You were made alive when you were dead in transgressions and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience. We also all once lived among them in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
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You were made alive when you were dead in transgressions and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience. We also all once lived among them in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus; for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we would walk in them.
Parallel Translations
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You were made alive when you were dead in transgressions and sins,
in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience.
We also all once lived among them in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
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And hath quickened you also that were deed in treaspasse and synne
in the which in tyme passed ye walked acordynge to the course of this worlde and after the governer that ruleth in the ayer the sprete that now worketh in the children of vnbelefe
amonge which we also had oure conversacion in tyme past in the lustes of oure flesshe and fullfilled the will of the flesshe and of the mynde: and were naturally the children of wrath even as wel as other.
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And you hath he quickened, that were dead in trespasses and sinnes,
Wherein, in times past ye walked, according to the course of this world, and after the prince that ruleth in the aire, euen the spirite, that nowe worketh in the children of disobedience,
Among whom we also had our conuersation in time past, in the lustes of our flesh, in fulfilling the will of the flesh, and of the minde, and were by nature the children of wrath, as well as others.
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Cross-references (118)
- Colossians 2:13 (v1) You were dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our…
- Ephesians 2:5-6 (v1) even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him,…
- Ephesians 6:12 (v2) For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world’s rulers of the…
- Colossians 3:1-4 (v1) If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your…
- 1 John 5:19 (v2) We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
Show all 100 cross-references
- Ephesians 2:3 (v2) We also all once lived among them in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of…
- John 12:31 (v2) Now is the judgment of this world. Now the prince of this world will be cast out.
- Colossians 3:6-7 (v2) For these things’ sake the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience. You also once walked in those, when you lived in them;
- Titus 3:3 (v3) For we were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating…
- John 8:44 (vv2–3) You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and doesn’t stand…
- Ephesians 5:6 (v2) Let no one deceive you with empty words. For because of these things, the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience.
- Ephesians 4:22 (vv2–3) that you put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit,
- 1 Corinthians 6:11 (v2) Some of you were such, but you were washed. But you were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the…
- Romans 8:2 (v1) For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
- 2 Corinthians 4:4 (v2) in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the Good News of the glory of Christ, who is the…
- Ephesians 4:18 (v1) being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of…
- John 5:21 (v1) For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom he desires.
- John 11:25-26 (v1) Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies. Whoever lives and believes…
- 1 John 2:15-17 (v2) Don’t love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the Father’s love isn’t in him. For all that is in the…
- 1 Peter 1:14 (vv2–3) as children of obedience, not conforming yourselves according to your former lusts as in your ignorance,
- Romans 12:2 (v2) Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing,…
- 1 John 3:10 (v2) In this the children of God are revealed, and the children of the devil. Whoever doesn’t do righteousness is not of God, neither is he who…
- 1 John 4:4 (v2) You are of God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.
- 1 John 5:4 (v2) For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world: your faith.
- Galatians 1:4 (v2) who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father—
- Revelation 20:2 (v2) He seized the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole inhabited earth, and bound him for a thousand…
- Galatians 5:16-24 (v3) But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against…
- Colossians 1:21 (v2) You, being in past times alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil deeds,
- 1 Peter 4:3 (v2) For we have spent enough of our past time doing the desire of the Gentiles, and having walked in lewdness, lusts, drunken binges, orgies,…
- 1 Corinthians 5:10 (v2) yet not at all meaning with the sexual sinners of this world, or with the covetous and extortionists, or with idolaters; for then you would…
- James 4:4 (v2) You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a…
- 1 John 3:14 (v1) We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. He who doesn’t love his brother remains in death.
- Isaiah 30:1 (v2) “Woe to the rebellious children”, says Yahweh, “who take counsel, but not from me; and who make an alliance, but not with my Spirit, that…
- John 14:6 (v1) Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.
- John 15:19 (v2) If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore…
- Acts 5:3 (v2) But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the price of the land?
- John 14:30 (v2) I will no more speak much with you, for the prince of the world comes, and he has nothing in me.
- Romans 13:14 (v3) But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, for its lusts.
- 2 Peter 2:14 (vv2–3) having eyes full of adultery, and who can’t cease from sin; enticing unsettled souls; having a heart trained in greed; children of cursing;
- Job 1:7 (v2) Yahweh said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Then Satan answered Yahweh, and said, “From going back and forth in the earth, and from…
- Psalms 51:5 (v3) Behold, I was born in iniquity. My mother conceived me in sin.
- John 5:25 (v1) Most certainly I tell you, the hour comes, and now is, when the dead will hear the Son of God’s voice; and those who hear will live.
- John 7:7 (v2) The world can’t hate you, but it hates me, because I testify about it, that its works are evil.
- John 8:23 (v2) He said to them, “You are from beneath. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world.
- John 13:2 (v2) During supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him,
- John 13:27 (v2) After the piece of bread, then Satan entered into him. Then Jesus said to him, “What you do, do quickly.”
- John 16:11 (v2) about judgment, because the prince of this world has been judged.
- Romans 6:12 (v3) Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
- 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 (v3) Or don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s Kingdom? Don’t be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor…
- Ephesians 5:14 (v1) Therefore he says, “Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
- Matthew 13:38 (v2) the field is the world; and the good seed, these are the children of the Kingdom; and the darnel weeds are the children of the evil one.
- Romans 8:7-8 (v3) because the mind of the flesh is hostile toward God; for it is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed can it be. Those who are in the…
- Ephesians 2:2 (v3) in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works…
- Ephesians 4:17-19 (v3) This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their…
- 1 Timothy 5:6 (v1) But she who gives herself to pleasure is dead while she lives.
- 1 John 2:16 (v3) For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, isn’t the Father’s, but is the world’s.
- Job 31:7 (v2) if my step has turned out of the way, if my heart walked after my eyes, if any defilement has stuck to my hands,
- Psalms 17:14 (v2) from men by your hand, Yahweh, from men of the world, whose portion is in this life. You fill the belly of your cherished ones. Your sons…
- Isaiah 57:4 (v2) Whom do you mock? Against whom do you make a wide mouth and stick out your tongue? Aren’t you children of disobedience and offspring of…
- Jeremiah 23:10 (v2) For the land is full of adulterers; for because of the curse the land mourns. The pastures of the wilderness have dried up. Their course is…
- Matthew 11:19 (v2) The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’…
- Matthew 12:43-45 (v2) When an unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places, seeking rest, and doesn’t find it. Then he says, ‘I will…
- Luke 11:21-26 (v2) “When the strong man, fully armed, guards his own dwelling, his goods are safe. But when someone stronger attacks him and overcomes him, he…
- Luke 16:8 (v2) “His lord commended the dishonest manager because he had done wisely, for the children of this world are, in their own generation, wiser…
- Luke 22:2-3 (v2) The chief priests and the scribes sought how they might put him to death, for they feared the people. Satan entered into Judas, who was…
- Acts 19:35 (v2) When the town clerk had quieted the multitude, he said, “You men of Ephesus, what man is there who doesn’t know that the city of the…
- Galatians 2:15-16 (v3) “We, being Jews by nature, and not Gentile sinners, yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in…
- 2 Timothy 4:10 (v2) for Demas left me, having loved this present world, and went to Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia; and Titus to Dalmatia.
- James 1:7 (v2) For that man shouldn’t think that he will receive anything from the Lord.
- 1 Peter 2:10-11 (v3) In the past, you were not a people, but now are God’s people, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. Beloved, I beg you…
- 1 John 3:8 (v2) He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. To this end the Son of God was revealed: that he might…
- Revelation 12:9 (v2) The great dragon was thrown down, the old serpent, he who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown…
- Revelation 13:8 (v2) All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life…
- Job 1:19 (v2) and behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young men, and they…
- Hosea 10:9 (v2) “Israel, you have sinned from the days of Gibeah. There they remained. The battle against the children of iniquity doesn’t overtake them in…
- Luke 22:31 (v2) The Lord said, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have all of you, that he might sift you as wheat,
- John 10:10 (v1) The thief only comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.
- 1 Corinthians 15:45 (v1) So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
- Ephesians 1:19-20 (v1) and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might which he…
- 1 Peter 4:2-3 (v3) that you no longer should live the rest of your time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough…
- 1 John 1:8-10 (v3) If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to…
- Revelation 13:14 (v2) He deceives my own people who dwell on the earth because of the signs he was granted to do in front of the beast, saying to those who dwell…
- Revelation 16:17 (v2) The seventh poured out his bowl into the air. A loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, “It is done!”
- Genesis 6:5 (v3) Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually…
- Job 1:16 (v2) While he was still speaking, there also came another, and said, “The fire of God has fallen from the sky, and has burned up the sheep and…
- Job 15:14-16 (v3) What is man, that he should be clean? What is he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, he puts no trust in his holy…
- Mark 4:19 (v3) and the cares of this age, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes…
- Acts 17:30-31 (v3) The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent, because he has appointed a…
- Romans 3:9-19 (v3) What then? Are we better than they? No, in no way. For we previously warned both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is…
- Romans 3:22-23 (v3) even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all those who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have…
- Romans 7:18 (v3) For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing. For desire is present with me, but I don’t find it doing that which is…
- 1 Corinthians 4:7 (v3) For who makes you different? And what do you have that you didn’t receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not…
- 2 Corinthians 7:1 (v3) Having therefore these promises, beloved, let’s cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear…
- Genesis 8:21 (v3) Yahweh smelled the pleasant aroma. Yahweh said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake because the…
- Job 14:4 (v3) Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.
- Job 25:4 (v3) How then can man be just with God? Or how can he who is born of a woman be clean?
- Isaiah 53:6 (v3) All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
- Daniel 9:5-9 (v3) we have sinned, and have dealt perversely, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even turning aside from your precepts and from your…
- Mark 7:21-22 (v3) For from within, out of the hearts of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, sexual sins, murders, thefts, covetings, wickedness, deceit,…
- John 1:13 (v3) who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
100 distinct cross-references across this passage (118 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (31 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1. And you who were dead. This is an…
1. And you who were dead. This is an ἐπεξεργασία of the former statements, that is, an exposition accompanied by an illustration. To bring home more effectually to the Ephesians the general doctrine of Divine grace, he reminds them of their former condition. This application consists of two parts. “Ye were formerly lost; but now God, by his grace, has rescued you from destruction.” And here we must observe, that, in laboring to give an impressive view of both of these parts, the apostle makes a break in the style by (ὑπερβατὸν) a transposition. There is some perplexity in the language; but, if we attend carefully to what the apostle says about those two parts, the meaning is clear. As to the first, he says that they were dead; and states, at the same time, the cause of the death — trespasses and sins. He does not mean simply that they were in danger of death; but he declares that it was a real and present death under which they labored. As spiritual death is nothing else than the alienation of the soul from God, we are all born as dead men, and we live as dead men, until we are made partakers of the life of Christ, — agreeably to the words of our Lord,
“The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.” (John 5:25)
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The Papists, who are eager to seize every opportunity of undervaluing the grace of God, say, that while we are out of Christ, we are half dead. But we are not at liberty to set aside the declarations of our Lord and of the Apostle Paul, that, while we remain in Adam, we are entirely devoid of life; and that regeneration is a new life of the soul, by which it rises from the dead. Some kind of life, I acknowledge, does remain in us, while we are still at a distance from Christ; for unbelief does not altogether destroy the outward senses, or the will, or the other faculties of the soul. But what has this to do with the kingdom of God? What has it to do with a happy life, so long as every sentiment of the mind, and every act of the will, is death? Let this, then, be held as a fixed principle, that the union of our soul with God is the true and only life; and that out of Christ we are altogether dead, because sin, the cause of death, reigns in us.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1–3 See Rom. 6:2. So then he calleth them dead,…
See Rom. 6:2. So then he calleth them dead, which are not regenerate: for as the immortality of them which are damned, is no life, so this knitting together of body and soul is properly no life, but death in them which are not ruled by the Spirit of God.
He declareth again the greatness of God’s good will, by comparing that miserable state wherein we are born, with that dignity whereunto we are advanced by God the Father in Christ. So he describeth that condition in such sort, that he saith, that touching spiritual motions we are not only born half dead, but wholly and altogether dead.
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He showeth the cause of death, to wit, sins.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead…
1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
Ver. 1. Who were dead] Natural men are living carcases, walking sepulchres of themselves. In most families it is, as once it was in Egypt, Exo 12:30, no house wherein there is not one, nay, many dead corpses. Howbeit, the natural man, though he be theologically dead, yet is ethically alive, being to be wrought upon by arguments; hence, Hos 11:4; "I drew them by the cords of a man," that is, by reason and motives of love, befitting the nature of a man. So the Spirit and Word work upon us still as men by rational motives, setting before us life and good, death and evil.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–3 And you hath he quickened; his verb quickened is…
And you hath he quickened; his verb quickened is not in the Greek, but the defect of it may be supplied from Eph 1:19, thus: The greatness of his power to us-ward, and to you that were dead in trespasses and sins; the remaining part of that chapter being included in a parenthesis, which, though long, yet is not unusual. Or rather, as our translators and others do, from Eph 2:5 of this chapter, where we have the word quickened. It imports a restoring of spiritual life by the infusion of a vital principle, (in the work of regeneration), whereby men are enabled to walk with God in newness of life.
Who were dead; piritually, not naturally; i.e. destitute of a principle of spiritual life, and so of any ability for, or disposedness to, the operations and motions of such a life.
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In trespasses and sins:he preposition in is wanting in the Greek by an ellipsis, but the expression is full, Col 2:13; this dative case therefore is to be taken in the sense of the ablative. By these words he means either all sorts of sins, habitual and actual, less or greater; or rather, promiscuously and indifferently, the same thing several ways. expressed. Sin is the cause of spiritual death; where sin reigns, there is a privation of spiritual life.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Observe here, 1. The deplorable condition which the Ephesians…
Observe here, 1. The deplorable condition which the Ephesians were in by nature, and all persons with them before their conversion from sin to God. It is a state of spiritual death; the natural and unregenerate man is a dead man, spiritually dead in sin. Our apostle doth not say they were in a dying, but in a dead condition; not half dead, but altogether dead.
But how so?
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Not dead as to natural actions, they can eat and drink; not as to rational actions, they can reason and discourse; not as to civil actions, they can buy and sell, bargain and trade. Nor is the natural man dead to moral actions; he can pray, read, and hear the word, meditate upon it, and discourse of it; if he please, he can hearken to the voice of God’s judgments, consider and call his own ways to remembrance.
But as to spiritual acts, to be spiritually performed, here he is dead, till quickened by a vital act of the Holy Spirit, whose office it is to enlighten blind eyes, and whose delight it is to quicken and enliven dead souls.
But what doth this state of spiritual death imply?
It doth suppose and imply a state of separation from God, insensibility of that dismal state, an impotency and inability to recover ourselves out of that condition, and our loathsomeness and offensiveness to Almighty God, whilst we continue in it.
In short, every unregenerate man is a dead man, in a double sense.
He is, 1. Legally dead, being under the condemnatory sentence of the law; we call a man underthe sentence of death, a dead man.
2. Spiritually dead, as being destitute of a principle of spiritual life, a quickening principle to enable the soul to perform spiritual operations. Thus before regeneration are we dead, in opposition to justification: and dead in opposition to sanctification also; and the fatal instrument, by which our souls die, is here discovered, dead in or by trespasses and sins. This is the sword that kills souls, and cuts them off from God. You hath he quickened, being dead in trespasses and sins.
Observe, 2. The choice and singular privilege and favour vouchsafed to the Ephesians, in and under the power of spiritual death; they were quickened; that is, made spiritually alive by the quickening or life-giving power of the Spirit of God. A regenerate man is a living man; he lives a life of justification, which consists in pardon of sin.
A condemned man’s pardon is his life; and he lives a life of sanctification, having received from the Holy Spirit a vital principle of grace in all the powers and faculties of the soul: justification reconciles God to us, sanctification reconciles us to God; justification takes away the legal enmity, sanctification the natural enmity between God and us.
Here note, That the person who is spiritually quickened, is universally quickened; there is not a faculty in the soul but is spiritually dead, and therefore not a faculty but must be spiritually quickened. As there is an universal pollution in every faculty, so must there be an universal renovation; for no spiritual duty can be performed without it, no spiritual privilege can be enjoyed without it, and we can never be saved hereafter, is not spiritually quickened here: but if quickened aright, we live a divine life, the life (in some measure) which God himself lives; and this must needs be an excellent life and a pleasant life here on earth, and shall be an everlasting life with Christ in heaven: Whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die.
Observe 3. The person quickening described: You hath he quickened; that is, God the Father, who, Eph 1:17, is said to have given them the spirit of wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of himself. Man in his natural state considered, is unable of himself to quicken himself; he doth not so much as desire the quickening grace of God, till God gives the grace of desire.
Alas! the understanding is naturally so blind, the heart so hard, and the will so stout and stubborn, that none but a divine power can enlighten the one, and efficaciously incline the other: it is a change of stone into flesh, of a dead sinner into a living saint. A change from nature to grace requires as much or more divine power, than a change from grace to glory. To see a creature naturally filthy, now to delight in purity; to see a sinner that by nature drinks in iniquity like water, now thirsting after righteousness; to see a man that loathed the holy law and holy ways of God, now longing to walk in them, and to come to an exact conformity to God in them; these acts are above nature, contrary to nature, and consequently the God of grace is the author of them: You hath he quickened.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v1 The miserable condition of the Ephesians by nature is…
The miserable condition of the Ephesians by nature is here in part described. Observed, 1. Unregenerate souls are dead in trespasses and sins. All those who are in their sins, are dead in sins; yea, in trespasses and sins, which may signify all sorts of sins, habitual and actual, sins of heart and of life. Sin is the death of the soul. Wherever that prevails there is a privation of all spiritual life. Sinners are dead in state, being destitute of the principles, and powers of spiritual life; and cut off from God, the fountain of life: and they are dead in law, as a condemned malefactor is said to be a dead man. 2. A state of sin is a state of conformity to this world, Eph 2:2. In the first verse he speaks of their internal state, in this of their outward conversation: Wherein, in which trespasses and sins, in time past you walked, you lived and behaved yourselves in such a manner as the men of the world are used to do. 3. We are by nature bond-slaves to sin and Satan. Those who walk in trespasses and sins, and according to the course of this world, walk according to the prince of the power of the air. The devil, or the prince of devils, is thus described. See Mat 12:24, Mat 12:26. The legions of apostate angels are as one power united under one chief; and therefore what is called the powers of darkness elsewhere is here spoken of in the singular number. The air is represented as the seat of his kingdom: and it was the opinion of both Jews and heathens that the air is full of spirits, and that there they exercise and exert themselves. The devil seems to have some power (by God's permission) in the lower region of the air; there he is at hand to tempt men, and to do as much mischief to the world as he can: but it is the comfort and joy of God's people that he who is head over all things to the church has conquered the devil and has him in his chain. But wicked men are slaves to Satan, for they walk according to him; they conform their lives and actions to the will and pleasure of this great usurper. The course and tenour of their lives are according to his suggestions, and in compliance with his temptations; they are subject to him, and are led captive by him at his will, whereupon he is called the god of this world, and the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. The children of disobedience are such as choose to disobey God, and to serve the devil; in these he works very powerfully and effectually. As the good Spirit works that which is good in obedient souls, so this evil spirit works that which is evil in wicked men; and he now works, not only heretofore, but even since the world has been blessed with the light of the glorious gospel. The apostle adds, Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past, which words refer to the Jews, whom he signifies here to have been in the like sad and miserable condition by nature, and to have been as vile and wicked as the unregenerate Gentiles themselves, and whose natural state he further describes in the next words. 4. We are by nature drudges to the flesh, and to our corrupt affections, Eph 2:3. By fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, men contract that filthiness of flesh and spirit from which the apostle exhorts Christians to cleanse themselves, Co2 7:1. The fulfilling of the desires of the flesh and of the mind includes all the sin and wickedness that are acted in and by both the inferior and the higher or nobler powers of the soul. We lived in the actual commission of all those sins to which corrupt nature inclined us. The carnal mind makes a man a perfect slave to his vicious appetite. - The fulfilling of the wills of the flesh, so the words may be rendered, denoting the efficacy of these lusts, and what power they have over those who yield themselves up unto them. 5. We are by nature the children of wrath, even as others. The Jews were so, as well as the Gentiles; and one man is as much so as another by nature, not only by custom and imitation, but from the time when we began to exist, and by reason of our natural inclinations and appetites. All men, being naturally children of disobedience, are also by nature children of wrath: God is angry with the wicked every day. Our state and course are such as deserve wrath, and would end in eternal wrath, if divine grace did not interpose. What reason have sinners then to be looking out for that grace that will make them, of children of wrath, children of God and heirs of glory! Thus far the apostle has described the misery of a natural state in these verses, which we shall find him pursuing again in some following ones.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–3 And you hath he quickened,.... The design of the…
And you hath he quickened,.... The design of the apostle in this and some following verses, is to show the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and to set forth the sad estate and condition of man by nature, and to magnify the riches of the grace of God, and represent the exceeding greatness of his power in conversion: the phrase
hath he quickened, is not in the original text, but is supplied from Eph 2:5, where it will be met with and explained: here those who are quickened with Christ, and by the power and grace of God, are described in their natural and unregenerate estate,
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who were dead in trespasses and sins; not only dead in Adam, in whom they sinned, being their federal head and representative; and in a legal sense, the sentence of condemnation and death having passed upon them; but in a moral sense, through original sin, and their own actual transgressions: which death lies in a separation from God, Father, Son, and Spirit, such are without God, and are alienated from the life of God, and they are without Christ, who is the author and giver of life, and they are sensual, not having the Spirit, who is the spirit of life; and in a deformation of the image of God, such are dead as to their understandings, wills, and affections, with respect to spiritual things, and as to their capacity to do any thing that is spiritually good; and in a loss of original righteousness; and in a privation of the sense of sin and misery; and in a servitude to sin, Satan, and the world: hence it appears, that man must be in himself unacceptable to God, infectious and hurtful to his fellow creatures, and incapable of helping himself: so it was usual with the Jews to call a wicked and ignorant man, a dead man; they say (i),
"there is no death like that of those that transgress the words of the law, who are called, "dead men", and therefore the Scripture says, "turn and live".''
And again (k),
"no man is called a living man, but he who is in the way of truth in this world.----And a wicked man who does not go in the way of truth, is called, "a dead man".''
And once more (l).
"whoever is without wisdom, lo, he is "as a dead man";''
See Gill on Ti1 5:6. The Alexandrian and Claromontane copies, and one of Stephens's, and the Vulgate Latin version, read, "dead in your trespasses and sins"; and the Syriac version, "dead in your sins and in your trespasses"; and the Ethiopic version only, "dead in your sins".
(i) Zohar in Gen, fol. 41. 3. (k) Ib. in Num. fol. 76. 1. Vid. ib;. in Exod. fol. 44. 2. (l) Caphtor, fol. 30. 2.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1–3 And he hath quickened you - In the nineteenth…
And he hath quickened you - In the nineteenth and twentieth verses of the preceding chapter, St. Paul spoke of God's working in them by the same almighty power whereby he raised Christ from the dead. On the mention of this he, in the fulness of his heart, runs into a flow of thought concerning the glory of Christ's exaltation in the three following verses. He here resumes the thread of his discourse. Who were dead - Not only diseased, but dead; absolutely void of all spiritual life; and as incapable of quickening yourselves, as persons literally dead. In trespasses and sins-Sins seem to be spoken chiefly of the gentiles, who knew not God; trespasses, of the Jews, who had his law, and yet regarded it not, ver. 5. The latter herein obeyed the flesh; the former, the prince of the power of the air.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1–3 The character of the Ephesians previously to their conversion
CHAPTER II.
The character of the Ephesians previously to their conversion
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to Christianity, 1-3.
By what virtue they were changed, and for what purpose, 4-7.
They were saved by faith, 8, 9.
And created unto good works, 10.
The apostle enters into the particulars of their former
miserable state, 11, 12.
And those of their present happy state, 13.
Christ has broken down the middle wall of partition between the
Jews and Gentiles, and proclaims reconciliation to both, 14-17.
The glorious privileges of genuine believers, 18-22.
NOTES ON CHAP. II.
Verse 1. And you hath he quickened] This chapter should not have been separated from the preceding, with which it is most intimately connected. As Christ fills the whole body of Christian believers with his fulness, (Eph 1:23,) so had he dealt with the converted Ephesians, who before were dead in trespasses, and dead in sins. DEATH is often used by all writers, and in all nations, to express a state of extreme misery. The Ephesians, by trespassing and sinning, had brought themselves into a state of deplorable wretchedness, as had all the heathen nations; and having thus sinned against God, they were condemned by him, and might be considered as dead in law-incapable of performing any legal act, and always liable to the punishment of death, which they had deserved, and which was ready to be inflicted upon them.
Trespasses, παραπτωμασι, may signify the slightest deviation from the line and rule of moral equity, as well as any flagrant offence; for these are equally transgressions, as long as the sacred line that separates between vice and virtue is passed over.
Sins, αμαρτιαις, may probably mean here habitual transgression; sinning knowingly and daringly.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 3 Eph 2:1-2. And you, &c. — In the nineteenth…
Eph 2:1-2. And you, &c. — In the nineteenth and twentieth verses of the preceding chapter, the apostle had spoken of God’s working in the believers at Ephesus, in order to their conversion, and resurrection from spiritual death to spiritual life, by the same almighty power whereby he raised Christ from the dead. On the mention of this he runs on, in the fulness of his heart, into a flow of thought concerning the glory of Christ’s exaltation, in the three following verses. He here resumes the thread of his discourse. You hath he quickened — Or, (as these words are not in the original,) if we connect this verse with the last clause of the preceding chapter, we may read, you hath he filled, namely, with his gifts and graces, and thereby hath made you alive to himself; who were dead — Not only diseased, but dead; absolutely devoid of all spiritual life, and as incapable of quickening yourselves, as persons literally dead are of restoring their bodies to life. In this sense Locke paraphrases the words: “Ye were so entirely under the power of sin, that ye had no more power, nor hope, nor ability, to get out of it, than men dead and buried have to get out of their graves.” The truth is, unawakened, impenitent, and unbelieving sinners, are dead in three respects; 1st, They are under condemnation, on account of their past depravity and various transgressions, to the second death, or to future wrath and punishment, like criminals under sentence of death for their crimes. 2d, They are destitute of all union with God, and in a state of separation from him, and alienation from his life, chap. Eph 4:18; Col 1:21. 3d, They are carnally minded; that is, their thoughts and affections are set upon visible and temporal things, which is spiritual death, (Rom 8:6,) implying deadness or aversion to spiritual and divine things. In trespasses and sins — Sins seem to be spoken chiefly of the Gentiles who knew not God; trespasses of the Jews, who had his law, and yet regarded it not. Or the expressions may be used indiscriminately, without any such distinction being intended; for all trespasses are sins, and all sins are trespasses, properly speaking. Wherein in time past ye walked — Περιεπατησατε, ye walked about, or walked continually. For, as Grotius observes, the word significat consuetudinem, implies custom, or habit. According to the course of this world — Κατα τον αιωνα, according to the age, or the common usage of the age in which you lived, and to those corrupt principles and practices which prevailed around you. The word above mentioned, translated course, properly means along series of times, wherein one corrupt age follows another. The prince of the power of the air — “That wicked spirit, who commands the legions of fallen angels, that by divine permission range in the air, and fly from place to place, in pursuit of their pernicious purpose of corrupting and destroying mankind.” So Dr. Doddridge, who observes, “This refers to a Jewish tradition, that the air is inhabited by evil spirits, a notion which the apostle seems to approve.” Macknight’s interpretation of the passage is nearly the same, as follows: “Power, being here put for those who exercise power, (as it is likewise chap. Eph 1:21, and Col 2:10,) signifies those powerful evil spirits, whose confinement [mentioned by Jude, Eph 2:6] is not of such a nature as to hinder them from going to and fro on the earth. And therefore, being irreconcilable enemies of God and goodness, they use the liberty granted to them in opposing God, and in ruining men by their temptations, 1Pe 5:8. And that they may do this the more effectually, they have ranged themselves under the direction of one chief, here called their prince; but in other passages Satan, and the devil. Perhaps also he is called their prince, because he instigated them to rebel against God, and was their leader in that rebellion. See 1Jn 5:19.” To these quotations we may add, with Bengelius, “A power this the effect of which all may perceive, though all do not understand the cause of it; a power unspeakably penetrating and widely diffused, but yet, as to its baleful influences, beneath the orb of believers.” The spirit that now worketh — Ενεργουντος, worketh inwardly with energy. So he did, and so he doth work in all ages; in the children of disobedience — In all that disbelieve and disobey the gospel.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1–3 And you hath he quickened - The words “hath…
And you hath he quickened - The words “hath he quickened,” or “made to live,” are supplied, but not improperly, by our translators. The object of the apostle is to show the great power which God had evinced toward the people Eph 1:19; and to show that this was put forth in connection with the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and his exaltation to the right hand of God in heaven; see the notes at Rom 6:4-11; compare Col 2:12-13; Col 3:1. The words “hath he quickened” mean, hath he made alive, or made to live; Joh 5:21; Rom 4:17; 1Co 15:36.
Who were dead in trespasses and sins - On the meaning of the word “dead,” see the notes at Rom 5:12; Rom 6:2, note. It is affirmed here of those to whom Paul wrote at Ephesus, that before they were converted, they were “dead in sins.” There is not anywhere a more explicit proof of depravity than this, and no stronger language can be used. They were “dead” in relation to that to which they afterward became alive - i. e., to holiness. Of course, this does not mean that they were in all respects dead. It does not mean that they had no animal life, or that they did not breathe, and walk, and act. Nor can it mean that they had no living intellect or mental powers, which would not have been true. Nor does it settle any question as to their ability or power while in that state. It simply affirms a fact - that in relation to real spiritual life they were, in consequence of sin, like a dead man in regard to the objects which are around him.
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A corpse is insensible. It sees not, and hears not, and feels not. The sound of music, and the voice of friendship and of alarm, do not arouse it. The rose and the lily breathe forth their fragrance around it, but the corpse perceives it not. The world is busy and active around it, but it is unconscious of it all. It sees no beauty in the landscape; hears not the voice of a friend; looks not upon the glorious sun and stars; and is unaffected by the running stream and the rolling ocean. So with the sinner in regard to the spiritual and eternal world. He sees no beauty in religion; he hears not the call of God; he is unaffected by the dying love of the Saviour; and he has no interest in eternal realities. In all these he feels no more concern, and sees no more beauty, than a dead man does in the world around him. Such is, in “fact,” the condition of a sinful world. There is, indeed, life, and energy, and motion. There are vast plans and projects, and the world is intensely active. But in regard to religion, all is dead. The sinner sees no beauty there; and no human power can arouse him to act for God, anymore than human power can rouse the sleeping dead, or open the sightless eyeballs on the light of day. The same power is needed in the conversion of a sinner which is needed in raising the dead; and one and the other alike demonstrate the omnipotence of him who can do it.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1–3 He enlivened you, when you were dead. These words,…
He enlivened you, when you were dead. These words, he enlivened or restored to life, are necessary to express the literal sense and construction, as appears from the following fifth verse. by what is here translated offences, are commonly understood trespasses less grievous than by the word sins. (Witham) --- God hath quickened you, or restored you to life; these words, expressed in ver. 5, are understood in this: in some editions they are expressed. (Bible de Vence)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain On v1 Ephesians Chapter 2
Ephesians Chapter 2
In chapter 2 [4] the operation of the power of God on earth, for the purpose of bringing souls into the enjoyment of their heavenly privileges, and thus of forming the assembly here below, is presented, rather than the unfolding of the privileges themselves, and consequently that of the counsels of God. It is not even these counsels; it is the grace and the power which work for their fulfilment, by leading souls to the result which this power will produce according to those counsels. Christ is first seen, not as God come down here and presented to sinners, but as dead, that is, where we were by sin, but raised from it by power. He for sin had died; God had raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand. We were dead in our trespasses and sins: He has quickened us together with Him. But as it is the earth that is in question, and the operation of power and grace on the earth, the Spirit naturally speaks of the condition of those in whom this grace works, in fact of the condition of all. At the same time, in the earthly forms of religion, in the system that existed on earth, there were those who were nigh and those who were far off. Now we have seen that in the full blessing of which the apostle speaks the nature of God Himself is concerned; in view of which, and to glorify which, all His counsels were settled. Therefore outward forms, although some of them had been established provisionally on the earth by God’s own authority, could now have no value. They had served for the manifestation of the ways of God as shadows of things to come, and had been connected with the display of God’s authority on earth among men, maintaining some knowledge of God-important things in their place; but these figures could do nothing as to bringing souls into relationship with God, in order to enjoy the eternal manifestation of His nature, in hearts made capable of it by grace, through their participation in that nature and reflecting it. For this, these figures were utterly worthless; they were not the manifestation of these eternal principles. But the two classes of man, Jews and Gentles, were there; and the apostle speaks of them both. Grace takes up persons from both to form one body, one new man, by a new creation in Christ.
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In the first two verses of this chapter he speaks of those who were brought out from among the nations that knew not God-Gentiles, as they are usually called. In Eph 2:3 he speaks of the Jews-”We all also,” he says. He does not enter here into the dreadful details contained in Rom 3:5,[5] because his object is not to convince the individual, in order to shew him the means of justification, but to set forth the counsels of God in grace. Here then he speaks of the distance from God in which man is found under the power of darkness. With regard to the nations, he speaks of the universal condition of the world. The whole course of the world, the entire system, was according to the prince of the power of the air; the world itself was under the government of him who worked in the hearts of the children of disobedience, who in self-will evaded the government of God, although they could not evade His judgment.
If the Jews had external privileges; if they were not in a direct way under the government of the prince of this world (as was the case with the nations that were plunged in idolatry, and sunk in all the degradation of that system in which man wallowed, in the licentiousness into which demons delighted to plunge him in derision of his wisdom); if the Jews were not, like the Gentiles, under the government of demons, nevertheless in their nature they were led by the same desires as those by which demons influenced the poor heathen. The Jews led the same life as to the desires of the flesh; they were children of wrath, even as others, for that is the condition of men; they are in their nature the children of wrath. In their outward privileges the Israelites were the people of God; by nature they were men as others. And remark here these words, “by nature.” The Spirit is not speaking here of a judgment pronounced on the part of God, nor of sins committed, nor of Israel having failed in their relationship to God through falling into idolatry and rebellion, nor even of their having rejected the Messiah and so deprived themselves of all resource-all of which Israel had done. Neither does He speak of a positive judgment from God pronounced on the manifestation of sin. They were, even as all men, in their nature the children of wrath. This wrath was the natural consequence of the state in which they were[6] Man as he was, Jew or Gentile, and wrath, naturally went together, even as there is a natural link between good and righteousness. Now God, though in judgment taking cognisance of all that is contrary to His will and glory, in His own nature is above all that. To those who are worthy of wrath He can be rich in mercy, for He is so in Himself. The apostle therefore presents Him here as acting according to His own nature towards the objects of His grace. We were dead, says the apostle-dead in our trespasses and sins. God comes, in His love, to deliver us by His power-”God, who is rich in mercy, according to his great love wherewith he loved us.” 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 quickened us; not only that-He has quickened us together with Christ. He had not said in a direct way, that Christ had been quickened, although it may be said, where the power of the Spirit in Himself is spoken of. He was however raised from the dead; and, when we are in question, we are told that all the energy by which He came forth from death is employed also for our quickening; and not only that; even in being quickened we are associated with Him. He comes forth from death-we come forth with Him. God has imparted this life to us. It is His pure grace, and a grace that has saved us, that found us dead in sins, and brought us out of death even as Christ came out of it, and by the same power, and brought us out with Him by the power of life in resurrection-with Christ, [7] to set us in the light and in the favour of God, as a new creation, even as Christ Himself is there. 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 quickened the one and the other with Christ.
