Ephesians 2:1

And you heathens, lying like so many carcasses, desperately gone in all kind of sins, (see note [c] Luke xv.) hath God quickened and raised to new life, ver. 5, (all between being to be read as in a parenthesis);

Ephesians 2:2

You, I say, that for so many years together lived formerly, and securely went on in the epidemical sins of the nations, the customs of the Gentile world, following the direction of your idol false gods, (who prescribed all villainy in their worships,) that is, of Satan, that hath such power here below, and doth still exercise his power among all that have not received the gospel of Christ,

Ephesians 2:3

Among whom we of the Gentile church of Rome, from whence I write, formerly lived, and yielded ourselves to those sensual sins and idol-worships which our lusts and our fancies were pleased with, and so went on in those heathen customs, which did universally overspread them, and were born, and lived, and continued in a damning condition, (see note [f] 1 Cor. xi.) as all other heathens did.

Ephesians 2:4

But God, who is infinitely merciful, beyond what we can ask or think, without any thing in us to invite him to it, merely out of that kindness of his

Ephesians 2:5

Hath by that power by which he raised Christ from the grave, raised us out of this heathen state of all kind of impietics, a state so far from meriting any such dealing, that it deserved nothing but utter desertion (and therefore it is as wonderful an act of goodness and mercy in God that we are thus rescued, and escaped out of that condition by the preaching of the gospel to us, (see note [c] Heb. xiii,) as it was for Lot, when he was by the angel led out of Sodom, and commanded to escape for his life, &c.)

Ephesians 2:6

And as he hath quickened us out of this spiritual death, so in Christ our head he hath also in assured hope raised us up from the dead, and set us with him in heaven: for he sitting there, which is our head, we are at present not unfitly said to sit there also, and shall infallibly come thither in due time,

Ephesians 2:7

By which means he hath given an eminent testimony to all ages that shall follow this of the apostles, how exceedingly gracious he is to those that live under Christianity, (which is called the age to come, see note [a] Matt. xi,) by those undeserved mercies shewn unto us, by giving us Christ and his gospel to be revealed to us.

Ephesians 2:8

For you are delivered out of that heathen state by the mere undeserved mercy of God, who might justly have left you in it without ever calling you (who had so sinned against nature) out of it; and the preaching of the gospel, which hath been the means of rescuing you thus, is a mere free, undeserved gift of God, the matter of the gospel being no way to be known but by divine revelation, and God having sent Christ, and Christ his apostles, to make that known unto you, without which you had never heard, as without hearing you could never have believed such supernatural truths, (see Rom. x. 17, and note [c] Heb. xiii,) and all this an act of God’s free will and merciful pleasure:

Ephesians 2:9

Not from any merits of yours to move God to it, that so all may be imputed to him, nothing at all unto yourselves.

Ephesians 2:10

For we are formed anew by God, and as it were out of a state of nothing (the heathen idolatry

Ephesians 2:11

And this consideration and remembrance may be useful to you; viz. that by birth or natural generation ye were originally Gentiles, called the uncircumcised by the Jews, who had that circumcision in their flesh wrought by the hands of men;

Ephesians 2:12

That being then without Christ, ye lived in a very distant manner from the Israelites, both in respect of customs and laws, but especially of the worship of God, were justly detested, and not permitted to live among them; and for the promises made to Abraham, ye were utterly strangers from them; and so in the first respect you had no God, nothing but idols to worship, and in the latter, no kind of hope of good to entertain yourselves with.

Ephesians 2:13

But now, instead of that great distance formerly kept, an affinity and league hath been made between you (see Acts xx. 39) Gentiles and Jews, and Christ’s blood hath been the solemn rite by which that league (after the manner of the eastern nations, which use that ceremony of blood in making leagues) hath been struck.

Ephesians 2:14

For he is our peacemaker, and hath joined those two distant people into one, having, as it were, broke down or removed that little sept or wall in the temple that separated the court of the Jews from that of the Gentiles, and so hath laid all common, brought them both into his church to live without any discrimination of ceremonies, &c.

[a] middle wall of partition] We have oft spoken of the Gentile proselytes, the second sort of which, those of the gates, which were not circumcised, were by the Jews so far accounted unclean according to the law, that they were not permitted to come into that court of the temple called holy, where the Jews were. So it is charged upon them as a fault, Ezek. xliv. 7, that they had brought into God’s sanctuary strangers, &c., and Acts xxi. 28, on Paul, that he brought Greeks into the temple. The proselytes of righteousness indeed, those that had undertaken the whole law, which were circumcised, &c., they were admitted with the Jews into the inner court; but these other only into

Ephesians 2:15

Having by his sufferings brought the Gentiles that believe to that condition, that the people of God ought not to look upon them as enemies and persecute them, as now the Judaizers do, for neglecting the ceremonies of the Mosaical law, and by the doctrine of the gospel taken away the obligingness of the Mosaical precepts, which made the conversing with the Gentiles, eating their meats, &c. unlawful also,

[f] after I heard] The word ἀκούω, to hear, is answerable to the Hebrew שָׁמַע, and that signifies to know, as well as to hear, and is sometimes rendered εἰδέναι and γινώσκειν, to know: and so it seems to be used in this Epistle, ch. iii. 2. Εἶγε ἠκούσανε, If indeed ye have known, not heard; for his apostolic commission to the Gentiles, which is the thing there spoken of, was that which they to whom he had preached must needs know immediately, and not by hearsay only. And so here their faith was a thing known by him also, and not only heard, though it is also true, that their growth in the faith since he was there, and the evidences of their charity, might be brought to him by the advertisement of others. Thus ch. iv. 21. If ye have heard him is, if ye have known.

Ephesians 2:19

[b] saints] That ἅγιοι, saints, here signify the Jews, will appear by the opposition to ξίνοι, strangers, before; for in respect of the Jews it was that they were called strangers, they being the only people of God before, and now the Gentiles, that were but λεῖ, strangers, (vulgarly known by that name,) being received in to be συμπολίται, fellow-citizens; with whom? why, with the same to whom they were strangers, that is, the Jews. Thus doth Procopius interpret it in Isa. p. 683, who accordingly calls the Jews τὸ ἐκ πατέρων ἁγίων ἔθνος, “the nation made up of the holy fathers:” which saying of his gives the reason of this phrase, why the Jews are called ἅγιοι, holy, viz. in re-

Ephesians 2:21

Far, infinitely far above all those rulers and potentates (that have but fading power) by whom he was here put to death, yea above the highest degree of angelical powers that inhabit heaven to all eternity;

Ephesians 2:22

And by so doing gave him victory and superiority over all his enemies, and constituted him the prince of his church, who should till the day of doom have in his hands the sole disposing of that (every one that is placed in any power therein moving regularly and subordinately to him);

Ephesians 2:23

The church, I say, which is the body of Christ, and so is required to make him perfect in this relative perfection, (as the body is required and necessary to the perfection of the head,) though absolutely considered, he is most exactly perfect of himself: (see note [d] Rom. xi.)

CHAP. II. AND you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;