Daily Bible Reading 26th September 2024 // Ephesians 2:1-5
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
If the first chapter of Ephesians unfolds to us the constitution of the Church, in God the Father (1:3-6), in God the Son (1:7-12), and in God the Holy Spirit (1:13ff), what we have in chapter 2 may be called the raw materials of the Church. This is a good way of looking at this chapter, for we are given some perception of the greatness of God's everlasting salvation, as we look at what we were before God laid His hand upon us, and then see the miracle of grace by which we became new creatures in Christ. The sequence of thought from the latter part of chapter 1 to what we read here is surely clear. Having spoken of the power at work in Christ when He was raised from the dead and exalted above all principality and power, he now shows us that power at work in the lives of the Ephesians - hence the change from the pronoun 'we' in ch 1 to the pronoun 'you' in 2:1. Not only so: in the reference in 2:2 to 'the prince of the power of the air', the dark malignity that holds all men in his bondage and tyranny, it is made clear that Christ's being made head over all principality and power has direct reference to this power. Here, in the case of the Ephesians, Christ has exercised this Lordship over the evil one by His Spirit. One readily recalls our Lord's own parable about 'first binding the strong man, and then spoiling his house'. There are two possible ways of interpreting these verses before us, and we will proceed to look at them in tomorrow's Note.