Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
Ephesians 2:1

Clarke's Commentary

CHAPTER II.

The character of the Ephesians previously to their conversion

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 Ephesians 2:1. 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, (Ephesians 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.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

2:1-3:21 GOD’S PLAN FOR THE CHURCH

Sinners saved by grace (2:1-10)

In their natural state, all people are spiritually dead because of sin. Nothing they do can bring them back to life, because no matter how much good they try to do, they are still sinners. This is true of Jews and Gentiles alike. In body and mind they are under the control of Satan, and consequently are rebellious against God (2:1-3). Such rebels do not deserve God’s love, but God loves them nevertheless. God does for sinners what they cannot do themselves. He gives them new life, and he does this on the basis of Christ’s death and resurrection. By God’s grace, Christ not only died to bear the penalty of human sin, but he rose to glorious life in the heavenly world so that repentant sinners can have a glorious new life in him (4-7).
This salvation is entirely God’s work. Sinners cannot save themselves. Through faith they can only turn to God in their helplessness, and humbly accept the salvation that God offers. Good works cannot earn them salvation, but once they are saved their lives should be full of good works. When God gives people a new life, they must live a new life (8-10).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins.

"To be dead in trespasses and sins does not mean unconsciousness or non-existence." John William Russell, Compact Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1964), p. 476. (1 Timothy 5:6; Revelation 3:1). In the Scriptural view, sin equals death; and there is no light or casual view of either in the Bible.

You did he make alive … Beare pointed out that the various pronouns "you" (Ephesians 2:1-2), "we all" (Ephesians 2:3), and "us … we" (Ephesians 2:4), "refer to the distinction between Jews and Gentiles only to nullify it. Both are shown to have been alike guilty and in need of God's mercy." Francis W. Beare, The Interpreter's Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1953), Vol. X, p. 638.

Trespasses and sins … Barry suggested a difference in the meaning of these terms, making "sins" to "denote universal and positive principles of evil doing, and trespasses, failure in visible and special acts of those not necessarily out of the right way." Alfred Barry, Ellicott's Commentary on the Holy Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1959), Vol. VII, p. 23. However, such a distinction is not corroborated by other New Testament use of the terms. For example, the Matthew and Luke accounts of the Lord's Prayer use the words interchangeably; and, as Blaikie said, "The distinction cannot be carried out in all other passages. W. G. Blaikie, The Pulpit Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1950), Vol. 20, Ephesians, p. 61. The full thought would seem to be "all kinds of sin."

It is evident in this verse that the deadness of unregenerated people is a derivative, not of their birth, but of their sins. Death always implies a change from the state of being alive. Therefore, the thought of total human depravity as something inherited must be incorrect. Sinners in their pre-Christian state were "dead in sins"; but that deadness was not something they inherited, but came about through the guilt of sins committed.

There is a world of difference in being dead in sins, as here, and being dead to sin in Christ Jesus. Those in Christ are legally dead to sin, in the sense of being free of the penalty of it, through the death of Christ. They are in Christ; Christ died, and therefore they died. Neither in that blessed state in Christ, nor in the wretched condition mentioned here, is there any such thing as "being dead to sin" in the sense of exemption from the temptations to sin. Even Christ was tempted.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

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 Ephesians 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 Romans 6:4-11; compare Colossians 2:12-13; Colossians 3:1. The words “hath he quickened” mean, hath he made alive, or made to live; John 5:21; Rom 4:17; 1 Corinthians 15:36.

Who were dead in trespasses and sins - On the meaning of the word “dead,” see the notes at Romans 5:12; Romans 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.

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.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

1.And you who were dead. This is anἐπεξεργασία of the former statements, that is, an exposition accompanied by an illustration. ⁽¹¹⁸⁾ 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. ⁽¹¹⁹⁾ 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)

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.

(118) “Il expose et esclarcit ce qu’il avoit dit ci-dessus.” “He explains and illustrates what he had formerly said.”

(119) Classical writers employ the same metaphor, to denote not spiritual death, with which they were unacquainted, but the absence of moral principle, or utter ignorance of right and wrong. Thus Epictetus says, νεκρὸς μὲν ὁ παιδευτὴς νεκροὶ δ ᾿ ὑμεῖς ὅτε χορτασθὢτε σήμερον, καθὢσθε κλαίοντες περὶ τὢς αὔριον πόθεν φάγητε. “The instructor is dead, and you are dead. When you are satiated to-day, you sit down and weep about to-morrow, what you shall have to eat.” — Ed.

Smith's Bible Commentary

Shall we turn in our Bibles now to Ephesians, the second chapter.

Paul is going to talk about someone tonight...very interesting. You! Well, at least you are interested in the subject. For many of you it is your favorite subject. If we were able to take a wide angle lens picture of the service this evening and posted it on the bulletin board, and you went up to look at that picture, who is the first one you would look for? Of course.

And you ( Ephesians 2:1 )

Paul said. Now notice the words,

hath he quickened ( Ephesians 2:1 ),

Are in italics. What it means is that these words were added by the translators. That they do not appear in the original Greek text in this place. Now, they do appear in the original Greek text down in verse Ephesians 2:5 , but it does not appear here at the beginning of this text. And so they wrote "hath he quickened" in italics in order to indicate the fact that they themselves added those words. They are not a part of the original text.

Evidently it was just a little bit to heavy. The things that Paul has to say about you, so that they tried to sort of cushion the whole blow by giving you a peak ahead at what he is going to say about you. But at this point, Paul is just saying, and you

who were dead in your trespasses and sins ( Ephesians 2:1 );

God said to Adam, "In the day that you eat thereof you will surely die." Talking about that forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. God was talking about spiritual death. That awareness of God, that communion with God, or that fellowship and oneness that God intended that man should have with God. That would cease, for God is a Spirit, they that worship Him worship Him in Spirit and in truth. The relationship with God would cease the moment that man disobeyed the commandment of God, the moment man transgressed. And so "and you who were dead" really as the result of your transgressions and sins.

The Greek word for sin, hamartia, is a word that means "to miss." Our English word sin comes from a root "to miss." In fact, it comes from a game in archery that the British used to have. They would put a hoop on a pole, and each man would take his quiver of arrows and shoot his arrows through the hoop one at a time. And so maybe you would have five men in the contest. Each of them with ten arrows, and one after another they would shoot their arrow through the hoop there at the top of the pole. Now, if a man should miss the hoop, then he was called a sinner, you have missed. And he would have to treat the rest of the fellows to the drinks. He was a sinner. He had missed the mark.

Now, by the very root of the word, it does indicate, which is also true, that it is possible to be a sinner without wanting to be. It is possible that you would be trying very hard to hit the mark. But no matter how hard we may try to hit the mark, none of us have really hit the mark that God has required for man. All have sinned, or missed the mark, and come short of the glory of God. Now, some may have come closer than others.

If we decided to go sailing out here in the channel and maybe sail to Catalina, but half way across the channel we sprang a leak in the boat and it starts to go down, and some of you who can't swim go down with the boat. Others who are novices at swimming may swim a few feet and then go down. Some who are strong swimmers may swim for a mile or two before they go under. And there may be a marathoner in the group that will get within a mile of the shore before he goes under. Someone may even make it almost to the pier, a hundred feet off of the pier and gulp, gulp, gulp, you know.

Now, you have all come short, no one made it. That is what God says about us, you may come closer than others, but we have all come short of the glory of God. We have all sinned; we have all missed the mark. "There is none righteous, no not one." That means that we all need help. None of us can make it on our own.

The mark that God has established for you is perfection. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect" ( Matthew 5:48 ). Then the scripture says none of you are perfect. Now do you agree with that or not? If you don't, your wife does. All of us have sinned, all of us have missed the mark. Even though we may be trying our best to hit the mark, we've come short of the glory of God. And as the result, the soul that sins shall surely die. The wages of sin is death. The loss of fellowship with a holy God.

So, and you who were dead because of your trespasses and sins;

Wherein times past you walked according to the course of this world ( Ephesians 2:2 ),

The word walked here in Greek is a word that should be translated meandered. That is, when you see a person walking you make an assumption he is going someplace and he has a purpose in mind. When you see a person meandering you get the impression he is not really going anywhere and he doesn't have any purpose. He's just sort of wandering, meandering. So this Greek word meander is the word that Paul uses here. It is translated walk. But in times past you were just meandering through life. That is, you really didn't have any real eternal purpose. You were really not going anywhere, you were just existing. But there was no real purpose to your life. In times past you meandered according to the course of this world. The word course has its root meaning in Greek weathervane. That is, whatever way the wind is flowing, that is the way you turn, that is the way you go. So the flow of the world, you just flowed with it. Whatever was the current fashion. Whatever was the current fad, here I am, flowing with it, you know. Everybody is doing it, get on board.

When I was a small fellow I used to often ask my mother if I could go a certain place. Do a certain thing. And if she would say, "No, son, you can't." I would say, "Why, Mom? Everybody is going. Everybody is doing it." And she used to say, "Son, it doesn't make any difference if everybody is doing it or not. If everybody is jumping in the fire, are you going to jump in the fire? As a Christian you're going to have to learn to go against the current. Any dead fish can float down the stream, it takes a live fish to swim against the current." I thank God for that good godly advice from my mother.

In times past we just flowed with the current, the weathervane. As it moved as it meandered. Following the crowd, following the course of the world. Following the fads.

But then Paul gives us an awesome insight, and that is that these fads and fashions of the world are really being directed by none other than Satan.

according to the prince of the power of the air, that even now works in the children of disobedience ( Ephesians 2:2 ):

Now, there may have been a time in the history of the world that a person would challenge the fact that Satan is behind the course or the flow of the world. I don't think that that would be challenged much anymore. As we look at the course of this world, as we look at the way things are going, as we look at the latest rock stars, the latest idols, they have become quite obvious of the bondage and the chains, and of the cruelty, and of the evil by which they are inspired.

In Copenhagen we saw these posters all over town. In fact, I ripped one off and brought it home. I figured it was all right because there were so many around town. I didn't think anybody would miss the one. I really thought it was worthwhile having. I asked the Lord to forgive me. But I ripped off this poster that was there because it was so intriguing. The poster has the picture of a young man, blood all around him, tied with chains, and in big letters, it said, "No escape." That is the message of the young people of Europe today. There is no escape. There is bondage. The world is going down the tube. And there is no escape; that is the world's message to the world.

Paul said, "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" They should thank God there is an escape, it has been provided by Jesus Christ. The glorious salvation that He has given to us. But outside of Christ the message is true. To those who want to reject Christ, the message is true; there is no escape. Satan is behind the world's fashions, the trends, directing, orchestrating those destructive, damning forces that we see pervading our society. The increase of immorality, the increase of pornography, the acceptance of abortion, and homosexuality, and these other trends that we see, Satan is behind them orchestrating as he is leading the world to hell. And we at one time were following that course, dead in our trespasses and sins, living an aimless life without purpose as we follow the trends that were being set by Satan. What a sad and tragic picture of man apart from Jesus Christ.

It is interesting to me how that so often people fear the will of God. Having walked in the will of God, I cannot understand why any man would fear it. But Satan has so lied to people about God, about the nature of God, that it has caused people to oftentimes fear submitting their lives to God.

Now, when I was a child growing up in church, so many times I would hear people say, "You be careful what you say you are not going to do, because that is exactly what God is going to make you do. The boogieman will get you, you know." And God was almost a boogieman to us. Just waiting to prove us wrong. You say you are not going to do something, well, you just wait, you know, the moment you yield your life to God, that is exactly what He is going to make you do. And I was fearful of yielding my life to God. There was a lot of things I didn't want to do. And I was fearful that God was going to suddenly start making me do all of these distasteful things that I said I would never do.

What if my son should come to me, and say, "Dad, I have been thinking, I really had a good life, you have always provided a roof over my head, you have always provided food on the table, I always had clothes to wear. And I really appreciate all that you have given to me, Dad, and all that you have done for me. And to show my appreciation, Dad, I just thought that today I would come over and just do whatever you would like me to do for you. Any task that you may have around here, I just would like to spend a day with you, Dad, doing whatever you'd like for me to do." Now, as a dad, do you think that suddenly I would think, "All right, I have got this kid now where I want him. Boy, I had the worst time with him trying to get him to hoe weeds in the backyard." I would say, "Okay, start out in the back yard, that weed patch back there. When you are through with that, wash out the garbage cans." And you think that I would think of every dirty, miserable task around the house and send him to do them? Well, if you think I would think that, you don't know me. I tell you, I would be so shocked if I had one of my sons come and say something like that to me. But pleasantly shocked, that I would want to make that one of the greatest days of his life. A day he wants to share with his dad. Well, why don't we head on down to Huntington and let's spend a little while surfing. And then maybe we can do a little water skiing in the afternoon, and I would be looking for those things that we could really enjoy together. I would be so pleased that he is wanting to do something to please me. I would want to make it a great day.

Now, do you think that our Father is any different? Do you think that when you finally come and say, "Father, I do realize You have been good to me, You have done so much for me. You have blessed me so much, I just want to do whatever You like me to do today, Father. I would like to just commit to You." Somehow we have an impression that God is going to just get all of these dirty, nasty things that we have said we would never do and say, "All right, start here." And God is going to lay some heavy, heavy trip on us just because we submitted ourselves to His will. Not so. You don't know the heavenly Father. You have got a wrong and blasphemous concept of God. Who just delights to spend pleasant days together with you. Who is delighted when He sees you happy and joyful. Who wants to see you enriched in all things in Christ.

Now on the other hand, Jesus said concerning Satan, "That he is come to rob and to kill and to destroy." Satan's purpose for you is your destruction, and so as he is guiding the course of the world, it is a destruction derby. It is a course that is leading to destruction. And yet, people so blindly flow along with it. No worries, no concerns, no consideration, "Talk to me later, man, I'm having too great a time." No time to worry about where the path, the flow is leading. And they seem to have no qualms yielding and flowing with the will of Satan, which will lead to their ultimate destruction. Whereas you talk about so many who say, "When I get to my death bed, maybe, you know, I will consider turning my life over to Him. Now I am too busy. I am having fun. I don't want to commit myself to God." And what a wrong concept people have of what it means to surrender your life to the will of God.

For once a person does, they find as, Jesus said, "I delight to do thy will, O Lord." It becomes the pleasure, the delight, the thrill of our lives. Now, the other people looking at us can't understand that, because they don't know what is going on inside. "You mean you go to church on Sunday evening and you listen to a Bible study? Man." And they don't know the joy that we have in the presence of the Lord as we worship Him and as we sing unto Him our love and our praises and our thanksgiving. And then, as He begins to minister His truth to our heart, and He begins to really speak to us, they don't understand that thrill of God's Word really ministering to our lives and to the things of our lives. And so, looking from the outside in, they can't understand, but once we are on the inside walking in fellowship with God, experiencing His presence and His joy, we understand what it is all about. And it is just a joy and a pleasant delight, to gather with God's people and to just experience God's love and the love within the family of God. And the warmth of God's truth as it just bears witness to our spirits.

But Paul said that we were all once in that boat where Satan was guiding, leading to a shipwreck.

Among whom also we all had our conversation ( Ephesians 2:3 ).

Now the word conversation is an old English word, and we have a new definition for that word today. Conversation, we are talking with each other. This old English word conversation doesn't really give you the true meaning of the Greek word, which is our manner of living. It isn't just our talking, it is our whole manner of life. "Among whom we all had our manner of living, or our lifestyles in times past." What was our lifestyle? Or, what was the manner of life that we lived? What kind of a life were we living? We were living

in the lust of our flesh, as we were fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; as we were by nature the children of wrath, even as the others ( Ephesians 2:3 ).

That is, we were living by the lower nature, the animal nature, living after the lust of our flesh, and the lust of our minds. These are the things that were the motivation behind our lives. These are the things that governed our lives in the past. My life was ruled and dominated by the lust of my flesh and by the lust of my mind. I spent my life trying to satisfy my fleshly desires.

We read concerning Solomon the king, as he was trying to find meaning in life how that he pursued so many different directions. First of all, he thought that it must lie in riches, which often many people feel. And so he began to amass to himself wealth until he was the richest man in the world, and silver was as common as rocks in Israel. And if you've ever been to Jerusalem, you know how common rocks are around that city. It is the rockiest city in the world. Imagine in Solomon's day when silver was as common as rocks. And he said, "I looked at all of the wealth and I said, 'How dies the rich man like the fool, this is emptiness.' And so I gave myself to understanding and to wisdom, I said, 'The answer must lie in knowing,' and so I applied myself to wisdom until I was the smartest man in the world. How dies the wise man as a fool, this too is empty, it doesn't satisfy. And so I said, 'It must lie in leaving great monuments,' and so I applied myself to building, and I built all of these great monuments around Jerusalem, and when I looked at all of these great buildings and all I said, 'This too is empty; it doesn't satisfy.'" Until he finally concluded that life was empty and frustrating, there was nothing worthwhile under the sun, that is, after it says, "and all that I did not withhold from myself anything that my heart desired." You see, after the total indulgence of the lust of his flesh, not withholding anything from himself, he came to the conclusion life is empty and frustrating; there is nothing worthwhile under the sun. Sort of concluding, you might as well bomb out and stay drunk, there is nothing else, too much pain to try to face reality.

Sort of the philosophy that a lot of people have taken today. They have tried everything. They have jaded themselves. They have run the full ten yards, it is still empty. You might as well just, you know, get into a fuzz of drugs or into the folly of liquor, because there is no sense in trying to be sober. Reality is hopeless. Isn't that what existential philosophy pretty much declares? That reality will lead to despair, therefore you cannot face reality. You have got to take the leap of faith into the second story and hope that you land on something.

You have got to just hope that you can have some kind of satisfying experience of truth. Because if you face reality, truth doesn't exist, and thus you will only end in despair. There we were, tripping right along with the crowd, as they were trying to satisfy the lust of their flesh, and the lust of their mind. For we were by nature, that is, we were doing what comes naturally to the fallen man. "We were by nature the children of wrath, even as others." The fallen nature of man, which is dominated by his flesh, and thus is ruled by his fleshly desires. That is the natural man, apart from Jesus Christ, and you, black is this picture that Paul paints of you and of me.

Verse Ephesians 2:4 . Now he takes this canvas in which he has painted all of this charcoal slate black, and he begins to splash on it some brilliant colors.

But God ( Ephesians 2:4 ),

In contrast to the blackness of my own past, now God

who is rich in mercy ( Ephesians 2:4 ),

Brilliant colors flashed across this black background.

for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins ( Ephesians 2:4-5 ),

God commended His love towards us even that while we were yet sinners Christ died for the ungodly. Herein is love. Not that we love God, but that God loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whosoever believes in Him does not perish but has everlasting life. "But God, rich in His mercy, in His love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins." When did God start loving you? So many times we think that God started loving us when we started being loving. When we started being sweet and kind, and you know, generous and good, and when we started just living such a perfect life, God said, "My, isn't that lovely? Aren't they perfect? My, I love them." When did God start loving you? When we were still dead in our trespasses and sins God loved us.

God has loved you from eternity, there has never been a time when God didn't love you. There will never be a time when God doesn't love you. But God who is rich in His mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead has made us alive. Now it is here in the Greek text, finally we have got it.

he has made us alive together with Christ, (for by grace you are saved;) ( Ephesians 2:5 )

So I was once dead because of the trespasses and sins, but through Jesus Christ God has provided the forgiveness of my trespasses and sins. So with the psalmist in Psalm 32 , I can say, "Oh how happy is the man, whose transgressions are forgiven. Oh how happy is the man whose sins are covered. When I tried to hide my guilt I was miserable. The hand of God was heavy on my life. I thought I was going to die. But then I confessed my sin and God forgave me my sin completely. Oh how good it is to have God's forgiveness. Oh how happy is the man."

And so God provided the way for the forgiveness of our sins, and having forgiven us our sins we became alive in the spirit, or were born again. Our first birth, the natural life was of the flesh. I was born in a body of flesh, and from the beginning my fleshly appetites were dominating me. I was a pretty good little kid until my fleshly appetites took over, and then I began to yell until they took care of feeding me. And sometimes if they didn't feed me when I wanted to be fed, I would flail and kick and scream and holler. I was a natural man, dominated by my fleshly needs. Some people never grow beyond that stage. They are still natural men, dominated by their fleshly needs, and if they don't find satisfaction they scream and holler and yell and flail and kick.

But I was born again by the Spirit of God, a spiritual birth. A new life, I no longer relate back to Adam, my father after the flesh. But I now relate back to Jesus Christ, my Father after the Spirit. I have been born again by the Spirit of God through Jesus Christ. And now this spiritual birth, my spirit is now alive, and with my spirit alive I now have fellowship with God. I have been joined back together with God through the Spirit. And His Spirit is bearing witness with my spirit that I am His child, and because of His Spirit bearing witness with my spirit I cry Abba, I cry Father. Very naturally. And I worship Him in Spirit and in truth.

And so He has made us alive, alive spiritually, for by grace are we saved. That is, we don't deserve it. That is, we can't earn it. There is no work that you can do that can make you alive spiritually. That is not the result of some great effort on my part. That is not the result of killing the seven-headed dragon and grabbing the three golden apples. But it is by grace, God's glorious gift of love to me. By grace are you saved.

