In the foregoing message we saw the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity in Ephesians chapter one. Ephesians 1 reveals that God selected us and predestinated us with a view to dispense Himself into us as life and life supply by sonship, that is, by life-dispensing, and by the sealing of the Spirit. Sealing of the Spirit indicates not only dispensing, but also saturating. God wants to saturate us with His life-dispensing so that we may be an organism, the Body of Christ, as the enlargement, the fullness, of the One who fills all in all.
Chapter two of Ephesians tells us that the chosen ones of God became fallen. Before God began to dispense Himself into His chosen ones, we became fallen not only into sin, but also into death (v. 1). Within the realm of death in offenses and sins we walked first according to the age of this world, that is, according to the current, the tide, of the world (v. 2). It is not difficult to understand what is the current, the tide, of the age. The age of the world simply means the modern style of the world. As fallen people in the sphere of death we walked according to the trend of this age. Second, we walked according to the spirit who operates in the sons of disobedience (v. 2). This is not just one demon, nor one fallen angel, but an aggregate of the evil spiritual power. This is the spirit in the air who operates within unbelievers. Such an aggregate of the evil spiritual power is both above them and within them. Therefore, unbelievers walk in death according to the age of the world and according to the spiritual power in the air and within them.
Furthermore, fallen people have the lusts of the flesh, which cooperate with the world and with the spirit in the air (2:3a). This is the condition of fallen mankind.
Before God began to infuse Himself into man, man became fallen and became the flesh, walking according to the age of the world and according to Satan, the power in the air and the evil one operating in fallen mankind by the lusts of the flesh.
Because we were dead in offenses and sins, because we walked according to the age of this world and according to the ruler of the authority of the air, and because we behaved ourselves in the lusts of the flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the thoughts, we were by nature the children of wrath (2:3b).
Because the descendants of Adam had become fallen, God came in to call out Abraham with all his descendants to form the commonwealth of Israel (Gen. 12). In God’s creation mankind had certain rights, but these were lost by man’s fall. Therefore, God called out a people, Israel, and gave them rights as a commonwealth. A commonwealth denotes a people with certain civil rights. When God called out Israel, He recovered the lost rights and made Israel a commonwealth with the proper rights to enjoy God’s blessing. For that commonwealth God gave them certain promises: that God would rule over them, that God would bless them, and that God would be their enjoyment. These promises were put into a legal form and became a covenant to the people of Israel. Thus, the entire Old Testament was a covenant with promises that had been put into a legal form. Such a commonwealth excluded the Gentiles.
When God called Israel to be His commonwealth to receive all the promises and to enjoy all the rights, He told them to circumcise themselves (Gen. 17:10-14). Because the people God called out were part of the fallen human race, walking in the flesh according to the age of the world, according to the spiritual evil power in the air and within them, and walking by the lusts of their flesh, they had to cut off their flesh. This cutting off of the flesh was signified by circumcision. Circumcision then became an ordinance that separated the Jews from the Gentiles. The Jews were called the circumcision, and the Gentiles were called the uncircumcision. The circumcision, or the circumcised people, were accepted by God to enjoy the rights of the commonwealth of God’s people and to receive all the blessings. But the uncircumcised Gentiles were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenant. Hence, they were without God in the world and had no hope (Eph. 2:12).
Up to this point Christ was altogether related to the commonwealth of Israel. God was the God of the commonwealth of Israel, and all the blessings were within God’s covenant. As long as you were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, you were alienated from God’s commonwealth, from Christ, from God’s covenant, from God’s blessing, from any hope, and even from God Himself. You were in the world, not in the commonwealth of Israel. This is the condition of fallen mankind, and this was our condition before we were saved.