Ephesians 2:1

My Notes

What Does Ephesians 2:1 Mean?

Paul begins chapter 2 of Ephesians with the bluntest possible diagnosis: you were dead. Not sick. Not struggling. Not spiritually underperforming. Dead — in trespasses and sins. The condition was not partial. It was terminal.

"Hath he quickened" — the KJV italicizes this phrase because it is implied, not in the Greek text. The meaning is supplied from verse 5: God made you alive. The deadness required resurrection, not rehabilitation.

The trespasses (paraptoma — falling beside, deviation) and sins (hamartia — missing the mark) describe the cause of death. The falling and the missing were fatal. The deviation and the failure produced a spiritual corpse.

The verse sets up the greatest contrast in Ephesians: dead in verses 1-3, alive in verses 4-6. The distance between the two states is the distance between a corpse and a living person. And the bridge between them is God's initiative: but God (v.4).

Reflection Questions

• 1.What does being 'dead in trespasses and sins' mean for human ability to save ourselves?
• 2.How is being 'quickened' (made alive) different from being improved or reformed?
• 3.What does the deadness of verse 1 make the 'but God' of verse 4 more powerful?
• 4.Where do you see evidence of spiritual life that could only have come from God quickening you?

Devotional

And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins. Dead. The word lands with finality. Not weak. Not distant. Not backslidden. Dead. Spiritually deceased. Unable to respond, unable to change, unable to save yourself.

In trespasses and sins. The cause of death is named: falling and missing. Deviating from the path and failing to hit the mark. Every trespass was a step toward death. Every sin was a nail in the coffin. The accumulation was fatal.

Hath he quickened. Made alive. The dead do not make themselves alive. Someone else does the quickening. God took a corpse — you — and breathed life into it. The resurrection of your spirit was as supernatural as the resurrection of Christ's body.

The diagnosis is devastating. The remedy is divine. You were dead. God made you alive. The distance between those two states is infinite — and God crossed it entirely by his own initiative.

If you have spiritual life — if you can pray, if you can believe, if you can feel the pull of God's Spirit — it is because a dead person was made alive. The life you have is not self-generated. It is given. By the one who quickens the dead.

You were dead. You are alive. And everything between those two realities is God.

Commentary

Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.

Cross References

Related passages throughout Scripture