You’ve been saved for the purpose of good works.
And Jesus seems to have said something along Paul’s lines in Eph 2 also (Matthew 5:16 — understood within the entire narrative context of Matthew). Martin Luther argues this in “The Freedom of a Christian” (who, let’s face it, functionally stands in as Jesus for some people). While Ephesians 2:1-10 sings the “saved by grace” tune pretty loudly, there are a couple of “in order that” clauses that bring out the “good works” side of the equation also.
Now, I know many will say, “Of course. First is the divine initiative and the good works flow out of God’s work in us.”Remember the old liturgy: “forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways … ” Indeed. Yet, perhaps still more can be said. The above phrase highlights something important for understanding the good works for which we’ve been saved: “walking.” It’s a word we find in Ephesians 2:1-10 — the Greek verb peripateo. It’s often overlooked, but it shows up both at the beginning and at the end of this pericope (vss. 1 & 10). One could make the case that this idea — peripateo— frames what Paul says here.
Paul is getting at something other than just “doing” good works; he’s writing about “walking.” Sometimes, I’m afraid, it seems we’re inclined to read this passage through the lens of what I have termed MPS: “Moral Perfection Syndrome.” God demands moral perfection. We can’t do enough good stuff, we sin, and because we’re not “perfect” we are in big divine trouble. Jesus needs to save us and forgive us because of what we can’t do. MPS, I think, negatively affects how we read passages like Ephesians 2:1-10.
The verb peripatew, used metaphorically, as many of you probably know, pertains to the orientation of one’s life. Many people today peripateo in the stream of the “American Dream,” and of a general cultural mentality that shamelessly promotes the elevation of the self above all else. To reduce the idea of peripatew to the steps one takes and the choices one makes risks misunderstanding the profound claims Paul makes here. The common translation “following” (NRSV; NIV; ESV) does not quite encapsulate the thickness of this term. We’re not saved just from our bad individual choices or what we “follow.” God delivers us from an entire mode of existence — indeed transfers us from one sphere to another — not just from the inability to make enough of the “right” choices.
Paul reminds his audience that they were once peripateo-ing according to “the course of this world” (NRSV; ESV); “the ways of this world” (NIV). These translations again suffer from MPS by thinking in terms of steps, choices, ways, etc. The word translated “ways” or “course” is aeon. Scholars debate whether it should be best understood as a force, not unlike “capital-S Sin” in Paul’s letters, or in a temporal sense “the age of this world.” Since the early 2nd century BC people personified Aeon, and it referred to a deity of sorts. Something to which certainly some people could be captive from Paul’s perspective. For some interpreters it is more probable that Paul uses the word temporally. Either way, the emphasis lies on something more substantial than “ways” or “course.”
The idea might be equivalent to the house in which we live and make our dwelling. One sets up a house according to everyday living habits, preferences, and things we take for granted. And the set up reinforces these everyday habits. We put the toothpaste in a certain drawer; we place pots and pans in certain places because of how and why we use them. This is more than just “ways” or “course” of the house. It’s an entire environment that makes for certain ways of going about the details.
“Whose house?” This is an important question. The following clauses, “the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient” (NIV), can further define the aeon as a cosmic or divine force (“the one ruling the kingdom of the air … ”) or it can itemize the “ruler” as a component of this aeon understood temporally. The point is that the house in which the old humanity made its dwelling was operated by an outside party. And it’s not Jesus Christ.
It is only after defining the meta-structures operating in this world that Paul then comments on the individual transgressions and missteps in following the flesh (which Paul does not say is inherently evil or sinful). Our individual actions are products of the house and its environment, under the operations of its ruler.
When we operated according to the transgressions and sins — the mode of life in the old house of the old aeon, Paul says to his audience, “you were dead.” In contrast to this, Paul says we are “made alive” in Christ, and “created” in Christ. Our transfer is a genuinely new thing; we are created new. We’re not just to feel better about our relationship with God while still dwelling in the old house.
This transfer from houses and their overlords, according to verses 5 and 8, is an act of “grace.” “Grace” in Paul’s world was not “pardon” but an act of benevolence that usually resulted in a better situation for the recipient. We’ve been moved on up. And it’s in that transfer that we’re saved — saved from the self-imposed disaster and ruin that inevitably results from life dwelling in the house of the old aeon.
