That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. -- Eph 2:7-10 Peoples New Testament -- Ephesians 2:8-10 For by grace are ye saved through faith. Lest they might forget the doctrine that he ever preached, he reminds them that works of the law never saved them; that they were saved by Gods grace shown in the gospel; that this salvation was obtained through the faith. The definite article is found before faith in the Greek, showing that the faith, or the gospel, is meant. It is the gift of God. The salvation is not due to ourselves, but is Gods gift. The grammatical construction of the Greek does not allow us to make faith the subject of the last clause. It is not faith, but salvation through the faith, which is the gift of God. So says John Wesley in his Notes: This refers to the previous clause, That you are saved, etc. Not of works. The salvation is not due to works of law, or to our own merit; hence there is no ground for boasting. For we are his workmanship. It is God who saved us; as new creatures, he had made us through the gospel. We are not saved by works, but are his workmanship, created unto good works, designed henceforth to abound in them. Which God hath before ordained. It is his ordination that all who believe the gospel and are saved should practice good works. God has graciously quickened us, saved us, made us new creatures, and prepared us unto good works. Expositors Bible Commentary on Ephesians 2:7-10 Greatly do we need, like the Asian disciples of Paul and John, to assure our hearts before God. With death confronting us, with the hideous evil of the world oppressing us; when the air is laden with the contagion of sin; when the faith of the strongest wears the cast of doubt; when the word of promise shines dimly through the haze of an all-encompassing scepticism and a hundred voices say, in mockery or grief, Where is now thy God? when the world proclaims us lost, our faith refuted, our gospel obsolete and useless, -then is the time for the Christian assurance to recover its first energy and to rise again in radiant strength from the heart of the Church, from the depths of its mystic life where it is hid with Christ in God. You are saved! cries the apostle; not forgetting that his readers have their battle to fight, and many hazards yet to run. (Eph_6:10-13) But they hold the earnest of victory, the foretaste of life eternal. In spirit they sit with Christ in the heavenly places. Pain and death, temptation, persecution, the vicissitudes of earthly history, by these God means to perfect that Which He has begun in His saints-if you continue in the faith, grounded and firm. (Col_1:23) That condition is expressed, or implied, in all assurance of final salvation. It is a condition which excites to watchfulness, but can never cause misgiving to a loyal heart. God is for us! He justifies us, and counts us His elect. Christ Jesus who died is risen and seated at the right hand of God, and there intercedes for us. Quis separabit? This is the epistle of the Church and of humanity. It dwells on the grand, objective aspects of the truth, rather than upon its subjective experiences. It does not invite us to rest in the comforts and delights of grace, but to lift up our eyes and see whither Christ has translated us and what is the kingdom that we possess in Him. God quickened us together with the Christ: He raised us up, He made us to sit in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Henceforth our citizenship is in heaven. (Php_3:20) This is the inspiring thought of the third group of St. Paul s epistles; we heard it in the first note of his song of praise. (Eph_1:3) It supplies the principle from which St. Paul unfolds the beautiful conception of the Christian life contained in the third chapter of the companion letter to the Colossians: Your life is hid with the Christ in God; therefore seek the things that are above, where He is. We live in two worlds at once. Heaven lies about us in this new mystic childhood of our spirit. There our names are written; thither our thoughts and hopes resort. Our treasure is there; our heart we have lodged there, with Christ in God. He is there, the lord of the Spirit, from whom we draw each moment the life that flows into His members. In the greatness of His love conquering sin and death, time and space, He is with us to the world’s end. May we not say that we, too, are with Him and shall be with Him always? So we reckon in the logic of our faith and at the height of our high calling, though the soul creeps and drudges upon the lower levels. With Him we are gone up on high, Since He is ours and we are His; With Him we reign above the sky, We walk upon our subject seas! In his lofty flights of thought the apostle always has some practical and homely end in view. The earthly and heavenly, the mystical and the matter-of-fact were not distant and repugnant, but interfused in his mind. From the celestial heights of the life hidden with Christ in God (Eph_2:6), he brings us down in a moment and without any sense of discrepancy to the prosaic level of good works (Eph_2:10). The love which viewed us from eternity, the counsels of Him who works all things in all, enter into the humblest