Ephesians 2:1-10
The passage on which this chapter is based begins with a look backward at the condition from which the Ephesians has sprung. They had been raised from the dead. Jesus Christ came into a world of dead men. He himself was the only living man in the world. He came to give life to the dead. “I am come that they might have life.” “You… who were dead,” says the apostle to the Ephesians. They had lived in trespasses and sins. They had walked according to the course of this world instead of after the way of God’s commandments. They had come out of heathenism. “The prince of the power of the air” had been their master. This “prince of the power of the air” is Satan. We need not, however, accept the view of the Jewish rabbis that the air is Satan’s abode, that it is peopled by demons flitting about invisibly. Probably Paul means here the moral atmosphere of the world. “The power of the air is a fitting designation of the prevailing spirit of the times, whose influence spreads itself like a miasma through the whole atmosphere of the world.”
Not only the Ephesians, but we all, lived at one time the same sinful life. We are “children of disobedience” and consequently “children of wrath.” If we keep God’s commandments we abide in his love. If we do not keep his commandments we are under condemnation. “It is God’s smile or frown that makes the sunshine or the gloom of our whole life.”
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