mind and will. Before salvation, while we were under the domination of the flesh and the

god of this age, good works, as God sees them, were impossible.

Verse 11 starts another section and looks back into the past once more, but from a

different angle. Verses 2-10 show our basic condition as unsaved sinners. Verses 11 and

12 give our dispensational disability of being Gentiles and therefore not belonging to the

chosen race of Israel. "Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the

flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh

made by hands;  that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the

commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope,

and without God in the world." To better appreciate this great disability `in the flesh', let

us see what Scripture teaches concerning Israel, the nation specially chosen by God and

redeemed by type and shadow and in close covenant relation to Him. In Rom. 9: 3-5

Paul states: "For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my

kinsmen according to the flesh; who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and

the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the

promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh, Christ came, Who

is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen". No wonder Psa. 147: 19, 20 reads: "He

showeth . . . . . His statutes and His judgments unto Israel. He hath not dealt so with any

nation: and as for His judgments, they have not known them. Praise ye the Lord".

It should be quite obvious that in the human sphere, that is "in the flesh", God's

dealings and the blessings He showered upon the Jew were unique. No Gentile, however

civilized and cultured, could ever hope to attain to such a position of Divine favour by his

own efforts. Israel had all the earthly blessings; they were a nation near to the Lord, as

Moses described it, and had the honour of being custodians of His written revelation, "the

oracles of God" (Rom. 3: 1, 2). They were in close covenant ties with God and had the

unique position of being His servants and His witnesses to a darkened Gentile world. To

cap it all, in His humanity Christ came primarily to them (Matt. 15: 24). Israel alone had

the expectancy of a Messiah (Christ).

To all this the Gentile was a `stranger' and an `alien'. Great Gentile civilizations

arose and passed away, making their mark on human history, but not one of them could

compare in Divine privilege with the elect nation of Israel. In this section of Ephesians, it

is a question of distance and nearness to God. The favoured nation of Israel were placed

near by God Himself, whereas anyone being born a Gentile was as far off from God as it

is possible to imagine, and his only hope of canceling this out was to become a proselyte

and forsake his Gentile status. When one adds on top of all this his condition as a

helpless sinner under the dominion of Satan and death, the picture of hopelessness is

As we have before seen, unless God steps in there could be no possibility of

deliverance, but just as He did so in verse 4, so He does again in verse 13: "But now in

Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ". It is

the Lord's redemptive work on the Cross that can alone cancel this appalling state of the