Ephesians 2:1-18: “But God” and “But Now”

A walk through the Greek

Ephesians 2 turns on two hinges. “But God” (verse 4) answers our death. “But now” (verse 13) answers our distance. Between them, Paul tells the whole gospel.

Where We Were (verses 1-3)

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins” (2:1). Paul says dead (nekrous), not weak or sick. He uses two words for sin. Paraptōma is a false step, crossing a line. Hamartia is missing the mark. Between them, we crossed every line and missed every mark.

“In which you once walked” (verse 2). The verb is peripateō, to walk around, to live day to day. Keep that word in mind, because Paul comes back to it. We walked “following the course of this world,” literally “according to the age (aiōn) of this world,” under “the prince of the power of the air.”

Then Paul includes himself: “among whom WE ALL once lived… and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (verse 3). Jew and Gentile alike. No one is exempt.

“But God” (verses 4-7)

“But God (ho de theos), being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us” (verse 4). In Greek, “the great love with which he loved us” is agapēn… ēgapēsen: love loving. God didn’t save us because we were lovable. He saved us because He is love.

Then come three verbs, each beginning with syn, “together with”:

• synezōopoiēsen: He “made us alive together with Christ” (verse 5)
• synēgeiren: He “raised us up with him” (verse 6)
• synekathisen: He “seated us with him in the heavenly places” (verse 6)

All three are aorist, completed acts. Whatever happened to Christ in the resurrection and ascension, God counts as having happened to us in Him.

In the middle of verse 5 Paul breaks in with a parenthesis: “by grace you have been saved.” The verb (este sesōsmenoi) is a perfect periphrastic. You were saved in the past, and you remain saved now.

Why did God do it? “So that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness (chrēstotēti) toward us in Christ Jesus” (verse 7). We are God’s exhibit of kindness for all eternity.

The Gift (verses 8-10)

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (2:8-9).

Grace (tē chariti, dative) is the source. Faith (dia pisteōs) is the channel, the hand that receives. Then: “and this (touto) is not your own doing.” Touto is neuter. “Grace” (charis) and “faith” (pistis) are both feminine, so touto doesn’t point to either word alone. It points to the whole package: saved, by grace, through faith. The entire salvation is “the gift of God,” and none of it is “from works” (ouk ex ergōn). There is nothing to boast about.

“For we are his workmanship (poiēma), created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk (peripatēsōmen) in them” (verse 10). Poiēma is where we get “poem.” We are God’s handiwork. And there’s that verb again. In verse 2 we walked in trespasses. In verse 10 we walk in good works He prepared for us. Grace changed the road under our feet.

Where the Gentiles Were (verses 11-12)

Paul tells Gentile believers to “remember.” They were:

• “separated from Christ,”
• “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel,”
• “strangers to the covenants of promise,”
• “having no hope,”
• “and without God in the world” (verse 12).

“Without God” is atheoi, the word we get “atheist” from. They weren’t unbelievers by philosophy. They were outsiders by birth.

“But Now” (verses 13-18)

“But now (nyni de) in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (verse 13).

“For he himself is our peace” (verse 14). Not a peace plan. A Person: autos estin hē eirēnē hēmōn. He “has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.” Paul’s readers would have pictured the stone barrier in the temple courts that kept Gentiles out of the inner courts. Archaeologists found one of its warning inscriptions in 1871. It warned that any foreigner who went past it would be responsible for his own death. Christ tore that wall down.

How? “By abolishing (katargēsas) the law of commandments expressed in ordinances (dogmasin), that he might create in himself one new man (hena kainon anthrōpon) in place of the two” (verse 15). The Law of Moses had been the wall between Jew and Gentile. In Christ, that dividing function is set aside. Kainos is the same word Jesus used for the “new commandment” in John 13:34. A new humanity calls for a new commandment.

“And might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility” (verse 16). The cross kills the hostility between us and God, and the hostility between us and one another, in one stroke.

“And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near” (verse 17), echoing Isaiah 57:19.

Then the summit: “For through him we both have access (prosagōgē) in one Spirit to the Father” (verse 18). Prosagōgē is the word for being formally introduced into a king’s presence. Through the Son, in the Spirit, to the Father. The whole Trinity is at work opening the door.

So What?

Dead people can’t contribute to their own resurrection. Outsiders can’t tear down walls they didn’t build. Ephesians 2 is “But God” from beginning to end, and faith is simply how we receive what He gives.

And notice where Paul takes it two chapters later: “Be kind (chrēstoi) to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (4:32). The kindness God showed us in 2:7 (chrēstotēs) becomes the kindness we show one another. The wall is down. The people on the other side of it are now family.

Grace. Always grace.