As Paul goes on in Ephesians, he will stress the importance of reconciliation. Not just our reconciliation with God, but with each other. This new house under the Lordship of Jesus has no place for divided humanity. The “other” is no longer the “other” but sister/brother. We have been saved and remade in Christ for this, for the “good works” that are simply part of the mode of life in the new house under the benevolent and gracious house Lord. We’re not saved by good works, but saved so that the good works that reconcile and are evidence of reconciliation would be our mode of life. It’s not for us; it’s for the reconciliation of the world (2 Corinthians 5:18-20).
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we[a] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we[b] boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we[c] also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11 Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.“
A survival kit: the past, present and future of salvation
“The church is not a theological classroom. It is a conversion, confession, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness and sanctification center, where flawed people place their faith in Christ, gather to know and love him better, and learn to love others as he designed.”
― Paul David Trip
This passage is like a condensed course in Theology. So much is packed in to a few verses. It’s like a soldier’s rucksack – a survival kit carefully filled with everything necessary.
In just two verses Paul covers all time, past, present, and future. We have been justified and set into right relationship with God. The climactic word is “reconciled” (v11). It has happened through our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s all about God’s faithfulness through Jesus and how our lives are different under Jesus’ lordship. We look forward to a future with God, as the word “hope” implies.
Meanwhile -in the present- we stand in God’s grace. It’s as if we have entered a room filled with it, or perhaps entered the cloud of God’s glorious presence as did Moses and Jesus before us. But truly, the death and resurrection of Jesus make the cosmos God’s house filled with God’s presence. To live in confidence that God fills all the world’s time, past, present and future, is to experience the peace that Paul speaks of in verse 1. It does not matter enormously whether Paul summons us to be at peace with God or indicates that we already have such peace. What matters is that it is peace, shalom arise when we live in confidence that our lives and our world are in the hands on one who loves it and us.
We boast in the very difficulties we experience
If there is to be reconciliation, first there must be truth.
Why, if our justification is already accomplished, do we find peace so oddly absent from God’s beloved creatures, not least ourselves? Perhaps because we confuse God’s love for us with the absence of suffering. Such a confusion beset Israel, safely delivered from Egypt but wandering in the wilderness, not yet at home. Such confusion threatens Paul’s congregations not only here, but also in Corinth (cf. I Corinthians 10:1-12). Paul puts the realities front and center. Yes, we stand in such love that we boast confidently in our hope of God’s glory. And, yes, we boast also in the very difficulties we experience. Paul does not let his hearers imagine that difficulties are a contrary witness to God’s promises. Rather we survive them by growing in our hope, appreciating difficulties for the real, but penultimate occurrences that they are. Even our troubles, rightly lived through, lead us around again to hope. Hope itself, says Paul, in a verse glowing with intimacy, is founded on God’s gift of love already poured into us by the presence of God, Holy Spirit, in and among us.
Our confidence is based upon the love of God in Christ
Redemption leads to reconciliation..
Now Paul did not see the world with rose-colored glasses. He was not an idealistic fool who only liked to think the best of people. Had he been like this, he would have been set up for radical disappointment and we would do well to ignore his words. But, Paul based his confidence on God’s love poured into our midst on the death and resurrection of Jesus.
The extent of God’s love is shown by how Jesus lived and died. He died for us sinners, for folks who could not appreciate his death, for folks whose gratitude would be measured and compromised time after time. What kind of love could or would do this? Our hymn, “What wondrous love is this?” asks the same question with the same sense of awe that one hears in Paul.
Paul does not get stuck in admiration or awe. Rather briskly he moves on to remind us that our hope of God’s glory is exactly our hope of reconciliation with God such that we will be saved. If this sounds a little like 5:21 to you, you’re right. Paul’s re-cap in vv12-21 of his earlier teaching ends with the promise of eternal life with God. All this will be celebrated yet again in Rom 8:32-39 where Paul almost sings that nothing will be able to separate us from the one who loved us, that is, from the love of God.
The meaning of justification, Paul’s very first word in Romans 5, is that we are brought into the reconciled family of God. This love of God has triumphed over not only our human failings, but also over God’s own characteristic passion for justice. God’s own grief at the gap between humans and God’s self has also been reconciled.
