Ephesians 2:1–10

Verse 1. He enlivened you, when you were dead. These words, he enlivened or restored to life, are necessary to express the literal sense and construction, as appears from the following fifth verse. By what is here translated offences, are commonly understood trespasses less grievous than by the word sins. Witham.—God hath quickened you, or restored you to life; these words, expressed in verse 5, are understood in this: in some editions they are expressed. V.

Verse 2. According to the course of this world, (that is the customs of this wicked corrupt world) according to the prince of the power of this air, of the spirit, and so forth meaning the devils, who are permitted to exercise their power upon the earth, or in the air. See John 12:10. 14:30. 16:11. Witham.—Secundum sæculum mundi hujus: according to the custom of this world. You were dead to the eyes of God, but you live in the eyes of the world: and how do you live? according to the maxims of the world, in idolatry, in crime, in corruption of manners. Corrumpi et corrumpere sæculum est. Tacitus. Calmet.

Verse 3. Among whom, and so forth S. Jerom (p. 3) refers it to trespasses or sins.—Were by nature; not by nature according to the state of man’s first creation in paradise, but by nature infected with original sin by the fall of our first parents.—Even as the rest; that is, all mankind. Witham.

Verse 4, and so forth But God … hath raised us up together, both Gentiles and Jews, to life in Christ, remitting our sins by faith in him, and by the grace of our merciful Redeemer, by his pure mercy, not by any works of ours, nor merely by the works of the former law.—Hath made us in a condition to sit together in heavenly places, to be hereafter crowned in heaven. Witham.

Verse 5. Quickened us together in Christ. Faith, baptism, and grace, are pledges of our future resurrection and glorification in heaven. Our present conversion is also a kind of resurrection. The time is come, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live. Saint Augustine upon Saint John, No. 7.

Verse 8. Faith is the beginning, foundation, and root of justification, and the first of all other virtues, without which it is impossible to please God. B.

Verse 9. Not of works, as of our own growth, or from ourselves: but as from the grace of God. Challoner.

Verse 10. For we are his workmanship, not only as to our body and soul, but by a new creation in Christ Jesus, with a new heart by his grace. Witham.—Saint Paul now compares our conversion to creation, to shew that we had been called and justified without preceding merit. In the same manner as the things which God has drawn out of nothing, cannot glory as if they had contributed any thing to their existence. S. Jerom. hic.