daily duties. Grace, moreover, sets us great tasks. There should be something to show in deed and life for the wealth of kindness spent upon us, some visible and commensurate result of the vast preparations of the gospel plan. Of this result the apostle saw the earnest in the work of faith wrought by his Gentile Churches. St. Paul was the last man in the world to undervalue human effort, or disparage good work of any sort. It is, in his view, the end aimed at in all that God bestows on His people, in all that He Himself works in them. Only let this end be sought in God’s way and order. Man’s doings must be the fruit and not the root of his salvation. Not of works, but for good works were believers chosen. This little word for, says Monod, reconciles St. Paul and St. James better than all the commentators. God has not raised us up to sit idly in the heavenly places lost in contemplation, or to be the useless pensioners of grace. He sends us forth to walk in the works, prepared for us,-equipped to fight Christ’s battles, to fill His fields, to labour in the service of building His Church. The workmanship of our Version suggests an idea foreign to the passage. The apostle is not thinking of the Divine art or skill displayed in man’s creation; but of the simple fact that God made man. (Gen_1:27) We are His making, created in Christ Jesus. The preparation to which he refers in verse to leads us back to that primeval election of God’s sons in Christ for which we gave thanks at the outset. (Eph_1:3) There are not two creations, the second formed upon the ruin and failure of the first; but one grand design throughout. Redemption is creation reaffirmed. The new creation, as we call it, restores and consummates the old. When God raised His Son from the dead, He vindicated His original purpose in raising man from the dust a living soul. He has not forsaken the work of His hands nor forgone His original plan, which took account of all our wilfulness and sin. God in making us meant us to do good work in His world. From the world’s foundation down to the present moment He who worketh all in all has been working for this end -most of all in the revelation of His grace in Jesus Christ. Far backward in the past, amid the secrets of creation, lay the beginnings of God’s grace to mankind. Far onward in the future shines its lustre revealed in the first Christian age. The apostle has gained some insight into those times and seasons which formerly were veiled from him. In his earliest letters, to the Thessalonians and Corinthians, St. Paul echoes our Lord’s warning, never out of season, that we should watch, for the hour is at hand. Maranatha is his watchword: Our Lord cometh; the time is short. Nor does that note cease to the end. But when in this epistle he writes of the ages that are coming on, and of all the generations of the age of the Eph_3:21, there is manifestly some considerable period of duration before his eyes. He sees something of the extent of the world’s coming history, something of the magnitude of the field that the future will afford for the unfolding of God’s designs. In those approaching aeons he foresees that the apostolic dispensation will play a conspicuous part. Unborn ages will be blessed in the blessing now descending upon Jews and Gentiles through Christ Jesus. So marvellous is the display of God’s kindness toward them, that all the future will pay homage to it. The overflowing wealth of blessing poured upon St. Paul and the first Churches had an end in view that reached beyond themselves, an end worthy of the Giver, worthy of the magnitude of His plans and of His measureless love. If all this was theirs-this fulness of God exceeding the utmost they had asked or thought-it is because God means to convey it through them to multitudes besides! There is no limit to the grace that God will impart to men and to Churches who thus reason, who receive His gifts in this generous and communicative spirit. The apostolic Church chants with Mary at the Annunciation: For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed! Never was any prediction better fulfilled. This spot of history shines with a light before which every other shows pale and commonplace. The companions of Jesus, the humble fraternities of the first Christian century, have been the object of reverent interest and intent research on the part of all centuries since. Their history is scrutinised from all sides with a zeal and industry which the most pressing subjects of the day hardly command. For we feel that these men hold the secret of the world’s life. The key to the treasures we all long for is in their hands. As time goes on and the stress of life deepens, men will turn with yet fonder hope to the age of Jesus Christ. And many nations will say: Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. And He will teach us of His ways; and we will walks in His paths. The stream will remember its fountain; the children of God will gather to their childhood’s home. The world will hear the gospel in the recovered accents of its prophets and apostles.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 10:06:14 +0000
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