Ephesians 2

CHAPTER II

The Great Quickening

Ephesians 2:1

1 The great doxology, praising God for all that he has done for us (1:3–14), closes with the earnest of our inheritance and the reference to our final ransoming. This is followed by the contents of Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians regarding the power guaranteeing their hope for this inheritance, the power so fully exhibited in the supreme exaltation of Christ, and closes with our wondrous relation to Christ. Now there follows what God has done in us in order to establish this relation: we who were dead have been quickened and made spiritually alive (2:1–10). It has been well said that the preceding verses rise to such a climax that what Paul now writes cannot be a continuation. A new section begins. Paul is no longer stating what he is praying that the Ephesians may know but is reminding them of what they once were, and of what God has now made of them.

We again have one grand sentence in v. 1–10. The two γάρ statements (v. 8–10) may be punctuated as separate sentences, but only in English.

The Deadness

And you, being dead due to your trespasses and sins, in which at one time you walked in accord with the eon of this world, in accord with the ruler of the authority of the air, of the spirit now operating in the eons of the disobedience, among whom also we all lived at one time in the lusts of our flesh, doing the volitions of the flesh and of the reasonings, and were children by nature of wrath even as the rest, etc.

New paragraphs often start with “and,” which indicates a general connection with the preceding. Paul begins with the object “you” but adds so many descriptive modifiers that, when he comes to the subject “God” and the main verb “quickened,” he repeats the object which he has changed into “us” and thereby includes himself. The structure is thus regular. These pronouns show that in this paragraph no distinction is made between former Gentiles and former Jews.

They were all spiritually “dead,” completely separated from God and the true life that is in God alone. “Dead” is preparatory to the predication “quickened” or “made alive” mentioned in v. 5. The datives are causal: “due to your trespasses and sins”; the articles are repeated as is done in the German because the genders differ. Two concepts are used, not because there is a distinction between them, but because this repetition states the cause of this condition of deadness more emphatically. The two plurals make plain the continuation of this cause; every trespass (see 1:7) and every sin (missing the mark) exhibited the deadness.

Ephesians 2:2

2 The relative is feminine because of the last antecedent but applies to both trespasses and sins. “In which at one time you walked,” with its historical aorist, describes the former life as being wholly in the sphere of what was filled with spiritual death. But two important phrases add to the picture. This former walk in trespasses and sins was “in accord with the eon of this world.” This combination of terms is unusual. Paul does not say simply, “in accord with this eon,” the opposite of “the eon to come”; or, “in accord with this world,” the opposite of “the kingdom of heaven,” he combines the two. “This world” (ὁκόσμοςοὗτος) is the order or system of this earth as it now exists since sin and death have invaded it; and since this invasion was due to man, “the world” refers especially to mankind in its depraved state. “Eon” adds the idea of long existence but as marked by the added genitive and as finally to give way to another eon or era that is not so marked.

To walk “in accord with the eon of this world” is to live in a way that harmonizes with the whole age in its present corrupt and debased order which is due to the fallen state of mankind and thus contrary to the kingdom of heaven which shall last forever. To walk so is to follow the transient norm of worldly life as it exists around us everywhere, which is the opposite of the spiritual norm set by Christ in the kingdom of God. Thus, obeying this norm, the Ephesians once walked in nothing but trespasses and sins, in flagrant opposition to God’s norm.

The parallel phrase reaches deeper. To walk “in accord with the eon of this world” is to walk “in accord with the ruler of the authority,” etc., i. e., in accord with Satan; for that he is this ruler is admitted by all (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; 2 Cor. 4:4). So much is clear; the rest is not. The crux lies in the second genitive: “of the air.” Is this to be understood literally as referring to the air surrounding the earth, or is the word to be taken figuratively as referring to the evil atmosphere (the depraved influence or condition) in which the spirit that is operative in the sons of the disobedience moves? The other two genitives are interpreted according to one or the other of these views. The writer is compelled to confess that he is satisfied with neither alternative and that he is unable to suggest a third choice.

If “the air” is taken literally, we are offered the following: the ruler of authority (collective for demons) located in the air about us, this authority (ἐξουσία) being called by apposition the bad spirit (singular, or collective) that is operating in the sons of the disobedience. Or: the ruler of the power domain (ἐξουσία) located in the air and thus the ruler of the bad spirit (parallel genitive, no apposition) operating, etc. B.-P. 432 has “the authority of the air” = Luftreich. C.-K. 404 and others conceive “the air” as being located lower than heaven where the good angels dwell (Matt. 24:36) yet above the earth but related to the earth so that Satan operates in wicked men. But how can “the authority” or call it “the power” (ἐξουσία) be a collective for demons? The two passages that are said to assure the other meaning, “power domain,” Luke 23:7 and Col. 1:13, do not offer this assurance, for the idea of “domain” is added. Although these proponents of the literal meaning do not claim that Paul adopted the rabbinical and the Pythagorean (sixth century) ideas, they must base the idea that the air is the home of Satan and the demons on nothing more definite in Scripture than the one word ἀήρ, here used by Paul.

When “air” is made figurative as we speak of a certain atmosphere, we are offered: the ruler of the power domain of the atmosphere (figurative) which consists of the spirit (apposition to “the air”) that operates in the sons of the disobedience. Here we again have the questionable “power domain” which is now, however, located in the figurative “atmosphere” instead of in the physical air. What kind of a location is this? And how can “the spirit” operating in the disobedient be an apposition to this figurative “atmosphere”? A third suggestion is to regard the genitive “of the spirit” as an apposition to the accusative “the ruler”; but this is a rather gross violation of grammar. Besides, it still leaves us with the real crux which lies in the genitive “of the air.”

The idea that the definite authority of which Paul speaks has a definite ruler who wields it (objective) presents no difficulty. So also the thought that a definite spirit or animus (τὸπνεῦμα) operates in the sons of the disobedience. The fact that these sons and Satan are connected is also obvious; likewise the fact that his authority rules their spirit in all its disobedient operations. But what about this second genitive? We confess that we are unable to answer.

“The sons of the disobedience,” like “the children of wrath” (v. 3), is called Hebraistic, but why it should be so called is usually not stated. It is an Old Testament way of using “sons” and “children” in connection with what may be termed an ethical genitive. These “sons” are like their fathers; together they second “the disobedience” of Adam, into which Satan lured him. “Children by nature of wrath” are all who are born subject to divine wrath.

Ephesians 2:3

3 “Among whom,” namely “the sons of the disobedience,” “also we all lived at one time,” all you Ephesians as well as I, Paul, myself. “Among whom” means that we were a part of these sons of disobedience. “We all” puts former Jews and former Gentiles on the same plane. The second aorist passive “we lived” indicates the past fact exactly as does “you walked” in v. 2; the passive is to be understood in the sense of the middle. The two verbs are quite synonymous, the one (v. 2) meaning “to walk around” in the daily life, the other (v. 3) “to turn about” and thus to move here and there.

The emphasis is on the subject “we all,” next on the phrase “in the lusts of our flesh,” and is continued by the participial clause and by the following coordinate clause and ends with the concluding phrase “even as the rest.” “The disobedience” revealed itself “in the lusts of our flesh.” These ἐπιθυμίαι are the evil desires that arise out of the flesh as its natural products; when they are παθήματα they are stirred up by something outside of us (C.-K. 501). They are many and varied and are evil in various ways. Σάρξ is the Hebrew basar in the full ethical sense, our fallen and depraved nature. At one time “our flesh” governed us completely. It is its nature to produce nothing but sinful desires and appetites that call for sinful satisfaction. With this phrase Paul reaches down to the inmost source of sin in us. In Rom. 7:18 Paul declares that in his flesh there dwells nothing good. All Pelagianism and all semi-Pelagianism are here contradicted.

From the phrase Paul advances to the participle, a durative present: “(ever) doing the volitions (the things willed) of the flesh and of the reasonings.” The lusts lead to acts. We take θελήματα to mean, not desires, but volitions in the sense of things willed. “Flesh” is used in the same sense as before. Because “the flesh” is combined with “the reasonings,” we consider the two as genitives of possession rather than of agency. The volitions are formed by the will, but in the natural man the will itself is wholly subject to the flesh. Hence the volitions are responses to “the lusts of our flesh.”

But since they are actual volitions, the διάνοια, the reasoning mind, helps to produce them. The will resolves to do this or that according as the mind directs the choice. This lies back of the plural (which is used only here in the New Testament) διάνοιαι, which does not refer to the individual minds but to their products. Some translate “thoughts” (R. V. margin), others “purposes” (less good), our versions simply “mind.” It is best to think of the reasonings, reflections, concluions formed by the thinking mind as these direct our volitions and the resulting acts. By adding this second genitive Paul is not speaking of two sources of our volitions.

We question whether he refers to source at all. The psychological source of all volitions is the will. Paul is connecting the volitions of the natural man with his flesh and his fleshly reasonings in order to designate their character; they are such as belong to the flesh and its ways of reasoning and concluding.

Now Paul advances to an independent sentence: “and were children by nature of wrath.” Phrase—participle—finite verb: rhetoric corresponding with thought. First, lusts—next, deeds—now, what we actually were. Lusts and deeds as the evidence, now the final fact: “children by nature of wrath.” The dative is like the double one used in v. 1; thus, “due to nature.” By placing it between the other two words, it does not receive the emphasis which is thus left on “children of wrath.” The genitive is like “the sons of the disobedience.” The article is absent because this is the predicate, and here subject and predicate are not identical: “we” were not the only children of wrath; many others besides us, who are now children of God, were and still are in this great class.

The fact that Paul refers to God’s wrath and not to our own wrath, needs no proof. His wrath is the unvarying reaction of his holiness and righteousness against all that is sinful. It is like fire when it touches tinder. Holiness and righteousness are always energetic in God. While the term is anthropopathic, it is adequate to express the dreadful reality. To attribute to God’s wrath the sinful passion of our own anger and then to deny that there is a wrath of God, in no way removes this wrath. “Children of wrath” are those who are subject to God’s wrath. There is a contrast between what we once were and what by grace we now are. “Even as” or “as the rest” refers to mankind in general, to what all men are by nature, and thus rounds out the lengthy description of the object “you” (“us”) begun in v. 1.