Now, Christ having done this, Jews and Gentiles, without the differences which death had abolished, are found together in the risen and ascended Christ, sitting together in Him in a new condition common to both-a condition described by that of Christ Himself.[8] Poor sinners from among the Gentiles, and from among the disobedient and gainsaying Jews, are brought into the position where Christ is, by the power which raised Him from the dead and set Him at God’s right hand,[9] to shew forth in the ages to come the immense riches of the grace which had accomplished it. A Mary Magdalene, a crucified thief, companions in glory with the Son of God, all we who believe, will bear witness to it. It is by grace we are saved. Now we are not yet in the glory: it is by faith. Would any one say that at least the faith is of man? No[10] it is not of ourselves in this respect either; all is the gift of God; not of works, in order that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship.
In how powerful a way the Spirit puts God Himself forward, as the source and operator of the whole, and the sole one! It is a creation, but, as His work, of a result which is in accordance with His own character. Now it is in us that this is done. He takes up poor sinners to display His glory in them. If it is the operation of God, assuredly it will be for good works: He has created us in Christ for them. And observe here that if God has created us for good works, these must in their nature be characterised by Him who has wrought in us, creating us according to His own thoughts. It is not man who seeks to drawnigh to God, or to satisfy Him by doing works that are pleasing to Him according to the law-the measure of that which man ought to be; it is God who takes us up in our sins, when there is not one moral movement in our hearts (“none that understandeth, none that seeketh after God”), and creates us anew for works in accordance with this new creation. It is an entirely new position that we are placed in, according to this new creation of God-a new character that we are invested with according to the pre-determination of God. The works are pre-determined also according to the character which we put on by this new creation. All is absolutely according to the mind of God Himself. It is not duty according to the old creation.[11]
All is the fruit of God’s own thoughts in the new creation The law disappears with regard to us even as to its works; together with the nature to which it applied. Man obedient to the law was man as he ought to be according to the first Adam; the man in Christ must walk according to the heavenly life of the second Adam, and walk worthy of Him as the Head of a new creation, being raised up with Him, and being the fruit of the new creation-worthy of Him who has formed him for this very thing (2Co 5:5).
The Gentiles therefore enjoying this ineffable privilege-although the apostle does not recognise Judaism as a true circumcision-were to remember from whence they had been taken; without God and without hope as they were in the world, strangers to all the promises. But however far off they had been, now in Christ they were brought nigh by His blood. He had broken down the middle wall, having annulled the law of commandments by which the Jew, who was distinguished by these ordinances, was separated from the Gentiles. These ordinances had their sphere of action in the flesh. But Christ (as living in connection with all that), being dead, has abolished the enmity to form in Himself of the two-Jew and Gentile-one new man; the Gentiles brought nigh by the blood of Christ, and the middle wall of partition broken down, to reconcile both to God in one body; having by the cross not only made peace, but destroyed-by grace that was common to both, and to which one could make no more claim than the other, since it was for sin-the enmity that existed, till then, between the privileged Jew and the idolatrous Gentile far from God, abolishing in His flesh the enmity, the law of commandments contained in ordinances.
Having made peace, He proclaimed it with this object to the one and the other, whether far off or nigh. For by Christ we all-whether Jews or Gentiles-have access by one Spirit to the Father. It is not the Jehovah of the Jews (whose name was not called upon the Gentiles); it is the Father of Christians, of the redeemed by Jesus Christ, who are adopted to form part of the family of God. Thus, albeit a Gentile, one is no longer a stranger or foreigner; one is of the Christian and heavenly citizenship; of the true house of God Himself. Such is grace. As to this world, being thus incorporated in Christ, this is our position. All, Jew or Gentile, thus gathered together in one body, constitute the assembly on earth. The apostles and prophets (of the New Testament) form the foundation of the building, Christ Himself being the chief corner stone. In Him the whole building rises to be a temple, the Gentiles having their place, and forming with the others the dwelling-place on earth of God, who is present by His Spirit. Firstly, he looks at the progressive work which was being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, the whole assembly according to the mind of God; and, secondly, he looks at the union which existed between the Ephesians and other believing Gentiles and the Jews, as forming God’s house on the earth at that moment. God dwells in it by the Holy Ghost.[12]
Chapter 1 had set before us the counsels and purposes of God; beginning with the relationship of the sons and the Father, and, when the operation of God is spoken of, the assembly as the body of Christ united to Him who is Head over all things. Chapter 2, treating of the work which calls out the assembly, which creates it here below by grace, sets before us this assembly on the one hand, growing up to a holy temple, and then as the present habitation of God here below by the Spirit.[13]
Footnotes for Ephesians Chapter 2
4: It is this power which, raising the saints with Christ from the death of sin, and uniting them to Him the head, forms their relationship to Him as His body. The first part of the chapter gave our individual relationship to the Father, in that Christ is the firstborn among many brethren. Here we come to corporate relationship to Christ, the last and risen man. Up to the second part of the prayer we have the counsels of God. From the latter part we have the operations of power to accomplish them. And it is here our union with Christ first comes in, which, though God’s counsels as to it are revealed, yet spiritually is wrought now, as seen in chapter 5.
5: Take especial notice here, that, in the Ephesians, the Spirit does not describe the life of the old man in sin. God and His own work are everything. Man is viewed as dead in his sins; that which is produced is therefore entirely of God, a new creation on His part. A man who lives in sin must die, must judge himself, must repent, by grace be cleansed; that is, he is dealt with as a living man. Here man is without any movement of spiritual life: God does everything; He quickens and raises up. It is a new creation.
6: Faith, when taught by the word, always goes back to this: judgment refers to deeds done in the body. But we were dead in sins-no living movement of the heart towards God. We do not (Joh 5:1-47) come into judgment, but are passed from death unto life.
7: Here it is a wholly new creation, and the new estate is looked at simply in itself. We were dead towards God in our old one. Man is not looked at here as alive in sins and responsible, but as entirely dead in them, and created again: hence in this part of the epistle we have no forgiveness, no justification. The man is notlooked at as a living responsible man. In Colossians we are risen with Christ, but “having forgiven you all trespasses” which Christ had borne in coming down into death. Here, too, we have not the old man, and death brought into it, though both walk and the old man are recognised as facts, though not in connection with resurrection. In Colossians we have; even when “dead in your sins” is spoken of, it is added, “and the uncircumcision of your flesh,” for it is dead towards God. The epistle to the Romans looks at responsible man in the world; hence you have fully justification, death to sin, and no resurrection with Christ. The man is a living man here, though justified, and alive in Christ.
8: It is not merely life communicated (that we had in Romans), but a totally new place and standing which we have taken, life having the character of resurrection out of a state of death in sins. And here we are not viewed as quickened by Christ, but quickened with Him. He is the raised and glorified man.
9: In Colossians the saints are only seen risen with Christ, with a hope laid up for them in heaven, and are called to set their affections on things above, where Christ and their life with Him are hid. Moreover their resurrection with Christ is only an administrative one for this world in baptism, in connection with faith in the power which raised Christ. We have no union of Jews and Gentiles in Him as risen and in heavenly places. Indeed in Colossians, Gentiles only are before the mind of the apostle.
10: I am quite aware of what critics have to say here as to gender; but it is equally true as to grace, and to say, “by grace . . . and that not of yourselves,” is simply nonsense; but by faith might be supposed to be of ourselves, though grace cannot. Therefore the Spirit of God adds, “and that [not it] not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” That is, the believing is God’s gift, not of ourselves. And this is confirmed by what follows, “not of works.” But the object of the apostle is to shew that the whole thing was of grace and of God-God’s workmanship-a new creation. So far, grace and faith and all go together.
11: Not that God does not recognise the relationships He had originally formed-He does fully when we are in them; but the measure of the new creation is another thing
12: It is exceedingly important in these days to see the difference between this progressive building, never complete till all believers who are to form Christ’s body are gathered in, and the present temple of God on earth. In the former Christ is the builder. He carries it on without fail, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. This is not yet complete nor viewed as a whole till built. Hence in the Epistles we never find a builder in this case: in Peter, “unto whom coming as to a living stone, ye also as living stones are built up”; so here, in Ephesians, it grows to a holy temple in the Lord. But, besides this, the present manifested professing body is looked at as a whole on earth; and man is looked at as building. “Ye are God’s building” (1Co 3:1-23). “I, as a wise masterbuilder, have laid the foundation: let every man take heed how he buildeth thereon.” Man’s responsibility comes in, and the work is the subject of judgment. It is the attributing to this the privileges of the body, and of that which Christ builds, that has produced popery and all that is akin to it. The corrupt thing which is to come under judgment is falsely clothed with the security of Christ’s work. Here in Eph 2:1-22 we find not only the progressive and surely constructed work, but the present building together as a fact in the blessing of it, without reference to human responsibility in building.
13: Chapter 2 speaks indeed of the body (Eph 2:16); but the introduction of the house is a new element and requires some development. Although the work which is accomplished in the creation of the members who are to compose the body is all of God, it is accomplished on earth. The counsels of God have in view, first individuals, to place them near Himself, such as He would have them; then, having exalted Christ above every name now or hereafter, gives Him to be head of the body, formed of individuals united to Christ in heaven over all things. They will be perfect according to their Head. But the work on earth, if it gathers together the new-born, gathers them together on the earth. Now that which answers here below to the presence of Christ in heaven is the presence of the Holy Ghost on earth. The individual believer is indeed the temple of God, but in this chapter it is the whole body of Christians formed on earth that is spoken of; they become the house, the dwelling-place, of God on the earth. Wonderful and solemn truth. Immense privilege and source of blessing; but equally great responsibility. It will be observed that, in speaking of the body of Christ, we speak of the fruit of God’s eternal purpose and own operation; and, although the Spirit may apply this name to the assembly of God on earth, as accounted to be composed of real members of Christ, nevertheless the body of Christ, as formed by the quickening power of God according to His eternal purpose, is composed of persons united to the Head as real members. The house of God, as now set up on earth, is the fruit of a work of God, here entrusted to men, not the proper object of His counsels (though the city in Revelation in a measure answers to it). In so far as it is the work of God, it is evident that this house is composed of those who are truly called of God, and so God set it up, and as it is spoken of here (compare Act 2:47). But we must not confound the practical result of this work, accomplished in the hands of men, and under their responsibility (1Co 3:1-23), with the object of the counsels of God. A true member of Christ can no one be without being really united to the Head, neither a true stone in the house; but the house can be the dwelling-place of God, although that which is not a true stone may enter into its construction. But it is impossible that one not born of God should be a member of the body of Christ. See the preceding note.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 B. The extent and mission of the church
B. The extent and mission of the church
Eph_2:1-22
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1. Reminder of the previous condition of death and the glorious new creation
(Eph_2:1-10.)
1And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins [You also who were dead in your1 trespasses and your sins]; 2Wherein in time past ye [Wherein ye once] walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power [or powers]2 of the air, [of] the spirit that [which] now worketh in the children [sons] of disobedience: 3Among whom also [even] we all had our conversation [way of life] in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires [doing the wishes] of the flesh and of the mind [thoughts]; and [we] were by nature3 the children of wrath, even as others [the rest:—]. 4But God, who is [being] rich in mercy, for [because of] his great love wherewith he loved us, 5Even when we were dead in sins [our trespasses], hath [omit hath]4 quickened us together with Christ, 6(by grace ye are [have been] saved;) And hath [omit hath] raised us up together [with Him],5 and made us sit together [with Him] in [the] heavenly places in Christ Jesus: 7That in the ages to come he might shew [That he might shew forth in the ages which are to come]6 the exceeding riches7 of his grace, in his [omit his] kindness toward us, through [toward us in]8 Christ Jesus. 8For by grace are ye 9[have ye been] saved through faith9 it is the gift of God [the gift is God’s]. Not; of works, lest any [that no] man should boast. 10For we are his workmanship [his handiwork are we]10, created in Christ Jesus unto [for] good works, which God hath before ordained [God before prepared] we should walk in them.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Connection and Summary.—After the Apostle has been led, by his petition for enlightenment respecting the glory purposed from eternity and already begun, to the carrying out of this purpose in the Church of Christ, the Body of which He is the Head, and in such a manner too, that Eph_1:23, “so grand and solemn in matter and in manner,” is adapted to form “a full-toned conclusion” (Meyer), his look is again turned to his readers to notice the “mighty working of the Father, through the resurrection and ascension of the Son, done once for all, and yet taking place in every one called into the Church” (Stier). First of all he is moved by “a glance at the similar condition of death in the case of the Gentiles (Eph_2:1-2) and of the Jews (Eph_2:3)” (Stier) and then by the thought of God, who out of mercy has quickened and blessed the wretched in, with and through Christ (Eph_2:4-7): of grace through faith (Eph_2:8-9), new-creating in Christ (Eph_2:10)!
[Braune, as will be seen below, arranges this section into paragraphs: Eph_2:1-3, the condition of death out of Christ; Eph_2:4, the Deliverer; Eph_2:5-6, the deliverance; Eph_2:7, the purpose; Eph_2:8-10, the means of bringing about the deliverance.—Hodge, who is always clear in his analysis, finds three principal topics treated of in this section:—(1) The spiritual state of the Ephesians before their conversion, Eph_2:1-3. (2) The change which God had wrought in them, Eph_2:4-6. (3) The design for which that change had been effected, Eph_2:7-10. He then enters into details.—Alford: “The power of the Father in quickening us, both Gentiles and Jews, in and with Christ (1–6); His purpose in manifesting this power (7); inference respecting the method of our salvation.” This follows Stier’s view, who refers the preceding clause to God.—R.]
Hence the connection of the beginning of this chapter (καὶ ὑμᾶς συνεζωποίησε, Eph_2:5) with “wrought” (Eph_1:20, Bengel) or “gave” (Eph_1:22, Harless) is inadmissible. Nor is καὶ ὄντας ὑμᾶς to be joined with εἰς ἡμᾶς τοὺς πιστεύοντας (Eph_1:19, Knatchbull and others) or with πληρουμένου (Eph_1:23, Calovius, Koppe and others); nor is it necessary to complain here again, that a well-continued thread of discourse can scarcely be found in this Epistle (Rueckert). Although these grammatical connections are to be rejected, there is still an internal relation: as the petition (Eph_1:15-19) passed over into the typical and consolatory view of the exaltation of Christ, this section by applying this to the readers in effect continues the subject.
The condition of death out of Christ (Eph_2:1-3) The construction is not easy at first sight, but otherwise regular: καὶ ὑμας ὄντας (Eph_2:1)—ὁ θεός (Eph_2:4)—συςεζωοποίνσεν (Eph_2:5). The expansion of the object (Eph_2:1-3), alone occasions the beginning of a new sentence (Eph_2:4), as ὁ δὲθεός shows, indicating as do autem, inquam the epanalepsis (Winer, p. 412); in consequence the object already described (Eph_2:1-3) is again repeated in briefer statement (Eph_2:5). So Theophylact and most ancient and modern expositors. [Ellicott thus states the same view: “Eph_2:1, after having its structure interrupted by the two relatival sentences, Eph_2:2-3, is renewed in Eph_2:4 (not Eph_2:5, Schott) by means of δέ resumptive (Herm. Viger, No. 544), and there further elucidated by the interpolated nominative Θεός, expanded in application by the more comprehensive ἡμᾶς, and concluded in Eph_2:5.”—Hodge (more popularly, but less exactly): “He dwells so long, in Eph_2:2-4, on the natural state of the Ephesians, that he is obliged, in Eph_2:5, to repeat substantially the beginning of Eph_2:1, in order to complete the sentence there commenced.” The objection to the E. V.: hath he quickened, aside from the wrong tense, is that “he” has no antecedent, if Eph 2:23 refers to Christ, within reasonable distance.—R.]
Eph_2:1. You also, καὶ ὑμᾶς, applies the discourse to the readers, without opposing ὑμᾶς to any others, than the genus, the whole church, as members of which they here come into special consideration, since they also have experienced, what has been experienced by the whole, and are a proof of the truth before uttered. [In rendering καὶ ὑμᾶς, “you also,” it is not implied that they are contrasted with other Christians; it is chosen rather to avoid the simple connection with what precedes which is expressed by “and you,” and to give prominence to the word “you;” not thus introducing “a special exemplification of the general act of grace in Eph 2:23,” but implying a parallelism between the physical death in the case of Christ and the spiritual death in their case, as indeed the governing verb συνεζωοποίησεν (Eph_2:5) suggests.—R.]
Who were dead in your trespasses and your sins, [ὄντας νεκροὺς τοῖς παραπτώμασι καὶ ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ὑμῶν. See Textual Note1].—Ὄντας, depending on συνεζωοποίησε, in view of the ποτέ occurring in the subsequent relative clause, is evidently=cumeratis (Bengel), the condition in which God found them, when He quickened them (Meyer). They were dead through sins; the dative is ablatival, marking the causa efficiens (Grotius, Meyer). Hence it is not equivalent to νεκροὶ τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ (Rom_6:11), ye are dead for sin (Cajetan), nor with Grotius=ἐν τοῖς παραπτώμασι (Col_2:13, the parallel passage, in which the status, the element is emphasized).11
That Paul makes a distinction between παράπτωμα and ἁμαρτία, and what it is, is shown in Rom_5:12-19. There the sin of Adam is termed τὸ τοῦ ἑνὸς παράπτωμα (Eph_2:15; Eph_2:17-18) or παρακοή (Eph_2:19), and through one man ἡ ἁμαρτία has come into the world (Eph_2:12). Comp. Rom_5:20 with Rom_7:10-13. Παράπτωμα is applicable to the first sin of the seduced first man; the idea of misdeed is contained in it, of a deed not considered, temere commissum, i.e., a nolente facere injuriam, while ἁμαρτία, with its manifestations αἱ αμαρτίαι reaches further and deeper (Tittmann, Syn. I., p. 45 ff.).12 There is here an ascent from desertio boni to perpetratio mali (Augustine). To this view approximate Harless [Hodge] (actual sins and manifestations of sin in word, deed or otherwise), Olshausen (actions of sin and the more internal sinful motions of the soul in desires and words), Jerome (delicta cogitatione inchoata and actual sins).13 The distinction: the mental errors and obscurations, the moral sins and vices (Matthies), is unfounded; neither should we apply the former to the Jews and the latter to the Gentiles (Bengel), nor with Stier first think of the law of the State, of the conscience, well-known to the heathen also, and then of the outbreaks of corruption itself. We may not, however, take the two as purely synonymous (Koppe), or deny a real distinction by affirming merely a two-fold representation, fall and transgression (Meyer).—The article points to the sins committed by the readers, Rom_5:12 : ἐφʼ ᾦ πάντες ἥμαρτον. Hence ὑμῶν is an unnecessary explanatory gloss. [It is to be retained on diplomatic and critical grounds, but does not affect the sense.—R.]
Under νεκροί we should understand the dead, made dead; it recalls ἐκ νεκρῶν (Eph_1:20); Christians are no longer dead. But the natural sinful condition, according to the Scripture from Gen_2:17 on, is really a death, because it is without life from and in God (Eph_4:18). It is therefore not=miserable (Koppe and others), nor does it refer to physical death, as though it were equivalent to certo morituri (Meyer), which does not spare them now. Spiritual death alone is spoken of, since God is the source of life (Psa_36:10) and without Him men are in the shadow of-death (Mat_4:16; Luk_1:79; Mat_8:22; Luk_15:24; Luk_15:32; Rom_7:9-10). So nearly all expositors. [No weakening of the sense is admissible; comp. Doctr. Note 3, d.—R.]
Eph_2:2. Wherein ye once walked [ἐν αἶς ποτὲ περιεπατήσατε].—Ἐν αῖ̓ς, which connects with ἁμαρτίαις, the word just preceding and forming a climax, denotes the causa of the condition of death as a developed condition, as a desired element. Ποτὲ περιεπατήσατε joined with νεκρούς is an oxymoron, like 1Ti_5:6 : ζῶσα τέθνηκεν ΙΙεριπατεῖν (Eph_4:17; Eph_5:2; Rom_6:4; 2Co_4:2; Col_3:7) has been transferred from the Hebrew (חלך) and designates walking as to the mode of life (Winer, p. 32); in English it designates the being at home, having entrance and exit, having one’s doings and movements, having one’s residence (Mat_17:22 : they abode in Galilee”). [Eadie: “The ἐν marks out the sphere or walk which they usually and continually trod, for in this sleep of death there is a strange somnambulism. Col_3:7.”—R.]
According to the course of this world [κατὰ τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ κόσμου τούτου].—Κατά now defines a relation of those walking to a power. This relation qualifies the walk more closely as one directed thereby, dependent thereon, determined thereby; “according to,” ‘ ‘by virtue of” are the two significations required here (Stier), which are combined in: corresponding to. This power is designated by τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, “the course of this world.” This combination is peculiar, the words themselves are frequent, seeming to be used indiscriminately: 1Co_2:6 (σοφία τοῦ αἰωνος τούτου); Eph_3:18 (σοφὸς ἐν τῷ αἰῶνι τούτῳ); Eph_2:19 (σοφία τοῦ κόσμου τούτου); Eph_1:20 (σοφία τοῦ κόσμου); Joh_12:31 (ὁ ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου τούτου); 1Co_2:6 (τῶν ἀρχόντων τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου); 2Co_4:4 (ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου). But the distinction is clearly obvious. Αἰών (Passow sub voce, Harless in loco), from αΐω=ἄημι, ἄω, to breathe, is related to ψυχή, with which Homer joins it, referring to life and time (ævum); hence also ἀπʼ αἰῶνος, ἀπʼ αἰώνων. In the New Testament the notion of time predominates, of periods of time, and the tendencies controlling them, their character, view and mode of life, their spirit. Κόσμος is the created, but fallen, apostate world, more definitely: humanity. The former may occur in the plural, the latter not. Hence Bengel is very correct: Ille hunc regit, el quasi informat; κόσμος est quiddam exterius: αἰών subtilius. “Tempus dicitur non solum physice, sed etiam moraliter, connotata qualitate hominum in eo viventium; el sic αἰών dicit longam temporum seriem, ubi ætas mala malam ætatem excipit.” Act_14:16; 1Pe_1:18. In αἰών here the notion of the tendency of time predominates, and means more what we call the course of the world than lapse (Verlauf); the course includes both the time and its character, as does αἰών also. Hence: according to, corresponding to the course of this world. The αἰών is in itself ethically indefinite, hence αἰὼν πονηρός (Gal_1:4) and the demonstrative οὖτος or a genitive as here τοῦ κόσ μουτούτου. Κόσμος is the external appearance, the external continuance of the world of men, αἰών its course, current, impulse (Stier); the latter may change, vary, in different periods, the former remains, and as the latter is estranged from God, so is this.14
It is incorrect to take the two words as purely synonymous, as though it were τὸν κόσμον τοῦτον (Koppe). We regard as arbitrary the view that they are=τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦτον τοῦ κόσμου (Rueckert), or: τὸν κόσμον τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου (Bretschneider). It is impossible to explain this designation from the gnostic doctrine of Æons, and to understand the devil thereby (Semler). Luther’s rendering: Lauf [so E.V.: “course”] is more apt than: spirit of the age (Matthies), tendency of the age (Olshausen), life (Harless), duration of time (Meyer), course of time (Schenkel).
According to the prince of the powers of the air [κατὰ τὸν ἄρχοντα τῆς ἐξουσίας τοῦ αέρος].—Here Paul evidently passes to what stands behind the course of this world, influencing it, working through it. Κατά places this clause as parallel to the preceding, and τὸνἄρχοντα refers to the master, the prince.15 The genitive τῆς ἐξουσίας denotes the power belonging to and at the command of this prince (Mat_9:34; Mat_12:24; Mar_3:22; Luk_11:15). This power, which is to be considered as collective, is further defined by the genitive τοῦ ἀέρος, “of the air,” most closely connected with it. Ἀήρ, which in its etymology reminds us of αἰών and in its nature of πνεῦμα, is the air, the atmosphere, surrounding the earth, breathed by all, acting upon the κόσμος, the world of men, standing in many relations to and exerting great power and influence upon their life; hence the power which the prince controls, is brought into connection with “the air,” is described by “of the air,” because in this are found the place and character of the power, its medium, element, region and domain, its means and mode; the figurative and literal meanings coalesce, the air as a cosmical and pneumatic reality (Stier); we too say: it lies in the air, in the time, thus denoting a quiet, profound and powerful operation. Thus Satan with his kingdom is sharply characterized, his nature spreading widely miasmata of corrupting power, from which even those truly living can scarcely withdraw or defend themselves, miasmata from diabolical choke-damp (as in the French Revolution) even to the most refined ethereal poisons of classical, æsthetic literature (Eph_6:11-12; Col_1:13). So Œcumenius has described the devil’s power as ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανόν, οὐχ ὑπὲρ τὸν οὐρανόν, concluding thus: φύσις γὰρτοῖς πνεύμασιν ἡ ἐναέριος διατριβή.
We reject therefore those explanations, which take ὁ ἄρχων τῆς ἐξουσίας as princeps potentissimus (Clarius), or the genitive as appositional=ὅς ἐστιν ἐξουσία (Flatt), or cui est potestas (Erasmus and others), or as the object=imperium (Greek and Latin Fathers and others); those taking τῆς ἐξουσίας τοῦ ἀέρος as potestatis aëriæ (Syriac, Bucer and others); or those taking τοῦἀέρος only figuratively (Calvin, Beza), or=τοῦ σκότους (although we find: εσκοτίσθη ὁ ἀήρ, Rev_9:2), either tropically pro obnubilatione mentis (Cocceius, Storr, and others), or pro concreto as darkened spirits, men and bad angels (Flatt), or by metonyme, continens pro contento, the earth surrounded by the atmosphere (Hilary, Bullinger and others), or merely as the region=ἐν τῷ ἀέρι (Baumgarten, not -Crusius), or only as a designation of quality=ἀέριος (A-Lapide, Calixtus and others), or referring it to the “prison,” 2Pe_2:4 (Augustine); nor can we suppose here a remnant of rabbinical tradition (Meyer), or echoes of a Pythagorean view of the world (Meyer, Schenkel), or the influence of Alexandrian gnosis (Elsner and others). Out of such “muddy pools” or untenable speculations Paul would not have drawn his doctrine. Comp. Doctr. Note 3.
[Harless and Stier are very full on this clause. The most extended comments easily accessible to the English reader will be found in Eadie, whose opinion approaches very nearly to that of Braune. The simplest explanation is that of Alford, who thinks the phrase “of the air “is drawn from “the persuasion and common parlance of mankind,” without conveying any teaching respecting demonology. In any case the genitive ἀέρος is to be regarded as a genitive, not of quality, but of place, either literal or figurative, or both, as Braune holds. Hodge, while not definitely deciding, seems to favor the untenable view, that “of the air” is=“of darkness.” Eadie: “The κόσμος of the New Testament is opposed to God, for it hates Christianity: the believer does not belong to it, for it is crucified to him and he to it. That same world may be an ideal sphere, comprehending all that is sinful in thought and pursuit—a region on the actual physical globe, but without geographical boundary—all that out-field which lies beyond the living church of Christ. And, like the material globe, this world of death-walkers has its own atmosphere, corresponding to it in character—an atmosphere in which it breathes and moves. All that animates it, gives it community of sentiment, contributes to sustain its life in death, and enables it to breathe and be, may be termed its atmosphere. Such an atmosphere belting a death-world, whose inhabitants are νεκροὶ τοῖς παραπτώμασι καὶ ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις, is really Satan’s seat. His chosen abode is the dark nebulous zone which canopies such a region of spiritual mortality, close upon its inhabitants, ever near and ever active, unseen and yet real, unfelt and yet mighty, giving to the κόσμος that ‘form and pressure’—that αἰών—which the Apostle here describes as its characteristic element.”—Comp. Stuart, Biblioth. Sacra, 1843, p. 140; Hagenbach, Stud. u. Krit. I. p. Eph 479: Cudworth, Intel. System, II. p. 664.—R.]
Of the spirit, τοῦ πνεύματος, is in apposition to τῆς ἐξουσίας τοῦ ἀέρος, “of the power of the air.” While the last phrase sets forth his external dominion, the parallel phrase denotes his internal efficiency. Bengel is excellent: principium illud internum, ex quo fluunt actiones in-fidelium, oppositum spiritui fidelium filiorum Dei. It is therefore not a personality, but an influence which has become a ruling mode of thought, disposition, a πνεῦμα ἐνεργοῦν (Rueckert, Stier). Comp. Winer, p. 589. Hence it is not to be joined in apposition to τὸν ἄρχοντα and a hypallage accepted as in Eph_3:2; 2Co_3:7; Luk_8:32; Luk_22:20. So Calovius, Koppe, Rueckert; similarly Flatt. But τοῦ πνεύματος is also not dependent, on το ῦ ἀέρος, as Hofmann (Schriftbeweis I. p. 455) thinks, taking ἐξουσία in accordance with Luk_23:7 as the region of dominion, so that the air of the spirit working in the disobedient is the atmosphere formed by his nature. Nor is it to be taken collectively, just as ἐξουσία τοῦ ἀέρος is the complex of demons (Grotius and others). It is the spirit, which through its ruler, the devil, exists outside of individuals, defines them, works in them, the Spirit of the age [Zeitgeist].
[The apposition with ἐξουσίας is at all events to be accepted, with the majority of modern commentators. But here the two views present themselves: (1) the reference to the evil principle, which must be taken objectively as the article requires (Meyer, Ellicott), as Braune holds, or (2) to the aggregate character of the individual πνεύματα (Eadie, Alford). The former is open to the objection, that it represents Satan as the prince of a principle, and the latter assumes a collective sense which is quite unusual. If we accept a tacit antithesis to the Spirit of God, and remember that this spirit is here conceived of as distinct from its influence on men, (1) will be the safer view.—R.]
Which now worketh, τοῦ νῦν ἐνεργοῦντοσς.—This spirit is to be regarded as efficient, not as effected, affectus mundanus (Schmidt); νῦν being put in advance and “in the children of disobedience” appended for emphasis. “Now” expresses the fact that it has not ceased to work, after no longer working in them, the readers (ποτέ); it now works in the children of disobedience, subjects of its activity are not wanting; it might be explained with Olshausen by ἐν τῷ αἰῶνι τούτῳ. From this danger always springs for the believers. Hence it is not: now still, ad huc (Meyer and others), nor: nunc maxime (Bengel: qui evangelium per incredulitatem spernunt, manent mancipia spiritus illius et amplius capiuntur; Stier: “more now, since accomplished redemption proffers itself”). Rueckert also, with Flatt, refers to the extraordinary, specially dangerous power of the Satanic kingdom in the age of Redemption (2Th_2:2 ff.; 2Co_4:4). [So De Wette].
In the sons of disobedience, ἐν τοῖς υἱοῖς τῆς ἀπειθίας.—Thus are those designated who are οἱ ἐξ ἀπειθείας (comp. Rom_2:8 : οἱ ἐξ ἀριθείας), who are dependent on, springing from, nourished by disobedience, as Eph_5:6; Col_3:6. It is a Hebraistic expression. [It marks “the essential and innate disobedience of the subjects, a disobedience to which they belong as children to a parent” (Ellicott).—R.] “Disobedience” emphasizes the immoral nature of unbelief, which is precisely disobedience, contumacy, among the heathen also, who resist the secret voice of God in their conscience (Rom_2:14-15) as well as among the Jews who resist the revealed will of God in the word of the prophets, and among both, in resisting the apostolic announcement. Meyer should not be willing to refute the explanation: unbelief (Luther, Bengel, Harless, Stier.)16—The preposition ἐν, “in,” marks the internality of this Satanic working: in their souls (Meyer). They are the “fulness” of the devil, on whose part there is a “spirit,” efficient unto destruction, which the disobedient and unbelieving mood already present in man comes to meet.
Eph_2:3. Among whom even we all had our way of life in times past [ἐν οἶς καὶ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἀνεστράφημεν ποτέ].—The emphasis rests on καὶ ἡμεῖς “even we;” in antithesis to “you” (Eph_2:1), the readers, whom he describes as previously heathen, he places himself and the Jewish Christians,17 and that too without exception (“all”). ‘Ἑνοἶς, according to grammatical rules, refers to “the children of disobedience” (Eph_2:2); thus declaring that those who were formerly Jews belonged also to the children of disobedience; ἐνοἶς is=ὦν καὶ ἡμεῖς ὄντες, in order to lay down the ethical category for the Jews (Meyer). So the same corruption and its universality are predicated of the Jews, over against the Gentiles. Comp. Doctr. Note 3. We should not then render it inter quos, or explain that although the Jews were actually locally among the Gentiles, they did not live there as children of disobedience. The reference to παραπτώμασιν, “trespasses,” Eph_2:1 (Syriac, Jerome, Bengel, Stier and others), is at once impossible, if ὑμῶν be retained there, and in any case inadmissible on account of “in the lusts of our flesh,” which denotes the element or sphere of the verb, so that this cannot be found in ἐνοἶς. The grammatical connection cannot be decided by the parallel passage, Col_3:7 : ἐν οἶς—περιεπατήσατε, since parallelism will not contravene the requirements of grammar.
In the lusts of our flesh [ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις τῆς σαρκὸς ἡμῶν].—The repetition of ἐν in the same clause occurs also in 2Co_1:12 : ἐν ἁγιότητε καὶ εἰλικρινείᾳ—ἐν σοφίᾳ—ἐν χάριτι ἁνεστράφημεν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, where the first phrase answers to the last in our verse, and the last to our first. Bengel remarks on the verb: hoc quiddam speciosius quam ambulare. Stier finds it sharper and stronger than περιεπατήσατε, used of the Gentiles. Luther: “ye have walked”—“we have had our walk.” [So substantially the E. V.] This ἀναστρέφεσθαι refers more to an unquiet, refractory, quarrelsome course of conduct, περιπατεῖν is rather an indolent letting one’s self go according to habit. The qualifying phrase; “in the lusts of our flesh,” also sharpens the affirmative here, in comparison with that respecting the Gentiles. Among the latter the power of the evil spirit works, as respects the Jews prominence is given to their own disposition and will. Israel had already the proper ἄρχων in the theocracy, in its discipline another ἐξουσία, the moderating and helping air of a better spirit, being by no means given over in the same degree to the course of this world (Stier).—Harless sets forth very well the order of the significations of σάρξ; 1) what is material, 2) external, not mental, 3) what is ruled by matter, and in so far sinful, 4) what is sinful, opposed directly to the Spirit of God, 5) Humanity in all these aspects. [Comp. the Excursus in Romans, pp. 235 ff. The word is here used in its ethical sense: the whole human nature turned away from God, in the supreme interest of self, devoted to the creature.—R.]
Doing the wishes of the flesh and of the thoughts [ποιοῦντες τὰ θελήματα τῆς σαρκὸς καὶ τῶν διανοιῶν].—Ποιοῦντες, placed first for emphasis, defines more closely the preceding verb. [A participle of manner.—R.] The children of disobedience to whom they belonged, do the wills, to τὰ θελήμ̊ατα,18 not merely single ones, which the flesh has, and those τῶνδιανοιῶν, as real servants, slaves in fact. The plural denotes the confused, opposing multiplicity; a united, self-contained will is not spoken of. But these are not mere ebullitions of the flesh. “The διανοιεῖσθαι is the internal self-activity of man, conscious of his nature as self-determinable, and the διάνοιαι are the manifold productions of this” (Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, I. p. 563). He appears as the slave of his inborn nature and of his selfish thought; the two are turned to various objects, and in his desires create a diversity. The understanding or the reason stands in the service of the flesh, falls into subtleties, seeking reasons, excuses, ways and means for the “lusts of the flesh,” helping the desire to strengthen into determinations and activities of the will. Διάνοιαι are “opinions of the will representing themselves as prudent, deceitful grounds of volition.” Cogitationes callidius peccandi studium inferunt, caro cœco ruit impetu (Bengel). The plural marks the sundering, the confusion of the διάνοια into the unhappy and treacherous diversity (Harless, Stier); the flesh makes a heap of: reasonings (Berlenburger Bible). The context determines this view, as Meyer correctly remarks, but the form chosen subserves the context, corresponding well to its purpose; but it should be noted, that διάνοιαι is used by Paul only here, and θελήματα only in his speech, Act_13:22, there too of God’s will. It is incorrect to regard διάνοιαι as loose fancies (Matthies), sensuous thoughts without the basis of sensuous desire (Olshausen), or corrupt imaginations (Hase).
