for a hierarchy of priests to intercede for us as we can now go directly to the Father through His Son Christ Jesus.