Exclusion From Privilege
EXCLUSION FROM PRIVILEGE
EPHESIANS 2:11-12
Paul’s readers were Gentiles, and the Jews thought they were better than the Gentiles.
Gentiles in the ancient world faced two challenges: first, their moral degradation invited the wrath of God (2:1-3; 5:6; remember, Paul is writing to Gentile believers), and secondly, their exclusion from the privileges that God gave to Israel kept them from a direct encounter with God, a situation Paul points out in 2:11-12.
Resuming the train of thought with which he had begun the chapter, Paul calls his Gentile readers to reflect on the contrast between their present experience in the church and their recent past. A deep hostility had separated them from the people of the synagogue—the Jews. Results of birth and training caused mutual disparagement. Priding themselves on the outward sign of the covenant, which declared them to be the people of God, the Jews had expressed their contempt for Gentiles by calling them “the uncircumcision” (2:11). This superficial and unspiritual way of regarding people was an indication that circumcision could be little more than a mark made by human hands, a work of the flesh.
Although the prejudice of the Jews against the Gentiles was not commendable, the fact was that before their experience of God’s grace, Gentiles were without Christ, in whom God’s grace found its most pointed expression (2:12).
As a consequence of their separation from God, the Gentiles were like people living outside the gates of a city-state. Not only did they lack the civic rights of the free citizen, they were not even resident foreigners within the city. Paul describes the former condition of his readers as excluded from citizenship and foreigners to God’s covenants of promise. They possessed no hope of engaging the attention of the city’s sovereign to give permission for them to enter the city. In fact, they did not even possess any real knowledge of him.
The picture Paul paints is one of utter abandonment to life in the world without the meaning that only a knowledge of God can supply.