Ephesians 2:4-8

4-8. This passage is a pictorial parallel with Ephesians 1:20-23; and a pictorial contrast with Ephesians 2:1-3.

The parallel is drawn between the corporeal death, resurrection, and enthronement of Christ, and the death in sin and co-resurrection and co-enthronement of the Church with him. That a parallelism is intended, overlooked though it has been by commentators, is plain both from the progress of the two pictures and from the sameness of the terms used: raised… sit… heavenly places. And then parallel with the permanent glory of Ephesians 2:21-22, is the ages to come of glorious showing.

The contrast with Ephesians 2:1-3 is striking. They were dead in sin, in accord with Satan: whose power was in the lower air; they are raised and co-enthroned in accord with Christ in the heavenly places. And the perception of both this parallelism and this contrast enables us to decide the question, mooted by commentators, whether the death and resurrection here are only present and spiritual or also bodily. The entirety of our death by sin, namely, spiritual, bodily, and eternal, and the correspondent entire salvation, must be included in one conception. For it is this that is to be shown to the ages to come, Ephesians 2:7.