If someone wrote about our life, it would have to include years of sadness, in which we wandered without hope and without God in the world, oblivious to the covenants of the promise of God that he granted to his people, because we all have in our biography sad chapters. The Apostle Paul reminds us in his letter to the Ephesians:
On many occasions God exhorts us to "remember" our past. It is a healthy exercise to remember where we came from, for example, God reminded David in all his glory, where he had found him but David forgot it and had to reap the consequences, but neither you nor I forget him.
The expression "Gentiles of the flesh" means that you are born separated from God, not a single drop of justice has arrived genetically through DNA; only when we receive Christ, "by faith." You are born "without Christ" because "the inclination of the flesh is contrary to God." It is true that Christ died for us, and he paid for our sins, but we did not know it. For those we lived apart, immersed in ignorance, we were strangers to the house of God because we did not know that we belong to him, by virtue of the sacrifice that Christ made with us.
Our situation was like that of a very hungry individual, who walks in front of a house full of food in abundance, without knowing that he has been invited to enter. Being oblivious to the covenants of the promises, means that we live on top of a gold mine and we know nothing of what is under our feet. The promise of the covenant is the promise that God made to Abraham for our sake; It has always been in the Bible, but for us it had been a sealed book and we never knew anything about the wonderful good news it contains.
For this reason we were hopeless and we started to experience all the pleasures and vices that fill the world, this is what people do when they find themselves without hope. Not that they are more evil than others, the basic problem is that they have no hope, and when one is hopeless, then there is nothing else to do, but to live life like the ancient pagans of Rome, who said: Let's eat and drink , that tomorrow we will die. In this desperate situation, the son of God made an appearance. The savior came with the mission to save us forever. The Bible says:
We were called to approach Christ, he always waits with open arms.
God bless you greatly.
Good reflection @juner, we must never forget where God took us, before we knew him we were children of anger by nature, but God in his mercy by grace has called us to live a life full of fullness and humility.
Thank you for your comment sc-v , certainly to know God and to believe him, new life changes completely, and measure of our communion with our lives is still transformed. God bless you greatly.