The transformative power of our life in Christ
Our having been saved “in” the life of God’s son is an important part of this section. While en with the dative case can suggest incorporation or means, either interpretation reminds us that it is Jesus’ life that gives us life. This will be a major emphasis in Romans 6 where Paul states that baptism is the way we are caught up in the life of Jesus or by it, such that we live his life. The sheer effrontery of that claim is shocking. We “boast” Paul says, in the God who so loved us, even as we boast in our sufferings and boast in our hope of experiencing the glory of God.
This boasting is not about simply bragging. About what would we have to brag? That has already been disallowed in Romans. But boasting here is the opposite of shame, as it is used in v. 5. Our hope will NOT shame us, disappoint us, show us to be fools. Instead, difficulties or not, we live trusting in God’s love, God’s outreach, God’s determination to have us at great cost, now and in the future.
How then do we live joyfully confident of reconciliation now and in the future? A blessing is a divine gift, a redeeming grace from God that radiates through peace, hope, love, and reconciliation. And only through people can this divine gift be generously shared and partaken by others, because only people are the real instrument of God’s blessings.
It’s the grace of reconciliation
The message is simple, a celebration of unity in diversity as the heartbeat of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Psalmist calls on it and invites readers to think about the beauty and majesty of people who dream to live together in unity (Psalm 133: 1–3). The gospel, as Paul writes, is strong enough to bring nations, ethnic groups, tribes, races, male and female into a human relationship, where they can live together as a new eschatological community whose DNA is belief in God, faith in Jesus Christ, and unity in and through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Like circumcision, capitalism and military power have come to define and draw the boundaries of separation. The church in the so-called first world countries, uses capitalism and technology to coerce less powerful nations into their own worldview, or else those poor Christian nations will not be part of the Global Church. Instead of heeding the message of Paul in Ephesians 2: 11–22, religious leaders and evangelists have failed to persuade all people to be brothers and sisters in Christ. In reality, the people who should be united in Christ, have come to be Jews and Gentiles in more challenging, if not tragic ways.
It’s unity in diversity
The message is urgent in the 21st century, and we should realize that there is no resurrection and no Pentecost without the church becoming a diversified body of Jesus Christ. In Acts 2: 1–47 Luke the evangelist says, “When the day of Pentecost came, the disciples were all together in one place,” united for a purpose, namely to evangelize, missionize and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It would be appropriate for the church today to ask if the 21st century Church is ever united and focused on the task of social justice, evangelism, missionizing and proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ? The apostle Paul uses the phrase “commonwealth of Israel,” as a metaphor signifying that Gentiles and Jews are now one family on the basis of Christ’s blood, who sacrificed his life for the entire human family (Ephesians 2: 12–14).
It’s a new way of being human
The creation of a new humanity through the death and resurrection of Jesus made it possible for both Jews and Gentiles to live together in a relationship of peace and reconciliation. Hence, the hostility that once existed between Jews and Gentiles was destroyed by the events of the cross. Therefore the 21st century global church is summoned to reconsider ways they can live together without walls of hostility toward each other. In other words, reconciliation is the fulfillment of God’s Covenant with the children of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Jacob.
The global Church, nations, ethnic groups, political and religious leaders should hear and implement the message of Ephesians 2: 11–22. While people seek to live a life of privilege, the call for unity and peace should be the agenda and mission of all humanity. In our 21st century worldview, we are experiencing a construction of walls of hostility and barriers of exclusion, leading to the resurfacing of racism, sexism, killing of innocent lives, and closing of borders. Immigrants from all over the world are experiencing rejection from their fellow human family, making the events of the cross meaningless.
But this reconciliation is the gospel itself
Like the Mosaic law, faith communities are focused on church rules in a way that is deeply dehumanizing to others. Pastors, lay people, youth, children, and political leaders should be advocates of the atoning work of Jesus Christ. The theological notion of Jesus as an embodiment of peace should invite Christians to be agents of peace, love, reconciliation and compassion. The entire Gospel message of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is given meaning in Ephesians.
In other words, Ephesians is a fulfillment of the Gospel message in the synoptic gospels, as well as in John’s gospel and John’s letters.
Therefore, the 21st-century global Church should use Ephesians as mirror and standard in assessing its life as the body of Christ. It is not enough to teach orthodoxy, but the church and her believers must advocate for orthopraxis, and live out the life of Jesus Christ. The Church must model a life of servanthood discipleship, as evidenced by the life of Jesus Christ in the four Gospels. Hence, pride, contempt, and intolerance toward other fellow human beings should be opposed and rejected at every level of human life. This is the warning of the apostle Paul, and it’s not just for Gentiles and Jews, but the entire human family.
