Belonging
Just yesterday when I was volunteering at the local soup kitchen, one of my friends said when she started working there over a year ago, she felt like she was an outsider. Not part of the team.
She had replaced a wonderful young man who wasn’t a good fit for his job. Beloved by all the clients, but he absorbed too much of their pain and made it his own. I think there is a word for that but I’m not well-versed in such things.
This lovely lady who has become my friend shared with me yesterday that she had felt this almost rejection because she appeared to have taken the place of someone everyone loved. “Why are you here?” kinds of questions.
Remembering what that was like, she compared it to how she feels now. As she hugged me good bye till next week, she commented how much she appreciates being “part of the gang.” Everyone wants that.
Not everyone has it.
Already Called to Remember
If you recall in Bites 28 and 29, Paul has already called his audience to remember some things about who they once were. He doesn’t use this Greek word behind the English word remember, but he describes them in the past tense:
- They were dead in sin.
- They were not alive with Christ.
- They were not saved.
- They were unforgiven.
- They were lost.
- They were children characterized by wrath
- They used to follow the prince of the power of the air, other spirits, and their own passions
Paul doesn’t want the recipients of his letter to remain in the past, but he does call them to glance back.
Remember
Let’s make sure we know what our context is and read the verses that contain this call.
Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
Ephesians 2:11-12 (ESV)
Surprise!
Well now, would you look at that! As I’m studying and bringing you fellow students of the Word along, I see now this word remember is repeated in the ESV, but not in the NET and it is not repeated in the original language (Greek).
Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh—who are called “uncircumcision” by the so-called “circumcision” that is performed on the body by human hands—that you were at that time without the Messiah, alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
Ephesians 2:11-12 (NET)
The NET Bible translators did not provide an additional remember in the text. For clarity, the ESV translators supplied the word after Paul has this parenthetical comment about these two groups, the uncircumcision and the circumcision. In reality, it is not a repeated word within the passage.
Within the scope of Ephesians and within the scope of all of Paul’s writing, this is a concept he touches on with regularity, as we’ve observed before. So I think we will continue to explore what Paul commands that his audience remember. Though the precise word is not repeated, as I understand scripture, the concept is.
Remember What?
As I examine the text more closely, it looks like the construction of the Greek isn’t that there is a list of things to remember as much as there is one thing to remember and it is defined a number of ways.
Side Note
Psst. Lean over here a second. Did you know that the original Greek documents and our subsequent Greek manuscripts don’t have English conveniences like punctuation or capitals to indicate what is going on in the sentences?
It’s a Grammar Nazi Nightmare.
Consequently, English translators do what they can to help us non-Greek readers to understand what is happening grammatically by including punctuation and capitalization in keeping with English rules.
As I was sentence diagramming, I didn’t notice the punctuation because the program I use for it inserts the text to diagram without any punctuation or capitalization. It has spaces, but otherwise it is just a block of text.
What does this mean? That the line up of our original sentence diagram looks like it isn’t accurate as far as the grammar Paul used. Which is fine because we remember our objective in diagramming is to be engaged with the text.
And we have been. Yay us!
How should it be lined up? I think this is closer for Ephesians 2:12:
remember that
you were at that time
separated from Christ
alienated from the commonwealth of Israel
and strangers to the covenants of promise
having no hope
and without God in the world
Can you see that the thing the Gentiles in Asia were supposed to remember here is that they were separated from Christ?
This is another example of how we are studying this bite-by-bite together. Bible Study Bites is not a professionally scripted devotional but instead is a boots-on-the-ground, real live how-does-someone-actually-study.
Ok, you can go back over there. Side note completed.
Remember What?
In the churches across Asia, Paul declares in Ephesians 2:11-12 that the recipients were all formerly separated from Christ. Conveniently, Paul proceeds to define for his audience what separation is.
Considering our sentence diagramming revision, here is my new list that describes what being separated from Christ looks like.
Separated from Christ
- Alienated from commonwealth of Israel (Ephesians 2:12)
- Strangers to covenants of promise
- Without hope
- Without God in the world
What were the recipients commanded to remember? That they did not formerly belong. Words that described them were foreign, alien, apart, stranger. Defining them was the fact that they had no people group, they had no god to whom they belonged, they had no hope.
