4. The Gentiles made heirs of the promises (2:11-22)
Chapter 2
3b. God’s power in the raising of those who were dead in sins (2:1-10)
Verse 1: And you did he quicken, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins,
Not only did God raise Christ from the dead by his mighty power; he has raised the people of Christ from the dead as well. This theme of rising-with-Christ is not new in Paul’s letters. But in the other places where it appears, rising-with-Christ is the sequel to death-with-Christ and burial-with-Christ. Here the apostle departs from this pattern; in the present passage the death from which God has “quickened us together with Christ” (verse 5) is not our death-with-Christ but our moral and spiritual death brought about through our trespasses and sins. This modification of the usual sequence of his thought has been felt by some to be so strange that they have suggested that the dative case (tois paraptοmasin kai tais hamartiais hymon) should not be taken as instrumental but in the sense “dead to your trespasses and sins” (cf. Romans 6:2,11). But this suggestion is excluded by the grammatical consideration that the present participle in the phrase “being dead” (Gk. ontas nekrous) here and in verse 5 must refer to the condition existing at the time when the quickening took place. RV rightly brings out the force of the present participle by its rendering “when ye were dead.”
“Not only did God raise Christ from the dead by his mighty power; he has raised the people of Christ from the dead as well.”
Verse 2: wherein aforetime ye walked according to the course of this world,
Paul here begins a characteristic digression, suggested by his reference to “trespasses and sins,” before he has completed the first clause of his new paragraph. The interrupted clause is not resumed until verse 5 (from which our translation borrows the phrase “did he quicken,” which appears in italics in verse 1, to help out the sense). The ethical sense of the verb “to walk” is common in the New Testament. “The course of this world” is literally “the age (aion) of this world order (kosmos)”; it means what Paul calls “this present evil age (aion)” in Galatians 1:4. Temporally believers on earth still live in this age, but spiritually they belong to the new age introduced by the work of Christ, and they manifest its power in their lives.
according to the prince of the power of the air,
The devil is here described as the ruler whose authority is exercised in the realm of the air; ie he is the leader of those “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” of whom we are told in Ephesians 6:12. (Another, but less likely, suggestion is that “air” is here equivalent to “darkness” in Luke 22:53; Ephesians 6:12; Colossians 1:13; since the word used is not aither, the clear upper air, but aer, the obscure, misty lower air.) Believers are liberated from bondage to him and his minions, by virtue of the victory of Christ (cf. Colossians 2:15); unbelievers are still held in subjection to him and forced to live in accordance with his God-opposing will.
of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience;
By adding the preposition “of” before “the spirit,” RV implies that the devil is not himself “the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience” (which the AV and RSV rendering indicates), but that he is the prince or ruler of that spirit. The “spirit” in this sense is not a personal force, but means more or less what we have in mind when we speak of the “spirit of the age.” The spirit of the age, says RV, is under the control and direction of the devil (cf. 1 John 5:19). It is certain that RV does more justice here to the grammatical construction; “prince” and “spirit” are not in apposition to each other in Greek, for “prince” is accusative whereas “spirit” is genitive.
The expression “sons of disobedience” exemplifies an idiomatic Semitic way of referring to men whose lives are characterized by disobedience. The converse term, “children of obedience,” appears in 1 Peter 1:14.
Verse 3: among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
Paul is writing to Christians of Gentile birth, but when he reminds them that they once lived in accordance with the standards accepted by the “sons of disobedience,” he makes haste to say that this was equally true of Christians of Jewish birth, not excluding himself. The “desires of the flesh” may take many different forms, and Paul elsewhere lists the things in which he formerly took such patriotic and religious pride as samples of his “confidence in the flesh” (Philippians 3:4-6). For the “flesh,” the unregenerate nature of man, can manifest itself in respectable forms as well as in the disreputable pursuits of first-century paganism. For “the mind” we might substitute “our minds” or “our thoughts,” in order to indicate that the Greek word (dianoia) is plural here; these are minds, of course, which have not yet been renewed so as to approve the will of God (Romans 12:2).
and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest:
We who were Jews by birth and upbringing, he says, were as much under the wrath of God as those who were born and reared as pagans. These few words sum up the argument of Romans 1:18–2:29, where Gentile and Jew alike are shown to have incurred the revelation of God’s wrath from heaven.
