Does "dead in sins" mean that people cannot do anything good or respond to God? Study Ephesians 2 with context, apologetic analysis, and cross-references.
Dr. Lucas D. Shallua Commentary · EPHESIANS 2 — MADE ALIVE IN CHRIST AND ONE NEW HUMANITY
It means that apart from God's work, no one can bring himself to spiritual life or earn acceptance with God. Unbelievers can do acts that are good in human terms, but they cannot overcome their separation from God. The remedy is entirely God's initiative, and the gospel call is the means by which He awakens faith.
The grammar of verse 8 leaves room for different interpretations, but the passage's emphasis is clear: salvation in its entirety is a gift, and no one can boast. Scripture elsewhere teaches that faith is a response prompted by God's work (John 6:44; Acts 16:14; Philippians 1:29). Believers are responsible to believe, and when they believe, they will recognize that it was God who opened their eyes.
Because good works are the purpose and the evidence of salvation. They do not earn salvation, but a faith that does not produce them is not the faith that saves (James 2:17). Paul and James are looking at the same reality from different angles.
No. The ritual and ceremonial boundaries that separated Jews from Gentiles have been fulfilled in Christ, but the moral will of God remains, and the Spirit writes it on the hearts of believers (Jeremiah 31:33; Romans 8:4). Ephesians 4–6 spells out what holy living looks like.
The apostles and prophets who laid the foundation are the witnesses to the risen Christ and recipients of revelation, and their teaching is preserved in the Scriptures. This unique role is finished. But the New Testament also describes a continuing gift of prophecy in the church, which edifies, encourages, and consoles, and which is to be tested against Scripture (1 Corinthians 14:3, 29; 1 Thessalonians 5:19–21). This commentary holds that the gift continues.
Chapter 2 develops the themes introduced in chapter 1. If chapter 1 describes the plan of God and the power of Christ, chapter 2 describes how that plan and power reach sinners. The chapter has two movements, which are connected by the repeated phrase "but now" or "but God." In verses 1–10 Paul describes salvation as the movement from death to life, and in verses 11–22 he describes salvation as the movement from separation to unity. The first addresses the individual and the second the community, and neither can be separated from the other. A particular background informs the second half. In the Jerusalem temple, a low stone barrier separated the outer court, where Gentiles could come, from the inner courts, and Greek inscriptions warned Gentiles that entering beyond it was punishable by death. Paul's readers knew the world in which Jews and Gentiles were divided by religion, culture, and mutual suspicion. The gospel announces that in Christ this division has been abolished, and Paul presents the church as the living demonstration of reconciliation.
Paul's image of the "dividing wall" is rooted in historical reality. Josephus describes a stone barrier around the inner temple courts with inscriptions in Greek and Latin warning that foreigners who passed beyond it would be responsible for their own death. In 1871 a complete warning inscription was found in Jerusalem, and a fragment of another was later discovered, confirming the detail. This is more than a curiosity. In Acts 21:27–29, Paul himself was nearly killed in the temple because a mob thought he had brought Trophimus, an Ephesian Gentile, past this barrier, which gives the image in Ephesians a sharp personal edge. The letter also describes what would have been a historical novelty: a community in which Jews and Gentiles, who for centuries had been separated by deep religious and cultural barriers, shared a common life and a common worship. The early Christian writers were conscious of the strangeness of this. The unity of Jew and Gentile in the church is a notable historical fact that calls for explanation, and the explanation the early church gave is the one Paul gives here: Christ has made the two one.
This study preserves the hard questions, explanations, context, apologetic note, and references from Dr. Shallua's Commentary.