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who hath raised Him from the dead, and you, being dead to your sins and the
uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him. . . . and have put
on the NEW MAN. . . . where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor
uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all."
AT THAT TIME YE WERE WITHOUT CHRIST.--We can realize that to be of the
uncircumcision involved one in hopeless gloom and distance, but when we add the above
words the gloom becomes Egyptian darkness. To Israel a Messiah had been promised,
the hope of His appearing burned like a star in the firmament, even though the conception
of what the Messiah should be and what He should do fell far below the scriptural
description. Nevertheless, nationally, and in a higher sense individually, the Messiah was
of Israel and for Israel, "of whom concerning the flesh Christ came" (Rom. 9: 5). Like
circumcision, this blessing was related to the flesh.
The apostle, before the revelation of the mystery, stepped beyond this limitation:--
"Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no
more, therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature" (II Cor. 5: 16, 17).
As in Eph. 2:, so here, the new creation, as the new man, is lifted beyond the "flesh"
and is entirely in the "Spirit.
ALIENS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF ISRAEL, AND STRANGERS
FROM THE COVENANTS OF PROMISE.--Little comment is necessary. The
Syrophoenician woman learned this dispensational fact (Matt. 15:). Whatever mercies fell
to the Gentiles down the age were crumbs from the master's table. In the eyes of the
circumcision Gentiles were "dogs".
The word "commonwealth" and the pride and privilege it conveyed is well expressed
in its one other occurrence: "the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this
FREEDOM". Israel had such a freedom, they had citizen's rights, from all of which the
Gentiles were "strangers". Israel could look back to the "fathers" to whom were made
the "covenants of promise"; the Gentiles could look back to no "fathers" to whom God
had made special and distinguishing covenants. While God was the Lord of Hosts, and
the Most High God, the possessor of heaven and earth, He was in a special sense the God
of Israel, and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So the passage goes on to say that if
the Gentiles were strangers from the covenant of promise, then they had.
NO HOPE AND WERE WITHOUT GOD.--This passage is speaking of
dispensational disability, not moral depravity. The word atheoi, "without a God", was
used by the pagans of Rome to describe the Christians. They did not charge the believers
with "ungodliness" by using this term, but with having a faith and a worship which had
no visible God, and which caused them to deny "the gods". With a Pantheon full of
"gods" and altars dedicated to the unknown god; with Athens, to quote an ancient writer,
"so full of idols that it was easier to find a god than a man", is it not a tragedy that these
nations were nevertheless atheoi, "without God".