[The distinction between the two classes of θε λ ήματα is thus expressed by Eadie: “The ‘desires of the flesh’ are those grosser gratifications of appetite which are palpable and easily recognized; and the ‘desires of the thoughts,’ those mental trespasses which may or may not be connected with sensuous indulgences.” Ellicott: “The worldly sensual tendency of our life on the one hand, and the spiritual sins of our thoughts and intentions on the other.” Both Eadie and Hodge restrict σάρξ (in the second clause, not in the first) to the animal part of our nature, but this scarcely seems justifiable, especially as the wider meaning gives so good a sense. Nor is the latter exact in taking διανοία as including “the whole thinking and sentient principle, so far as distinguished from the animal principle,” still less in referring it here “more to the affections.” Meyer says διάνοιαι bears to σάρξ in this case the relation of the special to the general.—The article before σαρκός and before διανοιῶν would justify the rendering “our flesh,” “our thoughts,’ but the literal translation is sufficiently explicit, “thoughts” being the nearest equivalent to διάνοια.—R.]
And we were by nature the children of wrath [καὶ ἦμεν τέκνα φύσει ὀργῆς].—Καὶἦμεν is most naturally taken as Eph_1:19-22 : ἐγείρας—καὶ καθίσας—καὶ ὑπέταξεν, or ἐγείρας—καὶ ἐκάθισεν—and joined with ποιοῦντες, as a participle resolved into the finite verb. Since ἦμεν comes first, it is emphatic. [The change of construction gives emphasis to this verb also, marking that they “were,” not that they “are,” and further, as Eadie suggests, indicating unmistakably, that what they “were by nature” was not the result of what they had been doing.—The insertion of “we” in the English text will serve to indicate this emphasis.—R.] The Apostle has noted the action in the preceding clause, he now notices the state of the Jews, which is perceptible and perceived from the action, and hence put in the second place, this like the other being more sharply expressed than in the case of the heathen. This is parallel to “the children of disobedience,” among whom he has already reckoned them (ἐν οἶς) but among whom they are now characterized as “by nature children of wrath.” The phrases: “son of perdition” (2Th_2:3), “child of hell” (Mat_23:15), “Son of peace” (Luk_10:6) are similar. Paul says τέκνα, not υἱοί, not to weaken it into “little children,” but to indicate the relation to birth.
The genitive ὀργῆς without the article must be connected as closely as possible with τέκνα, “children of wrath.” [Not mere liable to wrath, but under it, as the figure implies.—R.] The Hebrew phrase בָּנִים־לַיהוָֹה (2Sa_12:5; υἱὸς θανάτου in the LXX., comp. Psa_79:11; Psa_102:21) may have occasioned the expression, but does not modify the explanation in the N. Testament, nor justify a weakening of the meaning, only marking the dependence of ὀργή, which the context (Eph_2:4) defines as that of God. Son_5:6; Col_3:6; Rom_1:18; comp. Doctr. Note 1.
Φύσει is not so emphatic ῆ̓μεν, nor even as τέκνα, denoting only a closer qualification of the latter, as regards origin, by nature. Φύσις (from φύω, to become, to arise, as natura from nasci, ingenium from geno, gigno) refers to birth, origin, and is that which has grown as distinguished from what has been effected, has the ground of its being, as it is in its own development, not in the accessory influence of others (Harless, Stier). [So Eadie, Alford, Hodge, Ellicott and the vast body of commentators. The last named finds the exact meaning in Gal. 2:25; Rom_2:14; Gal_4:8, to be respectively (a) transmitted inborn nature; (b) inherent nature; (c) essential nature. The first is the meaning here, see below.—R.] So in Gal_4:8; Rom_2:24 (comp. Act_17:28) φύσει points to the ground and origin of the present status. The meaning of these words necessarily is: we were from birth those who were forfeited to the Divine wrath, iræ Dei devoti atque obnoxii, quasi ad eam rem ab ipsa natura efficti (Beza). Indeed ἡ φύσις is something living, developing itself, but from its beginning, in accordance with the principle inherent in it, so that there is included here also the natural development, further determined by man in his unregenerate state.
Standing in contrast to this φύσει is the Divine θέσις of God’s work of revelation and of His covenant with the people of Israel, according to which they should not be “children of wrath,” and also might not have been. “As belonging to the people of God, the Jews were בָּנִים־לַיהוָֹה, but aside from this, consequently as belonging to the Adamite humanity, they were τέκνα ὀργῆς” (Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, I. p. 565), hence φύσει. It is aptly mentioned that Chemnitz remarks: Dicit, eramus et nos, Judæi scilicet. Dixerat enim Rom_11:16 : si radix sancti, ergo rami. Ne ergo intelligatur, Judæos natura esse sanctos, dicit; eramus et nos Judæi filii iræ, sicut cæteri (Harless). The position of φύσει between τέκνα and ὀργῆς suggests too: we were children—that is, φύσει, not θέσει, ὀργῆς, and yet might and should have been διαθήκης (cum putaremus nos esse liberos liberos Dei. Bengel)! [The doctrine of original sin is here plainly implied (Eadie, Hodge, Alford, Ellicott, and others), the implication being an “even more convincing assertion of that profound truth.” The opposition of Barnes and Stuart, so far as it has an exegetical basis, finds some justification in the forcing of a direct theological statement on our passage. But the attitude here taken as respects this fearful fact of a universal natural state of condemnation, is precisely that which the Scriptures hold toward the question of the existence of God: it is not proved, but assumed. Comp. Doctr. Notes 1, 3, 4; Eadie in loco; Romans, Dr. Schaff’s exhaustive notes on Eph_5:12-21, especially pp. 178–180, 191–195; the last reference is to a resumè of the theories of original sin.—R.]
Accordingly “children of wrath” is not to be taken as merely a Hebraizing phrase for “worthy of wrath,” ira rei, digni (Theodoret, Rueckert and others), nor proprii iræ (Striegel), objects of wrath (Flacius). Nor is ὀργή=pœna (Greek Fathers). Quite as little is φύσει=ἀληθῶς, γνησίως (Œcumenius), or: natura, indole gentis (Clericus), still less: paternœ, traditionis consuetudine (Pelagius), since it is the very opposite of συνήθεια. Moreover we should not think of a relation produced by the development of a nativa indoles (Meyer), or of the customary actual life of sin, “a doing of the wills of the flesh and of the thoughts,” which had become habitual, making them “the children of wrath” (Schenkel). Bleek says more circumspectly: the reference here is not merely to the inborn character, but also to the natural development springing from the man himself. To explain it of the natural condition of man in ante-christian life (Erasmus and others) leaves undecided the main question, whether or not the φύσει designates an inborn relation. Holzhausen’s connection of φύσει with ὀργῆς (wrath springing from the ungodly natural life) is entirely too inverted.
Even as others, ὡς και οἱ λοιποί.—In 1Th_4:13, this designates the Gentiles, who have not become Christians. Λοιποί are passed over, without any further characteristics; according to the context the word classes together here men with and men without Christ, who have not submitted themselves to the working of Christ, resist it; such can be among Christians even. We may easily suppose, however, that Paul means the yet unbelieving Jews, over against the “we all,” who have become believers in Christ; this would render prominent that while the Jewish Christians who have been rescued from the condition of death are no longer “children of wrath,” these are and remain so, like the heathen, the “children of disobedience.” So Stier, while nearly all expositors refer it either to the Gentiles (Meyer and others) or to all except those mentioned before (Harless and others); the latter is unquestionably more correct than the former, since just here the Gentiles are not in question, and to refer it to these alone, would be as if Eph_2:3 had been appended. The extension to other nations is, however, unnecessary, since all men are either Jews or Gentiles, and what has been said of the previous life of Christians from among the Gentiles or Jews, applies to the whole of the human race. It marks in a tender, sparing manner those Jews unconverted to Christ as “children of wrath,” as the Gentiles not converted to Christ are “children of disobedience,” in whom Satan works. [Those who refer ἡμεῖς πάντες to all Christians, of course take οἱ λοιποί as including all the rest of mankind, not Christians; but the universality of sin and guilt remains the indirect (and more convincing) assertion of the passage, whatever reference be adopted.—R.]
Eph_2:4. The Deliverer. But God, ὁ δὲ θεός.—This is not antithetical, but resumes the discourse, begun with the object and then lengthened out, in order to permit the subject to follow, as we would say in German: hat also Gott. [We have no word so strictly resumptive as the German also, or the Greek δέ, as used here, hence the E. V. supplies both subject and verb in Eph_2:1, and resumes here with “but,” which may bear a resumptive meaning.—R.] See on Eph_2:1. The δέ is required here by the antithesis in which the subject stands to the object; otherwise we have found οὐν here (Meyer and others). [Hodge makes the antithesis too strong: “notwithstanding our guilt and misery.”—R.]
Being rich in mercy [πλούσιος ὢν ἐν ἐλέει]—Πλούσιος stands first for emphasis; our Epistle frequently mentions the riches in God (Eph_1:7; Rom_10:12 : πλουτῶν). [Ὤν does not seem to be causal here (Hodge: “because He is rich in mercy”), but rather to state (in the form of a secondary predicate of time) the general principle under which the Divine compassion was exhibited (Ellicott, Alford); “being rich in mercy.” The special ground follows.—R.]. The connection “rich in mercy” is like Jam_2:5 (“rich in faith”); 1Co_1:5; 2Co_9:11. So πλῆθος τῶν οἰκτιρμῶν σου, Psa_51:1; Psa_69:16. But ἔλεος is somewhat more than οἰκτιρμός (ὁ ἐλεῶν subvenire studet misero et si potest, vere subvenit, sed qui intra fines doloris se tenet, is tantum οἰκτείρει; Tittmann, Syn. I., p. 70).
Because of his great love wherewith he loved us [διὰ τὴν πολλὴν ἀγάπην αὐτοῦ ἥν ἠγάπησεν ἡμᾶς].—The preposition (διά) marks the ground of His doings (Eph_2:5-6), on account of this, propter multum suum amorem. Luther is therefore incorrect: through His great love. Prominence is given, not so much to the greatness, as to the riches; the manifold character of the love of God. The construction, ῆν ἠγάπησεν ἡμᾶς, is like Joh_17:26; Mar_10:38. Winer, p. 210.—The great love of God (αὐτοῦ) is added by Paul, after the expression respecting the riches of His mercy, which he had placed first on account of the context over against the condition of death in the case of Gentiles and Jews alike, because there was to be found in men themselves no ground at all for their salvation, Mercy was in God the movement of His love, which belongs to His Being; that men should be helped, required the entire fulness of the love of God. Misericordia removet miseriam, amor confert salutem (Bengel). Calvin incorrectly joins διὰ τὴν πολλὴν ἀγάπην with πλούσιοςὤν [Hodge apparently]; the latter is an attribute of God, the former is an adverbial qualification of συνεζωοποίησεν. “Us” must be applied here to entire Christendom, after the necessary statements about “you” (Eph_2:1-2) and “us” (Eph_2:3). Aperta satis hæc verba sunt et cognitu facillima, si tantum et creditu facilia ea plerisque dominus redderet (Bucer)! Stier refers it to the Jews, on which view see next verse. [It is=ἡμεῖς πάντες, if that phrase be accepted in its wider reference.—R.]
The Deliverance; Eph_2:5-6.
Eph_2:5. Even when we were dead in our trespasses [καὶ ὄντας ἡμᾶς νεκροὺς τοῖς παραπτώμασιν].—After ἡμᾶς (Eph_2:4) the object is again repeated, with a reference to what has been said in Eph_2:1-3, in admiration and wonder at the Divine grace, mercy and love. Now however we read καὶ ὄνταςἡμᾶς, while before we had καὶ ὑμᾶς ὄντας (Eph_2:1), καὶ ἡμεῖς (Eph_2:3); the emphasis therefore rests on ὄντας, and καί puts this state of death with another ὥν in a certain relation to πλούσιος ὤν ἐν ἐλέει. Accordingly the distinction between those dead, between “you” and “us” falls into the background behind the existence, the reality of this condition. [Against Meyer, who takes καί as the simple copula, and Rueckert, who deems it resumptive, we are fully justified in taking it as intensive, retaining even (E. V.) therefore; so Alford, Ellicott and most.—The dative is precisely as in Eph_2:1.—R.] What he has said in Eph_2:1 of the heathen: “dead in trespasses,” is true of both therefore: it is the briefest expression, and quite sufficient after the previous explication of the object, especially as he mentions παραπτώματα, in which the reality of the condition of death is perceptible. The article denotes that the sins are the sins of the “dead” themselves (Meyer). [Hence our trespasses.]
This statement cannot indeed be referred to entire humanity; though it be done for all men, yet it is only done in Christians; and that is what is spoken of here. But it is just as little to be limited to Jewish Christians (Stier); the interchange of ἡμεῖς and ὑμεῖς (Eph_2:5; Eph_2:7-8) springs from the liveliness of the discourse, the interest in the readers and the purpose of the Apostle. Καί is of course not=καίπερ, quamvis (Calvin, Schenkel). [For a making alive could only be from a state of death, not in spite of it.—R.]
Quickened us together with Christ, συνεζωοποίησεν τῷ Χριστῷ.—The construction is clear; the dative is governed by the σύν in composition. A fact in the past is clearly denoted as having taken place upon Christ and upon us. The meaning is also indicated by the antithesis or object: the dead He has made alive; were these not physically, but spiritually dead, then a spiritual life is meant. The preposition σύν does not denote contemporaneousness, but only fellowship: in the fellowship with the Risen One God quickened us also: Him hath He raised from the dead, us from our death, but not without Him, the Risen One. The verb itself does not determine any thing more definite regarding the life; the tense marks only the act of God as having taken place. Nothing further is added. Accordingly this fact is to be taken altogether objectively, without a subjective reference, altogether generally, without further qualification, as Col_2:12-13; Col_2:20; Col_3:1; Col_3:3; Rom_6:4-6; it is simply: He quickened us together with Christ. Theodoret: κεφαλὴ ἡμῶν ὁ συνεδρεύων, ἀπαρχὴ ἡμῶν ὁ συμβασιλεύων· τὴν γὰρ ἡμετέραν ἐνδέδυται φύσιν. Comp. Eph_1:7; Eph_1:22-23. Though the life of Christ the Risen One is completed, and ours just begun, beginning in the Spirit, yet the two stand in an internal connection (2Co_5:15), the latter, like the former, is the Father’s act, in which the whole, the full life is implied and granted.
Accordingly it is first of all incorrect to apply συν to the re-animation of the Jews and Gentiles together (Beza), or: sicut ad exemplum (Anselm, Grotius). Then the reference is not to physical death and the actual resurrection life (Meyer), or to the forgiveness of sins (Rueckert), or only to the first degree of life, from which the subsequent ones advance (Olshausen), or to justification and regeneration (Bodeus); nor are the aorists to be justified by recalling God’s prescience (Jerome), or by introduced hope (Augustine, Erasmus), or by a prophetic view, as if it had already taken place, were as good as certain (Meyer), nor is the fact of the actual accomplishment of this act of love in the readers, the Christians to be set aside by an emphasizing of the objective act in Christ (Harless).19
By grace ye have been saved [χάριτίἐστε σεσωσμένοι].—In lively discourse, with a direct application to the readers, this is joined parenthetically to the general, objective fact of new life in Christ. The emphasis rests on χάριτι, which comes first; it refers to “His great love,” is God’s grace, thus dismissing all thought of claim and merit on the part of man. The clause emphasizes the fact of the deliverance from death into life, from wrath into love. Ye are (ἐστε)! This means more than the simple ἐσώθετε. [“Ye have been and are saved,” the perfect of permanent state, implying that God’s grace abides.—R.] Videmus, ut nun quam sibi in prædicanda gratiæ amplitudine satisfaciat; ideoque identidem pluribus verbis inculcat, nihil esse in salute nostra, quod non sit Deo tribuendum certe qui ingratitudinem hominum rite expendet, non fastidiet hanc parenthesin quasi supervacaneam (Calvin).20 It is not interpolated from what follows (Grotius), nor is the grace of Christ (Beza) referred to.
Eph_2:6. And raised us up with him and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus [καὶ συνήγειρεν καὶ συνεκάθισεν ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ].—After thus specializing, Paul expands what was expressed in συνεζωοποίησεν. Here the first verb gives prominence to the negative side, and the second, with “in heavenly places,” to the positive side of the quickening; the former marks the disappearance of the condition of death, the latter the permanent participation in what is heavenly. The liveliness of the discourse causes the introduction and repetition of καί, καί; they are not to be rendered: both—and. “In heavenly places” (comp. on Eph_1:3) sets forth the antithesis to “the power of the air;” “at His right hand” (Eph_1:20) could be predicated only of Christ (Bengel: Christo sua manet exccllentia), but “in heavenly places” of Christians also. “In Christ Jesus,” following “with Christ” (Eph_2:5), introduces the mediation in the fellowship with Him; with this Col_2:12-13 should be compared. [Eadie takes “in Christ Jesus” as qualifying “in the heavenly places,” but this is scarcely allowable.—R.]
Accordingly, “raised with him,” is not an advance from “quickened” toward “made us sit” (Olshausen) [Eadie], the first two expressions occur Col_2:12-13 in inverted order. We should not interpolate spe (Grotius) or jure et virtute spirituali (Bengel), nor are the aorists to be taken as futures from a prophetic view (A Lapide), nor should we refer them to summa et universa felicitas (Koppe), or to something spiritual, which is not yet objectively and really given. Comp. Col_3:1-3; Php_3:20; Rom_6:6-10. Though ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ is not=per et propter Christum, yet it cannot be denied that fellowship with Him is indicated (Harless), in accordance with the συν in the verbs.21 But it may not be affirmed that on account of this “wonderful union” of the redeemed with the Redeemer, all the occurrences, through which the Redeemer passed after His death until His glorification, are spiritually and morally, hence in this life, consummated in the converted (Schenkel). Comp. Doctr. Note 2.
[Eadie also takes the three aorists as referring to what takes place in this life, and as marking successive steps: “The dead, on being quickened, do not lie in their graves.” Ellicott is very cautious here: “As συνεζωοποίησεν, though primarily spiritual and present, may have a physical and future reference,—so here conversely, a present spiritual resurrection and enthronement may also be attended to,” the primary reference being, as he thinks, to what is future and objective. Alford seems most correct: “God vivified us together with Christ: in the one act and fact of His resurrection He raised all His people—to spiritual life, and in that to victory over death, both spiritual and therefore necessarily physical also. To dispute therefore whether such an expression as this is past (spiritual), or future (physical), is to forget that the whole includes its parts.—The three aorists are proleptical as regards the actualization in each man, but equally describe a past and accomplished act on God’s part.—The disputes as to whether these are to be taken as present or future, actual or potential, literal or spiritual, will be easily disposed of by those who have apprehended the truth of the believer’s union in and with Christ.” This last statement finds a striking confirmation in the fact, that many a commentator begins by limiting the sense, and ends by including the entire meaning.—R.]
Eph_2:7. The purpose.—That he might show forth, ἵνα ἐνδείξηται.—The verb stands emphatically first. Ἐνδείκνυσθαι (Rom_2:15; Rom_9:17; Rom_9:22; 1Ti_1:16; 2Ti_4:14; Tit_2:10; Tit_3:2) has, like ἔνδειξος (2Co_8:24) the signification of an efficient, active showing, a making known through communicating, giving, causing to experience. It is not a mere φανεροῦν, γνωρίζειν, declarare (Olshausen, Meyer and others. [Eadie inclines to the singular meaning: give a specimen of, which is not in accordance with the emphasis resting on the word.—R.]
In the ages which are to come, ἐν τοῖς αἰῶσι τοῖς ἐπερχομένοις.—The plural marks a series, the word αἰῶνες, periods of time, stretching over “generations” (Eph_3:21), standing over against “the course (αἰών) of this world (Eph_2:2), not mere καιροί, occasions, moments of time (Eph_1:10); ἐπερχόμενοι points to coming periods, i.e., according to the context, those periods (temporibus in stantibus) following each other with the fact of Redemption in the resurrection of Christ as the starting-point; lastly the preposition ἐν marks these as the spaces of time in which the showing takes place, in which there is really an advance. Bengel: Plurale, contra unum seculum malum, cui secula beata superveniunt potenter. Congruit hæc locutio menti Pauli de die novissimo non proxime in stante. Even in the earliest Epistles there is not wanting the thought of the long development of Christianity, whose blossoming in the Apostolic Church and in the first Christians as first fruits and representatives, lets us perceive the fulness of their Lord (1Th_4:15-17; comp. Eph_5:1; 2Th_1:7; comp. Eph_2:3 ff.). It is neither the age succeeding the resurrection, the age of the parousia (Grotius, Meyer), nor αἰὼν μέλλων (Harless). [These limitations are rejected by Eadie, Alford and Ellicott, Hodge who agree with Braune in referring the phrase to the successive periods of time between the resurrection and the Second Advent of Christ. The plural for bids the limitation to any one age, the present participle renders any remote future reference improbable. The Second Advent is rarely alluded to in this Epistle (Alford), though as usual Meyer finds it here also.—R.]
The exceeding riches of his grace, τὸ ὑπερβάλλον πλοῦτος τῆς χάριτος αῦτοῦ.—The neuter form to τὸπλοῦτος is well established here, as in Eph_3:16, and occurs several times (Eph_3:8; Php_4:19; Col_2:2). On ὑπερ βάλλον, see notes on Eph_1:19. It denotes, over against the wrath of God (Eph_2:3) and the power of Satan (Eph_2:2) the triumphant superior power, hence it is not=περισσεύειν (Eph_1:8). Comp. Rom_5:20. Evidently as in the case of those realities, so is the power of this grace efficient, already imparted. Rom_9:23.
In kindness toward us in Christ Jesus [ἐν χρηστότητι ἐφʼ ἡμᾶς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ].—“In kindness” designates the mode of showing the grace, “the friendly, condescending kindness” (Heubner), which expressed itself in Christ’s Incarnation and in Himself. Tittmann (Syn. I. p. 195): Est benignitas Dei ad benefaciendum hominibus potius parata, quam ad puniendum; differt a voce χάρις; in hac enim certe in N. T. imperat notio benevolentiæ et gratiæ, quæ. nihil merentibus bene facit. It is therefore not here (as Tittmann thinks, p. 142): ipsum beneficium in nos Dei benignitate per Jesum Christum; it is not χάρισμα, but χάρις is active “in kindness,” the condescending love scatters out of the fulness of its possessions; that is, its “kindness.” [Eadie says of the four terms here used respecting the source of salvation: ἔλεος, ἀγάπη, χάρις, χρηστότης, “the first respects our misery; the second defines the co-essential form of this—ἔλεος; the third characterizes its free outgoing, and the last points to its palpable and experienced embodiment.” He finds an evident alteration in χάρις, χρηστότης, Χριστός.—R.]
Ἐφʼ ἡμᾶς is connected with “in kindness,” as χαρὰ ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ (Rom_14:17) and similar cases. See Winer, p. 126. This occurs with anarthrous substantives, which receive further definition; ἐπὶ denotes the object of the kindness, as Luk_6:35. The phrase: ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ without τοὺς or ὄντας is therefore not to be referred to ἡμᾶς. Were it grammatically admissible, the thought would not be against it, since it corresponds with “to us-ward who believe” (Eph_1:19). As, however, it stands here without any word to connect it with ἡμᾶς, it must be taken as qualifying the verb ἐνδείξηται.22 Notanda repetitio nominis Christi, quia nihil gratiæ neque amoris a Deo sperari vult, nisi ipso intercedente (Calvin). Comp. Doctr. Note 2.
The means of the deliverance. Eph_2:8-10.
Eph_2:8. For by grace have ye been saved through faith, τῇ γὰρ χάριτί ἐστε σεσωσμένοι διὰ πίστεως.—This is a completed, more closely defined, repetition of the parenthetical clause (Eph_2:5). Γάρ is connective. Non igitor ait, sed enim, quia ab effectu ad causam concludit (Bengel): because He in the course of time brings into manifestation nothing else than the exceeding riches of His grace. Ye are saved by grace. Τῇ, χάριτι not merely χάριτι (Eph_2:5), to denote the category; the article referring to the grace mentioned in Eph_2:7, the wealth of which is so exceeding, marking thus the grace in question (Meyer). The dative expresses, as Rom_3:24 (αὐτοῦ χάριτι διὰ τῆς ἀπολυτρώσεως), the motive, διά with the genitive here states the subjective means,23 in the passage just referred to, the objective. Comp. Winer, p. 204 f. The emphasis rests on “by grace,” which is placed first, being the causa efficiens; the causa apprehendens follows, as a modal qualification. On the nature of “faith,” see Doctr. Note 5.
And that not of yourselves: the gift is God’s [καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν, θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον].—“And that” refers back to the idea of the preceding verb: “ye are saved,” in the sense of et quidem (Passow, sub οὖτος, 12); and this in addition I say, or and this, being saved through faith, comes not out of yourselves. Thus the value of διὰ πίστεως is put below that of τῇ χάριτι salvation has not its origin in faith or the believing one (οὐκἐξὑμῶν); he has indeed only to accept it. Hence there is at once added to the negative the positive (not parenthetical, Harless) expression: θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον, God’s is the gift, i.e., the salvation; the genitive being=ἐκ θεοῦ (Php_3:9) or ἀπὸ θεοῦ (Php_1:29), and τὸδῶρον=δωρεάν (Rom_3:24; Rom_5:15; Rom_5:17), gratis, as a present of grace.
[The reference to salvation is adopted by Calvin, Rueckert, Harless, Olshausen, Meyer, De Wette, Stier, Eadie, Alford, Ellicott, and every commentator of note since the days of Bengel, except Hodge.24 Of course on doctrinal grounds there is no objection to the reference to faith, for, as Ellicott remarks, “it may be said that the clause καὶ τοῦτο κ. τ. λ. was suggested by the mention of the subjective medium πίστις, which might be thought to imply some independent action on the part of the subject.” But since the next verse: “not of works,” cannot be referred to faith, and an unnecessary parenthesis, creating some confusion and destroying the obvious parallelism between ἐξ ὑμῶν and ἐξ ἔργων, is the result of this view, it seems far better to accept the other reference. The gender of τοῦτο is not decisive in favor of this; but when it stands so near to πίστεως, it does seem strange that it should not be feminine, were the latter its antecedent.—R.]
Eph_2:9 takes up the negative side again: not of works, οὐκἐξἔργων, used by Paul repeatedly (Rom_3:20; Rom_4:2; Rom_11:6; Gal_2:16; Gal_3:2; Gal_5:4; Tit_3:5). Without the article, because in this respect there are no saving, meritorious works; it is God who rescues, and He is determined thereto by no works or virtues of men. There is not here, nor should there be, any thought of the works of the Mosaic law (Bleek). Thus the phrase “not of yourselves” is more closely and sharply defined. Accordingly we should not accept a parenthesis from καὶ τοῦτο to ἐξ ἔργων (Griesbach) or καὶ τοῦτο—τὸ δῶρον (Beza), or θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον (Lachmann, Harless), nor refer καὶ τοῦτο to διὰ τῆς πίστεως and then to infer τὸ πιστεύειν on this account (Fathers, Erasmus and others).
That no man should boast, ἵναμήτις καυ χήσηται.—This is the manifest end (ἵνα) of this ordering of grace, established and desired by God Himself. Comp. 1Co_1:29 ff; 1Co_4:7; 2Co_10:17 f.; Rom_3:27; Rom_4:2. Ἵνα is not to be taken as=ὥστε or as imperative (Koppe). [Macknight objects that this is not a worthy end, therefore ἵνα is not telic. But it is only one end, and then it implies a great deal more than the mere stopping of man’s boasts. The implied antithesis is: that God should have the glory, as Eph_2:10 indicates.—R.]
Eph_2:10. For his handiwork are we, αὐτοῦ γάρ ἐσμεν ποίημα.—The genitive stands first with special emphasis; if there should be any boasting, He should be boasted of by us, His work.25 Hence the connection by means of γάρ, for the reason is given why no one should boast. Gratia tollit naturam. What we are to understand by ποίημα, the Apostle sets forth in the following participial clause belonging to ἐσμέν:
Created in Christ Jesus for good works.—Κτισθέντες ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, “created in Christ Jesus,” is like 2Co_5:17 : εἴ τις ἐν Χριστῷ, καινὴ κτίσις. Comp. Gal_6:15. The fellowship with Christ is the mediation conditioning the creative efficiency of God. “God’s work” is a creation in Christ, by means of which there becomes a “new man” (Eph_2:15). A double creation is therefore not spoken of, the physical, that of the protoplast, in “His handiwork” (Tertullian, Gregory Naz. and others), and the spiritual, that of the new birth in “created,” nor are both creations to be regarded as united here (Pelagius, Erasmus, Matthies, Rueckert), so that we both as Christians and as men are God’s work. Salvation alone is in question. Thus much only is true, that the expressions respecting the physical first creation are transferred to this ethical one, which is a new birth (Tit_3:5), a real creation (Eph_2:15; Eph_4:21-22).
The preposition ἐπί with the dative marks both the end and the result; Gal_5:13 : ἐπʼ ἐλευθερίᾳ ἐκλήθητε; 1Th_4:7; 2Ti_2:14; Winer, p. 368. It is not=εἰς ἔργα ἀγαθά, hence not merely the end and aim of salvation [Hodge], (Schenkel). [Alford: “Just as a tree may be said to be created for its fruit.”—R.] Ἐπὶ ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς is in antithesis to ἐξ ἔργων, denoting that those created in Christ Jesus do perform good works, as “a peculiar people, zealous Of good works” (Tit_2:14); such works are therefore not the cause but the consequence of being delivered.26 Hence we read here not ἔργοις or ἔργοις νόμου, but, what is much more significant, ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς: good works are performed only by the regenerate.
Which God before prepared that we should walk in them, οἶς προητοίμασεν ὁ θεός, ἵνα ἐν αὐτοῖς περιπατήσωμεν.—As regards the construction it should first be remarked that the difficulty lies in οἶς and in the meaning of the verb προητοί μασεν, which requires an object in the accusative, as well as in the reference of the preposition προ. The relative οἶς can belong only to ὲργοις ἀγαθοῖς, and since προετοιμάζειν cannot be taken as neuter (Bengel) and there is no ἡμᾶς added, it must be explained by attraction (Vulgate, Syriac, down to Bleek); ἐναὐτοῖς follows, as in Joh_5:36. [That is, the relative is the object of the verb, which would be in the accusative (ἅ) were it not attracted into the case of its antecedent ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς; so E. V. and the vast majority of commentators.—R.] Προετοιμάζειν (Rom_9:23) is to prepare beforehand, here of things, as προορίζειν of persons (Eph_1:11). [See below however.] The προ totam rem Deo tribuit (Bengel), implying that they should be performed. It should be borne in mind that we do not find: ἐπὶ τοῖς ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς, οἶς—; the individual good works are not regarded as prepared before, but only ἔργα ἀγαθά in general. Christians are new-created for these; they are performed by the Christians not according to arbitrary choice; they are determined, as by the law, so by the Holy Ghost (Grotius: quasi in mari aliquis et viam præsignaret et simul ventos daret ferentes); they are given, to them is the Christian directed, equipped therefor with strength and desire.
God Himself has thus prepared before “good works,” and that too with the design, to the end: “that we should walk in them,” as prepared beforehand by God, as in the element in which the Christians’ walk moves, in which the regenerate should prove themselves alive. This final clause is in antithesis to: “lest any man should boast” (Eph_2:9). Hofmann, who (Schriftbeweis, II. 1, p. 365) rejects rightly the explanations, ordained before, predisposed in God’s counsel, and accepts the proper conduct of humanity to God as once for all present in Christ, says excellently in further exposition (ibid. II. 2, p. 294): Our walk in Him is a walk in them (good works), so that ἐν αὐτοῖς has the emphasis, and ἡμεῖς is not missed in the first clause.
Accordingly ἶς cannot be referred to κτισθέντες and explained as masculine: for whom, to whom He has before ordained (Erasmus, and necessarily Rueckert also). It is altogether impossible to accept a Hebraism and construct thus: ἐν οἶς ἵνα περιπατήσωμεν προητοίμασεν ὁ θεός (Bengel, Koppe); but προετοιμάζειν is not=velle, jubere. Nor should ἡμᾶς be supplied from the context and the clause rendered: to which, or: for which He has prepared us before (Luther, Rueckert but doubtfully, Schenkel). Nor should the verb be taken as neuter (Bengel): for which He has already prepared, so that nothing is wanting (Stier). Nor should we say that God has prepared the circumstances for them (bonos socios, præceptores, confessionarios, concionatores, sancta exempla aliaque incitamenta et occasiones), as do Michaelis and Olshausen, following Catholic expositors. Nor does προ stand related to “created unto good works,” as though the preparation of the works preceded the new creation of the man, and the men were redeemed for the works and for their sake, and the walk in good works were the final and supreme aim of the Divine revelation of grace and saving dealings with man (Meyer, Schenkel).
[The view of Braune is open to serious doubt in one point alone. The attraction from the accusative is by far the best solution of the grammatical question. The verb, which is not neuter, does not mean “predestinated,” but “prepared before.” Comp. Romans, p. 321. That notion is a fair inference, but does not necessarily belong to the word, as even Hodge admits. It may be allowed too that “good works” without the article does not of necessity refer to definite, particular actions, which God has appointed for the several believers. But the force of προ is not sufficiently taken into the account in the view advocated above, while Hofmann’s explanation seems to be an attempt to avoid a theological difficulty rather than a fair exegesis. Προορίζειν is distinguished from προετοιμάζειν, not by a difference of objects (as Braune holds, following Harless), but as follows: The end comes more into view in the former, the means more in the latter (so Fritzsche, Lange, Romans, p. 320, Eadie, Ellicott). As the temporal relation to “created” seems to be the only proper reference in the preposition προ, we should accept this explanation: God, before we were created in Christ, made ready for us a sphere of moral action, a road, with the intent that we should walk in it, and not leave it; this sphere, this road, was “good works” (Ellicott).—Or yet more definitely, with Alford: As trees are created for fruits which God before prepared that they should bear them: i.e., defined and assigned to each tree its own, in form, and flavor, and time of bearing. So in the course of God’s providence, our good works are marked out for and assigned to each one of us. This does not seem to be open to the objection that it makes the works the supreme end of God’s saving dealings.—Eadie: “These good works, though they do not secure salvation, are by God’s eternal purpose essentially connected with it, and are not a mere offshoot accidentally united to it.”—R.] Bengel says aptly: Ambularemus, non salvaremur aut viveremus.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Theologically: God’s nature is designated by: “who is rich in mercy, for His great love” (Eph_2:4). Precisely as in 1Jn_4:16 : “God is love” (comp. my notes, Biblework in loco, p. 146 f.). What He will ever more and more manifest and prove, is “the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness” (Eph_2:7). All salvation is traced back to “grace” (Eph_2:5-8), to “love” (ἀγάπη) now condescending in its entire fulness to the deepest misery, the lost condition of sinners (χάρις), in order to help (ἔλεος) as a master and to minister (χρηστότης). as a servant. How then can there be room for “wrath?” Ὀργή (from ὀρέγω, allied with reach, rack, stretch, and ὀργάω, to swell, to be full) designates first of all, appetite, emotion, then passion, anger. God is indeed holy love, hence precisely not an apathetic personality, not an epicurean natura divom semota ab rebus nostris sejunctaque longa, not a pagan or Turkish εἱμαρμένη, nor a modern moral order of the world, or mere “Providence,” “Heaven,” or the philosophical Absolute, or the common numb Deity. He loves, He must also be angry with what is unholy, evil; He has wrath, not as a man, active et initiative, but passive et consecutive. His wrath is the zeal of love against corrupting evil, the energy in the conduct of God against that relation to Him, established with the fall of the creature from Him; in the creature’s sin God’s wrath brings forth itself (Stier).—One thing besides should be especially considered. By “we,” described in Eph_2:3, the Israelites are meant: precisely these, though chosen, are called on account of the apostasy of the human race, “children of wrath.” Accordingly all, the entire fallen race, are the object of the wrath of God, even the elect, just as all are the object of His grace, as even these have been, who, because they will not let themselves be saved, are cast away. In mercy and anger is He the same God, and has before Him the human race in like manner undivided, in order to save it as the object of His love. Comp. Frank, Theologie der Form. Conc., IV. p. 194 ff.
