Ephesians 2:1 - Exposition

You also, who were dead in your trespasses and your sins. The apostle returns from his digression, in which he had shown the marvelous working of the Divine power on Christ, to show the working of the same power on the Ephesian converts themselves. The ὑμἀς is not governed by any verb going before; it manifestly depends on the συνεζωοποίησεν of Ephesians 2:5 , but it is separated from it by a new digression ( Ephesians 2:2 , Ephesians 2:3 ), on which the apostle immediately starts. While the same quickening power of God was exerted on Christ and on the Ephesians, it was exerted to very different effects: in the case of Christ, raising him literally from the dead and exalting him to heavenly glory; in the case of the Ephesians, raising them from spiritual death and exalting them to high spiritual privileges. We may observe the change from the second to the first person, and vice versa , in this chapter as in Ephesians 1:1-23 . Second person ( Ephesians 1:1 , Ephesians 1:8 , Ephesians 1:11 ); first ( Ephesians 1:3 , Ephesians 1:10 , Ephesians 1:14 ); and the two streams brought together ( Ephesians 1:18 ). The chapter closes beautifully with an emblem of the Church as the one temple of which all believers are parts. The death ascribed to the Ephesians in their natural state is evidently spiritual death, and "trespasses and sins," being in the dative ( νεκροὺς τοῖς παραπτώμασι καὶ ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ), seems to indicate the cause of death—"dead through your trespasses and your sins" (R.V.); "dead of your trespasses," etc., is suggested by Alford. It is not easy to assign a different meaning to the two nouns here; some suggest acts of transgression for the one, and sinful tendencies or principles for the other, but this distinction cannot be carried out in all other passages. The killing effect of sin is indicated. As sins of sensuality kill truthfulness, industry, integrity, and all virtue, so sin generally, affecting as it does our whole nature, kills, or does not suffer to live, the affections and movements of the spiritual life. A state of "death" implies previous life—the race lived before; it implies also a state of insensibility, of utter powerlessness and helplessness.