While φύσις may occasionally be used in contexts which describe something that is habitual and gradually developed so that it becomes, as we often say, a person’s “second nature,” this word is regularly used to designate what is innate and original. Here we even have “children by nature of wrath,” τέκνα (from τίκτω, to beget, to give birth to), which indicates their nature already at the time of conception and of birth. The view that Paul refers to a nature that is developed byactual sins disregards this context. Paul does not again use “sons” as he did in v. 2. Since already our conception and our birth connect us with God’s wrath, it is unwarranted to argue that because of our very nature we are not subject to God’s wrath. In other words, Paul’s expression rests on the fact of what is commonly called “original sin,” man’s inborn, utter sinfulness and depravity, a doctrine which is taught in the entire Scripture.

And not in Scripture alone, the reality is before us in all of humanity, notably in the death of babes unborn and born. We are by nature “flesh” (John 3:6). Our one hope lies in the new birth even as Paul here speaks of it.

Ephesians 2:4

4 In v. 1–3 we have an example of the richness of Paul’s mind. He sees the object in all its relations and implications and unfolds them to us in modifier after modifier. By placing the object forward, ahead of the subject, he makes both object and subject decidedly emphatic, in fact, this includes the predicate as well: You, dead, etc.,—God, rich, etc.,—made alive, etc.! No less God did to you! It is marvelous before our eyes. The sentence continues: God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love, wherewith he loved even us while we were dead due to the trespasses, he quickened together with the Christ—by means of grace have you been saved—and raised us up together and seated us together in the heavenly places in connection with Christ; etc.

We find no “break” and no “change in the structure of the sentence,” contra R., W. P. This is true even of the English, still more so of the far more flexible Greek. Some attach the whole object (v. 1–3) to the participle used in 1:23 and start a new sentence with v. 4: “But God,” etc. This construction disregards the formulation of the object, which Paul matches with the verb in v. 5; “you dead—he quickened,” and substitutes the incongruity; “he filling—also you who are dead.”

Some, like our versions, think that δέ is adversative because “dead” and quickening are opposites. They only correspond; only those who are dead can be quickened and raised up. Δέ is not adversative, for it is added after the numerous modifications of the object in order to mark the fact that the subject now appears. The English has no equivalent and hence must omit the word in translation. “God, being rich in mercy,” describes him according to his motive; the διά phrase modifies the three verbs and describes this motive still further as causing the threefold act. “Rich” in mercy brings out the sufficiency in God.

Paul uses the three terms: ἔλεος—ἀγάπη—χάρις. While they are synonymous, each is distinctive, and the three are not to be confused by ignoring this distinction. “Love” is the broadest: as in 1:4, it is the love of fullest comprehension and corresponding purpose. It sees our deadness and is moved to bring us to life. This divine, infinite love will ever remain the most wondrous and glorious mystery which is too deep for full penetration by our finite minds: “God is love,” is so revealed to us in the gospel. Let us fall down before him and adore the glory of his love.

“Grace” is this love as it is extended to us sinners in our guilt and unworthiness and pardons the guilt for Christ’s sake in spite of our unworthiness. “Mercy” goes out to the wretched and miserable. Grace deals with the cause, the guilt; mercy with the consequences, the wretched death in which we lie. All three are active in our restoration. Paul names them in the proper order. Having described us in our pitiful deadness, mercy is applied in order to remove this consequence of guilt; it is the mercy of love with its full knowledge and blessed purpose; and this love also in the form of grace as wiping out our guilt and its penalty of death. Here Paul again presents all the angles; his readers are to see them all.

He dwells on this love because it is the divine motive in its comprehensiveness: “because of his great love wherewith he loved us even while we were (yet) dead due to the trespasses.” All of this belongs together. Some punctuate so as to combine: “even when we were dead—he quickened us”; but the fact that only dead persons can be vivified is too obvious to be stated. The fact that God loved us while we were yet spiritually dead, that is indeed astounding. The thought of love is expressed in three terms: “his love—with which (love)—he loved us.” A dwelling thus on the term by means of noun, relative, and verb, is a frequent construction in Paul’s writings; R. 478 has an example from Plato. The relative forms the cognate object, “he loved” having two objects, one of the inner content, the other of the persons. The aorist indicates the great past fact, call it constative if you wish.

The “you” of v. 1 has already been changed into “us” (“we” in v. 3). Our being dead due to the trespasses is significantly repeated from v. 1 since the verbs in regard to our being made alive now follow.

Ephesians 2:5

5 Paul uses mystical language: “you” (“us”) as dead “he quickened together with the Christ and raised up together and seated together.” Mystical means neither mysterious nor mystic. Compare the other notable passage where Paul uses mystical terms, Rom. 6:4, etc. Here we have no figures, symbols, or verbal beauties but concentrated facts. One set of facts applies to the Christ physically, in his human nature; the other set applies to us spiritually. The two sets are drawn together into one. The interval of time is ignored.

All are viewed as one, what God did with the Christ in the three acts and what he later did with us. Yet the difference remains. God vivified Christ in the tomb, raised him up from the dead, seated him at his right hand. God then did three similar spiritual things with us, the spiritual effects of what he did with the human nature of the Christ. The verbs compounded with σύν, “together,” combine Christ and us in these acts. Cause and effect do go together; this σύν is a fact.

Rom. 6:4, etc., states that this effect, namely making us alive with Christ, was mediated for us by baptism. That makes baptism the divine means of regeneration (John 3:3, 5).

When in 1:20 Paul names the resurrection and the session at God’s right hand he includes the vivification in the former as this is commonly done in the Scriptures and in our own way of speaking. Yet here and in 1 Pet. 3:18 there is reason to distinguish the vivification from the resurrection. God made the dead body of Christ alive, he quickened it. The soul or spirit of Christ was returned from Paradise, from the Father’s hands (Luke 23:43, 46), where it had been since the moment he expired on the cross, God returned Christ’s spirit to the body in the tomb. In the same instant the body, animated by the spirit, left the closed tomb and then now and again appeared to the disciples during the forty days. God “raised him up” includes both acts; here “God quickened and raised him up” distinguishes between the two.

After the tomb was empty, after the living body had left it, the angel descended, touched the stone that closed the door, hurled it away, and thus revealed the fact that the tomb was empty. Only the grave bands were left behind just as they had been wound round and round the body and the limbs, but these wrappings had now collapsed and were flat, the body having been miraculously removed from their winding embrace—mute testimony to the vivification and the resurrection. John 20:5–8.

Us God “quickened together with Christ.” This expresses more than likeness: Christ physically dead and then physically quickened—we spiritually dead and then spiritually quickened. This is not allegory like physical leprosy—the leprosy of sin; physical blindness—spiritual blindness. “Together with the Christ” states a vital connection, that of cause and effect. Yet “together with” must not be stressed to mean that in the instant of Christ’s physical vivification in the tomb all of us Christians were also spiritually vivified; the preposition in the verb is not that strong. The interval of time remains. The spiritual effect produced in us coincides with our baptism (Rom. 6:4, etc.). The aorist denotes instantaneousness.

No evolution, no development is even conceivable between either physical or spiritual deadness and physical and spiritual life. Paul has repeatedly used the appellative “the Christ” (note 1:12), here it differs from the official name “Christ.”

Paul reverts to the second person when he inserts the necessary parenthesis: “by means of grace have you been saved.” This adds “grace” to “mercy” and “love.” The remark is so necessary because Christ was physically vivified by the omnipotence of God (1:20) while our spiritual vivification was not due to omnipotence but to the power of grace. Hence God also used the means of grace in our spiritual vivification (Word and baptism); in vivifying Christ physically he used no means whatever. This has been denied. When we were considering 1:19 we already noticed the claim that omnipotence causes our faith. So here, despite Paul’s explicit statement that grace has saved us, i. e., by this quickening and kindling of spiritual life, we are told that omnipotence did this. The fear of synergism in conversion has produced the assertion: “no kind of God’s operation of grace in our hearts” precedes vivification and regeneration. Omnipotence is made to do all of it in one instant.

Two facts are true:1) the life is kindled in an instant as already noted; 2) nothing that God works in us prior to that instant makes us better in our dead, sinful state so that we ourselves even in the least degree contribute anything to our quickening. Yet the Scriptures are full of instances of prevenient grace. See how this grace operates upon Nicodemus, upon the Samaritan woman before life and faith were kindled in them.

Grace operates according to a certain τάξις or order and never effects regeneration all at one blow. The law always first takes hold and works the knowledge of sin and contrition for sin; this is combined with the knowledge and the saving power of the gospel that is drawing us to Christ (John 6:44, 65). The instant faith is thereby produced we are vivified, grace has saved us. God’s work is accomplished (John 6:29). It is all pure monergism of grace, absolutely no synergism, which has never been anything but a theological fiction. Take baptism in Rom. 6:4: no adult comes to baptism with saving effect without first learning what baptism is.

Baptism is part of the gospel, and it is hearing the Word of God that kindles faith. “By means of grace,” working as thus sketched, “you have been saved.” omnipotence does not work in the spiritual domain, grace and grace alone does. The periphrastic perfect denotes the instantaneous act of rescue by vivification plus the resultant and enduring state of safety. Lifted out of our death by grace, we live on spiritually in the new life. God is the sole agent in the passive (monergism).

Ephesians 2:6

6 Vivified, the Christ was raised up, left the tomb, and appeared to the disciples in his glorious life (Acts 1:3). This was accomplished by God’s omnipotence (1:20). Spiritually vivified by grace, this same grace raised us up, took us out of and away from the tomb of our spiritual death, henceforth to live spiritually in newness of life (Rom. 6:4). “Raised us up together” (with Christ) once more connects the two acts mystically as cause and effect.

Paul completes the thought by adding the exaltation: “and seated us together (with him) in the heavenly places.” Forty days after his resurrection God’s omnipotence seated the Christ in the glory of heaven (1:20, 21). This, too, has its resultant counterpart in what God’s grace did spiritually for us: “he seated us together with (him) in the heavenly places.” Paul cannot say as he did in 1:20: “at his right hand in the heavenly places far above,” etc. The counterpart is not a duplicate. The result matches the cause but is not the cause repeated.

“In the heavenlies” denotes loca and not bona, but the term now appears as a flexible expression. In 1:3, 20 the context indicates that the heaven of glory is referred to; here the kingdom of God on earth is evidently the meaning; in 6:12 only the supermundane regions are referred to. The kingdom of the heavens (Matthew’s expression), established here on earth, is heavenly throughout and not of this world (John 18:36). It is the threshold of the kingdom of glory and is located wherever God’s grace has sway. God seated us in his own gracious presence in the church, amid all his children, at the table of his Word and Sacraments, under the shadow of his mercy and love. All the high and prideful places of the world are dungheaps compared with the heavenly places in the kingdom of grace.