2. Christologically: The Mediator, in whom alone the fallen race, now a prey to the corruption of sin, is and can be an object of love to God, and through whom alone, yet certainly, the purpose of salvation conceived in Him, is consummated, is Jesus Christ, the Risen One, who, as the Sinless One, was not forfeit to death, but overcame it. The text only indicates this latter thought; but it distinctly asserts: only in Him is life, renewal, power, blessedness, without Him there is none of this (Eph_2:10; Eph_2:5-7). In this entirely unique Person, including in Himself all that man needs for a renewal well-pleasing to God, presenting in His resurrection and exaltation, not merely a type, but the dynamic principle for the elevation of humanity to sonship with God—in this Person is set forth all that is specifically Christian in Christianity.
3. Hamartologically: a) The essence of sin is disobedience (“sons of disobedience”) to the will of God, and obedience to the flesh (“doing the wishes of the flesh and of the thoughts”).
b) The universality of sin. It extends itself over the whole human race without exception. Gentiles (Eph_2:1-2) and Jews (Eph_2:3), and among these (ἡμεῖς πάντες) to those also who like the Apostle were “taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and zealous toward God” (Act_22:3); for fleshly self-will and obstinacy mingles itself as a ruling power, even in the most refined forms, with human virtue and honorableness.
c) The variety of sin does not condition a variety in the extent of guilt. To the Apostle the heathen world was a wrestling place of demons: Satan ruled it; there all goes according to his will; and the Apostle calls the Gentiles “sons of disobedience.” The people of Israel, notwithstanding its theocracy, consists in his esteem of “children of wrath,” as he designates them much more sharply. The guilt increases with the less considerable sins, if the favors received, which have been despised or neglected, are greater: so there may be less guilt with greater sins, and a far greater guilt with sins less great externally, because there is a greater sinful corruption.
d) The corruption of sin. Although some may hold for truth in Eph_5:14 (“Awake thou that steepest and arise from the dead”), only “thou that sleepest,” together with Rom_5:6 : “when we were yet without strength,” the phrase “were dead” (Eph_2:1; Eph_2:5) here may not be overlooked. The Romanists indeed say (Conc. Trid. Sess. VI. cap. 1): liberum arbitrium minime extinctum esse, viribus licet attenuatum et inclinatum, and Möhler speaks only of the sleep of sin (Symbolik, p. 100), but Paul says, in accordance with his Lord in the parable of him left “half-dead” (ἡμιθανῆ, Luk_10:30), that we are dead to what is good, robbed of the “life,” which includes strength and activity in connection with entire satisfaction, i.e. happiness, and hence are powerless, inactive, cramped in our life-movement, troubled, dissatisfied and unhappy; it is therefore not merely a feeling of unhappiness, not merely the corruption of the intellectual, but also of the moral, in fact of all the powers of life, so that physical death cannot fail, nor yet the ἀπώλεια, eternal destruction. Indeed the physical life is so affected, that sin is the heritage of every child of man from birth, it is forfeit to death as well as to sin.
[Eadie: “While admitting the scriptural account of the introduction of sin, many have shaped their views of it from the connection in which they place it in reference to Divine foreknowledge, and so have sprung up the Supralapsarian and Sub-lapsarian hypotheses. Attempts to form a perfect scheme of Theodicy, or a full vindication of the Divinity, have occupied many other minds than that of Leibnitz. The relation of the race to its Progenitor has been viewed in various lights, and analogies physical, political and metaphysical, with theories of Creationism and Traducianism, have been employed in illustration, from the days of Augustine and Pelagius to those of Erasmus and Luther, Calvin and Arminius, Taylor and President Edwards. Questions about the origin of evil, transmission of depravity, imputation of guilt, federal or representative position on the part of Adam, and physical and spiritual death as elements of the curse, have given rise to long and labored argumentation, because men have looked at them from very different stand-points, and have been influenced in their treatment of the problem by their philosophical conceptions of the Divine character, the nature of sin, and that moral freedom and power which belong to responsible humanity. The modus may be and is among the deep things of God; but the res is palpable: for experience confirms the Divine testimony that we are by nature ‘children of wrath,’ per generationem, not per imitationem.” Comp. the history of the Doctrine, Romans, pp. 191 ff.—R.]
These walking dead ones (Eph_2:2-3) stand in the relation of slaves in Satan’s kingdom, and so long as they are without help from above, they wallow ever deeper and deeper into misery and death. They have in Satan an ἄρχοντα, “prince,” who works and rules in opposition to Christ, the Head of the Church. He has his personal, wicked will as ruler, according to which (κατά) unconverted sinners walk; he has in the existing tendencies of the age in the world, urging themselves as a norm, an assistant of his power, which surrounds all men, penetrates all, unperceived and unregarded (ἐξουσία τοῦ ἀέρος), which works as a spirit in the sons of disobedience (Eph_2:2). The lusts of the flesh also and its glory, of the “thoughts,” the selfish thought, are channels of his influence, of the flow of his spirit into the children of wrath, to which he is himself forfeit and to which all are exposed, who do not permit themselves to be converted and redeemed. This truth is as startling as it is humbling. In and with the world-historical progress under God’s gracious guidance Satan as the prince of darkness carries on his activity to the destruction of men.27
4. Anthropologically: Man appears here:
a. As the creature of God (αὐτοῦ ποίημα), in which however there is but a side reference to the fact of man’s creation. Paul uses this (Eph_2:10) only as a substratum for his remarks respecting man’s renewal and regeneration in Christ, holding this truth firmly however, just here, where man’s ruin in sin is spoken of. This must never be forgotten: Every man, not merely Adam and Eve, those too who are born, are God’s creatures. Even though the substance is given, out of which man is begotten and born, it exists only as the creative in working of God. And although man is to be regarded continually as the creature of God, this does not exclude the second causes by means of which God since the close of the Hexaëmeron continues the work of creation (see Frank, Theol., F. c, I. p. 52), so that the Apostle can say: “by nature children of wrath.” There is a two-fold nature, the original, created by God, the degenerated, corrupted by sin. So far as we are God’s work and creation, is the nature of the body and the soul in organism and powers, good; but intruded sin has corrupted their nature which was in itself good. This leads to the second point.
b. As a member of his race (φύσει) and that from the point of time when his “nature,” a production within humanity, begins, hence from his birth. As respects this he is “flesh,” doing the wishes of the flesh and of the thoughts, is “dead in trespasses and sins.” For humanity is a living whole and in it every individual partakes of the character of the whole. This permits no one to be a non-participant in the consequences of the first sin, and each individual has his natural share in the corruption thereof. There is however, notwithstanding, in him a capacity for being converted, redeemed, saved, which distinguishes him from the fallen angels, who do not possess this, and also from lapis or truncus, negatively, in that he holds himself not passively, but aggressively against God, and positively, in that he has been created by God for renewal in Christ, and has from the creation on such an aptitudo (see Frank, p. 140 ff.). To his doings and his character there belongs however no activity or relation to the salvation given in Christ, although he can and will have a consciousness of his unhappiness as a “child of wrath,” and has accordingly a certain knowledge (obscura scintillula ejus notitia quid sit Deus), or a memoriter knowledge of God and a longing for the removal of his need, and hence too will try in his conduct and plans many a way to help himself, without ever finding the right way and the effective means. He will rather be deceived by the lusts and be oftener and more powerfully moved by the wills of his flesh and of his selfish thought under the evil influences of his surroundings.
c. As a child of his age (“according to the course of this world”) and his nation, breathing in the atmosphere of his time and his tribe, determined and swept on by the stream of the present, to which he belongs.
d. As member of a world, in which outside the Divine power the power of the kingdom of darkness secretly, noiselessly exercises its force all about and in the individual men, who are unbelieving and unconverted. Man has an individual, moral, national position, but stands related also to the cosmical power of the evil one as well as to the eternal power of God working above and within the world.
5. Soteriologically: a) The essence of salvation (“ye have been and are saved”) out of the condition of death, wrought and strengthened by sin, is “life:” hence “quickened together” (Eph_2:5). Life is a gift, a gratuity of grace (δῶρον, Eph_2:8), but not so complete at once, that it only needs to be offered and taken into possession; it is a new creation (Eph_2:10), a creative renewal. Salvation is also conceived of as deliverance from the power and dominion of this world and its prince, as exaltation and redemption into the kingdom of God; hence “raised us up with Him, and made us sit with Him in heavenly places.”
b) The cause of salvation is God, who quickens, raises and exalts, and especially His grace (Eph_2:5; Eph_2:8). Comp. 1. This salvation is so little a life developing itself out of the natural character, that it is called a “gift of God,” which is only to be received.
c) The Mediator is Christ. See 2.
d) The condition is faith: “through faith.” The context shows that the object of faith is the Person of Christ (Eph_2:5-7; Eph_2:10), in whom God and God’s grace are known and grasped, grasped and known. The nature of faith is evidently thus defined, that it is no work, since in this salvation works are denied as antecedent (“not of works,” Eph_2:9), and good works are designated only as subsequent thereto (Eph_2:10), but also, that it does not spring of itself on the soil of our heart or spirit, since salvation comes “not of yourselves:” faith is not from the natural man. But since salvation is the impartation of life, and that too in creative manner, faith itself must be conceived of as an accepting activity, an ethical act, or an ethical course of action, having its corresponding development. Still nothing further is predicated on this point.
[“It is the uniform doctrine of the New Testament, that no man is saved against his will; and his desire to be saved is proved by his belief of the Divine testimony. Salvation by grace is not arbitrarily attached to faith by the mere sovereign dictate of the Most High, for man’s willing acceptance of salvation is essential to his possession of it, and the operation of faith is just the sinner’s appreciation of the Divine mercy, and his acquiescence in the goodness and wisdom of the plan of recovery, followed by a cordial appropriation of its needed and adapted blessings, or, as Augustine tersely and quaintly phrases it—Qui creavit te sine te, non salvabit te sine te. Justification by faith alone is simply pardon enjoyed on the condition of taking it.” Eadie.—R.]
e) The course of salvation, according to Eph_2:5-6 : “quickened us together with Christ,” “and raised us up with Him and made us sit with Him” “in Christ,” as well as Eph_2:10 : “created in Christ Jesus,” is to be thus understood: that the salvation, given personally and actually in Christ, begins in man with a reviving, which is a “dying to sin” (Rom_6:1 f.), beginning first of all in the individual and having in him first its growth and development, but then extending itself over whole races and unfolding itself ever more gloriously in them, not indeed as a natural life left to itself, but as continually evoked and furthered by the supernatural grace in its riches (Eph_2:7), always in Christ, out from Christ, never away from Christ, beyond Christ, but on toward and up to Him.
6. Ethically: a. The worth of morality transcends all intellectual power. If ever a people was great in the latter respect, it was the Greeks, and yet to them applies what is said in Eph_2:1-2 : despite all science and art, despite all progress in the department of human mental culture and the earthly life, so that they have been for centuries the masters of the leading civilized nations, they have fallen and persisted in moral corruption.
b. The nature of morality is “good works,” which God prepared before; they have been given since the beginning of the creation: in the written law the unwritten laws have been rendered, fixed and secured against alteration. The new creation in Christ has resumed and continued the first, not obsolete creation, not however as supplementing a defective one, but as renewing one disfigured and destroyed in man. God’s dealings ordered from the beginning by Him are alone spoken of.
c. The basis of morality, which is the proper bearing of man towards the will of God, rests in the proper relation of man to God, into which he is transferred as a new creature in Christ. Since this is brought to pass through faith, faith itself is the basis of true Christian morality. From what is said respecting the people of Israel, it is manifest that even the law of God and many other salutary institutions can be in force, without helping or furthering this, if faith be lacking. But works cannot and may not be lacking to faith, if it is genuine: they are essential in the life of faith; even though not necessary for the sake of justification and to the attainment of eternal life, they are still necessary proofs of faith, and necessary on account of the mandatum, ordinatio et voluntas Dei. Since good works are not created by God, but Christians created for them, and since Christians should perform them of their own free will under the impulse of the Spirit, faith must be the basis for these, the same faith by means of which the man becomes a new man. [The Gospel says “Live and do this,” not “Do this and live,” and the old maxim: bona opera non præcedunt justificandum, sed sequuntur justificatum, is here again proven Scriptural, as experience proves it the only possible order. The many battles on this point, the ever-recurring tendency in theology and in the heart of the Christian, to mix, confuse, contrast and oppose faith and works, find in the plain, pellucid statement of the Apostle their proper rebuke. Alas, such simple words have too often been tortured by expositors to support their theories.28—R.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Despite the amiable qualities and social virtues in the character, lovely mental gifts in the life of those who are not born of God, not born of His Spirit; they are still walking dead men, dead in the living body, in which the outer man is nobly upheld while the inward man perishes day by day.—Through trespasses and sins, through many, but little sins, little meannesses, trifling impurities, petty jealousies, which creep in secretly, lightly, unnoticed, and work so successfully for the death of man’s soul,—it occurs that one otherwise honorable can be inwardly more corrupt, more thoroughly ruined, than one who has committed some great crime. Among the twelve disciples of Jesus, one was Judas the traitor!—Consider the experience of all Christians: only after conversion do they perceive the abomination of sin, its origin and its end, destruction. Here can man only reflect.—Most men appear well, but if they had at one time the thoughts and feelings which so often steal in upon them, in externally manifest and accomplished deeds before their eyes, their body would seem to them like a shroud, and their heart like a corpse, of a beloved one indeed, yet full of stench.—The spirit of the age of this world is never a good spirit. It does indeed occasionally appear to be so here and there, as in the time of the Reformation. This was born of God’s Spirit and Word, and yet it was furthered by carnal hostility to the Pope, evil desires after the ecclesiastical possessions, after the treasures of the monasteries; godless movements against godless oppression; if God the Lord had not helped it by special events and circumstances, it would have been repressed or polluted—by the spirit of the age!—In evil there is system, progress, growth, development; a prince too and rulers, spirit and law; evil, darkness is a kingdom also, and at its head is a prince, the chief of the devils; from frivolous, temperate sinners to premeditated villains, and from sinful men to fallen angels, and among these there is gradation and connection, a kingdom, without peace and happiness, it is true.
Selfishness is a destructive pervading disease of one’s own Ego, which dies of it. To live for self and only for self is a poor, pitiable life. What kind of a wife is that who will not live for her husband? what kind of a man is he who will not live for his calling? what kind of a human being is that who will not live for his God, but only for his lusts, capable of no sacrifice, except petty alms if he is rich; noble before men, before God a tatter, honored before men and yet the object of Divine wrath and of His sentence to perdition?—It is a sad contradiction among men, that they speak of the “dear God” [the common German phrase: der liebe Gott and say, He is love, while no one is to them more uncomfortable and obnoxious than the Church, which makes this a matter of earnest, preaching of the love of the Father in Christ the Crucified and Risen One; they are tolerant toward sins in themselves and others, aye, toward vile sins, fornication, suicide, if there is any respectability about it, but tolerant toward the living and active members of the church they are certainly not, that is impossible for them. What then do they think of the love of God?—You may as little undervalue faith as the rudder, however small it is in a large ship. All labor in the rigging, in the masts and sails, at stem or stern, helps nothing even in the best of weather, much less in swell and storm, if the rudder is not in order and rightly used; so without faith you toss about in life, aimless, helpless, hopeless.—God did not first make the members and then out of them the body; man was at once entire. So too man is not born piecemeal, though small and weak, he is yet an entire human being. It is so with the new birth also. Conversion affects the whole man, is however only the first step, not perfection, is a beginning pointing and impelling toward advance and completion.
Luther:—That for which each thing is created, it does without law and compulsion. The sun shines by nature, unbidden; the pear-tree bears of itself, voluntarily; three and seven ought not to be ten, they are ten already. There is no need that one should say to God, He should do good, for He does all the time willingly and gladly of Himself. So too one should not command the righteous man, that he should do good works, for he does it without this, without command and compulsion, because he is a new creature and a good tree.—He should not be driven thereto, if his faith be not fancied and feigned.
Starke:—He who does not walk in God’s way, following the guiding star of God’s will, gets other blind guides, and is induced to cut such capers, that he is plunged into extreme corruption.—The saints are free confessors of their sins, having no desire for hypocrisy to justify themselves.—All men are equally corrupted by original sin, although the corruption breaks out in various ways.—Evil lust is the root of all sins, even of sin itself.—Reason is a glorious gift of God, as the deprival of the same, madness, is a great misery and judgment. But it is much weakened and darkened through the fall, and hence inclined to many errors and prejudices, permitting itself to be abused.—Art thou poor in soul, here thou mayest find an inexhaustible treasure of God’s mercy, making us rich in Him.—Our salvation comes from God’s compassionate love alone.—We are really quickened in Christ, by Christ and with Christ. Therefore we have a real not a fancied life, and there is as great a difference between a natural and a regenerated man as between those physically dead and alive.—Believers not only become blessed in the future, but they are really blessed, although their blessedness is still imperfect.—Without grace no one can believe, and without believing no one can partake of grace.—We are God’s work as regards creation; but if we do not become so as regards sanctification and the application of redemption, we remain outside the fellowship with God.—Regeneration is a real creation and the source of all spiritual life.
Rieger:—Living men cannot exactly understand that they are to regard themselves as dead through trespasses and sins. Weak they prefer admitting as applicable to them; and indeed the word of God does occasionally describe us as weak, as sick. But the Spirit of God does not mean this, as men gladly explain it. They confess themselves weak with the persuasion that they can make themselves better and become strong by self-improvement. The word of God, however, means a weakness, in which self-help is no longer possible, where the hope of recovery rests solely on the presence and power of the physician. As certainly as the body without the soul is dead, so certainly is the soul without the Spirit dead.—The walk and the occupation with which man commonly conceals this death, do not make the harm less, but rather the more dangerous.—That the time, the existing course of the world, the principles, opinions and habits arising therein, can operate largely in man, bearing him into much which he would not reach by himself, making his exit and freedom very difficult, should a longing for something better actually arise within him; this is quite readily perceived. But that a prince, a ruler of darkness, an expert power, extending as far as the air and clouds, lurks therein, that we do not know of ourselves, nor do we want to believe it, though it is proven by the word of God. The devil himself has the best interest in the fact that so little of his business is suspected among the dealings of men.—At first flesh and Reason can be for a while in conflict. Reason accuses the lusts of the flesh of being vile and unbecoming to man; but there is no power to free itself from them; and the flesh reproaches the reason with this inability and the consequent falsity of its assumed virtues, and so the two prefer to make peace with each other. The reason is reconciled with the flesh, helps to justify and excuse its lusts, paints a better external appearance for them, while the flesh for the sake of the praise occasionally crawls into a form not too coarse.—What will God yet do in future ages, that the riches of the grace of Christ may be yet more confidently proven, more gladly believed, and more uninterruptedly enjoyed!
Passavant:—Our whole nature desires life, life is our thirst, we hate death! So often and so long as we trespass against the law of our conscience or God’s law, is all holiness and righteousness dead within us; there lives then no love of God, no Spirit of the Lord, no joy in Him, no heavenly peace, no Divine life in us, that is, no real life.—If God’s breath does not breathe afresh upon us with the power of the Divine nature, then education however careful, culture however refined, is mere patchwork and tinsel, no pure truth, no pure power from God, no new birth, no heavenly life.—We can learn from the reports of the gospel messengers, in what forms, in what follies and enormities the kingdom of superstition and unbelief has down to our days, multiplied and established itself. Every recollection of the holy and eternal, every trace, every presage of the unknown God in the human soul, has been degraded and distorted into the silliest and most infamous fictions and lies, into the most miserable and sinful abortions of idolatrous forms and worship.—Notice the language of Scripture. One and the same word in the text signifies unbelief and disobedience, for both these poisonous plants proceed from one and the same bitter root of the heart. You do not look with pleasure on Him, Whom you will not obey; you do not keep Him in mind, nor inquire after Him.—Is thy obedience poor, then thy faith is not earnest; is thy faith not vital and genuine, then there is no child-like, earnest obedience.
Heubner:—Those are dead, who have died to all that is good and godly, in whom the spirit is benumbed and the flesh alone is active. There are grades of death as well as of life. Spiritual death manifests itself in the entire lack of knowledge respecting spiritual things, of desire, love, power for good; all taste for the Divine, all longing for God is wanting. This death is the result of sin. Christianity found the world dead and reanimated it. To be without God, without Christ, is death. The first stirring of life is anxiety about ourselves, the consciousness of misery and sin.—Fearful is the power, which the course, the spirit of the world, maintains over man. It distorts all his ideas. We must agree with it, if we would have peace, honor, respect and power; those who oppose it, are regarded with wrath. The origin of this spirit is in the prince of darkness. He who stands outside of Christ, stands in fellowship with Satan; for he thinks and lives in accordance with the maxims of the evil spirit.—“Prince of the power of the air!” This description is apt, because the evil spirit is not a visible member of human society, and yet is about us, in our circle, in the sublunary world.—Satan was therefore the ruling power in heathenism, and accordingly this cannot be regarded as a healthful and normal development of religion. His influence still continues.—To deny this activity of Satan is to bring water to his mill.—The bodily resurrection of Christ has as a consequence a spiritual resurrection of men.—It is contrary to the proud consciousness of man, to live by the grace of God, and yet he cannot live by any thing else than grace. All is of grace: that we may hear the gospel, God opens our understanding, and makes our hearts willing to believe.—What would have occurred had Christ not come? Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras appeared 4–500 years before Him—what had they helped the world? He who thinks that others would have come after them, who would have helped, will wait in vain forever. —On the one side Paul excludes works, on the other he requires them.
Stier:—God not only raised Him from the dead, but the dead in Him.—The air which exhales from earth the old villain who hides therein and uses it, thoroughly knows how to turn and pour in opposition to the gales from heaven.—Mercy removes misery and death, Love appears instead of wrath, blessing, delivering, saving.—First life, the new creature, then we may speak of walk and good works.—Life, as just begun, is not complete, does not stand still, but grows, develops, forms and employs itself. It proceeds from the Risen One continually as the Spirit of sanctification.
Spurgeon:—Spiritual quickening: Jairus’ daughter, the young man at Nain, Lazarus, 1) Illustrations of the different circumstances in which those who are really dead are to be found; 2) Illustrations of the various means of grace through which they are quickened by the power of the same Spirit; 3) Illustrations of experiences through which those who have been made alive pass after their quickening.
Langbein:—The glorification of Christ, the glorification of Redeemed ones: 1) God has quickened us together with Him, 2) raised us together with Him, 3) transferred us into heavenly places in Him.—Gesetz und Zeugniss: Bow thy knees and rejoice over the great gracious plan of God: 1) that we fully survey it in Christ, 2) that each of us has his place in it, 3) that it has become actual in many respects through the word and faith and in the Holy Ghost.
[Schenkel:—Sin a fountain of death in apparent life.—The kingdom of Satan in its dreadfulness and nothingness.—The blessedness of the Christian: 1) It has a firm basis, that of grace; 2) It leads them to a certain way, that of faith.—Our hope that in the course of ages God will manifest Himself yet more gloriously by means of the grace and truth made known in Christ. “Faith opens our eyes, ears, mind and heart; giving us (1) the heavenly desire, (2) the Divine knowledge, (3) the Divine taste, (4) the truth of life” (from Passavant).—R.]
[Eadie:
Eph_2:1. The epithet “dead” here implies: 1. Previous life; 2. Insensibility; 3. Inability. He cannot because he will not, and therefore he is justly responsible.
Eph_2:2. They did not pursue indulgences fashionable at a former epoch, but now obsolete and forgotten. Theirs were not the idolatries and impurities of other centuries. No; they lived as the age on all sides of them lived—in its popular and universal errors and delusions; they walked in entire conformity to the reigning sins of the times.
Eph_2:3. Si Deus non irascitur impiis et injustis, nec pios justosque diligit (Lactantius).
Eph_2:4. Though mercy has been expended by God for six milleniums, and myriads of myriads have been partakers of it, it is still an unexhausted mine of wealth.—The love is great—a great God is its possessor and great sinners are its objects.
Eph_2:5. Life may be feeble at first, but the sincere milk of the word is imbibed and the expected maturity is at length reached. Its first moment may not indeed be registered in the consciousness, as it may be awakened within us by a varying process.
Eph_2:6. The quickened soul is not merely made aware that in Christ, as containing it and all similar souls, it is enlivened, and raised, and elevated, but along with this it enjoys individually a conscious life, resurrection and session with Jesus.
Eph_2:7. All the grace in this kindness shown in the first century is a lesson even to the nineteenth century. What God did then, He can do now and will do now; and one reason why He did it then was, to teach the men of the present age His ability and desire to repeat in them the same blessed process of salvation and life.
Eph_2:8. Look at salvation in its origin—it is “by grace;” in its reception—it is “through faith;” in its manner of conferment—it is a “gift.”
Eph_2:9. If man be guilty, and being unable to win a pardon, simply receives it; if, being dead, he gets life only as a Divine endowment; if favor, and nothing but favor, has originated his safety, and the only possible act on his part be that of reception; if what he has be but a gift to him in his weak and meritless state—then surely nothing can be further from him than boasting, for he will glorify God for all.—R.]
Footnotes:
[1]Eph_2:1.—[The pronoun ὑμῶν is found in א. B. D. F.; accepted by Lachmann, Tischendorf, Meyer, Ellicott. It is omitted in Rec., K. L.; bracketted by Alford, rejected by Braune, but it seems unlikely to have been inserted, since the articles are sufficiently explicit. They justify at all events the above rendering.—On also instead of and, the meaning of in, and the anacoluthon, see Exeg. Notes.—R.]—B. reads ἐπιθυμίαις instead of ἁμαρτίαις.
[2]Eph_2:2.—[The word ἐξουσίας is generally taken collectively. It means here either empire (so Ellicott renders) or powers (Four Ang. clergymen). The latter least disturbs the E. V., and gives an excellent sense.—Of must be inserted before “spirit,” to show that it is not in apposition with “prince,” as the E. V. assumes.—Sons is more literal than “children,” and serves to distinguish υἱοί from τέκνα. (Eph_2:2).—R.]
[3]Eph_2:3.—Instead of τέκνα φύσει [Rec.] in א. B. and others, A. D. E. F. G. and others read φύσει τέκνα; an evident transposition, to take φύσει from between two words belonging together. [Most modern editors retain the order of the Rec.—Alford accepts ἤμεθα (א. B.) instead of ἦμεν (Rec., A. D. F. K. L., most editors).—Ellicott has been followed in the emendations of the English text.—R.]
[4]Eph_2:5.—[The aorist should be rendered by the English past, here and Eph_2:6, while the peculiar and emphatic ἐστε σεσωσμένοι, ye have been and (still are) saved, seems to require the perfect here, where a series of past acts are brought in review.—We substitute our trespasses for sins, because παραπτώμασιν is usually rendered thus, the article having in this instance almost the force of our possessive pronoun.—B. has a number of various readings in this verse, inserting ἐν before τοῖς παραπτώμασιν, which is an evident gloss. On in see the parallel expression, Eph_2:1.—R.]
[5]Eph_2:6.—[In Him is preferable to together, bringing out more exactly the force of συν in the compound verbs.—R.]
[6]Eph_2:7.—The whole verse is wanting in א.; yet added very early. [The order of the E. V. is unfortunate, since the emphasis rests on the verb shew forth. The fuller expression: the ages which are to come, seems to be required by the full form of the Greek.
[7]Eph_2:7.—[The Rec. (with D.3 K. L.) gives the masculine form. The neuter is found in A. B. D.1 F., added in א., accepted by nearly all modern editors.—R.]
[8]Eph_2:7.—[The E. V. as so often incorrectly renders ἐν, through. The comma should be omitted, as the phrase is either part of a compound modal clause, or closely joined with “toward us.”—His before kindness is altogether unnecessary.—R.]
[9]Eph_2:8. [The article τῆς before πίστεως is found in א. D.3 K. L., most cursives, Rec.; accepted by Tischendorf, Meyer, Eadie. Bracketted by Alford. It is omitted in א. B. D. F. G.; rejected by Lachmann, Ellicott (not in eds. 1, 2, but in 3, 4) and Braune. The weight, though not the majority, of authorities seems to be against it.—Alford renders the last clause of the verse: God’s is the gift, following the Greek order, but Ellicott’s rendering: the gift is God’s, better accords with the English usage respecting emphatic position.—R.]
[10]Eph_2:10.—[This transposition brings out the emphasis resting on His, required by the Greek order, and has the additional advantage of showing that the participle created agrees with we.—The changes in the latter part of the verse are demanded by the generally admitted interpretation of the passage.—See Exeg. Notes.—R.]
[11][Eadie infers from Eph_2:2, “in which,” that these datives represent not simply the instrument, but at the same time the condition of death. The general notion of the dative, the where-case, is not opposed to this. Hodge Ellicott and Al-ford accept the causal sense, the latter justifying the use of in, to express this (“sick in a fever”). There seems to be doubt enough as to the exact force to warrant us in retaining the preposition supplied in our version.—R.]
[12][Alford doubts the universal applicability of Tittmann’s distinction, but accepts it as correct here, where both words are used. In Rom_5:12-19 (see pp. 176, 182, Romans) there is a very marked distinction between the words, but here it is less observable. We must however attribute to ἁμαρτία a more generic sense than is found in the concrete παράπτωμα.—R.]
[13][Ellicott: The former, the more limited term, viz.: particular and special acts of sin; the latter, the more inclusive and abstract, embracing all forms, phases and movements of sin, whether entertained in thought or consummated in act.” So Eadie, though not very decided in his preference.—R.]
[14][Ellicott finds an ethical meaning predominant here in” αἰών. “In such cases as the present the meaning seems to approach that of ‘tendency, spirit, of the age’ (Olsh.), yet still not without distinct trace of the regular temporal notion, which, even in those passages where αἰών seems to imply little more than our ‘world’ (comp. 2Ti_4:10), may still be felt in the idea of the (evil) course, development, and progress (‘ubi ætas mala malam excipit’), that is tacitly associated with the term.”—R.]
[15][“The world and the church are now tacitly brought into contrast as antagonistic societies; and as the church has its own exalted and glorious Head, so the world is under the control of an active and powerful master, thus characterized” (Eadie). The reference to a personality is to be found in this word, though ἐξουσίας as a collective noun includes the evil spirits whose prince is Satan.—R.]
[16][The connection between “unbelief” and “disobedience” is undoubted, but the former does not come into any special prominence here. The word here “characterizes the world not as in direct antagonism to the gospel, but as it is by nature—hostile to the will and government of God, and daringly and wantonly violating that law which is written in their hearts” (Eadie).—R.]
[17][The reference to Jewish Christians has been accepted by the vast majority of commentators, both on account of the particular antithesis (ὑμᾶς, Eph_2:1) and the general distinction which seems to attach to these pronouns in this Epistle. But De Wette, Eadie, Ellicott, Alford oppose this reference here, on the ground that πάντες will not admit of this limitation. In every case Paul refers to both, when he uses ἡμεῖς πάντες.—Perhaps it is safest to follow this usage here, for the doctrinal teaching remains the same, whether we suppose the Apostle is emphasizing the fact that all Christians are children of wrath by nature, or even the Jews who thought themselves children of promise by nature.—The meaning of οἱ λοιποί at the close of the verse will of course be modified by the view taken of ἡμεῖς.—R.]
[18][Ellicott says of this word: “It here probably denotes the various exhibitions and manifestations of the will, and is thus symmetrical with, but a fuller expansion of ἐπιθυμίαις.” So Meyer. Eadie similarly; the latter inclinations, the former the resolves into which they ripen, and which are further divided.—The use of the word seemed to justify our finding in it an element of desire, though the E. V. is too decided in its rendering.—R.]
[19][Eadie emphasizes the subjective side: “The object of the Apostle, however, is not merely to affirm that spiritual life and resurrection have been secured by such a connection with Jesus, but that having been so provided, they are really possessed.” This makes the “life” here referred to strictly spiritual. But a reference to physical resurrection seems to be involved (Alford, Ellicott). The aorist, retaining its proper force, has occasioned some difficulty. While the reading ἐν (B.) is to be rejected, and “in Christ” is not the exact sense, we must still hold that this thought underlies our verse. “What God wrought in Christ He wrought ipso facto in all who are united with Him “(Ellicott); not to the exclusion of a reference to the actual quickening in the case of believers. “When He was raised physically, all His people were ideally raised in Him; and in consequence of this connection with Him, they are, through faith, actually quickened and raised” (Eadie).—Dr. Hodge finds in the last fact that two other aorists follow a reason for limiting this verb to the beginning of the work of restoration, and yet says, Eph_2:6 : “In its widest sense the life, which in Eph_2:5 is said to he given to us, includes the exaltation expressed in this verse. It is, therefore, only by way of amplification that the Apostle, after saying we are made partakers of the life of Christ, adds that we are raised up and enthroned with Him in heaven.” If the latter position be correct, the verb is not to he limited here.—R.]
[20][Ellicott: “This emphatic mention of grace (grace, not works) is to make the readers feel what their own hearts might otherwise have caused them to doubt,—the real and vital truth, that they have present, and actual fellowship with Christ in the quickening, yea, and even in the resurrectionary and glorifying power of God.”—R.]
[21][The force of συν in the two verbs is brought out in our rendering of this verse. A neater version would probably he: “And with Him raised us up, and made us sit in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”—R.]
[22][It is joined by some to χρηστότητι, but this seems a strange collocation. Ellicott takes the whole expression as “a single compound modal clause,” “in kindness toward us” defining accurately the manner in which God displays “the riches of His grace.” while “in Christ Jesus” specifies as it were, the ever-blessed sphere to which its manifestations are confined, and in which alone its operations are felt. The same author very properly remarks on De Wette’s “melancholy want of appreciation” of the repeated mention of the name of Christ.—R.]
[23][The variation in the reading does not affect this statement, since διὰ πίστεως would mean, through faith, taken abstractly, while τῆς πίστεως would mean your faith. As regards the meaning of “grace,” it preserves the same wide sense as in Eph_2:5, and is “not to be regarded specially and technically as in the scholastic theology, and divided into gratiæ præveniens, operans, co-operans; the first having for its object homo convertendus; the second, homo qui convertitur; and the third, homo conversus sed sanctificandus” (Eadie). The force of the perfect as expressing both a terminated action and a present state should not be overlooked: Ye have been saved, and ye are actually now in a state of salvation.—R.]
[24][Dr. Hodge presents four reasons for preferring the reference to faith. 1. “It best suits the design of the passage.” Grant it, but that is of little weight when the other reference accords better with grammar and syntax. 2. “The other interpretation makes the passage tautological.” Paul uses a great deal of such tautology. 3. “The antithesis between faith and works is preserved.” But regard for an antithesis found in the Epistles to the Galatians and Romans should not outweigh regard for the parallelism of our own passage. 4. “The analogy of Scripture is in favor of this view.” Very true, but as it represents elsewhere faith as the gift of God, so it represents everywhere that salvation is the gift of God.—It is to be regretted that so judicious an author had not stated the difficulties attending his view as well as these arguments in its favor.—R.]
[25][Alford: “The English reader is likely to imagine a contrast between ‘not of works’ and ‘for we are His work manship,’ which can hardly have been in the mind of the Apostle.” The word ποίημα becomes in Latin and English poema, poem; the same notion of poetry being the truest, highest work or creation, is found in other languages.—R.]
[26][Eadie well sums up the argument of the Apostle, that salvation is not of works: 1. The statement that salvation is of works involves an anachronism; 2. Involves the fallacy of mistaking the effect for the cause. 3. Even such good works can have in them no saving merit, for we are His work manship.—R.]
