and *you*, being dead in your offences and sins --
The letter has just described the power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him above everything. Now that same power turns toward the reader. The first thing it says about him is that he was dead. Everything that follows in the chapter rests on that one word.
The word does not mean inactive. The very next verse describes these same people walking.
Ephesians 2:1 describes our state as "dead in trespasses and sins." Remarkably, the next verse goes on to speak of walking in those trespasses and sins. That is because the death spoken of here is death toward God. Those who are dead Godward are very much alive to "the course of this world," and to "the prince of the power of the air," who works in the "children of disobedience." Being dead toward God fits perfectly well with being alive toward the world and the devil. In fact the one springs out of the other… Man is not right. He does not understand that he is not right. He has no desire after God, who is right. In one word, he is dead toward God.
Chapter 2 does not start a new subject. It carries on what chapter 1 said about God's power.
So chapter 2 simply opens with, "And you, who were dead in trespasses and sins." God's power has worked "in Christ … and you." It worked in Christ when He was dead because of our trespasses and sins. It worked in us when we were dead in our own trespasses and sins. His life-giving power in us matches that supreme display which took place in regard to Christ.
One writer sets this letter beside Romans. The two start from different views of the sinner.
In two ways the starting point of Ephesians is completely different from Romans. The starting point in Romans is man's responsibility: he is guilty, all the world is guilty. There are proofs of sin in both Jew and Gentile; Romans looks at man as alive in sins. In Ephesians he is dead in them; a different thought altogether. He is alive in sin in Romans. For that very reason he is dead toward God — not a movement in his heart toward God. After a man is dead he neither speaks, nor moves, nor feels.
This diagnosis also rules out a popular hope about human nature.
See how serious spiritual death is. Many speak without knowing of a divine spark in every man that only needs fanning into a flame. But the Bible calls the sinner "DEAD in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1), and speaks of "being alienated from the life of God" (Eph. 4:18). It presses the need of the new birth even on a religious man like Nicodemus… A man can no more produce his second and spiritual birth than his first and natural birth. No man can give himself life. The power of producing life belongs to God alone.
Nicodemus was a respected religious teacher, and Jesus told him he must be born again.
The verdict is not reserved for the obviously wicked. It covers the person everyone admires.
As dead in sins, we are totally away from God. Do we not know it, dear friends? Take the most respectable, decent man in the world — the things of Christ have no interest for him. He is dead toward God. He may be intelligent, honest and so on, but you never find Christ in his heart. It was just the same with ourselves. It is not a question of hardened criminals; we were dead.
Because the condition is death, the answer cannot come from inside us.
Such were we, whether Jew or Gentile. At one and the same moment we were dead in trespasses and sins and yet active in every kind of evil. Very much alive to everything wrong, yet wholly dead to God. Being dead toward God, we had no point of recovery in ourselves: our only hope lay in Him. So we come to the great words that open verse 4, "But God —"
And what God gives goes past the bare need.
Being "dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1), nothing short of being made alive would meet our case. Being made alive was therefore a necessity. But there was no necessity that we should be made alive together with Christ. That is the fruit of God's own purposes in grace.
- Dead — Godward. The death is toward God, not toward sin. A man in this state can be busy, clever and honest, yet make no move toward God.
- Dead — universally. The word covers Jew and Gentile, the criminal and the most decent man alive. No one is merely weak.
- Dead — helplessly. There is no spark to fan; no one can produce his own new birth any more than his first birth.
- Dead — then made alive. Because the case is death, the remedy is life given from outside, by the same power that raised Christ.
- Dead — but God. Verse 1 prepares the way for verse 4; the darker the state, the bigger those two words become.
in which ye once walked according to the age of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience
The apostle has just said his readers were dead in trespasses and sins . Now he describes how those dead people spent their days. In one sentence he names a world with a settled direction, an unseen ruler behind the air, and a spirit still at work in people today.
The verse opens with a puzzle: dead people do not walk. The death of verse 1 points in one direction only.
Ephesians 2:1 sets out our state as "dead in trespasses and sins." Strikingly, the next verse speaks of walking in those trespasses and sins. That is because the death spoken of there is death towards God. Those who are dead toward God are very much alive to "the course of this world," and "the prince of the power of the air," who operates in the sons of disobedience. Being dead towards God fits perfectly with being alive towards the world and the devil. In fact, the one springs out of the other.
"Course" here is not aimless drift. It is the ordinary flow of human life, and Scripture sets another way against it.
"The course of this world" stands in Scripture against "the way of life." To faith it plainly means the ordinary flow of natural human life. It stands in contrast to the way of those who share in the risen Christ. They have ceased to be of the world, though they are still in it as strangers and pilgrims… This verse shows us the true character of the present world by revealing the powers that govern its course.
Walking with it took no effort at all — that was the trouble.
There they were walking according to the course of this world. They floated with the stream, under the powerful and universal influence of Satan. He penetrates everywhere and reigns over everything, like the air, which is his seat.
The title given to this ruler is a picture, and it has a point.
The title, "Prince of the power of the air," was meant to show how his influence spreads through everything. As the air surrounds and penetrates everything, so the devil spreads through the realm of nature… They showed that they were under his power in this way — by their disobedience.
The same picture reaches further — to the very air people breathe.
The expression "prince of the power of the air" shows that giving in to Satan has polluted the very air people live in, as Adam and Eve did. Satan's evil influence has corrupted every area of human life.
