Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ephesians 2:4

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,

4. But God ] The Divine counter-fact now comes in, brighter for the awful contrast.

who is rich in mercy ] See note on “riches,” Eph 1:18. The ultimate motive of the work of regeneration is here given, and it is simply the Divine Mercy. No claim or obligation is in the question, nor right inherent in the alienated race, nor “fitness of things” in the abstract; only the uncaused and supremely free choice of the God of mercy. Cp. Tit 3:5; 1Pe 1:3.

for his great love, &c.] On account of, &c.; another aspect of the same fact.

loved us ] the New Israel, the Church. Not the Philanthropy of God, His “love toward man” (Tit 3:4), but His inner and special love, is here in view; affection rather than benevolence. The whole context shews this. Observe the change from “ you ” (Eph 2:1) to “ us. ” For similar words regarding the Old Israel see Deu 7:8; “Because the Lord loved you, &c.”

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

But God, who is rich in mercy – On the use of the word rich by Paul, see the notes at Eph 1:7. It is a beautiful expression. God is rich in mercy; overflowing, abundant. Mercy is the riches or the wealth of God. People are often rich in gold, and silver, and diamonds, and they pride themselves in these possessions; but God is rich in mercy. In that he abounds and he is so rich in it that he is wilting to impart it to others; so rich that he can make all blessed.

For his great love – That is, his great love was the reason why he had compassion upon us. It is not that we had any claim or deserved his favor; but it is, that God had for man original and eternal love, and that love led to the gift of a Saviour, and to the bestowment of salvation.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Eph 2:4

But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us.

The mercy of God

1. God is a God of rich mercies.

(1) Let us acknowledge His mercy to us.

(2) Let us imitate it in our dealings with others.

2. It is the love of God which procures His mercy toward us.

(1) This may assure us of Gods favour towards us. If a man out of love have sought the friendship of his enemy, and used means to be reconciled to him, is it not likely that he will be constant in his love to him to the end? However this may be with man, it is certain that God will not change (Joh 13:2; Mal 3:7).

(2) This teaches us our duty to God and man. He has loved us first, therefore must we love Him again, His love must constrain us; and our love is a reflection of His to us (1Jn 4:19; 2Co 5:14; 1Jn 4:11). (Paul Bayne.)

Gods mercy towards the sinner

I. The motives of the Divine mercy.

1. The promotion of His own glory. To show mercy is the most sublime work, and, emphatically, a Divine action.

(1) Never despair of the boundless mercy of God; to doubt is to dishonour Him.

(2) Show mercy also to others, that Gods Spirit may be made manifest in you.

2. His holiness. God, by His love of all that is good, and by His hatred of all that is bad, is moved to extirpate what is morally bad. This design is best accomplished by the conversion of the sinner, because if he were to die a sinner, that which is bad would be and would remain permanent in him. Hence the long suffering of God, His attempts to save the sinner, His readiness to forgive, that sin may be abolished.

3. The love of the Father for His Son. Jesus has purchased and redeemed mankind by His death. By losing one soul, He loses a most dear property, the price of His own precious blood. Therefore, the Father is moved by love to save the redeemed and to recover the lost soul (Joh 6:39).

4. His infinite benevolence.

II. The immense greatness of Divine mercy.

1. Like all the Divine perfections, it is as great as God Himself. Thy mercy is above the heavens.

2. It extends to all sins.

(1) Despair not because of their number (Isa 1:18).

(2) Nor on account of their hideousness (Rom 5:20). Have not the saintly penitents obtained forgiveness of the most hideous crimes? A murderer is the first stone God made use of in establishing His eternal kingdom, says Augustine.

3. It embraces all sinners without exception.

4. It lasts till death.

III. The wonderful manner of its manifestation.

1. Before the sinner is converted. This love is manifested

(1) By graciously sparing him who, a criminal as he is, has forfeited every right to temporal and eternal life. When all nature is in arms against the sinner, God restrains it.

(2) By incessantly seeking, inviting, urging, with such tender solicitude, as if the Shepherd had forgotten all His faithful sheep.

(3) By ardently longing for Him.

2. Whilst the sinner is converted.

(1) By receiving him kindly and meeting him graciously.

(2) By forgiving and forgetting all offences.

(3) By rejoicing exceedingly at finding again him who was lost.

3. After the sinner is converted.

(1) By granting His efficacious graces.

(2) By recalling to life the merits which in consequence of mortal sin had died away (Zec 10:6).

(3) By admitting the penitent to a participation in the sacraments and ordinances of the Church.

(4) By receiving him into His everlasting joy and happiness in heaven. (Querico Rossi.)

God is rich in mercy

Mercy is the aspect of God which the sinner first and most needs. Dare I approach His awful throne, all wretched and guilty as I am? The apostle answers, He is rich in mercy! But let us contemplate the riches of God a little more generally, and see how His bounty meets and supplies all our wants.

1. We are creatures who have test all–have nothing and need much; and to meet this God is rich in goodness (Rom 2:4). He is good–that is, He is God; for the name God is derived from His goodness. The earth and the heavens, the laws of the moral and physical worlds, are conceived and established out of pure goodness. His fulness overflows, and worlds and boundless systems of worlds arise to manifest and enjoy His goodness.

2. Are we impotent and incapable of procuring the Divine favour? Then, says Paul, He is rich in grace (Eph 2:7), which is the same nearly as the rich in mercy of my text. You need no merit–you require no preparation in coming to God.

3. But wherein is this riches of mercy seen? It is seen in the degradation and ruin from which it delivers us; it is seen in the glory and blessedness to which we are raised; it is seen in the number and heinousness of the sins which it forgives; and it is seen in the greatness of the number of the saved.

4. But there is still another aspect of the human character, which the riches of God meets. We long for power, for fame, for glory and immortality. We would be great, and the aspiration is not in itself wrong, but it is often misdirected. We find ourselves in this world bounded on every side by insurmountable barriers, baffling all our efforts of knowledge and of power. But are we satisfied? No, no; the soul longs for complete knowledge, pines for the possession of power, seeks to wing her flight through the sparkling stars and circumambient worlds, up to the empyrean throne itself, from whence proceed such manifestations of wisdom, beauty, and strength. And God meets this longing of the soul by that other word, the riches of His glory (Php 4:19). He is rich in goodness, He is rich in grace, He is rich in mercy, and He is rich in glory. Here, honourable ambition may expand itself; and the soul, enlarged and purified by the Spirit of God, may drink deeply and more deeply forever–may approach forever and for evermore, in love, wisdom, knowledge, and power, the character of Him who loved us, and whom we love.

5. Mercy is nearly allied to pain or misery, and the ideas are in most languages connected. It is not impossible that eleos (mercy) may come from the Hebrew chil, to be in pain, as the English word is from misericordiae, the pain of the heart, the sorrow which goodness feels at the sight of wretchedness and woe. It is this feeling (if we may apply it so) in the heart of our heavenly Father which is the fountain of redemption. (W. Graham, D. D.)

The love of God

Not as the world loves doth God love. They love today and hate tomorrow; wearing their friends like flowers, which we may behold in their bosoms whilst they are fresh and sweet, but soon they begin to wither, and are laid aside. Whereas the love of God to His people is everlasting, and He wears them as a signet upon His right hand, which He will never part with. (E. White.)

The signs of love

The signs and tokens of love are four.

1. We think of those whom we love. Love begins in the heart, and leads away the thoughts over seas, rivers, mountains, and all kinds of impediments, to its object. Such is the love of God. Its dwelling place is His own bosom; and before all worlds His delights were with the sons of men.

2. But love seeks fellowship with its object; and God visited us in the person of His Son that He might woo our fond hearts from the world to Himself.

3. Then, again, true love willingly suffers for its object, if need be, and the affection which abides not this test is not genuine. God cannot suffer, but His incarnate Son did, and all the fountains of the great deep of Divine sorrow were broken up on the cross.

4. Love seeks to exalt its object; and so God, having taken our nature into union with His own, did exalt and glorify the Son of man, our Eider Brother and Head, with His own right hand, in heavenly places, far above all principality and power. (W. Graham, D. D.)

God rich in mercy

I asked, in New Hampshire, how much it took to make a farmer rich there; and I was told that if a man was worth five thousand dollars he was considered rich. If a man had a good farm, and had ten thousand dollars out at interest, oh! he was very rich–passing rich. I dropped a little farther down, into Concord, where some magnates of railroads live (they are the aristocrats just now), and I found that the idea of riches was quite different there. A man there was not considered rich unless he had a hundred or a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in pretty clear stuff. I go to New York, and ask men how much it takes to make one rich, and they say, There never was a greater mistake made than that of supposing that five or six hundred thousand dollars make a man rich. What does that sum amount to? I go into the upper circles of New York, where millionaires, or men worth a million dollars or over, used to be considered rich; and there, if a man is worth five or ten millions it is thought that he is coming on. It is said, He will be rich one of these days. When a mans wealth amounts to fifty or a hundred millions he is very rich. Now if such is the idea of riches in material things, what must riches be when you rise above the highest men to angels, and above angels to God! What must be the circuit which makes riches when it reaches Him? And when yon apply this term, increscent, to the Divine nature, as it respects the qualities of love and mercy, what must riches be in God, the infinite, whose experiences are never less wide than infinity! What must be love and mercy, and their stores, when it is said that God is rich in them? (H. W. Beecher.)

His great love

The Rev. John Davies says, A certain man had a wayward son; his conduct brought down his father to a premature grave. On the day of the funeral the son was present, saw unmoved the pale face of his father in the coffin, and stood unmoved on the brink of the grave. The family retraced their steps. Their fathers will was read; in that testament was the name of the undutiful son. As his name was read his heart heaved with emotion, his eyes were bedewed with tears, and he was heard to say, I did not think that my father would have so kindly thought of me in his will. In the family of Christ some of us in reading His Testament, and thinking upon His great love and marvellous gifts, feel our unprofitableness and unworthiness, and are filled with love and wonder.

God is rich in mercy

When Dr. Arnot was in this country–he is now in heaven–I heard him use in a sermon an illustration that impressed me. He said: Have you not been in a home where the family were at dinner, and have you not seen the old family dog standing near and watching his master, and looking at every morsel of food as if he wished he had it? If his master drops a crumb he at once licks it up and devours it; but if his master were to set the dish of roast beef down and say, Come, come, he would not touch it–it is too much for him. So with Gods children; they are willing to take a crumb, but refuse when God wants them to take the whole platter. God wants you to come right to the throne of grace, and to come boldly. (D. L. Moody.)

Mercy Divine and human

I have seen the lifebuoy spun out to a drowning man, and, amid the crowd on the pier that gazed in horror, there was none, as they watched its course over the roaring waves, but wished in his heart that it might reach its mark. Nor is it only that God is willing that all should come to Him, and live. What mother but would open her door who heard the knocking, and recognized the well known voice of some poor, fallen child, that had sunk down there amid the winter drift, and cried, with failing breath, O mother, mother dear, open and let me in. And who thinks so ill of God as to believe that when He hears such a cry at the door of mercy, He will not rise to let us and to welcome us in! (T. Guthrie, D. D.)

The mercy and love of God

I. First, then, we are to notice the richness of Gods mercy and the greatness of Gods love. There appears to me to be a difference in the terms which are used here, and that this difference is intentional–that the mercy, in fact, refers to man in his fallen state, and that the love refers to the manner in which that mercy is manifested. And taking it in this point of view, it will be necessary to dwell upon the two expressions separately–the mercy which is called rich, the love which is called great.

1. This mercy appears to be called great on account of the amount of mercy which is dispensed. But when we look at the inspired Word of God, we see at once the amount of mercy which is being dispensed to the world, for God has been pleased to reveal Himself as plenteous in mercy. He keeps mercy for thousands. I put these two facts together, and I read that for backsliders there is a willingness on the part of God to manifest His rich mercy. I look at the history of Matthew the publican, sitting at the receipt of custom, one of a whole body famed for their extortion; and I look into the world, and I see the mammon hunters of the day, and feel myself privileged to press upon them also the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; because I see that for the extorting Matthew there was converting grace, there was Gods rich mercy.

2. On this verse, then, we may speak of the mercy of God being rich; but you will perceive the apostle speaks also of the love of God, of the great love of God. And why should not that epithet be used, when we remember that it is the love of a great God to great sinners?

II. But we must pass on to inquire, in the second place, how this love is manifested. And keeping to the text before me, I read that it is by quickening us, by giving us of His spiritual life–God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins, hath quickened us–hath given us spiritual life. But this is connected, indeed, with the next expression in the text, which speaks of God having raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Here, of course, reference is made to the resurrection and the glorified state, when there shall be rest from our labours, when there shall be eternal pleasure, and when we shall enter into the joy of our Lord. But notice, in the next place, when this mercy was manifested. The Scripture describes the manifestation of this mercy to have been when we were dead, when we were dead in our sins. (M. Villiers, D. D.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 4. But God, who is rich in mercy] As they were corrupt in their nature, and sinful in their practice, they could possess no merit, nor have any claim upon God; and it required much mercy to remove so much misery, and to pardon such transgressions.