The call of Ephesians 2: 11–22, is basically a summoning of all people to live together as children of one parent. If God is the parent of all humanity, polarization in all its forms should be avoided. In the face of racial tensions, the Church and its leaders as well as laity should seek to model hospitality. In other words, the Church with its mandate on building the Kingdom of God on earth, should choose to change human life by bringing love to places where hatred has become the norm. For the 21st century Church, the task of building a multicultural church is urgent, because in and around the world, we are experiencing institutional racism, hostility toward others, tribalism, and white supremacy resurfacing in ways never seen before. Hence, the message of integration and appreciation of diversity is urgently needed.
The events of the Cross brought in a new season, whereby humanity is called to reconcile with each other to live in harmony with others. While it is hard to live with many cultures, nationalities and ethnicities, the call of God on the church is summed up in one word: love. Love transcends everything in the world, and as such, the church should embody the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Understanding your past through your present
For Paul’s audience, one part of the Grace-Dynamic of Reconciliation was learning to understand their transformation from outsider to insider. Ephesians 2 calls its hearers to remember their own story, but to remember it in a particular way: not necessarily the way that they experienced it at the time, but from the perspective of a present experience of God’s grace dynamic. It welcomes, it releases from division and it unites…
Only from that vantage point can they see that they had been “Gentiles” (which is certainly not how they would have described themselves at the time), separated, without hope, and (despite their probable previous polytheistic practices) without God (a-theists / atheoi, verse 12). For the early church, the question of how such Gentiles could be welcomed as part of God’s people was a wrenching debate, as is seen most clearly in Acts and Galatians. Jews and Gentiles were separated by a painful and often violent history, by divergent cultures and convictions, by mutual hostility and suspicion.
This is what sin does — it divides us from one another. But now they have been made part of a story which moves from exclusion, hostility, and deprivation to welcome, reconciliation, and God’s overflowing gift.
What does this outsider-insider talk mean to us?
We may feel distant from the Gentile/Jew divisions that this text declares abolished. However, we must not forget the continuing painful relationship between church and synagogue. Over the centuries the church’s side of this relationship has often violated the reconciliation claimed in this text. We also need to recognize that, despite God’s reconciling peace toward us, we have allowed other social hostilities to divide us and to cloud our view of God’s mission.
In our current context, those divisions seem to revolve with particular ferocity around political parties, perspectives, and policies, and these are woven together with insidious divisions of economics, gender, and ethnicity.
The terms in which this text describes that reality might strike us as startling current: it speaks of “aliens” and of a dividing, hostile wall (vv 12, 14). We can scarcely avoid the very concrete issues regarding whom we are willing to welcome, and whom we are eager to exclude.
Faced with such continuing tensions, it may seem that the writer of Ephesians has declared “peace” a bit prematurely. However, though it may still be promise and hope, we should not miss the crucial theological claim made here. Verse 13 turns to proclaiming the good news: “But now in Christ Jesus…” By Jesus’ death on the cross, the old cultural markers of worth and status, of being “in” or “out,” have been abolished. Sin’s power to divide the world has come to its end in Christ.
And where does such reconciliation take us?
This means that a new community is being formed, based not on social merit or cultural capital, but on the utterly astounding grace of God toward the whole world. We confess that in Christ God draws both those who are “near” and those who are “far away,” and we are sent as carriers of that reconciliation for the sake of the world.
In this text, it is in particular the Torah as “the law of commandments in decrees” (NET) that was effective in dividing, and now has been rendered moot (verse 15). That hardly means that we cease to care about morality (note that we join the “saints / holy ones” in verse 19), or that we stop reading books like Exodus or Deuteronomy as God’s Word for us (note how 6:2-3 quotes one of the Exodus / Deuteronomy commandments). However, the Torah as centered on demands makes “others” into “outsiders,” and so cannot overcome the alienation that sin brings with it.
Verse 17 interprets what Jesus’ ministry was centrally about: “when he came, he proclaimed peace to you who were far away and to those who were near.” How did Jesus do that? He repeatedly crossed cultural, religious, and political boundaries to reach those on the other side (women, Samaritans, lepers, Gentiles, tax collectors, sinners) and to welcome them into fellowship with himself and thus into the Kingdom of God. Crossing over such boundaries to be with the “others” was (and still is) dangerous, and was part of what got Jesus crucified. “In his flesh” (verse 14), and by the crucifixion of that flesh, he embraced both insiders and outsiders and so made peace.
