Ephesians 2:4

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, Eph 2:8. 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, Eph 2:9. 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, etc., Eph 2:4. 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 (Eph 2:5), and by grace are you saved through faith - it is the gift of God, Eph 2:8. 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 (Eph 2:5), 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, Eph 2:6. 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, etc. (Eph 2:7), 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, etc., Eph 2:10. 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, etc. 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.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

God, who is rich--Greek "(as) being rich in mercy."

for--that is, "because of His great love." This was the special ground of God's saving us; as "rich in mercy" (compare Eph 2:7; Eph 1:7; Rom 2:4; Rom 10:12) was the general ground. "Mercy takes away misery; love confers salvation" [BENGEL].

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

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.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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 God’s 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.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But God, being rich in mercy. The preceding verses convey the idea of a rushing towards inevitable ruin towards some frightful cataract, when all help from man is hopeless. Man"s extremity becomes God"s opportunity. The "but" is very emphatic, and wonderfully reverses the picture. The sovereignty of God is very apparent, on its gracious side. It interposes to rescue those who would otherwise plunge into irretrievable ruin. We have here the filling up of that Divine saying, "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help." The genesis of salvation is declared to be in two of God"s attributes, of which the first is mercy, or compassion. God has a tender, yearning feeling towards men brought to misery by their own sins. And this feeling is not shallow or spare he is rich in mercy. It is an exuberant, full-flowing feeling in God ("Thy mercy ... is in the heavens,", Psa_36:5) and may therefore be appealed to trustfully. For his great love wherewith he loved us. The other attribute from which the plan of salvation sprang is God"s love. Love is more than compassion. Compassion may be confined to the breast, but love goes forth in active beneficence. It makes common cause with its object. It cannot rest till its object is lint right. Two expressions are used intensifying this Divine love:

(1) his great love;

(2) love with which he loved us;

the verb of love governing the noun of love makes the idea rich and strong. This view of the exuberance of the Divine attributes from which salvation has its rise is in harmony with the whole character of the Epistle.

The true origin of salvation.

It is interesting to observe the variety of terms here employed to describe the source of all the blessings of salvation. It is no longer a question of power, as it was in the first chapter, (Eph_1:19, Eph_1:20) but of love, mercy, grace, and kindness.

I OUR SALVATION IS OF GOD"S MERCY. "God who is rich in mercy." There is a distinction between mercy and love, for love is the foundation of mercy. God is called the "Father of mercies"; (2Co_1:3) mercy is his delight, for "he delighteth in mercy"; (Mic_7:18) he betrotheth us to himself in mercies; (Hos_2:19) he begets us again according to his abundant mercy"; (1Pe_1:3) and we are led to pray, Lord, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions". (Psa_51:1) Believers are therefore well described as "vessels of mercy". (Rom_9:23)

II OUR SALVATION IS OF LOVE. "According to the great love wherewith he hath loved us." The apostolic saying, "God is love," supplies us with the best Christian idea of God, as welt as with the right key to explain all his actions. God"s love is more than kindness, which is, indeed, one of his attributes, but love is, properly speaking, the nature of him who unites all these attributes in himself. The incarnation of the only begotten Son is the greatest fact of the Divine love, but is not disjoined from the deep humiliation and suffering to which it enabled him to descend. The love of God to sinners is

(1) a great love, (Eph_2:4) "a love strong as death"; (Son_8:6, Son_8:7)

(2) an everlasting love; (Jer_31:3)

(3) an unchanging love; (Mal_3:6)

(4) an invincible love; (Rom_8:39)

(5) it is like the Father"s love to the Son, "As thou hast loved me". (Joh_17:23)

III OUR SALVATION IS OF GRACE. "By grace ye are saved.