Now, not only has He made me alive,

But he has raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus ( Ephesians 2:6 ):

Or in the heavenlies. You notice places is italicized.

So it's far more than just saving me from my sins, it is making me alive unto God and then raising me up into the heavenly levels. Where God now seats me together in Christ in these heavenly places, or in the heavenlies. This new walk and life that I have in the Spirit, this resurrected life of Jesus Christ. The purpose:

That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace, and his kindness toward us, through Christ Jesus ( Ephesians 2:7 ).

Now, notice verse Ephesians 2:5 , "with Christ," verse Ephesians 2:6 , "in Christ Jesus," verse Ephesians 2:7 , "through Christ Jesus." All of these things that God has done, He has done for us, in, and through, and by Jesus Christ.

Now the glorious future that awaits us, as Paul prayed in chapter 1, and we studied last week. He prayed that they might know what is the hope of their calling. God has called you to be His child. You know what that means? That means throughout the endless ages to come you are going to be dwelling with God in His eternal kingdom as God is revealing unto you the exceeding richness of His mercy and of His kindness towards you through Christ Jesus.

The psalmist said, "As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high is God's mercies towards those who fear Him." And God throughout eternity is going to be revealing the exceeding greatness of His mercy and of His kindness, these things that He has given and provided and done for you through Jesus Christ. You will never discover it all. Eternity isn't long enough. Throughout all eternity, God's grace and love and mercy being revealed.

For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves ( Ephesians 2:8 ):

What not of yourselves? Faith. You say, "Well, I believe God. Look at me, I believe." No, no. That not of yourself, the faith didn't come from you. Even the faith

was the gift of God ( Ephesians 2:8 ):

Do you remember when the Midianites had covered the land like grasshoppers? Were ripping off the crops from the children of Israel, they were hiding their food in caves and all. And Gideon was in a cave as he was threshing the wheat to hide from the Midianites, and the angel of the Lord came to him and said, "Gideon, go and deliver the children of Israel from the oppression of the Midianites." And he said, "Who are you? And you have got the wrong address. My father is a nobody and I am the least in my father's household. You can't be meaning me." And the Lord said, "Yes, I do mean you." "Well, I would like to know that for sure. Let me put out a fleece of wool. And in the morning if it is wet and the ground is dry, then I will know that it is you." And so in the morning when the fleece was wet and the ground was dry, he said, "Now I want to make sure about this. Tomorrow morning let the ground be wet and the fleece dry." I might be stumbling onto a phenomena of nature that I don't understand. But the morning when it was reversed, then he came to the realization that it was God.

And he blew the trumpet in Israel and gathered together 32,000 men to face the 135,000 Midianites. And God said Gideon, "The men that are with you are too many, because I know the heart of this people. And if I would deliver the Midianites into the hands of the 32,000, they would go around glorying in themselves. So go out and tell all of the men who are afraid to go to war to go home." Gideon went out and faced his troops and said, "All right, all of you that are afraid to go to battle, you can go on home." Twenty-two thousand of them turned on their heal and left. Left him with 10,000 men to face the 135,000 Midianites. And the Lord said, "Gideon." "Yes, Lord." "The men that are with you are too many. I know the heart of this people. If I would deliver the Midianites in the hands of the 10,000, they would go around boasting in themselves and glorying in themselves. Take them down to the stream and let them get a drink of water. And all of those that get down and put their face in the water, send them home. Those that pick it up in their hands and drink out of the hands, then with these will I deliver the Midianites into the hands of Israel." And Gideon took them down to the stream and 9,700 of them got down on their knees and put their face in the water and began to drink and 300 of them picked it up in their hands. And so Gideon took the 300. Now, what was the purpose of God? To keep the men from glorying or boasting in what God was going to do. "

Contending for the Faith

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;

And you hath he quickened: The writer now shows that the same power exercised on the body of Christ to raise Him from the dead (1:19-20) is used upon those who are dead in sins to resurrect them from spiritual death (2:5). The phrase "hath he quickened" is not in the Greek text but is grammatically supplied by the KJV translators, even though the idea is not expressly stated until verse 5. "You" refers to Gentiles (2:11).

This is the beginning of another extended sentence in the Greek (2:1-10).

who were dead: This clause is speaking of spiritual death. Spiritual death is the state of being separated from fellowship or affiliation with God. Isaiah records, "...your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear" (59:2 NASB). Sin creates a division between us and God. Since we are dependent upon God for our eternal life and since our sin destroys our relationship with God, we are dead, cut off, alienated from the source of eternal life.

What benefit did you reap at that time from the things ("sins" Ephesians 2:20) you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:21-23 NIV). (See also Romans 6:16; John 3:36.)

Someone can be physically alive and yet spiritually dead at the same time. Paul tells Timothy, "But she who gives herself to wanton pleasure is dead even while she lives" (1 Timothy 5:6 NASB). (Note also Romans 5:12; Romans 5:21; James 1:15; James 5:20; Romans 7:5; Romans 7:10; Romans 7:13; Romans 7:24; John 5:24.)

An outstanding illustration of spiritual death is found in the parable of the prodigal son:

And the son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son." But the father said to his slaves, "Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found." And they began to be merry (Luke 15:21-24 NASB).

In this passage the son admits to his father that he has "sinned" and is "no longer worthy to be called your son." This declaration does not mean he is not a son, only that he does not consider himself worthy of such a position. It is apparent the erring son is representative of an erring Christian, for it is speaking of someone who is an heir wasting the blessings of his father in a sinful, rebellious way. The father in this parable represents God and shows our Father’s continuing love for his children who have forsaken the right way. The statement of the father reflects the spiritual impasse of the father/son relation­ship while the son is in sin. The father affirms, "...for this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found" (Luke 15:24 NASB). To the father, the sinful "son" was dead in sin and lost.

This illustration of spiritual fellowship lost does not end sadly. When the father sees the son, he can see the haughty spirit has been replaced by humility (Luke 15:20; Matthew 6:8). This repenting child then confesses his sin to his father and finds that "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteous­ness" (1 John 1:9 NASB). The son, who "was dead" to his father, repents and confesses his sin. Upon his repentance and confession, his father forgives him; therefore, he spiritually "came to life again." The imagery of death and life, as used here, is often used when illustrating fellowship issues with God.

We must not overlook the fact that those who neglect (Hebrews 2:3) or choose not to receive forgiveness for their sins before their physical death (2 Corinthians 5:10) will experience a "second death" at the judgment (Revelation 21:8).

Contextually, the writer is stating that the Gentiles were spiritually dead to God because of their own "trespasses and sins."

in trespasses and sins: The scriptures here maintain that "trespasses and sins" are what bring about spiritual death, not "hereditary depravity." The words "trespasses" and "sins" are probably synonymous (compare 1 Corinthians 15:3 and Romans 4:25). "Trespasses" literally means to "fall beside," and "sins" literally means "a failing to hit the mark" (Thayer 485, 30). To illustrate, one may shoot an arrow and fail to hit the mark, or shoot an arrow and have it fall beside the mark. They both mean the same thing; he missed the mark. Spiritually, when one "misses" the mark of keeping God’s will, he has sinned. He can sin by either violating the standard of God’s will or by failing to come up to its standards.

John explains, "Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3:4 NIV). The law or "mark" in this context is the righteous will of God. The sinner arrogantly lives in total disregard of the will of God, as though the Creator has no law or moral judgment for His creation. The sinner chooses to live in contempt of any law or higher authority that would supersede his own will. He is one who does not subject himself to any authority and, therefore, practices "lawlessness." Sin, then, is a failure to comply with the will of God through choice or disregard.

At the final judgment, those who "practice lawlessness" will hear the Lord say, "...I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness" (Matthew 7:21-23 NASB).

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Before their regeneration, believers were spiritually dead, separated from God, and unable to have fellowship with Him (cf. Ephesians 4:18; John 17:3). We were living in the sphere of rebellion against God (cf. Ephesians 2:2). Transgressions (false steps, cf. Ephesians 1:7; Ephesians 2:5) and sins (acts of missing the mark) describe deliberate offenses against God.

"There are three outstanding schools of moral pathology traceable throughout the centuries. Pelagianism asserts the convalescence of human nature. Man merely needs teaching. Semi-pelagianism admits his ill-health, but affirms that the symptoms will yield to proper treatment, to a course of tonic drugs and a scrupulous regimen. But Biblical Christianity probes the patient to the quick. Its searching diagnosis pronounces that mortification has set in and that nothing less than infusion of fresh lifeblood can work a cure. Nostrums and palliatives aggravate rather than allay the disease. Sin is an organic epidemical malady, a slow devitalizing poison issuing in moral necrosis; not a stage of arrested or incomplete development, but a seed-plot of impending ruin." [Note: Simpson, p. 46.]

"The unbeliever is not sick; he is dead! He does not need resuscitation; he needs resurrection. All lost sinners are dead, and the only difference between one sinner and another is the state of decay." [Note: Wiersbe, 2:18.]

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Once dead to God 2:1-3

These verses are really preliminary to Paul’s main point. They describe the Christian’s condition as an unbeliever before God justified him or her. In the Greek text Ephesians 2:1-7 are one sentence. The subject of this sentence is God (Ephesians 2:4). The three main verbs are "made alive" (Ephesians 2:5), "raised up" (Ephesians 2:6), and "seated" (Ephesians 2:6). The object is "us," and the prepositional phrase "with Christ" describes "us." The main point then is that God has made believers alive, raised us up, and seated us with Christ. Everything else in Ephesians 2:1-7 is of subordinate importance.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

3. The motive: grace 2:1-10

Paul proceeded to conclude his revelation of the Christian’s individual calling in Christ (Ephesians 1:3 to Ephesians 2:10). He began this section of the epistle by explaining the purpose of our calling (i.e., the glory of God, Ephesians 1:3-14). He then expounded the means whereby we appreciate our calling (i.e., knowledge given by the Holy Spirit through God’s revelation, Ephesians 1:15-23). Finally, He enunciated the motive for our calling (i.e., the unmerited grace of God, Ephesians 2:1-10).

These verses continue the theme of redemption (Ephesians 1:7). This pericope is a condensation of Paul’s exposition of redemption in Romans. Whereas we were once dead to God (Ephesians 2:1-3), we are now alive in God (Ephesians 2:4-10).

". . . what Paul does in this passage is to paint a vivid contrast between what man is by nature and what he can become by grace." [Note: Stott, p. 69.]

"Having described our spiritual possessions in Christ, Paul turns to a complementary truth: our spiritual position in Christ. First he explains what God has done for all sinners in general; then he explains what God did for the Gentiles in particular." [Note: Wiersbe, 2:17.]

Barclay's Daily Study Bible

Chapter 2

THE CHRISTLESS LIFE AND THE GRACE OF GOD ( Ephesians 2:1-10 )

2:1-10 When you were dead in your sins and trespasses, those sins and trespasses in which once you walked, living life in the way in which this present age of this world lives it, living life as the ruler of the power of the air dictates it, that spirit who now operates in the children of disobedience--and once all we too lived the same kind of life as these children of disobedience do, a life in which we were at the mercy of the desires of our lower nature, a life in which we followed the wishes of our lower nature and of our own designs, a life in which, so far as human nature goes, we deserved nothing but the wrath of God, as the others do--although we were all like that, I say, God, because he is rich in mercy, and because of his great love with which he has loved us, made us alive in Christ Jesus, even when we were dead in trespasses (it is by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Christ, and gave us a seat in the heavenly places with Christ, because of what Christ Jesus did for us. This he did so that in the age to come the surpassing riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus might be demonstrated. For it is by grace appropriated by faith that you have been saved. You had nothing to do with this. It was God's gift to you. It was not the result of works, for it was God's design that no one should be able to boast. For we are his work, created in Christ Jesus for good works, works which God prepared beforehand that we might walk in them.

In this passage Paul's thought flows on regardless of the rules of grammar; he begins sentences and never finishes them; he begins with one construction and halfway through he glides into another. That is because this is far more a lyric of the love of God than a careful theological exposition. The song of the nightingale is not to be analysed by the laws of musical composition. The lark sings for the joy of singing. That is what Paul is doing here. He is pouring out his heart, and the claims of grammar have to give way to the wonder of grace.

Life Without Christ ( Ephesians 2:1-3)

2:1-3 When you were dead in your sins and trespasses, those sins and trespasses in which you once walked, living life in the way this present age lives it, living life as the ruler of the power of the air dictates it, that spirit who now operates in the children of disobedience--and once all we too lived the same kind of life as these children of disobedience do, a life in which we were at the mercy of the desires of our lower nature, a life in which we followed the wishes of our lower nature and of our own designs, a life in which, as far as human nature goes, we deserved nothing but the wrath of God, as the others do.

When Paul speaks of you, he is speaking of the Gentiles; when he speaks of us he is speaking of the Jews, his fellow countrymen. In this passage he shows how terrible the Christless life was for Gentile and for Jew alike.

(i) He says that that life was lived in sins and trespasses. The words he uses are interesting. The word for sin is hamartia ( G266) ; and hamartia ( G266) is a shooting word. It literally means a miss. A man shoots his arrow at the target; the arrow misses; that is hamartia ( G266) . Sin is the failure to hit the target of life. That is precisely why sin is so universal.

We commonly have a wrong idea of sin. We would readily agree that the robber, murderer, the razor-slasher, the drunkard, the gangster are sinners, but, since most of us are respectable citizens, in our heart of hearts we think that sin has not very much to do with us. We would probably rather resent being called hell-deserving sinners. But hamartia ( G266) brings us face to face with what sin is, the failure to be what we ought to be and could be.

Is a man as good a husband as he might be? Does he try to make life easier for his wife? Does he inflict his moods on his family? Is a woman as good a wife as she might be? Does she really take an interest in her husband's work and try to understand his problems and his worries? Are we as good parents as we might be? Do we discipline and train our children as we ought, or do we often shirk the issue? As our children grow older, do we come nearer to them, or do they drift away until conversation is often difficult and we and they are practically strangers? Are we as good sons and daughters as we might be? Do we ever even try to say thank you for what has been done for us? Do we ever see the hurt look in our parents' eyes and know that we put it there? Are we as good workmen as we could be? Is every working hour filled with our most conscientious work and is every task done as well as we could possibly do it?

When we realize what sin is, we come to see that it is not something which theologians have invented. It is something with which life is permeated. It is the failure in any sphere of life to be what we ought to be and could be.

The other word Paul uses, translated trespasses is paraptoma ( G3900) . This literally means a slip or a fall. It is used for a man losing the way and straying from the right road; it is used for a man failing to grasp and slipping away from the truth. Trespass, is taking the wrong road when we could take the right one; it is missing the truth that we should have known. Therefore it is the failure to reach the goal we ought to have reached.

Are we in life where we ought to be? Have we reached the goal of efficiency and skill that our gifts might have enabled us to reach? Have we reached the goal of service to others that we might have reached? Have we reached the goal of goodness to which we might have attained?

The central idea of sin is failure, failure to hit the target, failure to hold to the road, failure to make life what it was capable of becoming; and that definition includes every one of us.

Death In Life ( Ephesians 2:1-3 Continued)

Paul speaks about people being dead in sins. What did he mean? Some have taken it to mean that without Christ men live in a state of sin which in the life to come produces the death of the soul. But Paul is not talking about the life to come; he is talking about this present life. There are three directions in which the effect of sin is deadly.

(i) Sin kills innocence. No one is precisely the same after he has sinned. The psychologists tell us that we never forget anything.

It may not be in our conscious memory, but everything we ever did or saw or heard is buried in our subconscious memories. The result is that sin leaves a permanent effect on a man.

In Du Maurier's novel Trilby there is an example of that. For the first time in his life Little Billee has taken part in a drunken debauch and has himself been drunk. "And when, after some forty-eight hours or so, he had quite slept off the fumes of that memorable Christmas debauch, he found that a sad thing had happened to him, and a strange! It was as though a tarnishing breath had swept over the reminiscent mirror of his mind and left a little film behind it, so that no past thing he wished to see therein was reflected with quite the same pristine clearness. As though the keen, quick, razor edge of his power to reach and re-evoke the by-gone charm and glamour and essence of things had been blunted and coarsened. As though the bloom of that special joy, the gift he had of recalling past emotions and sensations and situations, and making them actual once more by a mere effort of will, had been brushed away. And he never recovered the full use of that most precious faculty, the boon of youth and happy childhood, and which he had once possessed, without knowing it, in such singular and exceptional completeness.

The experience of sin had left a kind of tarnishing film on his mind and things could never be quite the same again. If we stain a garment or a carpet, we may send it to be cleaned, but it is never again quite the same. Sin does something to a man; it kills innocence; and innocence, once lost, can never be recovered.

(ii) Sin kills ideals. In the lives of so many there is a kind of tragic process. At first a man regards some wrong thing with horror; the second stage comes when he is tempted into doing it, but even as he does it, he is still unhappy and ill at ease and very conscious that it is wrong; the third stage is when he has done the thing so often that he does it without a qualm. Each sin makes the next sin easier. Wordsworth in the Intimations of Immortality wrote:

"The youth, who daily from the east

Must travel, still is Nature's priest,

And by the vision splendid

Is on his way attended;

At length the man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day."

Sin is a kind of suicide, for it kills the ideals which make life worth while.

(iii) In the end sin kills the will. At first a man engages in some forbidden pleasure because he wants to do so; in the end he engages in it because he cannot help doing so. Once a thing becomes a habit it is not far from being a necessity. When a man has allowed some habit, some indulgence, some forbidden practice to master him, he becomes its slave. As the old saying has it. "Sow an act and reap a habit; sow a habit and reap a character; sow a character and reap a destiny."

There is a certain murderous power in sin. It kills innocence; sin may be forgiven but its effect remains. As Origen had it: "The scars remain." Sin kills ideals; men begin to do without a qualm the thing which once they regarded with horror. Sin kills the will; the thing so grips a man that he cannot break free.

The Marks Of The Christless Life ( Ephesians 2:1-3 Continued)

In this passage Paul makes a kind of list of the characteristics of life without Christ.

(i) It is life lived in the way this present age lives it. That is to say, it is life lived on the world's standards and with the world's values. Christianity demands forgiveness, but the ancient writers said it was a sign of weakness to have the power to avenge oneself for injury and not to do so. Christianity demands love even to our enemies, but Plutarch said that the sign of a good man was that he was useful to his friends and terrible to his enemies. Christianity demands service, but the world cannot understand the missionary for instance, who goes away to some foreign land to teach in a school or heal in a hospital for a quarter of the salary he or she might obtain at home in some secular service. The essence of the world's standard is that it sets self in the centre, the essence of the Christian standard is that it sets Christ and others in the centre. The essence of the worldly man is, as someone has said, that "he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." The world's motive is profit. the Christian's dynamic is the desire to serve.

(ii) It is life lived under the dictates of the prince of the air. Here again we are at something which was very real in the days of Paul but which is not so real to us. The ancient world believed strenuously in demons. They believed that the air was so crowded with these demons that there was not room to insert a pinpoint between them. Pythagoras said: "The whole air is full of Spirits." Philo said: "There are spirits flying everywhere through the air." "The air is the house of the disembodied spirits." These demons were not all bad, but many were, out to propagate evil, to frustrate the purposes of God and to ruin the souls of men. The man who is under their domination has taken sides against God.

(iii) It is a life characterized by disobedience. God has many ways of revealing his will to men. He does so by conscience, the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking within us; he does so by giving to men the wisdom and the commandments of his book; he does so through the advice of good and godly men. But the man who lives the Christless life takes his own way of things, even when he knows what God's way is.

(iv) It is a life which is at the mercy of desire. The word for desire is epithumia ( G1939) which characteristically means desire for the wrong and the forbidden thing. To succumb to that is inevitably to come to disaster.

One of the tragedies of the nineteenth century was the career of Oscar Wilde. He had a brilliant mind, and won the highest academic honours; he was a scintillating writer, and won the highest rewards in literature; he had all the charm in the world and was a man whose instinct it was to be kind; yet he fell to temptation and came to prison and disgrace. When he was suffering for his fall, he wrote his book De Profundis and in it he said: "The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease.... Tired of being on the heights I deliberately went to the depths in search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the house-top. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace."

Desire is a bad master, and to be at the mercy of desire is to be a slave. And desire is not simply a fleshly thing; it is the craving for any forbidden thing.

(v) It is the life which follows what the King James Version calls the desires of our flesh. We must be careful to understand what Paul means by the sins of the flesh. He means far more than sexual sins. In Galatians 5:19-21 Paul lists the sins of the flesh. True, he starts with adultery and fornication, but he goes on to idolatry, hatred, wrath, strife, envyings, seditions, heresies. The flesh is that part of our nature which gives sin a bridgehead and a point of attack.

The meaning of "the flesh" will vary from person to person. One man's weakness may be in his body and his risk may be sexual sin; another's may be in spiritual things and his risk in pride; another's may be in earthly things and his risk unworthy ambition; another's sin may be in his temper and his risk in envyings and strife. All these are sins of the flesh. Let no man think that, because he has escaped the grosser sins of the body, he has avoided the sins of the flesh. The flesh is anything in us which gives sin its chance; it is human nature without God. To live according to the dictates of the flesh is simply to live in such a way, that our lower nature, the worse part of us, dominates our lives.

