Paul begins these verses by appealing to the Gentile believers in Ephesus to “remember” their condition outside of Christ. In a sense, this section of Ephesians 2:11, 12 is somewhat like Paul’s words in Ephesians 2:1-3. That is, the Gentiles outside of the Messiah are not only “dead in trespasses and sins,” but they are outside God’s covenant blessings to Abraham and his descendants. In these two verses Paul was setting the stage for what he describes in Ephesians 2:13-22. Namely, the Gentiles are no longer isolated from the promises of God but are included in those promises through the victory of the Messiah’s death and resurrection.
It is also important that we remember the flow of Paul’s argument in Ephesians 2. First, as noted above, Jews and Gentiles are all under the dominion of the evil one outside of Christ. Second, it is through the riches of God’s mercy and through grace alone that God has shown His lovingkindness in the Messiah Jesus to both Jews and Greeks. Third, Paul is showing that in the body of the Messiah, God has brought Jew and Gentile together to “create in Himself one new man from the two” as a witness to divine grace for the whole world (Ephesians 2:15). In this new identity found solely in the body of the Messiah, with Jesus as the head, Jew and Gentile do not fully lose their distinct identity but come together in the Messiah to reveal God’s redemptive purposes for humanity.
But before moving towards the divine purpose that Paul expounds in the remainder of Ephesians 2, Paul addresses the painful reality that divided Jews and Gentiles. In the Bible, there are essentially three identities for humanity for all time: Jews, Gentiles, and those redeemed in the Messiah. In Ephesians 2:11, 12, Paul writes about the first two, Jews and Gentiles.
He begins by acknowledging what amounted to a slur against the Gentiles: they were uncircumcised. Jewish identity in circumcision goes back to Genesis 17, where circumcision was a sign of God’s covenant with Abraham. The covenant was rooted in Abraham’s faith in God’s promises to him. It begins with God’s promise of blessings to Abraham, his descendants, and all who would bless him. It includes promises related to the land of Canaan. Over a quarter of a century, God and Abraham were engaged in this “faith-walk” whereby God declared Abraham righteous because he believed in the Lord (Genesis 15:6). Even when Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar failed in their fleshly effort to fulfill God’s promise (Genesis 16), God did not abandon them. Abraham was 86 years old when this effort to fulfill God’s promise by their works failed (16:16). But thirteen years later, God again appeared to Abraham, renewed His promises, and told Abraham to circumcise himself and all the males in his household, including Ishmael, as a physical sign in the male organ of procreation. It is important to remember that faith was prior to the sign of circumcision, not the other way around. This was so important that Paul emphasized it in Romans 4 and Galatians 2 and 3.
Thus, Jews used the term “uncircumcised” as a “spiteful designation.”[1] But interestingly, Paul also condemns the Jews for what he calls “circumcision made in the flesh by hands” (Ephesians 2:11). Paul recognized that circumcision in the flesh had become a point of human pride and an unholy distinction. This was not new to Paul. The Old Testament also declared that God intended circumcision to be of the heart; that is, a heart for God and His purposes (Jeremiah 4:4; 6:10; 9:26). Even Moses in the Law called for circumcision of the heart (Deuteronomy 10:16; 30:6).
Circumcision was a sign of belonging to God’s people. In Ephesians 2:12 Paul reminds the Gentiles of what they missed by not being part of the grace-called people God chose through the faith and lineage of Abraham. There are five aspects of not being Jewish that were experienced by all Gentiles.[2]
First, Gentiles “were without the Messiah.”[3] The Gentiles had mighty warriors and leaders of great empires, but they did not have the expectation of a promised Savior.
Second, Gentiles “were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel.” The word “commonwealth” carries the connotation of “citizenship.”[4] To be an alien is to be in a foreign land but without citizenship. It can mean being without protective rights and excluded from the benefits of belonging. An alien is, in a real sense, a person in a foreign land.
Before we go to the third point, a word of clarity is needed about the phrase, “commonwealth, or citizen of Israel.” Paul is not thinking of a geopolitical, independent nation in the modern sense of the word.[5] Rather, Paul is referring to the reality of Jewishness as an expression of faith in God handed down through the centuries through the covenants and Torah (law). Paul has in mind the reality of the covenants made with Abraham, Moses, and David as revelations of the being and nature of God.
Third, Gentiles are “strangers from the covenants of promise.” In the previous paragraph, I mentioned the three primary covenants that God made with Israel that formed her identity and purpose in the world. Gentiles are “strangers” to all three of these covenants. That means that Gentiles do not share in the historical divine interaction between the One True God and the children of Abraham. Furthermore, these covenants form the premise of a future (“covenants of promise”) that belongs to the seed of Abraham by virtue of the Word of the Lord who oversees all history and its future. Another way to put this is, the Gentiles do not belong! A Gentile’s history and future is shaped by remembrance and hope that is found primarily outside of divine revelation. Gentiles have many gods, but not the One True God revealed in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the Messiah, and Israel’s history.
The fourth and fifth aspects are expressed in the phrase, “having no hope and without God in the world.” The word translated as “without God” is transliterated as atheist. A theist is a person who believes in God; an a-theist is a person who does not believe in God.[6] Paul is probably not thinking of our modern view of an atheist as a person who philosophically rejects the notion of God. Rather, Paul was affirming that the gods worshipped by the Gentiles are not gods at all but are demons or figments of the Gentile imagination (1 Corinthians 10:20, 21; Romans 1:20-23). But Paul makes clear that being “without God” is being without hope.
In conclusion, there are two things we should remember—the same things Paul advises these Ephesian Gentiles to remember. First, the work of Jesus the Messiah is rooted in the promises of God to Israel. This means that we should be grateful for that testimony through the covenant children of Abraham. In a time of rising antisemitism in the United States and around the world, regardless of our political views about the modern state of Israel, we must be careful to remember the blessings of Genesis 12:1-3 as the promise of God to the Jews and those who bless them. Second, while Paul’s point in Ephesians 2 is about the church, the body of the Messiah, Paul’s comments have a personal aspect for those of us who are Gentiles. We no longer live by the spirit of the world (2:1-3), but we now live as those who have experienced and are experiencing the riches of God’s mercy and grace in Jesus the Messiah (2:4-10).
[1] Markus Barth, p. 254, 255. See Noel Brooks, p. 77 in previously cited works.
[2] Some Gentiles became proselytes, or God-fearers, who recognized the monotheism of Judaism, and the morality revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures.
[3] I am intentionally using Messiah rather than “Christ” as many Christians miss the Jewish connection of Jesus as the Promised Messiah of Israel. Remember that “Christ” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew
“Messiah,” which means the anointed One.
[4] See Barth’s discussion on pp. 257, 258.
[5] That does not preclude any discussion of the modern state of Israel in terms of its role, or lack thereof, in God’s purposes for humanity. That is a topic for a different time.
[6] The Greek letter alpha, “a,” before a word often serves to negate the meaning of the word it precedes. When this occurs, it is called the “alpha privative.” It is easily seen in the English word “atypical.”
