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Scripture Reading: Eph. 2:1-22
In the foregoing chapter we saw the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity in Ephesians 1. Ephesians 1 reveals that God selected us and predestinated us with a view to dispense Himself into us as life and life supply by sonship, that is, by life dispensing, and by the sealing of the Spirit. The sealing of the Spirit indicates not only dispensing but also saturating. God wants to saturate us with His life dispensing so that we may be an organism, the Body of Christ, as the enlargement, the fullness, of the One who fills all in all.
Chapter 2 of Ephesians tells us that the chosen ones of God became fallen. Before God began to dispense Himself into His chosen ones, we became fallen not only into sin but also into death (v. 1). Within the realm of death in offenses and sins, we walked first according to the age of this world, that is, according to the current, the tide, of the world (v. 2). It is not difficult to understand what the current, the tide, of the age is. The age of this world simply means the modern style of the world. As fallen people in the sphere of death, we walked according to the trend of this age. Second, we walked according to the spirit which is now operating in the sons of disobedience (v. 2). This is not just one demon or one fallen angel but an aggregate of the evil spiritual power. This is the spirit in the air which is now operating in the unbelievers. Such an aggregate of the evil spiritual power is both above them and within them. Therefore, unbelievers walk in death according to the age of the world and according to the spiritual power in the air and within them.
Furthermore, fallen people have the lusts of the flesh, which cooperate with the world and with the spirit in the air (v. 3a). This is the condition of fallen mankind.
Before God began to infuse Himself into man, man became fallen and became the flesh, walking according to the age of the world and according to Satan, the power in the air and the evil one operating in fallen mankind by the lusts of the flesh.
Because we were dead in offenses and sins, because we walked according to the age of this world and according to the ruler of the authority of the air, and because we behaved ourselves in the lusts of the flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the thoughts, we were by nature children of wrath (v. 3b).
Because the descendants of Adam had become fallen, God came in to call out Abraham with all his descendants to form the commonwealth of Israel (Gen. 12). In God’s creation mankind had certain rights, but these were lost by man’s fall. Therefore, God called out a people, Israel, and gave them rights as a commonwealth. A commonwealth denotes a people with certain civil rights. When God called out Israel, He recovered the lost rights and made Israel a commonwealth with the proper rights to enjoy God’s blessing. For that commonwealth God gave them certain promises: that God would rule over them, that God would bless them, and that God would be their enjoyment. These promises were put into a legal form and became a covenant to the people of Israel. Thus, the entire Old Testament was a covenant with promises that had been put into a legal form. Such a commonwealth excluded the Gentiles.
When God called Israel to be His commonwealth to receive all the promises and to enjoy all the rights, He told them to circumcise themselves (17:10-14). Because the people whom God called out were part of the fallen human race, walking in the flesh according to the age of the world, according to the spiritual evil power in the air and within them, and walking by the lusts of their flesh, they had to cut off their flesh. This cutting off of the flesh was signified by circumcision. Circumcision then became an ordinance that separated the Jews from the Gentiles. The Jews were called the circumcision, and the Gentiles were called the uncircumcision. The circumcision, or the circumcised people, were accepted by God to enjoy the rights of the commonwealth of God’s people and to receive all the blessings. But the uncircumcised Gentiles were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenant. Hence, they were without God in the world and had no hope (Eph. 2:12).
Up to this point Christ was altogether related to the commonwealth of Israel. God was the God of the commonwealth of Israel, and all the blessings were within God’s covenant. As long as you were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, you were alienated from God’s commonwealth, from Christ, from God’s covenant, from God’s blessing, from any hope, and even from God Himself. You were in the world, not in the commonwealth of Israel. This is the condition of fallen mankind, and this was your condition before you were saved.
Because God loved His chosen people with a noble, high, and great love, He would not give them up. Within His love there are the riches of His mercy. Love may maintain a high standard, but there is no need of any standard for mercy. Mercy can reach you in any situation. Love does not reach as far as mercy does. You do not love a pitiful person; you love a person who matches you. But within your love there may be mercy that reaches farther to people’s pitiful condition to bring love to them.
God, in His great love, came to make us alive (v. 5). Have you noticed that Ephesians 2 is different from the first section of Romans? In the first section of Romans it was sin and sins that were taken care of in order that we could be justified. But death is taken care of in Ephesians 2. According to Ephesians 2, we were not merely sinners — we were dead people. Dead people need more than justification; they need to be enlivened. Therefore, in His great love God first enlivened us. When He resurrected Christ from the dead, He enlivened us. He did not enliven you at one time and me at another time. He enlivened us all at the same time in the resurrection of Christ.