The dative after the first verb, “he quickened us together with the Christ,” need not be repeated after the next two compound verbs; so we translate: “raised us up together with him and seated us together with him.” This means that the closing phrase: “in connection with Christ Jesus” (here the actual title and personal name) modifies all three verbs. On the phrase itself see 1:1. All three acts were “together with the Christ” because they were done “in union, in vital connection with Christ Jesus.” Nor is ἐν equal to διά, which Paul writes when he means “by means of” or “through” (1:5). So also Paul’s thought is changed when the three aorists are thought to mean that what God did in Christ’s vivification, resurrection, and enthronement he did not do spiritually for us but only “objectively”, assuring us of our transformation at the Parousia, so that Paul might have used future tenses.

Ephesians 2:7

7 The purpose clause takes care of the future: in order that he might show forth in the eons that are coming the exceeding riches of his grace in goodness upon us in connection with Christ Jesus. The aorist subjunctive denotes the complete and full showing forth. The verb means that God intends to make such a grand display of his wondrous grace before all the angels and the saints in heaven that all may see, admire, and glorify. “In the eons that are coming” means in those that follow “the eon of this world” (v. 2); the plural denotes their endlessness: when time shall be no more, when all God’s saving work shall have reached its glorious goal, when the timeless eons of eternity have come. Because of the limitation of our finite minds the Scriptures use terms that denote time when they speak of eternity, which, in reality, is timelessness.

See “the riches of his grace” in 1:7 and “rich in mercy” in 2:4. Here the same riches are referred to. But the adjective “exceeding” points to their superlative greatness, and the modifying phrase “in goodness upon us” to the quality of the grace as it will be displayed upon us in the world to come. To the great concepts: love, grace, and mercy, Paul thus adds a fourth, the χρηστότης, which Trench defines as benignity and sweetness such as invites to familiar intercourse and sweet converse and bestows all manner of good. Christ’s ministry was full of this quality of grace; some of its fairest manifestations we see in the reception of the sinful woman in Simon’s house, in his blessing the little children, and in his words of comfort and healing. In the eons to come, when everything sinful has forever been removed from us, the benignity of God will display itself in still higher ways. Who can describe all that God has in store for us?

We construe, “of his grace in benignity upon us”; τῆς does not need to be repeated in order to insure this construction. Even in the eons to come all will be pure grace, undeserved favor; but after having removed every trace of sin from us and having brought us to perfection and glory, grace will still have endless goodness and kindness to lavish upon us. Paul freely interchanges “you” and “us” in this paragraph. To think that “you” refers to the Gentile Ephesians and “us” to Paul and the Jewish Ephesians creates confusion. The final phrase: “in connection or in union with Christ Jesus,” modifies the verb and thus the entire statement. Paul rings the changes on this phrase from 1:1 onward: from eternity to eternity everything is connected with Jesus who is the Anointed.

By repeating the phrase in the same form in v. 6 and 7 Paul lends it significant emphasis. This the more since in both instances the reference is to Christ Jesus in his exaltation. To all eternity all that is in the kingdom of glory applies to us only in union with him.

Ephesians 2:8

8 In English the two “for” statements may be punctuated as continuations of the grand sentence or as two separate additional sentences, the sense remains unchanged. The brief explanatory parenthesis in v. 5: “by grace have you been saved,” indicates the thought that underlies this entire paragraph. That is why Paul uses so many terms to designate the divine motive: mercy, love, grace, goodness. So important is “grace” that he not only repeats the parenthetical statement but now amplifies it as an explanation of (γάρ) all that he says: for by this grace have you been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves: God’s (is) the gift: not from works in order that no one shall (ever) boast; for his workmanship are we, created in connection with Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance for us to walk in them.

“For,” as just stated in v. 5, “by this grace (by it alone, the article to indicate the very grace just mentioned) have you been saved,” etc. This repetition is emphatic: the past act of rescue plus the resultant condition of safety (periphrastic perfect) is entirely due to God (the agent in the passive) and to the grace he used as his means. The emphasis is again on the dative. Gratiam esse docet proram et puppim. Bengel. On “grace” see 1:6; 2:4.

But now Paul expands the statement by adding: “by means of (or through) faith,” living trust in Christ and all his redemptive work. God accomplishes his purpose of delivering the Ephesians when by the power of his grace and the means of this grace (Word and Sacrament) he kindled faith in their hearts. Faith is not something that we on our part produce and furnish toward our salvation but is produced in our hearts by God to accomplish his purpose in us.

Col. 2:12 states this directly: “through the faith of the operation of God.” One often meets careless statements such as: “Grace is God’s part, faith ours.” Now the simple fact is that even in human relations faith and confidence are produced in us by others, by what they are and what they do; we never produce it ourselves. Even deceivers know that they must cunningly make their deceptions of such a nature that they may appear true and grand, and that they may thus produce faith in those whom they wish to deceive. There is no self-produced faith; faith is wrought in us. Saving faith is wrought by the saving grace of God. Salvation is received “by means of faith.” The dogmaticians call it the ὄργανονληπτικόν, die Nehmehand, by which God makes the gifts of grace our own. In this matter of being saved by God faith is the trustful reception wrought in us by God, only this reception, which is distinguished from the subsequent activity of gratitude and works of faith. On this account faith is essential, and he who does not believe is lost because he does not by faith receive the salvation he ought to receive.

Grace and faith are thus always correlatives. “As often as mention is made of mercy”—the same is true with regard to grace—“we must keep in mind that faith is there required, which receives the promise of mercy. And again, as often as we speak of faith, we wish an object to be understood, namely the promised mercy.” In the German: “As often as we find the word mercy in the Scriptures or in the fathers, we are to know that there the faith is taught which grasps the promise of such mercy. Again, as often as the Scriptures speak of faith, they mean the faith which builds on pure grace.” C. Tr. 136, etc., § 55.

So important is this matter that Paul adds explanatory specifications: “and this not from yourselves.” The neuter τοῦτο does not refer to πίστις or to χάρις, both of which are feminine, but to the divine act of saving us: this that you have been saved. Paul denies categorically that this is in any manner due to the Ephesians themselves. The source and origin (ἐκ) is not in you; it is wholly and only in God. As little as a dead man can do the least toward making himself alive, so little can the spiritually dead contribute the least toward obtaining spiritual life.

Without a connective or even a copula Paul introduces the opposite: “God’s the gift!” his and his alone. The emphasis is on the genitive. “The gift” (definite) = the salvation he has given to you. This is a “gift” pure and simple, gratuitously, freely bestowed by abounding grace and mercy. Poor sinners are not even in a condition to go to God and to beg the gift from him; God devised all the means for appropriating the gift. Everything about us is a gift.

Ephesians 2:9

9 “Not from works” expounds “not from yourselves.” If we were in any degree saved by ourselves, this could be possible only by some work or works we ourselves had done. But among all our works done before our quickening there was not one in which God could find pleasure, not one that could aid toward our salvation; all were wide of the mark, all were so damnable that it took infinite grace to save us. As grace would be excluded if our salvation came from ourselves, so faith and the gift would be excluded if our salvation were due to works. A salvation coming “from ourselves” would, of course, exclude also faith just as a salvation obtained “from works” would exclude grace. Yet it seems best to parallel the two negatived phrases, both of which also have ἐκ; the other contrasts are implied. Works earn something, “the gift” is unearned. “Works” and “faith” are exclusive of each other, even complete opposites.

We may regard the aorist as ingressive: “in order that no one shall (ever) get to boast.” The aorist also includes the fact that every boast of any kind is excluded. In our human way we may say that, when we consider what it cost God to save us by his grace through faith, namely the sacrifice of his Son on the cross, it should be plain why he wants all human boasting excluded. But there is more, namely the fact that God alone saved us, that we contributed absolutely nothing, that God is truth and could not possibly allow anyone by boasting to deny even in part that God alone saved him. Now nothing so militates against God’s grace and what it does in saving us as the boasting of self-righteousness, the falsehood of Pelagianism and of synergism. To know what grace is, and to have saving faith in that grace, is to glory only in the Lord, 1 Cor. 1:31.

Ephesians 2:10

10 But what about “good works” for which even Christians are inclined to take at least some credit? Instead of there being any in advance of our quickening and having been saved, so that they could have contributed something, or so that God could have in some way used them in saving us, the very reverse is the fact: “for his workmanship are we, created in connection with Christ Jesus for good works,” etc. This is what we are and how we must think of ourselves in regard to good works. They are nothing but the product of what God himself has made us to be when he created our spiritual life by his grace. The emphasis is on the αὐτοῦ which is placed forward: “His handiwork are we,” ποίημα, the result of ποιεῖν, the thing wrought or made. As this is true of our entire being, so it is true also of our being God’s children. “Know ye that the Lord he is God; it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture,” Ps. 100:3.

The participle completes the thought that we are God’s product, something made by him: “having been created,” etc. No less an act is involved. In κτίζειν we have the equivalent of the Hebrew barah, to call into existence from nothing. Paul has in mind a close parallel between the first creative act when God brought man into being and this second act, which is likewise creative, when God brought our spiritual life into being. There are, of course, great differences, for the one is the act of omnipotence, the other the act of grace; yet in regard to the essential point both acts are alike. God alone could perform these acts; both produced something from nothing. Where there was no being and no part of any being, God called Adam into existence; and again, where there was no life and nothing but spiritual death God brought into existence the spiritual life that is now in us.

The difference is brought out by the phrase “in Christ Jesus,” which means more than that we are now in Christ Jesus as the result of God’s work in saving us; it says in so many words that the creative work itself, from beginning to end, took place in union with Christ Jesus. “Wherefore, if any man is in Christ (in union with him) he is a new creation” (the noun for the participle: κτίσις), 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15; Eph. 4:24. Paul reiterates emphatically what he says in v. 5, 6 that God quickened, raised up, and seated us together with Christ in the heavenly places. Just as our redemption is in Christ Jesus, so our new creation and our personal possession of this redemption are in him. In fact, he is the specific life element outside of which the spiritual creative act cannot possibly occur. The very life that is now in us is the life that Christ brought to light (2 Tim. 1:10) and that God made ours as a gift by means of the gospel.