By raising Jesus from the dead, God declares that the Law’s pattern of alienation is not God’s goal for the world. The Law is “abolished” (NRSV, verse 15) as the way for the church to be God’s people not because sin no longer matters, but because it is Jesus himself who defeats all sin, hostility, and alienation. This is not the pax of the Empire, for whom the cross was a brutal tool of control and oppression; instead, this is the peace of persistent, unrelenting mercy for others, as Jesus loves us all the way to death. Because of that, the church will not be defined by differences in nationality, language, marital status, sexual orientation, ethnic identity, education, political affiliation, or any of the myriad ways in which culture is determined to divide, but will be defined by Jesus who welcomed those declared “aliens” by the Law.
Let’s pray into the development of reconciliation in our world
One danger in hearing and preaching this text is that we tend to think of ourselves as the “insiders,” and so we fall into patterns of thinking about how those “others” need to come to us and become more like us. Ephesians is talking about something more startling: a “new humanity” (verse 15) formed around and through Christ. God is still forming us into the humanity that God desires.
Let’s continue to consider the first section of Ephesians 2 and the grace which has totally changed both our reality and conduct forever.
It’s something of a Before/After photo, like an advert for a Slimming club. The difference would be that the change described by Paul was not from personal effort, but from divine intervention. The dynamic of grace has radically altered everything about who we are and whose we are, about how we live, why we live, and even where we live.
As is typical throughout Ephesians, the text is densely packed with clause upon clause and prepositional phrases stacked up like logs around the cottage. In the original Greek, verses 1-7 form a single, one hundred twenty four word sentence whose subject does not appear until verse 4 with the main verbs following in vv 5-6. Consequently, it is helpful to examine the text in smaller sections to understand and appreciate the vision of Christian existence which the author displays.
The text opens with a kaleidoscopic depiction of our former reality and conduct (vv 1-3). Previously we were dead because of our trespasses and sins by which we conducted our lives (vv 1-2). Such existence was also a matter of utter bondage to malevolent powers, which the text describes variously in verses 2-3 as “this world,” “the ruler of the power of the air,” and “flesh.”
In the cosmology of Ephesians, “this world” refers to the present age in enmity with God (cf. 1:21). Here “air” is understood to be the zone between earth and the heavens which is inhabited and ruled by antagonistic forces exercising control over the world below. Later in Ephesians, this ruler is labeled the devil (4:27; 6:11). The term “flesh” depicts the human condition so turned in on itself that one’s passions, cravings, and mindset are in total disrepute and disobedience thus marking us as children of wrath (v 3). While this was the former existence of Christians, it remains the current reality of all non-Christians (v 2).
2:4-7 presents God’s intervening actions and the transformation they wrought. Though we were children of wrath, God acted out of the wealth of divine mercy and abundance of love (v 4). This divine conversion had nothing to do with how loveable we were, but with how incredibly loving God is. Thus, God made us alive with Christ, raised us with Christ, and sat us in the heavenly places where Christ now rules over all powers and dominions (2:5-6 echoing 1:20-21). In the Greek, the three verbs “made alive, raised, and seated” all have a prefix meaning “with,” highlighting how God did to us what God had previously done to Christ. This emphasizes the divinely wrought solidarity shared between Christ and Christians.
In 2:5, 8 Paul marks the headline of the whole conversation: “You have been saved by grace.” Here the Greek use of a passive, perfect periphrastic participle bears comment. The use of the passive voice underscores how we are totally passive when it comes to being saved. God’s grace has accomplished our salvific reality. The use of the perfect tense and periphrastic participle emphasizes the duration of our being saved. It was accomplished in the past and remains our reality into the coming ages as the ongoing demonstration of the immeasurable riches of divine grace (v 7).
This reinforces the sheer enormity of God’s mercy, love, grace, and kindness which has brought about such an altered state of existence for Christians. Likewise it also reminds Christians of the stark difference between their ongoing state of salvation and the state of non-Christians who remain dead in their trespasses and under the devil.