His great love] God’s infinite love is the groundwork of our salvation; in reference to us that love assumes the form of mercy, and that mercy provides the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore the apostle adds, Eph 2:5: By grace ye are saved-it is by God’s free mercy in Christ that ye are brought into this state of salvation. See Clarke on Eph 2:8.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Rich in mercy; abundant. Riches of mercy here, as riches of grace, Eph 1:7; see Psa 51:1; 86:5.

For his great love; the fountain from whence his mercies vouchsafed to us proceed; riches of mercy from great love: God shows mercy to us miserable creatures in time, because he loved us from eternity, viz. with a love of good will.

Wherewith he loved us, both Jews and Gentiles; there being the same original cause of the salvation of both.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

4. God, who is richGreek“(as) being rich in mercy.”

forthat is, “becauseof His great love.” This was the special ground of God’ssaving us; as “rich in mercy” (compare Eph 2:7;Eph 1:7; Rom 2:4;Rom 10:12) was the generalground. “Mercy takes away misery; love conferssalvation” [BENGEL].

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

But God, who is rich in mercy,…. Mercy is a perfection of the divine nature, and is essential to God; and may be considered with respect to the objects of it, either as general, extending to all men in a providential way; or as special, reaching only to some in a way of grace; for though mercy is his nature, yet the display and exertion of it towards any object, is the act of his will; and special mercy, with all the blessings and benefits of it, is only exhibited in Christ Jesus: and God is said to be “rich” in it, because he is free and liberal in dispensing it, and the effects of it; and that to a large number of persons, in great abundance and variety, by various ways, and in divers instances; as in the covenant of grace, in the mission of Christ, in redemption by him, in regeneration, in pardon of sin, and in eternal salvation; and yet it is inexhaustible and perpetual; and this sets forth the excellency and glory of it:

for his great love wherewith he loved us; the love of God to his chosen people is very great, if it be considered who it is that has loved them, God and not man; who is an infinite, unchangeable, and sovereign Being; and his love is like himself, for God is love; it has heights and depths, and lengths and breadths immeasurable; it admits of no variation nor alteration; and is altogether free, arising from himself, and not from any motives and conditions in men: and if the persons themselves are considered, who are the objects of it, men, sinful men, unworthy of the divine notice and regard; and that these are loved personally, particularly, and distinctly, and not others; nakedly, and not theirs, or for any thing in them, or done by them, and that notwithstanding their manifold sins and transgressions: to which may be added, that this love is represented as a past act; and indeed it is from everlasting, and is antecedent to their being quickened, and was when they were dead in trespasses and sins; and is the source and spring of the blessing next mentioned: so the divine love is often called in the Cabalistic writings of the Jews t, , “great love”.

t Zohar in Gen. fol. 8. 4. & in Exod. fol. 102. 3. Lex. Cabal. p. 44. 45.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

The Change Wrought in the Ephesians.

A. D. 61.

      4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,   5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)   6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:   7 That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.   8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:   9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.   10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

      Here the apostle begins his account of the glorious change that was wrought in them by converting grace, where observe,

      I. By whom, and in what manner, it was brought about and effected. 1. Negatively: Not of yourselves, v. 8. Our faith, our conversion, and our eternal salvation, are not the mere product of any natural abilities, nor of any merit of our own: Not of works, lest any man should boast, v. 9. These things are not brought to pass by any thing done by us, and therefore all boasting is excluded; he who glories must not glory in himself, but in the Lord. There is no room for any man’s boasting of his own abilities and power; or as though he had done any thing that might deserve such immense favours from God. 2. Positively: But God, who is rich in mercy, c., &lti>v. 4. God himself is the author of this great and happy change, and his great love is the spring and fontal cause of it; hence he resolved to show mercy. Love is his inclination to do us good considered simply as creatures; mercy respects us as apostate and as miserable creatures. Observe, God’s eternal love or good-will towards his creatures is the fountain whence all his mercies vouch-safed to us proceed; and that love of God is great love, and that mercy of his is rich mercy, inexpressibly great and inexhaustibly rich. And then by grace you are saved (v. 5), and by grace are you saved through faith–it is the gift of God, v. 8. Note, Every converted sinner is a saved sinner. Such are delivered from sin and wrath; they are brought into a state of salvation, and have a right given them by grace to eternal happiness. The grace that saves them is the free undeserved goodness and favour of God; and he saves them, not by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus, by means of which they come to partake of the great blessings of the gospel; and both that faith and that salvation on which it has so great an influence are the gift of God. The great objects of faith are made known by divine revelation, and made credible by the testimony and evidence which God hath given us; and that we believe to salvation and obtain salvation through faith is entirely owing to divine assistance and grace; God has ordered all so that the whole shall appear to be of grace. Observe,

      II. Wherein this change consists, in several particulars, answering to the misery of our natural state, some of which are enumerated in this section, and others are mentioned below. 1. We who were dead are quickened (v. 5), we are saved from the death of sin and have a principle of spiritual life implanted in us. Grace in the soul is a new life in the soul. As death locks up the senses, seals up all the powers and faculties, so does a state of sin, as to any thing that is good. Grace unlocks and opens all, and enlarges the soul. Observe, A regenerate sinner becomes a living soul: he lives a life of sanctification, being born of God; and he lives in the sense of the law, being delivered from the guilt of sin by pardoning and justifying grace. He hath quickened us together with Christ. Our spiritual life results from our union with Christ; it is in him that we live: Because I live, you shall live also. 2. We who were buried are raised up, v. 6. What remains yet to be done is here spoken of as though it were already past, though indeed we are raised up in virtue of our union with him whom God hath raised from the dead. When he raised Christ from the dead, he did in effect raise up all believers together with him, he being their common head; and when he placed him at his right hand in heavenly places, he advanced and glorified them in and with him, their raised and exalted head and forerunner.–And made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This may be understood in another sense. Sinners roll themselves in the dust; sanctified souls sit in heavenly places, are raised above the world; the world is as nothing to them, compared with what it has been, and compared with what the other world is. Saints are not only Christ’s freemen, but they are assessors with him; by the assistance of his grace they have ascended with him above this world to converse with another, and they live in the constant expectation of it. They are not only servants to the best of masters in the best work, but they are exalted to reign with him; they sit upon the throne with Christ, as he has sat down with his Father on his throne.

      III. Observe what is the great design and aim of God in producing and effecting this change: And this, 1. With respect to others: That in the ages to come he might show, c. (&lti>v. 7), that he might give a specimen and proof of his great goodness and mercy, for the encouragement of sinners in future time. Observe, The goodness of God in converting and saving sinners heretofore is a proper encouragement to others in after-time to hope in his grace and mercy, and to apply themselves to these. God having this in his design, poor sinners should take great encouragement from it. And what may we not hope for from such grace and kindness, from riches of grace, to which this change is owing? Through Christ Jesus, by and through whom God conveys all his favour and blessings to us. 2. With respect to the regenerated sinners themselves: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, c., &lti>v. 10. It appears that all is of grace, because all our spiritual advantages are from God. We are his workmanship; he means in respect of the new creation; not only as men, but as saints. The new man is a new creature; and God is its Creator. It is a new birth, and we are born or begotten of his will. In Christ Jesus, that is, on the account of what he has done and suffered, and by the influence and operation of his blessed Spirit. Unto good works, c. The apostle having before ascribed this change to divine grace in exclusion of works, lest he should seem thereby to discourage good works, he here observes that though the change is to be ascribed to nothing of that nature (for we are the workmanship of God), yet God, in his new creation, has designed and prepared us for good works: Created unto good works, with a design that we should be fruitful in them. Wherever God by his grace implants good principles, they are intended to be for good works. Which God hath before ordained, that is, decreed and appointed. Or, the words may be read, To which God hath before prepared us, that is, by blessing us with the knowledge of his will, and with the assistance of his Holy Spirit and by producing such a change in us. That we should walk in them, or glorify God by an exemplary conversation and by our perseverance in holiness.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

But God ( ). Change in the structure of the sentence here, resuming verse 1 after the break.

Being rich in mercy ( ). More than (being merciful).

Wherewith (). Cognate accusative with (loved).

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

But God. Resuming ver. 1.

For His great love [] . For the sake of, in order to satisfy His love. Quickened us together. Spiritually. Compare Col 2:13; Rom 6:11 – 14; Rom 8:10, 11 “What God wrought in Christ He wrought, ipso facto, in all who are united with Him” (Ellicott).

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “But God, who is rich in mercy” (ho. de theos plousiois hon en eleei) “But God being or existing rich in mercy.” David described His mercy as: a) gracious, b) plenteous, and c) everlasting, Psa 103:8-11; Jer 3:12; Psa 23:6; Luk 6:36; Mic 6:8, Rom 12:1. The Publican prayed for His mercy and received it, Luk 18:13.

2) “For his great love” (dia ten pollen agapen autou) “Because or source of the much love of His (nature)” God’s mercy is extended to sinners, motivated by His great love for them. As mercy is rich so love is great toward all men, the whole world, Joh 3:16; Joh 17:26.

3) “Wherewith he loved us” (hen agapesin hemas) “With which He loved us” John declared, ‘We love him because he first loved us;” 1Jn 4:19. God’s love is inherent in His nature and when one is born again or becomes a partaker of His divine nature, he also has implanted in him the divine love of God, one evidence by which one may know he is a child of God or saved, 1Jn 5:11; 2Pe 1:4; 1Jn 3:1; 1Jn 3:14; 1Jn 4:7; 1Jn 4:10-11. The Greek term “hemas” has the widest sense, meaning “all of us.” God loved Jew and Gentile, Rom 1:14-16.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

4. But God, who is rich in mercy. (122) Now follows the second member of the sentence, the substance of which is, that God had delivered the Ephesians from the destruction to which they were formerly liable; but the words which he employs are different. God, who is rich in mercy, hath quickened you together with Christ. The meaning is, that, there is no other life than that which is breathed into us by Christ: so that we begin to live only when we are ingrafted into him, and enjoy the same life with himself. This enables us to see what the apostle formerly meant by death, for that death and this resurrection are brought into contrast. To be made partakers of the life of the Son of God, — to be quickened by one Spirit, is an inestimable privilege.

On this ground he praises the mercy of God, meaning by its riches, that it had been poured out in a singularly large and abundant manner. The whole of our salvation is here ascribed to the mercy of God. But he presently adds, for his great love wherewith he loved us. (123) This is a still more express declaration, that all was owing to undeserved goodness; for he declares that God was moved by this single consideration. “Herein,” says John, “is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us. — We love him because he first loved us.” (1Jo 4:10.)

(122) “That is, exceedingly bountiful and liberal in the exercise of mercy. And in this metaphorical sense, the words ‘rich’ and ‘riches’ are used by the best writers. Lucian speaks of πλοῦτος φιλοσοφίας, ‘the riches of philosophy.’ The Roman orator frequently speaks of the ‘riches of the mind,’ by which he means those excellencies of understanding and virtue which are the peculiar ornaments and riches of it. De Orat. I. So the apostle means here the infinite benignity of the Divine Nature, and his unchangeable disposition to be merciful.” — Chandler.

(123) “‘Loving with love,’ increaseth the emphasis and force of the expression. Cicero hath an expression exactly parallel: ‘ Cura ut me ames amore illo tuo singulari.’ — Ep. Fam. ‘Be sure you love me with your singular and peculiar love.’ An allowed beauty in a profane author should not be censured as a tautology in a sacred one.” — Chandler.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

Eph. 2:4. But God, who is rich in mercy.Unto all that call upon Him (Rom. 10:12). He hath shut up all into disobedience, that He might have mercy upon all (Rom. 11:32). For His great love wherewith He loved us.A combination only used when the notion of the verb is to be extended (Winer).

Eph. 2:5. Even when we were dead in sins.The phrase which closes Eph. 2:3, difficult as it is, must receive an interpretation in harmony with this statement. It is the very marrow of the gospel that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. That the wrath of God is real we know, but God is love. By grace ye are saved.Grace is as truly characteristic of St. Pauls writing as his autograph signature; it, too, is the token (sign-manual) in every epistle (2Th. 3:17-18).

Eph. 2:6. In heavenly places.As in Eph. 1:3.

Eph. 2:7. The exceeding riches of His grace.The wealth of mercy mentioned in Eph. 2:4 more fully stated. Grace is condescension to an inferior or kindness to the undeserving. In kindness toward us.Kindness here represents in the original a beautiful word, as it is the expression of a beautiful grace (Trench). It is that fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22) called gentleness in the A.V., but which would be better named benignity.

Eph. 2:8. For by grace are ye saved through faith.By grace expresses the motive, through faith the subjective means (Winer). The emphasis is on by grace.

Eph. 2:9. Not of works, lest any man should boast.The more beautiful the works achieved the more natural it is for a man to feel his works to be meritorious. One can understand that a man jealous for the honour of God, like Calvin, should speak of the excellencies of those out of Christ as splendid vices, even though we prefer another explanation of them.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Eph. 2:4-9

Salvation an Act of Divine Grace.