Verse 4: but God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
The wrath of God, however, is not the whole of the picture. It provides the background against which his mercy and love stand out in all their radiance. The wealth of his mercy and the greatness of his love are emphasized, because it is entirely thanks to that mercy and love that believers are no longer exposed to his holy wrath against sin.
“The wrath of God . . . provides the background against which his mercy and love stand out in all their radiance.”
Verse 5: even when we were dead through our trespasses, quickened us together with Christ
Paul now resumes the sentence which was broken off short at the end of verse 1, but this time he says “us” instead of “you” (including Jewish as well as Gentile Christians). We have already observed (in the notes on verse 1) that the death from which we have been “quickened together” with Christ is not here our death with him but the death brought about by our trespasses. The verb “to quicken together” (Gk. synzoopoieo) is probably a Pauline coinage to express a new revelation; it appears also in Colossians 2:13.
(by grace have ye been saved),
This fundamental truth is inserted parenthetically here as Paul presses on with his account of all that God has made his people share with Christ; it is repeated and expanded in verse 8. The perfect tense (Gk. este sesosmenoi) expresses a present state resulting from a past action.
Verse 6: and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus:
In Ephesians 1:20 we have been shown how the surpassing power of God was displayed when he raised Christ from the dead and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places. Here a further truth is unfolded: God has also raised the people of Christ along with him (synegeiro) and made them sit with him (synkatthizo) in those heavenly places. This goes farther even than what is revealed in the companion-letter to Colossae. There believers are raised with Christ (Colossians 2:12; 3:1), and are urged to “seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God,” for the new life which they possess “is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:1,3). But here believers are viewed as being already seated there with Christ, by the act and in the purpose of God. Temporally, indeed, we live on earth so long as we remain in this body; but “in Christ Jesus” we are seated with Christ where he is. And God, who sees all his creatures as they really are, sees believers “in Christ Jesus.” The verbs “quickened,” “raised,” “made to sit,” are all in the aorist tense; they express what God has already done for his children in Christ.
Verse 7: that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus:
In another epistle Paul declares that on the day of his advent Christ is “to be glorified in his saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:10). But here his thought goes beyond that: in the limitless future, as age succeeds age, the crowning display of God’s grace will ever be his kindness to his redeemed people, not simply in pardoning their sins, but in raising them up to share the place which Christ occupies by right in the heavenly sphere. The superlative term hyperballon, used here to describe the riches of God’s grace, was commented on in our note on Ephesians 1:19, where it describes the greatness of his power. If the raising of Christ from death to sit at his own right hand is the supreme demonstration of God’s power, the raising of the people of Christ from spiritual death to share Christ’s place of exaltation is the supreme demonstration of his grace.
Verse 8: for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
The parenthesis of verse 5 is now repeated at greater length. In verse 5 “grace” lacks the article in Greek; here it is supplied, for it points back to the grace already mentioned in verses 5 and 7. This is one of the great evangelical summaries of the New Testament. Our salvation springs solely from God’s grace and is appropriated by us through faith alone. Not that our faith merits the salvation in any way; it is simply the faculty by which we accept the salvation that God’s free grace has procured for us. Here is the basis for the watchword of Reformation theology: sola gratia, sola fide, soli Deo gloria (“by grace alone, through faith alone, to God alone be glory”). Commentators are not agreed about the exact reference of the words “and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” Do they refer expressly to faith, or more generally to salvation? It is true, in either case, that we could never exercise saving faith did not the Holy Spirit “persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel” (to quote the Westminster Shorter Catechism). But the fact that the demonstrative pronoun “that” is neuter in Greek (touto), whereas “faith” is a feminine noun (pistis), combines with other considerations to suggest that it is the whole concept of salvation by grace through faith that is described as the gift of God. This, incidentally, was Calvin’s interpretation, although many of his followers have preferred to take faith itself as the gift of God here.