The Jewish People as a Group
Have you ever thought about how the Jewish people are a people and have been a distinct people for generations even when they had no land? What kept them as a unit was their God, their laws, their holy days, and their customs. Maintaining these meant they belonged to each other and to God.
No matter what happened, they were still part of the commonwealth of Israel, they claimed the covenants of promise that were promised to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they had outward signs of belonging in the sign of circumcision.
They had identity when other people groups scattered and became part of the cultures they were scattered among.
Who Were the Gentiles in Ephesians 2:11-22?
Making distinction between one group and another group in our day and culture is often considered hate speech. Dividing and pointing out weakness seems harsh. What picture is Paul painting with these vividly unwelcoming descriptors?
In the Jewish mind, the Gentiles were nobodies, dogs. And not like in our Western mind where dogs are often “fur-babies.”
They were the opposite of belonging, being joined with others, having camaraderie, being native, being familiar. Describing these folks, Paul used separation, alienation, being a stranger.
How does Paul describe them now? All the way back in Ephesians 1:1, he calls the recipients saints. (If you don’t remember, you can read a little about it in Bite 6.)
For a brief glance back here in Ephesians 2:11-12, Paul commands the recipients to remember that they used to be the opposite of a saint.
Let’s add to the list that we began in Bites 28 and 29. In our current passage Paul defines Gentiles as people who don’t belong. I like to call them…
Pre-believers
- They were dead in sin.
- They were not alive with Christ.
- They were not saved.
- They were unforgiven.
- They were lost.
- They were children characterized by wrath
- They used to follow the prince of the power of the air, other spirits, and their own passions
- They were called the uncircumcision (Ephesians 2:11)
- They were separated from Christ (Ephesians 2:12)
- They were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel (Ephesians 2:12)
- They were strangers to the covenants of promise (Ephesians 2:12)
- They had no hope (Ephesians 2:12)
- They were without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12)
Reflection
Deciding to remain in our passage and not explore elsewhere in scripture was by design. With all the negativity Paul uses to identify these pre-believers in the past, we didn’t need to find additional passages to support what we could already see here.
These folks were held in derision by those who thought they were “in.” Thinking they already had a relationship with God, it was justified to use a term like uncircumcised (the term is defined as “foreskins”, here the abstract term for the concrete people) for those outside their religion.
If you consider it, when a whole object (a people group) is identified by one component (a foreskin), what is that called? A synecdoche. You can read a little about that here in Basics 8.
Knowing that the one thing that defined the people was that they had a foreskin–does that help us get into the sandals of the recipients of the letter?
Combine that moniker with the descriptors like separated, alienated, strangers, no hope… Sounds like some bullying that goes on today, doesn’t it?
Or like a sweet lady at a local soup kitchen who wanted to be “part of the gang.” It’s what everyone wants, to belong.
But Paul once again does not dwell on this. He commands them to remember this was their state, and follows it up with a but. Our Bite for today is almost done, but you can look at it there on your observation worksheet. Ephesians 2:13 makes sure there is also the assurance that the current reality is not the same as the former.
Wrap Up
Our Bible Study Bite for today is to understand that when we study scripture verse-by-verse in this way, the verses we are currently exploring do not stand in isolation. Having used words earlier in the letter, Paul has had a pattern of this is what you were, this is what you are.
We want to keep incorporating what we’ve learned before into what we are currently learning. Remembering that these epistles were not simply read 10 verses at a time and then picked apart, they were read aloud in one session in the congregation. That was the “sermon.”
The authorial intent was for the content of the letter to be ingested as one unit. As we dig in and attempt to determine Paul’s meaning, we must keep bringing what patterns of meaning we’ve uncovered forward with us in our study.
Today we got to practice this because Paul has explained what the previous identity of the recipients was and we got to bring that list to our study and add to it.
Verses in scripture do not stand in isolation but are part of a cohesive unit and as much as possible, we must remember to consider them as the author intended.
