Salvation by Grace.
I. To Paul the doctrine of justification by faith was not a final statement of Christian truth. It was not a formula which could be used mechanically for constructing schemes of Christian doctrine, and which made it unnecessary for him to recur to the actual relations between God and the human race. Any account of the relations between God and ourselves which does not include this conception is not only defective, but fatally defective, is absolutely and ruinously erroneous; but this conception does not exhaust the Divine relations to the human race. There are other relations between God and man which cannot be expressed in terms of law, and it is with these relations that Paul is dealing in this Epistle. The fact which his account of justification by faith represented in one form is represented here in another. His mind and heart are filled with the Divine grace.
II. To some of us that beautiful word has been soiled by unclean hands, tainted by contact with corrupt and pernicious forms of religious thought. But the word is too precious to be surrendered. Among the Greeks it stood for all that is most winning in personal loveliness, for the nameless fascination of a beauty which is not cold and remote, but irresistibly attractive and charming. (1) Grace transcends love. Love may be nothing more than the fulfilment of the Jaw, but grace is love which passes beyond all claims to love. (2) Grace transcends mercy. Mercy forgives sin, and rescues the sinner from eternal darkness and death; but grace floods with affection the sinner who has deserved anger and resentment. If human salvation has its origin in the infinite grace of God, if by that grace it is carried through to its eternal consummation, then our true position is one of immeasurable trust and hope. We have only to receive the infinite blessings of the Divine love; we have to surrender ourselves to that stream of eternal benediction which has its fountains in the eternal depths of the Divine nature; we have to make way for the free unfolding in our life and destiny of the Divine idea and purpose.
R. W. Dale, Lectures on the Ephesians,p. 170.
References: Ephesians 2:8. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xviii., No. 1064; vol. xxvii., No. 1609; W. Cunningham, Sermons,p. 203; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 411; T. R. Stevenson, Ibid.,vol. xxv., p. 371; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 94; T. T. Lynch, Three Months' Ministry,p. 49. Ephesians 2:8; Ephesians 2:9. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. ii., p. 160; A. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit,p. 165; J. Smith, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. xvi.,p. 389. Ephesians 2:8-10. W. Hay Aitken, Mission Sermons,vol. iii., p. 109.