Ephesians 2:12

Paul listed five privileges Gentile believers did not enjoy that Jewish believers did enjoy before the Cross. First, Gentile believers were separate from Christ, Messiah. They had no corporate national hope centered in a Messiah, as the Jews did. Second, God excluded them as a people from citizenship in Israel. Individual Gentiles could become members of the nation of Israel, but as a whole the Gentiles had no part in what God planned to do in and through Israel. The Gentiles were aliens from Israel in this sense. Third, they had no direct part in the promises of God to Israel contained in the biblical covenants (Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic). Morris, an amillennialist, believed the singular "promise" refers to "God’s promise to send his Messiah." [Note: Morris, p. 62.] Probably the singular "promise" simply stresses the promise element that is foundational to all the biblical covenants. Fourth, as a people the Gentiles had no corporate future promised by God to which they could look and in which they could hope, as Israel did. Fifth, they were separate from God. In contrast, God had reached out to Israel and drawn her to Himself.

"The Jew had an immense contempt for the Gentile. The Gentiles, said the Jews, were created by God to be fuel for the fires of hell. God, they said, loves only Israel of all the nations that he had made. The best of the serpents crush, they said, the best of the Gentiles kill. It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile mother in her hour of sorest need, for that would simply be to bring another Gentile into the world. Until Christ came, the Gentiles were an object of contempt to the Jews. The barrier between them was absolute. If a Jewish boy married a Gentile girl, or if a Jewish girl married a Gentile boy, the funeral of that Jewish boy or girl was carried out. Such contact with a Gentile was the equivalent of death." [Note: Barclay, p. 125. Cf. Jonah.]