If a spirit is at work in people, no one acts alone.
In the light of the Gospel, man is not an independent agent. Whatever is done here below is prompted either by the Spirit of God or by some spirit which is not of God… And Christians do well to remember this. The Holy Spirit testifies to the existence and power of Satan, the ruler of this present world, as clearly and positively as He testifies to the Anointed Captain of Salvation.
Yet Satan's puppets are willing ones.
He is the subtle schemer and they are only his puppets. Men are willing to carry out his schemes, because their hearts are hostile to God.
The phrase names character by family likeness.
Sons are those who reproduce the typical or distinctive traits of their fathers. This sense of representing a parent is often used in moral matters. So the "sons of disobedience" (Eph. 2:2) are those whose conduct displays disobedience as clearly as a son resembles a father.
Verse 2 describes one group; verse 3 widens it to another.
In verses 2 and 3 we again meet the distinction between the Gentile "you" and the Jewish "we." Yet both were active in what was wholly evil. The walk of the Gentile was marked above all by the world and the devil, since they followed false gods, and behind those gods lay the power of demons. The walk of the Jew was marked more by the lusts of the flesh.
For the believer, all of this belongs to the past. So what breaks Satan's hold?
Satan gained his power over men through disobedience. He holds that power over them today because they are still in a state of disobedience. Once obedience to God appears in any one of us, his power over us is broken.
- Dead — the death of verse 1 is toward God only. The same person is alive to the world and the devil, and one state grows out of the other.
- Driven — the world's "course" is its ordinary flow. Behind that flow stands a ruler whose influence spreads like air, into every area of life.
- Dependent — no one acts alone. Either the Spirit of God prompts what a person does, or a spirit that is not of God does — and men go along willingly.
- Displayed — "sons of disobedience" names a family likeness. Disobedience shows in conduct as clearly as a son resembles a father.
- Delivered — Satan gained his hold through disobedience and keeps it the same way. Where obedience to God appears, his power breaks, and the whole description becomes "once."
among whom *we* also all once had our conversation in the lusts of our flesh, doing what the flesh and the thoughts willed to do, and were children, by nature, of wrath, even as the rest
Paul has just described the Gentile world as dead in sin; now he turns and puts himself and his own nation in the same place. Two phrases carry the weight: "the desires of the body and the mind," and "by nature children of wrath."
The pronoun changes in this verse. Up to now the apostle wrote "you," meaning his Gentile readers. Now he says "we," and puts his own nation on the same level:
The Jew, with all his privileges and favours, was not one bit better than the outside Gentile. There may be outward differences, but before God the ruin is complete. … Solemn thought! We should always have delighted in the will of God and done it. But we did not love His way. We preferred our own, indulging our "desires" (or "wills") to the full.
The verse names two sources of desire: the body and the mind. The second is easy to miss, because it looks respectable:
Yet he distinguishes between "the desires (or wills) of the flesh" and "the thoughts." By this he means the cruder tendencies on one side, and the more refined, intellectual workings on the other. Suppose a man devotes himself to science and makes it his object — is this doing the will of God? No. It is the indulgence of the desires of the mind. It is just as much self as in others who give themselves over to the coarser appetites of nature.
The verse puts the mind's desires under the same heading as the body's. One writer explains why you cannot split them into a lower self and a higher one:
Here the desires of the flesh, as distinct from the mind, mean natural interests. The desires of the mind mean his mental powers, which set him apart from the animals. It takes in everything the natural man craves — his desires, tastes as well as lusts. … For the mind is not independent of the flesh; as the mind excites the flesh, so the flesh gives tone to the mind. That is, the higher and the lower qualities of nature influence each other, and both are "the flesh."
Everything before this phrase describes conduct. The phrase itself points somewhere else:
They were children of wrath, even as others, for that is the condition of men. In their nature they are the children of wrath. In their outward privileges the Israelites were the people of God. By nature they were men like others. And notice these words, "by nature." The Spirit is not speaking here of a judgment pronounced by God. He is not speaking of sins committed, or of Israel failing in their relationship to God by falling into idolatry and rebellion. He is not even speaking of their rejecting the Messiah and so cutting themselves off from every resource — though Israel had done all of this.
"Children of wrath" is a family word. It describes what a person inherits, and it points to something in God as well as in man:
The apostle tells us, "we also," Jews — we were walking in the same lusts; and therefore, according to the moral truth of our nature, we were, he says, children of wrath — heirs by nature of the wrath of that God who could not mix Himself up with sin. All were children of wrath. It was what they deserved, according to their nature, which was opposed to God.
Some argue that those God chose were never in this condition. The verse's "like the rest of mankind" rules that out:
Until they believe, all alike are sons of disobedience and children of wrath. That is certain. So the apostle groups himself with the most privileged of mankind, yet declares that "we all once lived in the passions of our flesh … and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." All were alike dead in their offences and their sins. … It is contradictory, unsound, and evil to claim that God's chosen were not dead but alive compared with the rest of men. It is just as wrong to say that faith only showed a life they already had.
The verse is the bottom of the descent. What comes next turns everything:
Notice how this takes in the whole race, both Gentile and Jew — all alike guilty and spiritually dead, all children of wrath. But at this very point divine love declares itself! When we were dead in sins, that is when mercy and love act. God's power makes the soul alive and blesses it beyond all measure.
- Nature, not record. The verse does not stop at sins committed; "by nature" reaches behind conduct to what a person is from birth.