“Our salvation springs solely from God’s grace and is appropriated by us through faith alone.”
Verse 9: not of works, that no man should glory.
Salvation is not of works, firstly because it is bestowed by grace, and secondly because it is received by faith. “If it is by grace, it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace” (Romans 11:6). “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness” (Romans 4:5). These and many other Pauline statements of gospel truth are summed up concisely in this passage. If salvation were of works, men would have something to boast about (cf. Romans 4:2). But when it is all of grace, and received by faith, all boasting is “excluded” (Romans 3:27); if the Christian wishes to glory, “let him glory in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:31).
Verse 10: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.
But if we are not saved by good works, we are assuredly saved for good works. For this purpose (among others which this epistle mentions) God fashioned us as his new creation “in Christ Jesus.” We are his “workmanship” (Gk. poiema), his work of art, his masterpiece. And we shall show that we are his workmanship by the works which we perform. Those who continue to “walk” in the trespasses and sins which characterize the unregenerate state show that they are not God’s workmanship, whatever professions they may make. But those who “walk” in those good works which God has preordained for his people give ample evidence of the power of a new life which operates within them. No one more wholeheartedly than Paul repudiated good works as a ground of salvation; no one more wholeheartedly insisted on good works as the fruit of salvation. The later chapters of this epistle specify in considerable detail the kind of good works which attest God’s workmanship.
4. The Gentiles made heirs of the promises (2:11-22)
Verse 11: Wherefore remember,
It is salutary from time to time to be reminded of what we were apart from God’s grace, in order that we may the better appreciate the riches of his grace and be armed against the temptation of having high thoughts of ourselves.
that aforetime ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision, in the flesh, made by hands;
Although circumcision and uncircumcision are alike irrelevant in the new order (cf. Galatians 5:6; 6:15), it must be acknowledged that in earlier days circumcision was the external sign of participation in the covenant made with Abraham (Genesis 17:10-14), and those who lacked it had no claim to the blessings pronounced in that covenant. But in Christ this external sign, formerly so important, can be dismissed as a merely physical, hand-made circumcision, in favor of the “circumcision not made with hands” (Colossians 2:11), that seal of the Spirit, which Jews and Gentiles alike may receive by faith.
“Salvation is not of works, firstly, because it is bestowed by grace, and secondly because it is received by faith.”
Verse 12: that ye were at that time separate from Christ,
not only because they had not come to know him, but also because they had no part or lot in the Messianic people, “of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh” (Romans 9:5).
alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,
“alienated” in the sense of “aliens”; they had never been anything else. The community of God’s people was in those days confined within the national frontiers of Israel, and was restricted to descendants of Jacob, apart from those Gentiles who were admitted as proselytes.
and strangers from the covenants of the promise,
that is, from the covenants bound up with God’s promise to Abraham (see Genesis 12:2 f.; 13:14 ff.; 15:1 ff.; 17:1 ff.; 22:15 ff.), which he reaffirmed to Isaac (Genesis 26:2 ff.) and to Jacob (Genesis 28:13 f.; 35:9 ff.).
having no hope and without God in the world.
This description of the Gentiles’ status before they were reached by God’s gracious purpose in Christ is, in a more general sense, a vivid and apt summary of the moral condition of the pagan rank and file in the first-century Graeco-Roman world.
Verse 13: But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ.
But “in Christ Jesus” – as joint-members of the body of Christ – the seemingly impossible has happened; those who were far off from God have been brought near to him. And the agency by which this has come about is “the blood of Christ” – his life willingly yielded up in death as a sin-offering on behalf of “the many” (Isaiah 53:11-12), embracing Gentiles as well as Jews. In the words “far off” and “nigh” we may detect an echo of Isaiah 57:19, quoted more clearly below in verse 17.