But the main emphasis is on the phrase: “for good works,” plus the relative clause: “which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.” So completely is the idea that our salvation is due to works of ours excluded that Paul states that all good works on our part are only the result of God’s saving work in us. Harless says correctly that on the basis of the apostolic declaration Lutheran theology has always taught: Bona opera non praecedunt justificandum, sed sequuntur justificatum. “Good works” are such as God adjudges as good and not the world in its superficial judgment. They are all of the thoughts, words, and deeds in which the righteousness and the holiness of the new life manifest themselves. They all spring from faith, are all done unto Christ (Matt. 25:40). Such works are an utter impossibility before our quickening; only the new creation in Christ Jesus is able to bring them forth.

This, too, is God’s purpose (ἵνα) that every one of us who lives in Christ should produce the fruits of such a life. “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be my disciples,” John 15:8. Not in order to be saved but because we are already saved are we to do good works. As the sun was created to shine, the rose to give forth its delightful fragrance, the bird to fly, so we are created anew to do good works and thus to glorify him who created us as what we are in Christ Jesus. This is the text for all who are slothful in good works and need to be driven.

Long in advance of doing a single good work God himself prepared and made ready the good works in which he wanted us to walk. Even this God did and not we. All the ways of holiness and righteousness are God’s design and preparation. We need not puzzle about and search for what may please God, he has long ago mapped out the entire course. What Paul says is not that God prepared us that we should walk in good works (so Luther), but that he prepared the good works Οἷς is attracted from ἅ and is not = ἐφʼ οἷς. Nor does the verb mean “ordained” (A.

V.) or “foreordained,” which would require προώρισεν; it means “prepared in advance” so that, when the time came, we might walk in them. Stoeckhardt writes: “Christ, in whom we live and move and have our being, makes us partakers of his gifts and virtues; is formed in our life and walk; his holiness, purity, humility, gentleness, goodness, tenderness, kindness, etc., shine forth in our walk as Christians. And thus all self-praise is excluded. A true Christian does not boast even of the truly good works which flow from his regeneration, his faith. To God alone belongs the honor for what we are and do as Christians.” Thus in Christ the good works have been prepared in advance.

We need not prepare them at this late date; all we need to do is to walk in them. Bengel says finely on this subjunctive: Ambularemus, non salvaremur aut viveremus. All the works are ready, they only await the living doers and their doing. The road is entirely made, all that is needed is that we walk thereon. God and what he has done stand out in the whole paragraph. This continues the emphasis on God in the doxology (1:3–14) and in the substance of Paul’s prayer (1:15–23). It is essential that this be noted, and that all the points of detail be focused accordingly. The glory-praise of the doxology runs through the prayer and through the quickening.

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The Great Peace

Ephesians 2:11

11 “You” and “we” have been freely used thus far. Some of the Ephesians were of Jewish, most of them of Gentile antecedents. Thus far Paul has left this difference untouched. Efforts to introduce it by way of the pronouns in 1:13 and in 2:1, etc., are unconvincing. Now, however, this difference is introduced by Paul. Especially in Paul’s day the great Una Sancta was composed of these two classes who, outside of the Christian Church, stood antagonistically apart with apparently no hope of a union.

How did it happen that in Ephesus and elsewhere these two classes had actually been made one, all equally and peacefully members together in the church, the Una Sancta? When he was describing the church and what God had done for it and in it Paul could not pass this question by. He now states the answer: Christ is our Peace.

This truth is freighted with especial import for the Gentile portion of the church. Hence Paul addresses the Gentile Christians in this portion of his letter. He begins a new paragraph. Wherefore remember that at one time you, the Gentiles in the flesh, those called foreskin by the so-called circumcision, handmade, in the flesh, that you were at that time apart from Christ, having been alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, having not hope, and without God in the world.

Διό naturally refers to the entire preceding paragraph since this is a unit, even one sentence. “Wherefore” = because you Ephesians, once dead, have been made alive and have been created for a new life in good works. The connective is properly consecutive: for this reason the Gentile portion of the Ephesian church should remember and bear in mind how far removed and how totally separated they once were from all the provisions God had made for saving men, and how in the most marvelous way Christ ended this separation which seemed so permanent and so hopeless.

The statement that διό and its consecutive meaning are illogical, and the consequent efforts to adjust the connection by either altering this meaning or by changing the text itself (by following the heretic Marcion) do not correlate what Paul presents in these two paragraphs. These Gentile Christians were not only dead and then quickened by grace like the Jews; they were also, unlike the Jews, so completely and so utterly removed from all the institutions of God’s grace that the hope that they might ever be reached by this grace seemed groundless. Yet God’s grace reached even them. Here they now are, these Ephesian Gentiles, in the great Una Sancta, on a perfect level with the Ephesian Jews, these Gentiles brought from afar, the wall of separation completely removed, believing Gentiles and Jews made one in Christ, he their Peace. “Wherefore,” because they as Gentiles were thus quickened from death, they certainly ought to remember from what distance God had reached even them.

The Jews were always near the institutions of grace, Christ himself was a Jew, and the fact that Jews should be in the Una Sancta was to be expected; but that this entire multitude of Gentiles should also have been brought in, have been united in perfect union with these Jews, and placed on a perfect par with them, this, indeed, no man could have expected. “Wherefore remember” these things is the connection between the two paragraphs when the thought in them is noted as this connective binds it together.

The Gentile Christians are to remember (present, durative imperative) what they once were in distinction from the Jews, and what in spite of that fact they now are in Christ Jesus. The subject of the object clause is fully described from this angle so that ὅτι is repeated in easy fashion when the predication is introduced. “You, the Gentiles in flesh,” together with its apposition, addresses the Gentile Christians in Ephesus. Whenever only a part of a congregation is addressed, Paul leaves no doubt in the readers’ minds.

“The Gentiles in the flesh” is explained by a second apposition: “those called ‘foreskin’ by the so-called ‘circumcision’ in the flesh, handmade.” Jews used these two terms when they distinguished themselves from Gentiles. They would use them with reference to even converted Gentiles and Jews. Both terms are abstract collectives. It is Paul himself who adds ἐνσαρκί (the Greek needing no article in such general phrases) to both “the Gentiles” and “the circumcision” and emphasizes the second phrase by adding even the significant verbal adjective: the circumcision “handmade.” The Jews, of course, added no such modifiers.

In both instances “in the flesh” = in what is merely flesh, the physical body. Both foreskin and circumcision were only physical marks and were this only because the latter was made by the human hand by cutting away the natural foreskin of the membrum virile. Paul is not speaking slightingly of circumcision, for he well knows that it was given by God to serve as the covenant sign from the days of Abraham onward (Rom. 4:11). This function of circumcision, however, had ceased when the redemption was accomplished by Christ. The Jews still sought to maintain it by their empty formalism and despised the “foreskin” (Gentiles). Paul thus speaks of foreskin and circumcision as being only a physical distinction, “man-made” by the Jews, now artificial and thus valueless. Yet even then the distinction still indicated one thing, namely that the “foreskin,” the Gentiles, had never, like the Jews, been in contact with the saving institutions of God.

It is this fact that Paul wants the believing Gentiles in Ephesus to remember because it means so much to them personally when they see what God has now done for them. The Jewish believers in Ephesus will also hear what Paul thus calls to mind for their Gentile fellow believers. They, too, will praise God for the riches of his grace which reached out even to the “foreskin.” Paul, however, removes all occasion for pride in their circumcision since it is now only a thing of the flesh and merely handmade.

In addition, these Jewish believers will feel ashamed; for as circumcised Jews they had been in contact with God’s saving institutions but had not profited thereby, had trusted in the mere sign of the old covenant and not in the covenant itself, had waited so long until at last the covenant fulfillment in Christ had won their hearts. These are the silent implications for the Jewish believers in what Paul writes to their Gentile fellow believers. For so long a time they had been what Paul in Acts 28:26, 27 quotes to the Jews in Rome. Thank God this has changed.

Ephesians 2:12

12 The imperfect “you were” should be noted, for it points to the aorist (v. 13) “you have come to be.” At one time you went on in the most deplorable condition; then, all at once, this ended, and you got into an entirely different position. The predicate does not begin with χωρὶςΧριστοῦ just as in v. 13 it does not begin with ἐνΧριστῷ. “At that time apart from Christ” is a designation of time and belongs together just as “now in connection with Christ Jesus” is temporal and belongs together. Until these Ephesian Gentiles came into contact with Christ, their state was the one the four predicate terms describe: “having been alienated,” etc. There were Jews in Ephesus, a synagogue, and Jewish worship. But even these Jews were mere formalists and did not bring even the few proselytes they made into contact with salvation. So the Gentiles remained “in the condition of alienation from the commonwealth of Israel” (extensive perfect passive participle).

Πολιτεία is either the right of citizenship or the organization of citizens, here it is the latter. “Of Israel” is not the appositional but the possessive genitive: “belonging to Israel.” The commonwealth of Israel is, of course, not the Jewish nation but the body of the true Old Testament believers, who were named after “Israel,” the last of the three great patriarchs, “Contender with God” (Gen. 32:26–28), the name of honor given to Jacob because of his faith which prevailed. Since the Jews were such people in those days, how could the Gentiles come into real contact with the Old Testament church of God? “Being alienated” evidently implies no previous acquaintance but only the state of being foreign to something. The passive leaves unsaid who produced this state.

The second predicate with its noun (adjective used as a noun): “and foreigners to the covenants of the promise,” is the second part of what the participial predicate states. The state of alienation is that of being “foreigners.” The figure is that of a state or a city which gives all sorts of valuable rights to its own citizens and withholds them from foreigners. The ablative genitive denotes separation: foreigners “from (we say: to) the covenants of the promise.” This first double predicate names the objective features from which the Gentiles were during the past excluded; the second double predicate adds the subjective blessings from which the Gentiles were in consequence also debarred. Judaism as it was in those days could bring neither of these blessings to the Gentiles. The commonwealth of the spiritual Israel had dwindled down to small proportions. The true church of God was all but submerged by the empty formalism of the Jews.

The entire Jewish officialdom was itself foreign and even hostile to the kingdom of God. The rabbis in the synagogues, also those in the Diaspora, taught rank work-righteousness. How could Gentiles attain contact with the spiritual polity through their mediation?

