CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Ephesians 2:4. But God, who is rich in mercy.—“Unto all that call upon Him” (Romans 10:12). “He hath shut up all into disobedience, that He might have mercy upon all” (Romans 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).
Ephesians 2:5. Even when we were dead in sins.—The phrase which closes Ephesians 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 (2 Thessalonians 3:17-18).
Ephesians 2:6. In heavenly places.—As in Ephesians 1:3.
Ephesians 2:7. The exceeding riches of His grace.—The wealth of mercy mentioned in Ephesians 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” (Galatians 5:22) called “gentleness” in the A.V., but which would be better named “benignity.”
Ephesians 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.”
Ephesians 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.— Ephesians 2:4-9
Salvation an Act of Divine Grace.
I. Springing from the benevolence of God (Ephesians 2:4; Ephesians 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 (Ephesians 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” (Ephesians 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 (Ephesians 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 (Ephesians 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” (Ephesians 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” (Ephesians 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
Ephesians 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 (Ephesians 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” (Ephesians 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 (Ephesians 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.
Ephesians 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.
Ephesians 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.
Ephesians 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.
Ephesians 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.
Ephesians 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.
Ephesians 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.