(vi) It is life which is deserving only of the wrath of God. Many a man's life is embittered because he feels that he has never had what his talents and his work deserve; but in the sight of God no man deserves anything but condemnation. It is only his love in Christ which has forgiven men who deserved nothing but punishment from him, men who had grieved his love and broken his law.

The Work Of Christ ( Ephesians 2:4-10)

2:4-10 Although we were all like that, I say, God, because he is rich in mercy and because of his great love with which he has loved us, made us alive in Jesus Christ, even when we were dead in trespasses (it is by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Christ, and gave us a seat in the heavenly places with Christ, because of what Christ Jesus did for us. This he did so that in the age to come the surpassing riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus might be demonstrated. For it is by grace appropriated by faith that you have been saved. You had nothing to do with this. It was God's gift to you. It was not the result of works, for it was God's design that no one should be able to boast. For we are his work, created in Christ Jesus for good works, works which God prepared beforehand that we might walk in them.

Paul had begun by saying that, as we are, we are dead in sins and trespasses; now he says that God in his love and mercy has made us alive in Jesus Christ. What exactly did he mean by that? We saw that there were three things involved in being dead in sins and trespasses. Jesus has something to do about each of them.

(i) We saw that sin kills innocence. Not even Jesus can give a man back his lost innocence, for not even Jesus can put back the clock; but what he can do is take away the sense of guilt which the lost innocence necessarily brings with it.

The first thing sin does is create a feeling of estrangement between us and God. Whenever a man realizes that he has sinned, he is oppressed with the feeling that he dare not approach God. When Isaiah received his vision of God, his first reaction was to say: "Woe is me! for I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips" ( Isaiah 6:5). When Peter realized who Jesus was, his first reaction was: "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord" ( Luke 5:8).

Jesus begins by taking that sense of estrangement away. He came to tell us that no matter what we are like the door is open to the presence of God. Suppose there was a son who did some shameful thing and then ran away, because he was sure that there was no use in going home, because the door was bound to be shut. Then suppose someone came with the news that the door was still open and a welcome was waiting at home. What a difference that news would make! It was just that kind of news that Jesus brought. He came to take away the sense of estrangement and of guilt, by telling us that God wants us just as we are.

(ii) We saw that sin killed the ideals by which men live. Jesus reawakens the ideal in the heart of man.

The story is told of a negro engineer in a river ferry-boat in America. His boat was old and he did not worry over much about it; the engines were begrimed and ill-cared for. This engineer was soundly converted. The first thing he did was to go back to his ferry-boat and polish his engines until every part of the machinery shone like a mirror. One of the regular passengers commented on the change. "What have you been up to?" he asked the engineer. "What set you cleaning and polishing these old engines of yours?" "Sir," answered the engineer, "I've got a glory." That is what Christ does for a man. He gives him a glory.

It is told that in the congregation in Edinburgh to which George Matheson came there was an old woman who lived in a cellar in filthy conditions. After some months of Matheson's ministry, communion time came round. When the elder called at this old woman's cellar with the cards, he found that she had gone. He tracked her down. He found her in an attic room. She was very poor and there were no luxuries, but the attic was as light and airy and clean as the cellar had been dark and dismal and dirty. "I see you've changed your house," he said to her. "Ay," she said, "I have. You canna hear George Matheson preach and live in a cellar." The Christian message had rekindled the ideal.

As the old hymn has it:

"Deep in the human heart, crushed by the tempter,

Feelings lie buried that grace can restore."

The grace of Jesus Christ rekindles the ideals which repeated failing to sin has extinguished. And by that very rekindling, life is set climbing again.

(iii) Greater than anything else, Jesus Christ revives and restores the lost will. We saw that the deadly thing about sin was that it slowly but surely destroyed a man's will and that the indulgence which had begun as a pleasure became a necessity. Jesus recreates the will.

That in fact is always what love does. The effect of a great love is always a cleansing thing. When a person really and truly falls in love, his love compels him to goodness. He loves the loved one so much that the love of his sins is broken.

That is what Christ does for us. When we love him, that love recreates and restores our will towards goodness. As the hymn has it:

"He breaks the power of cancelled sin,

He sets the prisoner free."

The Work And The Works Of Grace ( Ephesians 2:4-10 Continued)

Paul closes this passage with a great exposition of that paradox which always lies at the heart of his view of the gospel. That paradox has two arms.

(i) Paul insists that it is by grace that we are saved. We have not earned salvation nor could we have earned it. It is the gift of God and our part is simply to accept it. Paul's point of view is undeniably true; and for two reasons.

(a) God is perfection; and, therefore, only perfection is good enough for him. Man by his very nature cannot bring perfection to God; and so, if ever man is to win his way to God, it must always be God who gives and man who takes.

(b) God is love; sin is therefore a crime, not against law, but against love. Now it is possible to make atonement for a broken law, but it is impossible to make atonement for a broken heart; and sin is not so much breaking God's law as it is breaking God's heart. Let us take a crude and imperfect analogy. Suppose a motorist by careless driving kills a child. He is arrested, tried, found guilty, sentenced to a term of imprisonment and/or to a fine. After he has paid the fine and served the imprisonment, as far as the law is concerned, the whole matter is over. But it is very different in relation to the mother whose child he killed. He can never put things right with her by serving a term of imprisonment and paying a fine. The only thing which can restore his relationship to her is an act of free forgiveness on her part. That is the way we are to God. It is not God's laws against which we have sinned; it is against his heart. And therefore only an act of free forgiveness of the grace of God can put us back into the right relationship with him.

(ii) That is to say that works have nothing to do with earning salvation. It is neither right nor possible to leave the teaching of Paul here--and yet that is where it is so often left. Paul goes on to say that we are recreated by God for good works. Here is the Pauline paradox. All the good works in the world cannot put us right with God; but there is something radically wrong with the Christianity which does not issue in good works.

There is nothing mysterious about this. It is simply an inevitable law of love. If someone fine loves us, we know that we do not and cannot deserve that love. At the same time we know with utter conviction that we must spend all life in trying to be worthy of it.

That is our relationship to God. Good works can never earn salvation; but there is something radically wrong if salvation does not produce good works. It is not that our good works put God in our debt; rather that God's love lays on us the obligation to try throughout all life to be worthy of it.

We know what God wants us to do; God has prepared long beforehand the kind of life He wants us to live, and has told us about it in his book and through his son. We cannot earn God's love; but we can and must show how grateful we are for it, by seeking with our whole hearts to live the kind of life which will bring joy to God's heart.

B.C. AND A.D. ( Ephesians 2:11-22 )

2:11-22 So then remember, that once, as far as human descent goes, you were Gentiles; you were called the uncircumcision by those who laid claim to that circumcision which is a physical thing, and a thing produced by men's hands. Remember that at that time you had no hope of a Messiah; you were aliens from the society of Israel, and strangers from the covenants on which the promises were based; you had no hope; you were in the world without God. But, as things now are. because of what Christ Jesus has done, you who were once far off have been brought near. at the price of the blood of Christ. For it is he who is our peace; it is he who made both Jew and Gentile into one, and who broke down the middle wall of the barrier between, and destroyed the enmity by coming in the flesh, and wiped out the law of commandments with all its decrees. This he did that in himself he might make the two into one new man, by making peace between them, and that he might reconcile both to God in one body through the Cross, after he had slain the enmity between them by what he did. So he came and preached peace to you who were afar off, and peace to them who were near, because, through him, we both have the right of entry into the presence of the Father, for we come in the one Spirit. So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners resident in a land that is not their own, but you are fellow citizens with God's consecrated people and members of the family of God. It is on the foundation of the prophets and the apostles that you have been built up; and the corner stone is Christ himself. All the building that is going on is being fitted together in him, and it will go on growing until it becomes a holy temple in the Lord, a temple into which you too are built as part, that you may become the dwelling place of God, through the work of the Spirit.

Before Christ Came ( Ephesians 2:11-12)

2:11-12 So then remember, that once, as far as human descent goes, you were Gentiles; you were called the uncircumcision by those who laid claim to that circumcision which is a physical thing, and a thing produced by men's hands. Remember that at that time you had no hope of a Messiah; you were aliens from the society of Israel, and strangers from the covenants on which the promises were based, you had no hope: you were in the world without God.

Paul speaks of the condition of the Gentiles before Christ came. Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, but he never forgot the unique place of the Jews in the design and the revelation of God. Here he is drawing the contrast between the life of the Gentile and of the Jew.

(i) The Gentiles were called the uncircumcision by those who laid claim to that circumcision which is a physical and man-made thing. This was the first of the great divisions. The Jew had an immense contempt for the Gentile. They said that the Gentiles were created by God to be fuel for the fires of Hell; that God loved only Israel of all the nations that he had made; that the best of the serpents crushed, the best of the Gentiles killed. It was not even lawful to render help to a Gentile woman in childbirth, for that would be to bring another Gentile into the world. The barrier between Jew and Gentile was absolute. If a Jew married a Gentile, the funeral of that Jew was carried out. Such contact with a Gentile was the equivalent of death; even to go into a Gentile house rendered a Jew unclean. Before Christ the barriers were up; after Christ the barriers were down.

(ii) The Gentiles had no hope of a Messiah. The King James Version has it that they were without Christ. That is a perfectly possible translation; but the word Christos ( G5547) is not primarily a proper name although it has become one. It is an adjective meaning the anointed one. Kings on their coronation were anointed; and thus Christos ( G5547) , the literal Greek translation of the Hebrew Messiah ( H4886) , came to mean the Anointed One of God, the expected King whom God would send into the world to vindicate his own and to bring in the golden age. Even in their bitterest days the Jews never doubted that that Messiah would come. But the Gentiles had no such hope.

See the result of that difference. For the Jew history was always going somewhere; no matter what the present was like, the future was glorious; the Jewish view of history was essentially optimistic. On the other hand, for the Gentile history was going nowhere. To the Stoics history was cyclic. They believed that it went on for three thousand years; then came a conflagration in which the whole universe was consumed in flames; then the whole process began all over again, and the same events and the same people exactly repeated themselves. To the Gentile history was a progress to nowhere; to the Jew history was a march to God. To the Gentile life was not worth living; to the Jew it was the way to greater life. With the coming of Christ the Gentile entered into that new view of history in which a man is always on the way to God.

Hopeless And Helpless ( Ephesians 2:11-12 Continued)

(iii) The Gentiles were aliens from the society of Israel. What does that mean) The name for the people of Israel was ho hagios laos ( G2992) , the holy people. We have seen that the basic meaning of hagios ( G40) is different. In what sense were the people of Israel different from other peoples? In the sense that their only king was God. Other nations might be governed by democracy or aristocracy; Israel was a theocracy. Their governor was God. After his triumphs, the people came to Gideon and offered him the throne of Israel. Gideon's answer was: "I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord shall rule over you" ( Judges 8:23). When the Psalmist sang: "I will extol thee, my God and king" ( Psalms 145:1) he meant it literally.

To be an Israelite was to be a member of the society of God; it was to have a citizenship which was divine. Clearly life was going to be completely different for any nation which had a consciousness of destiny like that. It is told that when Pericles, the greatest of the Athenians, was walking forward to address the Athenian assembly, he used to say to himself: "Pericles, remember that you are an Athenian and that you talk to Athenians." For the Jew It was possible to say: "Remember that you are a citizen of God, and that you speak to the people of God." There is no consciousness of greatness in all the world like that.

(iv) The Gentiles were strangers from the covenants on which the promises were based. What does that mean? Israel was supremely the covenant people. What does that mean? The Jews believed that God had approached their nation with a special offer. "I will take you for my people, and I will be your God" ( Exodus 6:7). This covenant relationship involved not only privilege, but also obligation. It involved the keeping of the law. Exodus 24:1-8 gives us a dramatic picture of how the Jewish people accepted the covenant and its conditions--"All the words which the Lord has spoken we will do" ( Exodus 24:3; Exodus 24:7).

If God's design had ever to be worked out, it must be worked out through a nation. God's choice of Israel was not favouritism, for it was choice not for special honour but for special responsibility. But it gave to the Jews the unique consciousness of being the people of God. Paul could not forget, because it was a fact of history, that the Jews were uniquely the instrument in God's hand.

(v) The Gentiles were without hope and without God. People often speak of the Greeks as being the sunniest people in history; but there was such a thing as the Greek melancholy. At the back of things there was a kind of essential despair.

Even as far back as Homer that is so. In the Iliad (6: 146-149) Glaucus and Diomede meet in single combat. Before they close in fight, Diomede wishes to know the lineage of Glaucus, and Glaucus replies: "Why enquirest thou of my generation? Even as are the generations of leaves such are those likewise of men; the leaves that be the wind scattereth upon the earth, and the forest buddeth and putteth forth more again, when the season of spring is at hand, so of the generations of men one putteth forth and another ceaseth." The Greek could say:

"We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,

And wither and perish"

But he could not triumphantly add:

"But nought changeth Thee."

Theognis could write:

"I rejoice and disport me on my youth; long enough beneath the

earth shall I lie, bereft of life, voiceless as a stone, and shall

leave the sunlight which I loved; good man though I am, then

shall I see nothing more."

"Rejoice, O my soul, in thy youth; soon shall other men be in life,

and I shall be black earth in death."

"No mortal is happy of all on whom the sun looks down."

In the Homeric Hymns the assembly of Olympus is charmed by the Muses who sing "of the deathless gifts of the gods and the sorrows of men, even all that they endure by the will of the immortals, living heedless and helpless, nor can they find a cure for death, nor a defence against old age."

In Sophocles we find some of the loveliest and the saddest lines in all history.

"Youth's beauty fades, and manhood's glory fades.

Faith dies and unfaith blossoms as a flower;

Nor ever wilt thou find upon the open streets of men.

Or secret places of the heart's own love,

One wind blows true for ever."

It was true that the Gentile was without hope because he was without God. Israel had always had the radiant hope in God which burned clearly and inextinguishably even in her darkest and most terrible days; but in his heart the Gentile knew only despair, before Christ came to give him hope.

The End Of Barriers ( Ephesians 2:13-18)

2:13-18 But as things now are, because of what Christ Jesus has done, you who were once far off have been brought near, at the price of the blood of Christ. For it is he who is our peace; it is he who made both Jew and Gentile into one, and who broke down the middle wall of the barrier between, and destroyed the enmity by coming in the flesh, and wiped out the law of commandments with all its decrees. This he did that in himself he might make the two into one new man, by making peace between them, and that he might reconcile both to God in one body through the Cross, after he had slain the enmity by what he did. So he came and preached peace to you who were afar off, and peace to them who were near, because, through him, we both have the right of entry into the presence of the Father, for we come in the one Spirit.

We have already seen how the Jew hated and despised the Gentile. Now Paul uses two pictures, which would be specially vivid to a Jew, to show how that hatred is killed and a new unity has come.

He says that those who were far off have been brought near. Isaiah had heard God say: "Peace, peace to the far, and to the near" ( Isaiah 57:19). When the Rabbis spoke about accepting a convert into Judaism, they said that he had been brought near. For instance, the Jewish Rabbinic writers tell how a Gentile woman came to Rabbi Eliezer. She confessed that she was a sinner and asked to be admitted to the Jewish faith. "Rabbi," she said, "bring me near." The Rabbi refused. The door was shut in her face; but now the door was open. Those who had been far from God were brought near, and the door was shut to no one.

Paul uses an even more vivid picture. He says that the middle wall of the barrier between has been torn down.

This is a picture from the Temple. The Temple consisted of a series of courts, each one a little higher than the one that went before, with the Temple itself in the inmost of the courts. First there was the Court of the Gentiles; then the Court of the Women; then the Court of the Israelites; then the Court of the Priests; and finally the Holy Place itself.

Only into the first of them could a Gentile come. Between it and the Court of the Women there was a wall, or rather a kind of screen of marble, beautifully wrought, and let into it at intervals were tablets which announced that if a Gentile proceeded any farther he was liable to instant death. Josephus, in his description of the Temple, says: "When you went through these first cloisters unto the second court of the Temple, there was a partition made of stone all round, whose height was three cubits. Its construction was very elegant; upon it stood pillars at equal distances from one another, declaring the law of purity, some in Greek and some in Roman letters that no foreigner should go within the sanctuary" (The Wars of the Jews, 5, 5, 2). In another description he says of the second court of the Temple: "This was encompassed by a stone wall for a partition, with an inscription which forbade any foreigner to go in under pain of death" (The Antiquities of the Jews, 15, 11, 5). In 1871 one of these prohibiting tablets was actually discovered, and the inscription on it reads: "Let no one of any other nation come within the fence and barrier around the Holy Place. Whosoever will be taken doing so will himself be responsible for the fact that his death will ensue."

Paul well knew that barrier, for his arrest at Jerusalem, which led to his final imprisonment and death, was due to the fact that he had been wrongly accused of bringing Trophimus, an Ephesian Gentile, into the Temple beyond the barrier ( Acts 21:28-29). So then the intervening wall with its barrier shut the Gentile out from the presence of God.

The Exclusiveness Of Christless Human Nature ( Ephesians 2:13-18 Continued)

It is not to be thought that the Jews were the only people who put up the barriers and shut people out. The ancient world was full of barriers. There was a time, more than four hundred years before this, when Greece was threatened with invasion by the Persians. It was the golden age of the city state. Greece was made up of famous cities--Athens, Thebes, Corinth and the rest and it very nearly encountered disaster because the cities refused to cooperate to meet the common threat. "The danger lay," T. R. Glover wrote, "in every generation, in the same fact of single cities, furious for independence at all costs."

Cicero could write much later: "As the Greeks say, all men are divided into two classes--Greeks and barbarians." The Greek called any man a barbarian who could not speak Greek; and they despised him and put up the barriers against him. When Aristotle is discussing bestiality, he says: "It is found most frequently among barbarians," and by barbarians he simply meant non-Greeks. He talks of "the remote tribes of barbarians belonging to the bestial class." The most vital form of Greek religion was the Mystery Religions, and from many of them the barbarian was excluded. Livy writes: "The Greeks wage a truceless war against people of other races, against barbarians." Plato said that the barbarians are "our enemies by nature."

This problem of the barriers is by no means confined to the ancient world. Rita Snowden quotes two very relevant sayings. Father Taylor of Boston used to say: "There is just enough room in the world for all the people in it, but there is no room for the fences which separate them." Sir Philip Gibbs in The Cross of Peace wrote: "The problem of fences has grown to be one of the most acute that the world must face. Today there are all sorts of zig-zag and criss-crossing separating fences running through the races and people of the world. Modern progress has made the world a neighbourhood: God has given us the task of making it a brotherhood. In these days of dividing walls of race and class and creed we must shake the earth anew with the message of the all-inclusive Christ, in whom there is neither bond nor free, Jew nor Greek, Scythian nor barbarian, but all are one."

The ancient world had its barriers. So, too, has our modern world. In any Christless society there can be nothing but middle walls of partition.

The Unity In Christ ( Ephesians 2:13-18 Continued)

So Paul goes on to say that in Christ these barriers are down. How did Christ destroy them?

(i) Paul says of Jesus, "He is our peace." What did he mean by that? Let us use a human analogy. Suppose two people have a difference and go to law about it; and the experts in the law draw up a document, which states the rights of the case, and ask the two conflicting parties to come together on the basis of that document. All the chances are that the breach will remain unhealed, for peace is seldom made on the basis of a legal document. But suppose that someone whom both of these conflicting parties love comes and talks to them, there is every chance that peace will be made. When two parties are at variance, the surest way to bring them together is through someone whom they both love.

That is what Christ does. He is our peace. It is in a common love of him that people come to love each other. That peace is won at the price of his blood, for the great awakener of love is the Cross. The sight of that Cross awakens in the hearts of men of all nations love for Christ, and only when they all love Christ will they love each other. It is not in treaties and leagues to produce peace. There can be peace only in Jesus Christ.

(ii) Paul says of Jesus that he wiped out the law of the commandments with all its decrees. What does that mean? The Jews believed that only by keeping the Jewish law was a man good and able to attain to the friendship and fellowship of God. That law had been worked out into thousands and thousands of commandments and decrees. Hands had to be washed in a certain way; dishes had to be cleaned in a certain way; there was page after page about what could and could not be done on the Sabbath day; this and that and the next sacrifice had to be offered in connection with this and that and the next occasion in life, The only people who fully kept the Jewish law were the Pharisees and there were only six thousand of them. A religion based on all kinds of rules and regulations, about sacred rituals and sacrifices and days, can never be a universal religion. But, as Paul said elsewhere, "Christ is the end of the law" ( Romans 10:4). Jesus ended legalism as a principle of religion.

In its place he put love to God and love to men. Jesus came to tell men that they cannot earn God's approbation by a keeping of the ceremonial law but must accept the forgiveness and fellowship which God in mercy freely offers them. A religion based on love can at once be a universal religion.