The heart of this polity or commonwealth consisted of “the covenants of the promise.” The Jews had falsified this promise (the Old Testament gospel). They had made it a promise of earthly glory for the Jewish nation under an earthly Messiah-King. The covenants in which the true promise was imbedded, those old covenants made with the patriarchs, were equally falsified by the Jews. The Jews, themselves foreigners to these blessed gospel covenants, could not and did not open them to the Gentiles even when they made proselytes of the Gentiles.

The word διαθῆκαι cannot here denote “testaments,” nor can this plural be equivalent to the singular “testament,” nor does the word refer to the stone tables on which the commandments were inscribed (ideas advanced by C.-K. 1069). The singular does mean “testament,” and the Greek word even entered the Hebrew in the form of a transliteration. How this meaning developed from the Hebrew word berith, “covenant,” by way of the LXX we have sketched in Matt. 26:18 and 1 Cor. 11:25, which see. “Testament” is the proper word in Gal. 3:15. Here, however, Paul is speaking of the Old Testament promise and thus uses the word in the Old Testament sense of “covenants,” and even uses the plural. The plural is in place because God repeated his covenant promise. Each repetition was in a way a new covenant.

The word berith does not signify a mutual agreement, with mutual promises and obligations, and διαθήκη does not have this force, and therefore it is not necessary to translate Verfuegungen, Erbrechtverfuegungen, testamentary dispositions. The whole Old Testament covenant and all of its repetitions were absolutely one-sided, pure promise from God to Abraham and not also from Abraham to God. Never is it called anything but God’s covenant, never also Abraham’s (or Israel’s). That is why the LXX translated as they did, and why this word came to be employed as a designation for “testament” even by the Jews.

By being aliens to the Old Testament church, foreigners to the gospel covenants, the Gentiles were also subjectively in the worst plight: “having (thus) no hope, and without God in the world.” “And” connects these two as “and” connects the two objective modifiers. The mistake that μή is subjective is still made; but this word is the standard negation with participles and needs no comment (R. 1136, etc.). The fact that the conditions now named are subjective appears from their meaning alone. “Not having hope” = having no real hope, no objective basis of hope. Whatever the Gentiles subjectively hoped for after death had no reality, rested on air, would never be realized. “Hope” matches “the promise”; for God’s promise (gospel) is man’s only basis of hope. The hopes of the Jews were equally empty. This is also true with regard to all self-made hopes of men today.

The companion predicate: “and without God in the world,” really states the reason for being devoid of hope. What gods the Gentiles had were vain, dead idols, imaginary, non-existent beings; the true God they did not have. Yet he alone can promise and fulfill and thus justify our hope. The Jews themselves had lost the true knowledge of God and of his promise and hence could not aid the Gentiles in attaining either. Ἀσέβεια = the conduct of “godlessness”; ἄθεος in the passive sense = devoid of connection with God and thus without his help, left without God (C.-K. 490).

Paul’s picture of the Gentiles during this period apart from Christ is one of sadness: far from the safe haven, from the sure promise (gospel), devoid of real hope and help. They were lost, indeed. Judaism as it then was did nothing for them; it, too, had lost all it had. Rom. 3:22b, 23; 11:32; Gal. 3:22.

Ephesians 2:13

13 But now in connection with Christ Jesus you, those at one time being afar off, have gotten to be near in connection with the blood of Christ.

The sad story has changed into one of great joy. We regard this as an independent sentence and not as one that is still dependent on “remember” in v. 11. The expression of time, “now in connection with Christ Jesus,” is the opposite of, “at that time apart from Christ,” used in v. 12. The one period was marked by χωρίς, the present is marked by ἐν; once separation and thus a hopeless condition, now connection, union, and the happiest condition. In the phrase introduced by “apart” “Christ” is proper, for this period extends far back to the time before the Messiah came in the person of Jesus. The Jews had lost the spiritual conception of the Messiah, and thus the Gentiles also remained far from any spiritual contact with him despite the widespread Jewish Diaspora. The phrase introduced by “in” properly has “Christ Jesus” since this happy condition of union dates from the time when the Messiah came in the person of Jesus.

The emphatic “you” is elaborated by the apposition “those at one time being far off,” which summarizes the description given in v. 12 and at the same time emphasizes the great point of that description, that the Gentiles were formerly μακράν (sc. ὁδόν), “far off,” a long way from the true God, the true church of God, the promised Messiah and his salvation. This sad situation has changed now that Jesus Christ has come. Now the gospel is preached “to those far off”; in fact, the Jews, too, so long sunken in formalism and work-righteousness, are also having this gospel preached to them (v. 17). And thus the Ephesian Gentiles, once as far off as anyone, “have gotten to be near” (ingressive aorist, at the same time also historical); how near the phrase “in connection with the blood of Christ” states. They are actually in the polity of the kingdom, believing the promise, possessing the true hope, joined to the true God (v. 12, compare v. 19–22). “Now in Christ Jesus” only connects the present time as such with Christ Jesus, his name and the gospel preached in the whole world forming the connection. The final phrase, the connection with Christ’s blood, applies to the Gentile Christians in Ephesus who were actually saved by Christ’s blood.

The blood of Christ is the objective means, yet any true connection with that means includes faith. This scarcely needs to be said. Christ shed his blood for the whole world of men, and in the gospel its efficacy was now being proclaimed to all nations. Thus these Ephesian Gentiles had been brought to saving faith. The Koine loved passive forms and even coined a number of them such as the one here used without giving them a passive meaning. The blood is to be considered together with “his flesh” (v. 15) and with “the cross” (v. 16).

The blood = the sacrificial, expiatory death which “cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). It brings us “near,” into union with God, by removing our sins. Like his cross, the blood of Christ is comprehensive, and we consider it a mistake to eliminate the idea of price or to reduce it to the idea of sprinkling the mercy seat. Paul thinks of the blood in all its effectiveness but does not give details.

Much more may be said on “the blood of Christ.” It is always the blood shed in sacrifice, the blood of the Lamb of God, the blood by which Jesus laid down his life for us. It is the ransom, the price (λύτρον, τιμή), is substitutionary, effects the ἀπολύτρωσις or ransoming on which rests the ἄφεσις or remission of sins (1:7). The entire gospel centers in Christ’s blood. Follow the word “blood” through especially the New Testament and thus discover the whole “blood theology” against which modernism, like the older rationalism, stands arrayed. This word “blood” involves the Incarnation itself; without becoming incarnate the Savior could not have shed his blood. Blood is far more specific than “death” (θάνατος) although both are used.

One may die in various ways without shedding of blood. The cross (σταυρός) denotes the curse, Gal. 3:13, and is specific in this sense; hence “Christ crucified” appears so often. In Revelation he is the Lamb “having been slain” (Isa. 53).

Ephesians 2:14

14 All that v. 14–18 contain explains (γάρ) what precedes. The entire section deals with the union of Gentiles and Jews in the Una Sancta. In this union they both form one spiritual body. All separation is removed, not only that which is due to nationalism and perverted Jewish religionism, but also that which is due to pagan Gentilism (“afar off”). This union is formed in Christ: For he is the peace (that is) ours, he who made both parts one part and destroyed the middle wall of the fence by having abolished in connection with his flesh the enmity, the law of the commandments in decrees, in order that he might in connection with himself create the two into one new man, making peace, and might reconcile the both of them in one body unto God by means of the cross, having slain the enmity in himself, etc.

Αὐτός is emphatic, “he,” he himself and no other; emphatic, however, because it resumes the preceding phrase “in connection with the blood of Christ.” “He” = this Christ with his blood, he, the one crucified who shed his expiatory blood, “he is our peace.”

The predicate is ordinarily without the article, but when it has the article, the predicate is identical and interchangeable with the subject (R. 768). It is so here. To name Christ with reference to his blood is to name the peace that is ours; to name this peace is to name him. He is the personification or rather the embodiment of our peace. This identification is the strongest way of saying that he wrought out our peace, and that we have this peace by spiritual connection with him.

The question is raised as to what “peace” means, and who is included in “our.” The answer is furnished by all that follows: “the peace” that unites Gentiles with Jews in the Una Sancta in God and Christ; “ours” meaning that of the Gentile Ephesians plus Paul, a former Jew, and thus the Jewish believers, for the two are named as such in the next breath and repeatedly. True peace between Gentiles and Jews was impossible save in Christ. It is so to this day.

The apposition defines: our peace, “he who made both parts (neuter) one part (again neuter) and destroyed the middle wall of the fence,” etc. The middle wall = the wall in the middle between Gentiles and Jews, separating them. This word = the dividing wall, Jews being on one side, Gentiles on the other. The appositional genitive “of the fence,” the middle wall that consisted of the fence, adds the idea that this wall was the fence that fenced in, not the Gentiles, but the Jews. The whole Mosaic law and system of legal regulations kept the Jews away from the Gentiles. It was like a tremendous city wall that protected the citizens from invasion by outside enemies, a fence that keeps the flock within safe from outside marauders.

This dividing, separating wall Christ broke down with his blood; it had served its appointed purpose. Because of the person who removed it and because of the way in which it was removed the abolition of this wall and fence was not an exposure of the Jews to pagan Gentilism; it was a union: with his blood Christ “made the two parts one part,” created the Una Sancta, the Communion of Saints, which was drawn from all nations without distinction.

We note that ὁποιήσας——καὶλύσας are placed chiastically, their objects being placed between the two participles. This chiasm forms a unit in thought and in formulation. And this means that the following accusative is not an apposition that is still dependent on λύσας: “and the middle wall of the fence (he) destroyed, i. e., the enmity (he destroyed) in connection with his flesh.” This spoils the chiasm and produces an abstruse apposition. If Paul desired to say this, he would have placed λύσας before “the middle wall of the fence” and not between this object and its apposition.

Ephesians 2:15

15 Καί connects the two chiastically arranged participles. A third is added without a connective and thus modifies the two: he who made, etc., and destroyed, etc., “by having abolished,” etc. The objects are placed forward and hence are emphatic. Καταργέω is the causative of ἀργέω: to put out of commission, make ineffective, i. e., to abolish or wipe out. When Christ made the enmity between Jews and Gentiles pointless he broke down the wall and fence, he made the two parts one part. But “the enmity,” emphatically forward, advances the idea of the wall and fence to the effect these produced. The Jews utterly despised the goyim or Gentiles; they considered them dogs, vile, unclean (Matt. 15:27; Rev. 22:15).