I. Springing from the benevolence of God (Eph. 2:4; Eph. 2:7).A good old saint once said, There is nothing that affects me more profoundly, or more quickly melts my heart, than to reflect on the goodness of God. It is so vast, so deep, so amazing, so unlike and beyond the most perfect human disposition, that my soul is overwhelmed. The apostle seems to have been similarly affected as he contemplated the divine beneficence, as the phrases he here employs indicate. He calls it the great love wherewith He loved us. God is rich in mercyin irrepressible, unmerited compassion (Eph. 2:4). Language is too poor to express all he sees and feels, and he takes refuge in the ambiguous yet suggestive expression, The exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:7)hinting at the sublime benignity of the divine nature longing to express itself through the noblest medium possible. By his rebellion and deliberate sin man had forfeited all claim to the divine favour, and his restoration to that favour, impossible of attainment by any efforts of his own, was an act of sheer divine goodness. Its spontaneity breaks in as a sweet surprise upon the sinning race. The most vicious and abandoned are included in its gracious provisions, and all men are taught that their salvation, if accomplished at all, must be as an act of free and undeserved grace.

II. Salvation has its life and fellowship in Christ (Eph. 2:5-6).God has given us as unquestioned a resurrection from the death of sin as the body of Christ had from the grave, and the same divine power achieved both the one and the other. The spiritual life of both Jew and Gentile has its origin in Christ, and the axe is thus laid to the very root of spiritual pride and all glorying in ourselves. We are raised by His resurrection power to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This we do already by our spiritual fellowship with Him, and by anticipation we share the blessedness which we shall more fully enjoy by our union with Him in the heavenly world. The spiritual resurrection of the soul must precede, and will be the inviolable guarantee of the future glorious resurrection of the body. As the great Head of the Church is already in the heavenlies, so ultimately all the members that make up the body shall be gathered there. We are already seated there in Him as our Head, which is the ground of our hope; and we shall be hereafter seated there by Him, as the conferring cause, when hope shall be swallowed up in fruition. Our life and fellowship in Christ are susceptible of indefinite expansion and enjoyment in the progressive evolutions of the future.

III. Faith, the instrument of salvation, is the gift of divine grace (Eph. 2:8).The question whether faith or salvation is the gift of God is decided by the majority of critics in favour of the former. This agrees with the obvious argument of the apostle, that salvation is so absolutely an act of divine grace that the power to realise it individually is also a free gift. Grace, without any respect to human worthiness, confers the glorious gift. Faith, with an empty hand and without any pretence to personal desert, receives the heavenly blessing. Without the grace or power to believe, no man ever did or can believe; but with that power the act of faith is a mans own. God never believes for any man, no more than He repents for him. The penitent, through this grace enabling him, believes for himself; nor does he believe necessarily or impulsively when he has that power. The power to believe may be present long before it is exercised, else why the solemn warnings which we meet everywhere in the word of God and threatenings against those who do not believe? This is the true state of the case: God gives the power, man uses the power thus given, and brings glory to God. Without the power no man can believe; with it any man may.

IV. Salvation, being unmeritorious, excludes all human boasting.Not of works, lest any man should boast (Eph. 2:9). Neither salvation nor the faith that brings it is the result of human ingenuity and effort. The grand moral results brought about by saving faith are so extraordinary, and so high above the plane of the loftiest and most gigantic human endeavours, that if man could produce them by his own unaided powers he would have cause indeed for the most extravagant boasting, and he would be in danger of generating a pride which in its uncontrollable excess would work his irretrievable ruin. The least shadow of a ground for pride is however excluded. God protects both Himself and man by the freeness and simplicity of the offer of salvation. It is the complaint of intellectual pride that the reception of the gospel is impossible because it demands a humiliation and self-emptying that degrade and shackle intellectual freedom. Such an objection is a libel on the gospel. It humbles in order to exalt; it binds its claims upon us to lift us to a higher freedom. So completely is salvation a divine act, that the man who refuses to accept it on Gods terms must perish. There is no other way.

V. The glory of divine grace in salvation will be increasingly demonstrated in the future.That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace (Eph. 2:7). The most valuable function of history is not that which deals with the rise and fall of empires, the brutal ravages of war, the biographies of kings, statesmen, and philosophers, but that which treats upon the social and moral condition of the people and the influence of religion in the development of individual and national character. The true history of the world is the history of Gods dealings with it. The ages of the past have been a revelation of God; the ages to come will be an enlargement of that revelation, and its most conspicuous feature will be an ever new development of the riches of divine grace in the redemption of the human race. In all successive ages of the world we are authorised to declare that sinners shall be saved only as they repent of their sins and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Lessons.Salvation

1. Is a revelation of what God does for man.

2. Is absolutely necessary for each. 3. Should be earnestly sought by all.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

Eph. 2:4-7. The Great Change effected in Man by the Gospel.

I. The happy change which the gospel made in the Ephesians.A change not peculiar to them, but common to all sincere believers.

1. God hath quickened us.Made us alive with Christ.

(1) True Christians are alive; they have spiritual senses and appetites.
(2) Spiritual motions.
(3) Spiritual pleasures.
(4) Spiritual powers. The spiritual life comes through Christ, and is conformed to Him.
2. God hath raised us up together with Christ (Eph. 2:6).His resurrection is a proof and pattern of that of believers.

3. God hath made us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ.His entrance into heaven is a proof of the final salvation of believers. He sits there for them, to take care of their interests, and in due time will bring them to sit where He is.

II. Contemplate the mercy of God in this great change.God, who is rich in mercy (Eph. 2:4). The mercies of God are rich in extent, in number, in respect of constancy, in variety, in value. The great love wherewith He loved us. He first loved us. His love shines brighter when we consider what a being He is. He is infinitely above us. He is self-sufficient. The gospel gives us the most exalted conceptions of Gods character.

III. The general purpose of Gods particular mercy to the Ephesians (Eph. 2:7).Gods mercy in reclaiming one transgressor may operate to the salvation of thousands in ages to come. The gospel dispensation was intended to serve some useful purposes among other intelligences. Not only Gods gracious dispensation to fallen men, but also His righteous severity toward irreclaimable offenders, is designed for extensive beneficial influence.Lathrop.

Eph. 2:4-5. The State of Grace.

1. Salvation originates in the love of God.

2. That it consists in emancipation from evil.Quickened us together with Christ; that is, gave life. The love and mercy of God were shown in thisnot that He saved from penalty, but from sin. What we want is life, more life, spiritual life, to know in all things the truth of God and to speak it, to feel in all things the will of God and do it.

3. The next word to explain is grace.It stands opposed to nature and to law. Whenever nature means the dominion of our lower appetites, then nature stands opposed to grace. Grace stands opposed to law. All that law can do is to manifest sin, just as the dam thrown across the river shows its strength; law can arrest sometimes the commission of sin, but never the inward principle. Therefore God has provided another remedy, Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are under grace.

4. Paul states salvation here as a fact.By grace ye are saved. There are two systems. The one begins with nature, the other with grace: the one treats all Christians as if they were the children of the devil, and tells them that they may perhaps become the children of God; the other declares that the incarnation of Christ is a fact, a universal fact, proclaiming that all the world are called to be the children of the Most High. Let us believe in grace instead of beginning with nature.F. W. Robertson.

Eph. 2:4-6. The Believer exalted together with Jesus Christ.

I. The believer is assured he is raised up with Christ by the proofs which assure him of the exaltation of Christ.These proofs, irresistible as they are, do not produce impressions so lively as they ought.

1. From the abuse of a distinction between mathematical evidence and moral evidence.
2. Because the mind is under the influence of a prejudice, unworthy of a real philosopher, that moral evidence changes its nature according to the nature of the things to which it is applied.
3. Because the necessary discrimination has not been employed in the selection of those proofs on which some have pretended to establish it.
4. Because we are too deeply affected by our inability to resolve certain questions which the enemies of religion are accustomed to put on some circumstances relative to that event.
5. Because we suffer ourselves to be intimidated more than we ought by the comparison instituted between them and certain popular rumours which have no better support than the caprice of the persons who propagate them.
6. Because they are not sufficiently known.

II. The means supplied to satisfy the believer that he is fulfilling the conditions under which he may promise himself that he shall become a partaker of Christs exaltation.Though this knowledge be difficult, it is by no means impossible of attainment. He employs two methods principally to arrive at it:

1. He studies his own heart;
2. He shrinks not from the inspection of the eyes of others.

III. The believer is raised up with Christ by the foretastes which he enjoys on earth of his participation in the exaltation of Christ.This experience is realised by the believer.

1. When shutting the door of his closet and excluding the world from his heart, he is admitted to communion and fellowship with Deity in retirement and silence.
2. When Providence calls him to undergo some severe trial.
3. When he has been enabled to make some noble and generous sacrifice.
4. When celebrating the sacred mysteries of redeeming love.
5. Finally, in the hour of conflict with the king of terrors.Saurin.

Eph. 2:5. Justification by Faith.

I. We hold that we are justified by faith, that is, by believing, and that unless we are justified we cannot be saved. Of all men whoever believed this, those who gave us the Church catechism believed it most strongly. Believing really what they taught, they believed that children were justified. For if a child is not justified in being a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, what is he justified in being? They knew that the children could only keep in this just, right, and proper state by trusting in God and looking up to Him daily in faith and love and obedience.

II. These old reformers were practical men and took the practical way.They knew the old proverb, A man need not be a builder to live in a house. At least they acted on it; and instead of trying to make the children understand what faith was made up of, they tried to make them live in faith itself. Instead of puzzling and fretting the childrens minds with any of the controversies then going on between Papists and Protestants, or afterwards between Calvinists and Arminians, they taught the children simply about God, who He was, and what He had done for them and all mankind, that so they might learn to love Him, look up to Him in faith, and trust utterly to Him, and so remain justified and right, saved and safe for ever. By doing which they showed that they knew more about faith and about God than if they had written books on books of doctrinal arguments.

III. The Church catechism, where it is really and honestly taught, gives the children an honest, frank, sober, English temper of mind which no other training I have seen gives.I warn you frankly that, if you expect to make the average of English children good children on any other ground than the Church catechism takes, you will fail. If it be not enough for your children to know all the articles of the Apostles Creed, and on the strength thereof to trust God utterly and so be justified and saved, then they must go elsewhere, for I have nothing more to offer them, and trust in God that I never shall have.C. Kingsley.

Eph. 2:8. Salvation by Faith.

I. What faith it is through which we are saved.

1. It is not barely the faith of a heathen.
2. Nor is it the faith of a devil, though this goes much further than that of a heathen.
3. It is not barely that the apostles had while Christ was yet upon earth.
4. In general it is faith in Christ: Christ and God through Christ are the proper objects of it.
5. It is not only an assent to the whole gospel of Christ, but also a full reliance on the blood of Christ, a trust in the merits of His life, death, and resurrection, a recumbency upon Him as our atonement and our life, as given for us and living in us, and in consequence hereof, a closing with Him and cleaving to Him as our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, or, in one word, our salvation.

II. What is the salvation which is through faith?

1. It is a present salvation.
2. A salvation from sin.
3. From the guilt of all past sin.
4. From fear.
5. From the power of sin.
6. A salvation often expressed in the word justification, which taken in the largest sense implies a deliverance from guilt and punishment by the atonement of Christ actually applied to the soul of the sinner now believing on Him, and a deliverance from the power of sin, through Christ formed in his heart.

III. The importance of the doctrine.Never was the maintaining this doctrine more seasonable than it is at this day. Nothing but this can effectually prevent the increase of the Romish delusion among us. It is endless to attack one by one all the errors of that Church. But salvation by faith strikes at the root, and all fall at once where this is established.Wesley.

Eph. 2:8-9. Our Salvation is of Grace.

I. Consider how we are saved through faith.

1. Without faith we cannot be saved.
2. All who have faith will be saved.

II. What place and influence works have in our salvation.

1. In what sense our salvation is not of works.
(1) We are not saved by works considered as a fulfilment of the original law of nature.
(2) We are not saved by virtue of any works done before faith in Christ, for none of these are properly good.
2. There is a sense in which good works are of absolute necessity to salvation.
(1) They are necessary as being radically included in that faith by which we are saved.
(2) A temper disposing us to good works is a necessary qualification for heaven.
(3) Works are necessary as evidences of our faith in Christ and of our title to heaven.
(4) Good works essentially belong to religion.
(5) Works are necessary to adorn our professions and honour our religion before men.
(6) By them we are to be judged in the great day of the Lord.

III. The necessity of works does not diminish the grace of God in our salvation nor afford us any pretence for boasting.

1. Humility essentially belongs to the Christian temper.
2. The mighty preparation God has made for our recovery teaches that the human race is of great importance in the scale of rational beings and in the scheme of Gods universal government.
3. It infinitely concerns us to comply with the proposals of the gospel.
4. Let no man flatter himself that he is in a state of salvation as long as he lives in the neglect of good works.
5. Let us be careful that we mistake not the nature of good works.Lathrop.

Eph. 2:8. True Justifying Faith is not of Ourselves.It is through grace that we believe in the grace of God. Gods grace and love, the source; faith, the instrument; both His gift. The origin of our coming to Christ is of God. Justifying faith, not human assent, but a powerful, vivifying thing which immediately works a change in the man and makes him a new creature, and leads him to an entirely new and altered mode of life and conduct. Hence justifying faith is a divine work.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

(4) Rich in mercy.Not only merciful, but rich in the multitude of mercy, as attaching even to those dead in sin (see Chrysostom on this passage). The idea of richness in grace, glory, mercy, is especially frequent in this Epistle. (See Eph. 1:7; Eph. 1:18; Eph. 2:7; Eph. 3:8; Eph. 3:16.)