Rita Snowden tells a story of the war. In France some soldiers with their sergeant brought the body of a dead comrade to a French cemetery to have him buried. The priest told them gently that he was bound to ask if their comrade had been a baptized adherent of the Roman Catholic Church. They said that they did not know. The priest said that he was very sorry but in that case he could not permit burial in his churchyard. So the soldiers took their comrade sadly and buried him just outside the fence. The next day they came back to see that the grave was all right and to their astonishment could not find it. Search as they might they could find no trace of the freshly dug soil. As they were about to leave in bewilderment the priest came up. He told them that his heart had been troubled because of his refusal to allow their dead comrade to be buried in the churchyard; so, early in the morning, he had risen from his bed and with his own hands had moved the fence to include the body of the soldier who had died for France.

That is what love can do. The rules and the regulations put up the fence; but love moved it. Jesus removed the fences between man and man because he abolished all religion founded on rules and regulations and brought to men a religion whose foundation is love.

The Gifts Of The Unity Of Christ ( Ephesians 2:13-18 Continued)

Paul goes on to tell of the priceless gifts which come with the new unity in Christ.

(i) He made both Jew and Gentile into one new man.

In Greek there are two words for new. There is neos ( G3501) which is new simply in point of time; a thing which is neos ( G3501) has come into existence recently, but there may well have been thousands of the same thing in existence before. A pencil produced in the factory this week is neos ( G3501) , but there already exist millions exactly like it. There is kainos ( G2537) which means new in point of quality. A thing which is kainos ( G2537) is new in the sense that it brings into the world a new quality of thing which did not exist before.

The word that Paul uses here is, kainos ( G2537) ; he says that Jesus brings together Jew and Gentile and from them both produces one new kind of person. This is very interesting and very significant; it is not that Jesus makes all the Jews into Gentiles, or all the Gentiles into Jews; he produces a new kind of person out of both, although they remain Gentiles and Jews. Chrysostom, famous preacher of the early Church, says that it is as if one should melt down a statue of silver and a statue of lead, and the two should come out gold.

The unity which Jesus achieves is not achieved by blotting out all racial characteristics; it is achieved by making all men of all nations into Christians. It may well be that we have something to learn here. The tendency has always been when we send missionaries abroad to produce people who wear English clothes and speak the English language. There are indeed some missionary churches who would have all their congregations worship with the one liturgy used in the churches at home. It is not Jesus' purpose, however, that we should turn all men into one nation, but that there should be Christian Indians and Christian Africans whose unity lies in their Christianity. The oneness in Christ is in Christ and not in any external change.

(ii) He reconciled both to God. The word Paul uses (apokatallassein, G604) is the word used of bringing together friends who have been estranged. The work of Jesus is to show all men that God is their friend and that, therefore, they must be friends with each other. Reconciliation with God involves and necessitates reconciliation with man.

(iii) Through Jesus both Jew and Gentile have the right of access to God. The word Paul uses for access is prosagoge ( G4318) and it is a word of many pictures. It is the word used of bringing a sacrifice to God; it is the word used of bringing men into the presence of God that they may be consecrated to his service; it is the word used for introducing a speaker or an ambassador into a national assembly; and above all it is the word used for introducing a person into the presence of a king. There was in fact at the Persian royal court an official called the prosagogeus whose function was to introduce people who desired an audience with the king. It is a priceless boon to have the right to go to some lovely and wise and saintly person at any time; to have the right to break in upon him, to take our troubles, our problems, our loneliness, our sorrow to him. That is exactly the right that Jesus gives us in regard to God.

The unity in Christ produces Christians whose Christianity transcends all their local and racial difference; it produces men who are friends with each other because they are friends with God; it produces men who are one because they meet in the presence of God to whom they all have access.

The Family And The Dwelling-place Of God ( Ephesians 2:19-22)

2:19-22 So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners resident in a land that is not their own, but you are fellow citizens with God's consecrated people and members of the family of God. It is on the foundation of the prophets and apostles that you have been built up; and the corner stone is Christ himself. All the building that is going on is being fitted together in him, and it will go on growing until it becomes a holy temple in the Lord, a temple into which you too are built as part, that you may become the dwelling-place of God, through the work of the Spirit.

Paul uses two illuminating pictures. He says that the Gentiles are no longer foreigners but full members of the family of God.

Paul uses the word xenos ( G3581) for foreigner. In every Greek city there were xenoi ( G3581) and their life was not easy. One wrote home: "It is better for you to be in your own homes, whatever they may be like, than to be in a strange land." The foreigner was always regarded with suspicion and dislike. Paul uses the word paroikos ( G3941) for sojourner. The paroikos ( G3941) was one step further on. He was a resident alien, a man who had taken up residence in a place but who had never become a naturalized citizen; he paid a tax for the privilege of existing in a land which was not his own. Both the xenos ( G3581) and the paroikos ( G3941) were always on the fringe.

So Paul says to the Gentiles: "You are no longer among God's people on sufferance. You are full members of the family of God." We may put this very simply; it is through Jesus that we are at home with God.

A. B. Davidson tells how he was in lodgings in a strange city. He was lonely. He used to walk the streets at evening time. Sometimes through an uncurtained window he would see a family sitting round the table or the fire in happy fellowship; then the curtain would be drawn and he would feel shut out, and lonely in the dark.

That is what cannot happen in the family of God. And that is what should never happen in a church. Through Jesus there is a place for all men in the family of God. Men may put up their barriers; churches may keep their Communion tables for their own members. God never does; it is the tragedy of the Church that it is so often more exclusive than God.

The second picture Paul uses is that of a building. He thinks of every church as the part of a great building and of every Christian as a stone built into the Church. Of the whole Church the corner stone is Christ; and the corner stone is what holds everything together.

Paul thinks of this building going on and on, with each part of the building being fitted into Christ. Think of a great cathedral. Down among the foundations there may be a Saxon crypt; on some of the doorways or the windows there may be a Norman arch; one part may be Early English and another Decorated and another Gothic; some may have been added in our own day. There are all kinds of architecture; but the building is a unity because through it all it has been used for the worship of God and for meeting with Jesus Christ.

That is what the Church should be like. Its unity comes not from organization, or ritual, or liturgy; it comes from Christ. Ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia, Where Christ is, there is the Church. The Church will realize her unity only when she realizes that she does not exist to propagate the point of view of any body of men, but to provide a home where the Spirit of Christ can dwell and where all men who love Christ can meet in that Spirit.

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

Gann's Commentary on the Bible

Ephesians 2:1

I. What We Were - v. 1-3 (Dead to God)

II. What We Are - v. 4-7 (Alive with Christ)

III. Thanks Be to God For This Change - v.8-10

2:1–10 Paul’s prayer (Eph 1:15–23) refers to Gentiles (non-Jews) becoming part of God’s family. In this chapter, Paul discusses how that happens: Christ’s victory over evil powers makes reconciliation with God possible. This discussion has two parts: vv. 1–10 and 2:11–22. In this first part, Paul writes about humanity’s reconciliation with God. Paul begins by reminding his readers that they lived in alienation from God (vv. 1–3). He then describes the blessings that believers receive as a result of being reconciled to God through Christ (vv. 4–10). - FSB

2:1-10 Saved By Grace

And you -- God is referring to the non-Jews reading the letter.

dead -- Refers to being separated from God and under the rule of the evil one (see v. 2 and note). Paul’s use of the metaphor of death is significant, as it allows for no middle ground; a person is either dead or alive. - FSB

who were dead -- Another demonstration of God’s power illustrated (Ephesians 1:19) is illustrated in the resurrection of the Ephesians from the dead! They were dead in sins, but now alive in Christ.

    Paul seems to allow no middle ground, a person is either dead or alive.

trespasses and sins -- The Greek words used here, paraptōma and hamartia, describe the evil that controls and characterizes human life apart from God. They are both the cause of death and the evidence of death.

trespasses and sins --. Caused spiritual death. Isaiah 59:1-2. Death is a separation, physical death is a separation of the spirit from the body, and spiritual death is the separation of the spirit from God. James 2:26 Verse 2 begins a description of Spiritual death.

This is a sobering reminder of the total sinfulness and lostness from which believers have been redeemed.

in -- indicates the realm or sphere in which lost sinners exist. They are dead because of sinful acts that they themselves have committed (cf. Matthew 12:35; Matthew 15:18-19), and not because of sins of other (Ezekiel 18:20).

In the NIV vs. 1-7, three additional verbs not in the Greek.

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

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 Ephesians 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,

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, מתים, "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, מת, "a dead man".''

And once more l

"whoever is without wisdom, lo, he is כמת, "as a dead man";''

Ephesians 2:5- :. 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.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;   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:   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.

      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, Ephesians 2:2; Ephesians 2:2. In the Ephesians 2:1 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 Matthew 12:24; Matthew 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, Ephesians 2:3; Ephesians 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, 2 Corinthians 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 Ephesians 2:1-3, which we shall find him pursuing again in some following ones.

Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible

'Spiritual Resurrection' and 'Life from the Dead'

Spiritual Resurrection

A Sermon

Delivered on Sabbath Morning, April 12, 1857, by the REV. C. H. Spurgeon at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

"And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." Ephesians 2:1 .

IT MIGHT NATURALLY be expected that I should have selected the topic of the resurrection on what is usually called the Easter Sabbath. I shall not do so; for although I have read portions which refer to that glorious subject, I have had pressed on my mind a subject which is not the resurrection of Christ, but which is in some measure connected with it the resurrection of lost and ruined men by the Spirit of God in this life. 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 to this place, will 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. Now, this morning, I trust I shall not be tedious; I shall endeavour to make the subject as interesting as possible, and also endeavour to be brief. The general doctrine of this morning is, that every man that is born into the world is dead spiritually, and that spiritual life must be given by the Holy Spirit, and can be obtained from no other source. That general doctrine, I shall illustrate in rather a singular way. You remember that our Saviour raised three dead persons; I do not find that during his lifetime he caused more than three resurrections. The first was the young maiden, the daughter of Jairus , who, when she lay on her bed dead, rose up to life at the single utterance of Christ, " Talitha cumi !" The second was the case of the widow's son , who was on his bier, about to be carried to his tomb; and Jesus raised him up to life by saying, "Young man, I say unto thee, arise." The third, and most memorable case, was that of Lazarus , who was not on his bed, nor on his bier, but in his tomb, ay, and corrupt too; but notwithstanding that, the Lord Jesus Christ, by the voice of his omnipotence, crying, "Lazarus, come forth," brought him out of the tomb. I. I shall begin by noticing, then, first of all, THE CONDITION OF MEN BY NATURE. Men by nature are all dead. There is Jairus's daughter; she lies on her bed; she seems as if she were alive; her mother has scarce ceased to kiss her brow, her hand is still in her father's loving grasp, and he can scarcely think that she is dead; but dead she is, as thoroughly dead as she ever can be. Next comes the case of the young man brought out of his grave; he is more than dead, he has begun to be corrupt, the signs of decay are upon his face, and they are carrying him to his tomb; yet though there are more manifestations of death about him, he is no more dead than the other. He is just as dead; they are both dead, and death really knows of no degrees. The third case goes further still in the manifestation of death; for it is the case of which Martha, using strong words, said, "Lord, by this time he stinketh; for he hath been dead four days." And yet, mark you, the daughter of Jairus was as dead as Lazarus; though the manifestation of death was not so complete in her case. All were dead alike. I have in my congregation some blessed beings, fair to look upon; fair, I mean, in their character, as well as their outward appearance; they have about them everything that is good and lovely; but mark this, if they are unregenerate they are dead still. That girl, dead in the room, upon her bed, had little about her that could show her death. Not yet had the loving finger closed the eyelid; there seemed to be a light still lingering in her eye; like a lily just nipped off; she was as fair as life itself. The worm had not yet begun to gnaw her cheek, the flush had not yet faded from her face; she seemed well-night alive. And so it is with some I have here. Ye have all that heart could wish for, except the one thing needful; ye have all things save love to the Saviour. Ye are not yet united to him by a living faith. Ah! then, I grieve to say it, ye are dead! ye are dead! As much dead as the worst of men, although your death is not so apparent. Again, I have in my presence young men who have grown to riper years than that fair damsel who died in her childhood. You have much about you that is lovely, but you have just begun to indulge in evil habits; you have not yet become the desperate sinner; you have not yet become altogether noxious in the eyes of other men; you are but beginning to sin, you are like the young man carried out on his bier; you have not yet become the confirmed drunkard; you have not yet begun to curse and blaspheme God; you are still accepted in good society; you are not yet cast out; but you are dead, thoroughly dead, just as dead as the third and worst case. But I dare say I have some characters that are illustrations of that case too. There is Lazarus in his tomb, rotten and putrid; and so there are some men not more dead than others, but their death has become more apparent, their character has become abominable, their deeds cry out against them, they are put out of decent society, the stone is rolled to the mouth of their tomb, men feel that they cannot hold acquaintance with them, for they have so utterly abandoned every sense of right, that we say, "Put them out of sight, we cannot endure them!" And yet these putrid ones may live; these last are not more dead than the maiden upon her bed, though the death has more fully revealed itself in their corruption. Jesus Christ must quicken the one as well as the other, and bring them all to know and love his name. Note, too, that in the case of this maiden, whom we have introduced to you, the daughter of Jairus, she is yet caressed ; she has only been dead a moment or two, and the mother still presses her cheek with kisses. Oh! can she be dead? Do not the tears rain on her, as if they would sow the seeds of life in that dead earth again? earth that looks fertile enough to bring forth life with but one living tear? Ay, but those salt tears are tears of barrenness. She liveth not; but she is still caressed. Not so the young man; he is put on the bier; no man will touch him any more, or else he will be utterly defiled. And as for Lazarus, he is shut up with a stone. But this young maiden is still caressed; so it is with many of you; you are loved even by the living in Sion; God's own people love you; the minister has often prayed for you; you are admitted into the assemblies of the saints, you sit with them as God's people, you hear as they hear, and you sing as they sing. Alas! for you; alas! for you, that you should still be dead! Oh! it grieves me to the heart, to think that some of you are all that heart could wish, except that one thing; yet lacking that which is the only thing that can deliver you. You are caressed by us, received by the living in Sion into their company and acquaintance, approved of and accepted; alas! that you should yet be without life! Oh! in your case, if you are saved, you will have to join with even the worst in saying, "I have been quickened by divine grace, or else I had never lived." And will you notice, yet once more, that this young maiden's death was a death confined to her chamber . Not so with the young man; he was carried to the gate of the city, and much people saw him. Not so Lazarus; the Jews came to weep at his tomb. But this young woman's death is in her chamber. Ay, so it is with the young woman or the young man I mean to describe now. His sin is as yet a secret thing, kept to himself: as yet there has been no breaking forth of iniquity, but only the conception of it in the heart; just the embryo of lust, not as yet broken out into act. The young man has not yet drained the intoxicating cup, although he has had some whisperings of the sweetness of it; he has not yet run into the ways of wickedness, though he has had temptations thrust upon him; as yet he has kept his sin in his chamber, and most of it has been unseen. Alas! my brother, alas! my sister, that thou who in thine outward carriage art so good, should yet have sins in the chamber of thine heart, and death in the secresy of thy being, which is as true a death as that of the grossest sinner, though not so thoroughly manifested. Would to God that thou couldst say, "And he hath quickened me, for with all my loveliness, and all my excellence, I was by nature dead in trespasses and sins." Come, let me just press this matter home. I have some in my congregation that I look upon with fear. Oh! my dear friends, my much loved friends, how many there are among you, I repeat, that are all that the heart could wish, except that one thing that you love not my Master. Oh! ye young men who come up to the house of God, and who are outwardly so good; alas! for you, that you should lack the root of the matter. Oh! ye daughters of Sion, who are ever at the house of prayer, oh! that you should yet be without grace in your heart! Take heed, I beseech you, ye fairest, youngest, most upright, and most honest; when the dead are separated from the living, unless ye be regenerated, ye must go with the dead; though ye be never so fair and goodly, ye must be cast away, unless you live. And note, too, that this young man, though carried out to his grave, was not like the maiden; she was in the garments of life, but he was wrapped in the cerements of death . So many of you have begun to form habits that are evil; you know that already the screw of the devil is tightening on your finger. Once it was a screw you could slip off or on; you said you were master of your pleasures now your pleasures are master of you. Your habits are not now commendable, you know they are not; you stand convicted while I speak to you this morning; you know your ways are evil. Ah! young man, thou hast not yet gone so far as the open profligate and desperately profane, take heed, thou art dead! thou art dead! and unless the Spirit quicken thee, thou shalt be cast into the valley of Gehenna, to be the food of that worm which never dieth, but eateth souls throughout eternity. And ah! young man, I weep, I weep over thee; thou art not yet so far gone, that they have rolled the stone against thee; thou art not yet become obnoxious; thou art not yet the staggering drunkard, nor yet the blasphemous infidel; thou hast much that is ill about thee, but thou hast not gone all the lengths yet. Take heed; thou wilt go further still; there is no stopping in sin. When the worm is there, you cannot put your finger on it, and say, "Stop; eat no more." No, it will go on, to your utter ruin. May God save you now, ere you shall come to that consummation for which hell so sighs, and which heaven can alone avert. 3. Now we come to the third and last case LAZARUS DEAD AND BURIED. Ah! dear friends, I cannot take you to see Lazarus in his grave. Stand, oh stand away from him. Whither shall we flee to avoid the noxious odour of that reeking corpse? Ah, whither shall we flee? There is no beauty there; we dare not look upon it. There is not even the gloss of life left. Oh, hideous spectacle! I must not attempt to describe it; words would fail me, and you would be too much shocked. Nor dare I tell the character of some men present here. I should be ashamed to tell the things which some of you have done. This cheek might mantle with a blush to tell the deeds of darkness which some of the ungodly of this world habitually practise. Ah, the last stage of death, the last stage of corruption, oh, how hideous; but the last stage of sin, hideous far more! Some writers seem to have an aptitude for puddling in this mud, and digging up this miry clay; I confess that I have none. I cannot describe to you the lusts and vices of a fullgrown sinner. I cannot tell you what are the debaucheries, the degrading lusts, the devilish, the bestial sins into which wicked men will run, when spiritual death has had its perfect work in them, and sin has manifested itself in all its fearful wickedness. I may have some here. They are not Christians. They are not, like the young maiden, still fondled, nor even, like the young man, still kept in the funeral procession: no, they have gone so far that decent people avoid them. Their very wife, when they go into the house, rushes upstairs to be out of the way. They are scorned. Such an one is the harlot, from whom one's head is turned in the very street. Such an one is the openly profligate, to whom we give wide quarters, lest we touch him. He is a man that is far gone. The stone is rolled before him. No one calls him respectable. He dwelleth, perhaps, in some back slum of a dirty lane; he knoweth not where to go. Even as he stands in this place, he feels that if his next-door neighbour knew his guilt he would give him a wide berth, and stand far away from him; for he has come to the last stage; he has no marks of life; he is utterly rotten. And mark; as in the case of the maiden the sin was in the chamber, secret; in the next case it was in the open streets, public; but in this case it is secret again. It is in the tomb. For you will mark that men, when they are only half gone in wickedness, do it openly; but when they are fully gone their lust becomes so degrading that they are obliged to do it in secret. They are put into the grave, in order that all may be hidden. Their lust is one which can only be perpetrated at midnight; a deed which can only be done when shrouded by the astonished curtains of darkness. Have I any such here? I cannot tell that I have many; but still I have some. Ah! in being constantly visited by penitents I have sometimes blushed for this city of London. There are merchants whose names stand high and fair. Shall I tell it here? I know it on the best authority, and the truest, too. There are some who have houses large and tall, who on the exchange are reputable and honorable, and everyone admits them and receives them into their society; but ah! there are some of the merchants of London who practise lusts that are abominable. I have in my church and congregation and I dare to say what men dare to do I have in my congregation women whose ruin and destruction have been wrought by some of the most respected men in respectable society. Few would venture on so bold a statement as that; but if you boldly do the thing, I must speak of it. It is not for God's ambassador to wash his mouth beforehand; let him boldly reprove, as men do boldly sin. Ah! there are some that are a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty; some whose character is hideous beyond all hideousness. They have to be covered up in the tomb of secresy; for men would scout them from society, and hiss them from existence, if they knew all. And yet and now comes a blessed interposition yet this last case may be saved as well as the first, and as easily too. The rotten Lazarus may come out of his tomb, as well as the slumbering maiden from her bed. The last the most corrupt, the most desperately abominable, may yet be quickened; and he may join in exclaiming, "And I have been quickened, though I was dead in trespasses and sins." I trust you will understand what I wish to convey that the death is the same in all cases; but the manifestations of it is different; and that the life must come from God, and from God alone. Now note the next case. Christ did not do the same thing with the young man that he did with the daughter of Jairus. No; the first thing he did was, he put his hand, not on him, mark you, but on the bier ; "and they that bare it stood still." and after that, without touching the young man, he said in a louder voice, "Young man, I say unto thee, arise!" Note the difference: the young maiden's new life was given to her secretly. The young man's was given more publicly. It was done in the very street of the city. The maiden's life was given gently by a touch; but in the young man's case it must be done, not by the touching of him, but by the touching of the bier. Christ takes away from the young man his means of pleasure. He commands his companions, who by bad example are bearing him on his bier to his grave, to stop, and then there is a partial reformation for awhile, and after that there comes the strong out-spoken voice "Young man, I say unto thee, arise!" III. This is an interested subject: I wish I could dilate upon it, but my voice fails me; and therefore, permit me to go to the third point very briefly. THE AFTER-EXPERIENCE OF THESE THREE PEOPLE WAS DIFFERENT at least, you gather it from the commands of Christ. As soon as the maiden was alive, Christ said, "Give her meat;" as soon as the young man was alive "he delivered him to his mother;" as soon as Lazarus was alive, he said, "Loose him, and let him go." I think there is something in this. When young people are converted who have not yet acquired evil habits; when they are saved before they become obnoxious in the eyes of the world, the command is, " Give them meat ." Young people want instruction; they want building up in the faith; they generally lack knowledge; they have not the deep experience of the older man; they do not know so much about sin, nor even so much about salvation as the older man that has been a guilty sinner; they need to be fed. So that our business as ministers when the young lambs are brought in, is to remember the injunction, "Feed my lambs;" take care of them; give them plenty of meat. Young people, search after an instructive minister; seek after instructive books; search the Scriptures, and seek to be instructed: that is your principal business. "Give her meat." And then comes the case of Lazarus. " Loose him, and let him go ." I do not know how it is that the young man never was loosed. I have been looking through every book I have about the manners and customs of the East, and have not been able to get a clue to the difference between the young man and Lazarus. The young man, as soon as Christ spoke to him, "sat up and began to speak;" but Lazarus, in his grave-clothes, lying in the niche of the tomb, could do no more than just shuffle himself out from the hole that was cut in the wall, and then stand leaning against it. He could not speak; he was bound about in a napkin. Why was it not so with the young man? I am inclined to think that the difference lay in the difference of their wealth. The young man was the son of a widow. Very likely he was only wrapped up in a few common things, and not so tightly bound about as Lazarus. Lazarus was of a rich family; very likely they wrapped him up with more care. Whether it was so or not, I do not know. What I want to hint at is this: when a man is far gone into sin, Christ does this for him he breaks off his evil habits. Very likely the old sinner's experience will not be a feeding experience. It will not be the experience of walking with the saints. It will be as much as he can do to pull off his grave-clothes, to get rid of his old habits; perhaps to his death he will have to be rending off bit after bit of the cerements in which he has been wrapped. There is his drunkenness; oh, what a fight will he have with that! There is his lust; what a combat he will have with that, for many a month! There is his habit of swearing; how often will an oath come into his mouth, and he will have as hard work as he can to thrust it down again! There is his pleasure-seeking: he has given it up; but how often will his companions be after him, to get him to go with them. His life will be ever afterwards a loosing and letting go; for he will need it till he cometh up to be with God for ever and ever. And now but one thing I have to say to those who are quickened; and then adieu this morning, and may God bless you! My dear friends, you who are quickened, let me advise you to take care of the devil; he will be sure to be after you. Keep your mind always employed, and so you will escape him. Oh, be aware of his devices; seek to "keep the heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life." The Lord bless you, for Jesus' sake.