- Nature shows in two ways. The body's cravings and the mind's refined pursuits both count as desires of the flesh. Each one feeds the other.
- Nature levels everyone. Paul sets the religious "we" beside the Gentile "you." Outward privilege changes nothing before God.
- Nature has an heir's portion. Children of wrath means wrath inherited and deserved, from a God who cannot mix Himself with sin.
- Nature meets mercy. Right where the verdict is total, divine love declares itself — acting toward the dead, not the deserving.
but God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love wherewith he loved us,
Verse 4 comes after a dark picture: people dead in sins, with nothing good in them. Then the sentence turns, and everything rests on what God is in Himself.
Two words break the description of ruin. One writer holds them up as the moment hope enters a hopeless case:
We were dead. There was no movement, no pulse of life towards God, no response to His claims or His pleading. And we were not dead only, but dead in sins. Chains bound us, darkness surrounded us. We were not only unresponsive in death; there was the added enmity of sin. Our case was hopeless to all "BUT GOD." How those two words "But God" break into the gloom! And being "rich in mercy," the great love with which He loves us is not a baffled and hopeless love. He has triumphed over death.
One writer defines the word, then points to a familiar roadside scene:
The riches of His mercy come first, and that mercy is the outcome of His great love. Mercy is that compassion that comes down to meet one in his circumstances of need, sorrow or misery. The Samaritan in Luke 10:33 did this. He "came where he was" — a man robbers had attacked and left half dead — and he cared for his needs. What great love has made our Saviour stoop so low to meet us at the very bottom of our hopeless misery.
The verse says mercy, not grace, and one writer refuses to treat the two as the same:
He is "rich in mercy." There is a difference between mercy and grace. Grace is a free gift, but mercy is much more; it speaks of demerit and brings our souls right to the heart of God Himself who has mercy. "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." No claim. Many young Christians have never taken their stand on the ground of mercy. So when something they trusted in breaks down, they are completely lost.
Mercy has a source: the "great love" named in the verse. That love decides how far the blessing goes:
Love is the nature of God, the spring of all His actions, and the source of all our blessings. If God acts according to the love of His heart, only His love can measure the blessing that results. So the question is not what amount of blessing will meet our needs. The question is how high a blessing will satisfy the love of God… God acts, then, "because of His great love", not because of anything that we are.
The love reached us when we were dead in sins. One writer draws out what that says about God:
The source of all our blessing is the heart of God. So it is only in redemption that we can see Him fully revealed. God came on the scene because of what He was as God. And notice the contrast: "even when we were dead in sins." He would have us remember that there was nothing but evil in us, and nothing but good in Him.
One writer draws out why the dark description of man comes first:
We have seen man and his natural condition. Now we are called to consider the One who made him… The fact of man's moral ruin becomes the occasion for displaying the perfection of the Divine character. Helpless sin is the opportunity for rich and saving mercy… What is the great proof here that He is rich in mercy? He loved His people in their natural condition, when they were dead in trespasses and sins. And because He loved them, He did not leave them as they were. He made them alive and gave them everlasting life.
Mercy this free still needs a foundation, and one writer names it:
But God! God now comes in and makes known the riches of His mercy. Yet a righteous, holy God cannot be rich in mercy unless His righteousness is fully met and maintained. His mercy must have His righteousness as its foundation. And this is blessedly the case. He is rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us. He gave His only begotten Son. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. He made full atonement on the cross, and now God can be rich in mercy.
- Ruin — our case was hopeless: nothing but evil in us, nothing but good in Him.
- But God — two words break into the gloom. The dead could not move, so God moved first.
- Mercy — compassion that comes down to where the person is. It weighs demerit, not merit, so no one has a claim.
- Love — mercy's source. Love sets the measure, so the question is not what meets our need but what satisfies His heart.
- Righteousness — mercy this rich still rests on the cross, where God gave His Son and made full atonement.
(we too being dead in offences,) has quickened us with the Christ, (ye are saved by grace,)
Ephesians 2 does not picture us as sick people needing help. It pictures us as dead — so verse 5 says what only God could do: He made us alive together with Christ, and grace is the reason.
Ephesians does not stop to prove that we are guilty. It treats the case as already closed:
In Ephesians the proof of guilt is needless. Man is viewed as so completely dead that it is only the removal of the cloth from off the corpse. So the apostle says, "You He made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins." It is not simply, How is a sinner to be forgiven, justified? but "You He made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins."
(Older translations read "quickened" where newer ones read "made alive.")
Death is final because the dead cannot answer. That was our state toward God when His love reached us:
Human love can do great things to serve and save the one it loves, as long as life lasts. But when death has done its work, love has reached its end and can do no more. And what is the most tragic, the most oppressive, the most heartbreaking thing in death? It is the unresponsiveness of the dead. Love may plead and agonize for one word from the silent lips — even for one flicker from the still eyelids in answer to its longing. It is all in vain. The silence is absolute, the breach is complete, love is beaten and death is the victor. But it is not so with God's love. His love is GREAT LOVE — greater than death. Our case was hopeless to all "BUT GOD." How wonderfully those two words break into the darkness!
If we were dead, then nothing in the verse can have started with us. Every verb belongs to God:
We were dead, says the apostle — dead in our trespasses and sins. God comes, in His love, to deliver us by His power. There was no good working in us: we were dead in our trespasses and sins. The movement came from Him, praised be His name! He has made us alive; and not only that, He has made us alive together with Christ.