[27][In our section, immediately following Eph_1:22-23, the world is marked in distinct and telling contrast to the Church. “The Church has its head—κεφαλή; the world has its—ἄρχων. That Head is a man, allied by blood to the community over which He presides; that other prince is an unembodied spirit—an alien as well as a usurper. The one so blesses the church, that it becomes His ‘fulness,’ the other sheds darkness and distress all around him. The one has His Spirit dwelling in the church, leading it to holiness; the other, himself the darkest, most malignant, and unlovely being in the universe, exercises a subtle and debasing influence over the minds of his vassals, who are ‘children of disobedience.’ Mat_13:38; Joh_8:44; Act_26:18; 2Co_4:4.” Eadie.—R.]
[28][As a specimen of the mode by which human inferences and hypotheses can be added to Scripture to pervert it, take the declaration of the Council of Trent. Sess. VI. cap. Eph 16: “The Lord’s goodness to all men is so great that He will have the things which are His own gifts to be their merits”—ut eorum velit esse merita quæ sunt ipsius dona (from Eadie).—R.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–3 the course of this world--the career (literally, "the age,"…
the course of this world--the career (literally, "the age," compare Gal 1:4), or present system of this world (Co1 2:6, Co1 2:12; Co1 3:18-19, as opposed to "the world to come"): alien from God, and lying in the wicked one (Jo1 5:19). "The age" (which is something more external and ethical) regulates "the world" (which is something more external).
the prince of the power of the air--the unseen God who lies underneath guiding "the course of this world" (Co2 4:4); ranging through the air around us: compare Mar 4:4, "fowls of the air" (Greek, "heaven") that is, (Eph 2:15), "Satan" and his demons. Compare Eph 6:12; Joh 12:31. Christ's ascension seems to have cast Satan out of heaven (Rev 12:5, Rev 12:9-10, Rev 12:12-13), where he had been heretofore the accuser of the brethren (Job 1:6-11). No longer able to accuse in heaven those justified by Christ, the ascended Saviour (Rom 8:33-34), he assails them on earth with all trials and temptations; and "we live in an atmosphere poisonous and impregnated with deadly elements. But a mighty purification of the air will be effected by Christ's coming" [AUBERLEN], for Satan shall be bound (Rev 12:12-13, Rev 12:15, Rev 12:17; Rev 20:2-3). "The power" is here used collectively for the "powers of the air"; in apposition with which "powers" stand the "spirits," comprehended in the singular, "the spirit," taken also collectively: the aggregate of the "seducing spirits" (Ti1 4:1) which "work now (still; not merely, as in your case, 'in time past') in the sons of disobedience" (a Hebraism: men who are not merely by accident disobedient, but who are essentially sons of disobedience itself: compare Mat 3:7), and of which Satan is here declared to be "the prince." The Greek does not allow "the spirit" to refer to Satan, "the prince" himself, but to "the powers of the air" of which he is prince. The powers of the air are the embodiment of that evil "spirit" which is the ruling principle of unbelievers, especially the heathen (Act 26:18), as opposed to the spirit of the children of God (Luk 4:33). The potency of that "spirit" is shown in the "disobedience" of the former. Compare Deu 32:20, "children in whom is no faith" (Isa 30:9; Isa 57:4). They disobey the Gospel both in faith and practice (Th2 1:8; Co2 2:12).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1–3 II. HISTORICAL INCLUSION OF THE EPHESIANS IN THE DIVINE…
II. HISTORICAL INCLUSION OF THE EPHESIANS IN THE DIVINE ELECTIVE PURPOSE, Eph_2:1 to Eph_3:21.
1. Recapitulation of their original death and subsequent resurrection, Eph_2:1-10.
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In parallelism with Christ’s resurrection and exaltation in Eph_1:20-23, St. Paul pictures the conceptual death of the Ephesians by sin, and their resurrection and exaltation with Christ. Their state of death, Eph_2:1-3; their resurrection and exaltation with Christ, Eph_2:4-6. The reason of this, a showing to the ages of his grace, Eph_2:7. A present reminder to the Ephesians that they are saved solely by this grace, Eph_2:8-10.
1. And you—St. Paul now begins from Eph_1:20, in order to furnish, in Eph_2:1-10, the parallel of the Ephesian spiritual resurrection with Christ’s bodily resurrection. Meyer opposes this connecting with Eph_1:20, because of the change from the first person plural, us who believe, Eph_2:19, to the second person, and you. But the you is to the we as a part to a whole, and so subject to the same statement.
Hath he quickened—As the italics indicate, these words are supplied by the translators to furnish a verb to govern the objective you. The words are in sense borrowed from Eph_2:5, where the verb is introduced with the objective changed to us.
Dead—Under the entire death which sin works—death temporal, spiritual, and eternal. Dr. Eadie and others in vain object that they were not in reality temporally dead. Nor were they, we reply, in reality raised with Christ and made to sit together in heavenly places. Yet both statements are conceptually true, and all parts of the redemption are taken as one whole. Note, 2Co_5:14. Redemption raises from the death that sin inflicts upon us. In— Rather, by. The more natural rendering of the Greek makes the death the effect of the trespasses and sins. The terms trespasses and sins run into each other in meaning, yet there is a general distinction. The trespass is the more secular, the sin the more religious term. The former is more uniformly a distinct act, sometimes an inadvertent one; the latter is often a habit, a moral state or condition. In the former more distinctly appears the idea of an offence against another; in the latter a guilt, or penalty, or depravation, contracted upon ourselves.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Chapter Eph_2:1-10. Regeneration of the Ephesians, an Instance of…
Chapter Eph_2:1-10. Regeneration of the Ephesians, an Instance of Gratuitous Salvation
1. And you hath he quickened] The construction is broken, and the gap is filled by the inserted verb, inferred from Eph_2:5 below, where however “we” has taken the place of “you.” Better, perhaps, did He quicken (as R. V.); the Gr. verb in Eph_2:5 being the aorist. Ideally, in their slain and risen Lord’s triumph, actually, in their spiritual regeneration, “believing on His name,” they had definitely received “eternal life.”—The English reader will remember that in the A. V. “to quicken” means seldom if ever to excite what already lives, but to bring from death to life.
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Observe here the great theme of the Church and its Head treated in the special aspect of entrance into the Body by Divine regeneration of persons. For close parallels, though they treat the matter more from the side of Christ’s atoning work, cp. Col_1:21; Col_2:13; passages which, if written shortly before this, may have suggested the form of the opening phrase of this.
who were dead] Lit. being dead, “when you were dead;” devoid of spiritual and eternal life; see the next words. Obviously this weighty phrase needs to be read in the light of other truths; such as the existence of spirit, and the full presence of conscience, and of accountability, in the unregenerate. But those truths must not be allowed unduly to tone down this statement, which distinctly teaches that the state of the unregenerate has a true analogy to physical death; and that that analogy on the whole consists in this, that (1) it is a state in which a living principle, necessary for organization, growth and energy, in reference to God and holiness, is entirely lacking; (2) it is a state which has no innate tendency to develope such a principle of life. The principle must come to it altogether ab extra.—The latest researches into nature confirm the conviction that dead matter has absolutely no inner tendency to generate life, which must come into it ab extra if it is to live; a suggestive analogy.
On the doctrine of spiritual death as the state of unregenerate man, cp. ch. Eph_5:14; Joh_5:24; 1Jn_3:14; 1Jn_5:12; and see Joh_3:3; Joh_6:53. There are passages where “death” is used as a strong term to denote a comparatively lifeless state of the regenerate soul, needing (if it is to be escaped) not new birth, which is a thing once accomplished, but revival. But this modified sense of “death” must not be allowed to lower the absolute sense in a passage like this, with its peculiar doctrinal emphasis on the contrast of death and life. The state here described is not one of suppressed life, but of absence of life. Cp. 1Ti_5:6; Rev_3:1.
2Co_5:14, sometimes quoted of spiritual death, is not in point: translate, “then did all die,” and interpret of the death, representatively in Christ, of “all” at Calvary.
in trespasses and sins] Better, in respect of your trespasses, &c.—The Gr. construction is the dative without the preposition “in,” (so Col_2:13); and indicates conditioning circumstances.—What is the distinction between “trespass” and “sin”? It has been held that “trespass” is more of the conception, and “sin” of the act; or again that “trespass” is more of omission, “sin” of commission. But usage forbids any certainty in such inferences. In Eze_18:26 the LXX. use the word paraptôma (trespass) of the sin which the “righteous” commits and in which he dies. Etymologically, it is a fall over; and this may be either over a pebble or over a precipice. In actual usage, however, there is a slight occasional tendency in “trespass” towards a mitigated idea of sin, a “fault,” as in Gal_6:1; and it is possible that we have this here; as if to say, “in every form of evil-doing, whether lighter (trespasses) or heavier (sins).” But it is more probable still that the phrase is used designedly for accumulation’s sake alone, without precise distinction; as if to say, “evil-doing, however described.”
See Abp. Trench, N. T. Synonyms, under the word ἁμαρτία, &c. And above, note on Eph_1:7.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–3 (1) And you hath he quickened.—And you also. St.…
(1) And you hath he quickened.—And you also. St. Paul here begins the particular application to the Ephesians, which is the main subject of this chapter, broken off in Eph_2:3-10, and resumed in Eph_2:11. The words “hath He quickened” (or, properly, did He quicken) are supplied here from Eph_2:5—rightly, as expressing the true sense and tending to greater clearness, but perhaps not necessarily.
Trespasses and sins.—These two words, more often used separately, are here brought together, to form a climax. The word rendered “trespass” signifies a “swerving aside and falling”; the word rendered “sins” is generally used by St. Paul in the singular to denote “sin” in the abstract, and signifies an entire “missing of the mark” of life. Hence, even in the plural, it denotes universal and positive principles of evil doing, while “trespass” rather points to failure in visible and special acts of those not necessarily out of the right way.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–3 Vers. 1-10. SPIRITUAL HISTORY OF THE EPHESIANS. This passage…
Vers. 1-10. SPIRITUAL HISTORY OF THE EPHESIANS. This passage corresponds to Genesis 1. It is a history of creation, and we note the same great stages.
1. Chaos (vers. 1-3).
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2. The dawn the Spirit of God moving on the face of the waters (ver. 4).
3. The work of creation in successive stages (vers. 4-10).
You also, who were dead in your trespasses and your sins. The apostle returns from his digression, in which he had shown the marvelous working of the Divine power on Christ, to show the working of the same power on the Ephesian converts themselves. The uJmajv is not governed by any verb going before; it manifestly depends on the sunezwopoihsen of ver. 5, but it is separated from it by a new digression (vers. 2, 3), on which the apostle immediately starts. While the same quickening power of God was exerted on Christ and on the Ephesians, it was exerted to very different effects: in the case of Christ, raising him literally from the dead and exalting him to heavenly glory; in the case of the Ephesians, raising them from spiritual death and exalting them to high spiritual privileges. We may observe the change from the second to the first person, and vice versa, in this chapter as in Ephesians 1. Second person (vers. 1, 8, 11); first (vers. 3, 10, 14); and the two streams brought together (ver. 18). The chapter closes beautifully with an emblem of the Church as the one temple of which all believers are parts. The death ascribed to the Ephesians in their natural state is evidently spiritual death, and "trespasses and sins," being in the dative (nekroumasi kaiaiv), seems to indicate the cause of death through your trespasses and your sins" (R.V); "dead of your trespasses," etc., is suggested by Alford. It is not easy to assign a different meaning to the two nouns here; some suggest acts of transgression for the one, and sinful tendencies or principles for the other, but this distinction cannot be carried out in all other passages. The killing effect of sin is indicated. As sins of sensuality kill truthfulness, industry, integrity, and all virtue, so sin generally, affecting as it does our whole nature, kills, or does not suffer to live, the affections and movements of the spiritual life. A state of "death" implies previous life the race lived before; it implies also a state of insensibility, of utter powerlessness and helplessness.
Vers. 1-10.
Spiritual history of Ephesians.
I THE CHAOS, or original state.
1. It is a state of death, implying previous life, but present insensibility and helplessness. The element of death is "trespasses and sins their killing power.
1. Yet a state of unholy activity,
1. in respect of the objects pursued course of this world;
2. the authority obeyed of the power of the air;
3. the companions accepted sons of disobedience.
1. A state of unholy indulgence; seeking the fulfillment
1. of the lusts of the flesh, the lowest part of our nature;
2. the lusts of the mind, a little higher, but still most unworthy to be the chief aim.
3. A state of condemnation; "by nature," by our very constitution, we are children of wrath. And this true of all.
II THE DAWN. "But." Force of contrast. "The darkest hour precedes the dawn.
1. Gods work. God says, "Let there be light, and there is light.
(1) The source of light and order God, not man.
(2) The attributes giving birth to the new creation:
(a) his mercy;
(b) his love.
(3) The fullness and intensity of these attributes: he is "rich" in mercy and his love is "great.
(4) Our condition when visited by mercy and love: "even when dead in sins.
1. Results of Gods interposition.
1. "He hath quickened us with Christ.
2. "Raised us up together.
3. Seated us with Christ in heavenly places.
4. Purpose of God in this process to "show the exceeding riches of his grace.
III THE NEW CREATION, or salvation by grace.
1. The great change. "Ye are saved.
1. How effected.
1. On the part of God, salvation is "by grace.
2. On the part of man, salvation is "through faith." God offers it, and faith receives it, as a free gift.
1. Relation of salvation to works.
1. Works do not procure salvation; for then boasting would come in.
2. Works are the product of God working in us; "We are his workmanship.
3. Works are the result of a Divine foreordination.
4. We are not only to do good works, but walk (habitually) in them.
5. Grandeur of this work. Creation was grand; new creation is grander. To bring a world out of nothing was great; to restore a world from chaos is greater. At the first creation, God saw all that he had made, and it was good. At the new creation, he experiences even a deeper emotion of joy. Imperfection of the new creation in this life in human souls. Let us seek that in us it may become continually more complete and more glorious. It is not that we are called to work, but rather to allow God to work to have all within us open and unobstructed for the full and free exercise of God"s almighty renewing power.
HOMILIES BY T. CROSKERY. Ver. 1.
Spiritual death.
The apostle sets forth the greatness of Divine power in man"s salvation by setting forth the greatness of his sin and misery, represented under the aspect of spiritual death. Let us understand the nature of this death.
I MARK THE EXPRESSIVENESS OF THE TERM. It is strange to find it applied to living men. But there are certain suggestive points of similarity between natural and spiritual death.
1. The dealt have all the organs of sense, but no sensibility. As the psalmist said of the idols of the heathen, so are the dead: "Eyes have they, but they see not: they have ears, but they hear not". (Psa_115:5, Psa_115:6) So the spiritually dead have no susceptibility in regard to the things of God; they see not the beauties of holiness; they see not God or Christ.
1. The dead drove all the machinery of motion, but the machine is at rest. So the spiritually dead have all the natural faculties of life judgment, memory, imagination, feeling, conscience but they are unable to renew themselves into spiritual life. The inability is not natural, but moral, and
2. therefore sinners are responsible for it. They cannot, because they will not. "Ye will not come unto me, that ye may have life". (Joh_5:40)
3. The dead are cold to the touch. The living body retains its heat very much in the same manner as a fire retains its heat, and, in a very true sense, we are all literally burning out like the fuel that is consumed in our fires. The dead are cold as the grave that covers them. So are the spiritually dead; they have no warmth of Christian love going out either to God or man. Though intellectually alive to all purely worldly interests, they are coldly indifferent, or even hostile, to the interests of the kingdom of grace.
4. The dead go onward to corruption. The process of corruption may be arrested for a time by the skill of man, but it will prevail in the end, and man returns to the dust whence he came, as the spirit has returned to the God who gave it. So the spiritually dead are corrupt, constitutionally, in virtue of the sin of Adam, and they are still more corrupt through temptation to actual transgression. The absence of love to God interposes no check to the progress of corruption in a human heart. What a terrific picture is that of a dead soul!
II THE CIRCUMSTANCES OR CONDITIONS OF SPIRITUAL DEATH. We see our dead surrounded successively by the shroud, the coffin, the hearse, the grave. So likewise the spiritually dead are surrounded by trespasses and sins ." These two expressive terms indicate, not simply the cause of death, but its conditions and circumstances.
1. Trespasses. This term is exceedingly expressive as embodying what is involved in the original term.
(1) It suggests the idea of a landmark fixed by God, which he has commanded us not to pass. Yet who can say that he has not passed the landmark? Who can say that he has not trespassed upon God"s preserves? For what God had reserved for himself out of all the trees of the garden of Eden, cur first parents trespassed upon; and who among ourselves has not again and again trespassed upon that reserved territory of love wherewith God has surrounded himself and surrounded each one of our neighbors?
(2) The word suggests the further idea of a barrier which God has placed in our way, and told us that we are not to force it or pass it. There is the barrier of his Law, which he has strengthened by terrible penalties, and upon which he has inscribed his own fearful curse: "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the Law to do them". (Gal_3:10) Yet who can say that he has not passed this barrier, though God"s curse was inscribed upon it? There is the barrier of conscience which God has built up strongly in every man; and who can say that he has not again and again passed this barrier, often bringing the artillery of worldly advantage or pleasure to bear against it and break it down?
2. Sins. This term points to the sinful movements of the soul sins of thought and purpose, as trespasses seem to point to the various developments of a sinful nature. The sins are the fruit of moral corruption which has its seat in the heart, and radiates thence to every department of human conduct. The principle of sin is not merely negative, for it is a positive negation of the Divine will, putting something else in its place. The term sins" would, more exactly than the other, include sins of omission, which are necessarily much more numerous than sins of commission. It is a solemn thought that men are "dead in sin" by every duty they omit, by every opportunity they neglect, by every blessing they despise, as well as by every positive transgression of the Divine Law. The radical significance of both terms implies a real hostility to God, which is only brought into prominence the moment the sinful spirit comes into sharp and painful collision with the pure Law of God. This dark picture of the sinner"s state suggests that
(1) we ought to mourn for the dead, as we mourn for our dear ones who are carried forth to burial;
(2) that we ought to pray for the dead, that God may grant them "a quickening together with Christ;
(3) that we ought to warn the dead that, if they die in their trespasses and sins, they will be buried in their trespasses and sins. T.C.
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR Vers. 1-7.
The resurrection and ascension of the soul.
Paul"s prayer for the Ephesians was, as we have seen, that they might appreciate the mighty power of God to us-ward who believe. This power was first manifested in the person and experience of Christ in raising him from the dead, in exalting him to the Father"s right hand, in putting all things under his feet, and in constituting him Head of his Church. We are now to notice a parallel experience of power in the case of the believer.
I CONSIDER THE RESURRECTION OF THE SOUL. (Vers. 1-5.) In these verses the apostle represents our souls as by nature dead like Christ"s body in the tomb. They are not sick through sin, but dead. And the death of the soul is manifested in the corruption of the nature, so that we live as the world lives, according to the devil"s desires, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and becoming most deservedly the "children of wrath" like others. All this corruption of the nature is the manifestation of the death in sin. But the Spirit, who raised up Christ"s body from the tomb, comes to quicken our dead souls. We are quickened together with Christ. The Father in his wondrous love works this miracle within us, so that we are raised out of death into a new life. Now, just as Jesus entered by resurrection into a new because immortal life, so we by resurrection enter into a new and immortal existence. We feel assured that we cannot die, since we have been raised into the new life with Christ. This idea of the death of the soul is found in the ancient and in the modern classics. In such authors as Plutarch, Cicero, Heraclitus, and Persius, as well as in such a modern as the poet Gautier, it may be found; but in them it is an utterance of despair. It is only Paul who can take it and show how the death can be terminated in the victory of resurrection.
II CONSIDER THE ASCENSION OF THE SOUL. (Ver. 6.) Not only is the soul raised together with Christ, but it is "made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." In other words, we are made to have an ascension experience as well as a resurrection experience. Now, when Christ ascended far above all principality and power, he must have entered a joyful experience such as this world could never afford. He would never have enjoyed such a delight had he lingered in a limited world like this. In the same way the risen soul is enabled to ascend into a seraphic experience, a joy in the Lord such as was never dreamed of. It is to be feared that many have experienced the spiritual resurrection who have not gone on to the experience of the ascension; in other words, they are living lives comparatively joyless. They do not live as if they were already within the golden gates and rejoicing always in the Lord. But the thing is not only possible, it is pre-eminently desirable. The world would be vastly the better of souls that had realized the ascension.
III CONSIDER THE BELIEVER"S CONSEQUENT REIGN. (Ver. 6.) For Jesus ascended that he might occupy a throne. And we ascend in spirit that we may be kings of men. It is Christ"s purpose that we should be kings and priests unto God and his Father. (Rev_1:5, Rev_1:6) Now, joyful Christians cannot but influence others for good. They come to their kingdom, and others are glad to submit to their sway. They hold men by the heart and assert a proper sovereignty over others. The reign of Christ is carried out in some measure when we have learned lovingly to reign.
IV THE PURPOSE OF SUCH SPIRITUAL GIFTS IS THAT THE EXCEEDING RICHES OF GOD"S GRACE MIGHT BE REVEALED. (Ver. 7.) For if we had never died in sin, God"s mighty power in raising us would never have been appreciated. If the creatures had never fallen, who would have known the wealth of God"s love and power in lifting them up again? The physical universe can only illustrate a small part of the power and love of God. It requires the moral universe as a background to set off the brightness of his redeeming mercy. It is out of a sinful world the greatest examples of Divine power shall be forthcoming. God is rich in mercy; how rich only sinners can illustrate and with some fullness appreciate. Every risen, ascended, and reigning soul is intended to be a fresh example of the exceeding riches of God"s grace. R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY R. FINLAYSON Vers. 1-10.
Association with Christ.
The concluding thought of the first chapter was the resurrection and exaltation of Christ. In order now to bring out how they were benefited thereby, he calls up to them their original condition. He shows them the pit out of which they have been dug, the rock out of which they have been hewn. In the first and second verses he has special reference to Gentile Christians, in the third verse he includes Jewish Christians in his description.
I GENTILE CHRISTIANS.
1. They were dead. "And you did he quicken, when ye were dead." It is a comprehensive word for the evil of their condition. There is a natural condition for plants, which they lose in their decay. There is a natural condition for animals, which they lose in their death. So there is a natural condition for rational beings, which they lose in what we call spiritual death. And, as there is nothing higher in kind than spiritual life, so there is nothing more dreadful than spiritual death. It is not extinction, but it is a condition against nature, on the ground of an immortal existence. It is not loving God with our whole soul and strength and mind, but living at enmity with him; and how wearing out to contend with our Maker! It is not loving our neighbor as ourselves, but seeking our own selfish ends; and how narrowing is this to our souls!
2. Their deadness was caused by themselves. "Through your trespasses and sins." If there is any difference between these two words, it is that the former refers more to overt transgressions, while the latter is inclusive of evil thoughts that have only been entertained in the heart. When Adam and Eve overtly transgressed in eating of the fruit, death at once passed upon them in the loss of confidence in God, of unconsciousness, of ingenuousness, of devotedness to each other. And the act was not long in bearing bitter fruit in the hate, which led Cain to take a brother"s life. Overt transgression makes matters worse, in the evil that is wrought on others in the entanglements to which it leads. At the same time, it is true that evil imaginations that never find expression in words or acts have a deadening effect on the soul. They may indicate daring rebellion against God; and, even though they are only vain thoughts that lodge in the mind, they are not there without the spreading of a baneful influence over the life.
3. They were only causes of deadness. "Wherein aforetime ye walked." In trespasses and sins they walked. Their life was one continual trespassing and sinning. Their fountain was constantly sending forth bitter water. Their tree only brought forth evil fruit. And how could it be otherwise, seeing that they were corrupted at the very center of their being? There were some of their acts that were better than others, but none that were thoroughly right in principle or motive. All their acts had a fatal defect, and many of them, as the first of Romans shows, had a positive vileness.
1. They stood related to this world. "According to the course of this world." This world is opposed to the world as it should be, or the kingdom of God among men. It is the world content with itself, and seeking to be
2. independent of God. And as the kingdom of God has an age or ages for its holy development, so this world, it is implied here, has an age for its unholy development. For the word translated "course" is properly age." In the mysterious providence of God evil has scope for its development. "The mystery of iniquity doth work." And when it is said here that they once walked according to the course of this world, the meaning is that their characters had not the normal form of the kingdom, but had one or other of those abnormal forms which belong to the world.
3. They stool related to the head of evil. "According to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience." He is here called the prince of the power of the air. He is a prince with other evil spirits under him. Evil is divisive; his then must be a mighty, prince-like influence that he keeps them united under him for evil ends. He is dependent on God, a mere instrument in his hand, at his absolute disposal, as it is with every creature; but he is allowed, through his emissaries, to have great power upon earth. The singular epithet is applied to him here in allusion to his surrounding us with temptation as the atmosphere surrounds the earth. As the air borders on the earth, so there is a sphere bordering on our spirits, subtle, invisible like air, through which evil suggestions can readily be conveyed to us. Or it may be that the evil spirits have an affinity to air, which they do not have to grosser matter, so that it is their haunt within this region. There is here what we cannot understand; but we can understand this temptation being skillfully presented to our minds, against which we must invoke the skill of another, else we are taken in the tempter"s meshes. He is further called the prince of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience. It is not usual to connect a spirit, or principle, with its prince. But he is undoubtedly the principal representative of the spirit of disobedience. In him disobedience takes its most virulent form. The object on which he is bent is to spite God, to thwart his holy ends. This is the spirit which he as its original source breathes into his subordinates, and which they in turn under his direction seek to breathe into men. And those in whom it finds a sphere of operation are called the children of disobedience. They stand related to the evil principle as its unclean progeny. It was from heathendom that the description here was taken. It was very much man left to himself. It was the truest representation of what "this world" is. It was Satan having his own way. It was rampant disobedience. For though the heathen world was under the Divine providence, yet it was without special helps, without special checks. Depraved human nature was allowed to bring out its own ignorance of God, its own profanity, its own licentiousness. It was from that heathen world that these Gentile Christians had been taken. There they could see what they once had been. But, lest the Jewish Christians might think that it had been better with them, he proceeds to bring them under the same description in respect of their original condition.
II JEWISH CHRISTIANS ALSO. (Ver. 3.) "Among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." Especially are they classed with Gentile Christians, as having originally been children of disobedience. Among whom we also all once lived. Their disobedience appeared in their living in the lusts of the flesh. Those lusts that had their root in the flesh, or unrenewed nature, they ought to have brought into subjection to reason or the will of God; but, instead of that, they lived in them. This is further described as "doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind." Evil wishes spring from the flesh; but in order to be gratified they require the consent of the mind, and so they become desires, not only of the flesh, but of the mind. And were by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest. "By nature" is a qualifying clause. The Jews could not be spoken of in the same terms as the Gentiles without qualification. For they were different in having a covenant position, in having Divine helps vouchsafed to them, in being placed under special training. And though they did testify to depravity in their frequent rebellions, yet was there alongside a work of grace, which showed itself conspicuously in some. It could only be said, then, that by nature, that is, apart from covenant grace, they were the children of wrath, even as the rest. What a testimony is there here to universal depravity! All have the Divine displeasure imprinted on their nature. In the condemning voice of conscience there is an echo, often very faint, of the condemnation of God. Our evil tendencies, which we so soon exhibit, are tokens that God is angry with us. His righteous sentence has gone forth upon us, even in our present condition. This is unpalatable truth, but it agrees with the facts. It is well that we should keep it in mind, in order that we may be humbled by it, and in order that we may realize the forces against which we have to struggle.
III OUR SALVATION.
1. Its explanation. "But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses." The mercy is mentioned first, as standing in closest connection with the miserable state which has been described. And as their former state was described in strong terms, so now is there set over against it the superlative quality of the mercy. He is not content with the expression," God in his mercy." That language is too bare in view of what they once were. So he applies his common epithet, "rich." "God, being rich in mercy." The mercy is a particular outgoing of the Divine love, viz. toward sinners. So he traces it up to the more general feeling, which leads him to seek the good, and nothing but the good, of all his creatures whatsoever. And to this in turn he applies another common epithet," great." "The great love wherewith he loved us." And the greatness of the Divine love is here presented under a special aspect. In the fifth of Romans it is said, "God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." The thought is very similar here. "Even when we were dead through our trespasses he quickened us." Stress is laid upon the moment of the Divine movement. When we were dead and could do nothing for ourselves, that was the time for the going forth of the great love of God in rich mercy toward us. And it is in this connection that we are to bring in the words within brackets, "By grace have ye been saved." For, though he has it in his mind to magnify the Divine grace further on, yet now, having the opportunity to make a point, he cannot let it pass. And the incidental way in which he brings it in shows the great importance which he attached to that doctrine.
2. Its nature. "Quickened us together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus." It is set forth in relation to our previous deadness. And it will be observed that the description here is connected with a certain historical point. The idea is that we were dead up to the time when Christ was quickened. We were dead, even as Christ was dead in the tomb. Nay, more, we were dead with Christ in the tomb. For it was as our Representative that he was lying there. And when he was quickened, it was as our Representative too. He was quickened, not for himself, but for us whom he represented. And therefore it can be said that, when the life-giving power went forth upon him in the grave, we were quickened with him. And it did not stop there; but when he was raised up we were raised up with him, in the whole breadth that language can bear. And not only so, but the consummation applies to us too. It is not indeed said that we were made to sit at the right hand of God, as is said of Christ in the first Chapter and twentieth verse. But it is said that we were made to sit with Christ in the heavenly places. Even here on earth we are sitting with Christ in the heavenly places. We are sitting there in him as our Head. That is no fancy, but the actual language which is applied to us by an inspired apostle. Oh, what a glorious privilege is conferred on us! How does it become us to be thankful, and to be humbled! Let us, in our life, rise to the height of our position. Let us not be as creeping on the earth, but as sitters with Christ in the heavenly places.
3. A purpose served by our salvation. "That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. The language is applicable to after ages on earth. There is encouragement to us, even now, in the fact that such kindness was shown to Ephesians who had been dead through trespasses and sins. But the language is also applicable to the eons of which the Scripture speaks beyond this life. For if there is not room there for sinners being encouraged, there certainly is room for the demonstration, the more complete realization, of the Divine grace. It will be one of the lessons of those ages to learn how much in our history on earth we were individually indebted to grace. Here again, in the fullness of emotion, he gives an ample characterization of the grace, the exceeding riches of his grace, in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. The latter expression has reference to benefits conferred, viz. our quickening.
(1) The exceeding riches of his grace appears in the complete exclusion of human merit. "For by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, that no man should glory." Our salvation is given to the subjective disposition of faith. It is when we believe, that the union between our souls and Christ takes place, and the first, not the completed, quickening goes forth upon us. But this believing does not make us the authors, or give us the merit, of our salvation. It, that is to say, our salvation, is the gift of God. And believing is just taking it as a Divine gift, taking it as that for which we have given nothing. Christ has paid the full price for it; he has paid the uttermost farthing, and so we can receive it as a free gift. But works are out of the question; for it is just as impossible for a dead man to rise and do the works which he was wont to do, as it is for the dead through trespasses and sins to work out their salvation. Divine help is the plainest necessity, and to such an extent that there is no room for boasting.
(2) The exceeding riches of his grace appears in good works following on the Divine workmanship. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them." "An honest man"s the noblest work of God." A Christian is certainly the noblest work of God. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus." We are the result of all the means that God has used. It may be seen in us, as saved persons, what Christ has done by his blood. And we are not his workmanship because of works which we were afterwards to do; but we were created "for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them." It may be said of a tree that it is afore prepared for the fruit which it is to bear. It may be said of a vessel that it is afore prepared for the uses which it is to serve. But as the fruit is not the cause of the tree, nor the uses served by a vessel the cause of the vessel, so neither can it be said that the works we perform are the cause of the Divine workmanship that has gone before. Our salvation, then, is wholly of grace. R.F.
HOMILIES BY D. THOMAS Vers. 1-10.
Gospel reformation great and gracious.
you hath he quickened," etc. This passage, though its language is somewhat obscure, sets forth most manifestly the greatness and graciousness of gospel reformation. The gospel is a reformative system; it is revolutionary in its spirit and its aim. It uproots the noxious in life, and plants the wholesome. It pulls down the corrupt and builds up the holy. It burns up man"s old moral heavens and creates new ones, "wherein dwelleth righteousness." It reforms society by reforming the individual man; it reforms the individual by regenerating his spirit, and making him a new creature in Christ Jesus. It works from the center to the circumference. Observe
I THE GREATNESS OF GOSPEL REFORMATION. The greatness of the change it effects in mankind will be seen if we consider two things which are so prominently set forth in this passage.
1. The state of man preceding its work. There are several striking expressions in this passage indicating the original depraved condition of sinners, their condition before the gospel touches them.
(1) They are morally dead. "Dead in through trespasses and sins." What is moral death? Not insensibility, for sinners feel; not inactivity, for sinners act. What, then? Destitution of the true principle of moral life. What is that? Supreme love to God. He is the true Life of the soul Humanity has lost it, and it is dead. Corporeal death is a separation of the soul from the body, moral death is the separation of the soul from godly love.
(2) They are practically worldly. "They walked according to the course of this world." What is the "course of this world"? Carnal, selfish, devilish. The spirit of the world is their inspiration, the maxims of the world their law.
(3) They are Satanically ruled. "The prince of the power of the air" works in them. He rules and fashions them to his purpose.
(4) They are wickedly associated. "Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past." Their social natures are so perverted that they are linked with the corrupt; all their social alliances are false and impure.
(5) They are carnally debased. "In the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh." The body with its gross impulses dominates over the soul; they are "carnally sold under sin." Their souls are animalized.
(6) They are perilously situated. "Children of wrath." Where is the wrath? It is of their own creation. "They treasure up wrath." From the eternal law of retribution their sins must bring on their ruin.
2. The state of man succeeding its work. The passage teaches that they are brought by the gospel into the most vital connection with him who is the embodiment, the standard, and the medium of all human excellence , "the Lord Jesus Christ.
(1) His life is theirs. "Quickened us together with Christ." That love which is the life of the soul has been imparted. This life is his life. "Together with him." They are quickened by his ideas, with his Spirit, with his aim.
(2) His resurrection is theirs. They are "raised raised from the grave of carnality, worldliness, and moral corruption, and their resurrection is with him. "Raised us up together." Christ"s resurrection is not merely the instrumental cause of their spiritual resurrection, but its inspiration and its type.
(3) His exaltation is theirs. They are made to "sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." They are morally exalted exalted in their power over themselves and over circumstances; exalted in their sympathies, ideas, and aims; exalted in their fellowship. They are in "heavenly places" now, their "citizenship is in heaven." All this exaltation is enjoyed together with Christ.
(4) His character is theirs. "They are created in Christ Jesus unto good works." God has recast their character; he has molded it after the ideal embodied in Jesus Christ. The general meaning of all these expressions is thorough Christianization. Man, after the gospel reformation has been effected, is like Christ in spirit and character. "He is conformed to the image of Christ." How great the change! how thorough! how sublime! How infinitely transcending all the reformations of men! This is the reformation that is wanted; this is the reformation that every true philanthropist should strenuously advocate and zealously promote.
II THE GRACIOUSNESS OF G OSPEL REFORMATION. What is the great, originating, efficient cause of this glorious moral reformation? The text answers the question. God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ." Instrumental causes, such as the Word of God, gospel ministry, Christian example and influence, are many, but eternal grace is the cause which originates all and blesses all. The passage indicates four things concerning this Divine grace.
1. It is great. It is ascribed to the richness of mercy and the greatness of love. "God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love," etc. God"s love is the spring of all his activities; it is as deep as his own heart; it is as infinite as himself. "It passeth knowledge.
O Love! the one sun! O Love! the one sea! What life has begun that breathes not in thee? Thy rays have no limit, thy waves have no shore; Thou giv"st without merit to worlds evermore.
1. It is mighty. It quickens, raises, exalts, recreates human souls. It is as mighty as the power that raised Christ from the dead. How mighty is that power that thoroughly Christianizes even one soul! No power but the power of God can do that. "Not by might, nor by power.