Life from the Dead

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A Sermon

(No. 2267)

Intended for Reading on Lord's-day, July 31st, 1892,

Delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

On Thursday Evening, March 13th, 1890.

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"And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." Ephesians 2:1 .

OUR TRANSLATORS, as you observe, have put in the words "hath he quickened", because Paul had thrown the sense a little farther on, and it was possible for the reader not to catch it. The have but anticipated the statement of the fourth and fifth verses: "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."

Here is the point. God has quickened us, who were dead in trespasses and sins, spiritually dead. We were full of vigour towards everything which was contrary to the law or the holiness of God, we walked according the course of this world; but as for anything spiritual, we were not only somewhat incapable, and somewhat weakened; but we were actually and absolutely dead. We had no sense with which to comprehend spiritual things. We had neither the eye that could see, nor the ear that could hear, nor the power that could feel.

We were dead, all of us; and yet we were not all like one another. Death may be universal over a certain number of bodies, and yet those bodies may look very different. The dead that lie on the battle-field, torn of dogs or kites, rotting, corrupting in the sun, what a horrible sight! The corpse looks like life still; yet is your beloved one in the coffin as dead as the mangled bodies on the battle-field. Corruption has not yet done its work, and tender care has guarded the body as yet from what will surely come to it; yet is there death, sure, complete death, in the one case as well as in the other.

So we have many who are lovely, amiable, morally admirable, like him whom the Saviour looked upon and loved; yet they are dead for all that. We have others who are drunken, profane, unchaste; they are dead, not more dead than the others; but their death has left its terrible traces more plainly visible. Sin brings forth death, and death brings forth corruption. Whether we were corrupt or not, is not a question that I need to raise here; let everyone judge concerning himself. But dead we were, most certainly. Even though trained by godly parents, though well instructed in the gospel scheme, though saturated with the piety that surrounded us, we were dead, as dead as the harlot of the street, as dead as the thief in the jail.

Now, the text tells us that, though we were dead, yet Christ has come, and by his Spirit he has raised us out of the grave. This text brings us Easter tidings; it sings of resurrection; it sounds in our ear the trumpet of a new life, and introduces us into a world of joy and gladness. We were dead; but we are quickened by the Spirit of God. I cannot help stopping a minute to know whether it is so with you, my dear hearers, and praying that what I might have to say may act as a kind of sieve, separating between the really living and those who only think that they are alive, so that, if you have not been quickened, if you are only "a child of nature, finely dressed," but not spiritually alive, you may be made aware of it. If you have been quickened, even though your life be feeble, you may cry to the living God with the "Abba, Father," which never comes from any lip but that which has been touched and quickened by the Holy Spirit.

I. First, let us talk a little about OUR QUICKENING. You who have been quickened will understand what I say. To those who have not, I daresay it will seem as an idle tale.

Well, dear friends, if we have been quickened, we have been quickened from above. "You hath HE quickened." God himself has had dealings with us. He has raised us from the dead. He made us at the first; he has new-made us. He gave us life when we were born; but he has given us now a higher life, which could not be found anywhere else. He must always give it. No man ever made himself to live. No preacher, however earnest, can make one hearer to live. No parent, however prayerful, no teacher, however tearful, can make a child live unto God. "You hath HE quickened," is true of all who are quickened. It is a divine spark, a light from the great central Sun of light, the great Father of Lights. Is it so with us? Have we had a divine touch, a superhuman energy, a something which all the learning and all the wisdom and all the godliness of man could never work in us? Have we been quickened from above? If so, I daresay that we remember something of it. We cannot describe it; no man can describe his first birth; it remains a mystery. Neither can he describe his new birth; that is still a greater mystery, for it is a secret inward work of the Holy Ghost, of which we feel the effect, but we cannot tell how it is wrought.

I think that, usually, when the divine life comes, the first consciousness that we get of a quickening is a sense of pain. I have heard that when a man is nearly drowned, while he lies under the power of death, he feels little or nothing, perhaps has even pleasurable dreams; but when, in the process of restoring him, they have rubbed him till the blood begins to flow, and the life begins to revive a little, he is conscious of pricking and great pain. One of the tokens that life is coming back to him is, that he wakes up out of a pleasant sleep, and feels pain. Whether it be so or not with every person restored from drowning, I do not know; but I think that it is so with every person restored from drowning in the river of sin. When the life begins to come to him, he feels as he never felt before; sin that was pleasant becomes a horror to him. That which was easy to him becomes a bed of thorns. Thank God, dear hearer, if you have living pangs. It is an awful thing to have your conscience hardened, as in the very fires of hell, till it becomes like steel. To have consciousness is a great mercy, even if it be only painful consciousness, and if every movement of life within seems to harrow up your soul. This divine life usually begins with pain.

Then, everything surprises you. If a person had never lived before, and had come into life a full-grown man, everything would be as strange to him as it is to a little-child; and everything is strange to a new-born man in the spiritual realm into which he is born. He is startled a hundred times. Sin appears as sin; he cannot understand it. He had looked at sin before, but had never seen it to be sin. And Christ appears now so glorious to him; he had heard of Christ before, and had some apprehensions of him; but now he is surprised to find that the One who he said had no form nor comliness is, after all, altogether lovely. To the new-born soul everything is a surprise. He makes no end of blunders; he makes many miscalculations because everything is new to him. He that sitteth upon the throne saith, "Behold, I make all things new;" and the renewed man says, "My Lord, it is even so." One said to me, when joining the church, "Either I am a new creature, or else the world is altogether altered from what it was. There is a change somewhere;" and that change is from death to life, from darkness into God's marvellous light.

Now, as life comes thus with strange surprises, and mingled with pain, so, dear friends, it comes often with many questions. The child has a thousand things to ask; it has to learn everything. We little think of the experiments that children have to go through before they arrive even at the use of their eyes. They do not know that things are at a distance; they have to learn that fact by looking many times. So long as the object falls upon the retina. The child is not aware of whether it is distant or a near object till some time after. What you think that you and I knew from our birth, we did not so know; we had to learn it. And when a man is born into the kingdom of God, he has to learn everything; and consequently, if he is wise, he questions older and wiser believers about this and about that. I pray you that are instructed, and have become fathers, never laugh at babes in grace, if they ask you the most absurd questions. Encourage them to do so, let them tell you their difficulties. You, by God's grace are a man; this little one is but a new-born babe; hear what he has to say. You mothers, do this with your little children. You are interested, you are pleased, you are amused, with what they say. Thus ought instructed saints to deal with those who have been newly quickened. They come to us, and ask, "What is this? What is that? What is the other?" It is a time of asking, a time of enquiring. It is well, also, if it is a time of sitting at Jesus' feet, for there is no other place so safe to a new-born believer as the feet of Jesus. If he gets to the feet of anybody else, he is apt to get ill-instructed at a time when everything warps his judgment, when he is exceedingly impressionable, and not likely to forget the mistakes that he has made, if he has borrowed them from others. So you see what the divine life does when it comes into the soul. It comes to us with pain; it gives us many surprises; and it suggests a large number of questions.

We begin then to make a great many attempts at things which we never attempted before. The new-born child of God is just like the new-born child of man in some things; and after a time that child begins to walk. No, it does not; it begins to crawl; it does not walk at first. It creeps along, pleased to make any kind of progress; and when it gets up on its little feet, it moves from one chair to another, trembling at every step it takes, and presently, down it goes. But it gets up again, and so it learns to walk. Do you remember when the new life came into you? I do. I remember the first week of that new life, and how, on the second Sabbath, I went to the place where I had heard the gospel to my soul's salvation, thinking that I would attend there. But, during that week, I had made a great many experiments, and tumbled down a great many times, and the preacher took for his text, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" I thought, "Yes; I know all about that; that is my case." When the preacher said that Paul was not a Christian when he wrote those words, though I was only seven days old in divine things, I knew better than that, so I never went there any more. I knew that no man but a Christian ever could or would cry out against sin with that bitter wail; and that, if the grace of God was not with him, he would rest satisfied and contented; but that, if he felt that sin was a horrible thing, and he was a wretched man because of it, and must be delivered from it, then he surely must be a child of God, especially if he could add, "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

Beloved, we make many mistakes, and we shall continue to do so. At the same time, we learn by our experiments. You remember when you began to pray; would you like to have your first prayer printed? I believe that God liked it better than many of the collections. You might not like it so well; it would not look well in print. You remember when you first began to confess Christ to a friend. Oh, you did stutter and stammer over it! There were more tears than words; it was not a "dry" discourse; you wetted it well with tears of grief and anxiety. That was the new life putting forth powers with which it was not itself acquainted; and I believe that there are some of God's children who have powers that they will never find unless they try to use them. I should like some of you young men who do not pray at the prayer-meeting to make a start. And some of you older men, perhaps, have never preached yet; but you might if you tried; I wish you would. "I should break down," says one. I wish you would. A break-down sermon, that breaks the preacher down, might break the people down, too. There might be many advantages about that kind of discourse.

This, then, was the way in which the new life, spiritual life, came into us. We did not know what it was when it came; we had never felt like that before; we could not think that we really had passed from death to life; and yet, in looking back, we are persuaded that the throes within, the anguish of heart, the longing, and the pleading, and the wrestling, and the crying, would never have been in a dead heart, but were the sure marks that God had quickened us, and we had passed into newness of life.

II. Now, secondly, let us think of OUR PRESENT LIFE. "You hath he quickened." Well, then, we have a new life. What is the effect of this life upon us? I speak to you who are quickened by grace.

Well, first, we have become now sentient towards God. The unconverted man lives in God's world, sees God's works, hears God's Word, goes up to God's house on God's day, and yet he does not know that there is any God. Perhaps he believes that there is, because he was brought up to believe it; but he is not cognizant of God; God has not entered into him; he has not come into contact with God. Beloved brethren and sisters in Christ, I think that you and I can say, that to us the surest fact in all the world is that there is a God. No God? I live in him. Tell a fish in the sea there is no water. No God? Tell a man who is breathing that there is no air. No God? I dare not come downstairs without speaking to him. No God? I would not think of closing my eyes in sleep unless I had some sense of his love shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Ghost. "Oh!" says one, "I have lived fifty years, and I have never felt anything of God." Say that you had been dead fifty years; that is nearer to the mark. But if you had been quickened by the Holy Spirit fifty minutes, this would have been the first fact in the front rank of all fact, God is, and he is my Father, and I am his child. Now you become sentient to his frown, his smile, his threat, or his promise. You feel him; his presence is photographed upon your spirit; your very heart trembles with awe of him, and you say with Jacob, "Surely God is in this place." That is one result of spiritual life.

Now you have become also sympathetic with similar life in others. You have a wide range, for the life of God, his life in his new-born child, is the same life that is in every Christian. It is the same life in the new-born believer as in yonder bright spirits that stand before the throne of God. The life of Christ, the life of God, is infused into us in that moment when we are quickened from our death in sin. What a wonderful thing it is to have become sympathetic with God! What he desires, we desire. His glory is the first object of our being. He loves his Son, and we love his Son. We desire to see his kingdom come as he does, and we pray for his will to be done on earth, even as it is in heaven. We wish that death did not remain, the old nature hampering us; but, in perfect proportion as the new life is really in us, we now run parallel with God. The holiness which he delights in we aspire after. Not with equal footsteps, but with tottering gait, we follow in that selfsame path that God has marked out for himself. "My soul followeth hard after thee; thy right hand upholdeth me."

The new life that made us sympathetic with God, and holy angels, and holy men, and with everything that is from above, has also made us capable of great pleasure. Life is usually capable of pleasure, but the new life is capable of the highest conceivable pleasure. I am certain that no ungodly man has any conception of the joy which often fills the believer's spirit. If worldlings could only know the bliss of living near to God, and of basking in the light of his countenance, they would throw their wealth into the sea, and ten thousand times as much, if they might but get a glimpse of this joy that can never be bought, but which God gives to all who trust his dear Son. We are not always alike. Alas! We are very changeable; but when God is with us, when the days are spiritually bright and long, and we have come into the midsummer of our heavenly bliss, we would not change places with the angels, knowing that by-and-by we shall be nearer to the throne than they are; and, while they are God's honoured servants, yet they are not beloved sons as we are. Oh, the thrill of joy that has sometimes gone through our spirits! We could almost have died with delight at times when we have realized the glorious things that God has prepared for them that love him. This joy we never knew till we received the new life.

But I must add that we are also capable of acute pain to which we were strangers once. God has made our conscience quick as the apple of the eye; he has made our soul as sensitive as a raw wound, so that the very shadow of sin falling on the believer's heart will cause him great pain; and, if he does go into the actual sin, then, like David, he talks about his bones being broken, and it is not too strong a figure of the sorrow that comes upon the believing heart when sin has been committed, and God has been grieved. The heart itself then, is broken, and bleeds at ten thousand wounds. Yet this is one of the results of our possessing the new life; and I will say this, the sharpest pang of spiritual life is better than the highest joy of carnal life. When the believer is at his worst, he is better than the unbeliever at his best; his reasons for happiness are always transcendently above all the reasons for joy that worldlings can never know.

Now, dear friends, if we have received spiritual life, you see what a range of being we have, how we can rise up to the seventh heaven or sink down into the abyss. This new life makes us capable of walking with God; that is a grand thing. We speak of Enoch walking with God, and we look at the holiness of his life; but did anybody ever think of the majesty of his life? How does God walk? It needs a Milton to conceive of the walk of God; but he that hath the divine life walks with God; and sometimes he seems to step from Alp to Alp, from sea and ocean, accomplishing what, unaided, he would never even attempt. He that has the divine life is lifted up into the infinities; he gets to hear that which cannot be heard, and see that which cannot be seen, for "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit," when he has given us the new life.

One effect of this divine life is to put life into everything that we do. They tell me that "creeds are dead." Yes, yes! It is a pleasant thing to hear an honest confession; they are dead to dead men. I hold nothing as truth that I can put away on a shelf, and leave there. My creed is part of my being. I believe it to be true; and believing it to be true, I feel its living force upon my nature every day. When a man tells you that his creed is a dead thing, do not deny it for a minute; there is no doubt of the fact. He knows about himself better than you do. Oh, dear friends, let us never have a dead creed! That which you believe, you must believe up to the hilt; believe it livingly, believe it really; for that is not believed at all which is only believed in the letter, but is not felt in the power of it.

If you have been quickened by the Spirit of God, your prayers are living prayers. Oh, the many dead prayers that are heard at the bedside; so many good words rushed through at a canter! He that is alive unto God asks for what he wants, and believes that he shall have it, and he gets it. That is living prayer. Beware of dead prayers; they are a mockery to the Most High. I do not think that a living man can always pray by clockwork, at such a time and such a time. It would be something like the minister's sermon which he "got up" beforehand, and upon which he wrote in the margin "weep here," "here you must show great emotion." Of course that was all rubbish; it cannot be done to order. You cannot resolve to "groan at one o'clock, and weep at three o'clock." Life will not be bound like that, I love to have an appointed season for prayer, and woe unto the man who does not have his time for prayer! But, at the same time, our living prayer bursts out hours before the appointed time, or sometimes it will not come at the time. You have to wait till another season, and then your soul is like a hind let loose. Why, sometimes we can pray, and prevail, and come off conquerors; and at another time, we can only bow at the throne, and groan out, "Lord, help me; I cannot pray; the springs seem to be all sealed." That is the result of life. Living things change. There are some personages in St. Paul's Cathedral; I have not seen them lately, but I have seen them. When I lived in the country, I came up to look at the notabilities in St. Paul's Cathedral. I have heard that they have never had a headache in the last hundred years, and no rheumatic pains, nor have they been troubled with the gout, The reason is that they are cut in marble, and they are dead; but a living man feels the fog and the winds; he knows whether it is an east wind or a west wind that is blowing. Before he gets up in the morning, he begins to feel sometimes lively and sometimes ill; he does not understand himself. Sometimes he feels merry, and can sing hymns; at another time, he can do nothing else but sigh and cry, though he scarcely knows wherefore. Yes, life is a strange thing; and if you have the life of God in your soul, you will undergo many changes, and not always be what you want to be.

If we are alive unto God, every part of our worship should be living. What a deal of dead worship there is! If we go on with our services in regular routine, a large number of our friends find it difficult to keep awake. I fear that some people go to a place of worship because they get a better sleep there than anywhere else. That is not worship which consists in doing as Hodge did, when he said, "I like Sunday, for then I can go to church, and put my legs up, and think of nothing at all." That is all the worship a great many render to God, just getting to a place of worship, and there sitting still, and thinking of nothing at all. But if you are a living child of God, you cannot do that. If, sometimes, through the infirmity of the flesh, you fall into that state of slumber, you loathe yourselves for it, but you rouse yourself up, and say, "I must worship my God; I must sing, I must praise God. I must draw near to him in prayer."

III. I must come to my third point; for our time flies. Notice what OUR PRESENT POSITION IS, if God has quickened us.

Our present position is this, first, that we are raised from the dead. "He hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together." We cannot live where we used to live. We cannot wear what we used to wear. There is nobody here who would like to go and live in a grave. If you have been raised from the dead, after you had been buried in Norwood Cemetery, I would warrant you that you would not go there to-night to sleep. So the man, who has once been raised by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit, quits the dead; his old company does not suit him. If you had been raised from the dead, and had come out of your tomb, you would not go about London streets with your shroud on. You are a living man. How is it that I find some who say they are people of God; but yet are rather fond of wearing their grave-clothes? I mean, that they like the amusements of the world; they like to put on their shroud sometimes just for a treat. Oh, do not so! If God has made you to live, come away from the dead; come away from their habits, and manners and customs. Life sees no charm in death. The living child of God likes to get as far as ever he can away from the death that once held him bound. "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." That is the first part of our position, that we have come to live a separate life now, and have quitted the path we trod before.

Next to that, we are one with Christ. He hath "quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together." I told you just now that the life which the Holy Spirit gives us when we are born again, is the life of God. We are made partakers of the divine nature, or course, in a modified sense, but still in a true sense. The life everlasting, the life that can never die, is put into us then, even as Christ said, "The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." The believer's life is the life of Christ in the believer. "Because I live, ye shall live also." What a mystic union there is between the believer and his Lord! Realize that; believe in it; rejoice in it; triumph in it. Christ and you are one now, and you are made to live together with him. God grant you to know the joy of that condition!