For his great love.Again, as in Eph. 1:4, stress is laid on the love of God, before all else, as the one moving cause of salvation. (Comp. Rom. 5:8, God commendeth His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.)

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

4-8. This passage is a pictorial parallel with Eph 1:20-23; and a pictorial contrast with Eph 2:1-3.

The parallel is drawn between the corporeal death, resurrection, and enthronement of Christ, and the death in sin and co-resurrection and co-enthronement of the Church with him. That a parallelism is intended, overlooked though it has been by commentators, is plain both from the progress of the two pictures and from the sameness of the terms used: raised sit heavenly places. And then parallel with the permanent glory of Eph 2:21-22, is the ages to come of glorious showing.

The contrast with Eph 2:1-3 is striking. They were dead in sin, in accord with Satan: whose power was in the lower air; they are raised and co-enthroned in accord with Christ in the heavenly places. And the perception of both this parallelism and this contrast enables us to decide the question, mooted by commentators, whether the death and resurrection here are only present and spiritual or also bodily. The entirety of our death by sin, namely, spiritual, bodily, and eternal, and the correspondent entire salvation, must be included in one conception. For it is this that is to be shown to the ages to come, Eph 2:7.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

4. God It is to be remembered, according to our introductory Plan, page 253, that Paul is giving the divine side of man’s salvation in the whole of these first two chapters. Here he emphasizes, God, mercy, and grace, with persistent force and earnestness.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, (by grace you are those who are saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus.’

‘But God.’ Here is the great turning point. In the midst of man’s sinfulness and subservience to evil God stepped in. He did not leave mankind without hope, walking in darkness, not knowing where they were going. Instead He intervened because He is rich in mercy, and because He has set His love on us. Thus Paul now stresses again the abounding riches of the mercy of God and the greatness of His love for us. It is these, and these alone, that can explain why, when we were dead in sins, He exercised the greatness of His power (Eph 1:19) and gave us new life, and raised us up with Him, and made us sit with Him in heavenly places, giving us spiritual life that we might know Him.

‘Being rich in mercy.’ Elsewhere we read, ‘according to His mercy He saved us’ (Tit 3:5). Here the richness of that mercy is stressed. This mercy is within His sovereign will (Rom 9:15-18), and it abounds towards us, so that Paul himself could never forget that he had obtained mercy in this way (1Ti 1:13; 1Ti 1:16), with the result that the plea for mercy for others is often contained in his salutations. Here we learn of God’s overflowing mercy, of His boundless activity which results from His compassion towards the undeserving, towards us and all who are His.

‘For His great love with which He loved us.’ His love was central to the exercise of His saving power. He so loved that He gave His only Son (Joh 3:16) and John exults continually at the greatness of that love (1Jn 3:1; 1Jn 4:9), while Paul tells us that God commends His love towards us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Rom 5:8). What greater love could there be than that? Grace is indeed love acting on behalf of the undeserving, and here again we learn of His overflowing and abounding love.

‘Even when we were dead through our trespasses.’ The suggestion appears to be that because we were ‘dead’ we were unwilling and unable to respond. We had no spiritual life. We had constantly deviated from what was right and it had worked death within us. We continually ignore Him in our daily lives. Thus because of our parlous state He had to step in and to force the issue.

‘Made us alive together with Christ.’ And how did He do it? He ‘made us alive.’ The word of God spoke to our hearts and the Holy Spirit worked a new birth within us. We were born from above (Joh 3:5) We experienced the ‘washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit’ (Tit 3:5). We were ‘begotten again to a living hope’ (1Pe 1:3). We were ‘begotten again — of incorruptible seed through the word of God which lives and abides’ (1Pe 1:23). We were begotten ‘of His own will –by the word of truth’ (Jas 1:18). It was like the dead earth producing life after an abundant fall of rain, the ‘drenching’ (baptizo) of the Holy Spirit (which is what baptism illustrates). Thus were we ‘made alive’ by Him.

‘Together with Christ.’ And it happened in Christ. Spiritually we rose because He rose. The power of His resurrection was released to give us life (Php 3:10; Rom 6:8-9), and we are now alive from the dead (Rom 6:13) and live our lives by the power of His risen life (Gal 2:20; Rom 5:10; Rom 6:10-11). ‘The hour comes and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live,’ Jesus had said (Joh 5:25) , and that hour has now come for us who are His. We live as those who are risen from the dead, walking in newness of life in the spiritual sphere (Rom 6:4), which then reflects itself in the physical sphere. So Father, Son and Holy Spirit unite in giving us life.

This ‘making alive’ indicates the commencement of the Christian life, and is therefore speaking of a genuine present, personal experience in the life of each believer. We may not always ‘feel’ it but it is at work within us nevertheless (Php 2:13). It is often suggested that while what Paul is describing in Eph 1:19-22 actually happened to Jesus Christ, it only ‘potentially’ happened to us. But that is not what Paul is saying. Rather he is making clear that it is more than that, that it is something that is actuated in experience. There are, in other words, two aspects to what he is describing. One the present aspect which we experience through the Spirit as he opens up a new spiritual world and we enter in and live in it (‘Heaven above is softer blue, earth beneath is sweeter green, something lives in every hue, that Christless eyes have never seen’), and the second the final fulfilment when earth is left behind and we enter totally into that spiritual world at the coming of Christ when we will be ‘changed’ or resurrected (1Th 4:14-17) and see Him as He is (1Jn 3:2) and spend eternity with Him (Rev 22:3-5).

‘By grace you are those who are saved.’ Lest this all seem to be too wonderful for us Paul interjects this comment, which he cannot keep back as he contemplates the graciousness of God. This is not something that we have attained for ourselves, he declares. This is not something we have earned or deserved. It is all as a result of God’s active grace, His undeserved, unmerited, active love and favour reaching out to us in saving power. It is ‘by His grace’ that we have been, and are therefore now saved, thus experiencing this glorious chain of events, commencing from new birth and finalising in glory.

‘And raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.’ If our being made alive with Him is actual in experience there is no doubt that this is so too. The point is not only that what happened to Him will one day happen to us because we are in Him, (although that is true), but that in a genuine sense it has already happened. We can ‘know Him and the power of His resurrection’ (Php 3:10). We can walk continually in His presence. We can experience continually the active power of His life at work within us and through us (Gal 2:20). And Eph 6:12 makes clear that even now, as we seek to stand against the wiles of the Devil (Eph 6:11), ‘our wrestling — is against — spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places’. Thus we are seen as already in  the heavenly places. And this is because when we responded and believed, we were not only made gloriously alive in Him through His Spirit, but were also raised with Him through His resurrection power and seated with Him in the heavenly places, and entered into a new sphere of existence, reigning in life through Christ (Rom 5:17). Into this sphere we are born as new-born babes (1Co 3:1; Heb 5:13; 1Pe 2:2) and within it we need continually to grow and mature (Eph 4:15; 1Pe 2:2; 2Pe 3:18).

Thus having entered into a new sphere of existence, we, as it were, live in two worlds. We live in the physical world, as we always have, but we now also live in a spiritual world where we are seated with Christ, Who is at God’s right hand (Eph 1:20). That means that in that world we experience the protection of His authority and power, and we know the power of His life. It is only because of this that we can hope to stand against the wiles of the Devil. (See on Eph 1:19-21). And it is from this world that we then go out as ambassadors for Christ, calling on the world to be reconciled to God (2Co 5:20). We are, through the Spirit, enjoying the earnest of our inheritance (Eph 1:14), the first sample and guarantee, until we finally receive the whole.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

God’s grace manifested toward the sinners:

v. 4. But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love where with he loved us,

v. 5. even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved,)

v. 6. and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

v. 7. that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

v. 8. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God;

v. 9. not of works, lest any man should boast.

v. 10. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Paul now introduces the subject of the sentence begun in v. 1. His thought is: God gave to us, who are now Christians, while we were still dead with reference to our trespasses, spiritual life. The reason for this is given: God, however, being rich in mercy, on account of the great love wherewith He loved us. In the entire passage there is not a word of merit on the part of man, the entire process of regeneration or conversion is ascribed to God alone. Because He was rich, is rich to this day, rich beyond all human understanding, in mercy, in free favor and benevolence toward fallen mankind, and by reason of the great love, a love entirely unmerited on our part, with which He loved us, therefore He showed us mercy. The same God who is angry, who must be angry with sin, is the God of grace, of a mercy that is so rich as to be exhaustless, Joh 3:16.

Now comes the great contrast: Even when we were dead by reason of transgressions, He made us alive with Christ, by grace you are saved. When we were in that terrible condition of spiritual death, as shown in our transgression of God’s holy Law, when we were without the faintest bit of saving knowledge of God, without fear, love, and trust in Him, when there was in us nothing but a total inability with regard to the things which pertain to our salvation, then God gave us life together with Christ. As Christ, by the life which He received in the grave, did not return to the former mode of living on earth, but entered into a new manner of existence, as He is now in a new, transfigured, spiritual, state and life, so we were made partakers of this life according to our spirit, when God quickened us from our spiritual death. The new life of regeneration is life out of the life of Christ. By this act of God salvation has been given to us, by the free grace in Christ, as Paul is careful to remark by way of parenthesis. Note the sharp and absolute contrast between death and life: one moment a person is dead, without the slightest evidence of life in any form, the next moment he is alive, with at least some show of life, even if that be expressed merely as a desire for salvation. One thing is clear: there is no intermediate stage, no neutral ground; the change from spiritual death to spiritual life is one step, and that step is the work of God alone.

So wonderful is this process that the apostle expatiates upon it: And He has raised us with Him and placed us with Him in the heavenly regions in Christ Jesus. Just as Christ, as true man, was raised from the dead and placed at the right hand of God, where He now leads a heavenly mode of existence, 1Co 15:48, so we, by our conversion, have become partakers of the same essence. Our mind is now set, inclined, toward heavenly things. The exalted Christ has elevated our spirit into the spiritual, divine, heavenly life, all by means of the Gospel of our salvation, chap. 1:13.

God’s purpose in working regeneration in us in this manner is finally stated: That He might show in the ages that are coming the superabundant wealth of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Our salvation here in time is an advance payment, earnest-money, assuring us of the last and most perfect manifestation of God’s grace, which lies beyond the present age and world. When the ages of this world come to an end and the period of eternity dawns upon us, then we, who were by nature children of wrath, but now partakers of God’s grace in Christ, shall experience the full riches of the grace of God. In Christ Jesus, our Redeemer and Mediator, we shall then receive the full benevolence and kindness of God in all eternity, we shall see the face of our heavenly Father and taste and see the beauty of the Lord, world without end.

All these wonderful blessings are gifts of God’s free grace: For by the grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, God’s is the gift, not of works, that no. one should glory. By and in our regeneration and conversion we have been made partakers of the salvation gained by Christ; by being awakened from spiritual death and given the life in and with Christ, we have become justified before God. All this is a work of God’s free grace, transmitted to us through the hand of faith; we are thus regenerated, justified, by faith. In our heart, which was spiritually dead, God has enkindled the flame of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And this flame, just as soon as it sent up the first spark and began to glow, spread life throughout the formerly dead and cold members. Thus faith is the beginning of the new spiritual life. In this work of spiritual regeneration, of quickening to new life, all cooperation on the part of man is expressly and emphatically excluded. God’s free gift and gracious present it is, not a reward for works performed by man by which he might have made himself worthy of being regenerated in the sight of God; no merit in us was considered, even had there been anything to point to in this respect, all boasting on the part of man is cut off absolutely. On our part we have not contributed even the slightest part toward our conversion, neither was it occasioned by any doing or conduct on our part. “That the glory of that salvation belongs wholly to God and in no degree to man, and that it has been so planned and so effected as to take from us all ground for boasting, is enforced on Paul’s hearers again and again, in different connections, with anxious concern and utmost plainness of expression, Rom 3:17; 1Co 1:29; 1Co 4:7; Gal 6:14; Php_3:3 .”

And another fact is adduced by Paul to show that we Christians have no reason to make the advantages which we enjoy before others a matter of boasting: For His handiwork we are, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before that we should walk in them. The emphasis again is on the side of God; it is God who gave us the position which we hold as Christians. It is God, also, who performed the work of the new creation in us, so that we are in the fullest sense of the word the work of His hands, fashioned by Him in Christ Jesus, through whose redemption and life we have received the new spiritual life. By virtue of this new life, which is here again, in its totality, ascribed to the creative power of God, we are prepared for good works, we are able and ready to perform such deeds as are pleasing to our heavenly Father. These good works, which are the evidence of the new creature in us, by which our Christianity is tested and approved, have been made ready and set forth by God before we ever thought of performing them. God is the unseen Source from which the good works spring, His creative power is their final explanation. And by and through our fellowship with Christ these good works are performed in us; Christ, in whom we live and move and have our being, makes us partakers of His gifts and virtues, is expressed in our life and conduct; Christ’s holiness, purity, humility, meekness, benevolence, and kindness appear in the lives of the Christians. And so all glorying on the part of the believers is excluded, as a matter of fact is never indulged in. A true Christian does not even boast of the good works which it is his privilege to perform, knowing that it is the power of Christ and God in him that enables him to follow the example of Christ.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Eph 2:4. But God, This connects the present verse admirably well with that immediatelypreceding,andmakesthepartsofthat incidental discourse cohere; which ending in this verse, St. Paul, in the beginning of Eph 2:5, takes up the thread of his general discourse again, as if nothing had come between. See on Eph 2:1.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Eph 2:4 . Now begins, after the intervening clauses, Eph 2:2-3 , the resumption, and that with the subject , which Paul already had in mind at Eph 2:1 . See on Eph 2:1 . It is not, however, by , but by , that the thought is taken up again, because that which is now to be spoken of (the abundant compassion of God) stands in an adversative relation to what has been said in the relative clauses. See Klotz, ad Devar. p. 377.