One must know the status of dogs in the Orient. This attitude toward Gentiles is reflected in many New Testament passages and flashes forth in shocking language in rabbinical literature. The Gentiles reciprocated in kind and hated the Jews because of their arrogance, their scornful separatism, their peculiar religious laws and ways. The enmity was mutual.

The world of men was actually divided into two classes, Jews and Gentiles; there was a gulf between them so deep and wide that it seemed impossible ever to close it. Of course, renegade Jews adopted Gentile ways to the scandal of the faithful, and Gentiles became proselytes of the synagogue, but such occasional incidents left the gulf unchanged. Uncompromising rabbis spoke derogatorily even of the proselytes. The stone screen (chēl) in the Temple court forbade by an inscription that any Gentile pass into the inner courts under penalty of death (Josephus, Ant. 15, 11, 5; Acts 21:28). Paul’s “middle wall of the fence” may refer to this screen although there is no evidence that it was so named. The fact that this screen still stood when Paul wrote makes no difference since Paul’s language is figurative to designate what Christ’s blood did on the cross.

The old hatred persists even to this day. Jews have been restricted to Ghettos, persecution followed them, in bloody pogroms they were decimated.

Paul inserts the phrase “in his flesh” immediately after “the enmity” before he adds the apposition “the law,” etc. This means that we are to think of the abolition of the enmity as being effected in connection with Christ’s flesh, and that the apposition, “the law,”etc., is an added thought. The flesh of Christ is his human body which was nailed to the cross (v. 16), by which he shed his sacrificial blood (v. 13). What the connection (ἐν) with his body was we see from the context. Without giving his flesh or body into death for us he could not have made this deep, divisive enmity ineffective so that, like a flame which is robbed of fuel, it went out.

The apposition to “the enmity”: “the law of the commandments in decrees,” is decidedly broad; for “the enmity” is a subjective feeling that divides men into hostile camps while “the law” is objective, imposed upon the Jews by God in order to keep them fenced in and separate. Yet the two may be made apposite since the second is the cause from which the first emanates as the effect so that putting out of commission to one does the same for the other. Matt. 5:17–19 speaks of the law in the sense of the Old Testament and cannot be adduced here, where “the law” is defined by the genitive of content “of the commandments” and even their form is described, “in decrees.” On δόγμα, “decree,” compare Luke 2:1.

Paul has in mind the entire Mosaic legal system with all its commands that decree: “Thou shalt! Thou shalt not!” Christ set it all aside when he died on Calvary. Admission into the Una Sancta was ever accomplished by faith in the gospel alone, by the Christ to come, and then the one who had come, the end of the law, he having met all its requirements and satisfied all its penalties. Even its function as a dividing wall and fence for the Old Testament saints was abrogated by the cross.

The purpose clause states the intent of Christ’s putting the law of the commandments out of effect. It repeats and thus emphasizes the unification Christ wrought and at the same time amplifies and thus explains more fully: “in order that he might in connection with himself create the two into one new man, thus making peace,” etc. The verb “create” is the same as the one used in v. 10, “to bring into existence.” No less than a creative act was required and thus intended by Christ when he died. The aorist implies that this purpose was actually carried out. Ἐναὐτῷ or ἑαυτῷ (the texts vary) is more than an ideal that existed only objectively, ideally in Christ; the two were created one new man in actuality, Jews and Gentiles became a unit by being one in union with Christ, namely with his blood and his cross.

The two neuters in v. 14 are advanced to two masculines: “the two (men) into one new man.” This is personification: Jews are one man, Gentiles another, and when they were brought to union by faith in Christ and his blood these two created “one new man,” this being the personified Una Sancta. We have the predicative use of εἰς (R. 481, etc.); καινός is “new” as something different from what is “old.” A church without a law fence, composed of believing Gentiles as well as believing Jews, was “new” as differing from the church during the Old Testament period, into which Gentile proselytes could enter only by being admitted within the Jewish fence.

The modal addition, “making peace,” resumes v. 14: “He is our peace.” Christ as the embodiment of our peace is this embodiment for all believers (Jewish and Gentile) by ever making or producing (iterative present participle) peace. His great peacemaking goes forward constantly as he brings more and more Gentiles and Jews into the Una Sancta and welds them into one by faith in his atoning blood. He is our peace in this active, creative sense.

Ephesians 2:16

16 Paul expands and explains still further: in order that he might create, etc., “and might reconcile the both of them in one body to God by means of the cross, having slain the enmity in himself.” The aorist is again effective, i. e., might actually reconcile. Ἀπό in the compound verb seems to add the idea of restoration to that of reconciliation: “might reconcile back to God,” back to him where both belonged (C.-K. 133). This is, of course, personal reconciliation which occurs when faith is produced in the heart. God and Christ do the reconciling, we are the objects. We need to be made thoroughly other, God and Christ make us so. They need no reconciling; they are never the object of this verb. Its root is ἄλλος, “other,” κατά is perfective: “to make thoroughly other.”

Here we have a striking case of Paul’s use of the singular and the plural and of the neuter and the masculine: two parts—one part (neuter plural and singular); the two men—one man (masculine, two individuals and one); now the masculine plural: “the both of them,” i. e., the two groups consisting of many persons, “in one body,” one spiritual organism. Each term explains the other. “One body” = “one new man” = ἕν, “one part.” This is enough. We do not extend it into “one body of Christ with him as the head,” as some do. The idea is that of oneness combined with peace which is opposed to duality, division, and thus to enmity. How Christ is concerned in this is plain throughout, namely by his great acts and by his great sacrifice and its effects.

Here we have “by means of the cross,” the blood in v. 13, his flesh in v. 15, each again defining the other. The cross was the mode of death by which Christ shed his sacrificial blood by having his flesh or body nailed to it. This mode (hanging on the ξύλον or wood) involved the curse which Christ bore in our stead, Gal. 3:13. Thus was the one body formed as the New Testament Una Sancta.

Here, too, a participial modifier is added: “having slain the enmity in himself,” i. e., in his own person on the cross. Ἐναὐτῷ is so much like the same phrase used in v. 15 and like the many preceding phrases “in Christ,” “in him,” that we cannot translate it “thereby” (our versions), i. e., instrumental: “by the cross.” The A. V. margin is correct. Paul has said that Christ put the enmity out of commission (v. 15); yes, so thoroughly that he killed it. All that we have said on this enmity might be repeated here. Ἐναὐτῷ is emphatic, “in (in union with) his own person,” the phrase echoes αὐτῷ at the beginning of v. 14.

Ephesians 2:17

17 Thus far Paul has stressed the great objective means for producing the New Testament Una Sancta: Christ, our peace, his blood, flesh, cross, and what was done through these. Together with these means their result is stressed: oneness, unity: “one part”—“one new man”—“one body.” Not in two grand divisions, the one Jewish, the other Gentile was the church to be brought to God, but as one perfect unit, even as God, Christ, his blood, flesh, and cross are one. Now the subjective side is added: and having come, he brought as good tidings peace to you, those afar off, and peace to those near by that through him we, the both (of us), have our access in one spirit to the Father.

The Greek uses the participle to indicate the subsidiary action of coming and the finite verb to express the main action of conveying good tidings and uses this verb transitively with “peace” twice being its object.

This coming of Christ is often taken to be the coming for his earthly ministry. The hysteron proteron that Paul here records Christ’s preaching after he records the expiation of the cross is accepted as fact, and it is stated that Paul disregards the sequence of time. Yet some avoid this thought by translating with past perfects: “had come and had announced good tidings.” Yet these aorists are exactly like those that precede. All of them are historical and follow in proper sequence. To be sure, Christ’s own personal preaching was full of universal statements, full of peace for both Gentiles and Jews; on that point no question need be raised. But we recall that when Christ sent his message to all the nations he told the messengers: “I am with you alway, even to the end of the world,” Matt. 28:20.

He assured them: “He that heareth you heareth me,” Luke 10:16; “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me,” John 13:20. These statements make Paul’s words rather plain: “having come, he brought as good tidings peace to you that are afar off,” i. e., Christ did this after his death and his glorification; did it through his gospel messengers. For the fact remains that those afar off, the Gentiles, heard Christ’s voice of peace only through Christ’s heralds even as we hear it today.

“Having come” is by no means merely picturesque or incidental; Bengel calls it insigne verbum. It is that, indeed. Christ came to these people, wretched as they were (v. 12), “far off” as they were, their paganism constituting a gulf of enmity between them and the Jews. They could never have come to Christ, he had to come to them. “Go!” is still his command to us for our mission work. This going is his coming. Thus did he “gospel peace to you (Ephesians), those afar off.” Note the keyword “peace” (v. 14 and 16), now combined with the precious verb “to bring as good tidings,” an effective aorist to indicate the successful work among the Ephesian Gentiles. “Those afar off” is repeated from v. 13 and is to be taken in the same sense. This peace brought them near as already stated.

“And peace to those near by” repeats “peace” (this reading is textually assured despite its omission from the textus receptus and the A. V.). This means that “to those near by” is not a second apposition to “to you,” which it also could not be, for no Gentiles were “near by.” In v. 13 we have: “got to be near in connection with the blood of Christ.” As the added phrase shows, this means the actual nearness of faith in Christ’s blood. The unmodified dative “to those near by,” paired with the similar dative “to those afar off,” signified Jews. They were “near by” as Jews, as descendants of Abraham, as being in possession of the Old Testament, and thus different from the Gentiles. Yet they, too, had to have peace preached to them, the same peace, because their nearness was only external and had to be made internal.

Paul is still addressing the Gentile Ephesians and thus speaks to them of the Jewish believers with whom they were one. When the epistle was publicly read in Ephesus, the Jewish believers heard this reference to themselves, heard it with the same gratitude as their Gentile brethren who were personally addressed.

Ephesians 2:18

18 Some assert that ὅτι is not explicative. But it is explicative of “peace.” Just what did Christ preach as peace to the Gentile as well as to the Jewish Ephesians? Why this, “that through him we, the both (of us), have the access in one spirit to the Father,” this that both of us through Christ may approach God as our Father in the same spirit of sonship. Good tidings, indeed! Our versions translate ὅτι “for.” But we fail to see that the clause presents either the logical reason (ErKenntnisgrund) or the factual reason (Realgrund) for Christ’s having preached peace to Gentiles as well as to Jews. The real reason that Christ preached peace has already been most adequately stated in v. 14, namely that he is our peace.

The fact that we now have access to the Father is not the cause of Christ’s having preached but the contents of his preaching, the substance of the peace he preaches. Those who believe this preaching “have” what the words say and contain.

