Christians are Raised and Exalted in the Risen and Exalted Christ by God's Free Grace and Gift. The recipients of the letter, like other people, had been (spiritually) dead by reason of the sins and trespasses in which they formerly walked in accordance with the course of the existing world-order, as subjects of the ruler who has power over the air and over the spirit operating in disobedient hearts (Ephesians 2:1 f.); the writer in like manner, and those for whom he speaks, had all lived formerly in the lusts of their flesh, following the impulses of the flesh and of the mind, and were in themselves as much the objects of Divine wrath as other people (Ephesians 2:3); the wealth, however, of the Divine mercy and the greatness of the Divine love had brought them to life with the bringing to life of Christ, dead though they were in sins (and your salvation is of God's free grace), had raised them with His resurrection, and had seated them with His session in the heavenly sphere in Him (Ephesians 2:4-6), a manifestation to all future ages of the extraordinary wealth of His kindness and goodness towards them (Ephesians 2:7). Salvation, it must be repeated, is wholly the outcome of God's free kindness; though requiring the response of human faith it is not of human initiation; the gift is from God; human merit does not enter into it; and therefore human boasting is excluded (Ephesians 2:8 f.). Christians are the handiwork of God, products of a creative act in Christ Jesus; good works are indeed involved, but it is as the purposed end of this creative act, the prepared course marked out for Christians to walk in (Ephesians 2:10).
Ephesians 2:2. The ruler of the evil powers that dwell in the air is ruler also of the spirit that energizes in the wicked. It was the common belief of late Judaism that the air was full of evil spirits; and Christians living in the corrupt cities of Asia Minor (Revelation 2 f.) were exposed to a veritable atmosphere of evil, which such language aptly personifies.
Ephesians 2:3. by nature: i.e. in ourselves, in our natural condition, apart from the Divine grace. children of wrath: objects of the Divine displeasure. The phrase is a Hebraism cf. Zechariah 4:14, sons of oil (= anointed personages), and Ephesians 2:2, sons of disobedience (= disobedient persons) and has no direct bearing upon the dogma of original sin.
Ephesians 2:5 f. The processes of death, resurrection, and ascension, through which Christ passed, are in the Christian mystically reproduced as a death to sin, a resurrection to new life, and a participation in the heavenly life of Christ.
Ephesians 2:8-10. The summing up of former controversies about faith and works. The Divine purpose is not achieved apart from the - good works-' of men: only it does not begin from them, but leads to them (Robinson).