Once more, we are told, "He hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." That is very wonderful. We have not only left the dead, and become joined to Christ, but we are made to sit in heaven with Christ. A man is where his head is, is he not? And every believer is where his Head is; and if we are members of Christ's body, we are in heaven. It is a very blessed experience to be able to walk on earth, and look up to heaven; but it is a higher experience to live in heaven, and look down on the earth; and this is what the believer may do. He may sit in the heavenlies; Christ is there as his Representative. The believer may take possession of what his Representative is holding on his behalf. Oh, to live in heaven, to dwell there, to let the heart be caught up from this poor life into the life that is above! This is where we should be, where we may be if we are quickened by the divine life.

One thing more, and I have done. We are in this position, that God is now working in us, through this divine life, to make us the most wonderful reflectors of his grace that he has yet formed. He has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, "that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." The ages to come will have for their wonder the quickened children of God. When God made the world, it was a wonder, and the angels came from afar to see his handiwork. But when Christ makes the new creation, they will say no more that God made the heaven and the earth, but they will say in higher strains, "He made these new-born men and women. He made for them, and in them, new heavens and a new earth."

Ah! Beloved, "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." God has given us a life that is more precious than the Koh-i-noor, a life that will outlast the sun and moon. When all things that are shall be like old ocean's foam, which dissolves into the wave that bears it, and is gone for ever; we shall live, and we shall live in Christ, and with Christ, glorified for ever. When the moon has become black as sackcloth of hair, the life that is within us shall be as bright as when God first gave it to us. Thou hast the dew of thy youth, O child of God; and thou shalt have yet more of it, and be like thy Lord, when he shall take thee away from every trace of death, and the corrupt atmosphere of this poor world, and thou shalt dwell with the living God in the land of the living, for ever and for ever!

The practical outcome of all this, that some of you do not know anything at all about it. If you do not, let the fact impress you. If there be a divine life to which you are a stranger, how long will you be a stranger to it? If there be a spiritual death, and you are dead, be startled; for within a little while God will say, "Bury my dead out of my sight." And what will happen to you when the word of God is, "Depart, depart, depart, depart," and unto the graveyard of souls, to the fire that never shall be quenched, you and the rest of the dead are taken away? "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living," and, unless we are made alive unto him, he cannot be our God either here or hereafter. The Lord impress this solemn truth on all your hearts by his own spirit; for Jesus Christ's sake! Amen.

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Ephesians 2:1-22

Verse 1. And you he hath quickened.

Is it so? Could the apostle say that to you, and to me?

1. Who were dead in trespasses and sins;

Look back to what you used to be, to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged: "You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins."

2. Wherein in time past ye walked

With a terrible activity of spiritual death;

3. 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:

He makes them to be his forge. There he blows his coals, there he fabricates his instruments. Do you not hear the noise of the infernal bellows when "the children of disobedience: swear, and use unclean language? Ah, such were some of us; but we are cleansed! The evil spirit has been driven out, and he no more works in us.

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.

You that now commune with God at the mercy-seat, you that are now his favoured children, and have received power to become the sons of God, you were once heirs of wrath: "By nature the children of wrath, even as others." Holy Scripture is not complimentary to unrenewed human nature. You may search it through and through to find a single flattering word to unregenerate man; but you will search in vain. This style of speech is left to those who scout divine inspiration. They draw their inspiration from another fount, from a desire to walk according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. They can se flattering speeches in addressing the ungodly; but the Holy Ghost never does.

4, 5. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins,

God loved us even when we were dead in sins. His love does not depend upon what we are; it flows from his own heart. It is not love of something good in us; it is love of us because of everything good in him. Here you see the greatness of his grace, in that "he loved us, even when we were dead in sins."

5. Hath quickened us together with Christ,

Ah! That accounts for everything: "together with Christ." When we get "together with Christ", then are we made alive, then are we saved. Are you. my dear hearers, "quickened together with Christ"?

5-7. (By grace ye are saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

See how Paul's language grows and swells and rises as he proceeds! Just now, we read of "God, who is rich in mercy"; now the apostle speaks of "the exceeding riches of his grace", exceeding expression, exceeding comprehension, exceeding even sin itself, though that is all but infinite. "The exceeding riches of his grace" are infinity itself; but they all come to us "through Christ Jesus." Paul will speak of nothing good except that which comes "through Christ Jesus." This is the one conduit-pipe through which the streams of living water flow to the dead in sin; God's grace comes to us "Through Christ Jesus", and through him alone.

8. For by grace are ye saved through faith;

We have this expression, "by grace are ye saved," twice over in this chapter. Paul knew that he needed to repeat himself, or people would forget what he taught. At bottom, all the wanderings from the faith at the present day amount to this, salvation by works instead of salvation by grace. The battle of the Reformation has to be fought over again. Men are justified by grace through faith in Christ Jesus. All the enmity of natural men is against that truth. They want to be saved by their own morality, and all sorts of things that they put instead of salvation by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

8, 9. And that not of yourselves: it is a gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.

"Oh!" said one to me just now, "the man who is saved by his own righteousness cannot do much in the line of praising." "No, my dear brother," I replied, "except he praises himself; and he can generally do that pretty well." Your self-made man usually worships his creator very earnestly; and your self-saved man glorifies him that saved him.

10. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus

Nothing without Christ Jesus, you see. The mark of the pierced hand is on everything: "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus."

10. Unto Good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

God has decreed that he will have a holy people. This is his purpose, his ordinance, to which he will always stand. He will make it good. He will make sinful people holy, and disobedient people obedient to the faith.

11. Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;

Remember what you were. You were not the chosen Israelites, you have not the covenant mark in your flesh.

12. That at that time ye were without Christ,

Which is the worst state of all, far worse than being without circumcision.

12. Being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,

Outsiders, rank outsiders, far away from any rights, or any participation in the rights of God's children.

12. And strangers from the covenants of promise,

Utter strangers to the covenants made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

12. Having no hope, and without God in the world:

It is an awful description, but a truthful description, of what we were.

13. But now

The apostle has turned over a new leaf in the book of our history: "but now." Oh, what a change from the past to the present! "But now"

13. In Christ Jesus

See how Paul keeps harping on that one string. Note how he links us with Christ Jesus. There is nothing for us without Christ and his cross.

13. Ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.

Paul can never have too much of Christ. It is Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ; like the harp of Anacreon. He wished to sing of Cadmus; but his harp resounded love alone; and so the harp of Paul resounds with Christ alone, Christ alone. He always comes back to that theme. It was said of one eminent commentator that he could not find Christ in the Scripture where he was; but it was said of Cocceius that he found Christ where he was not. I would rather find Christ where he is not, than not to find him where he is. There are plenty who err in that second direction nowadays.

14. For he is our peace,

Paul cannot do without Christ, you see. He will bring him in everywhere.

14. Who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;

There is no longer the division between Jews and Gentiles.

15. Having abolished in his flesh.

See, it is always Christ, his flesh, his blood, his life. There must always be something about him: "Having abolished in his flesh."

15, 16. The enmity, even the law of commandments containeth in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that he

I cannot help reminding you, that you must not overlook the fact that Paul will not go a hair's breadth away from Christ.

16-18. Might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.

There is the whole Trinity in that one verse, Christ, the Spirit, the Father. It needs the Trinity to make a Christian, and when you have got a Christian, it needs the Trinity to make a prayer. You cannot pray a single prayer aright without Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

19. Now therefore

Another of Paul's blessed "nows." It was "but now" a little while ago; now he has another "now." "Now therefore"

19. Ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God;

You are not only in the kingdom, but you are in the royal household, which is better still. You are princes of the blood imperial. You are peers of the court of heaven: "and the household of God."

20. And are built

You are not loose stones; you are built

20, 21 Upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom

You see, it is always that, in him, in Christ: "in whom"

21. All the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:

There is no church without Christ, no temple without him as its cornerstone, its priest, its glory.

22. In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

And all this hangs upon that first sentence, "You hath he quickened." Is it so, beloved? If you are spiritually dead, nothing here belongs to you; but if he hath quickened you, you may take every single sentence of the chapter, and say, "That is mine, and glory be the grace of God!"

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HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK" 463, 476, 461.

Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible

Exposition of Ephesians 2:1-22

Verse 1. And you he hath quickened.

Is it so? Could the apostle say that to you, and to me?

1. Who were dead in trespasses and sins;

Look back to what you used to be, to the hole of the pit whence ye were digged: "You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins."

2. Wherein in time past ye walked

With a terrible activity of spiritual death;

3. 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:

He makes them to be his forge. There he blows his coals, there he fabricates his instruments. Do you not hear the noise of the infernal bellows when "the children of disobedience: swear, and use unclean language? Ah, such were some of us; but we are cleansed! The evil spirit has been driven out, and he no more works in us.

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.

You that now commune with God at the mercy-seat, you that are now his favoured children, and have received power to become the sons of God, you were once heirs of wrath: "By nature the children of wrath, even as others." Holy Scripture is not complimentary to unrenewed human nature. You may search it through and through to find a single flattering word to unregenerate man; but you will search in vain. This style of speech is left to those who scout divine inspiration. They draw their inspiration from another fount, from a desire to walk according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. They can se flattering speeches in addressing the ungodly; but the Holy Ghost never does.

4, 5. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins,

God loved us even when we were dead in sins. His love does not depend upon what we are; it flows from his own heart. It is not love of something good in us; it is love of us because of everything good in him. Here you see the greatness of his grace, in that "he loved us, even when we were dead in sins."

5. Hath quickened us together with Christ,

Ah! That accounts for everything: "together with Christ." When we get "together with Christ", then are we made alive, then are we saved. Are you. my dear hearers, "quickened together with Christ"?

5-7. (By grace ye are saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

See how Paul's language grows and swells and rises as he proceeds! Just now, we read of "God, who is rich in mercy"; now the apostle speaks of "the exceeding riches of his grace", exceeding expression, exceeding comprehension, exceeding even sin itself, though that is all but infinite. "The exceeding riches of his grace" are infinity itself; but they all come to us "through Christ Jesus." Paul will speak of nothing good except that which comes "through Christ Jesus." This is the one conduit-pipe through which the streams of living water flow to the dead in sin; God's grace comes to us "Through Christ Jesus", and through him alone.

8. For by grace are ye saved through faith;

We have this expression, "by grace are ye saved," twice over in this chapter. Paul knew that he needed to repeat himself, or people would forget what he taught. At bottom, all the wanderings from the faith at the present day amount to this, salvation by works instead of salvation by grace. The battle of the Reformation has to be fought over again. Men are justified by grace through faith in Christ Jesus. All the enmity of natural men is against that truth. They want to be saved by their own morality, and all sorts of things that they put instead of salvation by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

8, 9. And that not of yourselves: it is a gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.

"Oh!" said one to me just now, "the man who is saved by his own righteousness cannot do much in the line of praising." "No, my dear brother," I replied, "except he praises himself; and he can generally do that pretty well." Your self-made man usually worships his creator very earnestly; and your self-saved man glorifies him that saved him.

10. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus

Nothing without Christ Jesus, you see. The mark of the pierced hand is on everything: "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus."

10. Unto Good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

God has decreed that he will have a holy people. This is his purpose, his ordinance, to which he will always stand. He will make it good. He will make sinful people holy, and disobedient people obedient to the faith.

11. Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;

Remember what you were. You were not the chosen Israelites, you have not the covenant mark in your flesh.

12. That at that time ye were without Christ,

Which is the worst state of all, far worse than being without circumcision.

12. Being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,

Outsiders, rank outsiders, far away from any rights, or any participation in the rights of God's children.

12. And strangers from the covenants of promise,

Utter strangers to the covenants made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

12. Having no hope, and without God in the world:

It is an awful description, but a truthful description, of what we were.

13. But now

The apostle has turned over a new leaf in the book of our history: "but now." Oh, what a change from the past to the present! "But now"

13. In Christ Jesus

See how Paul keeps harping on that one string. Note how he links us with Christ Jesus. There is nothing for us without Christ and his cross.

13. Ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.

Paul can never have too much of Christ. It is Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ; like the harp of Anacreon. He wished to sing of Cadmus; but his harp resounded love alone; and so the harp of Paul resounds with Christ alone, Christ alone. He always comes back to that theme. It was said of one eminent commentator that he could not find Christ in the Scripture where he was; but it was said of Cocceius that he found Christ where he was not. I would rather find Christ where he is not, than not to find him where he is. There are plenty who err in that second direction nowadays.

14. For he is our peace,

Paul cannot do without Christ, you see. He will bring him in everywhere.

14. Who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us;

There is no longer the division between Jews and Gentiles.

15. Having abolished in his flesh.

See, it is always Christ, his flesh, his blood, his life. There must always be something about him: "Having abolished in his flesh."

15, 16. The enmity, even the law of commandments containeth in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that he

I cannot help reminding you, that you must not overlook the fact that Paul will not go a hair's breadth away from Christ.

16-18. Might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.

There is the whole Trinity in that one verse, Christ, the Spirit, the Father. It needs the Trinity to make a Christian, and when you have got a Christian, it needs the Trinity to make a prayer. You cannot pray a single prayer aright without Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

19. Now therefore

Another of Paul's blessed "nows." It was "but now" a little while ago; now he has another "now." "Now therefore"

19. Ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God;

You are not only in the kingdom, but you are in the royal household, which is better still. You are princes of the blood imperial. You are peers of the court of heaven: "and the household of God."

20. And are built

You are not loose stones; you are built

20, 21 Upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom

You see, it is always that, in him, in Christ: "in whom"

21. All the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:

There is no church without Christ, no temple without him as its cornerstone, its priest, its glory.

22. In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

And all this hangs upon that first sentence, "You hath he quickened." Is it so, beloved? If you are spiritually dead, nothing here belongs to you; but if he hath quickened you, you may take every single sentence of the chapter, and say, "That is mine, and glory be the grace of God!"

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HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK" 463, 476, 461.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

In this epistle we have the unfolding of the grace of God in all its fulness, not merely the application of His righteousness to man's need on His part, but God from out of Himself, and for Himself, as the adequate motive and object before Him, even His own glory. Hence it is that righteousness disappears in this epistle. We have had the gospel thus in all the epistles that have gone before. In Romans, in 1st and 2nd Corinthians, and in Galatians righteousness was largely used. It was developed in a positive and comprehensive way, as in Romans. It was brought in either to convict the Corinthians of their utter departure through the spirit of the world, the flesh taking that shape, or it was brought in triumphantly on their restoration. Again, by it the apostle, writing to the Galatians, vindicated God's ways with man, and set the Christian outside the law.

But in Ephesians the aim is of a much more absolute and direct character. It is not the wants of man in any sense, either positively or negatively. Here God from Himself and for Himself is acting according to the riches of His own grace. Accordingly the very opening brings before us this astonishingly elevated manner of presenting the great truth with which the apostle's heart was filled. "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God." (Ephesians 1:1) It was pre-eminently for this that he had been chosen as an apostle; and he represents his apostleship not here as a question of calling, but "by the will of God:" everything in this epistle flows from the will of God; "to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus."

Although about to show us what the church is in its heavenly blessing, that is, in its highest associations, he always begins with the individual. This was peculiarly needed. The tendency is ever to set aside what is personal for that which is corporate. The epistle to the Ephesians truly understood will help none so to do. It may be perverted to this or anything else; but so far is our corporate place from being put in the foreground that we do not hear one word about the assembly as such till the close of the first chapter. Only in verse 22 is the church even named for the first time, where it is said God has given Christ "to be the head over all things to the church." But up to this the saints are contemplated as such. The moral order of this is exceedingly beautiful. In the admirable wisdom and grace of God it is the direct setting aside of that which is found in all earthly systems, where the individual is merely a portion of a vast body which arrogates to itself the highest claims. It is not so in the word of God. There the individual blessing of the soul has the first place. God would have us set thoroughly clear and intelligently appreciating our individual place and relation to Himself. Where these are made and kept right, we can then safely follow what God will show us in due time, but not otherwise.

As usual the apostle salutes the saints with the best wishes for their blessing. "Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ." Then, without delay, the next verses introduce a general view of the glorious topic that occupied him. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." It is God in His proper nature, and in His relationship to Jesus. He is the God of Jesus; He is the Father of Jesus. But the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ "hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." It is not carnal blessing such as was in measure given under the law to Israel, and will be under the new covenant by and by; it is spiritual blessing. The earth is their sphere; it is there that Israel looks to be blessed, and the Gentiles somewhat farther off, but all in the ordered blessing of the Most High God. Altogether differently here "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" has blessed us where Christ is on high. There is no place good enough for Christ the Son but heaven. There it is God Himself displays most His own glory; there He displays Christ Himself to all the heavenly hosts, delighting to put honour on that Man whom He raised from the dead and set at His own right hand. it is there not merely that He means to bless us, but that He has blessed us already. Such is the character of our blessing, and such its seat. The character is spiritual, the seat heavenly; and as the whole is given by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, so it is secured in Christ.

In the next verse the apostle opens out that which is move particularly connected with "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ." "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love." If "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" has blessed us with every spiritual blessing above in Christ, this is the first need to have a nature capable of communion with His God, to have a condition that would do no dishonour, not only to the highest sphere, but to the holiest form and sphere in which God has ever made, Himself known. This is the nature that is given to the believer now. But it is not merely a thing imparted. The special point before the apostle's mind is that this was the choice of God before the world, in which we are brought to know the infinite blessing. It was entirely unconnected with the world. Far different was Israel's case, however favoured as a nation. They were chosen in time. Not only were they called in time as we have been, but they were chosen in time, which we were not. The choice of the saints for heavenly blessedness was before the creation of the universe, before the foundation of the world.

This gives a very peculiar character to our blessedness. It is altogether independent of the old creation, of that which might fail and pass away. It was a choice of God Himself before there was any creature responsible or dependent. God made known His choice, not when the creature was to be proved, but when it had failed to the uttermost; but the choice itself was decided on by God Himself before the creature came into being. It is the moral answer to what was shown in Christ, "that we should be holy and without blame before him in love." Indeed, these are the very qualities of God Himself. He is holy in nature, and blameless in His ways. Man may cavil and murmur now in unbelief; but God will vindicate them every one when man shall be silent for ever. Besides, there is love, the activity, as well as, the moral qualities, of His being. Love it is which, as it were, puts all in movement that belongs to God. It is not something extraneous that acts on God as a motive, but His own love flowing out from Himself according to His holy nature, and in perfect consistency with His character and ways.

This is the moral nature which God confers on us who are born of Him. This and nothing less or else is what He chooses us to be before Him chooses us to be in Christ in His own sight, and therefore with the fullest certainty that it shall be according to His own mind. It is not merely in the presence of an angel, still less before the world. Angels are not adequate judges of what pertains to us; they may be witnesses, but not judges. God Himself is acting for His own glory and according to His own love. But then the possession of a nature capable of communing with God did not and could not satisfy. He would have something more. What could this possibly be? Is He not satisfied with giving us a nature like His own? No, not even so, and for this reason God has relationships, and these relationships are shown in Jesus just as much as His nature is. If we want to know what the holiness, and blamelessness, and love of God is, we must look at Him; but in the same way also, if we desire to know what are the relationships into which God puts those He loves, where shall we find the highest? Certainly not in the first man Adam. Israel's was at best a mere creature relationship, though, no doubt, having a special place in creation. Of all the creatures that live and breathe, man is the only one on earth that became a living soul by the breath of the Lord God, who, as it is written, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. That is, there is a creative connection between God and man which is the source of man's moral relations with God, and the reason why man, and man alone of all creatures on the earth, shall live again and give an account of himself to God.

But in that which comes before us in our epistle, it is not a question even of the highest creature on earth one that was called to have dominion on earth, and be the image and glory of God here below. God had in view One infinitely above man; and yet He was a man. It was Jesus; and Jesus stood in what was altogether peculiar in a relationship that was perfectly according to God's counsels; but more than that, according to a relationship that was peculiar to His own person. There was counsel, but besides there was intrinsic glory altogether independent of any plans of conferred honour. In other words, the Son of God never was made the Son, He is never even called the child ( τέκνον ) of God.* To us, to be called children of God is more intimate than to be styled His sons; but it would derogate from the Lord. Jesus is never called a child in the sense in which I am now speaking He has His own relationship to the Father eternally. To us it is more to be born of the very nature of God, than to be sons adopted into the family of God. There might be an adopted son without the nature. One might be altogether a stranger to him that adopts. But in Jesus, the Son of God, there was this character of Son in His own title and being from everlasting. Need I say that this is altogether above human comprehension? Yet nothing is more certain than that God so speaks to our faith. Were there an interval of one instant between the Father and the Son, did the Father exist in any respect before the Son as such, all the truth of God as revealed in the Bible perishes. He to whom I look up, by and in whom alone I can know God and the Father, is God Himself Let the notion of time come into the conception given of Godhead and of the persons Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and all would be falsehood and confusion. The Son would be a creature not self-subsisting, not therefore truly God. For if God, He is as such not less truly God than the Father; for there can be no difference as to Godhead. As the Father is everlasting, so is the Son. The relationship in the Godhead has nothing to do with the question of time; and the great mistake that has been wrought by all human philosophy is from introducing notions of time where time can have no place whatever.