Verse 14: For he is our peace, who made both one,
No iron curtain, color bar, class distinction or national frontier of today is more absolute than the division between Jew and Gentile was in antiquity. The greatest triumph of the gospel in the apostolic age was that it overcame this long-standing estrangement and enabled Jew and Gentile to become truly one in Christ. Those who enter into peace with God must have peace with one another. And nothing but the gospel can remove the barriers which divide mankind into hostile groups in our own age.
and brake down the middle wall of partition,
It has frequently been suggested that Paul had a literal wall in mind as a tangible symbol of the division between Jews and Gentiles – the wall in the temple area at Jerusalem which separated the court of the Gentiles from the inner courts (into which only Jewish worshipers might enter) and to which notices were affixed in Greek and Latin, warning Gentiles to keep out on pain of death. Paul himself had narrowly escaped death two or three years earlier when a rumor got about that he had violated the sanctity of the holy place by taking a Gentile into one of the inner courts (Acts 21:28 f.).
Verse 15: having abolished in his flesh the enmity,
It was as true man, by giving his body in sacrifice on the cross, that Christ annulled the state of war between these two divisions of mankind.
even the law of commandments contained in ordinances;
The elaborate system of legal observances publicly marked the Jew off from the Gentile. In Colossians 2:14 Paul deals with a prior aspect of our Lord’s removal of “the bond written in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us.” There the bond which he has canceled by “nailing it to his cross” is our signed acknowledgment of indebtedness in respect of the broken law, which hostile forces used to blackmail us into doing their will. Here a further aspect of that cancellation is seen in the disappearance of that which constituted the chief cause of offense between Jew and Gentile. Out of Christ, of course, the cause of offense still persists; in Christ it has ceased to exist.
“If we are not saved by good works, we are assuredly saved for good works.”
that he might create in himself of the twain one new man, so making peace;
The new man here, like the “full-grown man” of Ephesians 4:13, is the Christian community viewed corporately, the “new creation” of Galatians 6:15, in which Jew and Gentile are reconciled in the unity of the body of Christ. He who “made peace through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20) between God and his people has also made peace among his people, whatever divisions kept them apart previously.
Verse 16: and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross,
Again, our Lord’s reconciling work, which is presented in its widest scope in Colossians 1:19 ff., is viewed here in particular connection with the relationship between Jew and Gentile. The “one body” is the body of Christ of which Jewish and Gentile believers are alike members, rather than his “flesh” (ie his physical body) as in verse 15.
having slain the enmity thereby:
ie by means of the cross. Compare the first clause of verse 15.
Verse 17: and he came and preached peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh:
This verse echoes Isaiah 52:7 (“How beautiful . . . are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace”) and still more Isaiah 57:19 (“Peace, peace to him that is far off and to him that is near”). Cf. verse 13 and Acts 2:39. Clearly it is the Gentiles who were “far off” and the Jews who were “nigh”; to both alike Christ’s own peace has been proclaimed in the gospel.
Verse 18: for through him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father.
This peace does not merely remove hostility; it positively brings Jewish and Gentile believers on one common footing into the presence of God the Father. Under the law the Jew had access to God, but his access was hedged about by strict limitations; the Gentile could have access only by becoming a proselyte. (This is implied even in such passages as 1 Kings 8:41-43 and Isaiah 56:6 f.) But now through Christ both have free and unrestricted access to God “in one Spirit” – the Spirit by whom the “one body” of Ephesians 4:4 is indwelt and empowered. The implications of this verse for the biblical doctrine of the Trinity will not be lost upon the careful reader.
Verse 19: So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners,
lit. “foreigners and ‘strangers within the gates’,” (Gk. xenoi kai paroikoi), whose residence among the people of Israel was based on sufferance and not on right.