The same act puts Jew and non-Jew in one place:
Jews and Gentiles are found together in the same new position in Christ. Resurrection has put an end to all those distinctions; they have no place in a risen Christ. God has made the one and the other alive with Christ.
The verse does not stop at "made alive." It adds "together with Christ" — and that phrase decides where our life starts:
It is not simply that we are made alive. We are made alive "together with Christ." When it is only the giving of life, as in John 5, Christ is the One who gives it. But Ephesians shows Christ in death, where He had in grace put Himself for us. We were there through sin and disobedience. He came there in grace and obedience. And now, as made alive together with Him, we are, so to speak, raised by God out of His grave.
Our case demanded life. It never demanded this much:
Being "dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1), nothing less than being made alive would meet our case. So being made alive was a necessity. Being made alive together with Christ was not. That is the fruit of God's own purpose in grace.
Paul cannot finish his sentence without saying where all this came from. He throws the words in as an aside, and the tense of the verb matters:
His heart seems to overflow as he speaks of God's "rich mercy," His "great love," "the exceeding riches of His grace," and "His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus." In verse 5 he cannot hold back from adding, as a parenthesis, "by grace you have been saved." He writes as if to stress that we owe everything to the precious Saviour by whom "grace came." What happy assurance fills our souls as we consider the greatness of the salvation grace has worked! The verb is in the perfect tense — our salvation is secure and it lasts.
So this letter does not push salvation into the future. It speaks of it as done:
"By grace you have been saved." Salvation, according to this letter, is a present reality. We are as truly saved now as we ever can be. Some of the other letters speak of salvation as future. It is no less certain there. In those letters it comes at the end of our journey, when we shall stand before Christ in glory.
- Dead — Ephesians does not argue guilt; it uncovers a corpse. No response, no movement, no ability to change anything.
- But God — those two words break into the darkness. His love is greater than death, and it moved first, while we could not answer.
- Made alive — nothing less than new life could meet our case, so God gave it.
- With Christ — being made alive was necessary; being made alive with Him, out of His grave, was not. That is God's own purpose in grace.
- By grace — the aside names the source. The perfect tense names the security: already saved, and saved still.
and has raised [us] up together, and has made [us] sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus,
God did not stop at making dead people alive. He lifted them to where Christ Himself is. That raises two questions. How can people still on earth already be seated in heaven? And why does Paul write "in Christ Jesus" and not "with Christ"?
Our place in heaven rests on what God's power already did in Christ. That same power reached us.
If our acceptance in the Beloved means we receive the same privileges and possessions that He receives, it comes about through our being made alive by the same power by which He was made alive. We are not only one with Him in our blessing and prospects, but also in our life. God used the same power in the same way to make us alive as He used to make Him alive.
The verse changes its wording halfway through, and the change is deliberate. We are made alive together with Christ, but raised and seated in Him.
Everything God has done, He has done in connection with Christ. If we have been made alive, it has been together with Christ. If raised up and seated in heavenly places, it has been in Christ. Two prepositions are used, with and in. We have already actually been made alive... though we wait for our mortal bodies to be made alive. As made alive we live in association with Christ, because we live by His life. We have not yet actually been raised up and seated in the heavens, but Christ has, and He is our exalted Head. We are in Him, and so raised up and seated in Him. Soon we shall actually be raised up and seated with Him.
If our seat is in Christ, then our standing is not somewhere lower down, waiting to be improved.
We are brought not simply through death into resurrection, but we are seated (not with, but) in Christ in heavenly places. What then is my standing? It is there in Christ where He is. Nothing short of it. It is not simply that I am raised together with Christ down here where I am. No, I am carried further; I am seated in Christ, where He is in the glory. That is my place.
The repeated word "together" is not simply about believers and Christ. It is about two groups of people who had been kept apart.
The "together" here refers to Gentiles and Jews... Here again, the word "raised" means more than resurrection when used of our Lord. He has been raised to the highest point in glory, following His resurrection from the dead.
Commentators differ on how present this seat is. Hole says we are not yet actually raised and seated. Davison holds that the place is already ours, though not physically:
We are not yet there physically, but in the apprehension of our souls by the Spirit. "Sitting" carries the thought that we are now in possession of the place and privilege, and have the present enjoyment of it in our souls.
God had a further reason for lifting sinners that high. It reaches into the ages to come.
Poor sinners from among the Gentiles, and from among the disobedient and contradicting Jews, are brought into the position where Christ is by the power that raised Him from the dead and set Him at God's right hand, to show forth in the ages to come the immense riches of the grace that accomplished it. A Mary Magdalene, a crucified thief, companions in glory with the Son of God, will bear witness to it.
Later in the same letter, the heavenly places are also the place of conflict.
The church is seated "in heavenly places in Christ" — blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ. So too we are said to contend with spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. We are carried into conflict in the very place of strength; for the nearer we are to God, the more we need strength to walk there.
- Power — The strength that raised Christ and seated Him at God's right hand is the strength that reached us. Nothing less would do.
- Position — We were made alive with Christ, but raised and seated in Him; His seat is our standing, and nothing short of it.
- Partnership — "Together" means Jew and Gentile share one seat in Christ.
- Present — The seat is ours now, known by the soul through the Spirit. The body is still on earth and follows later.
- Purpose — God set former sinners beside His Son. The coming ages will see the immense riches of the grace that put them there.
that he might display in the coming ages the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.
