Ephesians Chapter 2:11-22 Outline: I.
Remember what you once were: 2:11-12
II.
Access to God only through Christ: 2:13-18
III.
No longer strangers and aliens: 2:19-22
“Alienation is a popular word in contemporary society. There are many people, especially young people in the so-called developed world, who are disillusioned with ‘the system’, critical of ‘the technocracy’ and hostile to ‘the establishment’, who describe themselves as ‘alienated’. Some work for reform, others plot revolution, others drop out. But long before Feuerbach and Marx the Bible spoke of human alienation. It describes two other and even more radical alienations than the economic and the political. One is alienation from God our Creator, and the other alienation from one another. Nothing is more dehumanizing than this breakdown of fundamental human relationships. It is then that we become strangers in a world in which we should feel at home, and aliens instead of citizens” (Stott pp. 89-90). Paul had mentioned earlier that we were dead in sin (2:1-3), now Paul gets very specific and points out the hopeless condition that Gentiles are in apart from Christ. Ephesians 2:11 “Wherefore remember, that once ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called circumcision, in the flesh, made by hands” “Wherefore remember”: “Paul was asking them to apply the truths he had presented (2:1-10) to their own personal circumstances. It is good 1