“It is salutary from time to time to be reminded of what we were apart from God’s grace, in order that we may the better appreciate the riches of his grace and be armed against the temptation of having high thoughts of ourselves.”
but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints,
Paul uses three figures to express the unity of Jewish and Gentile believers in the new fellowship which Christ has created: (i) a city; (ii) a family; (iii) a building. As regards the first, he assures his Gentile readers that they have now received a share in the civic privileges of the people of God, by divinely bestowed right. In the Old Testament the designation “saints” is reserved for members of one nation only. But now the branches have run over the wall, or rather, the wall itself has disappeared, national restrictions have been abolished, and Gentiles as well as Jews are included in God’s holy people. All believers, no matter what their natural ancestry may be, inherit the blessings promised to believing Abraham (Galatians 3:9) and are burgesses of that well-founded city to which he looked forward (Hebrews 11:10,16).
and of the household of God,
Secondly, instead of being outsiders as they were in their pagan days, they are now God’s housemates, full members of his family, on the same basis as the natural children of Abraham who have entered into God’s family by “like precious faith.” On the composition of the household (or house) of God see Hebrews 3:6.
Verse 20: being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Here comes the transition to the third figure, the building (more particularly the temple). Does “the foundation of the apostles and prophets” mean the foundation laid by the apostles and prophets, or are the apostles and prophets the foundation? Elsewhere Paul says that “other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). But here the relation of Christ to the building is expressed by another figure (the chief cornerstone), and the reference is probably to the apostles and prophets of the first Christian generation as the ascended Lord’s foundation-gifts to the church (cf. Ephesians 3:5; 4:11; 1 Corinthians 12:28). Steadfast adherence to the apostles’ teaching, and not the production of an impressive pedigree, is the best evidence of being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.
Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone;
The Greek term akrogoniaios used here is derived from the Septuagint of Isaiah 28:16, a passage quoted in 1 Peter 2:6 as a prophecy of Christ and linked in the following verses with two other “stone” oracles, Psalm 118:22 and Isaiah 8:14. The cornerstone is cut out beforehand, and not only bonds the structure together when at last it is dropped into place, but serves as a “stone of testing” to show whether the building has been carried out to the architect’s specifications.
Verse 21: in whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord;
The rendering in RV, which has just been quoted, suggests that the completed temple will consist of the aggregate of a large number of smaller buildings, rather like the Great Palace of the Byzantine Emperors at Constantinople. This, however, is hardly compatible with the context of the epistle as a whole. Nor does the New Testament appear to envisage the Church Universal as made up of the sum total of particular churches; it appears rather to view each particular church as something complete in itself, the Church Universal in its local manifestation. The Greek witnesses to the text are fairly evenly divided between pasa he oikodome (AV, “all the building”) and the reading without the definite article, pasa oikodome (rendered literally in RV margin, “every building”). But there is some authority elsewhere in the New Testament for the meaning “all” in a construction of this kind even when the definite article is absent. In any case, what is said to be growing is not so much the material edifice but the work of building which is in process. And the fact that Paul uses the biological verb “groweth” when speaking of the Church as a building suggests that the conception of the Church as a living organism, the body of Christ, is uppermost in his mind, whatever other figure he may be employing at the moment. The verb translated “fitly framed together” (Gk. synarmologeo) occurs in one other place in the New Testament – in Ephesians 4:16, where it is used of the living union of the various parts of the body. Here the whole building operation has the perfecting of a holy shrine for God as its goal. The idea that Paul has the Ephesian temple of Artemis at the back of his mind as he writes this is highly improbable; the background of his thought and language is much more biblical.
“Those who enter into peace with God must have peace with one another.”
Verse 22: in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
It is in Christ that individual believers find their place in this structure which is rising as the spiritual tabernacle of God. The thought is very similar to that in 1 Peter 2:4 f., where believers, by coming to Christ, the living cornerstone, and taking their proper places in relation to him, “are built up a spiritual house.” But Paul had expressed the same idea more concisely in an earlier epistle (1 Corinthians 3:16): “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” It is not in any tangible structure, but in the midst of his people, that God makes his dwelling-place on earth; it is there that he records his name and promises his blessing (cf. Exodus 20:24). And in the words “ye also” Paul repeats his insistence that Gentile believers have a full share in this high privilege.