1. It is not of works, but of grace. (Eph_2:8) It is "of faith, that it might be of grace". (Rom_4:16)

2. We are accepted by grace; (Eph_1:6) our calling is by grace. (2Ti_1:9)

1. We have a good hope through grace.

2. Our election is of grace. (Rom_11:5)

3. The grace of God abounds in faith and love. (1Ti_1:14)

4. We are under a reign of grace; (Rom_6:14) we have our standing in grace. (Rom_5:2)

5. It is the greatest of all concerns to establish men"s hearts in "the true grace of God". (1Pe_5:12)

IV OUR SALVATION IS OF GOD"S KINDNESS. (Ver. 7.) "The word here," says an old writer, "implies all sweetness, and all candidness, and all friendliness, and all heartiness, and all goodness, and goodness of nature." Scripture speaks of God as kind (Psa_36:5; Luk_6:35) and of his "loving-kindnesses". (Isa_64:7) It is made the root of mercy in; (Tit_3:4) for the apostle here speaks of his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Thus our salvation, first and last, is attributed to nothing in ourselves, but to love, mercy, grace, and kindness in God. T.C.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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. Paul’s 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 mercy”—in 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 man’s 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 God’s 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 God’s 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 God’s character.

III. The general purpose of God’s particular mercy to the Ephesians (Eph_2:7).—God’s 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 God’s 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 this—not 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 Christ’s 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 children’s 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 God’s 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. God’s 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.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

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?’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2:4-10 By God’s mercy, kindness, and love, those who are joined to Jesus Christ are saved from the terrible consequences of their sin and enjoy the benefits of Christ’s resurrection.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Eph 2:4. Πλούσιος, rich) “over all,” Rom 10:12.—ἐλέει—ἀγάπην, in mercy—love) Mercy takes away misery; love confers salvation.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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 οὖν, but by δέ, 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.

πλούσιος ὢν ἐν ἐλέει κ.τ.λ.] The connection is: God, however, since He is rich in mercy, has for His much loves sake made … us … alive in Christ. As to the distinction between ἔλεος and οἰκτιρμός, see on Rom_9:15. On ἐν ἐλέει, comp. 1Co_1:5; Jam_2:5; 2Co_9:11; 1Ti_6:18.

διὰ τὴν πολλ. ἀγάπην αὐτοῦ] 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 αὑτοῦ is to be written, but αὐτοῦ, as at Eph_1:6.

ἣν ἠγάπ. ἡμ.] as in Joh_17:26. Comp. the classical ἔρωτα ἐρᾶν, 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.

ἡμᾶς] 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 ἡμᾶς 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 ἔλεος is thus related to the ἀγάπη as the species to the genus.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eph 2:4 . ὁ δὲ Θεὸς , πλούσιος ὢν ἐν ἐλέει : 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 οὖν . The adversative δέ , 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 πλούσιος , πλουτίζειν , etc., cf. 1Co 1:5 ; 2Co 9:11 ; 1Ti 6:17-18 ; Jas 2:5 ). διὰ τὴν πολλὴν ἀγάπην ἣν ἠγάπησεν ἡμᾶς : by reason of His great love wherewith He loved us . The use of the cogn. acc. ἣν 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 ἡμᾶς has the widest sense here all of us, whether Jew or Gentile.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eph_2:4

The apostle having thus described the natural state of men, in this and the following verses, unfolds the manner in which those to whom he wrote had been delivered from that dreadful condition. It was by a spiritual resurrection. God, and not themselves, was the author of the change. It was not to be referred to any goodness in them, but to the abounding love of God. The objects of this love were not Jews in distinction from the Gentiles, nor the Gentiles as such, nor men in general, but us, i.e. Christians, the actual subjects of the life-giving power here spoken of. All this is included in this verse.

Ὁ δὲ Θεὸς, but God, i.e. notwithstanding our guilt and corruption, God, being rich in mercy, πλούσιος ὢν ἐν ἐλέει, i.e. because he is rich in mercy. Ἔλεος is, ipsum miseris succurrendi studium, the desire to succor the miserable; οἰκτιρμός is pity. Love is more than either. It was not merely mercy which has all the miserable for its object; but love which has definite individual persons for its objects, which constrained this intervention of God for our salvation. Therefore the apostle adds; διὰ τὴν πολλὴν ἀγάπην αὐτοῦ. Διὰ is not to be rendered through, but on account of. It was to satisfy his love, that he raised us from the death of sin.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Now hereof followeth another member of the comparison, declaring our excellency, to wit, that by the virtue 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 divers and sundry means he beateth this into their heads, 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.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

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.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

4. But God, who is rich in mercy. 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. 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.” (1 John 4:10,19.)

