Alive with Christ
Paul thinks about how difficult life was for...
Paul thinks about how difficult life was for the believers before they found Christ. He appreciates God's grace for saving them.
Paul describes how the people he was writing...
Paul describes how the people he was writing to were in a terrible spiritual condition before they believed in Jesus Christ. He says they were like dead people in their relationship with God (see 2:5; Colossians 2:13). This spiritual death happened because of their disobedience and sins. They regularly did things that went against God's will and broke his commands.
Paul explains that their sinful actions were influenced by the power of the devil. The devil was working in their lives, leading them away from God and toward wrongdoing.
Because of this situation, the people Paul wrote to were under God's judgment. They were condemned along with everyone else in the world who did not follow God.
1And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2in which you used to walk when you conformed to the ways of this world and of the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience. 3All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature children of wrath.
By God's mercy, kindness, and love, those united...
By God's mercy, kindness, and love, those united with Jesus Christ are saved from the terrible consequences of their sin and enjoy the benefits of Christ's resurrection.
4But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved! 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages He might display the surpassing riches of His grace, demonstrated by His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
This is a brief summary of how a...
This is a brief summary of how a person is saved. A key belief of the good news about Jesus is that people are made righteous by trusting in Christ. They are not made righteous by their own efforts (see Romans 1:16–17; 3:24–25; Galatians 2:16; compare John 3:16, 36). Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done (see Romans 3:21–4:8; 9:16; Galatians 3:2–10; 5:1–6; compare 2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 3:5). Salvation is for those who trust only Christ to save them. Therefore, none of us can boast about it (compare Romans 3:27; 4:2; 1 Corinthians 1:30–31; Galatians 6:14).
8For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life.†
One in Christ
Paul now focuses on the grace God has...
Paul now focuses on the grace God has given particularly to gentiles (non-Jews). God brought them into his family and united them with Jews in a new, unified, multiethnic community. This new community is the body of Christ, the church. Paul’s focus on including gentiles suggests they might have exprienced discrimination from Jewish Christians.
11Therefore remember that formerly you who are Gentiles in the flesh and called uncircumcised by the so-called circumcision (that done in the body by human hands)— 12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
14For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has torn down the dividing wall of hostility 15by abolishing in His flesh the law of commandments and decrees. He did this to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace 16and reconciling both of them to God in one body through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility.
17He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18For through Him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
Christ Our Cornerstone
(Isaiah 28:14–22; 1 Corinthians 3:10–15; 1 Peter 2:1–8)
19Therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. 21In Him the whole building is fitted together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22And in Him you too are being built together into a dwelling place for God in His Spirit.