Outwardly, it may not seem great that they lacked circumcision, had not been joined to the people of God, and did not know the order of its life. Yet the fearful thing was what was joined to this. "Do not think," he says, "that there is any decisive importance in the fact that you did not receive circumcision and remain in uncircumcision. This is not the fearful thing. Rather, it is this: to be without Christ, to be alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, for the first thing does not touch life, to be outside the covenant of promise, to have no hope, and to be godless in the world, precisely as the Gentiles were. This is fearful. Earlier the Apostle spoke of heavenly things, that having been dead, they were made alive together with Christ. Now he speaks of earthly things, since the Jews valued them highly" (Saint Chrysostom).
But were not the Jews also formerly without Christ? They were without Christ only because He had not yet come. Yet He was promised to them so certainly, and they awaited Him so certainly, that it was as though they already possessed Him in reality. The whole structure of faith under the Law was permeated with Christ. He was the body, and the Law was the shadow (Col. 2:17). Therefore the Jews possessed Christ in a hidden manner.
This hiddenness was clarified more and more by the prophets. Thus faith in the coming Christ the Lord formed the spirit of the Jewish people's piety. Christ was everything for them. From Him alone they expected every better thing. The Gentiles did not possess this advantage. They only knew that all was wrong with them. Yet they did not know how, or by whom, it would be set right, though some guessed at it through a kind of insight.
For this reason Christ appeared among the Jews. From them came the first Church, and through them the Gospel was preached. In this lies the strength, advantage, and significance of the Jews for all mankind.
"Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel." "Commonwealth" is politeia, the order of life instituted by God Himself. Commandments were given to Israel, showing how to please God and how to cleanse oneself when the commandments had been broken and God had been angered. Everything bore the manifest seal of God's will. Therefore those who lived in this way could not fail to be sure that they belonged to God and stood under His protection and good pleasure.
The order of Israel's commonwealth was significant precisely because it showed that Israel was the kingdom of God, in which God is king. He reigned tangibly among them. He revealed wondrous signs and preserved this people for the great purpose of saving the human race in Christ Jesus.
The Gentiles were alienated, apellotriomenoi, from this commonwealth. This expression hints that they too were originally destined to belong to it. The Gentiles also belonged to the same tree of mankind, as it was ordered by God after the fall and after the flood. They too received the first promises and the commandments of Noah, but later they broke away.
Like a foolish son, they fled from the father's house with the small inheritance they had seized. God left them to walk in their self-willed ways. They were alienated, because they alienated themselves. Who was at fault? The Apostle lets us understand this: now God forgives your self-will and brings you back to Himself.
"Strangers from the covenants of promise." In her song the Theotokos magnifies God because He at last remembered His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed (Lk 1:54-55). These mercies were the promises, confirmed by particular covenants. There were covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with the whole people at Sinai, and with the prophet David. All of them are covenants of promise.
God required faithfulness from the people, and He Himself promised them constant protection, defense, and preservation. Yet the essence of the promises was the promise of the Messiah's coming, or of His manifestation among them. For His sake the promise of defense and protection was also given and actually manifested. Otherwise the Messiah Himself could not have appeared among them.
That this is exactly so is clear from what happened as soon as the Lord came and the formation of the new Israel began. The old Israel was scattered. Its preservation ceased, since it was no longer needed. It stopped being a distinct people and wanders through the world, bearing witness to the truth by its very resistance to the truth.
The Gentiles were alienated from the commonwealth, having carried away with them the first promises and the commandments of Noah. But they were strangers to the promises. Here they had no share at all, for these were given apart from them. Yet at the end hints were given about them too, that they also would come to the mountain of God and the house of God, above the mountains, and would beseech that they too be taught the law of the living God.
But the report of this did not reach them. It was spoken for the spiritual revival of that same Israel, to whom the chief promise had been given.
"Having no hope." Since they did not share in the promises, they naturally could not nourish the hope awakened by the promises. Yet this is not what is being discussed. The Apostle does not mean the hope possessed by the Israelites because of the promise of the Messiah, coming in the name of the Lord. He means hope in general, by which a person feels secure according to the meaning of his relation to God, from whom all things come.
In Greek this word stands without the article, showing that no particular hope is meant here, but every kind of hope. Life without hope is a joyless life. The Gentiles were in a hopeless condition. Feeling made this known to them through a heaviness of heart, which tormented the whole pagan world.
In some, this undefined heaviness became definite. One man, for example, would undertake to attain knowledge of the truth. He would struggle and struggle, then let his hands fall, because truth did not show its face, and no road to it could be seen beneath his feet. Another would undertake to correct his morals. He too would struggle and struggle, then give up, because everything fell from his hands, and there was no success, nor any prospect of it. So it was in all the rest.
Such people could know definitely that they were in some hopeless condition. Others carried this in an undefined feeling, expressed in a universal heaviness. They did not know God definitely. They did not know the laws of His providence. They did not know how to please Him, nor how to be cleansed before Him from sins.
And there was death, a terrible event for those who vaguely imagined whether they would live after death and, if they would, what would become of them there. Everywhere there was uncertainty and ignorance. The Gentiles resembled a man sunk in a bog that is ready to swallow him.
Yet one cannot live without hope. Whoever loses all hope usually deprives himself of life. How, then, did the Gentiles remain alive? They fashioned hopes for themselves, though these were illusory and deceptive. Is this not what the Apostle means, that the Gentiles had no true hope, awaiting the reception of true and lasting good? This is likely, because he also calls them godless for not knowing the true God, but serving those who are not gods by nature.
"And godless in the world." "Although the Gentiles worshiped gods, they were nevertheless godless, because the idols before which they bowed mean nothing" (Saint Chrysostom). Man cannot be without God. Having lost knowledge of the true God, the Gentiles invented gods for themselves and found rest in honoring them. Yet in reality they served a fantasy, not God. They did not know the true and living God and were outside communion with Him.
However many other gods one may invent, all this is empty. By this alone the glory of the incorruptible God was exchanged, and not without guilt or accountability. They were godless, not because they had been condemned to godlessness, but because they placed themselves in such a condition.
Hopelessness is closely joined by the Apostle to godlessness. The latter is the source of the former. In an evil world one urgently needs a firm hope in the living, loving, and mighty God. It must stand strongly and be established on unshakable foundations. Outside communion with such a true God, where will hope find support? Therefore those who are strangers to the true God naturally sink into hopelessness.
By adding the words "in the world," did the Apostle intend to say, "in the world, which loudly proclaims the true God"? "For His invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead" (Rom 1:20). Thus there will be here a word of rebuke. It is not out of place even in our own time, for those who live in the world, see the world, even investigate it, and yet do not wish to know the true God.
THEOSIS