2. It is manifestable. "In the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." The conversion of every one is designed to manifest it. The conversion of the sinner, though a good in itself, is not an ultimate end; the event has remote issues, ulterior points, bearings and relations interminable. "Ages to come;" intelligences that will rise thousands of years in the future will study and adore the infinite grace of God in the spiritual reformation of mankind. "Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting". (1Ti_1:16)
3. It is unmeritorious. "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works." The expression, "not of works," does not mean, of course, that men are to do nothing. This would be contrary to the general teaching of Scripture, contrary also to the constitution of the soul and the nature of the work. Man is so constituted that no moral change can be effected in him irrespective of his own efforts. He must work. All that the expression means is that man"s works are not the cause. "By grace are ye saved through faith." But if faith is required, and it is an undoubted necessity, where is the freeness of the grace? Elsewhere Paul says that "it is of faith, that it may be of grace." Two remarks will explain this.
(1) Faith is essentially an unmeritorious act. Because it is the simplest act of the mind, and an act for which man has a strong propensity; he has never taken credit for it; he never can. There is no virtue in believing.
(2) This essentially unmeritorious act is itself the gift of God. Not a gift in the sense in which existence is a gift, but in the sense in which knowledge is a gift. It is a gift, because God gives the mental capacity for it, reveals the true objects for it, and furnishes the opportunities for studying the evidence essential to produce it. D.T.
HOMILIES BY W.F. ADENEY Vers. 1-7.
From death to life.
1. The process. This is a history of spiritual lift. It reverses the order of natural history. Instead of "funeral marches to the grave," we have a resurrection gladness, as the soul grows upward from death to life eternal.
I THE PROCESS BEGINS WITH DEATH. The death here referred to is not a future penalty, but the past condition of many men and the present state of all others.
1. There is a spiritual death in the midst of natural life. The body is flushed with the glow of health; the intellect is keen in worldly affairs; but the spirit is dead. The busy life of the lower nature may hide the scene of death, but it cannot destroy it, and to right-minded observers this noisy energy is painful and revolting like the revelry of a wake. Spiritual death bears all the hideous marks of real death:
(1) a failing of spiritual strength;
(2) a loss of faculties of spiritual discernment Divine truth fades from the darkened vision, the ear of conscience grows deaf to the voices of heaven;
(3) an unconsciousness of its own mournful condition the spiritually dead give no more evidence of realizing their condition than we can see in the mute, immobile countenance of a corpse;
(4) the commencement of corruption the dead soul rots and spreads a miasma of sin.
2. Spiritual death is caused by sin. There are positive trespasses," in which men go beyond the bounds of the lawful and commit what is forbidden; and negative "sins," in which people miss the mark, fail of their duty, and omit what they ought to do. Both have fatal consequences the one killing with the poison of bad thoughts, imaginations, and affections; and the other with an atrophy of spiritual organs that waste away for want of exercise.
3. Innumerable influences provoke to sin:
(1) from without, in the general customs of the times, "the course of this world," and. indirect temptations, "the prince of the power of the air;
(2) from within, in bodily appetites, lusts of the flesh," and in mental propensities, "desires of the mind." The resulting condition of death becomes a second nature, normal and chronic; yet it is not the less odious in the sight of God, but rather the more so, treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath.
II THE PROCESS RESULTS IN LIFE. The life is described in three stages.
1. A past quickening. "He quickened us." This is accomplished in the Christian. It is what Christ calls being "born from above", (Joh_3:3) and St. Paul, a new creation". (2Co_5:17)
(1) It is not an external change, such as the removal of penalties, the gift of blessings, and the entrance to a place called heaven, but an internal change in the soul of the redeemed.
(2) It is not the soothing of a troubled conscience nor the endowment of mere comfort and happiness, but life energy, Fewer, activity life that begins with painful cries and the awakening of sad repentance rather than with peace and comfort. The other blessings may be added, but this is first and most essential. It is useless to load the grave with treasures. The dead soul must come out of the tomb before it can be loosed from its cerements and enjoy its inheritance.
1. A present exaltation. "Raised us up;" "Made us sit with him in heavenly places." Lazarus comes forth from the tomb. The Christian does not linger long among the scenes of his miserable past. He is not forever sitting on the stool of the penitents. In his new life he walks in God"s sunlight, he breathes the free air of heaven, he is called to a high vocation and endued with glorious privileges.
2. A future blessedness. The Divine life is but in the germ on earth. Its fairest flowers will bloom on a happier shore and its sweetest fruits ripen in a sunnier climate. There are "exceeding riches" of grace to be revealed in "the ages to come." The life for which they are preparing is eternal. No disease will blight it, no age bring it decrepitude, no death lay it low. As it develops eternality, so will the riches of Divine love fill it in an ever-increasing abundance. W.F.A.
Vers. 1-7.
From death to life.
2. The secret. What is the secret of the wonderful reversal of the order of nature that is seen in the spiritual transformation from death to life? The power is put forth by the grace of God, and the method of its influence is through union with Christ.
I THE POWER THAT TRANSFORMS FROM DEATH TO LIFE IS THE GRACE OF GOD.
1. The power is Divine.
(1) Men cannot quicken themselves. The dead can never rise from their graves. Silent, stiff, and cold, dead souls will never shake off their lethargy and begin a new spiritual life.
(2) Men cannot quicken one another. Before life is extinct, by chafing the chill limbs, by giving cordials and other remedies, the fast-ebbing vitality may be restored to the dying man. But when the last breath is breathed, and the heart has ceased to beat, and the patient is really dead, science and love are both baffled. We can galvanize the corpse into a shocking mockery of life, but that is worse than useless. Now, nothing short of death has come upon those who are under the power of sin. They are too far gone for human restoratives such as education, social influence, reward and punishment, exhortation and rebuke.
(3) God alone can and does effect the great transformation, because he is the Source of all life, and because this return from death to life is a pure miracle.
2. The power is put forth by the grace of God. He might leave the dead to bury their dead, and concern himself only with fresh new lives. But he has infinite pity even for the dead. Nothing but grace could inspire such pity. For we have no claim upon God after we have become" by nature children of wrath." We must look for the motive in the love of God alone. But that love is so great that it is a very treasure-house of mercy. God is rich in mercy." Then our very helplessness appeals to his compassion. The more dead we are the more will God desire to quicken us.
II THE MEANS THROUGH WHICH THE GRACE OF GOD TRANSFORMS FROM" DEATH TO LIFE IS UNION WITH CHRIST.
1. All through the history of the wonderful process, St. Paul traces, step by step, the progress of the Christian, in the very experience through which Christ went.
(1) We begin in death as Christ stooped to die for us.
(2) We are "quickened together with Christ," and have fellowship with the resurrection of Christ.
(3) We are exalted in the likeness of Christ"s ascension (ver. 5).
(4) And we look forward to sharing in his future glory. Thus we are not merely to receive the benefits of the death and resurrection of our Lord; we have to enter into his very experience and pass through it ourselves spiritually. Then his life and his victory become ours.
2. This experience is realized by our union, with Christ in faith. It is vain and hopeless to attempt to follow Christ by painfully attempting an exact imitation while we are going alone and in our own strength. The way is too dark, too steep, too rough. And this is not what is expected of us. But if we trust Christ our faith unites us to him, and by the influence he puts forth over us he carries us along with him; so that through him we receive the gift of life from the grace of God. W.F.A.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1–3 And you hath He quickened who were dead in…
Eph_2:1
And you hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins.
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The quickening power of the gospel
This the peculiar characteristic of the preaching of Christianity in the first age. It came into a world preoccupied by other systems of religion, Jewish and Gentile, and succeeded where they had failed. The secret of its success is the same today--vital power.
I. Upon whom is it exerted?
1. The spiritually dead.
2. The bondslaves of Satan.
3. The subjects of Divine wrath.
II. Through whom does it operate? Christ, the manifested Son of God, is the Alpha and Omega of its proclamations.
1. Through faith men are united to Him.
2. Share in His resurrection.
III. In whom is its source? It is God who ordained the means of salvation, sent His Son into the world to die for sinners, and raising Him from the dead raised also all those who were united to Him by faith by a spiritual resurrection, that they might walk in newness of life. This gracious work is due--
1. To His nature. Being rich in mercy.
2. To His affection for men. For His great love wherewith He loved us. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)
Regeneration
I. The change here noticed is of a remarkably decided nature. A change of the whole human character, by which the dispositions of men become thoroughly altered from that which is evil to that which is good, and by which there are implanted and formed within them those spiritual graces which are essentially connected with the bestowment of the Divine favour and the restoration of the Divine image.
II. This change is accomplished purely by Divine agency.
1. The agency of the Spirit of God in the work of renovation is sovereign.
2. The agency of the Spirit is mysterious.
3. The agency of the Spirit is connected with the instrumentality of the Word.
III. This change is absolutely essential for the salvation of the immortal soul.
1. This is evident, if you consider the occupation, society, and enjoyments of heaven.
2. It is also evident by considering the express testimony of God on the subject. (J. Parsons.)
Quickening of the dead
I. The Scripture phrases by which the sinful state of man is described. Sleep. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others, etc. (1Th_5:6, etc.). Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, etc. (Eph_5:14). Death in trespasses (see text). And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, etc. (Col_2:13). A corrupt tree. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, etc. (Mat_7:18). For he shall be like the heath in the desert, etc. (Jer_17:6). Darkness. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, etc. (1Th_5:4). Led captive, etc. (Eph_2:3). Enmity (Rom_8:7).
II. How the scriptures describe the change that is wrought in those that shall be saved and state God as the Author of it. Being quickened--by God (see text). Born again--by God (Joh_3:3; 1Pe_1:3). Washed and sprinkled--by God (Eze_16:8-9; Eze_36:25). Writing the law in the heart--by God (Jer_31:33). Grafting--by God (Rom_11:23-25). Creating light to shine where was darkness (2Co_4:6).
III. No means short of God can quicken and convert such a sinner. Let us consider everything that is likely.
1. Will miracles? No (Exo_8:16-18; Joh_12:10-12; Act_4:16-17).
2. Will the fulfilment of prophecies? No (Cf. Mat_27:62, etc. with Mat_28:11, etc.)
.
3. Will prosperity? No (Psa_73:3).
4. Will adversity? No (Pro_27:22).
5. Will preaching the gospel? No (1Co_1:23).
6. Will one rising from the dead? No (Luk_16:31). The necessity of a Divine agent in the Church of God.
IV. Evidences of being quickened.
1. A feeling sense of the evil of sin (Rom_7:18; Psa_38:3-7).
2. A dying to self-confidence, and a trusting in Christ alone (Rom_7:7-11; Gal_2:19-20; Php_3:7-9).
3. An appetite for the means of grace (1Jn_2:3).
4. Love to the brethren as such (1Jn_3:13-14). (H. Foster, M. A.)
Various manifestations of death
The frightful presence of death is manifested in many ways.
1. The dead have no motion; they cannot come to God; they are helpless as was Lazarus till the voice of Jesus reached him; grace alone can quicken the dead soul.
2. The dead have no sensation; they are past feeling; all the fountains of passion and emotion are sealed (Eph_4:19); so that before they can love God or hate sin they must get a new life.
3. The dead have no enjoyment; food satisfies, beauty pleases, and music charms no more. It is even so. Sin has perverted the moral sense, and shut up the heart against the enjoyment of God Himself. His character and His love please us no more. All the wonders of grace, as well as the excellencies of the Divine character, which the Cross reveals, fall upon us like sunbeams on the eyes of the dead.
4. The dead have no restorative power. Life, that mysterious, incomprehensible principle, which, though ever present with us and filling all things, eludes research and baffles reason, has a wonderful restorative power. Indeed, life is a sort of miracle, for it reverses, suspends, and modifies most of the laws of nature. In every plant, in every living creature, you see life assimilating and incorporating most heterogeneous elements, counteracting the law of gravity, nullifying the most potent chemical agencies, and resisting the mechanical laws. The dead are destitute of all these mysterious powers; they remain as they are, or they become more and more corrupt. There is no healing process going on in the dead soul by which, in the course of nature, it can become pure and healthy and happy in the enjoyment of God. (W. Graham, D. D.)
The dead man
I. St. Paul reminds the Ephesians of their former condition. Contraries give lustre one to another. It magnifies grace marvellously to consider the opposite condition. It should also stir up our thankfulness when we consider from what we are delivered. Now to come to the words themselves. What is death? Death is nothing else but a separation from the cause of life, from that from whence life springs. The body having a communicated life from the soul, when the soul is departed it must needs be dead. Now death, take it in a spiritual sense, it is either the death of law, our sentence--as we say of a man when he is condemned, he is a dead man--or death in regard of disposition; and then the execution of that death of sentence in bodily death and in eternal death afterward. Now naturally we are dead in all these senses.
1. First, by the sin of Adam, in whose loins we were, we were all damned. And then there is corruption of nature as a punishment of that first sin, that is a death, as we shall see afterward, a death of all the powers; we cannot act and move according to that life that we had at the first; we cannot think, we cannot will, we cannot affect, we cannot do anything [that] savours of spiritual life.
2. Hereupon comes a death of sentence upon us, being damned both in Adams loins and in original sin, and likewise adding actual sins of our own. If we had no actual sin it were enough for the sentence of death to pass upon us, but this aggravates the sentence.
3. We are dead in law as well as in disposition. This death in law is called guilt, a binding over to eternal death. Now what is the reason of it why we are dead? First of all, the ground of it is; by sin we are separated from the fountain of life; therefore we are all dead. Secondly, by sin we lost that first original righteousness which was co-produced with Adams soul. When Adams soul was infused it was clothed with all graces, with original righteousness. The stamp of God was on his soul. It was co-natural to that estate and condition to have that excellent gracious disposition that he had. Now, because we all lost that primitive image and glory of our souls, we are dead. Nay, sin itself, it is not only a cause of death--of temporal death as it is a curse, and so of eternal death; of that bitter sentence and adjudging of us too, both that we feel in terrors of conscience and expect after--but sin itself is an intrinsical death. Why? Because it is nothing but a separation of the soul from the chic! good, which is God, and a cleaving to some creature; for there is no sin but it carries the soul to the changeable creature in delight and affection to its pride and vanity, one thing or other. Sin is a turning from God to the creature, and that very turning of the soul is death; every sinful soul is dead. In these and the like considerations you may conceive we are all dead. Let us consider a little what a condition this is, to be dead in trespasses and sins. And what doth death work upon the body?
1. Unactiveness, stiffness; so when the Spirit of God is severed from the soul it is cold, and unactive, and stiff. Therefore those that find no life to that that is good, no, nor no power nor strength, it is a sign that they have not yet felt the power of the quickening Spirit; when they hear coldly and receive the sacrament coldly, as if it were a dead piece of work and business; when they do anything that is spiritually good coldly and forced, not from an inward principle of love to God, that might heat and warm their hearts, but they go about it as a thing that must be done, and think to satisfy God with an outward dead action.
2. Again, death makes the body unlovely.
3. Loathsomeness.
4. We sever dead persons from the rest.
5. Death deprives of the use of the senses. He that is spiritually dead can speak nothing that is good of spiritual things. And as he is speechless, so he hath no spiritual eyes to see God in His works. There is nothing that we see with our bodily eyes, but our souls should have an eye to see somewhat of God in it, His mercy and goodness and power, etc. And so he hath no relish to taste of God in His creatures and mercies. When a man tastes of the creatures, he should have a spiritual taste of God and of the mercy in him. Oh, how sweet is God! A wicked man hath no taste of God. And he cannot hear what the Spirit saith in the Word. He hears the voice of man, but not of the Spirit when the trumpet of the Word sounds never so loud in his ears.
6. As there is no sense nor moving to outward things, so no outward thing can move a dead body. Offer him colours to the eye, food to the taste, or anything to the feeling, nothing moves him. So a dead soul, as it cannot move to good, so it is moved with nothing. That affects a child of God and makes him tremble and quake, it affects not a carnal man at all.
7. And as in bodily death, the longer it is dead, the more noisome and offensive it is every day more than other, so sin makes the soul more loathsome and noisome daily, till they have filled up the measure of their sins, till the earth can bear them no longer. (R. Sibbes, D. D.)
On spiritual death
I. To what sins this representation is to be applied, and to what description of persons it belongs.
1. The apostle expressly includes himself among those whose former state he had been considering.
2. The same expression is applied generally to those who never were heathens (Mat_8:22).
3. It is the declared intention of Jesus Christ, by His appearance in our world, to give life to the world by exhibiting Himself as the Bread of Life. I am come that they might have life.
4. True Christians, without any exception, are described as persons who have passed from death unto life.
II. Explain the import of this representation.
1. It implies a privation, or withdrawment, of a principle, which properly belongs, and once did belong, to the subject of which it is affirmed. The withdrawment of God is, with respect to the soul, what the withdrawment of the soul is in relation to the body. In each case the necessary effect is death; and as that which occasioned that withdrawment is sin, it is very properly denominated a death in trespasses and sins. Now this view of the subject ought surely to fill us with the deepest concern. Had man never possessed a principle of Divine life, there would have been less to lament in his condition. We are less affected at the consideration of what we never had, than by the loss of advantages which we once possessed. We look at a stone, or a piece of earth, without the least emotion, because, though it be destitute of life, we are conscious it was never possessed. But, when we look upon a corpse, it excites an awful feeling.
2. To be dead in trespasses and sins, intimates the total, the universal prevalence of corruption. Life admits of innumerable degrees and kinds. There is one sort of vegetative life, as in plants, another subsists in animals, and in man a rational, which is still a superior principle of life. Where life is of the same sort it is susceptible of different degrees. It is much more perfect in the larger sorts of animals than in reptiles. The vital principle in different men exists with various degrees of vigour, so that some are far more animated, alert, and vigorous than others. But there are no degrees in death. All things, of which it can be truly said that they are dead, are equally dead. (R. Hall, M. A.)
Standing, yet dead
Whilst visiting the beautiful island of Tasmania our attention was often called, nay, arrested, to huge trees which appear as bleached ghosts of a dead forest. They stand out in the brilliant moonlight with a weirdness that is surprising and magnificent. The reason for their condition is as follows: On account of their great size and the heavy cost of what is called grubbing up, the settler leaves them in the ground, but proceeds to cut them round the trunk at a height of about four feet. The axe cuts through the bark and about an inch into the tree. The effect is that when the next early spring comes all the sap exudes from the gashed wounds, and the monster of the forest dies. The great branches wither, the leaves fall off, the bark strips, and a year or two suffices to join the army of the upright dead. The farmer can now plough the ground between, sow his corn, and reap the harvest in the huge mausoleum of the forest. No sheltering foliage hinders the suns rays and the wheat plant thrives and ripens amidst hundreds of towering trees whose only voice is the silence of the dead. As we looked upon these dead ones we were reminded of an experience which comes to many men who are dead also even while they too are in posture, at least, upright. Hewed round in the trunk of their robust life, the axe of the adversary, hews and cuts until the sap, the rising, spreading, and expanding life, is drained. The spring time in these goodly trees of promise is followed by the bleach and ghostly death which comes of the exuding of conscience, honour, strength, and life. Alas, alas! this living human mausoleum knows no wheat growth or harvest at its base. The malaria of death is there, and the spreading corruption infects other trees also, and the forest of the dead extends. Welt does the apostle say of such, They wax wanton and are dead while they live. (Henry Varley.)
Partially quickened
I desire, brethren, for myself and you, that we may be alive all over, for some professors appear to be more dead than alive; life has only reached a fraction of their manhood. Life is in their hearts, blessed be God for that; but is only partially in their heads, for they do not study the gospel nor use their brains to understand its truths. Life has not touched their silent tongues, nor their idle hands, nor their frost-bitten pockets. Their house is on fire, but it is only at one corner, and the devil is doing his best to put out the flame. They remind me of a picture I once saw, in which the artist had laboured to depict Ezekiels vision, and the dead bodies in course of resurrection. The bones were coming together, and flesh gradually clothing them, and he represents one body in which the head is perfectly formed, but the body is a skeleton, while in another place the body is well covered, but the arms and legs remain bare bones. Some Christians, I say, are much in the same state. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Christ quickens the morally dead
I remember once conversing with a celebrated sculptor, who had been hewing out a block of marble to represent one of our great patriots--Lord Chatham. There, said he, is not that a fine form? Now, sir, said I, can you put life into it: Else, with all its beauty, it is still but a block of marble. Christ, by His Spirit, puts life into a beauteous image, and enables the man He forms to live to His praise and glory. (Rowland Hill, M. A.)
The nature and universality of spiritual death
To explain the context and show you the connection, I shall make two short remarks. The one is, That the apostle had observed in the nineteenth and twentieth verses of the foregoing chapter that the same almighty power of God, which raised Christ from the dead, is exerted to enable a sinner to believe. The same exertion of the same power is necessary in the one case and the other; because, as the body of Christ was dead, and had no principle of life in it, so, says He, ye were dead in trespasses and sins; and therefore could no more quicken yourselves than a dead body can restore itself to life. Death is a state of insensibility and inactivity, and a dead man is incapable of restoring himself to life; therefore the condition of an unconverted sinner must have some resemblance to such a state, in order to support the bold metaphor here used by the apostle. To understand it aright we must take care, on the one hand that we do not explain it away in flattery to ourselves, or in compliment to the pride of human nature; and, on the other hand, that we do not carry the similitude too far, so, as to lead into absurdities, and contradict matter of fact. A sinner dead in trespasses and sins may be a living treasury of knowledge, an universal scholar, a profound philosopher, and even a great divine, as far as mere speculative knowledge can render him such; nay, he is capable of many sensations and impressions from religious objects, and of performing all the external duties of religion. Trespasses and sins are the grave, the corrupt effluvia, the malignant damps, the rottenness of a dead soul: it lies dead, senseless, inactive, buried in trespasses and sins. Trespasses and sins render it ghastly, odious, abominable, a noisome putrefaction before a holy God, like a rotten carcase, or a mere mass of corruption: the Vilest lusts, like worms, riot upon and devour it, but it feels them not, nor can it lift a hand to drive the venom off. You have seen that the metaphorical expression in my text is intended to represent the stupidity, inactivity, and impotence of unregenerate sinners about divine things. This truth I might confirm by argument and Scripture authority; but I think it may be a better method for popular conviction to prove and illustrate it from plain instances of the temper and conduct of sinners about the concerns of religion, as this may force the conviction upon them from undoubted matters of fact and their own experience.
I. Consider the excellency of the Divine Being, the sum total, the great Original of all perfections. How infinitely worthy is He of the adoration of all His creatures! how deserving of their most intense thoughts and most ardent affections! Yet how insensible are we and all men to His perfections and majesty. The sun, moon, and stars have bad more worshippers than the uncreated Fountain of Light from which they derive their lustre. Kings and ministers of state have more punctual homage and more frequent applications made to them than the King of kings and Lord of lords. Created enjoyments are more eagerly pursued than the Supreme Good. Search all the world over, and you will find but very little motions of heart towards God; little love, little desire, little searching after Him. The reason is, men are dead in trespasses and sins.
II. The august and endearing relations the great and blessed God sustains to us, and the many ways He has taken to make dutiful and grateful impressions upon our hearts. What tender endearments are there contained in the relation of a Father! Now the name of a father is wont to carry some endearment and authority. Children, especially in their young and helpless years, are fond of their father; their little hearts beat with a thousand grateful passions towards him; and they fly to him upon every appearance of danger: but if God be a father, where is His honour? here, alas! the filial passions are senseless and immoveable. And is not a state of death a very proper representation of such sullen, incorrigible stupidity? Living souls have very tender sensations; one touch of their heavenly Fathers hand makes deep impressions upon them. Concluding reflections:
1. What a strange, affecting view does this subject give us of this assembly!
2. Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, that Christ may give thee light. The principle of reason is still alive in you; you are also sensible of your own interest, and feel the workings of self-love. It is God alone that can quicken you, but He effects this by a power that does not exclude, but attends rational instructions and persuasions to your understanding.
3. Let the children of God be sensible of their great happiness in being made spiritually alive. Life is a principle, a capacity necessary for enjoyments of any kind.
4. Let us all be sensible of this important truth, that it is entirely by grace we are saved. If we were once dead in sin, certainly it is owing to the freest grace that we have been quickened; therefore, when we survey the change, let us cry, Grace, grace unto it. (President Davies, M. A.)
Dead
The epithet implies--
1. Previous life. Death is but the cessation of life. The spirit of life fled from Adams disobedient heart, and it died, for it was severed from God.
2. It implies insensibility. The dead, which are as insusceptible as their kindred clay, can be neither wooed nor won back to existence. The beauties of holiness do not attract man in his spiritual insensibility, nor do the miseries of hell deter him.
3. It implies inability. The corpse cannot raise itself from the tomb and come back to the scenes and society of the living world. The peal of the last trump alone can start it from its dark and dreamless sleep. Inability characterizes fallen man. And this is not natural but moral inability, such inability as not only is no palliation, but oven forms the very aggravation of his crime. It is inability not of mind but of will. He cannot, simply because he will not, and therefore he is justly responsible. (J. Eadie, D. D.)
Quickening grace
Hence learn--
1. It is not sufficient that the servants of Jesus Christ do only preach privileges, and hold forth unto believers that happy estate unto which they are lifted up through Christ; it is necessary also that jointly herewith they be calling them to mind their woeful, miserable, and lost estate by nature: for the apostle, in the preceding chapter, having spoken much of those high privileges unto which the Ephesians were advanced by Christ, he doth here mind them of that miserable state wherein God found them; And you who were dead in trespasses and sins.
2. There is nothing contributeth more to commend the doctrine of free grace to peoples consciences, and so to commend it as to make them closely adhere unto it, both in possession and practice, than the serious perpending of mans woeful and altogether hopeless estate by nature: this alone would do much to scatter all that mist whereby human reason doth obscure the beauty of this truth, by extolling mans free will as a co-worker with grace (Rom_3:19-20).
3. Believers in Jesus Christ are not to look upon their lost and miserable estate by nature separately, and apart from, but jointly with Gods free grace and mercy, which hath delivered them from that misery; for otherwise the thoughts of sin and misery may, if God should give way, swallow them up (Mat_27:4-5). Hence is it the apostle hath so contrived his discourse here, that all along, while he speaketh of their misery in the first three verses, the mind of the reader is kept in suspense without coming to the perfect close of a sentence, until Gods mercy in their delivery from this misery be mentioned (verse 5); for the original hath not these words, He hath quickened, in this verse: but the translators have taken them from verse 5, to make up the sense, without suspending the reader so long until he should find them in their own proper place, And you who were dead, etc.
4. Every man by nature, and before conversion, is dead, not to sin (for that is proper to the regenerate only; see Rom_6:2, where the grammatical construction is the same in the original with that which is here; only the sense is much different), but in sin, whereby he is wholly deprived of all ability and power to convert himself (Rom_9:16), or to do anything which is spiritually good (Rom_8:7). (James Fergusson.)
Dead souls
When there is an estrangement of the soul from the Spirit of God and Christ, sanctifying, and comforting, and cheering it, then there is a death of the soul. The soul can no more act anything that is savingly and holily good, than the body can be without the soul. And as the body without the soul is a noisome, odious carcass, offensive in the eyes of its dearest friends, so the soul, without the Spirit of Christ quickening and seasoning it, and putting a comeliness and beauty upon it, is odious. All the clothes and flowers you put on a dead body cannot make it but a stinking carcass; so all the moral virtues, and all the honours in this world, put upon a man out of Christ, it makes him not a spiritual living soul; he is but a loathsome carrion, a dead carcass, in the sight of God and of all that have the Spirit of God. For he is under death. He is stark and stiff, unable to stir or move to any duty whatsoever. He has no sense nor motion. Though such men live a common natural civil life, and walk up and down, yet they are dead men to God and to a better life. The world is full el dead men, that are dead while they are alive, as St. Paul speaks of the widow that lives in pleasures (1Ti_5:6). A fearful estate, if we had spiritual eyes to see it and think of it. (R. Sibbes, D. D.)
Sin is the death of the soul
Sin disengages the love of God to the creature, because it renders the creature useless as to the end for which it was designed. Things, whose essence and being stand in relation to such an end, have their virtue and value from their fitness to attain it. Everything is ennobled from its use, and debased as far as it is useless. As long as a man continues an instrument of Gods glory, so long his title to life and happiness stands sure, and no longer. But now, sin in Scripture, and in Gods account, is the death of the soul. We were dead in trespasses and sins. Now death makes a thing utterly useless, because it renders it totally inactive; and in things that are naturally active, that which deprives them of their action bereaves them of their use. The soul, by reason of sin, is unable to act spiritually; for sin has disordered the soul, and turned the force and edge of all its operations against God; so that now it can bring no glory to God by doing, but only by suffering, and being made miserable. It is now unfit to obey His commands, and fit only to endure His strokes. It is incapable by any active communion or converse with Him to enjoy His love, and a proper object only to bear His anger and revenge. We may take the case in this similitude. A physician has a servant; while this servant lives honestly with him, he is fit to be used and to be employed in his occasions; but if this servant should commit a felony, and for that be condemned, he can then be actively serviceable to him no longer; he is fit only for him to dissect, and make an object upon which to show the experiments of his skill. So while man was yet innocent he was fit to be used by God in a way of active obedience; but now having sinned, and being sentenced by the law to death as a malefactor, he is a fit matter only for God to torment and show the wonders of His vindictive justice. (R. South, D. D.)
Spiritual insensibility
Announce to a man who believes himself possessed of an enormous capital that bankruptcy and beggary await him; tell a prisoner who hopes for certain deliverance that the sentence of death is passed on him, and he may expect the summons of the executioner; inform a man who thinks he has got but a slight disease, that it is the symptom of a fatal plague, and advise him to prepare for death; thunder at a mans door, and shout that the house is on fire, and bid him escape for his life--and surely nothing but that men had sunk in death before these tidings reached their ears, could prevent their being suitably affected by them. But men can hear of the judgments and the wrath of God as though they heard them not; such announcements are like those of the destruction of Sodom by Lot, He seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law, or like the language of unbelieving Israel to the prophet, when he proclaimed the fearful judgments to come, Ah, Lord God! they say of me, doth he not speak parables? (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)
The solemnity of death
What a solemn sight is presented to us by a dead body! When last evening trying to realize the thought, it utterly overcame me. The thought is overwhelming, that soon this body of mine must be a carnival for worms; that in and out of these places, where my eyes are glistening, foul things, the offspring of loathsomeness, shall crawl; that this body must be stretched in still, cold, abject, passive death, must then become a noxious, nauseous thing, cast out even by those that loved me, who will say, Bury my dead out of my sight. Perhaps you can scarcely, in the moment I can afford you, appropriate the idea to yourselves. Does it not seem a strange thing, that you, who have walked to this place this morning, shall be carried to your graves; that the eyes with which you now behold me shall soon be glazed in everlasting darkness; that the tongues, which just now moved in song, shall soon be silent, lumps of clay; and that your strong and stalwart frame, now standing in this place, will soon be unable to move a muscle, and become a loathsome thing, the brother of the worm and the sister of corruption? You can scarcely get hold of the idea; death doth such awful work with us, it is such a Vandal with this mortal fabric, it so rendeth to pieces this fair thing that God hath builded up, that we can scarcely bear to contemplate his works of ruin. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
All are dead by nature
Now, endeavour, as well as you can, to get the idea of a dead corpse, and when you have so done, please to understand that that is the metaphor employed in my text to set forth the condition of your soul by nature. Just as the body is dead, incapable, unable, unfeeling, and soon about to become corrupt and putrid; so are we, if we be unquickened by Divine grace, dead in trespasses and sins, having within us death, which is capable of developing itself in worse and worse stages of sin and wickedness, until all of us here, left by Gods grace, should become loathsome beings: loathsome through sin and wickedness, even as the corpse through natural decay. Understand, that the doctrine of the Holy Scripture is, that man by nature, since the Fall, is dead; he is a corrupt and ruined thing; in a spiritual sense, utterly and entirely dead. And if any of us shall come to spiritual life, it must be by the quickening of Gods Spirit, vouchsafed to us sovereignly through the goodwill of God the Father, not for any merits of our own, but entirely of His own abounding and infinite grace. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Man dead in trespasses and sins
One Sunday Father Taylor preached upon the Atonement. His text was, Dead in trespasses and sins. Dead! he exclaimed; not only dead, but buried; and you cant get out! A big boulder lays on the main hatch, keeping it down over your heads. You may go to work with all your purchases--bars, handspikes, winch, and double tackles; but you cant make it budge an inch. But hark! who is it that has the watch on deck! Jesus Christ. Now, sing out to Him, and Sing out loud. Ah! He hears you; and He claps His shoulder against this rock of sin, cants it off the hatch, the bars fly open, and out you come.
Image of the unregenerate
The unregenerate man may be said to be made up of two parts--a living body and a dead soul. In states of disease and injury we sometimes find something analogous, in one part of the body being full of life, and another part of it palsied and dead. I have seen a person after injury of the lower part of the neck surviving for a time; the head perfectly alive and well, but the body and limbs perfectly motionless. In the last fatal duel fought near Edinburgh a bullet struck the spine of the challenger. I have often heard this unhappy mans physician tell that when he first visited him, some hours afterwards, and asked him how he felt, I feel, he replied, exactly what I am--a man with a living head and a dead body mysteriously joined together. Every unbelieving man consists of a dead soul mysteriously joined to a living body. (Sir James Simpson.)
A dead soul
As a dead man cannot inherit an estate, no more can a dead soul inherit the kingdom of God. (H. G. Salter.)
Care for souls
When on a visit to a city in the neighbourhood of Ephesus, St. John commended to the care of the bishop a young man of fine stature, graceful countenance, and ardent mind, as suited to the work of the ministry. The bishop neglected his charge. The young man became idle and dissolute, and was at length prevailed on to join a band of robbers, such as commonly had their strongholds in the neighborhood of ancient Greek cities. He soon became their captain, and attained to notoriety in crime. Long after St. John entered the city again, and inquired for the young man. He is dead, said the bishop, dead to God. Having ascertained the particulars, the apostle exclaimed, I left a fine keeper of a brothers soul! then, mounting a horse, he rode into the country, and was taken prisoner. He attempted not to flee, but said, For this purpose am I come, conduct me to your captain. He entered the presence of the armed bandit, who, recognizing the apostle, attempted to escape. Why dost thou flee, my son, said he, from thy father--thy defenceless, aged father? Fear not, thou still hast hopes of life. I will pray to Christ for thee. I will suffer death for thee. I will give my life for thine. Believe that Christ hath sent me. The young man was subdued, fell into the apostles arms, prayed with many tears, became perfectly reformed, and returned to the communion of the Church. (Legend of St. John.)
Spiritual death and life
I. The original condition of the Ephesians. They were deaden trespasses and sins. The two words, trespasses and sins, have almost the same meaning. They imply the breaking, not keeping, or offending against the moral law of God. The negative symptoms of spiritual death are--
1. The want of spiritual perception. As a dead body has not the five bodily senses, so a dead soul has not the spiritual senses. It neither sees nor hears, nor tastes, nor perceives the perfume, nor feels the reality of the spiritual world. The glory of God shineth forth in the gospel of Christ, but dead souls are blind and cannot see it (2Co_4:3-4). God speaketh by His providence and by His inspired word in loudest tones of reproof, admonition, invitation, and love, warning, and terror; but the dead soul is deaf, like the adder that heareth not the voice of the charmer, charm he never so sweetly. The dead soul cannot taste and see that God is gracious.
2. No spiritual understanding. There is none that understandeth. The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned (Rom_3:2).
3. Want of spiritual desires. Depart from us, we desire not knowledge of Thy ways. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
4. The dead soul has no spiritual strength. The natural man is, in spiritual exertion, absolutely helpless and powerless.
5. The dead soul has no capacity of spiritual enjoyment. Dead in trespasses and sins, it can have no true or permanent happiness.
Having thus enumerated five qualities in which the spiritually dead soul is deficient, we may now mention those which such a soul has.
1. It has entire corruption and depravity.
2. From entire depravity proceeds the second positive quality in the dead soul--it is constantly committing actual sin.
3. A third property of a spiritually dead soul is, that it is under the wrath and curse of God (Gal_3:8).
4. The fourth and last property which we shall mention is, that the soul in this state is deserving of and prepared for eternal death. The soul that sinneth shall die is the unchangeable word of the inflexibly just God. The wages of sin is death.