. . .] The connection is: God, however , since He is rich in mercy, has for His much love’s sake made us alive in Christ . As to the distinction between and , see on Rom 9:15 . On , comp. 1Co 1:5 ; Jas 2:5 ; 2Co 9:11 ; 1Ti 6:18 .

. ] namely, in order to satisfy it . [140] Luther erroneously renders: through His great love. The Vulgate, rightly: propter , etc. Comp. Phm 1:8 . We may add that not is to be written, but , as at Eph 1:6 .

. .] as in Joh 17:26 . Comp. the classical , Lobeck, Paral . p. 516. The manifestation of the divine love thereby meant is the atoning death of Christ, in which, in pursuance of the abundance of the divine compassion, the great love of God communicated itself to us. Rom 5:18 ; Joh 3:16 ; Eph 5:2 ; Eph 5:25 .

] After the glance has extended from the readers (Eph 2:1-2 ) also to the Jewish Christians (Eph 2:3 ), the resumption of the object with now embraces both , the Jewish and Gentile Christians.

[140] The great love of God, who is rich in mercy towards the wretched, was the motive for not leaving them to their misery, but, etc. The is thus related to the as the species to the genus .

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 2098
THE RICHES OF DIVINE GRACE DISPLAYED

Eph 2:4-7. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ 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.

WHAT an accumulation of sublime ideas is here presented to our view! Well might the Psalmist say that the meditation of God was sweet to him. We scarcely know whether to admire more the grace of the Benefactor, or the felicity of those who participate his blessings. But the text requires us to fix our attention on that most delightful of all subjects, the riches of divine grace. The Apostle has in the preceding verses described the state of the unregenerate world. He now displays the grace of God towards the regenerate,

I.

In its source

God is rich in mercy, and abundant in love
[Mercy and love are, as it were, the favourite attributes of the Deity [Note: Exo 34:6-7.]: and the exercise of these perfections is peculiarly grateful to him [Note: Mic 7:18.]. There is an inexhaustible fountain of them in the heart of God [Note: Rom 10:12.]: they have flowed down upon the most unworthy of the human race; and will flow undiminished to all eternity. While he retains his nature, he cannot but exercise these perfections [Note: 1Jn 4:8.].]

These are the true sources of all the grace displayed towards fallen man
[Man had nothing in him whereby he could merit the attention of his Maker. He was fallen into the lowest state of guilt and misery: but the bowels of his Creator yearned over him [Note: In this view, Gods solicitude to find Adam, and his affectionate (perhaps plaintive) inquiry after him, Gen 3:9. are very striking.]. God felt (if we may so speak) an irresistible impulse of compassion towards him [Note: We may conceive of God as expressing himself in the language of the prophet. Hos 11:8-9.]. Hence was it that the Son of God was sent into the world [Note: Joh 3:16.]: hence also were so many offers of mercy made to man; and to this alone is it owing that so much as one has ever found acceptance with God.]

But, to judge how great the love was wherewith he loved us, we must trace it,

II.

In its operations

The grace of God has been displayed towards us in ten thousand ways; but we must confine our attention to its operations, as they are set forth in the text.
God has quickened us even when we were dead in sins
[What is meant by dead in sins, appears from the preceding verses. We were walking according to the course of this world; we were the willing servants of Satan; we were indulging all kinds of filthiness, both of flesh and spirit; we were demonstrating ourselves to be by nature as well as practice, children of wrath; and we were utterly destitute of all power to help and save ourselves [Note: Rom 5:6.]. Yet even then did God look upon us in tender compassion [Note: This may be illustrated by Eze 16:4-6.]: he quickened us by the same Spirit whereby he raised Christ from the dead [Note: Compare 1Pe 3:18. with Rom 8:11.]. In so doing, he united us together with Christ, and rendered us conformable to him as our Head. What an astonishing instance of divine grace was this!]

He has also raised us up, and enthroned us together with Christ in heaven
[The Apostle had before expatiated on what God had wrought for Christ [Note: Eph 1:19-20. quickened, raised, enthroned.]: he now draws a parallel between believers and Christ. What was done for Christ our head and representative, may be considered as done for all the members of his mystical body. In this view Christians may be considered figuratively as risen with Christ, and as already seated on his throne: their hearts, their conversation, their rest, is in heaven [Note: Col 3:1-2. Php 3:20.]. How has he thus verified the declaration of Hannah [Note: 1Sa 2:8.]!How has he thus discovered the exceeding riches of his grace!]

How worthy of God such a stupendous display of grace is, we shall see if we consider it,

III.

In its end

God is not only the author, but also the end of all things [Note: Rom 11:36.]; nor would it become him to do any thing but with a view to his own glory. The manifestation of his own glory was the express end for which he revealed his grace [Note: Eph 1:6.], and this end is already in some measure attained

[All ages, to the end of time, must admire the grace of God towards both the Jewish and the Gentile world. Every one, who partakes of that grace, must of necessity admire it: the exceeding riches of it are unsearchable. Gods kindness too is infinitely enhanced by flowing to us through Christ Jesus. The price paid by Christ will to eternity endear to us the blessings purchased: at present, however, the design of God in revealing his grace is not fully answered.]
But it will be completely answered in the day of judgment
[Then, how exceeding rich and glorious will this grace appear! Then the depth of misery, into which we were fallen, will be more fully known; the spring and source of that grace will be more clearly discovered; and all the operations will be seen in one view. Then Christ, the one channel in which it flows, will be more intimately revealed to us. How will every eye then admire, and every tongue then adore! Surely nothing but such an end could account for such operations of the Divine grace; let every one therefore seek to experience these operations in his own soul. Let those who have been favoured with them glorify God with their whole hearts.]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,

Ver. 4. But God, who is rich in mercy ] Such a mercy as rejoiceth against judgment, as a man against his adversary which he hath subdued,Jas 2:13Jas 2:13 .

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

4 .] The construction is resumed, having been interrupted (see above on Eph 2:1 ) by the two relative sentences, . But (contrast to the preceding verse, the and , to the just mentioned, is, however, often used after a parenthesis where no such logical contrast is intended, the very resumption of the general subject being a contrast to its interruption by the particular clauses: see examples in Klotz, Devarius, II. 376, 7) God, being rich (the participial clause states the general ground, and the following . . ., the special or peculiar motive, of ., De W.) in compassion (for , see reff. , (Psa 5:7 ; Psa 68:13 ) . ( Psa 1:1 ) , Chrys. , properly, as applying to our wretchedness before: cf. Eze 16:6 ), on account of His great love wherewith (the construction may be attractive: but it would appear from ref. 2 Kings, to be rather a Hellenistic idiom) He loved us (the clause belongs, not to . ., as Calv., al., and E. V. necessarily, by ‘ hath quickened ’ following; but to the verb below. are all Christians ; = in the last verse) even when we were dead (the belongs to, and intensifies, the state predicated by ; and is therefore placed before the participle. It is not to be taken as a mere resumption of Eph 2:1 (Rck., al.), nor as the copula only (Meyer). His objection to the above rendering, that a quickening to life can happen only in and from a state of death, and therefore no emphasis on such a state is required, is entirely removed by noticing that the emphasis is not on the mere fact , but on . , with all its glorious consequences) in our ( , the . which we committed) trespasses (see on Eph 2:1 ), vivified (not ‘ hath vivified’ a definite act in time, not an abiding consequence is spoken of) us together with Christ (the reading . . (see var. readd.) seems to have arisen either from repetition of the – in , or from conformation to Eph 2:6 .

It is clearly not allowable to render , in Christ , as Beza, without the preposition. It is governed by the -, and implies not exactly as Chrys., , but that Christ was THE RESURRECTION and the Life, and we follow in and because of Him. The disputes about the meaning have arisen from not bearing in mind the relation in N. T. language between natural and spiritual death. We have often had occasion to observe that spiritual death in the N. T. includes in it and bears with it natural death as a consequence, to such an extent that this latter is often not thought of as worth mentioning: see especially Joh 11:25-26 , which is the key-text for all passages regarding life in Christ. So here God vivified us together with Christ: in the one act and fact of His resurrection He raised all His people to spiritual life, and in that to victory over death, both spiritual, and therefore necessarily physical also. To dispute therefore whether such an expression as this is past (spiritual), or future (physical), is to forget that the whole includes its parts. Our spiritual life is the primary subject of the Apostle’s thought: but this includes in itself our share in the resurrection and exaltation ( Eph 2:6 ) of Christ. The three aorists, , , , are all proleptical as regards the actuation in each man, but equally describe a past and accomplished act on God’s part when He raised up Christ) by grace ye are saved (this insertion in the midst of the mention of such great unmerited mercies to us sinners, is meant emphatically to call the reader’s attention to so cogent a proof of that which the Apostle ever preached as the great foundation truth of the Gospel. Notice the perf. ‘ are saved,’ not , ‘are being saved,’ because we have passed from death unto life: salvation is to the Christian not a future but a past thing, realized in the present by faith) and raised us together with Him (the Resurrection of Christ being the next event consequent on His vivification in the tomb) and seated us together with Him (the Ascension being the completion of the Resurrection. So that all three verbs refer strictly to the same work wrought on Christ, and in Christ on all His mystical Body, the Church) in the heavenly places (see on ch. Eph 1:3 ; Eph 1:20 . “Obiter observa, non dixisse Apostolum: ‘ et consedere fecit ad dexteram suam ,’ sicut superiori capite de Christo dixerat: sedere enim ad dexteram Patris Christo proprium est; nec cuiquam alteri communicatur: tametsi in throno Christi dicantur sessuri qui vicerint, Apoc. iii. in fine.” Estius: and so Bengel) in Christ Jesus (as again specifying the element in which, as united and included in which, we have these blessings which have been enumerated . as in ch. Eph 1:3 , does not (Eadie) belong to . . but to the verb, as an additional qualification, and recalling to the fact of our union in Him as the medium of our resurrection and glorification. The disputes as to whether these are to be taken as present or future, actual or potential, literal or spiritual, will easily be disposed of by those who have apprehended the truth of the believer’s union in and with Christ. All these we have, in fact and reality (see Php 3:20 ), in their highest, and therefore in all lower senses, in Him: they were ours, when they were His: but for their fulness in possession we are waiting till He come, when we shall be like and with Him),

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Eph 2:4 . , : but God (or, God, however), being rich in mercy . A return is now made to the statement which was interrupted at Eph 2:2 . The resumption might have been made by . The adversative , however, is the more appropriate, as the other side of our case is now to be set forth the Divine grace which meets the sinful, condemned condition, and which stands over the dark background of our death by sin and our subjection by nature to the Divine wrath. God who is wroth with sin, is a God of grace. His disposition towards those who are dead by trespasses and sins is one of mercy, and this no stinted mercy, but a mercy that is rich , exhaustless (for , , etc., cf. 1Co 1:5 ; 2Co 9:11 ; 1Ti 6:17-18 ; Jas 2:5 ). : by reason of His great love wherewith He loved us . The use of the cogn. acc. adds to the force of the idea; cf. the use of the same phrase by our Lord Himself with reference to His Father’s love, Joh 17:26 . If mercy is God’s attitude to sinful men, love is His motive in all that He does with them; and as the mercy is “rich” so the love is “great”. With this great love God loved us when He chose us, and it is on account of that love (not “through” it, as Luther puts it) that He acts with us as He does. The has the widest sense here all of us, whether Jew or Gentile.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

EPHESIANS

THE RESURRECTION OF DEAD SOULS

Eph 2:4-5

Scripture paints man as he is, in darker tints, and man as he may become, in brighter ones, than are elsewhere found. The range of this portrait painter’s palette is from pitchiest black to most dazzling white, as of snow smitten by sunlight. Nowhere else are there such sad, stern words about the actualities of human nature; nowhere else such glowing and wonderful ones about its possibilities. This Physician knows that He can cure the worst cases, if they will take His medicine, and is under no temptation to minimise the severity of the symptoms or the fatality of the disease. We have got both sides in my text; man’s actual condition, ‘dead in trespasses’; man’s possible condition, and the actual condition of thousands of men-made to live again in Jesus Christ, and with Him raised from the dead, and with Him gone up on high, and with Him sitting at God’s right hand. That is what you and I may be if we will; if we will not, then we must be the other.

So there are three things here to look at for a few moments-the dead souls; the pitying love that looks down upon them; and the resurrection of the dead.

I. First, here is a picture, a dogmatic statement if you like, about the actual condition of human nature apart from Jesus Christ-’Dead in trespasses.’

The Apostle looks upon the world-many-coloured, full of activity, full of intellectual stir, full of human emotions, affections, joys, sorrows, fluctuations-as if it were one great cemetery, and on every gravestone there were written the same inscription. They all died of the same disease-’dead through sin,’ as the original more properly means.

