Ephesians 2:5 Commentary and Bible Study

We were unresponsive, unable to make a decision for Christ, uninterested, unmoveable. ‘Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us,’ re-animated us is the Greek, ‘together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved).’ It is all of God. At the time I was saved I could have thought it was me. Suddenly I was overcome by consciousness of my sin and my need and overwhelmed by the mercy and love of God and by Christ dying for a creature like me on Calvary’s cross. And I fell to my knees and came to him and yielded up my life to him and pleaded for new life and for mercy. Yes, according to the wonderful way God works, it was my very own choice. But I soon came to understand from Scriptures like this that it was God in the first place who ever in his amazing kindness brought me to feel like that. And that is what the apostle Paul is explaining here. Mercy (verse 4) is the pity of God. God who is so rich in mercy, pitied us but pity doesn’t actually do anything. Pity, mercy, is the heart of God, the attitude of God. Grace is God in action, responding to his own mercy, with undeserved favour. The mercy is his heart; the grace is his action. So by grace and grace alone ye are saved.