God's plan does not stop at rescuing us. Verse 7 gives His reason for the rescue, and it raises three questions: who is meant to see it, when does it happen, and what does His "kindness" mean?
Verse 7 states God's purpose right after describing what He has done. One writer rests the whole weight of assurance on that:
God makes us alive, raises us, and seats us. At once He states His own motive and purpose in blessing us... Here faith can breathe freely, rest quietly, and wait patiently, without the smallest doubt. Faith never asks for more than the word of God. Though, sadly, we fail and come short in many things, yet He is faithful. The life He gives is like Himself — eternal. His "kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" is also like Himself — eternal.
The passage names four qualities of God, and "kindness" is one of them. One writer keeps them apart:
Four qualities of God come before us — love, mercy, kindness and grace (verses 4 and 7). Love is the nature of God, the spring of all His actions, and the source of all our blessings. The question, then, is not what measure of blessing will meet our needs. It is how high a blessing must be to satisfy the love of God. Grace is love in action towards unworthy people, and it goes out to all. God shows mercy to the individual sinner. Kindness is His giving of blessings to the believer.
A display needs onlookers. One writer names them, and says where God has placed us in relation to them:
In the world to come God sets us over angels and rulers and powers. In doing so He is showing the exceeding riches of His grace in the place He has given us, in His kindness towards us... Angels are going to learn the immense riches of God's grace. How? By God making us sharers in the glory of Christ, in His kindness to us through Christ Jesus. They will see Mary Magdalene, the thief on the cross, the woman of the city who was a sinner — any one of us — in the same place of glory with Christ. Then they will admire the exceeding riches of His grace.
God has something specific to reveal, and only the highest place for us would show it:
God, as it were, says, "In the coming ages I am going to show what is the fruit of Christ's work, and what is the purpose of My heart." Clearly nothing but the highest condition and position a man can be found in is enough for such great ends. Angels and rulers will "see a poor sinner, and the whole church, in the same glory as the Son of God." Then "they will understand the exceeding riches of the grace that has set them there."
The verse says ages, not age. Writers take this as covering more than one era:
Two ages follow the present age. The millennial age, and after that has lasted for a thousand years, the eternal state begins. In the coming age and in all eternity, God is going to make known His glory through and in His masterwork. All His redeemed will be with Him in glory.
Commentators differ on where the series of ages begins, but they agree the plural matters. One writer draws out what that means for our own experience:
The eternal God has an eternal kindness for His children. Those who receive the exceeding riches of His grace will not take them in all at once. Knowledge and enjoyment will grow on, with life, in an endless progression. Pay careful attention to the phrase the Apostle uses here. "The coming ages" carries a different meaning from the same phrase in the singular.
Forgiveness is not the end of what grace intends to do:
Grace has not finished with us when our souls are redeemed and our sins forgiven, for "in the ages to come" He will show "the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus."
If the church is the chosen exhibit of grace later, that shapes how it should behave in the meantime:
In those ages God's grace will shine out in all His dealings with Israel and the nations. It will shine out in His dealings with the believers who lived before Christ too. But to see the surpassing display of grace, men and angels will turn their eyes to the glorified church. Let us never forget that! So we are surely right to expect this: grace must mark the witness of people who have themselves received grace in such surpassing measure.
- Purpose — God made us alive, raised us, and seated us with a goal in view: a display of His grace, not just a rescue.
- Kindness — Love is His nature. Grace reaches the unworthy, mercy meets the individual sinner, and kindness hands the blessing to the believer.
- Display — Angels and powers will study grace by looking at the people it saved, seated in the same glory as Christ.
- Duration — The ages are plural: a coming age, then eternity. Knowledge and enjoyment keep growing instead of arriving all at once.
- Now — Since the church is the exhibit that grace has chosen, grace should mark the people who received it.
For ye are saved by grace, through faith; and this not of yourselves; it is God's gift
One short line names the source of salvation, the means of receiving it, and the One who supplies both. It has raised two questions ever since: is salvation finished or still in progress, and does the faith itself come from God?
The verb is not "you are being saved." Commentators point to the tense: the work is done, and it stays done.
"By grace you have been saved." By this he means that we have been saved and are saved. We enjoy now what is already past and complete before God. It is a finished fact, because it is in Christ, and everything here is in Christ… The Saviour is seated on high, and salvation is so fully in Him that we are not in the process of being saved. We are saved, and we need nothing more on this point.
Other letters speak of salvation as something still ahead. One writer marks the difference:
Salvation is looked on in Ephesians as an accomplished and present thing. In Philippians 2:12-13 and Romans 8:22-25 the believer is a traveller here below, as in 1 Peter too. He is surrounded by difficulties and dangers. He looks ahead to salvation at the coming of the Lord Jesus. But that would not suit Ephesians, where we are viewed as blessed in the heavenly places. We have been and are saved.
Grace opens the door to people with no claim at all. But it does not brush sin aside. God's throne had to be satisfied first.
Anyone who knows how sick his own heart is will be glad to hear this. A principle like grace gives hope to the most unworthy. It opens the door for all of us. But grace must have righteousness as its foundation. Otherwise God's grace would be treating sin as a light thing, and that is impossible. God's throne must keep its majesty, whatever the cost… Here the cross of Christ comes in, which is both the full answer to everything God requires and the full expression of the grace in God's heart toward people who have gone wrong.
