Wherefore remember that *ye*, once nations in [the] flesh, who [are] called uncircumcision by that called circumcision in [the] flesh done with the hand;
Paul has just carried his readers to the heights: saved by grace, seated in the heavenly places. At verse 11 he turns them around. He tells them to look back at what they once were — outsiders, tagged with a name the Jews used with scorn.
The letter has been climbing. Here it tells the reader to look back instead. One writer separates that from a kind of looking inward that only does harm.
How striking that the apostle should tell the saints to look down in verse 11! Verse 7 carries us very high and shows our place as sitting in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Now we are told to remember what we were. There is an important difference between being taken up with yourself and remembering our ruined state. The first leads to doubt and fear; the second to humility and a deeper appreciation of grace.
The opening of the chapter had put Jew and Gentile on the same footing: dead, and children of wrath. Verse 11 looks at them from a different angle.
Here we are on totally different ground. It is no longer "children of wrath" — people who were by nature one as bad and as dead as the other. Here men fall into two groups on earth — the uncircumcision on one side, and the circumcision on the other. So you are on earthly ground. This is the ground of God's dealings in history, where He separates one part of mankind from another by His own will. He does it not because the one was better than the other, but to display His own wisdom and purpose.
The word was not a neutral description. It was what one group called the other, and it carried the sting of exclusion.
In their Gentile state, the Ephesians were called uncircumcision. It was a term of great reproach (1 Samuel 14:6; 1 Samuel 31:4). Circumcision was the sign of relationship with God, and more besides. To be uncircumcised meant being completely outside the circle of relationship and privilege… Earlier in the chapter the apostle sets out what is true of Jew and Gentile alike. Here he stresses what was true of the Gentiles in particular.
The gap between the two groups was not a human invention. It stood until the cross.
The Apostle is about to set out the present position of believers in Christ. First he contrasts the former position of Gentiles in the flesh with their new place. The church is not the sum of all believers from the beginning of the world. In times past — the times before the cross — God had appointed a distinction between Jew and Gentile. As long as that distinction stood, the church could not exist.
Notice Paul's careful wording for the other side. He does not write "the circumcision," but what is called the circumcision, made in the flesh by hands. After the cross, that badge has no standing left.
"The circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands" (Ephesians 2:11) is now simply Judaism. To go back in spirit to Judaism is to reject the cross of Christ. That cross has written for ever the sentence of death on man in the flesh… God judges man in the flesh, whether Jew or Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, as past recovery. In Christ, risen from the dead, there is new creation.
Remembering is not nostalgia or self-punishment. It has a target: the pride that grows in people God has blessed.
Grace alone has taken us out of a completely desolate condition. So we must guard against a natural and shameful tendency: to glory in flesh because the blessing God has given us is so great. Israel fell because they were proud of being blessed by God. Gentiles are now taking the same attitude (Romans 11:18-23). Gentiles had none of the advantages Israel had.
- Remember — the letter that seats you in the heavenly places also tells you to look down at where you started. The memory of ruin breeds humility. Endless self-inspection breeds only fear.
- Remember your name — "uncircumcision" was a label of contempt. It marked you as outside the circle of relationship and privilege.
- Remember the barrier — God appointed the Jew/Gentile divide; men did not invent it. While it stood, the church could not exist.
- Remember the flesh — Paul calls the other side's badge what is called the circumcision, made in the flesh by hands. The cross has passed sentence on man in the flesh, circumcised or not.
- Remember, and stop boasting — Israel fell through pride in being blessed. The greater the blessing, the more the Gentile must recall the desolate state grace lifted him from.
that ye were at that time without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world
After describing what God has done for believers, Paul turns them round to look back at what they once were. It lists five things the Gentile world lacked, and asks why a letter so full of blessing dwells on an empty past.
The apostle does not start with the list. He starts with a command to remember it.
Our souls rejoice not only in the intrinsic blessedness of these various aspects of our salvation, but also in contrasting them with the condition in which our lack of them once left us. And God would have us view matters in this way as we learn to estimate His grace towards us, as we read: "remember that you were at that time… having no hope and without God in the world." The more clearly we see all this, the higher the view of His grace we will rejoice in.
The list opens with Christ Himself. Where older translations read "without Christ," the ESV has "separated from Christ."
But then we were "without Christ." Without, that is, the only One who could bring in any way of salvation from our lost condition.
There is also a narrower sense. It turns on the place God gave Israel among the nations.
Such was their condition as Gentiles, in contrast with that of Israel. The beginning of the chapter shows that the Jews were by nature children of wrath just as much as the Gentiles. Yet as a people on the earth, chosen in God's sovereignty, they had advantages the Gentiles had no title or claim to. So they — the Gentiles — were without Christ; the Messiah as such was never promised to them.
"Commonwealth" describes a settled national order — citizenship, laws, worship — and Israel had one. The Gentiles stood outside the whole arrangement.
In God's ways on earth the Jew enjoyed a national place of outward privilege, and the Gentiles were complete strangers to it. Israel formed an earthly commonwealth, with promises and hopes for this world, and stood in outward relationship with God. God's ordinances regulated their religious worship, their political organisation and their social relations. Everything from the highest act of worship to the smallest detail of life came under them… It was not that the Jews were any better than the Gentiles, for in the sight of God the great mass of the Jews were as bad as the Gentiles, and some even worse.
Israel had promises to rest on. The nations had none, and one writer notes what people put in that empty space.
We have a right to nothing. We have not the smallest claim on God. God never gave us the settled place He gave Israel through the promises… The Gentiles had no hope. They were not expecting God to step in and rescue them on the earth. They might dream what people still dream — that man can become perfect on the earth.
The Greek word here is the one behind our word "atheist," and it did not mean then what it means now.
The Greek word is ἄθεος (atheos), which literally means "without God," and Ephesians 2:12 translates it that way. It describes Gentiles as they are by nature. It was true of the whole pagan world in their ignorance of God. It does not carry the sense the word has today: someone who chooses to refuse to acknowledge God's existence.
It was never a shortage of religion. It was a shortage of God, and the same holds today.
Lastly they were "without God in the world." Idols they had without number, and the modern world has them too, though in a different form. God was, and is, unknown.
The list does not stand alone. Verse 13 sets a second description against it, phrase for phrase.
These are very solemn words. "Having no hope, and without God in the world" is how the Spirit of God describes the condition and position of Gentiles in the flesh, dead in trespasses and sins. The contrast is just as striking: "In Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." On one side it is "no hope" and "without God". On the other side it is "in Christ Jesus" — "brought near by the blood of Christ."
- Remember — The verse commands a backward look. Grace looks as large as the emptiness it filled.
- Without Christ — The root loss. The Messiah was never promised to the nations, and He was the only One who could bring any way of salvation.
- Without privilege — Israel had a commonwealth, promises and ordinances for all of life. The Gentiles had no claim on any of it.
- Without hope — With no promises, there was nothing to expect from God. Into that empty space comes the dream that man can become perfect on the earth.
- But now — Verse 13 answers every "without": Christ's blood brings the far off near.