Because God loved His chosen people with a noble, high, and great love, He would not give them up. Within His love there are the riches of His mercy. Love may maintain a high standard, but there is no need of any standard for mercy. Mercy can reach you in any situation. Love does not reach as far as mercy does. You do not love a pitiful person; you love a person who matches you. But within your love there may be mercy that reaches farther to people’s pitiful condition to bring love to them.
God, in His great love, came to make us alive (2:5). Have you noticed that Ephesians 2 is different from the first section of Romans? In the first section of Romans it was sin and sins which were taken care of in order that we could be justified. But death is taken care of in Ephesians 2. According to Ephesians 2 we were not merely sinners—we were dead people. Dead people need more than justification; they need to be enlivened. Therefore, in His great love, God first enlivened us. When He resurrected Christ from the dead, He enlivened us. He did not enliven you at one time and me at another time. He enlivened us all at the same time in the resurrection of Christ.
In the Greek language the predicate used in 2:5 for enlivened or made alive has the prefix sun. This prefix means together, with, or co. God enlivened us together. This includes the apostles and all of us, even the last one to be saved in this age. All of us were enlivened together. Just as the children of Israel passed through the Red Sea together, so God enlivened all of us together. God also raised us up from among the dead (v. 6). Furthermore, He exalted us and seated us in the heavenlies (v. 6). This is the salvation revealed in Ephesians 2.
This salvation is not a salvation merely of forgiveness of sins or hope of going to heaven. We do not need to wait for a future day to go to heaven. We have already been seated in the heavenlies. This is neither a salvation merely of justification or reconciliation. This is a salvation of being enlivened, being raised up from the dead, and being seated in the heavens. This is to be saved by grace.
What a wonderful threefold salvation we have! In our salvation God has made us alive, He has raised us up together, and He has seated us with Christ in the heavenlies. This is the salvation revealed in Ephesians, salvation by life-dispensing.
A dead person can be made alive only by the dispensing of life into him. Forgiveness alone cannot make a dead person alive. Neither can washing cause a dead person to be enlivened. A person who is dead needs life-dispensing. Once life is dispensed into a dead person, he can jump up. He may still be dirty, but he can stand and walk. It is life-dispensing that enlivens him and raises him from among the dead.
To be saved by grace is much higher than to receive forgiveness of sins or justification or reconciliation. It is salvation that imparts life to us to make us alive, that raises us up from the dead, and that exalts us to the heavens and seats us there.
It is no wonder that Ephesians 2:10 indicates that such a salvation produces God’s masterpiece. Verse 10 says that we are God’s workmanship. The Greek word for workmanship may also be translated masterpiece. The Greek word here is poiema, a word that has been anglicized into the English word poem. We are God’s poem. A poem often displays the wisdom of the writer. It expresses his skill, art, and design. We are poems written by the threefold life-dispensing of the Father as the source, the Son as the course, and the Spirit as the flow. This threefold life-dispensing makes us a poem. We are the masterpiece of our Triune God by His threefold life-dispensing.