II. The change which the Ephesians underwent, so as to bring them into the state in which they were when the apostle transmitted to their Church this epistle--You hath He quickened. Under this head we might direct your attention to the five following particulars: The nature, author, qualities, effects, and subjects of this change.
1. As to the nature of this change. It was to the souls of the Ephesians what the resurrection of Lazarus was to his body, the actual communication of life to what was previously dead.
2. Who was the author of this mighty transformation? Not the apostle; he utterly disclaims the power, as well as the honour, of effecting it (1Co_3:5-6). Not the Ephesians themselves. Can the dead quicken the dead? You hath He quickened.
3. As to the qualities of this change. If our time permitted, we might describe it as being supernatural in its origin, nature, and effects; immediate, abiding (1Jn_2:19), saving, transforming, and a most glorious and happy change, giving glory to God, and conferring happiness on men.
4. The effects of this change of being quickened from spiritual death were two-fold--inestimable privilege and holy fruit.
5. The subjects of this change. You hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins.
III. Let us now endeavour to apply to our own use what we have learned respecting the Ephesians. Should anyone be saying, I greatly fear that I am dead, but oh that I knew how I may be quickened! Be of good courage, my brother, and despair not, for the mercy of God is unsearchable, and may reach even to you. If anyone in this assembly be quickened from his death in sins, to him I would say, You have been quickened in order that God in Christ may be glorified in you and by you. You are a monument of the marvellous grace of God, therefore glorify the grace of God by ascribing your salvation to sovereign grace as its origin, depending on efficacious grace as its means, and living to the praise of redeeming grace as its end. (W. Mackenzie,)
I. In the first three verses the state and character of the Ephesians before their conversion is described. As to their state, they were dead in trespasses and sins. This death may be viewed as two-fold, namely, legal and spiritual. The former consisted in the condemning sentence of the Divine law, under which they lay, as its transgressors; the latter consisted in the moral pollution of their natures, in consequence of which they were utterly incapable of any holy obedience to God. As to their character, or external deportment, the Ephesians are described in verses second and third, They walked in sins. The term walk is expressive of a regular habitual course. Their whole life was sin. The sinful life which the Ephesians led was more particularly distinguished by conformity to the world, and compliance with the devil. They walked in sins according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.
II. We come, secondly, to consider the great change which had taken place in the wretched condition of the Ephesians through Divine grace.
1. This blessed change is explained in verses 1, 4, 5, and 6. In verse 1 we are informed in what the change consisted You hath He quickened. To quicken is to implant holy principles in the soul, so that it becomes alive to God and righteousness.
2. We have next the author of this gracious change, in verses 4 and 5--But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved). To quicken dead souls is a Divine work, as much so as is the resuscitation of a dead body to life. The new birth is as far above the effort of nature as the rearing of a world.
3. We have next the formal or meritorious cause of this change--He hath quickened us together with Christ (verse 4). Christ was quickened by the mighty power of God when He rose from the dead; end His resurrection was the Fathers testimony to the perfection and acceptance of that glorious work, which is the foundation of all the grace which flows from heaven to poor sinners.
4. And hath made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Jesus not only rose from the dead, to which His people are conformed in regeneration, but also ascended into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God; and this He did as the Head, so that in Him His people sat down in heavenly places; and His exaltation there is the assurance that they shall personally appear in heaven, and share in the glory the Father hath bestowed on Him.
5. We have, finally, the moving cause of the grace shown to the Ephesians, in verse 4--But God, who is rich in mercy, etc. The cause of the grace manifested to Jews and Gentiles lay in God alone, not in any measure in them. It was love residing in the bosom of the Eternal Himself which moved Him to quicken these wretched sinners.
III. We come, thirdly and lastly, to the ultimate object of Gods grace to sinners of the Jews and Gentiles. It is mentioned in the seventh verse--that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. This was a noble end, in all respects worthy of our gracious God. These poor idolaters, quickened to a heavenly and endless life, are patterns of Divine grace to every age, and to every sinner of every age, till time has run its course. Let me shortly improve this subject by urging on you the lessons it inculcates. Learn, first, from this subject, the guilt and wretchedness of our spiritual condition by nature. We learn, secondly, from this subject, how great is the grace of God in Christ Jesus. (M. Grigor.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1 Chapter 7
Chapter 7
FROM DEATH TO LIFE
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Eph_2:1-6
We pass by a sudden transition, just as in Col_1:21-22, from the thought of that which God wrought in Christ Himself to that which He works through Christ in believing men. So God raised, exalted, and glorified His Son Jesus Christ {Eph_1:19-23} -and you! The finely woven threads of the apostles thought are frequently severed, and awkward chasms made in the highway of his argument, by our chapter and verse divisions. The words inserted in our Version (did He quicken) are borrowed by anticipation from Eph_2:5; but they are more than supplied already in the foregoing context. "The same almighty hand that was laid upon the body of the dead Christ and lifted Him from Josephs. grave to the highest seat in heaven, is now laid upon your soul. It has raised you from the grave of death and sin to share by faith His celestial life." The apostle, in Eph_2:3, pointedly includes amongst the "dead in trespasses and sins" himself and his Jewish fellow-believers as they "once lived," when they obeyed the motions and "volitions of the flesh," and so were "by birth" not children of favour, as Jews presumed, but "children of anger, even as the rest."
This passage gives us a sublime view of the event of our conversion. It associates that change in us with the stupendous miracle which took place in our Redeemer. The one act is a continuation of the other. There is an acting over again in us of Christs crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, when we realise through faith that which was done for mankind in Him. At the same time, the redemption which is in Christ Jesus is no mere legacy, to be received or declined; it is not something done once for all, and left to be appropriated passively by our individual will. It is a "power of God unto salvation," unceasingly operative and effective, that works "of faith and unto faith, " that summons men to faith, challenging human confidence wherever its message travels and awakening the spiritual possibilities dormant in our nature.
It is a supernatural force, then, which is at work upon us in the word of Christ. It is a resurrectionpower, that turns death into life. And it is a power instinct with love. The love which went out towards the slain and buried Jesus when the Father stooped to raise Him from the dead, bends over us as we lie in the grave of our sins, and exerts itself with a might no less transcendent, that it may raise us from the dust of death to sit with Him in the heavenly places (Eph_2:4-6).
Let us look at the two sides of the change effected in men by the gospel-at the death they leave, and the life into which they enter. Let us contemplate the task to which this unmatched power has set itself.
I. You that were dead, the apostle says.
Jesus Christ came into a dead world-He the one living man, alive in body, soul, and spirit- alive to God in the world. He was, like none besides, aware of God and of Gods love breathing in His Spirit, "living not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeded from His mouth." "This," He said, "is life eternal." If His definition was correct, if it be life to know God, then the world into which Christ entered by His human birth, the world of heathendom and Judaism, was veritably dying or dead-"dead indeed unto God."
Its condition was visible to discerning eyes. It was a world rotting in its corruption, mouldering in its decay, and which to His pure sense had the moral aspect and odour of a charnel-house. We realise very imperfectly the distress, the inward nausea, the conflict of disgust and pity which the fact of being in such a world as this and belonging to it caused in the nature of Jesus Christ, in a soul that was in perfect sympathy with God. Never was there loneliness such as His, the solitude of life in a region peopled with the dead. The joy which Christ had in his little flock, in those whom the Father had given Him out of the world, was proportionately great. In them He found companionship, teachableness, signs of a heart awakening towards God-men to whom life was in some degree what it was to Him. He had come, as the prophet in his vision, into "the valley full of dry bones," and He "prophesied to these slain that they might live." What a comfort to see, at His first words, a shaking in the valley, -to see some who stirred at His voice, who stood upon their feet and gathered round Him-not yet a great army, but a band of living men! In their breasts, inspired from His, was the life of the future. "I am come," He said, "that they might have life." It was the work of Jesus Christ to breathe His vital spirit into the corpse of humanity, to reanimate the world.
When St. Paul speaks of his readers in their heathen condition as "dead," it is not a figure of speech. He does not mean that they were like dead men, that their state resembled death; "nor only that they were in peril of death; but he signifies a real and present death" (Calvin). They were, in the inmost sense and truth of things, dead men. We are twofold creatures, two-lived, - spirits cased in flesh. Our human nature is capable, therefore, of strange duplicities. It is possible for us to be alive and flourishing upon one side of our being, while we are paralysed or lifeless upon the other. As our bodies live in commerce with the light and air, in the environment of house and food and daily exercise of the limbs and senses under the economy of material nature, so our spirits live by the breath of prayer, by faith and love towards God, by reverence and filial submission, by communion with things unseen and eternal. "With Thee," says the Psalmist to his God, "is the fountain of life: in Thy light we see light." We must daily resort to that fountain and drink of its pure stream, we must faithfully walk in that light, or there is no such life for us. The soul that wants a true faith in God, wants the proper spring and principle of its being. It sees not the light, it hears not the voices, it breathes not the air of that higher world where its origin and its destiny lie.
The man who walks the earth a sinner against God becomes by the act and fact of his transgression a dead man. He has imbibed the fatal poison; it runs in his veins. The doom of sin lies on his unforgiven spirit. He carries death and judgment about with him. They lie down with him at night and wake with him in the morning; they take part in his transactions; they sit by his side in the feast of life. His works are "dead works"; his joys and hopes are all shadowed and tainted. Within his living frame he bears a coffined soul. With the machinery of life, with the faculties and possibilities of a spiritual being, the man lies crushed under the activity of the senses, wasted and decaying for want of the breath of the Spirit of God. In its coldness and powerlessness-too often in its visible corruption-his nature shows the symptoms of advancing death. It is dead as the tree is dead, cut off from its root; as the fire is dead when the spark is gone out; dead as a man is dead, when the heart stops.
As it is with the departed saints sleeping in Christ, -"put to death, indeed, in the flesh, but living in the spirit,"-so by a terrible inversion with the wicked in this life. They are put to death, indeed, in the spirit, while they. live in the flesh. They may be and often are powerfully alive and active in their relations to the world of sense, while on the unseen and Godward side utterly paralysed. Ask such a man about his business or family concerns; touch on affairs of politics or trade, -and you deal with a living mind, its powers and susceptibilities awake and alert. But let the conversation pass to other themes; sound him on questions of the inner life; ask him what he thinks of Christ, how he stands towards God, how he fares in the spiritual conflict, -and you strike a note to which there is no response. You have taken him out of his element. He is a practical man, he tells you; he does not live in the clouds, or hunt after shadows; he believes in hard facts, in things that he can grasp and handle. "The natural man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him." They are pictures to the eye of the blind, heavenly music to the stone-deaf.
And yet that hardened man of the world-starve and ignore his own spirit and shut up its mystic chambers as he will-cannot easily destroy himself. He has not extirpated his religious nature, nor crushed out, though he has suppressed, the craving for God in his breast. And when the callous surface of his life is broken through, under some unusual stress, some heavy loss or the shock of a great bereavement, one may catch a glimpse of the deeper world within of which the man himself was so little conscious. And what is to be seen there? Haunting memories of past sin, fears of a conscience fretted already by the undying worm, forms of weird and ghostly dread flitting amid the gloom and dust of death through that closed house of the spirit, -
"The bat and owl inhabit here:
The snake nests on the altar stone:
The sacred vessels moulder near:
The image of the God is gone!"
In this condition of death the word of life comes to men. It is the state not of heathendom alone; but of those also, favoured with the light of revelation, who have not opened to it the eyes of the heart, of all who are "doing the desires of the flesh and the thoughts"-who are governed by their own impulses and ideas and serve no will above the world of sense. Without distinction of birth or formal religious standing, "all" who thus live and walk are dead while they live. Their trespasses and sins have killed them. From first to last Scripture testifies: "Your sins have separated between you and your God." We find a hundred excuses for our irreligion: there is the cause. There is nothing in the universe to separate any one of us from the love and fellowship of his Maker but his own unforsaken sin.
It is true there are other hindrances to faith, intellectual difficulties of great weight and seriousness, that press upon many minds. For such men Christ has all possible sympathy and patience. There is a real, though hidden faith that "lives in honest doubt." Some men have more faith than they suppose, while others certainly have much less. One has a name to live, and yet is dead; another, perchance, has a name to die, and yet is alive to God through Jesus Christ. There are endless complications, self-contradictions, and misunderstandings in human nature. "Many are first" in the ranks of religious profession and notoriety, "which shall be last, and the last first." We make the largest allowance for this element of uncertainty in the line that bounds faith from unfaith; "The Lord knoweth them that are His." No intellectual difficulty, no mere misunderstanding, will ultimately or for long separate between God and the soul that He has made. It is antipathy that separates. "They did not like to retain God in their knowledge": that is Pauls explanation of the ungodliness and vice of the ancient world. And it holds good still in countless instances. "Numbers in this bad world talk loudly against religion in order to encourage each other in sin, because they need encouragement. They know that they ought to be other than they are; but are glad to avail themselves of anything that looks like argument, to overcome their consciences withal" (Newman). The fashionable scepticism of the day too often conceals an inner revolt against the moral demands of the Christian life; it is the pretext of a carnal mind, which is "enmity against God, because it is not subject to His law." Christs sentence upon unbelief as He knew it was this: "Light is come into the world; and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil." So said the keenest and the kindest judge of men. If we are refusing Him our faith let us be very sure that this condemnation does not touch ourselves. Is there no passion that bribes and suborns the intellect? no desire in the soul that dreads his entrance? no evil deeds that shelter themselves from His accusing light? When the apostle says of his Gentile readers that they "once walked in the way of the age, according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air," the former part of his statement is clear enough. The age in which he lived was godless to the last degree; the stream of the worlds life ran in turbid course toward moral ruin. But the second clause is obscure. The "prince" (or "ruler") who guides the world along its career of rebellion is manifestly Satan, the spirit of darkness and hate whom St. Paul entitles "the god of this world," {2Co_4:4} and in whom Jesus recognised, under the name of "the prince of the world," His great antagonist. {Joh_14:30} But what has this spirit of evil to do with "the air"? The Jewish rabbis supposed that the terrestrial atmosphere was Satans abode, that it was peopled by demons flitting about invisibly in the encompassing element. But this is a notion foreign to Scripture-certainly not contained in Eph_6:12 -and, in its bare physical sense, without point or relevance to this passage. There follows an immediate apposition to "the domain of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience." Surely, the air here partakes (if it be only here) of the figurative significance of spirit (i.e., breath). St. Paul refines the Jewish idea of evil spirits dwell in the surrounding atmosphere into an ethical conception of the atmosphere of the world, as that from which the sons of disobedience draw their breath and receive the spirit that inspires them. Here lies, in truth, the dominion of Satan. In other words Satan constituted the Zeitgeist.
As Beck profoundly remarks upon this text: "The Power of the air is a fitting designation for the prevailing spirit of the times, whose influence spreads itself like a miasma through the whole atmosphere of the world. It manifests itself as a contagious nature-power; and a spiritus rector works within it, which takes possession of the world of men, alike in individuals and in society, and assumes the direction of it. The form of expression here employed is based on the conception of evil peculiar to Scripture. In Scripture, evil and the principle of evil are not conceived in a purely spiritual way; nor could this be the case in a world of fleshly constitution, where the spiritual has the sensuous for its basis and its vehicle. Spiritual evil exists as a power immanent in cosmical nature." Concerning great tracts of the earth, and large sections even of Christianised communities, we must still confess with St. John: "The world lieth in the Evil One." The air is impregnated with the infection of sin; its germs float about us constantly, and wherever they find lodgment they set up their deadly fever. Sin is the malarial poison native to our soil; it is an epidemic that runs its course through the entire "age of this world."
Above this feverous, sin-laden atmosphere the apostle sees Gods anger brooding in threatening clouds. For our trespasses and sins are, after all, not forced on us by our environment. Those offences by which we provoke God lie in our nature; they are no mere casual acts, they belong to our bias and disposition. Sin is a constitutional malady. There exists a bad element in our human nature, which corresponds but too truly to the course and current of the world around us. This the apostle acknowledges for himself and his law-honouring Jewish kindred: "We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." So he wrote in the sad confession of Rom_7:14-23 : "I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members."
It is upon this "other law," the contradiction of His own, upon the sinfulness beneath the sin, that Gods displeasure rests. Human law notes the overt act: "the Lord looketh upon the heart." There is nothing more bitter and humiliating to a conscientious man than the conviction of this penetrating Divine insight, this detection in himself of this incurable sin and the hollowness of his righteousness before God. How it confounds the proud Pharisee to learn that he is as other men are, -and even as this publican!
"The sons of disobedience" must needs be "children of wrath." All sin, whether in nature or practice, is the object of Gods fixed displeasure. It cannot be matter of indifference to our Father in heaven that His human children are disobedient toward Himself. Children of His favour or anger we are each one of us, and at every moment. We "keep His commandments, and abide in His love"; or we do not keep them, and are excluded. It is His smile or frown that makes the sunshine or the gloom of our inner life. How strange that men should argue that Gods love forbids His wrath! It is, in truth, the cause of it. I could neither love nor fear a God who did not care enough about me to be angry with me when I sin. If my child does wilful wrong, if by some act of greed or passion he imperils his moral future and destroys the peace and well-being of the house, shall I not be grieved with him, with an anger proportioned to the love I bear him? How much more shall your heavenly Father how much more justly and wisely and mercifully! St. Paul feels no contradiction between the words of verse 3 and those that follow. The same God whose wrath burns against the sons of disobedience while they so continue, is "rich in mercy" and "loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses!" He pities evil men, and to save them spared not His Son from death; but Almighty God, the Father of glory, hates and loathes the evil that is in them, and has determined that if they will not let it go they shall perish with it.
II. Such was the death in which Paul and his readers once had lain. But God in His "great love" has "made them to live along with the Christ."
How wonderful to have witnessed a resurrection: to see the pale cheek of the little maid, Jairus daughter, flush again with the tints of life, and the still frame begin to stir, and the eyes softly open-and she looks upon the face of Jesus! or to watch Lazarus, four days dead, coming out of his tomb, slowly, and as one dreaming, with hands and feet bound in the grave-clothes. Still more marvellous to have beheld the Prince of Life at the dawn of the third day issue from Josephs grave, bursting His prison-gates and stepping forth in new-risen glory as one refreshed from slumber.
But there are things no less divine, had we eyes for their marvel, that take place upon this earth day by day. When a human soul awakes from its trespasses and sins, when the love of God is poured into a heart that was cold and empty, when the Spirit of God breathes into a spirit lying powerless and buried in the flesh, there is as true a rising from the dead as when Jesus our Lord came out from His sepulchre. It was of this spiritual resurrection that He said: "The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live." Having said that, He added, concerning the bodily resurrection of mankind, "Marvel not at this; for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth!" The second wonder only matches and consummates the first. {Joh_5:24-28}
"This is life eternal, to know God the Father,"-the life, as the apostle elsewhere calls it, that is "life indeed." It came to St. Paul by a new creation, when, as he describes it, "God who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ." We are born again-the God-consciousness is born within us: an hour mysterious and decisive as that in which our personal consciousness first emerged and the soul knew itself. Now it knows God. Like Jacob at Peniel it says: "I have seen God face to face; and my life is preserved." God and the soul have met in Christ-and are reconciled. The words the apostle uses-"gave us life"-"raised us up"-"seated us in the heavenly places"- embrace the whole range of salvation. "Those united with Christ are through grace delivered from their state of death, not only in the sense that the resurrection and exaltation of Christ redound to their benefit as Divinely imputed to them; but by the life-giving energy of God they are brought out of their condition of death into a new and actual state of life. The act of grace is an act of the Divine power and might, not a mere judicial declaration" (Beck).
This comprehensive action of the Divine grace upon believing men takes place by a constant and constantly deepening union of the soul with Christ. This is well expressed by A. Monod: "The entire history of the Son of man is reproduced in the man who believes in Him, not by a simple moral analogy; hut by a spiritual communication which is the true secret of our justification as well as of our sanctification, and indeed of our whole salvation."
There is no repetition in the three verbs employed, which are alike extended by the Greek preposition "with" (syn). The first sentence (raised us up "with the Christ") virtually includes everything; it shows us one with Christ who lives evermore to God. The second sentence gathers into its scope all believers-the "you" of verse I and the "we" of Eph_2:3 : "He raised us up together, and together made us sit in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Nothing is more characteristic of our epistle than this turn of thought. To the conception of our "union with Christ" in His celestial life, it adds that of our "union with each other in Christ" as sharers in common of that life. Christ "reconciles us in one body unto God" (Eph_2:16). We sit not alone, but together in the heavenly places. This is the fulness of life; this completes our salvation.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv1–3 1–3. And you hath he quickened. In the closing…
1–3. And you hath he quickened. In the closing part of chapter 1 Paul has described the mighty working of the Divine power in raising Christ from the dead, and his exaltation to the right hand of God. He now turns from this mighty exhibition of power to another not less striking—the resurrection of those who were spiritually dead to a new and holy life. Dead in trespasses and sins. Spiritual death is meant. By their trespasses and sins they were separated from God. To be without God is to be in death. Trespasses are thought to refer to breaking known laws; sins, to the corrupt state which leads to a constantly sinful life.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 Eph_2:1. And you did He quicken.—The italics in A.V.…
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Eph_2:1. And you did He quicken.—The italics in A.V. and R.V. show a broken construction of St. Paul’s meaning, the verb being supplied from Eph_2:5, where the broken thread is taken up again. Dead in trespasses and sins.—“Dead through,” etc. (R.V.). “What did they die of?” it might be asked; and the apostle answers, “Of trespasses and sins” (so Alford). “The word for trespasses is one of a mournfully numerous group of words” (Trench). It has sometimes the milder meaning of “faults,” “mitigating circumstances” being considered. It makes special reference “to the subjective passivity and suffering of him who misses or falls short of the enjoined command” (Cremer). Meyer denies any “real distinction between the words for ‘trespasses’ and ‘sins.’ They denote the same thing as a ‘fall’ and a ‘missing.’ ”
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Eph_2:2.—“Shadows,” says Meyer, “before the light which arises in Eph_2:4.” Wherein in time past ye walked.—It is a sombre picture—men walking about “to find themselves dishonourable graves” in the “valley of the shadow of death,” knowing not whither they go because the darkness—the gloom of spiritual death—“hath blinded their eyes” (1Jn_2:11). According to the course of this world.—Well translated by our modern “zeit-geist,” or “spirit of the age.” The prince of the power of the air.—However contemptuous St. Paul may be of the creations of the Gnostic fancy, he never dreams of saying there is nothing existent unless it can be seen and felt. The dark realm and its ruler are not myths to the apostle.
Eph_2:3. Among whom also we all had our conversation.—St. Paul does not glorify himself at the expense of his readers’ past life. True his had not been a life swayed by animal delights (Act_26:5), but it had been marked by implacable enmity to the Son of God. And were by nature children of wrath.—“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, … whether it be Jewish or Gentile.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Eph_2:1-3
The Children of Wrath—
I. Are spiritually dead.—“Who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph_2:1). The only life of which they are conscious, and in which all their activities are displayed, is a life of sin. They have no conception of a higher life. They are capable of a higher life, and know it not. The spiritual, the higher form of life, is entombed and buried under a mass of sin. It is inert, dead, in process of corruption. Dante refers to such as, “These wretched ones who never were alive; I ne’er forsooth could have believed it true, that death had slain such myriads of mankind.” Sin first benumbs, then paralyses, and finally slays our spiritual sensibilities. The soul dead to God shall not be insensible to the reality of the divine wrath.
II. Are under the spell of an unseen evil power (Eph_2:2).—“The children of disobedience” are those who are withholding their allegiance from the Lord Jesus Christ, all those who are unconverted; not mere gross sinners and open profligates, but such persons as are strangers to the spiritual life, although they may have many excellencies of nature and disposition. The apostle plainly asserts that before he was brought to the knowledge of Christ he was under the influence of the “prince of the power of the air.” This is a startling statement. It is more startling still if we consider what sort of man Paul was before his conversion—how excellent, how earnest, how devoted to the external duties of a religious life. But startling as it is, it is the apostle who makes it of himself; and the inference is unavoidable, that all that mass of persons who are out of Christ and who are not partakers of His resurrection life, who have given their hearts to the world and not to the Saviour, are just the captives of Satan, and, without knowing it, are doing his lusts and accomplishing his will. The disease is not less deadly because it eats out the life without inflicting pain. The pestilence is not the less awful because it comes without giving notice of its presence, borne on the balmy breezes of the bright, cloudless, summer eve. The vampire does not do its work the less effectually because it fans its victim with its perfumed wings into an unconscious slumber whilst it drains away his life-blood and leaves him a corpse. And Satan is not the less real or the less destructive because he works his fatal work upon our souls without our even being conscious of his approach.
III. Are prompted to sin by the instincts of a depraved nature (Eph_2:3).—There is the twofold province of a man’s being, by the lower of which he is allied to the brute creation, and by the higher to the angels, both being under the dominion of sin. There is the corrupt body of flesh, and in a higher sense there is the fleshly mind. Every unregenerate person lives more or less in one or the other of these provinces—either in the sphere of fleshly lusts or in the sphere of the fleshly mind. Either he lives simply an animal life, and is in consequence a fleshly man, whose life consists only in fulfilling the desires of his lower nature; or he lives in the higher province of the mind, but it is nevertheless the mind in darkness, in uncertainty, in doubt—mind and heart alike alienated from God through the unbelief which is in them. It would not do to argue from this that our passions are our sins. Sin is not in appetite, but lies in the insubordination of appetite. There is need of a curbing and governing will, and our discipline consists in subjugating the lower to the higher. A due balance between the two regions must be preserved, and it is when passion becomes master and the lower invades the province of the higher, when the subordinate becomes insubordinate, that appetite and passion become sin. The flesh is the great rival of the Spirit, for it asserts that dominion over a man which the Holy Spirit alone ought to occupy, and these two are constantly opposed to each other. The depravity within, working in the thoughts of the mind and the passions of the flesh, prompts to a course of disobedience and sin.
IV. Are exposed to condemnation.—“And were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men.” The apostle shows that even the Jews, who boasted of their birth from Abraham, were by natural birth equally children of wrath, as the Gentiles whom the Jews despised on account of their birth from idolaters. The phrase “children of wrath” is a Hebraism, meaning we are objects of God’s wrath from childhood, in our natural state, as being born in sin, which God hates. Wrath abides on all who disobey the gospel in faith and practice.
Lessons.—
1. Sin when it is finished bringeth forth death.
2. Your adversary the devil walketh about seeking whom he may devour.
3. Because there is wrath, beware!
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Eph_2:1. A State of Sin a State of Death.
I. There are some respects in which the death of the soul does not resemble the death of the body.—
1. It does not involve the extinction of faculties and affections. The dead body moves not, nor feels, nor acts. The dead soul still thinks and feels and wills.
2. It does not exempt from responsibility. The dead soul is commanded to repent and believe and obey.
3. It is not incapable of restoration on earth. The spiritually dead may become spiritually alive here.
II. There are some respects in which the death of the soul does resemble the death of the body.—
1. In its cause. Sin.
2. In its extent. All men without exception.
3. In its consequences. The dead are utterly insensible, they fulfil none of the functions or duties of the living, they can be reanimated only by divine power. Address:
(1) Those who are spiritually dead.
(2) Those who have reason to believe that they are spiritually alive.—G. Brooks.
Eph_2:1-3. The State of Men without the Gospel.
I. The moral state of wicked men resembles a state of natural death (Eph_2:1).—From the metaphor used in the text we are not to conclude that all sinners are alike, for though all are in a sense dead some are under a greater death than others. The metaphor is usually applied to sinners of the most vicious character. When we speak of human nature as totally depraved we mean only a total destitution of real holiness, not the highest possible degree of vitiosity. In order to denominate one a sinner it is not necessary that he should be as bad as possible. Though natural death does not, yet spiritual death does, admit of degrees. Evil men wax worse and worse, add sin to sin, and treasure up wrath against the day of wrath.
1. Sinners may be said to be dead in respect of their stupidity.—We read of some who are past feeling, whose conscience is seared, who have eyes which see not, ears which hear not, and a heart which is waxed gross. Their hearts are like a mortified limb which feels no pain under the scarifying knife.
2. They are represented as wanting spiritual senses.—They savour the things of the world, not the things which are of God. They indeed love the effects of God’s goodness to them, but they delight not in His character as a holy, just, and faithful Being. They may feel a natural pleasure in certain mechanical emotions of the passions excited by objects presented to the sight, or by sounds which strike the ear, as the artificial tears from the image of the Virgin Mary will melt down an assembly of Catholics, or as a concert of musical instruments will rapture the hearers; but they relish not the word and ordinances of God, considered as means of holiness and as designed to convince them of their sins and bring them to repentance. If the word dispensed comes home to their conscience, they are offended. They lose the music of the pleasant song, and talk against it by the walls and in the doors of their houses.
3. They resemble the dead in the want of vital warmth.—If they have any fervour in religion, it is about the forms and externals of it, or about some favourite sentiments which they find adapted to soothe their consciences, not about those things in which the power of religion consists. As death deforms the body, so sin destroys the beauty of the soul. It darkens the reason, perverts the judgment, and disorders the affections. To be carnally-minded is death.
4. They may be denominated dead as they are worthy of and exposed to punishment.—This is called death because it is the separation of the soul from God and heaven, from happiness and hope, from all good and unto all evil. This is a death which awaits the impenitent.
II. There is in ungodly men a general disposition to follow the way of the world.—“According to the course of this world” (Eph_2:2). They, like dead carcasses, swam down the stream of common custom, and were carried away with the general current of vice and corruption.
1. Most men have a general idea that religion is of some importance.—Few can wholly suppress it, or reason themselves out of it. But what religion is and wherein it consists they seldom inquire, and never examine with any degree of attention. Such opinions as flatter their ungodly lusts, or pacify their guilty consciences, they warmly embrace. That scheme of doctrine which will make converts without exacting reformation, and give assurance without putting them to much trouble, they highly approve. The path which will lead men to heaven with little self-denial they readily pursue.
2. There are many who blindly follow the examples of the world.—Whether such a practice is right or wrong they take little pains to examine. It is enough that they see many who adopt it. They would rather incur the censure of their own minds and the displeasure of their God than stand distinguished by a singularity in virtue.
III. They are under the influence of evil spirits.—“According to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience” (Eph_2:2). The number of evil spirits is very great, but there is one distinguished from the rest, and called the devil, Satan, the prince of the power of the air. The manner in which he works in the minds of men is by gaining access to their passions and lusts, which he inflames by suggesting evil thoughts or by painting images on the fancy. It was by the avarice of Judas and Ananias that he entered into them and filled their hearts.
IV. The wickedness of men consists not merely in their evil works, but in the corrupt dispositions which prompt them to those works.—“The lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind” (Eph_2:3). The lusts of the flesh are the vices of sensuality, as intemperance, uncleanness, debauchery, and excess of riot. The desires of the fleshly mind are the lusts which arise from the corruption of the mind in its connection with flesh, as pride, malice, envy, wrath, hatred, ambition, and covetousness. Though no man indulges every vice, yet every unregenerate man obeys the carnal mind.
V. The indulgence of carnal lusts and passions brings on men the wrath of God.—“The children of wrath” (Eph_2:3). A mind sunk in carnality is incapable of rational felicity; it is miserable in itself and from its own corruption and perverseness. If man subjects his nature to the lusts and passions, the order of nature is inverted, the law of creation violated, and the Creator dishonoured and offended.
Lessons.—
1. If you have not abandoned yourselves to the grossest forms of vice, it is because you have been placed under superior light and enjoyed a happier education than the heathen.
2. Though you may not have indulged all the lusts and vices which others have done, yet if you are children of disobedience you can no more be saved without renovation of heart and repentance of sin than they can.—Lathrop.
Eph_2:3. The State of Nature.
I. If by human nature you mean nature as seen in this man or that, then unquestionably nature is evil—individual nature, personal nature, is contrary to God’s will. But if by human nature you mean nature as God made it, as it has been once in one man of our species and only one, and as by God’s grace it shall be again; if you mean nature as it is according to the idea of the Creator as shown in Jesus Christ, as it is in the eyes of God imputed not as it is but as it shall be,—then that nature is a noble thing, a thing divine; for the life of the Redeemer Himself, what was it but the one true exhibition of our human nature?
II. Paul says that by nature we fulfil the desires of the flesh and of the mind.—I pray you to observe that it is the second and not in the first sense that he here speaks of nature. The desires of the flesh mean the appetites; those of the mind mean the passions: to fulfil the desires of the flesh is to live the life of the swine; to fulfil those of the mind is to live the life of the devil. But this is the partiality, not the entireness, of human nature. Where is the conscience, where the spirit with which we have communion with God? To live to the flesh and to the mind is not to live to the nature that God gave us. We can no more call that living to our nature than we can say that a watch going by the mere force of the main-spring without a regulator is fulfilling the nature of a watch. To fulfil the desires of the flesh and of the mind is no more to fulfil the nature which God has given us than the soil fulfils its nature when it brings forth thorns and briars. St. Paul, in the epistle to the Romans, draws a distinction between himself and his false nature: “It is not I, but sin that dwelleth in me.” Sin is the dominion of a false nature; it is a usurped dominion.
III. The next thing that Paul tells us is that by nature we are children of wrath.—In the state of nature we are in the way to bear the wrath of God. Yet God is not wrath; He is infinite love. The eternal severity of His nature does not feel our passions, He remains for ever calm; yet such is our nature that we must think of Him as wrath as well as love: to us love itself becomes wrath when we are in a state of sin. God must hate sin and be for ever sin’s enemy. If we sin He must be against us: in sinning we identify ourselves with evil, therefore we must endure the consuming fire. So long as there is evil, so long will there be penalty. Sin, live according to the lusts of the flesh, and you will become the children of God’s wrath; live after the spirit, the higher nature that is in you, and then the law hath hold on you no longer.—F. W. Robertson.
The Worst of Evils.
I. By nature all are the children of wrath.—
1. Because we want that original righteousness in which we were created and which is required to the purity and perfection of our nature.
2. Because all the parts and powers of our soul and body are depraved with original corruption. Our understandings are so bad that they understand not their own badness, our wills which are the queens of our souls become the vassals of sin, our memories like jet good only to draw straws and treasure up trifles of no moment, our consciences through errors in our understandings sometimes accusing us when we are innocent, sometimes acquitting us when we are guilty, our affections all disaffected and out of order.
3. Some may expect that as the master of the feast said to him that wanted the wedding garment, “Friend, how camest thou in hither?” so I should demand of original sin, “Foe, and worst of foes, how camest thou in hither, and by what invisible leaks didst thou soak into our souls?” But I desire, if it be possible, to present you this day a rose without prickles, to declare plain and positive doctrine without thorny disputes or curious speculations, lest, as Abraham’s ram was caught in the thicket, so I embroil you and myself in difficult controversies. Let us not busy our brains so much to know how original sin came into us, as labour in our heart to know how it should be got out of us. But the worst is, most men are sick of the rickets in the soul, their heads swell to a vast proportion, puffed up with the emptiness of airy speculations, whilst their legs and lower parts do waste and consume, their practical parts decay, none more lazy to serve God in their lives and conversations.
II. Ye parents to children, see how, though against your wills, ye have propagated this wrath-deserving on your children unto your children; you are bound, both in honour and honesty, civility and Christianity, to pluck them out of this pit.
1. This you may do by embracing the speediest opportunity to fasten the sacrament of baptism upon them.
2. Let them not want good prayers, which if steeped in tears will grow the better, good precepts, good precedents, and show thy child in thyself what he should follow, in others what he should shun and avoid.
