There is a stretch of water that looks like nothing from the shore and takes forty minutes to cross.
Everybody who has grown up near water knows the trick your eye plays. Distance over water reads short. A headland that looks like a twenty minute paddle is an hour and a quarter, and people who do not know that set out cheerfully and get into trouble around the point where the wind picks up.
And then there is the other version of it, which is what I want to talk about.
There is a man who has spent two years measuring a distance he does not have to cover.
He has a matter with God, and he has come to think of it as a gap. There is where he is, and there is where he ought to be, and between them a stretch of water that he assesses regularly. He is not lazy about it. He has thought about the crossing carefully. He has considered what it would take, what he would need, whether he has the shoulders for it, and the answer has come back the same way every time: further than I can manage.
So he stands on the shore doing sums, and the sums are honest, and the conclusion is always that the water is too wide.
I want to name the wound before the lift, because a lift laid on top of an unnamed wound does not hold. Somewhere you learned that closeness is something you earn by effort, and that being far off is a fair description of somebody like you, and that the crossing, if it is going to happen, will be your work in your boat.
Nobody said it in a sentence. It arrived anyway, and it has had you on a beach for two years with a measuring eye.
That is you on the shore.
You've been assessing a crossing. And you are right about the width, in the sense that you could not do it, and wrong about whose job it was, and the second error is the one that has cost you.
The nearness in that verse is something done to you
Paul is writing to people who had every reason to think of themselves as the far off ones, and the sentence he gives them is built in a particular grammar. Watch the verbs.
But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.Ephesians 2:13
Are made nigh. Not: have come near. Not: managed to close the gap. Made nigh, which is something done to a person by somebody else, and the sentence names who and by what.
There is no crossing in that verse assigned to the one who was far off. The far off condition is stated as a past fact, and the nearness is stated as a present one, and the mechanism between them is named and it is not effort.
You have been made near, and the making was done to you rather than by you, and I am not being soft with Paul: Ephesians 2:13 puts it in that grammar in writing, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than my saying so who can bring it to a man doing sums on a beach.
Now sit with the word sometimes, which in that older English means formerly. Ye who sometimes were far off. The distance is real in the verse. Paul does not pretend there was no gap and he does not tell them their assessment of the width was wrong. He tells them the gap is in the past tense.
That is the difference between being told to try harder and being told the crossing is done, and only one of those is in the sentence.
You are not standing on the near shore because you rowed well, and the width you measured accurately was closed by somebody else, which is written into the passive verb rather than into my sympathy for two years, with the Spirit of God able to reach a man whose sums have all been correct and all been about the wrong question.
And here is the last thing, and I say it carefully because the ocean and the land where I come from are His handiwork and nothing more than that. Water is the one distance a person cannot pace out and cannot bridge by wanting to. That is exactly why Paul reached for far off and near rather than for anything measurable. He is not describing a distance you could halve by effort. He is describing a condition that was changed.
This is already closed, this morning, while you are still standing on the shore assessing it, because Scripture says are made nigh in the present tense, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying that down to the water at first light.
Put the tape measure down.
Your assessment of the width was accurate. That is worth saying plainly, because people in your position are usually told they are exaggerating and they are not. The distance was real and you could not have crossed it, and two years of honest sums arrived at a true answer to a question nobody was asking you.
The verse does not ask you to cross. It reports a crossing already made, in a passive verb, with the mechanism named, and it puts your far off condition in the past tense while you were still standing on the beach.
You are made nigh in the present tense, and the making was never work you were given, because Ephesians 2:13 says are made nigh by the blood of Christ, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that a place to stand rather than a doctrine to grant.
Walk down to the water. There is a hull going in and people carrying it.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, in whatever voice this morning has left you. The standing to say them is not something a man works up to and it does not come off his record: Christ is in you, and the authority in these words belongs to Him and has been given to you in Scripture, made living by the Holy Spirit rather than by how far you can reach. Jesus put the faith required at a mustard seed, which is His way of setting it under the line where anybody would trouble to measure, and then He said the part that carries: speak to the mountain. The mountain here is not the water. It is the crossing you assigned to yourself. Speak to that. What He does with the rest of it He does in His own way, and the lowering of the arms is yours to do this morning.
- Distance I keep measuring, you are not mine to cross, and in the name of Jesus I put down the tape. Scripture says the far off are made nigh, which is a thing done to a person and never a thing rowed.
- Fear that closeness is earned by effort, you have had two years of my mornings on this beach. Scripture puts my far off condition in the past tense while I was still standing here, so the width you kept quoting me was accurate and irrelevant.
- Lord God, You closed this Yourself and You closed it by something I could not have supplied, and I am standing here with my arms down and no crossing to attempt. I thank You, because Your Holy Spirit did the drawing and Your word said made nigh, and I am received on the near shore and not at the end of a passage I could never row.
Ephesians 2:13
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