2:8-10 elucidates the surpassing riches of God’s grace by making two interrelated points. First, the radical change we have experienced is a pure gift of God’s grace. In vv 8-9 the Greek utilizes emphatically negative parallel phrases (best translated as “not from us” and “not from works”) to drive home the point that our transformation is in no way the result of our activity. Even the reference to faith in 2:8 as the means by which God’s grace has saved us is to be understood not as an action which stems from our own volition but as that component of grace which empowers our faith response.
Second, while the text emphasizes that our salvation is not from works, it also understands works to be an indispensible component of God’s grace. Because we were created in Christ Jesus (i.e., made alive and raised with Christ), we are God’s handiwork with the goal of good works (2:10). These good works are so vital that God had prepared them ahead of time (2:10), recalling the claims made in 1:4-5,11-12 about God’s actions and decisions being established before the world’s foundation.
Our works have not saved us, but they are part of the goal God had in mind in saving us. Hence good works are not simply the by-products of our conversion but were pre-planned and pre-prepared by God.
The Greek text closes with a direct contrast to our former life which is not as clear as it could be in most English translations. Just as we had formerly walked (peripateō) in our trespasses and sins (verse 2a), so now the purpose of God’s pre-planned activity is that we would walk (repeating the Greek word, peripate) in good works (verse 10b). Thus our reality and conduct, our being and doing, are intricately and indelibly intertwined, both in our former existence of being dead in trespasses and in our ongoing existence of being made alive with Christ.
“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.”
― Frederick Buechner
What a picture of grace! What an amazing insight into how we live together within the party of God’s presence within life -real life as it was intended for us to live – within real life itself. Tis is the reality of grace, the dynamic of God’s love that issues in salvation.
As we move from Eph 1 to Eph 2, we come into this grace reality. We’re together within the very life of God’s family. Look at the positional symbolism: God raised Christ and “seated him” at God’s side (1:20), a symbolism that expresses the power God has granted to Christ (1:21). God subjected everything to Christ’s authority—including the ekklesia (see also 5:23)—for the sake of the ekklesia (1:22–23). As Christ’s “body” in the world, the ekklesia is the “fullness of him” (1:23). In that spirit, chapter 2 begins with the strange indicative phrase, “you were dead.”
The word is the nasty-sounding nekrous, from which we derive necrology and necromancer. And Paul emphasizes a nonhuman force that disrupted the human condition (“the ruler of the power of the world,” 2:2). Here’s the NIV passage:
“As for you, you were nekrous – dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.
But! With God, there is always a way out!
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
You were dead, in which condition you used to live… It’s worth pondering the paradox. On the whole, people don’t like being called dead, even when suggesting that they were formerly dead. And yet, death in all of its iterations is necessary to understand the depth of Paul’s point: any consideration of grace requires, as a prerequisite, a reflection on death.
There’s some subtlety here. In the New Testament, death is called an enemy and yet it is also, as Christ suggests, how we experience new life. By dying, we live. For the author of Ephesians, death is an inward reality of human existence. Death is not just a biological event. In the author’s mind, death is the slow decomposition of what was once vital and full of possibility. According to this schema, death can be, and often is, a gradual process. In Princess Bride, Miracle Max is right in principle when he explains to Fezzik and Inigo Montoya that you can be “mostly dead.” Moreover, death is also alluded to as a place complete with a set of practices and a ruler.
Death is not merely a process; it is a land through which we all walk. We get a glimpse of that when we speak of being “stuck in a dead-end job.” Or even, “dead bored.”
Paul simply asks: Do you want to stay there? Do you want to stay citizens of that land or find new life in a new realm.
And now we turn to the operation of grace.
Notice how salvation is described in this passage. The saved are “raised up and seated.” The image of salvation is one of retrieval. Christians are rescued from a land of death and afforded the opportunity to sit beside Christ in eschatological perpetuity. The contrast is striking, intentionally so. Convincing people that God’s promised future is preferable to the present tense of sin has always been difficult. This is why it is so essential that the author of Ephesians meet this talk of sin and death with a word about grace.
Grace diverts us from the shame and sin of the land of death into the very presence of God.
It is God’s grace that retrieved us from our wanderings and our trespasses. By considering the real consequence of sin and death, the reader is prepared to hear the most miraculous good news: God’s grace saves. Moreover, it is by receiving this grace (freely given, never out of obligation) that we come to realize the genuine peril of our deathly sojourn and our powerlessness to find a path to safety. That realization is, as the text says, immeasurably rich. Surrounded by these riches, the Christian realizes their true worth, not as one who is failing toward death, but as one basking in the light of God.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, this is not your own doing, but is a gift from God.”