Faith is the way grace reaches us. It earns nothing. Its whole value lies in what it looks at.
"Through faith" is the way we receive such grace. Faith is not a thing of merit in itself. It recognises that all the merit is in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it puts its confidence in Him alone.
Writers have long argued over the words "this is not your own doing." Some say "this" covers salvation as a whole. Others say it points to the faith. One writer works through the wording itself:
Those who oppose this truth say that "this" cannot go with "faith," because in Greek the word faith is feminine. But by that rule it cannot go with "grace" either, because grace is feminine too. Then they say it goes with the whole thing, salvation. That makes no sense. Read it that way: "By grace you have been saved through faith, and this (this salvation) is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." Of course salvation by grace is not our own doing. If it were, it would not be grace. Nobody imagines that grace comes from himself, so on that reading "and this" says nothing. But people do imagine that faith comes from themselves. So after saying it is by faith, he adds, "and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God."
A second writer puts the same point in a picture.
The grace is God's: the faith is ours. Yet even our faith is not of ourselves. Faith is not something the human heart grows on its own… Faith is no weed. It is a rare flower. Once the heavenly Father plants it, nothing can pull it up. It is the gift of God.
If everything is given, there is nothing left to take credit for — and that changes what a Christian becomes.
It is clear that boasting is excluded where salvation is of grace. Believers are not boasters but worshippers. With a wise and understanding heart they adore the God they have learned to know and love, because He has shown His own rich grace in Jesus.
- Grace — the cause. Salvation starts in God's unearned favour. That favour rests on righteousness, won at the cross — sin was not brushed aside.
- Faith — the channel. Faith carries no merit of its own. It rests the whole weight on Christ and owns that all the merit is His.
- Gift — even the faith. Writers differ on whether "this" points to faith or to the whole of salvation. They agree on one thing: God gives the believing heart; we do not produce it.
- Finished — not in progress. This letter states salvation as done. We have been saved and are saved, complete in Christ, who is already seated on high.
- Worship — the result. Where nothing is earned, boasting dies. The saved person speaks as a worshipper, not a boaster.
not on the principle of works, that no one might boast.
Paul has just called salvation God's gift, received through faith, and now he shuts the door on works. The verse answers two questions: why can our works have no share in saving us, and why does God care so much that they don't?
Works are shut out for a reason. Earlier verses in the chapter describe our condition: we were dead, and sin was our only activity.
Now this necessarily excludes works; that is, works done to gain life and blessing. The only works we were capable of were those described in verses 2 and 3, and in those works we were spiritually dead. God Himself is the Worker and we are His workmanship; a very different thing. Further, the work needed was nothing short of creation. How obvious, then, that human works have no place here.
Why does boasting matter? One writer answers by asking what would be true of him if his works could save him. He quotes the verse in an older wording: "not of works."
"Saved… not of works"! Not on the principle of works. And why? Because if my works could save me, then I really might boast. There would be no sin in my pride. I could claim heaven on the ground of my own worth. I could also keep in myself for ever, and rightly, any amount of the very thing God detests most of all. It lies at the root of all sin: pride, or self-sufficiency. But this is impossible. I can no more give myself new birth than bring myself into the world.
Silencing that boast is not a loss. It puts something better in its place.
God, who is seeking the glory of His Christ, will silence all human boasting. He does so now with His chosen ones by the power of His saving grace. He will do so in the coming day of judgment, when the pride of man will bow before the awesome presence of His holiness. Clearly boasting is excluded where salvation is of grace. Believers are not boasters but worshippers.
Leaving works out does something practical for the believer's peace. Human failure cannot shake what human effort never built.
If our works had any part in this new creation, it would carry the seeds of failure. That is why it is "not of works." It is only and wholly of grace, and that makes it absolutely certain and stable. Much of the doubt people have about salvation comes from one thing: they bring "works" into the plan, more or less.
Verse 9 and verse 10 sit side by side. The difference between them is one of order.
Notice, it is "not of works" as the principle, but it is "for good works" as the object. Good works accompany salvation, but they never go before it.
So the verse does not make good works optional. It resets who gets the credit for them, and leaves no way to opt out.
Verse 9 firmly guards against the natural human thought of adding works to grace and faith… It takes away every chance for people to exalt themselves. This puts us in our true place and exalts God… Yet His work in us is "for good works" (v.10). Good works are the proper result after God's work has brought salvation. God has even prepared these good works beforehand for us to walk in. So if we believers do good works, we have nothing to boast about, and no excuse for not doing them.
The Bible does tell people to "work out your own salvation." But who is that command for? Not the sinner, one writer answers.
It isn't meant for him. It is only for those who are already Christians. Nowhere in the Scriptures will you find one line that tells a sinner to work out his own salvation. They do say, "to the one who does not work but believes." And they say, "not a result of works, so that no one may boast." And again, "not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy He saved us." The Scriptures are very plain and clear on this point.
- Dead — our only works were the sins of verses 2 and 3. Dead people need creation, not improvement — and no one creates himself.
- Boast — if effort could save, pride would be fair. God removes that ground, because pride is the root of all sin.
- Worship — God does not just cancel the boast, He replaces it. Believers are not boasters but worshippers.
- Certain — no human part went into the foundation, so no human failure can shake it. Most doubt comes from adding works back into the plan.
- After — works are shut out as the principle but required as the outcome. God prepared them beforehand, so we can neither boast of them nor neglect them.
