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.