Hath quickened us; hath raised us up from the death of sin to the life of righteousness, not only in our justification, in which God frees us from our obnoxiousness to eternal death, and gives us a right to eternal life, who before were dead in law, (though this may be included), but especially in our regeneration, by the infusion of a vital principle. Together with Christ; either:
1. God, in quickening Christ, hath also quickened us; Christ's quickening, or receiving his life after death, being not only the type and exemplar of our spiritual enlivening or regeneration, but the cause of it, inasmuch as we are quickened, as meritoriously by his death, so effectively by his life: Christ, as having died and risen again, exerciseth that power the Father gave him of quickening whom he will, 1 Thessalonians 5:21. Or:
2. In Christ as our Head virtually, and by the power of his resurrection actually. Or:
3. By the same power whereby he raised up Christ from the dead, Ephesians 1:20. See the like expression, Colossians 2:13. (By grace are ye saved); some read the words without a parenthesis, supplying by whose, and so refer them to Christ, quickened us together with Christ, by whose grace ye are saved; but if the parenthesis stand, yet here seems to be a connection with the foregoing words, at least a reason of the apostle's bringing in these; for having mentioned God's great love, Ephesians 2:4, as the cause of their spiritual enlivening here, which is the beginning of their salvation, he infers from thence that the whole of their salvation is of grace, i.e. alike free, and as much out of God's great love, as the beginning of it, viz. their quickening, is.