Now, I dare say many who are listening to me are saying in their hearts, ‘Oh! Exaggeration! The old gloomy, narrow view of human nature cropping up again.’ Well, I am not at all unwilling to acknowledge that truths like this have very often been preached both with a tone and in a manner that repels, and which is rightly chargeable with exaggeration and undue gloom and narrowness. But let me remind you that it is not the Evangelical preacher nor the Apostle only who have to bear the condemnation of exaggeration, if this representation of my text be not true to facts, but it is Jesus Christ too; for He says, ‘Except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have no life in you.’ And I think that be He divine or not divine, His words about the religious condition of men go so surely to the mark that a man must be tolerably impregnable in his self-conceit who charges Him with narrowness and exaggeration. At all events, I am content to say after Him, and I pray that you and I, when we accept Him as our Teacher, may take not only His gracious, but His stern, words, assured that a deep graciousness lies in these, too, if we rightly understand them.

Let me remind you that the phrase of my text is by no means confined to Christian teachers, but that, in common speech, we hear from all high thinkers about the lower type of humanity being dead to the loftier thoughts in which they live and move and have their being. It has passed into a commonplace of language to speak of men being ‘dead to honour,’ ‘dead to shame,’ ‘dead’ to this, that, and the other good and noble and gracious thing. And the same metaphor, if you like, lies here in my text-that men who have given their wills and inmost natures over to the dominion of self-and that is the definition of sin-that such men are, ipso facto, by reason of that very surrender of themselves to their worst selves, dead on what I may call the top side of their nature, and that all that is there is atrophied and dwindling away.

Unconsciousness is one characteristic of death. And oh! as I look round I know that there are tens, and perhaps hundreds, of men and women who are all but utterly unconscious of a whole universe in which are the only realities, and to which it becomes them to have access. You live, in the physical sense, and move and have your being in God, and yet your inmost life would not be altered one hair’s-breadth if there were no God at all. You pass the most resplendent instances and illustrations of His presence, His work, and you see nothing. You are blind on that side of your natures; or, as my text says, dead to the whole spiritual realm. Just as if there were a brick wall run against some man’s windows so that he could see nothing out of them; so you, by your persistent adherence to the paltry present, the material, the visible, the selfish, have reared up a wall against the windows of your souls that look heavenwards; and of God, and all the lofty starry realities that cluster round Him, you are as unconscious as the corpse upon its bier is of the sunshine that plays upon its pallid features, or of the dew that falls on its stiffened limbs. Dead, because of sin-is that exaggeration? Is it exaggeration which charges all but absolute unconsciousness of spiritual realities upon worldly men like some of you?

And, then, take another illustration. Another of the signatures of death is inactivity. And oh! what faculties in some of my friends listening to me now are shrivelled and all but extinct! They are dormant, at any rate, to use another word, for the death of my text is not so absolute a death but that a resurrection is possible, and so dormant comes to express pretty nearly the same thing. Faculties of service, of enthusiasm, of life for God, of noble obedience to Him-what have you done with them? Left them there until they have stiffened like an unused lock, or rusted like the hinges of an unopened door; and you are as little active in all the noblest activities of spirit, which are activities in submission to and dependence upon Him, as if you were laid in your coffin with your idle hands crossed for evermore upon an unheaving breast.

There is another illustration that I may suggest for a moment. Decay is another characteristic and signature of death. And your best self, in some of you, is rotting to corruption by sin.

Ay! Dear brethren, when we think of these tragedies of suicide that are going on in thousands of men round about us to-day, it seems to me as if the metaphor and the reality were reversed; and instead of saying that my text is a violent metaphor, transferring the facts of material death and corruption to the spiritual realm, I am almost disposed to say it is the other way about, and the real death is the death of the spirit; and the outer dissolution and unconsciousness and inactivity of the material body is only a kind of parable to preach to men what are the awful invisible facts ever associated with the fact of transgression.

There are three lives possible for each of us; two of them involuntary, the third requiring our consent and effort, but all of them sustained by the same cause. The first of them is that which we call life, the activity and the consciousness of the bodily frame; and that continues as long as the power of God keeps the body in life. When He withdraws His hand there comes what the senses call death. Then there is the natural life of thinking, loving, willing, enjoying, sorrowing, and the like, and that continues as long as He who is the life and light of men breathes into them the breath of that life. And these two are lived or died largely without the man’s own consent or choice.

But there is a third life, when all that lower is lifted to God, and thinking and willing and loving and enjoying and aspiring and trusting and obeying, and all these natural faculties find their home and their consecration and their immortality in Him. That life is only lived by our own will and it is the true life, and the others are, as I said, but parables, and envelopes, and vehicles, as it were, in which this life is carried, that is more precious than they. In the physical realm, separate the body from God, and it dies. In the natural conscious life, separate the soul, as we call it, from God, and it dies. And in the higher region, separate the spirit, which is the man grasping God, from God, and he dies; and that is the real death. Both the others are nothing in comparison with it.

It may co-exist with a large amount of intellectual and other forms of activity, as we see all round about us, and that makes it only the more ghastly and the sadder. You are full of energy in regard to all other subjects, but smitten into torpor about the highest; ready to live, to work, to enjoy, to think, to will, in all other directions, and utterly unconscious and unconcerned, or all but utterly unconscious and unconcerned, in regard to God.

Oh! a death which is co-existent with such feverish intensity of life as the most of you are expending all the week at your business and your daily pursuits is among the saddest of all the tragedies that angels are called upon to weep over, and that men are fools enough to enact. Brother! If the representation is a gloomy one, do not you think that it is better to ask the question-Is it a true one? than, Is it a cheerful one? I lay it upon your hearts that he that lives to God and with God is alive to the centre as well as out to the finger tips and circumference of his visible being. He that is dead to God is dead indeed whilst he lives.

II. Now, notice, in the second place, the pitying love that looks down on the cemetery.

‘God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us.’ Thus the great truth that is taught us here, first of all, is that that divine love of the Divine Father bends down over His dead children and cherishes them still. Oh! you can do much in separating yourselves from God through selfishness, selfwill, sensuality, or other forms of sin, but there is one thing you cannot do, you cannot prevent His loving you. If I might venture without seeming irreverent, I would point to that pathetic page in the Old Testament history where the king hears of the death, red-handed in treason, of his darling son, and careless of victory and forgetful of everything else, and oblivious that Absalom was a rebel, and only remembering that he was his boy, burst into that monotonous wail that has come down over all the centuries as the deepest expression of undying fatherly love. ‘Oh! my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Oh! Absalom, my son, my son!’ The name and the relationship will well up out of the Father’s heart, whatever the child’s crime. We are all His Absaloms, and though we are dead in trespasses and in sins, God, who is rich in mercy, bends over us and loves us with His great love.

The Apostle might well expatiate in these two varying forms of speech, both of them intended to express the same thing-’rich in mercy’ and ‘great in love.’ For surely a love which takes account of the sin that cannot repel it, and so shapes itself into mercy, sparing, and departing from the strict line of retribution and justice, is great. And surely a mercy which refuses to be provoked by seventy times seven transgressions in an hour, not to say a day, is rich. That mercy is wider than all humanity, deeper than all sin, was before all rebellion, and will last for ever. And it is open for every soul of man to receive if he will.

But there is another point to be noticed in reference to this wonderful manifestation of the divine love looking down upon the myriads of men dead in sin, and that is that this love shapes the divine action. Mark the language of our text, in which the Apostle attributes a certain line of conduct in the divine dealings with us to the fact of His great love. Because ‘He loved us’ therefore He did so and so. Now about that I have only two remarks to make, and I will make them very briefly. The one is, here is a demonstration, for some of you people who do not believe in the Evangelical doctrine of an Atonement by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that the true scriptural representation of that doctrine is not that which caricaturists have represented it-viz. that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ changed in any manner the divine heart and disposition. It is not as unfriendly critics who, perhaps, are not to be so much blamed for their unfriendliness as for their superficiality would have us to believe, that the doctrine of Atonement says that God loves because Christ died. But the Apostle who preached that doctrine and looked upon it as the very heart and centre of his message to the world here puts as the true sequence-Christ died because God loves. Jesus Christ said the same thing, ‘God so loved the world that He sent His Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should be saved.’

And that brings me to the second of the remarks which I wish briefly to make-viz. this, that the Divine Love, great, patient, wonderful, unrepelled by men’s sin, as it is, has to adopt a process to reach its end. God by His love does not, because He cannot, raise these dead souls into a life of righteousness without Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ comes to be the channel and the medium through which the love of God may attain its end. God’s pitying love, because ‘He is rich in mercy,’ is not turned away by man’s sin; and God’s pitying love, because ‘He is rich in mercy,’ quickens men not by a bare will, but by the mission and work of His dear Son.

III. And so that is the last thing on which I speak a word-viz. the resurrection of the dead souls.

They died of sin. That was the disease that killed them. They cannot be quickened unless the disease be conquered. Dear brethren, I have to preach-not to argue, but to preach-and to press upon each soul the individual acceptance of the Death of Jesus Christ as being for each of us, if we will trust Him, the death of our death, and the death of our sin. By His great sacrifice and sufficient oblation He has borne the sins of the world and has taken away their guilt. And in Him the inmost reality of the spiritual death, and its outermost parable of corporeal dissolution, are equally and simultaneously overcome. If you will take Him for your Lord you will rise from the death of guilt, condemnation, selfishness, and sin into a new life of liberty, sonship, consecration, and righteousness, and will never see death.

And, on the other hand, the life of Jesus Christ is available for all of us. If we will put our trust in Him, His life will pass into our deadness; He Himself will vitalise our being, dormant capacities will be quickened and brought into blessed activity, a new direction will be given to the old faculties, desires, aspirations, emotions of our nature. The will will tower into new power because it obeys. The heart will throb with a better life because it has grasped a love that cannot change and will never die. And the thinking power will be brought into living, personal contact with the personal Truth, so that whatsoever darknesses and problems may still be left, at the centre there will be light and satisfaction and peace. You will live if you trust Christ and let Him be your Life.

And if thus, by simple faith in Him, knowing that the power of His atoning death has destroyed the burden of our guilt and condemnation, and knowing the quickening influences of His constraining love as drawing us to love new things and make us new creatures, we receive into our inmost spirits ‘the law of the spirit of life’ which was in Christ Jesus, and are thereby made ‘free from the law of sin and death,’ then it is only a question of time, when the vitalising force shall flow into all the cracks and crannies of our being and deliver us wholly from the bondage of corruption in the outer as well as in the inner life; for they who have learned that Christ is the life of their lives upon earth can never cease their appropriation of the fulness of His quickening power until He has ‘changed the body of their humiliation into the likeness of the body of His glory, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue even all things unto Himself.’

Brethren! He Himself has said, and His words I beseech you to remember though you forget all mine, ‘He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and he that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.’ ‘Believest thou this?’

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

God. App-98.

Who is = being.

mercy. Compare Rom 9:23.

for = on account of. App-104. Eph 2:2.

love, loved. App-135.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

4.] The construction is resumed, having been interrupted (see above on Eph 2:1) by the two relative sentences, . But (contrast to the preceding verse,-the and , to the just mentioned, is, however, often used after a parenthesis where no such logical contrast is intended, the very resumption of the general subject being a contrast to its interruption by the particular clauses: see examples in Klotz, Devarius, II. 376, 7) God, being rich (the participial clause states the general ground, and the following . . ., the special or peculiar motive, of ., De W.) in compassion (for , see reff. , (Psa 5:7; Psa 68:13) . (Psa 1:1) , Chrys. , properly, as applying to our wretchedness before: cf. Eze 16:6),-on account of His great love wherewith (the construction may be attractive: but it would appear from ref. 2 Kings, to be rather a Hellenistic idiom) He loved us (the clause belongs, not to . ., as Calv., al., and E. V. necessarily, by hath quickened following; but to the verb below. are all Christians; = in the last verse) even when we were dead (the belongs to, and intensifies, the state predicated by ; and is therefore placed before the participle. It is not to be taken as a mere resumption of Eph 2:1 (Rck., al.), nor as the copula only (Meyer). His objection to the above rendering, that a quickening to life can happen only in and from a state of death, and therefore no emphasis on such a state is required, is entirely removed by noticing that the emphasis is not on the mere fact ,-but on . , with all its glorious consequences) in our (, the . which we committed) trespasses (see on Eph 2:1), vivified (not hath vivified-a definite act in time, not an abiding consequence is spoken of) us together with Christ (the reading . . (see var. readd.) seems to have arisen either from repetition of the – in , or from conformation to Eph 2:6.