This is God’s activity—through Christ—to alter the human condition from death to life (2:5). The whole passage builds toward 2:10: “We are God’s accomplishment” (CEB)—a way of life that includes purposeful, human activity. So here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.
We’ve been considering the ‘glorious inheritance’ that is ours as the unified and connected people of God, but chapter 1 is really about the God- the Lord of this inheritance:God in three ways:
First, the FATHER who blesses…
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he[b] predestined us for adoption to sonship
Blessed, chose, predestined
Second, the SON who redeems…
through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8 that he lavished on us.
Redemption, forgiveness, grace
Third, the Spirit who guarantees…
When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit,14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance untilthe redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.
Past, present and future aspects of the work of the Spirit
The second chapter explores this corporate aspect of our inheritance in three ways: in our salvation, in our reconciliation and in the process of church – becoming ‘one holy temple’ together expressing the presence of God, in a word our sanctification
2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.
4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,which God prepared in advance for us to do.
11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
Third, Grace builds us into ‘one holy dwelling‘
19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
Unity and Connectivity
Ephesians 1:10: “to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment–to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.”
Here’s the KJV: “That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:”
Unity is a key theme in Ephesians. Church leaders are to equip the believers “until we all attain to the unity of the faith” (4:13). Paul was also “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (4:3).
Our inheritance is unity and connectivity. There is one body of Christ. Completely one and completely connected.
Reconciliation- There are no denominations in Christ. There are no boundaries.
And here, in this amazing verse, the concept of unity is applied in a cosmic sense.Paul specifically notes that “all things” includes “things in heaven and things on earth.” That is to say, there is both a spiritual and physical component to unity.
The is what the incarnation means. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” We focus so much on how to correct each other. Our task is to focus on how to connect
It’s useful to read these verse along with the Prologue of the Gospel of John (1:1-18), with the comparative language about adoption and inheritance found in the Ephesians text as compared to John’s similar claim, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13).
Both writers give a cosmic perspective. Just as John puts the beginnings of Jesus outside of time and space, “in the beginning” (1:1), the writer of Ephesians also places us in an eternal reality, “in the heavenly places.” It’s a different take on Christmas isn’t it? When we confess our faith in Jesus, we give testimony to both the incarnation and the divination of Christ. We hold both together simultaneously — that Jesus is fully human yet fully of God, and for John, the very presence of “I AM” in the world.
And this process is right now. It’s our inheritance and our task. John 17: “That they might be one.” All things connected: the material and the spiritual, the whole of creation groaning in childbirth (Romans 8), all things in heaven and earth (Eph 1) – All in Christ, and Christ in God.
This resonates with John’s prologue, where the entire world is the recipient of the word made flesh, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” (1:9).
When we are connected and Unified, we areChrist on earth. As ‘body of Christ’, we are not merely “those who are going to heaven.” We are intended to be the visible compassion of God on earth. We are the leaven who agree to share the fate of God for the life of the world now, and thus keep the whole batch of dough from falling back on itself. We are invited, not required, to accept and live the cruciform shape of all reality. It is not a duty or even a requirement as much as a free vocation. Some people feel called and agree to not hide from the dark side of things or the rejected group, but in fact draw close to the pain of the world and allow it to radically change their perspective.
They agree to embrace the imperfection and even the injustices of our world, allowing these situations to change them from the inside out, which is the only way outside things are changed anyway.
It’s important to note the corporate nature of our inheritance in Christ, and then to consider the high view that Paul takes of the corporate people of God. Let’s think about the reign of the church.In light of goodness that cannot be fully articulated, even with a profusion of words, Ephesians expresses hope for a maturing faith that comes to grasp Christ’s place in the universe and the church’s participation in his sovereignty.
We begin with the faith of the community
This passage begins with the phrase, “because of this” which should automatically prompt the question, “because of what?” Most immediately the answer is the faith of the Ephesians. They heard the gospel message, believed, were given the Holy Spirit who acts as a guarantee of their future redemption. They are evidence of the great mystery of God (Ephesians 1:9) having just now been revealed at the fullness of time (Ephesians 1:10). Because of their response to God’s revelation, Paul responds with unceasing thanks to God. In a situation in which Paul could pat himself on the back for his work among this community or brag to others, he directs his excitement about the community to God in prayer.
