CHAPTER 2
The apostle has drawn our attention in chapter 1 to
where “the Christ” is, and to our union with Him as His body. Now in chapter 2 he will turn to shew us where He was, and where we were. First he tells us how we lived (vv 2, 3), and the end of that life. This lands us in the place in which we were—“dead in … sins”. But Christ was dead for our sins, so that God in quickening power might have a righteous ground whereon to come in and exercise it. This He has, and He uses it to us in the riches of His mercy, v 4.
“God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love wherewith he loved us (we too being dead in offences), has quickened us with the Christ”, vv 4, 5.
The movement of the life we have is in its very beginning thus connected with “the Christ”, as is also the nearness to which we are brought dependent on the value of His shed blood. He tells us that we who were “afar off”, are “become nigh by the blood of the Christ”, v 13. It is not the nearness here of Israel, though they are spoken of as the “nigh” (v 17), while the Gentiles are said to have been
“afar off”. It is the nearness, marked off as to its value now by the blood, “become nigh by the blood of the Christ”. He has entered heaven by His own blood, Heb 9: 12.
The life which we have is connected with His, the nearness with the value which God puts upon His shed blood.
But also He insists that this thought of God for Him (Christ) embraces both Jew and Gentile. He shews that of both the body is formed, now that the middle wall of partition has been broken down, v 15. It was in order to
“form the two [Jew and Gentile] … into one new man, making peace”, v 15.
What men see on earth is the growing up of “a holy
temple in the Lord”, v 21; what faith rejoices in is the union 277
of every member with the Christ as being part of “his body”, which is the completion (or filling up) “of him who fills all in all”, chap 1: 23. And what the devoted heart seeks is to walk in the power of that faith here, to reproduce Christ on the earth, in the midst of all the various relationships of life, which are fully referred to ere he closes the epistle, and to which he exhorts us every one, for “We walk by FAITH, not by sight”, 2 Cor 5: 7.
From A Voice to the Faithful—vol 23, 1889
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