“Through or by means of him” is emphatic as its position shows. Those who deny this may compare the same emphasis in John 10:9; 14:6; Rom. 5:2; Eph. 3:12. “We have the access,” with its present tense, is general as in doctrinal propositions: the way to the Father is ever open to us by means of Christ who is himself the Way. M.-M. 545 affords no help for understanding προσαγωγή; C.-K. 69, etc., shows that the verb “we have” calls for the intransitive sense “access,” that we may come to the Father and not that we are brought or led to the Father (transitive). The additions found in 3:12 point to this same meaning in that passage. The meaning is not Zufuehrung but Zutritt or Zugang. C.-K. finds it “pedantic” to insist on the former when even the classics have examples of the word in both meanings. “Through” Christ, following, as it does, the significant mention of his blood, flesh, and cross, involves these three as constituting Christ the means for our having this blessed access to the Father.

And the fact that “we have” it surely includes the truth that it was given to us by this redemptive means. “The access” is definite; none exists but this one through Christ: “No one comes to the Father except through (διά) me,” John 14:6. That we might have the access called for both the sacrificial expiation accomplished by Christ as well as the gospeling of peace; “by means of him” includes both.

The Greek is able to add the apposition to the “we” by means of the verb ending after the object “peace,” thereby helping to emphasize the apposition: “we—the both (of us),” Gentiles and Jews alike. They come to the Father, not by two roads, but by one. Hence also the phrase “in one spirit.” One hesitates to leave the consensus of the commentators who here translate “in one Spirit” as do our versions. This consensus also finds the Trinity in Paul’s wording: “through him” (Christ)—“in one (Holy) Spirit”—“to the Father.” Yet, attractive as this appears, we question its soundness. In v. 16 we have “in one body” to which there is now added as the complement, “in one spirit.” This correspondence extends much farther when we note that “one” recurs together with “both” (“two”): v. 14, “both the parts one part”; v. 15, “the two men one new man”; v. 16, “the both of them one body”; now, “the both of us in one spirit.” In this chain of four “both—one,” one part, one man, one body, the last link is surely one spirit (not one Spirit). Not the thought that God or Christ or the Spirit are one fits into the chain, but one spirit, a unit mind and heart filled with one life and one faith by Christ, his blood and his cross, his gospel preaching of peace does. The decisive word is “one.”

“The access to the Father” implies that the Ephesian Gentiles and Jews have an approach to him as his children and sons, οἰκεῖοι, “household members.” All the rights of children are theirs as also all the gifts that this divine Father bestows. All come to him as a unit, come “in one spirit,” and are thus in one and the same blessed relation and position, no matter if they once were two, some of them Gentiles, others Jews. Πρός is the face-to-face preposition; “there is something almost intimate as well as personal in some of the examples” (R. 624, etc.), it is so in fact.

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The Great Sanctuary in the Lord

Ephesians 2:19

19 From all that Paul has been sketching regarding the church as being composed of Gentile and of Jewish members he now draws the grand conclusion. He loves the combination ἄραοὖν (the former word no longer being postpositive in the New Testament) which expresses correspondence between sentences or clauses (“fittingly,” “accordingly”), the latter indicating result. Accordingly, therefore, no longer are you foreigners and outsiders; on the contrary, you are fellow citizens of the saints and family members of God.

This is the deduction from the four “one” terms in which all that precedes is focused. Once the Gentiles were “foreigners” (v. 12), aliens, strangers, were “guests” in the nation or the city to which they had come for a shorter or a longer stay, and were tolerated only as such. Paul adds the synonymous “outsiders,” πάροικοι, literally, such as live beside others, tolerated neighbors and no more. M.-M. 496: “a licensed sojourner in a town, whose protection and status were secured by the payment of a small tax,” who add an inscription which shows the mixed nature of the population in Graeco-Roman towns. A ξένος might be a mere traveler, a πάροικος was one who dwelt in a city that was not of his own people. Nothing like this is the present status of Gentile Christians in Ephesus.

Quite the contrary. They are “fellow citizens of the saints,” members of the holy commonwealth or polity (see v. 12), with all the rights of citizenship. They are “saints” as much as any other saints (1:1), as much as the believers of Jewish descent. Paul is speaking of the present citizenship of the church in which all are on a perfect equality. He is not making a comparison with the Old Testament saints. The Una Sancta of Christ is composed of one class alone and not of two, one that is superior, the other inferior, one that has more, the other fewer rights.

From the image of a city or commonwealth Paul advances to that of a household or family even as he has just written “Father” (v. 18): “and family members (Gal. 6:10) of God,” he being the Father equally of all of them as his children and sons. The notion that some are only servants or even only slaves is not to be entertained.

Ephesians 2:20

20 A third step carries the figure still higher. The Christians dwell in the οἷκος or house as οἷκειοι, members of God’s family; but now Paul views them as themselves constituting the house, they are the “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:5) of which it is built: having been built up upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in connection with whom all the building framed together grows into a sanctuary holy in the Lord; in connection with whom also you are being built together into a habitation of God in the Spirit.

Paul is speaking of the invisible church, the Communion of Saints, a great temple in process of construction, rising on its foundation and its cornerstone. The Ephesian Gentile Christians are what they are since they had been built up upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, etc. The participle is causal, and God is the agent back of the passive. With the aorist Paul points to the past fact: the Ephesians have, indeed, been built up on this foundation and have ever since been what Paul says they now are (v. 19). The fact that God placed them on the divine foundation as living stones when he wrought faith in their hearts and brought them to baptism, does not need to be added. The great point is that these former pagans and Gentiles (v. 11, 12) have been made an integral part of the great spiritual Building of God.

God built them up “upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” The one article makes the apostles and prophets one class (R. 787) although scarcely with the idea that the apostles are themselves the prophets here referred to. All is clear in regard to the apostles. Although Paul is one of them, he speaks of them in an objective way (so also in 4:11; 1 Cor. 12:29). The dispute regarding “prophets” is whether the Old or the New Testament prophets are referred to. It is well to know that prophecy was one of the charismatic gifts (Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:10, 28, 29) of a nature to be desired and cultivated by all the members of the church (1 Cor. 14:1, etc.). Prophecy and prophets of this kind refer to the proper transmission of the saving truths already revealed.

Prophets in this sense rank with teachers, evangelists, and pastors. Then we find prophets like Agabus and the daughters of Philip (Acts 21:9, 10) to whom God communicated this and that special revelation about coming events. What we know of them places them far below the great Old Testament prophets as well as below the apostles. Their function was only incidental, their revelations only occasional, they were few in number.

Involved in the question regarding the identity of these prophets is the force of the genitive plus the meaning of “the foundation.” One view is that Paul means the foundation which the apostles and prophets lay whenever they promulgate the gospel in any place. So Paul laid the foundation of the Corinthian congregation (1 Cor. 3:10) and declined to build on the foundation already laid by some other man (Rom. 15:20), the latter referring to the church at Rome which was founded by no apostle but by Christian believers. Those who think of foundation in this sense regard the genitive as subjective or as causal or as possessive. All amounts to this that the apostles and prophets lay it where they start to work, they being the agents, the cause, the foundation being theirs in this sense. This conception thinks only of the New Testament prophets.

As far as men of the type of Agabus are concerned, these would be ruled out, for we have no record that they ever founded a single congregation. We should have left only ordinary Christians such as founded the church at Rome, such as fled from Jerusalem after Saul’s persecution and started churches in the places where they found refuge. We might include Barnabas (Acts 13:1, “certain prophets and teachers”) who worked with Paul and afterward worked by himself (Acts 15:39), also other assistants of Paul and of others of the Twelve like Mark who in later years was with Peter. If we think of founders of congregations we shall not get beyond the charisma of prophecy as it is noted in Rom. 12:6; 1 Cor. 12:10; 14:1, etc. We do not find this satisfactory. It will not do to refer to 4:11 and to other passages in Acts and in the epistles that contain the word “prophets”; we must see just who is meant in each case.

In 1 Cor. 3:11 Jesus Christ is called the foundation, not laid by Paul, but by God, not laid in founding this or that congregation, but laid by God once for all, for the church as such, for all time. In Ephesians “the foundation” is to be understood in the same sense, the one laid by God. Then the genitive is appositional: “the foundation which consists of the apostles and prophets,” not, indeed, of their persons as being the first believers, or of their faith as being the original faith, but of their office as “the apostles and prophets,” the recipients of the entire divine saving revelation for inspired transmission to all future ages. This revelation on which the faith of the Una Sancta rests as its foundation is “the impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture” as found in the Old and the New Testaments. Although it was at first spread orally, the apostles and prophets later committed it to a written form under the Spirit’s inspiration.

Thus also Paul adds: “Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.” God laid him as he laid the foundation. In 1 Cor. 3:11 Christ is viewed as the entire foundation; the whole church is built on him alone, and a foundation other than this cannot be laid. In a variation and an extension of the figure Paul now views Christ as the cornerstone in the foundation. Christ is the determining factor in the saving revelation of the inspired Word in both Testaments.

It is stated that Paul should then have reversed the words: “the foundation of the (Old Testament) prophets and (New Testament) apostles.” It all depends. The apostles added the testimonies of the prophets to the revelation they transmitted. Their constant refrain is: “As it has been written.” The apostles brought Christ and then the prophecies; they did not present the prophecies and then offer Christ. This order is perfectly proper when addressing Gentile Christians; if Paul had addressed former Jews in this passage he might have reversed the terms.

But note that the apostles are here placed on the same level with the Old Testament prophets. The idea that they are paired with lesser men (New Testament prophets, Agabus, Barnabas, assistants, men who had only a charisma) does not commend itself. The Twelve and Paul belong in the same class with Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc., because they exceed all others as the inspired transmitters of the Word. All these together constitute the foundation of the church. Our faith rests on the Word that has come to us through them (διά, the great preposition for inspiration). We believe, preach, and confess only what these apostles and prophets wrote; and to this date we use the apostles more than the prophets, and use the latter in the light of the former.

One might refer αὐτοῦ to “the foundation” and translate, “its cornerstone Christ Jesus.” But it seems far better to join the pronoun to “Christ Jesus”: “Christ Jesus himself being (the) cornerstone.” The predicate noun is marked as such by having no article. The purpose of a cornerstone does not seem clear to some interpreters. When preachers use our text on the occasion of the laying of cornerstones they often express strange ideas. One such idea is that the cornerstone connects two walls that meet at a corner, and another is that it holds them together. So Christ connects and holds together Jews and Gentiles. This thought is expanded: the cornerstone holds the entire building together, but no stone ever did that.