In the Greek language the predicate used in 2:5 for enlivened or made alive has the prefix sun. This prefix means “together,” “with,” or “co.” God enlivened us together. This includes the apostles and all of us, even the last one to be saved in this age. All of us were enlivened together. Just as the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea together, so God enlivened all of us together. God also raised us up from among the dead (v. 6). Furthermore, He exalted us and seated us in the heavenlies (v. 6). This is the salvation revealed in Ephesians 2.
This salvation is not a salvation merely of forgiveness of sins or hope of going to heaven. We do not need to wait for a future day to go to heaven. We have already been seated in the heavenlies. This is neither a salvation merely of justification or reconciliation. This is a salvation of being enlivened, being raised up from the dead, and being seated in the heavenlies. This is to be saved by grace.
What a wonderful threefold salvation we have! In our salvation God has made us alive, He has raised us up together, and He has seated us with Christ in the heavenlies. This is the salvation revealed in Ephesians, salvation by life dispensing.
A dead person can be made alive only by the dispensing of life into him. Forgiveness alone cannot make a dead person alive. Neither can washing cause a dead person to be enlivened. A person who is dead needs life dispensing. Once life is dispensed into a dead person, he can jump up. He may still be dirty, but he can stand and walk. It is life dispensing that enlivens him and raises him from among the dead.
To be saved by grace is much higher than to receive forgiveness of sins or justification or reconciliation. It is salvation that imparts life to us to make us alive, that raises us up from the dead, and that exalts us to the heavenlies and seats us there.
It is no wonder that Ephesians 2:10 indicates that such a salvation produces God’s masterpiece. Verse 10 says that we are God’s masterpiece. The Greek word here is poiema, a word that has been anglicized into the English word poem. We are God’s poem. A poem often displays the wisdom of the writer. It expresses his skill, art, and design. We are poems written by the threefold life dispensing of the Father as the source, the Son as the course, and the Spirit as the flow. This threefold life dispensing makes us a poem. We are the masterpiece of our Triune God by His threefold life dispensing.
We were fallen into sin and into death and even were walking in the realm of sin and death, but God came to enliven us, to raise us up from the dead, and to exalt us and seat us in the heavenlies. But God did not do this directly. Have you noticed that thus far in Ephesians 2 the Father is not mentioned? The verses only mention God. God made us alive together with Christ. Without Christ there is no way for God to enliven us. He raised us up with Christ, and He seated us in the heavenlies with Christ. Christ is the means, the element, the sphere, for God to enliven us, to raise us up, and to seat us in the heavenlies. Outside of Christ God has no way to work out these three matters. God did it, but He did it through a channel, through Christ.
As God’s channel, Christ did many things, but all He did can be summed up in the matter of His blood (v. 13). The blood is the sign of Christ’s marvelous death. The redemption through His blood has made us near to God and to all His blessings (v. 13). At one time we were far off from God, from God’s commonwealth, Israel, from God’s covenant, from Christ, and from all the blessings. We were kept far off by our fall into sin and death. We could be made near only through Christ’s blood that signifies Christ’s all-inclusive death. By His death on the cross He took away our sin and our sins.
Furthermore, through His death Christ made peace by breaking down the middle wall of partition, abolishing the law of the commandments in ordinances, and creating the two in Himself into one new man (vv. 14-15). To say that He abolished the law of the commandments in ordinances does not mean that He abolished the Ten Commandments. Here the law of the commandments refers to the law of the ritual commandments, not to the laws of morality, such as those dealing with the honoring of parents or forbidding murder and adultery. These laws have never been abolished. Likewise, the laws prohibiting idolatry have not been abolished. The ethical, moral laws have never been abolished. But the ritual ordinances, such as those related to food, holy days, and circumcision, have been abolished. The rituals and commandments in ordinances eventually became a high wall separating the Jews and the Gentiles.
Not many Christians realize that when Christ died on the cross, He nailed all these ordinances to the cross. By His death on the cross Christ not only crucified our old man, our flesh, and destroyed Satan, the power of death; He also crucified all the ordinances, including circumcision, Sabbath keeping, and ordinances concerning eating. He abolished the law of the commandments in ordinances, the middle wall that separated the Jews from the Gentiles.
Furthermore, Christ’s death on the cross released His divine life that was confined within Him, even as the life of a seed is confined within its shell. His crucifixion on the cross broke the shell and released the life confined within Him to produce the church.
