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.