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(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.”)

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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.”

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

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 2:13.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

But God....hath raised up together, both Gentiles and Jews, to life in Christ, remitting our sins by faith in him, and by the grace of our merciful Redeemer, by his pure mercy, not by any works of ours, nor merely by the works of the former law. --- Hath made us in a condition to sit together in heavenly places, to be hereafter crowned in heaven. (Witham)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

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.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

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.

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.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mercy removes misery: love confers salvation.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

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.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

4–7. Having shown that both Jews and Gentiles were spiritually dead, Paul now declares the spiritual resurrection of the saints. This lifting up from death to a new life is due to God, rich in mercy, and on account of the great love wherewith he loved us. The next verse affirms the fact.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

God is rich in mercy

"God is abundant in mercy" or "God is very kind to us"

because of his great love with which he loved us

"because of his great love for us" or "because he loves us very much"

While we were dead in trespasses, he made us alive together in Christ

This shows how a sinful person is unable to obey God until he is given new spiritual life just like a dead person is unable to respond physically unless he is raised from the dead. (See: Metaphor)

he made us alive together in Christ

"In Christ" and similar expressions are metaphors that frequently occur in the New Testament letters. They express the strongest kind of relationship possible between Christ and those who believe in him.

by grace you have been saved

This can be stated in an active form. AT: "God saved us because of his great kindness toward us" (See: Active or Passive)

God raised us up together with Christ

Here to raise up is an idiom for causing someone who has died to become alive again. Possible meanings are 1) because God has caused Christ to come alive again, God has already given Paul and the believers in Ephesus new spiritual life. AT: "God has given us new life because we belong to Christ" or 2) because God has caused Christ to come alive again, the believers in Ephesus can know that after they die they will live with Christ, and Paul can speak of the believers living again as if it has already happened. AT: "We can be sure that God will give us life as he has caused Christ to come alive again" (See: Predictive Past and Idiom)

in the heavenly places

"in the supernatural world." The word "heavenly" refers to the place where God is. See how this is translated in Ephesians 1:3.

in Christ Jesus

"In Christ Jesus" and similar expressions are metaphors that frequently occur in the New Testament letters. They express the strongest kind of relationship possible between Christ and those who believe in him.

in the ages to come

"in the future"

translationWords

God

mercy

love

die

trespass

life

in Christ

grace

save

heaven

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

4. πλούσιος. See note on τὸ πλοῦτος, Eph 1:7.

ἐν ἐλέει. Cf. Rom 15:9; Tit 3:5; Luk 1:78; and esp. 1Pe 1:3 and the declaration of the Name of the Lord to Moses in Exo 34:6. Mercy is not inconsistent with wrath. They are both aspects of the same love.

διὰ τὴν πολλὴν ἀγάπην. In his earliest Epistles (1Th 1:4; 2Th 2:13) St Paul notes that the love which Jehovah had lavished on His Israel (Deu 33:12) was now shared by Gentile Christians. In 2Th 2:16 this love is connected with the gift of ‘eternal consolation and good hope in grace.’ Elsewhere the only passages outside the Johannine writings in which the phrase occurs are in Rom 5:5; Rom 5:8; Rom 8:39; 2Co 13:13; Jud 1:21; cf. Tit 3:4 ἡ φιλανθρωπία.