It is clearly not allowable to render , in Christ, as Beza,-without the preposition. It is governed by the -, and implies not exactly as Chrys., ,-but that Christ was THE RESURRECTION and the Life, and we follow in and because of Him. The disputes about the meaning have arisen from not bearing in mind the relation in N. T. language between natural and spiritual death. We have often had occasion to observe that spiritual death in the N. T. includes in it and bears with it natural death as a consequence, to such an extent that this latter is often not thought of as worth mentioning: see especially Joh 11:25-26, which is the key-text for all passages regarding life in Christ. So here-God vivified us together with Christ: in the one act and fact of His resurrection He raised all His people-to spiritual life, and in that to victory over death, both spiritual, and therefore necessarily physical also. To dispute therefore whether such an expression as this is past (spiritual), or future (physical), is to forget that the whole includes its parts. Our spiritual life is the primary subject of the Apostles thought: but this includes in itself our share in the resurrection and exaltation (Eph 2:6) of Christ. The three aorists, , , , are all proleptical as regards the actuation in each man, but equally describe a past and accomplished act on Gods part when He raised up Christ)-by grace ye are saved (this insertion in the midst of the mention of such great unmerited mercies to us sinners, is meant emphatically to call the readers attention to so cogent a proof of that which the Apostle ever preached as the great foundation truth of the Gospel. Notice the perf. are saved, not , are being saved, because we have passed from death unto life: salvation is to the Christian not a future but a past thing, realized in the present by faith)-and raised us together with Him (the Resurrection of Christ being the next event consequent on His vivification in the tomb) and seated us together with Him (the Ascension being the completion of the Resurrection. So that all three verbs refer strictly to the same work wrought on Christ, and in Christ on all His mystical Body, the Church) in the heavenly places (see on ch. Eph 1:3; Eph 1:20. Obiter observa, non dixisse Apostolum: et consedere fecit ad dexteram suam, sicut superiori capite de Christo dixerat: sedere enim ad dexteram Patris Christo proprium est; nec cuiquam alteri communicatur: tametsi in throno Christi dicantur sessuri qui vicerint, Apoc. iii. in fine. Estius: and so Bengel) in Christ Jesus (as again specifying the element in which, as united and included in which, we have these blessings which have been enumerated- . as in ch. Eph 1:3, does not (Eadie) belong to . . but to the verb, as an additional qualification, and recalling to the fact of our union in Him as the medium of our resurrection and glorification. The disputes as to whether these are to be taken as present or future, actual or potential, literal or spiritual, will easily be disposed of by those who have apprehended the truth of the believers union in and with Christ. All these we have, in fact and reality (see Php 3:20), in their highest, and therefore in all lower senses, in Him: they were ours, when they were His: but for their fulness in possession we are waiting till He come, when we shall be like and with Him),

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Eph 2:4. , rich) over all, Rom 10:12.–, in mercy-love) Mercy takes away misery; love confers salvation.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Eph 2:4

Eph 2:4

but God, being rich in mercy,-The preceding verses convey the idea of a rushing towards inevitable ruin, when all hope from man is hopeless. The but is very emphatic, and wonderfully reverses the picture. The sovereignty is very apparent on its gracious side. It interposes to rescue those who would otherwise plunge irretrievably into ruin. God, who is wroth with sin, is also a God of grace. His disposition towards those who are dead by trespasses and sins is one of mercy, and this no stinted mercy, but a mercy that is rich, exhaustless.

for his great love wherewith he loved us,-If mercy is Gods attitude to sinful men, love is his motive in all that he does with them; and as the mercy is rich, so the love is great. With this great love God loved us when he chose us, and it is on account of that love that he acts with us as he does.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

who: Eph 2:7, Eph 1:7, Eph 3:8, Exo 33:19, Exo 34:6, Exo 34:7, Neh 9:17, Psa 51:1, Psa 86:5, Psa 86:15, Psa 103:8-11, Psa 145:8, Isa 55:6-8, Dan 9:9, Jon 4:2, Mic 7:18-20, Luk 1:78, Rom 2:4, Rom 5:20, Rom 5:21, Rom 9:23, Rom 10:12, 1Ti 1:14, 1Pe 1:3

his: Deu 7:7, Deu 7:8, Deu 9:5, Deu 9:6, Jer 31:3, Eze 16:6-8, Joh 3:14-17, Rom 5:8, Rom 9:15, Rom 9:16, 2Th 2:13, 2Ti 1:9, Tit 3:4-7, 1Jo 4:10-19

Reciprocal: Gen 19:16 – the Lord Exo 15:13 – Thou Deu 9:4 – Speak not Deu 23:5 – because the Deu 33:3 – he loved Job 40:14 – that Psa 25:7 – for thy Psa 31:16 – save Psa 47:4 – whom Psa 59:10 – The God Psa 102:21 – General Psa 103:11 – as the Psa 103:17 – the mercy Psa 104:30 – sendest Psa 108:4 – thy mercy Psa 116:5 – Gracious Psa 119:17 – I may live Psa 143:11 – Quicken Isa 43:7 – for my Isa 54:10 – that hath Isa 55:1 – without money Isa 63:7 – according to his Hos 14:4 – I will love Joe 2:13 – for Zec 4:7 – Grace Zec 9:17 – how great is his goodness Mat 7:11 – how Mar 4:11 – Unto you Luk 2:14 – good Luk 15:17 – when Luk 18:27 – General Joh 3:5 – cannot Joh 6:37 – shall Joh 6:44 – except Joh 17:26 – that Act 20:24 – the gospel Rom 8:39 – love Rom 11:6 – And if Rom 12:1 – by the Gal 2:20 – nevertheless Phi 1:6 – begun Phi 2:13 – to will Col 2:12 – wherein Col 3:12 – beloved 1Th 1:4 – your election 1Th 1:5 – but 2Th 2:16 – which 2Ti 1:18 – mercy Tit 3:5 – by works Jam 1:18 – his own Jam 2:13 – and Jam 5:11 – the Lord is 1Jo 3:1 – what 1Jo 4:8 – God is Rev 1:5 – him

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

(Eph 2:4.) , -But God, being rich in mercy. The apostle resumes the thought started in Eph 2:1. The not only intimates this, but shows also that the thought about to be expressed is in contrast with that which occupies the immediately preceding verses. The fact of God’s mercy succeeds a description of man’s guilt and misery, and the transition from the one to the other is indicated by the particle . Hartung, vol. i. p. 173; Jelf, 767. Jerome rashly condemns the use of ; but Bodius stigmatizes the patristic critic as judging-nimis profecto audacter et hypercritice. signifies mercy, and is a term stronger and more practical than . It is not mere emotion, but emotion creating actual assistance-sympathy leading to succour. The participle does not seem to have here a causal significance, as such an idea is expressed by the following . And in this mercy God is rich. It has no scanty foothold in His bosom, for it fills it. Though mercy has been expended by God for six millenniums, and myriads of myriads have been partakers of it, it is still an unexhausted mine of wealth-

, -on account of His great love with which He loved us. The former clause describes the general source of blessing; this marks out a direct and special manifestation, and is in immediate connection with the following verb. On the use of a verb with its cognate noun carrying with it an intensity of meaning, the reader may turn to Eph 1:3; Eph 1:6; Eph 1:20; Winer, 32, 2; Khner, 547. The are Paul and his contemporary believers, and, of course, all possessing similar faith. That love is -great indeed; for a great God is its possessor, and great sinners are its objects. The adjective probably marks the quality of intensity; indeed, while its generic meaning remains, its specific allusion depends upon its adjuncts. The idea of frequency may thus be included, as it seems to be in some uses of the word-number being its radical meaning. , therefore, is love, the intensity of which has been shown in the fervour and frequency of its developments. See under Eph 1:5. And what can be higher proof than this-

Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians

Eph 2:4. Rich in mercy. Riches do not consist solely in the amount of one’s possessions, but also in the character of them. The richness of God’s mercy was indicated by the kind of love with which He regarded mankind while in the bondage of sin. This is the same thought that is the outstanding subject of the familiar but underestimated verse in Joh 3:16, where the word “so” has reference to the kind of love God had for the world.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Eph 2:4. But God. But resumes the main thought, yet not without an implied antithesis between those described in Eph 2:1-3, and God.

Being rich in mercy, Being as He is, not = who is, and not so strongly causal as because He is. Rich in mercy; comp. similar expressions in 1Co 1:5; 2Co 9:11; Jas 2:5. Mercy is more general than compassion (comp. Rom 9:15); both refer to Gods love toward sinners, as those who are miserable and need help.

Became of his great love wherewith he loved us. Strictly speaking, love is the general term, one of the forms of which is mercy; and this love belongs to Gods essence; comp. 1Jn 4:16. But here the whole phrase qualifies the verbs, quickened, etc., assigning the special ground for these actions; hence the reference is to love which has manifested itself, love for persons (us). It was to satisfy this love that He wrought the saving acts afterwards named. Bengel well says: mercy removes misery, love confers salvation. Us includes all believers, and is not to be limited to Jewish Christians.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

St. Paul having set forth that miserable state, which both Jews and Gentiles were in by nature, namely, dead in sins, and children of wrath; he doth next set forth their deliverance from that woeful estate, by the rich mercy and free grace of God: God, who is rich in mercy, &c.

Here observe, 1. The author of our deliverance, God; and the moving or impulsive cause of it, rich mercy and great love.

Where note, That God hath done more for us, infinitely more, than he did for the angels: he showed love to them, but mercy to us; they are vessels of honour, but we are vessels of mercy: the object of mercy, is a creature in distress and misery.

Note farther, That all the attributes in God are subjected to his love; this is the great prevailing attribute which sways all the rest: which way love goes, all attributes go; mercy, power, justice, and wisdom, they all work in subordination to love, they are at all love’s beck, and love sets them all on work for the good and benefit of the object loved.

Note, 3. That the love which God bears to the children of men, is a great love; and the mercy which was set on work by it, is rich mercy; his love so great, that it can never be expressed; his mercy so rich, that it can never be conceived: rich mercy is abundant mercy, inconceivable mercy, inexhaustible mercy, sure mercy.

Note,4. The blessed effects and fruits of this great love and rich mercy in God towards the Ephesians, in quickening them when dead, in saving them when lost, in doing all things for them when they had undone themselves; God, who is rich in mercy–even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.

Learn hence, That poor lost sinners do stand in need of all the riches of mercy that are in God, in order to their regeneration and salvation: if ever we be saved, it is the riches of mercy that must save us.

Note, 5. How the apostle ascribes the whole work of their salvation to God’s free grace, in opposition to any merit or worth in the persons to be saved: By grace ye are saved.

Learn hence, That the dependency our salvation has in the whole, and in all the parts of it, upon the free grace of God, is the great thing which St. Paul delighted to discover and make known to us here: By grace ye are saved; and he asserts it again, By grace, & c. Eph 2:8

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

In Christ Jesus

Just as God’s justice and righteousness called for wrath upon sinful man, his abundant mercy flowing out of his multi-faceted love caused him to make provision for lost mankind. He made that provision while Jew and Gentile were dead in sin, or spiritually separated from God. Those made alive through baptism have had God’s unmerited favor bestowed upon them and been saved through one action which was completed in the watery grave (2:4-5). Scripturally speaking, salvation can be in the future, based upon one’s obedience to the Lord’s will; in the present because of an act recently completed; or in heaven, the final home of the redeemed ( Mar 16:16 ; Act 2:47 ; 1Th 5:8-10 ; Heb 9:28 ). Thus, one can be spoken of as being a part of those who have been saved from their past sins yet still needing to act in a manner necessary to their ultimate salvation in heaven ( 1Co 5:1-5 ; Act 8:18-24 ).

Everyone who has been buried with Christ and come up out of the waters of baptism has been raised from spiritual death ( Colossians 1:1213 ). Remember, the church is God’s heavenly kingdom on earth ( Eph 1:3 ). When one is raised from the waters of baptism, he is placed in Christ Jesus, or in heavenly places, which is the church. God’s ultimate design for those “in Christ Jesus” is to show them clearly the great wealth of his grace in heaven. The “ages to come” appear to this writer to refer to the eons we will spend in heaven. Throughout that unending span of time we will be constantly reminded of God’s great unmerited favor for us by the joys which will surround us (2:6-7).

Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books

Eph 2:4-6. But God, who is rich in mercy That is, in compassion for us, amidst our sins and miseries, and in his free, gratuitous goodness and readiness to pardon the guilty, and save the lost: for his great love Of benevolence and bounty; wherewith he loved us When there was nothing in us but sin and misery to move him to do it. Love in God was the cause why he resolved to show mercy to certain descriptions of persons, namely, to such as should obey the gospel call to repentance, faith, and new obedience. Love is a desire to communicate good to us, considered as creatures; but mercy respects us as fallen into sin and misery; even when we Jews and Gentiles, and all men; were dead in sins See on Eph 2:1. Hath he quickened us Brought us into spiritual life, by begetting in us repentance unto life, and living faith, and in consequence thereof by justifying us, or reversing the sentence of condemnation to eternal death under which we lay, taking us also into his favour, and uniting us to himself, by giving us his quickening and renewing Spirit, in consequence of which our affections are set on things above, and we become spiritually minded, which is life and peace. Together with Christ In conformity to his resurrection from the dead, and by virtue of our relation to him and union with him. By grace ye are saved By Gods mere mercy, or undeserved goodness, which is the original source and moving cause of our salvation; and by the enlightening, quickening, and renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, the efficient cause of it. The apostle speaks indifferently either in the first or second person, the Jews and Gentiles being in the same circumstances both by nature and by grace. This doctrine lays the axe to the very root of spiritual pride, and glorying in ourselves. Therefore St. Paul, foreseeing the backwardness of mankind to receive it, yet knowing the absolute necessity of its being received, again asserts the very same truth, (Eph 2:8,) in the very same words. And hath raised us up together Both Jews and Gentiles, already in spirit, having not only rained our souls from spiritual death to spiritual life, but having given us assurance of the resurrection of our bodies, and begotten us again, as his children and his heirs, to a lively hope of a heavenly inheritance, and enabled us to set our affections on the felicity and glory implied therein: and made us sit together in heavenly places in and through Christ Jesus Our head and representative, who has already been admitted into heaven as our forerunner, to take possession of these glorious mansions for us. For by means of that relation between him and us, which divine grace hath established, we may look upon his resurrection and exaltation to the right hand of God, as the certain pledge and security of ours; and regarding him under the character of a public person, who is thus raised and exalted in our name, we may be said to share in those felicities and dignities which are conferred on him.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

SECTION 5. GOD HAS MADE US SHARERS OF THE RESURRECTION LIFE OF CHRIST.