For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has before prepared that we should walk in them.
The verse just before shut the door on human effort as the ground of salvation. This verse opens a different door: the same grace that saves also produces. It raises two questions at once — what has God made of us, and what is the "work" that now belongs to a saved person?
The verse begins with "for," tying it back to the statement that salvation is not of works. One writer sets the two sides side by side and shows they never compete:
All is of grace. Works can have no place here, nor the boasting of man. But is God indifferent to good works? No. As to our standing, good works have no place, because we are God's workmanship. But this very fact demands that good works should follow as a result. We are not created by good works, but we are created for them.
That order removes both pride and laziness at the same time:
Believers are seen to be "His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus." Precious work of new creation, by power infinitely higher than all human work! Yet His work in us is "for good works," for good works are the proper result after God's work has brought salvation. Yet God has prepared even these good works beforehand for us to walk in. Therefore, if we believers do good works, we have nothing to boast of, nor do we have any excuse for not doing them.
The Greek word behind "workmanship" carries an artistic sense:
The word "workmanship" is in the Greek "poiema," which gives us our word "poem." It is a beautiful thought to call those who are saved by grace, and joined to Christ, "the poem of God." The word "poiema" can also mean "masterpiece" or "masterwork."
The only other place the same word appears measures this one:
In Romans 1:20 it describes the physical creation… But the creation of the universe out of nothing is not the greatest masterpiece of God. God has done something greater. He has produced a work which reveals Him in a far higher degree. That greater masterpiece is the redemption of sinners.
"Created" is a deliberate word, not a word for mending or reforming. One commentator explains why it matters:
Beyond doubt, it is to press on our minds that this work of God is completely new. It is not an adaptation of something that already existed, but a new creation. A believer carries nothing of himself into Christ. He is another man, a new man… In Him and from Him we receive another nature, a new and completely different life.
These works are of a new kind. God settled them in His mind before the world began:
These are not the good works of the law. They are not even the works that human judgment might call good. They are an offering of a new character, heavenly and of grace. God had it in His mind and settled it all about us before the world we are now brought into existed. Before the world was made, the same God purposed to save us and bless us with Christ. He also marked out a certain line of walk, a special course of action. He expected those who received such favour to walk in it.
Ephesians itself spells out what they look like:
There are indeed works that suit the place of blessing God has brought us into. He prepared them beforehand so that we should walk in them. These works come before us later in the letter. There we are urged to walk worthy of the calling, to walk in love, to walk as children of light, and to walk carefully.
Notice that God prepared two things — the walker and the road:
God has created us to walk in a path of good works, and He has prepared the path of good works for us to walk in. It is all of God, from first to last — all through grace, and all by faith… But remember: it is useless to talk about grace and faith and eternal life if the "good works" never appear.
This should quiet an anxious believer's search for a mission:
This shows two things. God's purpose is that His people should do good works. And we need not search anxiously for the good works we are to do, because God has appointed them for us. We simply have to abound in them.
Being made "in Christ" supplies both the power and the pattern:
Man in the flesh can never produce good works. But God gives those He has created in Christ the ability to work in a way that glorifies Him and gives Him pleasure. Created "in Christ," we share Christ's character, and so we can display His features of grace and beauty.
- His work, not ours. Salvation is not created by good works; we are created for them, so the sequence never reverses.
- His masterpiece. "Workmanship" is poiema — God's poem. Redemption is a greater masterwork than the making of the universe.
- His new creation. Nothing old is adapted or patched; the believer receives a new nature and a new life in Christ.
- His prepared path. God made both the walker and the road, so the works are ready and waiting, not something to hunt for anxiously.
- His character displayed. Because we are in Christ, the walk of love, light and care in the later chapters becomes possible. That leaves no room to boast and no excuse to sit still.
Wherefore remember that *ye*, once nations in [the] flesh, who [are] called uncircumcision by that called circumcision in [the] flesh done with the hand;
Paul has just carried his readers to the heights: saved by grace, seated in the heavenly places. At verse 11 he turns them around. He tells them to look back at what they once were — outsiders, tagged with a name the Jews used with scorn.
The letter has been climbing. Here it tells the reader to look back instead. One writer separates that from a kind of looking inward that only does harm.
How striking that the apostle should tell the saints to look down in verse 11! Verse 7 carries us very high and shows our place as sitting in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Now we are told to remember what we were. There is an important difference between being taken up with yourself and remembering our ruined state. The first leads to doubt and fear; the second to humility and a deeper appreciation of grace.
The opening of the chapter had put Jew and Gentile on the same footing: dead, and children of wrath. Verse 11 looks at them from a different angle.
Here we are on totally different ground. It is no longer "children of wrath" — people who were by nature one as bad and as dead as the other. Here men fall into two groups on earth — the uncircumcision on one side, and the circumcision on the other. So you are on earthly ground. This is the ground of God's dealings in history, where He separates one part of mankind from another by His own will. He does it not because the one was better than the other, but to display His own wisdom and purpose.
The word was not a neutral description. It was what one group called the other, and it carried the sting of exclusion.
In their Gentile state, the Ephesians were called uncircumcision. It was a term of great reproach (1 Samuel 14:6; 1 Samuel 31:4). Circumcision was the sign of relationship with God, and more besides. To be uncircumcised meant being completely outside the circle of relationship and privilege… Earlier in the chapter the apostle sets out what is true of Jew and Gentile alike. Here he stresses what was true of the Gentiles in particular.