* The Lord Jesus is repeatedly called παῖς , translated "son" and "child" in the English version of the Acts of the Apostles, but more properly God's servant as Messiah.

Thus in the Godhead there are the relationships of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. But I confine myself now to the relationship of the Son to the Father from everlasting. And God, having these counsels before Him from everlasting, deigns to have a people, not only capable of enjoying Him as having the very same nature as His own, without which they could not enjoy glory; but, besides, if He has us in His presence, He would have us in the highest relationship into which grace could bring us. Now, the highest being that of the Son, we accordingly are brought into that relationship, though not, of course, in the sense in which He was eternally so. To us it could be but eternal purpose, to Him eternal being; to us pure grace, but to Him His own indefeasible right. But the Son being before the Father as His supreme object of love and delight from all eternity, to bring us as sons before Him was as much a part of His counsels as to make us partakers of divine nature. Thus nature is the subject of verse 4, as relationship is of verse 5. Hence in the latter we find, not exactly choosing, but predestinating us: "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will."

It is well to mark the difference. To be before Him without having His own nature would be impossible; and therefore it is not stated as a matter of predestination, but of choice. He might have been pleased to choose none; but if we are to be brought into His presence at all, it is impossible to be there without having the divine nature, in a moral sense (and, of course, one only speaks of this). It is not the impartation of Godhead: none can be so foolish as to think of such a thing. But the divine nature is given to us in its qualities of holiness and love. On the other hand, we find that the predestination is "according to the good pleasure of his will," because no necessity operates in this. There was a moral necessity for a nature suitable to God, if we were to be in His presence at all; but there was none for this special relationship. He might have put us in any degree of relationship He pleased. Angels, for instance, are there; but they have no such relationship. His grace has predestinated us to the very highest relation that of sons unto Himself by Jesus Christ "according to the good pleasure of his will." And the apostle concludes the whole of this part of the matter "to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." All this wondrous scheme is to the glory of His grace. He uses therefore the highest terms in order to express it. Grace alone would not suffice, glory alone would not serve, but both. It is "to the praise of the glory of his grace." Meanwhile it is again presented to us in this new fact, that we are brought in as objects of His perfect favour in the Beloved. Such is the measure, if measure it can be called, of the grace wherein we stand.

But then those in respect of whom God the Father had such thoughts were in point of fact sinners. The next verse shows that this is not forgotten, for account is taken of the fact, and it is provided for. The same "Beloved" who accounts to us for the counsels of God has brought in redemption. In Him we enter into favour, "in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of offences," not exactly according to the praise of his glory, "but according to the riches of His grace." It is a present thing in every sense, though, of course, needed for heaven and eternity. Hence the expression does not go beyond the riches of God's grace. Thus is touched, incidentally, the need of our souls as offenders against God, but only so far as to show that it was in no way overlooked.

Next the apostle turns to the boundless scene that lies before us, as in the preceding verses he had looked at what is behind us. And why is all this? Clearly God has a purpose, a settled and glorious plan to gather the whole universe under Christ as its Head. Are those that He has brought into a share of His own moral nature and the relationship of sons to be left out of this? In nowise: even now He has abounded toward them "in all wisdom and prudence." These words do not attribute to God all wisdom and prudence, which certainly would be nothing new; but they intimate that He has now conferred on His saints all wisdom and prudence. It is truly an astonishing statement. The contrast is with Adam, who had a knowledge that was suited to his own place and relationship. Accordingly we hear inGenesis 2:1-25; Genesis 2:1-25 how he gave names to all that was put under him. And as to his wife, he instantly understands, though he had been in a deep sleep while she was being formed. But when presented to him, he knows all that it was meet for him to know then. He knows instinctively that she was part of himself, and gives her a name suitably. Such seems to have been the measure of Adam's wisdom and prudence. As being the image and glory of God on earth, he is the one that gives names to his companion, or to the subject creation. It is not merely that he accepts names given him by God, but God delights in putting him in this place of lordship, and to a certain extent also of fellowship lordship to that which is below him, and fellowship as regarded his wife. Thus, then, Adam acts and speaks.

But the saints, now being made the objects of these heavenly counsels of God, have a wisdom and prudence of their own, quite peculiar to the new creation in Christ, and its proper relations: God puts no limits to it. In point of fact, He looks for the expression and exercise of it, be assured, from all of us, though no doubt according to our measure. It is no use merely taking it up as a name or barren title. Our God and Father does look for the display of the mind of Christ in us, so that we should be able to form a judgment according to Himself, and to express it about whatever comes before us. For if we are in Christ, we have a vantage ground which makes all things clear. Christ is not darkness but light, and puts all in the light; He makes us to be children of the light, that so we may be able to judge ourselves, not discerned by man as such, but capable of discerning whatever claims our attention. Such is the place of a Christian, and a wondrous place it is, flowing from the nature and relationship which we possess by the grace of our God.

But the connection is important. God has "abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; having made known unto us [what is the special proof of it] the mystery of his will." This does not yet appear; for there is nothing to indicate to mankind what He purposes to do. It is an absolutely new thing; and this new purpose is "according to the good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him; in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory," etc.

Here the apostle repeats that high, large, and blessed phrase already so familiar to us, "that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ; in whom ye also [trusted]." It was not confined to those that had their hope founded on Christ while the nation refused Him. Paul was one of those; and there were others at Ephesus, as we well know in point of fact the first nucleus of the assembly there. The first saints and faithful in the city of Ephesus, asActs 19:1-41; Acts 19:1-41 shows, were persons who had been baptized with the baptism of John, and afterwards brought from Jewish to Christian ground by the apostle Paul. Hence he says, "that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ," referring to himself and any other saints who had been chosen from the people of the Jews. At the same time there is no exclusion of Gentile believers, but the reverse. "In whom ye, also [trusted], after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation." For the mass subsequently brought in were Gentiles, and the gospel of salvation they forthwith received, without going through the intermediate steps that the others knew. The Jews, or those who had been under Jewish teaching, had been for a while in an infantine state, or an Old Testament condition; but the Gentiles by faith passed simply and directly into the full Christian blessing. "In whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with the holy Spirit of promise, who is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory."

It cannot have escaped observation that there are two great parts in that which has come before us. The first is nature; the second is relationship. The Holy Ghost is here viewed according to these two. Connected with nature, He has sealed us, as it is said here and elsewhere; and connected with relationship, He is the earnest. For "if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." The Holy Ghost thus takes a corresponding part. Just as Christ is the sample and model whether of nature or relationship, so the Holy Ghost is not without His own proper place in bringing the saint into the reality, knowledge, and enjoyment of both. The Holy Ghost gives us the certainty and joyful assurance of our place as saints; the Holy Ghost at the same time gives us the foretaste of the bright inheritance of God that lies beyond.

Then follows a prayer of the apostle the first of those he pours out for the Ephesian saints. Naturally this prayer grows out of the two great truths he had been urging. He prays for the saints "that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory [for this is what his mind connected with it], may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints." These are the two former points. The "hope of his calling" is the bright prospect of the saints themselves, as they are in Christ before God. "The riches of the glory of his inheritance" embrace, of course, that vast scene of creation which is to be put under the glorified saints. He prays accordingly that they might enter into both, realizing the holy peaceful atmosphere of the one, and the glorious expectations that were bound up with the other; for clearly the future is before his mind. But then he adds a third point, which was not given in the previous part of the chapter; namely, that they might know "what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead."

This last was of all-importance to the saints, and the rather as that power had already been put forth. It shines in full contrast with Israel. If the latter enquired how God had interfered most conspicuously for them, no doubt they were reminded of the power that brought them out of the land of Egypt. This was always their comfort in the midst of disasters and troubles. The God that divided the Red Sea, and brought them across Jordan, was equal to any difficulty that might ever assail them again. In the prophets this too remains always the standard, until God exert His power in another way, when He shall be no longer spoken of as Jehovah that brought them out of the land of Egypt, but out of the north country into their land, where He shall settle them for ever. Thus Israel stands in the permanent remembrance of power that redeemed them from the land of Egypt, and in the anticipation of a still greater manifestation that will eclipse whatever had been seen of old.

But the Christian is even now himself, with his fellow-saints, the object of the very same power which never can be outshone the power that raised up Christ from the dead. We wait for nothing greater nor its match; we await the results of this glorious power for the body and the creation; but we look for no new putting forth of power which can enter into competition with that which God has already shown in Christ. The moment that Jesus presents Himself as the answer to what has been put forth already, the saints rise or are changed in the twinkling of an eye. Besides, it is not merely that the body will immediately respond to the call of the Lord Jesus, but even now the very same power Acts wrought toward us in making us Christians which "wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." Such is the power that has wrought now wrought toward us even while we are in this world.

Accordingly, in Ephesians 2:1-22, the apostle pursues this train, and shows that it is not another exertion of power, but a part of the very same work of God which raised up Jesus from the dead. In other words, Christ was not raised up as an insulated individual, severed from all others by His glory and their sin and shame. The gospel of God's grace proclaims the very reverse. He was raised up as the great manifestation of divine power for effectuating God's counsels as well as redemption. Not only was His resurrection this manifestation, but also whatever God put forth toward us was in virtue of that display of His energy was, so to speak, morally included in that power which raised up Christ from the dead. This clearly is of the deepest possible interest to the saints. Throughout the epistle all the secret is just this God would associate us with Christ (that is, of course, in everything that is consistent with the maintenance of the divine glory). Whatever could contribute to it, whatever fell in according to it, everything that God Himself could do to bind us up with Christ, sharing with us all that is glorious in Christ His own Son, even to His holy nature and relationship with the Father, as far as this could be conferred on a creature, is no more than God had in His heart yea, is what God has given us now, and will display in heavenly Places ere long.

So the apostle says, "You hath he quickened, who were dead in offences and sins;" for now we can bear to learn anything, however humiliating, and He can speak of anything, no matter how exalted or holy. God had never so spoken of man before. In Romans the sinner is regarded as alive in sins; and death, the death of Christ, is the means of deliverance. In Ephesians death is the very first place where we find even Christ. Not a word is said of sending Him into the world, or of His life and labours there, any more than of our doing this or being that. The first place where Christ is seen is in the grave whence God according to the mightiest action of His almighty power raised Him up. It was an absolutely new thing: never was seen one so glorious, never can there be another so triumphant, as the power there put forth. Man, Satan, yea, the judgment of God that had gone forth against Him because of our sins, had no force to detain Him in the grave. That judgment had fallen on Him necessarily and unsparingly; but in the face of everything calculated to hinder, God's power broke up the last stronghold of the enemy. There was Jesus lying in the grave; and from that grave God raised Him, and set Him on the highest pinnacle of heaven's glory not only of that which then was, but that ever shall be. Such is the very power that has taken you and me up in divine grace, and wrought toward us. The very power that brought you out of the world and of your sins is the power that raised up Christ from the dead, set Him in the heavenly places, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of that glorious Head to whom it is united.

This is pursued then first with reference to the Gentiles, for now the order is reversed. InEphesians 1:1-23; Ephesians 1:1-23 he began with the Jews, and then showed the Gentiles brought in; but now he begins with the outer circle where the Gentiles were. "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in offences and sins; 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." What can be conceived more dreadful than such a condition, positively without spiritual life, dead in offences and sins! Not only so, but they had walked according to the course of that which is most of all offensive to God "of this world, according to the prince of the authority of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience;" for indeed they were, one as much as another, children of disobedience. "Among whom also we all," etc., for he does not let slip the Jews, but turns round on their estate, equally lifeless as the Gentiles. They might otherwise think themselves more or less superior. He had spoken of the poor idolatrous Gentiles and their awful condition; but "we all," says he, putting himself along with them, Jews as we were, children of the covenant and what not, were none the less dead in offences and sins. "Among whom also we all had our conversation in time 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 the rest. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved), and raised us up together." Now he unites both in this place of richest blessing; for He has even "made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." In truth it is His grace to the full, and for heaven (not earth), though given to us to know here before we get there; "for by grace are ye saved." The whole work is thus presented in its completeness from first to last; nevertheless, it is only "through faith" as yet. This is and must be the medium, as far as the saints are concerned, grace being the spring on God's part: "and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship."

It is clearly not a question of righteousness here, or consistency with any known standard of judgment. God would frame a new sort of workmanship worthy of Himself; and therefore all question of antecedent measures disappears. Righteousness supposes a claim in the first place, however met; even though it may be God's righteousness, still it is God acting in consistency with Himself and His own claims. But in Ephesians we are in presence of a new creation in Christ, where claim is out of the question. Who would demand of God to make the objects of His mercy like Christ the Son? Who could, before He revealed His purpose, have so much as conceived such a dealing possible? Even now, though plainly made known in this epistle and elsewhere, how few Christians there are who rest in it as their assured portion! So totally and absolutely is it outside the range of human thought and feeling that the difficulty is to drop self, to cut all the strings that bind us to human nature and the world, to see all ended even now that is connected with the present course of this age, so that we may be simply occupied and filled with that heavenly blessedness which God unfolds to our souls.

However this be, "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works," a peculiar kind of good works, suited to the relationship in which we stand. This is the great point to seize always throughout Scripture. There never can be spiritual understanding, unless souls let in this after all plain principle, that the suited good depends on the relationship in which we are placed, whether to God, or to any other. The, good for an Israelite, for a Gentile, for a man, is wholly different from the good for a Christian, because their relationships are not the same as his. Now we are Christians; and this decides the character of the duties we have to pay, or of the good works which He has before prepared that we should walk in them; for "we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus" for this very purpose. It is not at all put as a question of command according to the law; but "God had before prepared," as a part of His wonderful scheme, "that we should walk in them." He merely now touches on the principle, as he had before let us see not merely God's counsels from before the foundation of the world, but the manner and means of their application through Christ our Lord to us in time. Hence the condition in which we were found here below came into view; and, as we have seen, it was total ruin, whether Jew or Gentile be looked at.

But now fromEphesians 2:11; Ephesians 2:11 the apostle enters into particulars, and shows that the bringing down from God's own heights of these glorious counsels and making them thus manifest in man here below, completely sets aside the Jewish system, or rather supposes the setting aside of all Jewish elements. Hence, being "Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; [the apostle bids such remember] that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world." And what had God done now? Had He brought the Gentiles into the place that Israel once occupied? The Jews had rejected their own Messiah. Of old they had forfeited every claim according to the law, and were spared and kept in God's mercy and faithfulness. But now they had consummated their rebellion by refusing the Christ of God. What was to be done? Would God send out and bring in the Gentiles to fill their place? Another plan discloses itself. The Jews who believe are taken out of their former place, as much as the Gentiles, who had no place. Both are now introduced by grace into an entirely new and heavenly place in Christ, which was not so much as heard of before. Accordingly not only does he enforce the truth first presented in the end of chapter 1, the church which is the body of Christ, but he also still more qualifies it as a "new man," and as "one body;" because, in treating of the two objects of grace, and component parts of the church, Jews and Gentiles who believe, he shows that God does not purpose to form two societies of these saints, but one body. It is not a mere aggregate of Gentiles into the well-known line of old blessing, but one new man, not merely fresh in time, but of an absolutely new order, never seen or experienced before. It is not again a simple question of a new nature, but of a new man: the first Adam, with all remedial or corrective dealings in him disappear, and one new man comes before our view.

Here again the apostle brings in the relation of the Holy Ghost to the new things. The consequence is that we find the Spirit of God, now sent down from heaven, not only putting the saints into relationship with the Father, but, besides, dwelling in them and making them God's habitation through the Spirit.

Thus we have at last the church developed in its two main characters. It has its heavenly association as the one body of Christ; it has its earthly place and responsibility as the "habitation of God through the Spirit." All this, it will be observed, is consequent on the cross. The one was not at all, nor was the other in such sort before. God had a dwelling-place of old in Israel; but it was a house made with hands, however magnifical, that followed the tabernacle of witness in the desert, in both of which the Shechinah, or visible sign of His glory, deigned to dwell. Such is not the character of God's dwelling now. It is neither the tabernacle, nor the temple, but His habitation in Spirit. It is not, of course, a display of glory before men's eyes; yet is it most real a proper dwelling of God on earth, answering to, though not necessarily coextensive with, those who are constituted the body of Christ glorified on high. Not that the body is there yet, but that the body of Christ is heavenly in its character, although in fact on the earth now. Besides, as we have seen, the church is the dwelling-place of God through the Holy Ghost's presence here below.

This leads toEphesians 3:1-21; Ephesians 3:1-21, in which the apostle unfolds things parenthetically. It is a revelation of God that comes in at the time when the Jews have, at least temporarily, lost their place altogether. The very structure of the chapter, as has been noticed, is a sort of confirmation of this. The chapter itself is a parenthesis. "For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, if ye have heard of the dispensation [administration or stewardship] of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward: how that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery (as I wrote afore in few words; whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ); which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed." Observe, therefore, that what was the first in counsel is the last in revelation.

Accordingly, when all was complete in the communication of God's plans in the Bible, there was one subject that was left a blank. Paul was the chosen witness to fill up that blank. He wrote in few words no doubt, but he has written with divine perfection, and clearly enough for those by God's grace made competent to understand, let the words be ever so few. Many wonder that such truths as these should not have more words used in communicating them. But profound truths are for those who have spiritual understandings; and such do not require many words to comprehend them. When persons are only learning the elements of truth, the grace of God provides precept on precept, line on line, for those who want it. If He is showing needy souls how they may be forgiven of God, He displays it in a thousand forms; if the need of righteousness, He repeats it over and over again. But it is not so with the revelation of the mystery. There is a certain spiritual competence supposed, a due preparation not only of heart, but also of knowledge; or, as the apostle said, "we speak wisdom among them that are perfect," Here no lengthy exposition would be wanted about it, because they were not so infantine as to suppose that the truth of God depends on the number of times that a thing is asserted. Once is enough for the intelligent.

God therefore has not been pleased in the heights of divine truth to repeat words in the same way as His grace leads Him to do when He is helping the babes. Hence the apostle Paul, in what is by no means the simplest utterance he has given, writes in few words. He could condescend. We know how he would bend down and be as it were a; Gentile to one without law, and a Jew to one under law, to do good to souls.

But now he speaks briefly. He was not constrained to enter into a full or long explanation. But as he said that by revelation it was made known to him, so he would from God communicate it to them. "Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit." It is remarkable that the mystery, though revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the power of the Holy Ghost, was not revealed by them. It was revealed by Paul alone. Revealed to all the apostles and prophets of the New Testament, to one as much as another, it never seems to have taken such a hold of the others as of Paul. In point of fact, from his conversion right through, the revelation of the mystery was involved. That which comforted his soul was Christ in heavenly glory far above all things. As the light that shone then was brighter, than the sun at noonday, so in the vision the truth about to be learnt was entirely outside and superior to the present or the past. It was grace in its deepest character and in its highest form, and so the apostle Paul was the suited vessel that God employed to instruct others, not merely the one to whom the revelation was made, but by whom the revelation was to be communicated. It is revealed to us here.

We must carefully remember that the mystery does not mean the church merely. It is the mystery of Christ emphatically; and the part about Christ is the higher of the two. The church is but a consequence; and we bless God for this, and bless Him also that we know the church is but the complement of Christ. One might distrust a mystery, if it centred in the church. Who that knows what man is, and God, as Christ has made both known, would dare to rest in any one person or thing which did not find its brightest form in Christ Himself? And the reason is simple; so inadequate is the creature, so untrustworthy is the first Adam, that one might well be certain the true meaning of the Bible was lost to him who judged otherwise. Such an one must have only got the lower end of the line, and not the full truth in its own native purity and freshness from God. Impossible that the Head should not be there as well as the body; and the apostle speaks as to Christ yet more than as to the assembly.

God then brings out His own secret, after having kept it hidden from all past ages and generations, though, of course, it has been before Him from the beginning. If God reveals it now, the idea of man of ourselves being the first and main object in the mind of God is impossible. It is the mystery of Christ; and this is what secures the blessing in its fulness and purity for the church of God. Therefore we need never fear, no matter what the blessing and the privilege may be. If it be illustrated in Christ, if it be bound up with Him, fear not to trust simply and to believe implicitly. Enter boldly into the sweetness of His grace and fulness of His glory. We never can go astray, if we follow the path of the Lord Jesus.

Though it is the mystery of Christ, it is not exclusively about Christ. So in Ephesians 5:1-33 he says, "This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church." Is there not good reason for saying that the church is but a consequence? The church follows; and as it belongs to Christ, so it is a part of Him. Hence, to make the mystery to be the church is a very serious moral as well as doctrinal mistake.

The apostle adds that it was now revealed of the Spirit, "That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel: whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power. Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints" there is nothing like this truth, where it is learnt from the Holy Ghost, for humbling the soul, were it even the greatest of the apostles, "is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and make all see what is the fellowship [rather administration] of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in, God, who created all things [by Jesus Christ to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God."