CH. 2:4-10.

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His much love with which He loved us, and we being dead through our trespasses, has made us alive together with Christ-by grace ye are saved-and raised us with Him and made us sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus; that He may show in the ages coming on the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For by grace ye are saved, through faith and that not of yourselves; the gift is Gods; not of works, that no man may glory. For His workmanship we are, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God before prepared in order that we may walk in them.

Eph 2:4-5. But God: in conspicuous contrast to lost and sinful mankind. This new sentence supplies the place of the grammatical conclusion of the foregoing sentence, which was postponed to make way for the further delineation of those dead in sins, and not afterwards added. Similarly, the sentence broken off in Rom 5:12 has its virtual completion in Rom 5:18. This delineation is a dark background for the glory which suddenly and majestically now bursts upon us.

Mercy: compassion for the helpless. It recalls the helplessness of those under the anger of God, and thus completes the picture given in 4.

Rich in mercy: cp. Eph 1:7; Eph 1:18.

Because of His much love; traces this mercy to its source in the central attribute of God. Upon this unique attribute Paul lingers: His much love with which He loved us. The past tense refers to the love manifested in the salvation of Paul and his readers.

And we being dead etc.: a repetition of Eph 2:1, for vivid contrast with the foregoing description of God and His love. A close parallel with Rom 3:23, where for a similar contrast we have a similar summary of foregoing teaching. This love of contrast, especially of contrast between past and present, is an almost certain mark of Pauline authorship.

Has-made alive-with-Christ: as in Col 2:13, where the same word is explained by having forgiven you all the trespasses. It reverses all that is implied in the words dead through trespasses. We were once, in consequence of our sins, a spiritual corpse given up to corruption utter and helpless, from which nothing could save us except the life-giving power of God. But God has pardoned our sins and given back to us the eternal life for which we were created. This eternal life is already our assured possession: and the witness of it is the Holy Spirit, the Breath of immortality, already moving our hearts with the pulse of divine life and prompting all Christian activities.

With Christ: as in Col 2:13. Our new immortal life is an outflow of the life breathed on the first Easter morning into His sacred corpse. For, had He not risen, there had been no saving faith, no Gospel, and no life eternal.

By grace (cp. Rom 3:24) ye-are saved: each word emphatic. Salvation is by the undeserved favour of God: it is already actual: and this is emphatically asserted. Contrast Rom 5:10; Rom 13:11. We are already saved from the sinking wreck into a lifeboat which cannot sink: but we are not finally safe until the perilous voyage of life is past. Hence Paul can say as here we are saved; or as in 1Co 1:18 we are being saved; or as above we shall be saved.

Eph 2:6. Raised with Him: as in Col 2:12; Col 3:1. It further pictures the new life as a participation in the act of God which raised Christ from the grave and brought Him back to the land of the living.

Made-to-sit-with Him: only here and Luk 22:55. A new feature of the Christian life. We are not only made alive, and raised from the surroundings of death, but are also sharers of the throne of Christ. Cp. Eph 1:20 : raised Him from the dead and made Him sit. Notice the close connection between the Christians life on earth and the life of his risen and glorified Lord. See under Col 2:12.

In the heavenly places: same words as in Eph 1:3, which they expound. They give further definiteness to the picture of Christs enthronement in heaven, and declare that already we share even its glorious environment. This resurrection and enthronement are with Christ and in Christ. For He will be both the companion and the encompassing element of our future glory. And whatever we shall be, to Pauls faith, believers already are. Thus (Eph 1:3) has God blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Eph 2:7. Aim of God in raising and enthroning us. Close harmony with Eph 1:6; Eph 1:12; Eph 1:14.

That He-may-show: more fully show something in Himself i.e. reveal His own inner nature. Same word in Rom 2:15; Rom 9:17; Rom 9:22; 1Ti 1:16.

The ages coming on: beginning with the coming of Christ. For only then will Gods kindness to men be worthily manifested. To the prophetic eye of Paul, successive ages of future glory are already approaching, like successive waves of blessing; an endless vista of splendour. That this manifestation is to take place during the ages of glory, suggests that it will be for angels as well as men: cp. Eph 3:10.

The surpassing riches of His grace: a superlative term embracing and surpassing Eph 1:7; Eph 1:19.

Kindness: so Rom 2:4, riches of His kindness; also Rom 11:22. It is mercy and grace represented as gentleness.

In Christ Jesus: objectively, through His death and resurrection, as in Eph 1:20; Rom 3:24; and subjectively through inward contact with Him, as in 2Co 5:17. This aim of God in raising us together with Christ proves the infinite greatness of the blessing thus conferred on men. For the means must be sufficient for the end in view. God resolved to manifest the surpassing abundance of His grace; and, to this end, loaded us with kindness. A similar, but further, purpose in Eph 3:10.

Eph 2:8-9. In order to justify and expound the riches of His grace, Paul now repeats and amplifies a few words which, in Eph 2:4, burst through the grammatical order of the sentence.

By-grace: by the grace of God; referring definitely to the grace mentioned in Eph 2:7.

Through faith: added in order to give a more complete account of salvation. It embodies a thought ever present to Paul, and ever ready to find expression: compare the casual mention of faith in Rom 3:25-26. The favour of God is the divine source, and faith is the human channel, of salvation.

This or this thing; refers almost certainly to the salvation just mentioned. For it is neuter, whereas faith and grace are feminine. Moreover, not from works, which must refer to ye are saved, is evidently parallel to not from yourselves, and thus gives to these words the same reference. They are added as an emphatic exposition, negative and then positive, of the words by grace. You are not the source of your own salvation: it is a gift: and the gift is Gods. It is not from human works.

Not from works, that no one may glory: marked characteristics of Paul: Rom 4:2; Rom 4:6; Rom 9:11; Rom 11:6; Rom 3:27; 1Co 1:29; Gal 6:14 From every side, Paul shuts out, as his wont is, all self-salvation.

Eph 2:10. Proof and amplification of the statement that our salvation is not from ourselves or from works, but from God; viz. that we are ourselves Gods workmanship.

Having-been-created etc.: proof of the foregoing. Paul refers evidently, in words taken from the old creation, to the new creation of the spiritual life. Cp. 2Co 5:17; Gal 6:15. Another trace of the hand of Paul.

Created: a word predicated only of God, and thus denoting a putting forth of power possessed only by God. Even when creating out of existing materials, as in Gen 1:21, God breathed into them new life; which man cannot do. The word here teaches that the Christian life is not only a workmanship of God but is a new putting forth of creative power.

In Christ: as in Eph 2:6-7. Notice the emphatic and characteristic repetition.

Good works: as in Rom 2:7; Rom 13:3; 2Co 9:8 : a phrase found only with Paul. The word good includes beneficence and intrinsic worth: another word, noting only excellence, in Mat 5:16. Just as God created certain animals for certain activities which were a part of His creative purpose, so He designs the new life in Christ to reveal itself in good works. The words following lay further stress on this definite purpose of God.

Before-prepared: in eternity, when the new life was only a thought in the mind of God. He then designed that good works should be its environment and outward expression. Same word in Rom 9:23, before-prepared for glory.

That we should walk in them: Gods purpose touching these good works. He designs them to be the surrounding element of our movements; in absolute contrast to in which sins ye walked.

It is now quite clear that salvation is in no way from ourselves or from works. For even our own good works are a part of Gods eternal purpose to give spiritual life to those who believe in Christ. And if they are an outworking of His purpose of mercy, they cannot be a ground of merit, or a source of salvation.

Notice here another reference to the eternal purpose of salvation already mentioned in Eph 1:4-5; Eph 1:9; Eph 1:11; also in Eph 3:11. It is a conspicuous feature of this Epistle, and a fuller development of teaching already found in Rom 8:28-29; Rom 9:11; Rom 9:23.

The chief significance of 5 is derived from its relation to 3. Paul there prayed that God would reveal to his readers the glory awaiting them and the great power of God which some day will realise their hopes and which already is at work in them. As a measure of that power and of that hope, he pointed to the power which raised Christ from the grave and set Him at the right hand of God. In order to make practical use of this comparison, Paul showed in 4 that all the unsaved are in a position analogous to that of the body of Jesus as it lay dead in the grave. For, through their sins, they were separated from the only real life and were doomed to corruption. This state of ruin Paul further described. Although dead, they were capable of movement: but it was a mere floating down a stream, in a channel marked out by the great enemy, under influences directed by him; a mere surrender to the promptings of the lower side of their nature. That the prince of darkness and their own nature led them along the same path, proved that their nature is corrupt, and that they who follow it are under the anger of God. Now the anger of God is death in its worst form.

At the beginning of 5 we see God looking down with compassion and infinite love upon the lost human race. Paul asserts that He who gave life to the lifeless body of Christ has made alive those who once were dead through their sins. This can only mean that He has rescued them from the corruption which was their inevitable doom and has given back to them spiritual activity and growth. This life is an outflow of that which entered into the silent body of Christ. And, as with Christ so with them, life has been accompanied by removal from the surroundings of death and by exaltation to heaven. All this God did in order to reveal His infinite favour to men. The same truth Paul repeats for emphasis in another form. Since his readers have been made alive, he can rightly say that they have been saved. And, since their resurrection with Christ is an outflow of the mercy and love of God, they are saved by grace. To make this the more conspicuous, Paul adds that salvation is not from themselves or their works, but is the gift of God; and that it has come in this way in order that no one may boast. And he cannot forbear to remind his readers that it is through faith. To complete his proof that salvation is altogether from God and not at all from man, he says that the new life is a work of the creative power of God and an accomplishment of an eternal purpose.

Thus Paul, after raising his readers to the throne of God and setting them beside their risen Lord, leads their thoughts back to the eternal purpose of which the actual salvation of men is an historic realisation. This tracing of the phenomena of time to their source in the eternal thought of God is a conspicuous feature of Paul, a feature nowhere so conspicuous as in this Epistle.

Fuente: Beet’s Commentary on Selected Books of the New Testament

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,

Paul has reminded them of where they were and what they were like, and now begins to remind them of where they are and what they are to be like.

God is rich in mercy – He has ample for all that He would shed it upon. On top of that mercy, He has a great love for us. The love mentioned is the self-sacrificing love rather than brotherly love. It is a love that desires to benefit, even if there is a cost involved for the one that loves. It is a love that acts for the betterment of the one loved.

I like the word “RICH” in mercy. He has a big bunch of it, He has loads of it, He has all that is needed and a lot more. “Rich” reminds me of Scrooge McDuck in the old comics. When I was very young, I was hospitalized for a time, then confined to bed for a few months at home. My folk’s friends all wanted to assist my boredom by bringing comic books and toys that could be used in bed. My favorite comics to receive were McDuck’s. He was my man, to say the least, he had it all, he enjoyed it all, he thrived in getting it all, and what is more important, he had all that I would have loved to have had.

Scrooge would build humongous safes to keep all his money in, safe after safe after safe. These safes were really huge buildings in the shape of a safe – all full of his money, and usually money pouring out of the windows and falling off the dump trucks that hauled the money to the safes.

God has that kind of mercy and even more. He selected us believers to shed that grace upon, for no reason at all other than His plan and His good pleasure.

This mercy was headed our direction before we even responded to His mercy. Indeed, His great love was love that existed before we responded to Him. He fully committed Himself and His love to us while we were still thumbing our noses at Him in our unbelief.

Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson

2:4 {8} But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,

(8) Now from this follows another member of the comparison declaring our excellency, that is, that by the power of Christ we are delivered from that death, and made partakers of eternal life, to the end that at length we may reign with him. And by various and different means he emphasises this, that the efficient cause of this benefit is the free mercy of God: and Christ himself is the material cause: and faith is the instrument, which also is the free gift of God: and the end is God’s glory.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

Now alive in God 2:4-10

The wrath of God on the unbeliever (Eph 2:3) contrasts with the grace of God on the believer (Eph 2:5; Eph 2:7-8). God’s special grace toward some unbelievers gives them life (Eph 2:4-5), raises them up (Eph 2:6), and seats them in heavenly realms with Christ (Eph 2:6-10).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Paul introduced the contrast between the condition of the unbeliever and that of the believer with "But." God, the subject of this passage (Eph 2:1-7), makes all the difference. "Mercy" (Gr. eleos, the word the Septuagint translators used to render the Hebrew hesed, loyal love) means undeserved kindness. God’s great love (Gr. agape) sought the highest good in the objects of His choice even though we were rebellious sinners.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)