Next the idea of stability is emphasized: this stone is said to give strength and cohesion to the whole building. A little stronger idea: it carries the whole building, but this would make it the whole foundation.

We also meet the idea that it completes the foundation, yet all the stones at all the corners are necessary for completeness. Von Hofmann has the cornerstone “enclose, as it were,” the whole building. Ewald regards it as the first stone that is laid and quotes Robinson to the effect that the cornerstones had greater dimensions than all the others. Yet at Baalbek in Syria the writer saw the greatest stones ever quarried, two of them were laid up high in the flat of the immense wall, the greatest one had been moved part of the way out of the quarries; it was evidently also intended for the walls and was not to be the first to be laid at the bottom of the foundation.

Ἀκρογωνιαῖος, “at the tip of the angle,” is an adjective, and τό makes it a noun that is applied to the stone set at the corner of a wall so that its outer angle becomes important. This importance is ideal, we may say symbolic: the angle of the cornerstone governs all the lines and all the other angles of the building. This one stone is thus laid with special, sometimes with elaborate ceremonies. It supports the building no more than does any other stone. Its entire significance is to be found in its one outer angle. Its size is immaterial and certainly need not be immense.

It is thus also placed at the most important corner, in or on the top tier of the foundation, so as to be seen by all. The idea that its place was originally at the bottom of the excavation appears improbable when we note that in the case of large buildings the foundation is broad at the bottom, and that the angels are rough, not always exact. The purpose of a cornerstone is ideal only, i. e., a special meaning is attached to it for the building with its lines and angles. One could build without this idealism, but it has found approval since ancient times. Aside from the LXX (first in Isa. 28:16) and the New Testament the Greek term has not as yet been found save, of course, in later church writers.

Paul uses the idea thus connected with a cornerstone to indicate what Christ Jesus is in reality in regard to the church plus its foundation (the Word). Figuratively speaking, Christ Jesus (title plus personal name) is the cornerstone of the divine building, the Una Sancta. There is not a single line or an angle in this building that is not determined by this Stone, ein Stein der Bewaehrung, ein koestlicher Eckstein wohlgegruendeter Gruendung (Isa. 28:16, Delitzsch). To speak of Christ as such a stone is no bolder a figure than when Isa. 8:14 calls God a stone and rock; the psalmist also again and again calls him a rock. Paul’s figure is beautiful and expressive in every way.

Ephesians 2:21

21 Paul is using what Trench calls Biblical allegory, namely figure and reality interwoven, which is thus self-interpretative as it moves on: “having been built up upon the foundation (figure) of the apostles and prophets (reality), the cornerstone (figure) being Christ Jesus (reality), in connection with whom (reality) all the building framed together grows into a holy sanctuary (figure) in the Lord (reality); in connection with whom also you (reality) are being built together into a habitation (figure) of God in the Spirit (reality).” See another beautiful example of this weaving with double thread, the gold of figure and the silver of reality, in John 15: “I (reality) am the Vine (figure), you (reality) are the branches” (figure), and thus on through.

When commentators declare that “in whom,” here and in v. 22, drops the figure they evidently do not understand what Paul is doing. He weaves reality and figure together for self-interpretation and for great riches. Does Paul “drop” the figure in “the apostles and prophets” or in “Christ Jesus himself”? Why, then, say that in the relative pronoun he now “drops” something? Some regard “in whom” as figurative language and write about the cornerstone which umschliesst the building or make the phrase mystical.

Ἐνᾧ signifies “in connction with whom,” the connection with Christ being like that of a building with its cornerstone, the angle of this stone dominating every line and every other angle in the building. Call the figure a simile if you wish, it is all simple and lovely. The A. V. is perfectly correct: “all the building,” πᾶσαοἰκοδομή, even as R. 772 puts it: “With the abstract word ‘every’ and ‘all’ amount practically to the same thing.” Yet in his W. P. R. is uncertain despite the examples such as Col. 1:15, “all creation”; 1 Cor. 1:5, “all knowledge,” and many others.

B.-D. 275, 3 adopts the variant reading with the article. The R. V. adopts the text that is minus the article and then becomes pedantic with its translation “each several building” as if there were several or many buildings while Paul speaks only of the one great “sanctuary.” The result is that some commentators seek to discover the several buildings. R., W. P., thinks of the individual Christians, others of the individual congregations, others, leaving the matter indefinite, of the individual parts of the building. Ewald’s conclusion is to the point: not, indeed, der ganze Bau but aller Bau, i. e., all that is building and is not foundation, all that as building is erected on the foundation, for which the foundation was laid by God.

Paul adds the participle: “by being framed or fitted together” all that is building grows into a sanctuary. The idea expressed is that of “the Communion of Saints.” An inner harmony, oneness, correspondence, attachment pervade all that forms the building. What the foundation and its cornerstone demand is carried out in all that is superstructure even to the joining of every stone and timber. So it grows (the verb is intransitive) into a holy Sanctuary in (in union with) the Lord (Christ). Both participle and verb are the present. Αὔξω means, “make grow,” in later Greek it is intransitive, “grow,” it is like a passive (Liddell and Scott). In v. 20 the aorist participle states that the Gentile Ephesians have already been built upon the foundation.

Now Paul speaks objectively of all building as being still in progress. The fitting together and the growing continue. The great Una Sancta actually “grows.” Some day it will be complete, “a glorious church,” indeed (5:27).

There is no incongruity unless we stress the figure and forget the reality which the figure is intended to serve and not to control or to change. This is a spiritual, living Sanctuary. It will not do, then, to think of the erection of a stone building by human hands, in which, when a stone is properly put in place, all is done as far as that stone is concerned. Paul does not forget the reality which the figure of dead, earthly stone and material cannot picture. Peter boldly speaks of “living stones” (λίθοιζῶντες), 1 Pet. 2:5. Justification places us on the foundation, but this is not the whole of God’s work of building us into a holy Sanctuary.

We need daily forgiveness, progressive sanctification, constant blessing. In 1:16, etc., Paul prays for great increase of knowledge for the Ephesians. So we need strengthening, comfort, help of all kinds, and much more besides.

Skillful as he is, Paul covers all this by saying “fitted together” and “grows”; the figure scarcely reaches the reality, the wording of it does, and that is the main thing. One might also urge that a building is not occupied until it has ceased to grow and is complete. But in this entire section God is the prominent subject. He builds this Sanctuary and is ever in it with his operative grace. He is not like one who lets another do the building and then finally moves in. Keep firm hold on the reality, then the figurative language will be much better understood and will serve the purpose which it is intended to serve.

Our versions translate “temple,” which word they also use to translate ἱερόν. The latter denotes the entire complex of buildings and courts of the place of worship in Jerusalem while ναός was the “sanctuary,” the central structure containing the Holy and the Holy of Holies. The idea that Paul has in mind any sanctuary, including those of pagans, is unwarranted; he thinks of the Sanctuary at Jerusalem, which was a type and a symbol of Christ (see John 2:18–22) and of the church. “Holy in the Lord” belongs together; the holiness of the Una Sancta lies in the union with Christ (5:27). The idea to be expressed cannot be that the Una Sancta increases in holiness from age to age; the church of the present age is not more holy than that of earlier ages. What Paul means is that the church is a Sanctuary, and that its being this is due to its union with Christ. It always grows, outwardly and inwardly, in this direction only (εἰς), to be a Sanctuary, holy only in this its connection.

Ephesians 2:22

22 The tenses are instructive: first, the aorist to denote the simple fact that the Gentile Ephesians had been built up upon the great foundation; then the present tenses, which throw on the screen the church as such, ever growing into a Sanctuary; now another present tense which applies to the Gentile Ephesians what has just been said (v. 21) of the church as such. “In connection with whom” is parallel to the same phrase in v. 21 and has the same antecedent (“Christ Jesus”—“the Lord”). In this very same union which connects the whole church with Christ (thus including all Jewish believers) “also you (the Gentile Ephesians) are being built together into a habitation of God in the Spirit.” They are receiving and are to be no less than other members of the church. They are not like the minor buildings of the hieron or Temple at Jerusalem; they belong to the Naos or Sanctuary itself.

“Being built together” is a variation for “being fitted together”; in both terms σύν denotes inner, spiritual union (“in one body,” v. 16, also “one part,” “one spirit”). We make the application that everything that interferes with this σύν, all false doctrines and wrong living, hinders this building process no matter what the apologists of error may say. While there are children of God in the erring churches, they are such only because of the truth that is still found in those churches and never because of the error that is mingled with that truth. The oxygen in the air keeps us alive and not the dust or the noxious gases which may be mingled with the air. If these deleterious elements increase sufficiently, they prevent even the oxygen that is left from energizing our blood through the lungs; when they are present in lesser degree so as not to kill, they seriously damage.

“Into a habitation of God in the Spirit” parallels and also explains “into a Sanctuary holy in the Lord.” This Sanctuary = the habitation of God, where he dwells (John 14:21). Both denote what the church calls the unio mystica, God’s indwelling in us, which is mediated objectively by Word and Sacrament, subjectively by faith. Here ἐνΠνεύματι is parallel to ἐνΚυρίῳ, which shows that here, unlike in v. 18, the Holy Spirit is referred to. Here we do have the Trinity, the Lord—God—the Spirit. In neither phrase does “Lord” or “Spirit” need the article, both terms designate persons. “In the Spirit” explains “in the Lord,” for union with the former mediates union with the latter and thus makes us a habitation of God.

B.-P Griechisch-Deutsches Woerterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments, etc., von D. Walter Bauer, zweite, etc., Auflage zu Erwin Preuschens Vollstaendigem Griechisch-Deutschem Handwoerterbuch, etc.

C.-K Biblisch-theologisches Woerterbuch der Neutestamentlichen Graezitaet von D. Dr. Hermann Cremer, zehnte, etc., Auflage, herausgegeben von D. Dr. Julius Koegel.

R A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, fourth edition.

M.-M. The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, Illustrated from the Papyri and other Non-Literary Sources, by James Hope Moulton and George Milligan.

B.-D Friedrich Blass’ Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, vierte, voellig neu-gearbeitete Auflage besorgt von Albert Debrunner.