The gap between the two groups was not a human invention. It stood until the cross.
The Apostle is about to set out the present position of believers in Christ. First he contrasts the former position of Gentiles in the flesh with their new place. The church is not the sum of all believers from the beginning of the world. In times past — the times before the cross — God had appointed a distinction between Jew and Gentile. As long as that distinction stood, the church could not exist.
Notice Paul's careful wording for the other side. He does not write "the circumcision," but what is called the circumcision, made in the flesh by hands. After the cross, that badge has no standing left.
"The circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands" (Ephesians 2:11) is now simply Judaism. To go back in spirit to Judaism is to reject the cross of Christ. That cross has written for ever the sentence of death on man in the flesh… God judges man in the flesh, whether Jew or Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, as past recovery. In Christ, risen from the dead, there is new creation.
Remembering is not nostalgia or self-punishment. It has a target: the pride that grows in people God has blessed.
Grace alone has taken us out of a completely desolate condition. So we must guard against a natural and shameful tendency: to glory in flesh because the blessing God has given us is so great. Israel fell because they were proud of being blessed by God. Gentiles are now taking the same attitude (Romans 11:18-23). Gentiles had none of the advantages Israel had.
- Remember — the letter that seats you in the heavenly places also tells you to look down at where you started. The memory of ruin breeds humility. Endless self-inspection breeds only fear.
- Remember your name — "uncircumcision" was a label of contempt. It marked you as outside the circle of relationship and privilege.
- Remember the barrier — God appointed the Jew/Gentile divide; men did not invent it. While it stood, the church could not exist.
- Remember the flesh — Paul calls the other side's badge what is called the circumcision, made in the flesh by hands. The cross has passed sentence on man in the flesh, circumcised or not.
- Remember, and stop boasting — Israel fell through pride in being blessed. The greater the blessing, the more the Gentile must recall the desolate state grace lifted him from.
that ye were at that time without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world
After describing what God has done for believers, Paul turns them round to look back at what they once were. It lists five things the Gentile world lacked, and asks why a letter so full of blessing dwells on an empty past.
The apostle does not start with the list. He starts with a command to remember it.
Our souls rejoice not only in the intrinsic blessedness of these various aspects of our salvation, but also in contrasting them with the condition in which our lack of them once left us. And God would have us view matters in this way as we learn to estimate His grace towards us, as we read: "remember that you were at that time… having no hope and without God in the world." The more clearly we see all this, the higher the view of His grace we will rejoice in.
The list opens with Christ Himself. Where older translations read "without Christ," the ESV has "separated from Christ."
But then we were "without Christ." Without, that is, the only One who could bring in any way of salvation from our lost condition.
There is also a narrower sense. It turns on the place God gave Israel among the nations.
Such was their condition as Gentiles, in contrast with that of Israel. The beginning of the chapter shows that the Jews were by nature children of wrath just as much as the Gentiles. Yet as a people on the earth, chosen in God's sovereignty, they had advantages the Gentiles had no title or claim to. So they — the Gentiles — were without Christ; the Messiah as such was never promised to them.
"Commonwealth" describes a settled national order — citizenship, laws, worship — and Israel had one. The Gentiles stood outside the whole arrangement.
In God's ways on earth the Jew enjoyed a national place of outward privilege, and the Gentiles were complete strangers to it. Israel formed an earthly commonwealth, with promises and hopes for this world, and stood in outward relationship with God. God's ordinances regulated their religious worship, their political organisation and their social relations. Everything from the highest act of worship to the smallest detail of life came under them… It was not that the Jews were any better than the Gentiles, for in the sight of God the great mass of the Jews were as bad as the Gentiles, and some even worse.
Israel had promises to rest on. The nations had none, and one writer notes what people put in that empty space.
We have a right to nothing. We have not the smallest claim on God. God never gave us the settled place He gave Israel through the promises… The Gentiles had no hope. They were not expecting God to step in and rescue them on the earth. They might dream what people still dream — that man can become perfect on the earth.
The Greek word here is the one behind our word "atheist," and it did not mean then what it means now.
The Greek word is ἄθεος (atheos), which literally means "without God," and Ephesians 2:12 translates it that way. It describes Gentiles as they are by nature. It was true of the whole pagan world in their ignorance of God. It does not carry the sense the word has today: someone who chooses to refuse to acknowledge God's existence.
It was never a shortage of religion. It was a shortage of God, and the same holds today.
Lastly they were "without God in the world." Idols they had without number, and the modern world has them too, though in a different form. God was, and is, unknown.
The list does not stand alone. Verse 13 sets a second description against it, phrase for phrase.
These are very solemn words. "Having no hope, and without God in the world" is how the Spirit of God describes the condition and position of Gentiles in the flesh, dead in trespasses and sins. The contrast is just as striking: "In Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." On one side it is "no hope" and "without God". On the other side it is "in Christ Jesus" — "brought near by the blood of Christ."
- Remember — The verse commands a backward look. Grace looks as large as the emptiness it filled.
- Without Christ — The root loss. The Messiah was never promised to the nations, and He was the only One who could bring any way of salvation.
- Without privilege — Israel had a commonwealth, promises and ordinances for all of life. The Gentiles had no claim on any of it.
- Without hope — With no promises, there was nothing to expect from God. Into that empty space comes the dream that man can become perfect on the earth.
- But now — Verse 13 answers every "without": Christ's blood brings the far off near.