Click or tap book name
Use <control> drag to
scroll
Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
About
Links
Home
"
Navigator
Ephesians 2:4
Comments
But God did something. We deserved nothing. God would have to show nothing but mercy. He could not say, ‘Well these people have something going for them.’ It would be entirely an act of kindness and undeserved mercy on his part to rescue us from this rebellion that we were in. God had to take the initiative, otherwise it would have been hopeless for us. This introduces us to the extent of God’s love. We have already read about sovereign election in chapter 1. It refers back to election in eternity past when he determined to save a vast number of people through world history and bring them to Jesus Christ. There are those even among Christians who feel this cannot be true. Every individual born must have a choice, to choose God or not. It cannot be that we are all locked up in a lost state and condition as rebels, and that even the first stirrings in the heart which bring us to repent are God’s mercy and initiative. But unless he does this we would never turn to him. It must be by sovereign election. And that is what Paul is going on to prove again.Why is he emphasising the richness of God’s mercy and the greatness of his love? He wants us to understand that God’s love was not just a temporary love, or a passing love, or a portion of love; it was complete, perfect, wonderful love. If God’s love had been a temporary love then it might be that God said, ‘In my great love I will give these people the opportunity to repent, and if they do I will carry on loving them, but if they do not I will terminate my love to them and that will be that. They will have determined their fate and they will be everlastingly lost.’ That would not warrant this language – ‘rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us.’ This is about a love that does not just give us a chance to repent, it makes sure that we do so. It moves within us and convicts us of our sin and illuminates our minds to our need and shows us Christ. It activates our feelings, our minds, our wills, that we see our sinfulness, and we long for Christ and we come and we repent. This is great love.It is you see entirely an act of God. He initiates salvation, he pays the price of salvation, by Christ going to Calvary and paying the penalty of our sins, and he enacts or sets up the process of our choosing him and our longing for him and needing him. It is great love. Grace brought it all about and saw it through to the end. Understand this, pleads Paul: ‘for his great love.’ You could go further, his overwhelming love wherewith he loved an elect people who he was determined to save.
Application
It is a great mystery, but God says to us who have been saved, ‘Speak to the dead, preach the Gospel to them. Tell them about Christ. Magnify and exalt him. Tell them about Calvary.’ I must do so in obedience to God’s command. I must speak to spiritual corpses, who cannot hear and cannot feel and cannot respond. So what is the point? But God, who is rich in mercy, quickens and brings to life. Suddenly I hear. I am a corpse spiritually but I can hear and I can feel and I can recognise and see Christ and what he has done for a needy sinner like me, and I feel the burden of my sin and I long for forgiveness and cleansing.
Questions
Outline
Purpose
Introduction