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Ephesians

Ephesianschapter 2

22 verses · BSBEphesians book hub →

Speaks with:Colossians 1×5Colossians 2×4Ephesians 2×4Colossians 3×4Romans 5×3Titus 3×3

Summary

Chapter summary

You who were dead in trespasses and sins, walking according to the prince of the power of the air. God, who is rich in mercy, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. Now in Christ Jesus, ye who were far off are made nigh by the blood. Christ is our peace, who hath broken down the middle wall. Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Henry marks the chapter as the great Scriptural portrait of salvation.

Context

Epistle · Paul — Ephesians overview

  • A. 1–10 Dead in Trespasses, Made Alive With Christ
  • B. 11–18 The Dividing Wall Torn Down
  • C. 19–22 No Longer Strangers: A Temple Rising Together

The outline

  1. A.Dead in Trespasses, Made Alive With Christvv. 1 to 10

    Read vv. 1 to 10 →

  2. B.The Dividing Wall Torn Downvv. 11 to 18

    Read vv. 11 to 18 →

  3. C.No Longer Strangers: A Temple Rising Togethervv. 19 to 22

    Read vv. 19 to 22 →

Threads

Each of these runs on past this chapter. The passage you have just read is marked.

In heavenly places

Pattern

Ephesians names the heavenly places five times: blessed there, Christ seated there, believers seated there with him, the principalities schooled there by the church, and the wrestling there against spiritual wickedness.

The five beats are the letter's own map of the unseen realm. The same sphere holds the believer's blessing and the believer's battle, and the seating of chapter 2 comes before the wrestling of chapter 6.

  1. Ephesians 1:3

    Blessed in heavenly places

    Every spiritual blessing is located there, in Christ, before any command is given.

  2. Ephesians 1:20

    Christ seated there

    Raised from the dead and set at God's own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power.

  3. Ephesians 2:6 you are here

    Seated there with him

    Believers are raised up together and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

  4. Ephesians 3:10

    The principalities taught by the church

    The manifold wisdom of God is made known by the church to the principalities and powers in heavenly places.

  5. Ephesians 6:12

    The wrestling there

    We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in high places, the same word as the other four beats.

The world behind this chapter

Ephesians 2
When
Paul's imprisonment, traditionally at Rome · c. AD 60–62 on the traditional dating
Where
Dead men made alive, and a wall in the Jerusalem temple used as the image for what Christ tore down.
Who first heard it
Gentile believers in Asia who had never had a share in Israel's covenants.

The history

The list of what Gentiles once were is a legal and religious inventory: separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world. Each phrase describes a status, not a mood.

The dividing wall of hostility almost certainly points at a real structure. The temple in Jerusalem had a stone barrier separating the outer court, where Gentiles could go, from the inner courts, where they could not. Inscriptions in Greek and Latin warned that any foreigner passing it had only himself to blame for his death, and two of those stones have been recovered.

Saying that Christ broke down that wall in his flesh, making one new humanity out of two, was a startling claim to make to people who had stood on the wrong side of it — and Paul was in prison partly because of an accusation that he had taken a Gentile past it.

The building imagery at the end reverses the temple picture. Instead of a barrier, a structure joined together and growing into a holy temple, with the Gentile readers themselves being built into it as a dwelling place for God.

What it meant to them

The first hearers were told they were saved by grace through faith, not by works, so that no one could boast — and then immediately that they were God's workmanship, created for good works prepared beforehand.

The second half gave them citizenship. No longer strangers and sojourners — the legal terms for resident foreigners without civic rights — but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

Sources cited

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on Ephesians 2. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

Connections from this chapter

v. 10 · Written to them

His workmanship, created unto good works

topics/purpose→

MannaFest topical index

This page draws on Charles Hodge, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament; Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary and Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm.

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