Biblion Bible Commentary
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But God, Being Rich in Mercy
Ephesians 2:4-7
4 But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us, · WEB
Two words reverse the paragraph, and the three verbs that follow put the readers where chapter 1 put Christ.
But God. After three verses in which every subject was the readers or the powers over them, the subject changes, and everything after it is something done rather than something achieved.
The ground is given before the action: being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us. The letter's vocabulary of wealth again, and again it describes God rather than anything brought to him.
Then verse 5 restates the problem to make the timing unmistakable — even when we were dead through our trespasses — and gives the first verb: made us alive together with Christ. And the sentence breaks off mid-clause for a parenthesis that could not wait: by grace you have been saved. The perfect tense, a completed act with standing results, three verses before the letter states it formally Ephesians 2:8.
Verses 5 and 6 supply three verbs, all compounded with together with him: made alive, raised up, and made to sit with him in the heavenly places. Chapter 1 used the last two of Christ himself — raised from the dead, seated at the right hand in the heavenly places Ephesians 1:20. The letter now says the same two things of the readers, in the same location, which is the third of its five uses of that phrase.
Verse 7 gives the purpose, and it is not the readers' comfort. It is display — that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace. The rescued are exhibits, and the audience is future.
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