11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. (Ephesians 2:11-12)
In today's text, the Apostle commands us to remember. Throughout the scriptures God commands us to remember because we forget so quickly. The fourth of the ten commandments comes with the idea to remember what God did when He created the heavens and the world.
In our text today, we are reminded to remember what God did when He recreated us. God tells us to remember from where we came. When we lose sight of what we were before we were rescued by God, we have a tendency to become arrogant and thinking more of ourselves than we should. F. F. Bruce once said "nothing is so apt to promote gratitude as a retrospective glance fixed on the whole of the pit from whence we have been dug."
In order to drive his point home, the Apostle Paul uses the Jews as an example. The Jews were known to call the Gentiles, which the Ephesians were, "uncircumcised.'' They did this in a derogatory way. This was the Jews way of marginalizing the Gentiles. On the other hand, the Jews believed that "circumcision" made them special people, belonging to God in a unique sense. Subtly, Paul is reminding the Gentiles of our ultimate enemy, the flesh.
In v.12, the Apostle hones in on what we must remember: we must remember that "we were separated from Christ." "We were alienated from God." An alien is a stranger, a foreigner living in the midst of a country, who does not have the rights of citizenship. A commonwealth is a nation or a kingdom.
In addition, we were "foreigners to the covenants of promise." These covenants were the promises, the agreements God had made with Abraham and Jacob and Moses and David and others in the Old Testament. Based on God's performance regarding His covenants, every Israelite knew that, no matter how bad things got, one day God was going to send a Messiah. Even though the nation forgot God.
The next thing the Apostle Paul reminds us of is our condition before we were born again: "without hope and without God in the world." Without hope there was no sense of purpose in life. Hope, on the other hand, is confidence based on credible promises from someone who can perform them.
"HOPE CANNOT EXIST
IN A VACUUM
WHERE FACTS ARE IGNORED."