God had something more to teach those who are the natural denizens of heaven. They had to learn what they had never known. They had seen creation, and sung at the sight. They had seen the ways of God with man, and with Israel; and surely they had entered into the glory of God that was involved in all His ways. Nevertheless, whether it was creation, whether man or favoured Israel, there was so much the more painful a declension that portended the judgment of God upon them. Thus there were dark shadows, and lowering clouds. But now appeared something altogether new. Latest of all, God divulged His wonderful scheme in which the man that came from above, the Son that became a man, the Word made flesh, had gone down to the very lowest in order to make good the glory of God morally in the scene where He had been most put to shame. But now, consequent on His resurrection from the dead, and of the place given Him in heaven above all, there was made known to these very principalities and powers "the manifold wisdom of God," made known to them before it came to pass, the sure deliverance of the whole scene of creation, of man, of Israel, as well as of the earth. But not merely this. That man who came down but was found alone to the end of His earthly course would now be alone no more; He would have a new and suited body, believing Jews and Gentiles fellow-heirs and of the same body. Most wholesome blessedness! for who should be more above the feelings of jealousy than those who delight in that which shows the greatness, and the glory, and the perfect goodness of God in His greatest work? This, then, was what was needed for the principalities and powers, and this is what they behold in the church of God.

The apostle accordingly is now led at the sight of the mystery of Christ into another prayer, in which he asks "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ [for now he takes up the other relationship,], of whom the whole [rather, every] family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; being rooted and grounded in love, that ye may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God."

Here the prayer is not, as in the first chapter, that they might know the power that had wrought toward them; it is now that their hearts might be in the secret of His grace according to the power that works in them. That is, he looks at the inner source, not merely at the glorious results. Here he prays to the Father of our Lord Jesus, not simply to the God that had raised up the Christ from the dead, and was glorifying Him on high. It will be observed that the desire is not merely that they might be enlightened as to the special glory of their standing, but that their hearts might be filled with the love of Christ, and this too as a present thing filling them to overflowing, though surely not to cease in the ages to come. "Unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end." This is not a question therefore of the place or standing of the Christian, but rather of his condition or state, which the Spirit would have in unison with the love of Him who alone made either possible. Consequently here it is not an energy already put forth, but he pleads that Christ might dwell by faith in their hearts. It is not a conferred position, however blessed, but practical enjoyment even that Christ Himself might be habitually the object before them, now that all question of deliverance and blessing was settled in their favour. It was all a known thing that they were blessed by yea, with Christ, forming a part of Christ, expressly fellow-heirs, and of the same body. But now, founded on this, the apostle prays thus for them, that the Holy Ghost would so act in the inner man that there might be no hindrance to Christ, and that they might know, not the Holy Ghost (for this they did not doubt), but Christ dwelling there by His power constantly.

Unquestionably the Spirit of God does evermore dwell in the Christian, though I am not aware that He is ever said to dwell in our hearts. He may shed abroad the love of God therein; but He is rather said to dwell in us, making the body God's temple. Here the apostle would have Christ to be more the satisfying object of our affections. This is the point. Far be it from us just to know that He loves us through the word of God, as a security to us, like a dry parchment deed of gift that we quietly keep in a strong box. Rather is the very gospel to the sinner free and full, that, having the certainty of the divine fulness of our blessing, our hearts may be now open to enjoy Christ, and be occupied with His love. "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith;" not that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, but "rooted," etc., that ye "may be able to comprehend with all saints." It is not here deliverance, let it be ever so complete; it is not the knowledge of our position in Christ as inEphesians 1:1-23; Ephesians 1:1-23; but rather the converse Christ dwelling in us by faith, and the heart entering into the positive excellency of the Son, the only adequate object of the Father's own delight. Hence it was that they might "be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and. height; and to know the love of Christ." It is not only the full extent of glory, but the sole satisfying spring, Christ thus dwelling in our hearts in the consciousness of His love "to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." He is the ultimate blessedness with which we are filled, the One in whom we most confide, being the Son, in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

Thus, having Him who is the centre of all glory dwelling in our affections by faith, we enter into, and become established in, the grace which is the secret of it all. In communion with the objects of it, we go out into the resulting scenes of glory on every side; knowing Christ's love though unknowable, and filled into God's fulness though infinite. The apostle concludes his prayer with an ascription of glory to Him in the Church unto all generations of the age of the ages, able to do far above all we ask or think according to His power which works in us. It is thus seen to be founded on the great facts and standing privileges mentioned at the end of Ephesians 2:1-22; but it is the desire that the saints should know God's present power to an indefinite extent working in them in spiritual enjoyment, through the Holy Ghost's power, giving us to have Christ the definite and constant object of the heart.

Ephesians 4:1-32 begins the proper exhortatory portion, and here, first of all, urges a walk in view of such a calling as is ours, diligently keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Then the diversities are brought before us. "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love." The very truth which, learnt and enjoyed in the Holy Ghost, conduces to all lowliness and meekness, as it calls for mutual forbearance in love, flesh would abuse to all pride and vain-gloriousness, to high-minded contempt of others, and bitter self-confidence. Than these nothing less becomes those so blessed. Oh that we might have grace to walk in communion with such grace! But if we are to walk thus, let us not forget the prayer for the state of our hearts which precedes these exhortations. Knowledge of standing and a, state answering to Christ's love, are the basis of a walk worthy of our calling. "The unity of the Spirit" seems to be the general name for that great fact which is now established that unity of which Christ is the chief, and to which we all belong. The apostle treats it as our business diligently to observe it. It is impossible for flesh to be true to it. This is as it should be. An easy path could not be divine, as men and things are on earth. We need, but we have, the Holy Spirit who is surely all-sufficient, if looked to. It is impossible to exaggerate the snares and difficulties of Christendom.

But what are difficulties to the Spirit of God? This is the great want simple, genuine faith in the Holy Ghost. He is equal to all, and, would have us count on His presence and power answering to the name of Christ. What has all the confusion of men to do with the glorious reality that God has established His unity, of which we all form part by the power of His Spirit? What does it matter about times, persons, or circumstances, if the Spirit abide to enable us, according to Scripture, diligently to keep His own unity? Numbers are of small account here. The Lord might be where there are only two gathered together unto His name. If but two acted accordingly, they ought to be and would be an expression of the unity of the Spirit. What is the value of any other unity? It can never rise above its human source. Evidently also, it is no essential matter for present practice of faithfulness, whether few or many see and feel it: this is a question for God's will, who will act for His own glory, whether by many or by few. Let this then rest in His hands. Be it our part with diligence (for this is needed) "to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

Then we hear the particulars, and in a very orderly manner. "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling." This verse states the intrinsic unity that never passes away, beginning with the fact of "one body;" then the efficient power, one Spirit; and lastly the cause of it all in the calling of grace. Nothing touches these.

In the next verse we have that which has been justly designated the unity of profession, where all things may come in to mar. Hence it is said, "One Lord," which is precisely that which is owned in the common creed of Christendom. And as there is one Lord, so "one faith." It is neither "faith" nor "the faith." That is, it may not be sincere, nor even doctrinally the truth that is held; but we hear of lone faith" in contrast with Judaism on one hand, and with Paganism on the other. Hence "one baptism" follows, which the context shows to be the plain initiatory rite of Christian profession, and nothing else. In the verse before the apostle had spoken of the "one Spirit," and hence it would be superfluous to introduce the statement of His baptism here, even if the adjuncts did not exclude the idea.

Thus we have had, first of all, the great spiritual reality which is always true of Christians, and of none else. They, and only they, have "one Spirit" dwelling in them. They only have the "one hope of their calling." But the moment you come to the "one Lord," this city, yea every city in Christendom, is a witness to a wide-spread profession of His name. As He is outwardly called on, so there is everywhere the "one faith," which does not mean (alas! we know too well) saving faith necessarily, but the faith of Christendom; and accordingly "one baptism" is its mark, because thus they are put on or take the ground of professing the one Lord and one faith.

Lastly, "one God and Father of all." Here we come to what is universal. Each circle hitherto was getting larger and larger. First there was the true company that had divine life and the Spirit of God; secondly, the circle of profession very much more extensive; and thirdly remains the universal unity, which embraces not Christendom only, but all the creatures of God included under their one God and Father whatever derived its being from God, the God that created all things, as we were told in Ephesians 3:9. He consequently is the lone God and Father of all," not merely of all believers, for this is a mistake of its force, but of all absolutely; just as we were told in verse 15 of that same chapter, that of Him every family in heaven and earth is named. No matter whether Jews or Gentiles, principalities or powers, every family is derived from this universal source of existence "One God and Father of all, who is above all [there we find His supremacy], and through all [there we find His permeance, if one may so say, as the support, of the whole universe], and in you all" [His intimacy with the saints]. The moment the apostle comes to inward relationship, he leaves the universality of phrase and speaks only of the saints of God "in you all." No statement can be conceived more exact.

Now we must turn to the diversities. "But to every [each] one is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ." And as the unity flowed from the power of the Spirit sent down from heaven; so now when we come to gifts, it is expressly connected with Christ in glory. "Wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended." Yes, but He did not go up as He came down from above. He came a divine person filled with love; and He went a man also, triumphant not with love only but in righteousness and power, to give effect to all the glorious counsels of His Father, which unjudged sin would have for ever frustrated. He went up after all the working of evil had been really defeated and destroyed in the sight of God. Satan is allowed to go on for a little while longer, because God is gathering out the joint-heirs, while the evil develops itself in a new form Man had been shown to be the enemy of all righteousness, and now betrays himself the enemy of all grace. As the end of the latter will be incomparably worse than the former, so judgment will be commensurate with man's apostasy from grace; for the Lord must come from heaven, "in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and on them that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Meanwhile, before a blow is struck at man's failure in the presence of righteousness, or at his apostasy from grace, that blessed Saviour, the only begotten Son in the bosom of the Father, the Son of man who is in heaven, went down to the very uttermost, and (having exhausted the powers of evil, and blotted out all that could rise against the objects of God's grace,) was raised and seated by God in heaven. He takes His place there, of course always the Son; but, wonderful to say, humanity makes an integral and everlasting part, so to speak, of that divine person, the Son of God. And here is the key, and that which accounts for the astonishing display of what God is now doing in man. How could it be otherwise, seeing that He who sits on His throne, tar above every creature in God's presence and in all ages, is a man, but withal the very Son of God? The Son is as truly man as God, and as such gives gifts to men. Angels are not the object. They had a distinguished place before the Son became man. Since then it is not so much they that have lost, but man in and by Christ that has gained such a place as they never had nor could have. Never were they to reign; never will they be one with Christ like the saints. They are "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation."

But Christ at the right hand of God gives gifts unto men; and, as it is said here, "He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;" bringing in both the highest gifts and also those ordinarily requisite for the good of the saints. I say "requisite," simply in view of Christ's love towards the church. It is not a question of rendering a testimony of the power of God working in man and dealing with the first creation. In Corinthians we have this, and properly in its place. There we have tongues, miracles, etc.; because all that is connected with man in the flesh and in the world is a sign to unbelievers, showing them the goodness of God, and the defeat of that wicked power which governs human nature as it is.

But in the epistle to the Ephesians we have none of these dealings with the first man, but that which forms and nourishes the new creation. Hence we have those gifts alone which are the expression of the grace of Christ toward the saints that He loves, for ministerial work, for the building up of His body. In this order He gave them the body to be edified, and ministry carried on, but always the individual first. The building up of the body is the fruit of God's blessing the individual saints. It cannot be otherwise. It is in vain to look for the church's prosperity, if saints individually do not grow up unto Christ. And so these gifts are given, as it is said, "till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man., unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up unto him in all things, which is the head, even Christ."

Then we have in the centre of this chapter no longer the unity or the gifts differing, but the moral walk of the saints. And what is the first lesson of the truth as it is in Jesus? This; not only that we hear of the one body, and that saints compose this body, but that a new man is seen. Introducing this great practical truth, he reminds them of what they had been, but also tells them what they are now. Our duties flow from what we are, or are made. And what then is the truth as it is in Jesus? Our having put off the old man, and our having put on the new man. Such is the truth, if indeed we have learnt the Christ as God teaches Him. Anything short of this is not the true Christian measure. Jesus could occupy Himself in divine love. Self would have hindered; had there been a particle, it would have ruined both His person and His work; but this is not the truth as it is in Jesus. He came so as to be left absolutely free to occupy Himself in love for God's glory and our desperate need. And now, in Him who is dead and risen, the Christian has put completely off the old man, is being renewed in the spirit of his mind, and has put on the new man, which according to God is created in righteousness and holiness of truth.

Not only is there this new man that God has created after the image of Christ in contrast with the first Adam, but this is the ground why all moral evil is to be judged, beginning with deceit and falsehood. "Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil. Let the stealer steal no more." How solemn to learn what the old man is in its most detestable forms, against all which the Christian is warned! Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers."

But, besides the new man which lives in dependence, we need to guard against losing power according to God. "Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." Thus the great basis of all our walk is, that the old man has been judged in Jesus, and the new man we have already put on; but, moreover, the Holy Ghost is given, and we are sealed by Him. Thus we have a new nature which hates sin, and the Holy Ghost which gives power for that which is good.

Then he adds the great exemplar and spirit of it all, according to the forgiveness with which God met us in Christ. "Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ hath forgiven you." But there is yet more. To forgive another's wrongs is not enough for a Christian. No doubt it is a giving up of self, and therefore the fruit of divine grace. But in Ephesians God cannot but have us imitate His own ways as they have shone in Christ. He Himself is the measure of the walk of the new man, and the manifestation of it is Christ Himself. Nothing short of this suffices. What has God done? He has forgiven you in Christ; and you are called to do the same. But was this all? Was there only this? Was there not positive love, far beyond forgiveness? And what is the manifestation of love? Not the law, but Christ. "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour."

Do you think this devotedness too much? yea, impossible? Not so. Take a passage in 2 Corinthians (2 Corinthians 8:5), which has been before us only a short time ago: "And this they did, not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God." How blessed is the character and the spring of Christian service! Think of their giving themselves first to the Lord, then to us by the will of God. It is just the answer to the grace of God in Christ. Nor is there full Christian service, except in proportion as it is according to this pattern and in this power. In Christ it was, of course, absolutely perfect: He did give Himself for us. But this was not enough. He might have given Himself ever so truly in pity for us; but it would not have been perfection, had He not "given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." And so accordingly all that is acceptable takes this shape. "But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once .named among you, as becometh saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking [even light words dishonour the Christian, as being contrary to Christ], nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks. For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."

But there are other elements. God is not only love but light; and inasmuch as this epistle reveals how fully God associates us with Christ according to His own nature, so having first shown us the privilege of loving, as He Himself loved us in Christ, now it shows that we are made "light in the Lord." But it is not said that we are love. This would be too strong, yea, false. Love is God's nature, but it is a sovereign prerogative in Him. In His own actings it has no motive or spring except in Himself. This could not be true of us. We need both motive and object, and hence could not be said to be love; because not we, but only God acts from Himself, as much as for Himself. Impossible that the creature could be or do so; and therefore the creature is never said to be love. But there is love after a divine sort in the new nature, which is said to be light, because this is the necessity of the new nature. Impossible that the new nature could countenance sin; the very essence of it is rejection and exposure of what is contrary to God. It is sensitive about sin; detects and detests it thoroughly. Hence we are said to be "light in the Lord," and we need to shake off the things of death that encumber the light, and hinder it. And so Christ gives us more light. For the word is, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." But just as before, in the walk which shuts out hatred, and anger, and so on, we were warned against grieving the Spirit of God; so the power of the Holy Ghost asserts itself here. Here it is not merely "Grieve not the Holy Spirit." He goes farther, and says, "Be filled with the Spirit." "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord."

And is this all? It is not. There has been the full unfolding of God's love, and the answer to it in the saints here below in their nature, and in the ways that manifest the new nature. But, besides, we have relationships; and now we have God manifesting Himself in each of our positions, and showing us that these are meant to give us opportunity of glorifying God by the good works that were before ordained of God. Accordingly he brings in the most important of them, first, the wife and the husband; then, children and their parents; and, finally, servants and masters.

All through these then we have, but more particularly in the first, the interweaving of the duty with the manifestation of God's grace: "Christ also loved the church." It is not now either sovereign love, or love of complacency. There was the sovereign love of God in Christ forgiving us; there was love of complacency, inasmuch as we were to love according to that love with which we were loved, as shown us in the matchless love of Christ. But now there is love of relationship as well; and here too Christ appears, who is the pattern and perfection of grace in every respect. "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself." Just look into this revelation of His love. How everything is connected with Christ! He gave Himself for us. What was it for? "That he might present it to himself [not merely to the Father, but present it to himself] a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." More than this; for "no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church." Everywhere Christ Jesus Himself is intermixed with every portion. He Himself is the beginning, He Himself the end, He Himself all the way through. He gave Himself as the beginning; and He presents it to Himself as the end. Meanwhile He tenderly cares for the church. "He that loveth his wife loveth himself; . . . for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." "This is a great mystery," he adds at the close; "but I speak as to Christ and as to the church."

Then we have the children, who are called to obey their parents in the Lord. It was not a question of the flesh: how could this be trusted? Let them obey in the Lord. To honour one's father and mother was both an obligation and had a special promise under law. And if children that had a relationship with their parents in the flesh and under law did so (for it was indeed right), how much more did it become Christian children to pay them reverence?

This is followed up by an exhortation to parents: "And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." Thus is the Lord ever presented as the pattern. Then come the slaves similarly. He was privileged to do all as unto Christ; as the master again must remember that he had his own Master in heaven. This also answers to the grand doctrine of this epistle.

Then the apostle introduces us to another topic. It is not the source of the blessing (Ephesians 1:1-23); nor the place into which we are now brought as being made one with Christ (Ephesians 2:1-22); nor the objects to whom we are bearing testimony. (Ephesians 3:1-21) The closing theme shows us where and with whom are our true conflicts as Christians. As such we have not properly to fight with flesh at all, any more than to fight with the world. All other combats are outside the calling of a Christian.

I do not deny but that a Christian may slip elsewhere. But as long even as he is merely in conflict with his own nature, he can hardly be said to be on Christian ground at all. He may be a converted person; and God may be truly dealing with him in the way of gracious action. A really awakened soul may still have a great many unsettled questions in agitation within him. He has not come to God consciously. Now the very baptism of a Christian man is the confession of the truth, that God has in Christ judged flesh root and branch. Is not this the meaning of the institution? How far the person has realised it is another matter; but such is the meaning of baptism. Judging what I am, I confess that all my blessing is in the Saviour, who did not merely come to bless me as a living man in the world, but died and is risen again; and 1, confessing Him who is thus dead and risen, have part in His death. The conflict of the Christian is not therefore with flesh, still less is it with the world, but with Satan, and with his power, viewed as interposing and hindering our enjoyment of our heavenly blessing.

Is not this the meaning of the combat as described here? The wrestling is not with flesh and blood, "but against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places." The English translators did not know what to make of the apostle, and so they changed it to "high places," which was an unwarrantable liberty, and gives the most perverse meaning. This has misled many beside the poor Puritans, who fancied they were called of God, as a Christian duty, to strive against kings and all in authority, when not satisfied with their ways or measures. I mention this, because it is a striking proof that an error imported into Scripture leads even right-minded men into sad evil. It is expressly not against any powers that were living and acting in the world. The conflict is against Satan and his hosts. Just as the Canaanites tried to keep the Israelites out of the land which God assured Moses the tribes were to have for their possession, so Satan's great effort is to hinder the saints of God from realizing their blessedness in heavenly places.

But for this the most careful provision is laid on us. The first thing is to "be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might." That is, all our strength is to lean on another, even the Lord. The next thing is that we take "the whole armour of God, that we may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth [inwardly applied, and thus bracing us morally], and having on the breast-plate of righteousness." The internal state is the great point here. Carefully remember this. Our standing is quite another matter, which itself could not avail here. The panoply is against Satan and not God. It is a question not of acceptance before God, but of resisting the enemy who would take advantage of loose ways and a bad conscience. The breast-plate means the practical righteousness of the saint himself. "And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace." So should our walk be. Besides, take "the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one." It is the confident trust of the heart in the favour of God in which we stand, not the remembrance of our first subjection to the gospel. Finally, "receive the helmet of salvation, [there the head is lifted up, not in presumption, but with none the less joy and courage,] and the sword of the Spirit," which is expressly said to be the word of God. The defensive comes before the offensive; and all should follow dependence on the Lord. The sword must be the real intrinsic power of the word wielded in the Spirit, which does not spare anything. Thus, first blessed, strengthened, and enjoying the grace and truth of God in Christ, we can then go out with the sword of the Spirit to deal with what is contrary to His nature, which Satan would use to obstruct our realization of our heavenly privileges.

Finally, there is the activity now for others, just as before there was dependence for ourselves. "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints; and for me [as the apostle blessedly adds], that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel" (what a gracious way of encouraging and strengthening saints, giving them a feeling of the value of their prayers, both in the sight of God, and in fellowship with the most blessed apostle that God ever gave the church!) "for which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak." He felt his need and that of the work. Also he counted on their loving desire to know his affairs as well as to have their hearts comforted through Tychicus.