...the circumcision performed with hands in the flesh,) Were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise ; having no hope, 13 and without God in the world. But now through Christ Jesus, . ye who were formerly far off" are...

...¿yкEvrptír0/7o-ovrat. The argument is, if God has had mercy on Gentiles, who in time past were " aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the Covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world" (Eph. ii. 12), à fortiori will He have mercy on the people whom He has...

...in twain," — the " middle wall of partition " has been broken down, and we Gentiles, long " aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise," are invited to come " nigh to God by the blood of Jesus;" and " repentance and remission of sins" are...

...church, and keep others out, * Sermons. Doctrine of the two Sacraments. when they are alike ' aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world? '* But the apostle has anticipated and precluded such an evasion. In...

...out from among them. " The strangers shall submit themselves unto "me;" the nations who were " aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise," either cordially submitted to the sceptre of Christ, or at least dissembled their hostility, and yielded...

...wrong. The very mildest construction which it can bear, amounts to a confession of their being " aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise" — of their anxiety to decline something which the service of God imposes, or of retaining something...

...In his Epistle to the Ephesians, for example, Paul speaks of the Gentiles as being formerly " aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise ;" but in virtue of faith in Christ, incorporated into the church, " built on the foundation of the...

...the circumstances of the baptism or conversion of the aliens ? A. The Gentiles were, indeed, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise. But admission to the new dispensation was proposed to Jews and Gentiles on the same premises, because...

...occupied by a strange people ; a people strange not only in the sense of " foreigners," but as " aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise," and who, though not without a kind of hope — the false hope of a false religion — are " without...

...Christ now to be proclaimed to the Gentiles. For the first time, they that had been hitherto aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, were to be invited to the Saviour of lost men. " The mystery," as it is often called, or hitherto....