He does mention the things the Ephesians are doing that cause him to be grateful: faith in Jesus and love towards all the saints. He mentions these in prayer to God so that they will increase still more. They have been enlightened he says (Ephesians 1:18), but he is hopeful that God would grant them more knowledge, more wisdom. He desires that they possess a spirit of wisdom, a thoughtfulness and reasonableness about their new identity, as well as a spirit of revelation, knowledge so superior no human mind could intuit it. He prays for a gift of both mind and mystery. In these, he wants them to know some specific things: the particular hope of God’s calling and the abundant greatness of God’s power. In other words, he is very thankful for their faith, but he is not satisfied with it.
We continue with the sovereignty of God in Christ
The mention of God’s power propels him to proclaim (with loquaciousness!) the evidence of God’s strength in Jesus Christ. That power he wants them to know still more about has been made active (literally energized, energew) in the death, resurrection, and exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here, as in many places in the New Testament, Psalm 110 provides the language for Christ’s exaltation. He is invited to sit at the right hand of God (Psalm 110:1). Paul clarifies where this right hand is located, specifying that Jesus is seated in the heavenlies (epouranos). He is no earthly Messiah sitting on the throne of Israel. His kingdom is much broader.
Lest his readers forget that heaven is above all the earth, he specifies in Ephesians 1:21 all the things that Jesus is Lord over: every ruler, authority, power, lordship, every name that is named, in Paul’s day and in the time to come. What a powerful word to Ephesian Christians in the time of the first century. No matter how comprehensive Caesar’s power seemed, Jesus was above him. In our own time, we too need to hear the comfort or the challenge that no human authority will win the day. Jesus reigns over them no matter how exciting or dismal our current situation may seem. This is the counter-cultural power of Christ.
When Paul quotes from another Psalm after this powerful rhetorical list, he quotes Psalm 8:2 and applies it to Jesus. Originally about the status of humanity, Paul (just like the author of Hebrews in 2:6-8) follows an allusion to Psalm 110:1 with Psalm 8:2 in application to Jesus. Jesus is the human under whose feet God has subjected everything. On the eschatological scale between already and not yet, this passage leans heavily toward the realized side. God’s power is displayed in the fact that Jesus is now currently in charge.
So what are the parameters of the reign of the church?
At the close of this chapter, Paul telescopes this comprehensive authority into a realm of particular importance for his readers. In putting everything under the feet of Jesus, God also gave him the position of head over everything in the church; this is his body. The picture given here is that Christ is sovereign over everything, and the church, which flows from him and constitutes his body, also has a position of authority in the world. He fills everything; as the sovereign over all, his kingdom knows no limit. It follows that his body, the church, extends throughout his realm in time and in space. The church’s presence everywhere is evidence of Jesus’ sovereignty and therefore God’s power. We, the church, participate in the Kingdom already here.
In response to such confident assertions, a question calls out to be addressed: Why can the church not always see nor experience Christ’s sovereignty? If he reigns and the church reigns with him, why is the world in the state that it is?
Paul will go on to recognize the reality of a kingdom opposed to God. He mentions his imprisonment (Ephesians 3:1; 4:1) suffering (Ephesians 3:13) the powers and principalities opposed to God (Ephesians 6:12), and the struggles he and others have against them. His assertion of Christ’s sovereignty is not a facile claim that turns a blind eye to the reality of evil, but an unflappable assertion that recognizes evil and arises from the very midst of a struggle with it. Hence, in the first part of this section, Paul’s prayer for them includes several elements of a future promise. He wants them to hold on to the hope of their calling and the rich glory of their inheritance (Ephesians 2:18). Christ reigns and they as the church reign with him, but the experience of sovereignty is not yet fully realized. They still need to hope.
Paul has begun and ended this section with comments about the Ephesians, their faith and their participation in the church, but it is the meat in the middle that gives the bread on the outside its identity as a sandwich. In other words, they know who they are because they are coming to know who God in Christ is. He has much to praise about the Ephesians because they have been invited into the sovereignty of the King. With excitement almost too great for words, or at least too great for few words, he reminds them that they have now found identity with the winning team. No matter what is going on in their world, all the world is truly under the power of God in Christ, and when they come into their inheritance, they will see and experience it to be so.
Dr Ken Baker 