ἣν ἠγάπησεν. Cognate acc. as in Joh 17:26 ἡ ἀγάπη ἣν ἠγάπησάς με. ἡμᾶς clearly here used inclusively.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

4.] The construction is resumed, having been interrupted (see above on ver. 1) by the two relative sentences, ἐν αἷς … ἐν οἷς. But (contrast to the preceding verse,—the ἔλεος and ἀγάπη, to the ὀργή just mentioned, δέ 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 διὰ τ. πολλ. ἀγ., the special or peculiar motive, of συνεζωοπ., De W.) in compassion (for ἐν, see reff. οὐχ ἁπλῶς ἐλεήμων, ἀλλὰ πλούσιος· καθάπερ καὶ ἐν ἑτέρῳ (Psa 5:7; Psa 68:13) φησὶν Ἐν τῷ πλήθει τοῦ ἐλέους σου· κ. πάλιν (Psa 1:1) Ἐλέησόν με κατὰ τὸ μέγα ἔλεός σου, Chrys. ἔλεος, 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 πλού. ὢν ἐν ἐλ., as Calv., al., and E. V. necessarily, by ‘hath quickened’ following; but to the verb below. ἡμᾶς are all Christians; = ἡμεῖς πάντες in the last verse) even when we were dead (the καί belongs to, and intensifies, the state predicated by ὄντας νεκρούς; and is therefore placed before the participle. It is not to be taken as a mere resumption of ver. 1 (Rück., 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 ἐζωοποίησεν,—but on συνεζ. τῷ χριστῷ, with all its glorious consequences) in our (τοῖς, the π. which we committed) trespasses (see on ver. 1), vivified (not ‘hath vivified’—a definite act in time, not an abiding consequence is spoken of) us together with Christ (the reading ἐν τ. χρ. (see var. readd.) seems to have arisen either from repetition of the -εν in συνεζωοποίησεν, or from conformation to ver. 6.

It is clearly not allowable to render χριστῷ, in Christ, as Beza,—without the preposition. It is governed by the συν-, and implies not exactly as Chrys., ἐζωοποίησε κἀκεῖνον κυὶ ἡμᾶς,—but that Christ was the Resurrection and the Life, and we follow in and because of Him. The disputes about the meaning ἐζωοποίησεν 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, Joh 11:26, 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 (ver. 6) of Christ. The three aorists, συνεζωοποίησεν, συνήγειρεν, συνεκάθισεν, 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 σώζεσθε, ‘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. 1:3, 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—ἐν χρ. as in ch. 1:3, does not (Eadie) belong to τ. ἐπουρ. 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),

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

4. ὁ δὲ Θεός resumes from ver. 1 after the interruption, and now with the subject; οὖν is more usual in such a resumption; but δέ is more suitable here, on account of the contrast of what is now to be said with what precedes. Jerome’s comment is characteristic, “Conjunctionem causalem in eo loco in quo ait: Deus autem etc. arbitramur aut ab indoctis scriptoribus additum et vitium inolevisse paulatim, aut ab ipso Paulo, qui erat imperitus sermone et non scientia, superflue usurpatum.” Erasmus’ remark is more correct, “Hyperbati longioris ambitum ipse correxit Apostolus.”

πλούσιος ὢν ἐν ἐλέει, “being as He is” (the participle assigning the reason), not simply ἐλεήμων, but “rich in mercy” (Chrys.). Compare Rom 9:23, “make known the riches of His glory on σκεύη ἐλέους.” In classical writers πλούσιος is construed with a genitive of the thing, but in the N.T. with ἐν, see Jas 2:5, ἐνπίστει; and similarly the verbs πλουτεῖν, πλουτίζεσθαι (1Co 1:5). Compare the correspondence of ἔλεος and ἀπειθεία in Rom 11:31. ἀγάπη is not a particular form of ἔλεος, but is the cause from which, or by reason of which, ἔλεος was exercised.

διὰ τὴν πολλὴν ἀγάπην, “propter,” Vulg. “for His great love”; cf. Phm 1:8, “for love’s sake.” ἥν, cognate accusative, a very common usage, both in classical and N.T. Greek. Here the addition ἣν ἠγ. ἡμᾶς, being not necessary to the sense, gives great emphasis to the expression of the Divine love. Nor is αὐτοῦ to be neglected, “His love” marking more distinctly that it is from Him alone and His attitude of love that this mercy proceeds.

ἡμᾶς now includes both the ὑμεῖς of ver. 1 and the ἡμᾶς ver. 3. and includes therefore both Jews and Gentiles.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But God. Resuming ver. 1.

For His great love [δια] . 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).

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.