By His all-inclusive and wonderful death, Christ created both the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers into one new man (v. 15). This one new man is not an organization but an organism full of life. Today we have a number of Jewish saints in the churches. But because Christ has abolished the law of the commandments in ordinances, and because we all have the dispensing of the divine life, we are one. We all have had the divine life dispensed into us. The dispensing of life not only changes us — it transforms us. The church is the issue of the divine dispensing of life. We are being transformed by God’s dispensing. We all must be transformed persons, not reeducated persons. We must be transformed by the divine dispensing of the divine life of the Divine Trinity.
On the cross Christ did a marvelous job. His death was all-inclusive. Through the cross He took away sin and sins, He destroyed Satan, He judged the world, and He abolished all the ritual laws contained in the ordinances. Finally, He released His divine life into God’s chosen people and created them into one new man as an organism constituted of the divine element by the dispensing of the divine life. Now both Jews and Gentiles are reconciled in one Body to God through the cross (v. 16).
After Christ accomplished all this by His all-inclusive death, He came to announce the gospel (v. 17). How could He announce the gospel to us after He was crucified and buried? The answer is that He was resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit to indwell us (1 Cor. 15:45b). We need to realize that when we announce the gospel to others, Jesus also is announcing. After He died and resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit, He came back to be within us to announce the highest gospel, the gospel of the new man, the gospel of life dispensing to make peace.
When Christ announces such a gospel by Himself as the life-giving Spirit, and when we hear and accept such a gospel, what do we receive? The main thing that we receive is the life-giving Spirit. Most Christians do not realize this. Do not think when we receive the gospel we mainly receive forgiveness of sins or justification. The main thing that we receive by accepting such a gospel is the Spirit. Suppose an unbeliever says, “Lord Jesus, thank You. You are my Savior, and I accept You. Lord, come into my heart.” Immediately, Christ the Announcer, as the Spirit, will enter into that one, and he will receive the Spirit. Therefore, verse 18 speaks concerning the Spirit: “Through Him we both have access in one Spirit unto the Father.” Now we have the Spirit and are in the Spirit, and the Spirit brings us to the Father, the source.
Chapter 2 of Ephesians tells us that God loved us, enlivened us, raised us up, and seated us in the heavenlies to make us His poem, His masterpiece. The God who did this is the Father as the source, acting through a channel, Christ the Son. In the foregoing chapter we pointed out that when the Son came, He came in the Father’s name (John 5:43), He came with the Father (8:29; 16:32), and the Son was even called the Father (Isa. 9:6). The Father is the source who planned all things, and the Son is the means, the course, who accomplished the Father’s purpose. Christ became the channel in which and the means by which God enlivened us, raised us up, and seated us in the heavenlies.
Ephesians 2 reveals God as the Father and Christ as the Son. After His death and resurrection Christ the Son came as the Spirit to announce the gospel. When the Spirit came, He came with the Father (John 15:26 and footnote, Recovery Version) in the Son’s name (14:26). This means that when the Spirit came, the Son came. Therefore, when the Son comes to announce the gospel to us, the Spirit also comes. When we receive the Son in His announcing, we receive the Spirit. The Spirit then brings us back to the Father through the Son. This is marvelous! The Father came to us through the Son in the Spirit, and now the Spirit brings us back to the Father through the Son. Through this wonderful two-way traffic we enjoy the threefold dispensing of life by the Triune God.
The first issue of the divine dispensing is that we are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (Eph. 2:19). Also, the Gentile believers are being built together with the Jewish believers upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ as the cornerstone (v. 20). Such a building has the wonderful Christ as the joining cornerstone. This building is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, a holy dwelling place of God (v. 21). This indicates that the holy temple is a living building, for a physical building does not grow. In order to enlarge a material structure we need to build something further. But the church as God’s building grows because it is organic. The church grows by life dispensing. The threefold God — God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Spirit — is dispensing Himself into us as life and as our life supply. As long as He is dispensing Himself into us, we are nourished, and we grow. He dispenses, and we grow. This is the building of the church into a temple.
Actually, the word temple here should be translated “sanctuary,” meaning the central part of the temple in the Lord. Such a sanctuary is God’s dwelling place in our spirit (v. 22). The church life today is in our spirit. Practically speaking, when you are out of your spirit, you are out of the church. If you are not in your spirit, although you may be in the meeting, you are not in the church in a practical way. The church life is in our human spirit. We must always turn to our spirit, exercise our spirit, and walk according to our spirit. We should not be out of our spirit or have our being apart from our spirit. We must walk, live, act, and have our being in our spirit. When we exercise our spirit in this way, we are in the church. This is for God’s dispensing of Himself into us as life so that we may grow in the church. Both God’s dispensing and our growing are in the spirit.