3. In the low countries, where their houses lie buried in the ground, the laying of the foundation is counted as much as the rest of the foundation; so half our badness lies secret and unseen, consisting in original corruption, whereof too few take notice. Witches, they say, say the Lord’s Prayer backward; but concupiscence, this witch in our soul, says all the commandments backward, and makes us cross in our practice what God commands in His precepts. Thus every day we sin, and sorrow after our sin, and sin after our sorrow. The wind of God’s Spirit bloweth us one way, and the tide of our corruption hurrieth us another. These things he that seeth not in himself is sottish, blind; he that seeth and confesseth not is damnably proud; he that confesseth and bewaileth not is desperately profane; he that bewaileth and fighteth not against it is unprofitably pensive: but he that in some weak manner doeth all these is a saint in reversion here, and shall be one in possession hereafter.—T. Fuller.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v1 1. Total depravity is most unequivocally taught in this…
TOTAL DEPRAVITY
1. Total depravity is most unequivocally taught in this verse. Depravity means being deprived. Total means altogether. “Hence, total depravity means utterly deprived of Divine life.” When God calls a man “dead,” rest assured there is no life in him. Spiritual life was lost by the fall, and is only regained in regeneration. Total depravity is only true of the human spirit, the mind and body being only partially depraved. Hence, Satan in all ages has been busy building up false religions on the residuum of mentality and materiality surviving in fallen humanity.
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2. “...According to the age of this world, according to the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience.” When the bright day of Eden went into eclipse, a dismal night of six thousand years supervened. We are still groping in Satan’s night, but anon cheered by inspiring rays of the glorious millennial dawn. Satan is generalissimo of hell’s belligerent armies, begirding the globe, and doing their utmost for the damnation of the world. These panoplied millions are all destined to retreat back into the bottomless pit, where the apocalyptic angel chains their commander-in-chief. (Rev 20:3.)
3. Here we have a vivid description of the unregenerate living in perpetual obedience to their fallen, sensual, and diabolical predilections.
4,5. We see here, in harmony with the great inspired curriculum, that the unutterable love of God for lost humanity superinduced the redemptive scheme. “Quicken” is suzoopoieo, from zoe, life, and poieo, to create. Therefore, the regeneration of a sinner by the Holy Ghost is an actual de novo creation, as literal and unequivocal as the creation of a world out of nothing. This is in harmony with the absolute total depravity of the sinner, everywhere revealed by the word “death,” which would be impertinent if there were a spark of life in the sinner’s soul. Hence, the human spirit of a sinner is as dead as a devil in hell, till Divine life is actually created in that spirit by the Holy Spirit. Hence, the radical trouble in the and holiness Churches is not the want of sanctification, but regeneration, which always reaches out for sanctification. The rosewater gospel of the popular Churches is utterly ignorant of the Bible type of regeneration, in which the Holy Ghost comes into the dead soul with the same de faco creative power which flung worlds from the creative fiat into ethereal space.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 Eph 2:4-7
Eph 2:4-7
I. Note the three privileges which are here supposed to belong to believers. (1) They are quickened. There can be no doubt that this privilege, in some intelligible sense at least, is enjoyed by God’s people on earth, or, in other words, that there is a change wrought upon them which is equivalent to their being made alive from having been previously dead. The three graces of faith, hope, and love, all of them the fruits of the Spirit, are the present evidences that believers are here in this world quickened together with Christ. They are evidences that life now reigns where death reigned before. (2) Believers are raised up. The expression is to be understood figuratively, as indicating that there is a spiritual change wrought upon believers, which bears some analogy to the literal resurrection of Christ. The being raised up together with Christ we consider as the development of the spiritual life in all the feelings and in the whole character and conduct of His people, in the varied relations in which they stand to Him, and to the Church, and to each other, and to the world. There is a spiritual quickening, and there is a spiritual resurrection. (3) The text forms a climax, each particular leading to something higher. Christ’s people, like all others of the human race, in their natural state dead in sin, are first quickened by the Spirit, next they are raised up with Christ, and then they are permitted to sit in heavenly places with Him. The last privilege, like the others, they enjoy even now.
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II. Note one or two illustrations from this truth. (1) God has provided a refuge for His people. He gives them peace. (2) In secret prayer the believer may realise the presence of God. (3) There are other heavenly places where Christ is to be met with, as, for example, where His people are engaged in solemn meditation on His truth. (4) There is another heavenly place where Christ’s people are permitted to enjoy His society even on earth, viz., the spot where, after a strong conflict with temptation, grace has secured the victory for the believer. When he can say to the wicked one, "No; I will not commit this wickedness and sin against God," you see a man in a heavenly place with Jesus Christ.
A. D. Davidson, Lectures and Sermons, p. 328.
References: Eph 2:4-7.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. vi., p. 52; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 106. Eph 2:4-8.—Ibid., vol. xxix., p. 100. Eph 2:5.—C. Kingsley, Sermons for the Times, p. 74; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 87.
Eph 2:6
The Church a Home for the Lonely.
The subject suggested by the text is the need which mankind lies under of some shelter, refuge, rest, home, or sanctuary from the outward world, and the shelter or secret place which God has provided for them in Christ.
I. By the world I mean all that meets a man in intercourse with his fellow-men, whether in public or in private, all that is new, strange, and without natural connection with him. Christ finds us weary of the world, in which we are obliged to live and act, whether as willing or unwilling slaves in it. He finds us needing and seeking a home and making one, as we best may, by means of the creature, since it is all we can do. The world in which our duties lie is as waste as the wilderness, as useless and turbulent as the ocean, as inconstant as the wind and weather. It has no substance in it, but is like a shade or phantom; when you pursue it, when you try to grasp it, it escapes from you, or it is malicious, and does you a mischief. We need something which the world cannot give; this is what we need, and this it is which the Gospel has supplied.
II. I say that our Lord Jesus Christ, after dying for our sins on the cross and ascending on high, left not the world as He found it, but left a blessing behind Him. He left in the world what before was not in it: a secret home, for faith and love to enjoy, wherever they are found, in spite of the world around us. This is the Church of God, which is our true home, of God’s providing, His own heavenly court, where He dwells with saints and angels, into which He introduces us by a new birth, and in which we forget the outward world and its many troubles. The world is no helpmeet for man, and a helpmeet he needs. What is our resource? It is not in arm of man, in flesh and blood, in voice of friend, or in pleasant countenance; it is that holy home which God has given us in His Church; it is that everlasting city in which He has fixed His abode; it is that mount invisible whence angels are looking at us with their piercing eyes, and the voices of the dead call us; Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world." "If God be for us, who can be against us?"
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. iv., p. 185.
References: Eph 2:7.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii., No. 1665; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 140; J. Baldwin Brown, Ibid., vol. vi., p. 373.
Eph 2:8
Salvation by Grace.
I. To Paul the doctrine of justification by faith was not a final statement of Christian truth. It was not a formula which could be used mechanically for constructing schemes of Christian doctrine, and which made it unnecessary for him to recur to the actual relations between God and the human race. Any account of the relations between God and ourselves which does not include this conception is not only defective, but fatally defective, is absolutely and ruinously erroneous; but this conception does not exhaust the Divine relations to the human race. There are other relations between God and man which cannot be expressed in terms of law, and it is with these relations that Paul is dealing in this Epistle. The fact which his account of justification by faith represented in one form is represented here in another. His mind and heart are filled with the Divine grace.
II. To some of us that beautiful word has been soiled by unclean hands, tainted by contact with corrupt and pernicious forms of religious thought. But the word is too precious to be surrendered. Among the Greeks it stood for all that is most winning in personal loveliness, for the nameless fascination of a beauty which is not cold and remote, but irresistibly attractive and charming. (1) Grace transcends love. Love may be nothing more than the fulfilment of the Jaw, but grace is love which passes beyond all claims to love. (2) Grace transcends mercy. Mercy forgives sin, and rescues the sinner from eternal darkness and death; but grace floods with affection the sinner who has deserved anger and resentment. If human salvation has its origin in the infinite grace of God, if by that grace it is carried through to its eternal consummation, then our true position is one of immeasurable trust and hope. We have only to receive the infinite blessings of the Divine love; we have to surrender ourselves to that stream of eternal benediction which has its fountains in the eternal depths of the Divine nature; we have to make way for the free unfolding in our life and destiny of the Divine idea and purpose.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 170.
References: Eph 2:8.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xviii., No. 1064; vol. xxvii., No. 1609; W. Cunningham, Sermons, p. 203; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 411; T. R. Stevenson, Ibid., vol. xxv., p. 371; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ii., p. 94; T. T. Lynch, Three Months’ Ministry, p. 49. Eph 2:8, Eph 2:9.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ii., p. 160; A. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit, p. 165; J. Smith, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xvi.,p. 389. Eph 2:8-10.—W. Hay Aitken, Mission Sermons, vol. iii., p. 109.
Eph 2:10
Christian Men God’s Workmanship.
I. The special infirmities of men vary. The fault of our nature assumes a thousand forms, but no one is free from it. I look back to the ancient moralists, to Plato, and to Seneca, and to Marcus Antoninus, and I find that they are my brethren in calamity. The circumstances of man have changed, but man remains the same. How are we to escape from the general, the universal, doom? We want to remain ourselves and yet to live a life which seems impossible unless we can cease to be ourselves. It is a dreadful paradox, but some of us know that this is the exact expression of a dumb discontent which lies at the very heart of our moral being. Is there any solution? Paul tells us what the solution is: Christian men are "God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus."
II. "We are God’s workmanship." The branch is in the vine, though as yet the leaf has hardly escaped from its sheath, and the flower is only timidly opening itself to the sun and air. The Divine idea is moving towards its crowning perfection. Never let us forget that the life which has come to us is an immortal life. At best we are but seedlings on this side of death. We are not yet planted out under the open heavens and in the soil which is to be our eternal home. Here in this world the life we have received in our new creation has neither time nor space to reveal the infinite wealth of its resources; you must wait for the world to come to see the noble trees of righteousness fling out their mighty branches to the sky and clothe themselves in the glorious beauty of their immortal foliage. And yet the history of Christendom contains the proof that even here a new and alien life has begun to show itself among mankind. A new type of character has been created. Christ lives on in those whose lives are rooted in Him.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 185.
The Heavenly Workman.
"We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works." It is true that we do not improve ourselves; it is all of grace; yet good works are binding upon us all the more. On the other hand, let us not take credit to ourselves. We should never have come into the workshop but for the heavenly Artist.
I. A great difference in the material. It is useless to say that all men are equal. We are not all born alike. From the fault or misfortune of our progenitors, we may start in the race with heavy burdens that we cannot shake off. Besides, we differ in both physical and mental constitution. Let it be understood that the Great Workman does not expect the same results from every kind of material. There is one thing He expects from all and something He has a right to expect, and that is what all can do: we must love God. Let us be charitable with each other, for all the material in God’s workshop comes there to be beautiful. This thought will help me to bear with my fellow-Christian, because I know that he will be improved before he leaves, and it will teach me to be modest, inasmuch as I should not be there if I were perfect. God is the almighty Artist. Other artists are limited, if in nothing else, certainly in time, but not so with Him who is at work upon us; and whatever God touches He ennobles.
II. It is well for us to have confidence in the Workman. God means to make us that which He can contemplate with delight, and we may be sure that every improvement in us brings Him enjoyment. "He taketh pleasure in the work of His hands." Confidence in the Workman will give us patience when He seems long.
III. We must not forget that the Workman has a plan. God knows all, and knows the precise bearing of each event on our lives. If we look back, we may often see that God has been working all along in harmony with one idea. (1) The variety of tools. What are the so-called means of grace but tools in the hand of the Great Workman? What are preachers but God’s chisels and hammers? Books, too, are tools. How much the Great Workman has accomplished by the press. The finest work is often done by those sharp-edged chisels called Pain and Bereavement. How many of us are to be made perfect by suffering. (2) Will the work ever be completed? Not in this world, certainly. One thing is apparent: we shall begin in heaven where we leave off in this world.
T. Champness, New Coins from Old Gold, p. 79.
References: Eph 2:10.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi., No. 1829; C. Marshall, Church of England Pulpit, vol. v., p. 65; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 6th series, p. 125; E. M. Goulburn, Thoughts on Personal Religion, p. 181.
Eph 2:11-22
Judaism and Christianity.
I. To Paul the moral confusion and the religious desolation of the Gentiles were appalling. He believed that they were enduring the just penalties of their own sins and the sins of their ancestors. The first chapter of Romans is a terrible commentary on what he meant by the Gentiles being without God in the world. Everything was changed by the coming and the death of Christ. By Him the whole world had been brought within the range of the grace and redemptive power of God. The external institutions of Judaism, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, had been the middle wall of partition between the elect nation and the rest of the world; these institutions had isolated the Jews from all pagan races, and had restrained within the limits of the elect race the great revelation of the righteousness and love of God; and the reason for the existence of these institutions ceased at the coming of Christ. He was the true Temple, the true Priest, the true Sacrifice; and He came to found a spiritual kingdom in which descent from Abraham was to confer no privileges. By bringing to an end the religious supremacy of the Jews, Christ brought to an end the estrangement, the enmity, between Jew and Gentile. He created in Himself of the twain one new man, so making peace.
II. The restoration of the universe to an eternal unity in Christ has begun; the old division between the descendants of Abraham and the heathen world has disappeared; in their religious life, all Christians of all nations, whatever their temporary and external distinctions, are already one in Christ. "Each several building"—the Church at Ephesus, which was largely composed of Gentiles, as well as the Church at Jerusalem, which was almost exclusively composed of Jews—each Christian community is included in the immense plan, has its relations adjusted to the rest of the great structure, and in Christ being "fitly framed together," groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians, p. 201.
Eph 2:12
Practical Atheism.
The text may be applied to us—
I. When the belief in God and its object do not maintain habitually the ascendant influence over us, over the whole system of our thoughts, feelings, purposes, and actions. Let us examine ourselves whether we live under a prevailing, powerful, all-pervading sentiment of God, or whether the thought of Him be slight, remote, uninfluential, and very often absent altogether.
II. The text is applicable to those who have no solemn recognition of God’s all-disposing government and providence, who have no thought of the course of things but just as going on, or think they see things managed so wrongly that there cannot be a constant interference of sovereign power and wisdom. If God be in the world and an all-presiding Providence, those who do not acknowledge it really and practically are without Him in the world.
III. The text is a description of these classes also: (1) all those who are forming or pursuing their scheme of life and happiness independently of God; (2) those who have but a slight sense of universal accountableness to God as the supreme authority, who have not a. conscience constantly looking and listening to Him and testifying for Him: to be insensible to the Divine character as Lawgiver, rightful authority, and Judge is truly to be without God in the world; (3) that state of mind in which there is no communion with Him maintained or even sought with cordial aspiration; (4) the state of mind in which there is no habitual anticipation of the great event of going at length into the presence of God; (5) those who, while professing to retain God in their thoughts with religious regard, frame the religion in which they are to acknowledge Him according to their own speculation and fancy.
J. Foster, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 278.
References: Eph 2:12.—F. W. Aveling, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 360; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 67; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 144.
Eph 2:13
Sin the Separator.
I. Sin has broken the beautiful chain of the material universe. When man fell, nature fell; and the links were severed by the Fall. And worse than this, man is divided from man, every one from his fellow. The very Church is broken up, Christian from Christian. The lust of pride, the lust of an opinionated mind, the lust of prejudice, the lust of jealousy, the lust of a worldly ambition—these are the fabricators of all discord. These make foes out of hearts which were meant to love as brethren.
II. Sin separates a man from himself. I question whether any man is at variance with his brother till he has first been at variance with himself. But sin takes away a man’s consistency. A man is not one, but he is two; he is many characters. What he is one time, that is just what he is not another. Passions within him conflict with reason, passions with passions, feelings with feelings; he is far off from himself, and this the separation does.
III. If you wish to know how far sin has thrown man away from God, you must measure it by the master link which has spanned the gulf. The eternal counsel, the immensity of a Divine nature clothing Himself in manhood, is love to which all other love is but a drop in the fountain from whence it springs. A life spotless; a work so finished that it admits no adding touch; sufferings which make all other sufferings a feather’s weight in the balance; a death which merges all other deaths into its one intensity; an eternity of priesthood; an eternity of the intercession of the Son of God—all this, and far more than this, has gone to make the return possible. That is the reason God so hates sin, because His dear Son had to travel all that way so painfully to bring us back.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 4th series, p. 145.
References: Eph 2:13.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv., No. 851; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 190. Eph 2:14, Eph 2:15.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 206.
Eph 2:15
St. Paul appears to regard the Jew as an incomplete or half-man till he found the Gentile, the Gentile as an incomplete or half-man till he found the Jew. He does not speak of opinions being adjusted or fitted into each other, of arrangements, mutual surrenders, compromises. He speaks of the human being in each as being raised to a new level, as attaining the position for which he had always been intended, but which he had never reached, when they could coalesce and become one body. His language can imply nothing less than that the Gospel was declaring that true manhood or humanity which hitherto had presented itself in two apparently irreconcilable aspects. Let us ask ourselves what these aspects were, what was the characteristic of the Jewish mind as such and of the Gentile mind as such.
I. No novelties or refinements are necessary, or could help us much, to settle these characteristics. St. Paul’s words to the Romans and the Athenians that the oracles of God were committed to the Jew, and that the Gentile was seeking God, if haply he might feel after Him and find Him, lead us to the very root of the matter, and explain the various phenomena which present themselves to us. Here is one picture: a Jew receiving from God His covenant, His law, His word, standing fast in the covenant, delighting in the law after the inner man, feeling His word as a fire within him, holding that to bear witness of His righteousness and truth was the great privilege and blessing of all, longing that He should reign over the earth, and that all which men had set up instead of Him should be put down. Here is another picture of one of the same race, perhaps of the same man in a degenerate stage of his existence. He looks upon God as shrivelled into his own oracles; they speak no more of Him; they speak only of those fortunate favourites whom He has chosen to receive gifts which are denied to mankind. The true Jew must have been longing for a fellowship with all God’s creatures which he had not yet realised; it was the effect of all his Divine education to inspire him with this longing; and the false Jew, just because it had never been awakened in him, just because he cultivated all the habits and tempers of mind which were alien to it, was losing the perception of that which was peculiar to him, was ceasing to understand that any oracles of God had been committed to him.
II. In such a person as our Lord was, that one true man, in whom Jewish and Gentile elements might both be reconciled, might be found, and surely only in such a one. If there were no such being, no one of whom it could be said, "He is the manifestation of God; He is the living centre of all human beings and of all human thoughts," I do not see what explanation we have of the history of the old world or of its passage into the modern. But without Him I can as little understand how there is to be peace in the jarring world to which we belong. He comes to arouse men and all the thoughts and energies of men out of sleep, not to put them into sleep. All that is strongest in man hears His voice and starts into life. Therefore the Jew becomes more intensely a Jew, and the Gentile more intensely a Gentile, before they consent both to receive their law from Him; and when they do receive it, though it crushes their pride, it justifies His Father’s purpose in the destiny which He has fixed for them, in the education which He has given them.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. i., p. 137.
References: Eph 2:16.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ii., p. 93. Eph 2:17.—E. H. Higgins, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 268.
Eph 2:18
In this text we have a declaration of the Holy Trinity; there can be no doubt about that. Here are all Three Persons together: the Father, unto whom we have access or introduction; the Son, by or through whom we are introduced; the Holy Spirit, in whom, in whose communion, we enjoy that access. But what is remarkable about the text is not the mere declaration of the Three Persons which is often to be met with in St. Paul’s epistles, but the practical nature of the declaration. We have here no mere assertion of a doctrine, but the declaration of a fact, and that fact not set down as a thing which must be believed, but made mention of as a thing to be recognised with thanksgiving and dwelt upon with joy.
I. "We both have access," says the Apostle, "unto the Father," and for this word "both" we may substitute "all," since the great distinction of that day between Jew and Gentile has been obliterated, and only those numerous minor distinctions remain which race and clime and colour make within the fold of Christ. We all have access unto the Father—this is the great and blessed fact, the practical sum of our religion; and this is the answer of the Gospel to all the seeking and questing of the natural man since the world began.
II. The Son, who is both God and man—He, the Daysman desired by Job; He who is equally at home both in earth and heaven, who was in heaven even while He walked on earth—He shall introduce us; by Him we shall have that long-sought-for, long-despaired-of access to the Father of our souls. He shall take us (as He only can) by the hand, and lead us (as He only may) into that dread presence.
III. After that first difficulty—Who shall lead us to the Father?—there comes another question quite as hard to answer, and it is this: If we attain unto Him, how shall we bear ourselves in His presence? How shall we, defiled, stand in that holy place? If I have some one to show me the way to heaven, to introduce me there, yet how shall I be fit to appear, how prepared to dwell, in that all-holy presence? And the practical answer to such questing of the natural man is the revelation of the Spirit. In Him who ministers the gifts and graces and perpetuates the life of Jesus within the Church, in Him, the Lord and Giver of life, the Sanctifier, shall we have true access unto the Father.
R. Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions, p. 331.
References: Eph 2:18.—Phillips Brooks, Contemporary Pulpit, vol. Hi., p. 318; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. v., p. 291; W. G. Horder, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxiii., pp. 228, 250. Eph 2:18, Eph 2:19.—E. L. Hull, Sermons, 1st series, p. 175. Eph 2:19.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 19; Maclure, Church of England Pulpit, vol. xiii., p. 289; Ibid., vol. xxi., p. 292. Eph 2:19, Eph 2:20.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 32. Eph 2:19-22.—H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. i., p. 217; Ibid., vol. v., p. 390. Eph 2:20.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 209; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii., No. 1388; Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 143. Eph 2:20, Eph 2:21.—F. Haines, Church of England Pulpit, vol. viii., p. 116; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 8th scries, p. 125. Eph 2:20-22.—E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, p. 439. Eph 2:21.—A. J. Griffith, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xv., p. 197. Eph 2:22.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 267; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 218; T.Arnold, Sermons, vol. i., p. 255. Eph 2:22.—R. Tuck, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 125. Eph 3:1.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. ix., p. 29.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Gentiles and Jews are now One in Chirst
Gentiles and Jews are now One in Chirst
1-10. Further illustration of God's power. He raised both Gentiles and Jews from the death of sin and exalted them to Christ's side.
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2. The prince of the power of the air] Jewish phraseology, as in Eph_1:21. The air is regarded as full of evil powers, with Satan as their prince (Eph_6:12; Luk_22:53; Act_26:18; Col_1:13).
3. Also we] 'we Jews were as dead in sins as you Gentiles, and were thus objects of God's wrath' (Eph_5:6).
Had our conversation] RV 'lived.'
5. Quickened us.. with Christ] 'made us, who were morally dead, to share the life of Christ.' 6, 8, 9.'No merit of our own has saved us; it is all God's free gift.'
10. Created in Christ Jesus] He means the new creation, by which the whole human race, reunited in Christ, makes a fresh start (Eph_2:14; Eph_4:24; Gal_6:15). Mankind began as one race; it was split in two; it is now one again.
11-22. 'Ye Gentiles were formerly cut off from Israel and from God's promises. But now Christ's death has broken down the barrier between Gentile and Jew, and reconciled both as one body to God. There are now no strangers: all are fellow-citizens; all are parts of a spiritual temple, in which God, in His Spirit, dwells.'
11. In the flesh] repeated for emphasis; it was in the flesh that the difference between Jew and Gentile was marked. Called] not contemptuous in either place; not' so-called.' The distinction was real enough, but it has been done away.
12. Without God] 'Atheists'; the only place where the word occurs in the Bible: the heathen were 'godless.'
13. But now] The blessed contrast is enlarged upon at four times the length (Eph_2:13-22) of the original sad condition (Eph_2:11-12).
14. He is our peace] emphatic pronoun; 'it is He who is our peace.' The middle wall of partition is perhaps an allusion to the warning barrier which marked off the Court of the Gentiles from the higher level of the Court of the Women in the Temple. It was death for a Gentile to pass the barrier.
15. The Fall of man introduced discord between God and man, and between man and man. The Law revealed this discord. Christ in His humanity fulfilled the Law for man, and set an example of perfect obedience. His humanity united all mankind; His obedience united mankind to God.
16. A paradox: the Slain slays, and a bloody death, which commonly provokes enmity, slays it.
17. Exulting repetition of 'peace,' four times in four vv.: cp. Isa_57:19.
18. Quite incidentally the recognition of Son, Spirit, and Father, comes to the surface: cp. Eph_4:4-6; 1Co_12:4-6; 2Co_13:14. The Apostle habitually thinks of the Godhead as threefold.
19. From the idea of 'Father' he easily passes to that of 'household,' and thence to that of 'a house.'
20. They are not merely members of the family; they are stones in the structure of the home, in which God Himself dwells: see on Eph_3:5.
21. All the building] This is the right meaning: only one building is in the Apostle's mind, as the preceding vv. show. The RV's accuracy is here misleading: cp. 'all' in Eph_1:8; Col_4:12.
22. Through the Spirit] RV 'in the Spirit.' It is in the Spirit's dwelling in us that God dwells in us.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v2 kosmos = world-system. Col 2:20; Joh 7:7. (See Scofield…
world
kosmos = world-system. Col 2:20; Joh 7:7. (See Scofield "Rev 13:8").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 2. The Production of the Masterwork and its Destiny
2. The Production of the Masterwork and its Destiny
CHAPTER 2:1-10
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1. What we are by nature (Eph 2:1-3)
2. What God does--rich in mercy (Eph 2:4-6)
3. The destiny of the masterwork (Eph 2:7)
4. Saved by grace (Eph 2:8-10)
After the great revelation of the first chapter and the prayer which followed, the production of the masterpiece itself is now brought more fully into view. We have before us a revelation concerning our state by nature and how God takes us up and produces out of such material His masterpiece. The first ten verses of this chapter give us this story. They contain one of the richest portions of the whole Word of God.
The first verse tells us that we are by nature in the state of death--”dead in trespasses and sins.” Man is dead spiritually; he is dead towards God (Joh 5:24-25). This fact that the unregenerated man is dead is much denied in our days. We hear of “the better self,” or “the good spark” which is in everybody, and the truth God has revealed concerning man, that he is dead in trespasses and sins is but little believed. The next verse states the walk of the natural man. It fully shows the awful place in which man is as dead in trespasses and sins. The walk is according to his fallen nature; the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life are the governing principles of this walk. We are enemies of God by wicked works. And behind all there stands the prince of the power of the air, Satan. He works in the children of disobedience, which here means the Jews. Of this our Lord spake when He said, “Ye are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do” (Joh 8:44). And again it is written, “He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. (1Jn 3:8). It is a solemn truth, which God has revealed concerning our condition as fallen beings, that we are in the grasp of the prince of the power of the air; that man is under this mighty being of darkness. To what a place of degradation man has been brought by sin! This likewise is disbelieved by the great majority of professing Christians. A personal devil is ridiculed and his existence is denied.
In the third verse another description is added, “children of wrath.” The “you” of the first verse is addressed to the Ephesians, showing what they were in their former condition. The “we” in the third verse means the Jews “among whom we also had our conversation.” The apostle shows that the Jews were in the same condition; and he adds “and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” Jews and Gentiles are dead in trespasses and sins, are the enemies of God and children of wrath. And this truth is also increasingly denied. The Word of God is most positive, and tells us “that he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him” (Joh 3:36). The denial of a future, conscious and eternal punishment of the wicked is becoming wide-spread; it is one of the marks of the latter day cults like Christian Science, Russellism, the New Theology, Spiritism and others. But the believer who knows the gospel and knows that he is “saved by grace” does not deny the truth of these first three verses of this chapter. It is our true photograph. Such material, God has to produce out of it His great masterwork.
After this dark picture of death, ruin and wrath, we read what God has done and does, for all who believe on His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. “But God who is rich in mercy, for the great love, wherewith He loved us” (Eph 2:4). This is the blessed bridge, which leads out of the dark and dreary, hopeless condition. But God! Man is guilty and lost. 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 for a foundation His righteousness. And this is blessedly the case. He is rich in mercy for the great love wherewith He loved us. He gave His only begotten Son. He made Him who knew no sin, sin for us. He made full atonement on the cross and now God can be rich in mercy. And what does He do with such as we are? Eph 2:5-6 tell the blessed story.
These verses in which we read of the believer’s quickening, his resurrection with Christ and being seated in Christ in the heavenlies, take us back to the time when our blessed Savior Lord was quickened and raised from the dead and seated in glory. It is plain what God did for Him, who died on the cross, He has done for all, who believe on His Son. Many Christians are ignorant of this great truth, while others have difficulty in grasping it. Yet it is quite Simple. Every Christian believes that when the Lord Jesus suffered on the cross He bore our sins in His own body on the tree. With the Apostle Paul every believer is entitled to say in looking back to the cross, “He loved me, He gave Himself for me.” We know all our sins were paid for by Him; all the punishment we deserved fell upon Him, our substitute. In Him we died. All this happened when we were not in existence at all. The sins He bore were not yet committed. God knew all about us and all about our sins and shame, the punishment we deserved, and His ever-blessed Son took all upon Himself. In the same sense God hath quickened us with Christ, raised us up and seated us in Him, when He did this for His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. This is simple, yet so wonderful and deep, that it is incomprehensible. It was all done for us, who believe, when it was done for Him. God in His marvelous counsels in redemption has associated us with Christ. He has made all, who believe on Him, sharers of His life and nature; He brings us into the same relationship as sons, and finally into the same glory and inheritance. Let us bear in mind that all this was done for us in Christ. He is the first one who was quickened, raised up and exalted in glory, and associated with Him are all His members; we share it with Him.
And all this becomes our blessed portion by faith in Jesus Christ. As we believe on Him, we are quickened, that is, we receive life, even eternal life and are saved by grace. Then we are risen with Him. We are now in Him, risen from the dead, the sons of God. Likewise in Christ (not with Christ) we are seated in the heavenly places. Now it is “in Him”; when He comes again we shall be “with Him” and share His glory. Here we have the summit of Christian position. We are not along representatively, but also virtually seated in Christ in the highest glory.
It is worth the while to review in a brief word the blessed revelations given in the first six verses of this chapter.
We saw first what man is by nature. Dead in trespasses and sins. Enemies of God under the prince of the power of the air, this is the result of such a condition. Children of wrath, because we are dead, His enemies and linked with Satan.
And now God has come in with His mighty power in the production of His masterwork. He gives life so that the dead condition is ended. Instead of enemies, we are constituted, by the resurrection of His Son, beloved sons of Himself. And in Christ Jesus, He makes of us children of glory, instead of children of wrath. Marvelous masterwork of God! May we praise Him for it all.
But one must ask in view of such riches of grace, as revealed in the preceding verses, What is the purpose of all this? The verse which follows gives the answer. We find ourselves face to face with the destiny of His masterpiece.
“That in the ages to come He might show (or display) the exceeding (surpassing) riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:7). This is one of the richest and deepest statements in the Bible. 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. When He comes again He brings many sons to glory; and we shall reign and rule with Him over the earth.
But this is not all. in the eternal age, from eternity to eternity, God is continuing in this. He will bring forth something new in glory, new riches of Himself for those who are one with His well-beloved Son. From eternity to eternity He displays the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. How one is overwhelmed in the presence of such a statement! And how little after all we can understand all those coming riches in glory. What a destiny! The heart may well cry--nothing but glory! What is the little suffering, the little while down here, in comparison with such never ending glory!
Fittingly this great revelation ends with the blessed statement that we are saved by grace through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God; and that we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v1 The Church as the Sum Total of Men Saved…
The Church as the Sum Total of Men Saved by Grace.
The natural condition of man:
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v. 1. And you hath He quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
v. 2. wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience;
v. 3. among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
This is really only a part of a long and involved period, the verb having been supplied by the translators from the next section; but the thought is clear and may be followed without difficulty. Addressing himself principally to the Gentiles, or speaking of his readers from the standpoint of the majority, Paul writes: And you, when you were dead by reason of your trespasses and sins (God has made alive with Christ). The Ephesians, like all men by nature, had been in a state or condition of death. All attempts to weaken the force of the statement by translating "dying," or "mortal," or "condemned to death," or by assuming that Paul meant to say that his readers had earned eternal death by their sins, come to naught in view of the uncompromising plainness of the text. They were spiritually dead, they had nothing of the life in and with Christ. See chap. 5:4; Joh 5:25; Rom 6:13; Rev 3:1. They were in this state of spiritual death through, by reason of, their trespasses and sins. The natural proneness to sin, in itself under the sentence of condemnation, found its expression in evil works of the flesh. The death in sins gives evidences of its power in the various and manifold trespasses and sins. Natural man, dead as he is to everything that is morally good, performs only that which is evil, such deeds as result in guilt.
This state of spiritual death is further described: In which formerly you walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who is now operative in the children of unbelief. At one time, formerly, the Ephesians were actively engaged in sins and trespasses; that was their occupation before their conversion, to serve sin, to commit trespasses against God’s holy Law. In this they followed the way of the world, the fallen, apostate humanity. In this world, men in the state of opposition to God impress their stamp upon everything, determining the character, view, and mode of life; and all men before their conversion are engaged with them in this opposition to God. Therefore their conduct is also in accordance with the will of the ruler of the domain of power of the atmosphere, namely, of the spirit which is now active in the children of disobedience. That is the devil’s sphere of activity, that is his domain: the mind of sinful man. The atmosphere of the spirit which actuates the unbelievers is created by the devil as a spirit of disobedience. Men by nature refuse to heed and obey the will of God, the Law which is written into their heart and conscience by nature. The spirit of evil, the principle of opposition, is governing their lives; that is the atmosphere in which they live, and move, and have their being: sin, disobedience, unrighteousness. It is an atmosphere created by Satan for his purposes, full of poison and the fumes of hell. Thus natural man is under the influence, in the power of the devil, bound to oppose God in everything that He does.
But the moral depravity of the Jews was just as bad as that of the Gentiles by nature: In the midst of whom we also all had our life and walk formerly, in the desires of our flesh, performing the wishes of the flesh and of the thoughts. Paul includes himself and all Jewish Christians in the category of the children of disobedience by nature. Their whole conduct and behavior, whatever they turned to, whatever they were engaged in, was concerned with the lusts and desires of the flesh, of the old Adam. And thus they performed the wishes, the expressions of the will of the flesh and also of the intellectual faculties. Natural man, whether Gentile or Jew, is not only inclined to the low, sensual impulses, indecency, lewdness, immorality, but his spiritual, intellectual abilities and powers are corrupt and at variance with God’s will. Thousands of books and articles in our days, most of them showing the use of a high grade of intellect, are charged with sentiments opposed to God and to His holy will and Word. Therefore it is true of all classes of people that are included in the category of natural man: We were by nature children of wrath, just as also the others. By nature, by birth, by reason of the fact that we are flesh born of flesh, we are subject to the condemning wrath of God; our inherited evil nature has made us children of wrath. Inherited sin is a fact, and it is a fact which makes us subject to wrath and damnation. We know from the Scriptures "that this hereditary evil is a guilt, that we all, on account of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, are under God’s displeasure and children of wrath by nature. " And this fact, that we all have this deep, evil, terrible, indescribable, inexpressible, unspeakable vileness in ourselves by nature, serves all the more to set forth before us the boundless mercy of God toward man.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v1 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Paul reminds the believers of their past and the way they now are before God.
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you were dead in your trespasses and sins
This shows how sinful people are unable to obey God in the same way a dead person is unable to respond physically. (See: Metaphor)
your trespasses and sins
The words "trespasses" and "sins" have similar meanings. Paul uses them together to emphasize the greatness of the people's sin. (See: Doublet)
according to the ways of this world
The apostles also used "world" to refer to the selfish behaviors and corrupt values of the people living in this world. AT: "according to the values of people living in the world" or "following the principles of this present world" (See: Metonymy)
the ruler of the authorities of the air
This refers to the devil or Satan.
the spirit that is working
"the spirit of Satan, who is working"
the desires of the body and of the mind
The words "body" and "mind" represent the entire person. (See: Metonymy)
children of wrath
people with whom God is angry (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
die
trespass
sin
walk
world
rule
authority
spirit
disobey
believe
evil
flesh
wrath
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1–3 2:1-10 Paul reflects on the terrible situation of the…
2:1-10 Paul reflects on the terrible situation of the believers before they believed in Christ and the grace of God that has spared them.
2:1-3 Paul’s readers were once like dead people before God (see 2:5; Col 2:13). Because of their disobedience and sins, driven by the power of the devil, they were condemned along with the rest of the world to suffer God’s judgment.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.