God has raised them with Christ and seated them with him in the heavenly places, for no other reason than that he might show forth in the ages to come the surpassing riches of his grace, as manifested in this his kindness to them in Christ Jesus, for the apostle now adds with iterant emphasis by grace have ye been saved. In this reiterated phrase we have in effect the heart of the heart of his gospel, to know which is our prime necessity if we are to know what that gospel is. The whole gospel turns as upon its hinge on this fact, that salvation is of pure grace. There are, especially, three ideas which are conveyed by the word grace, all of which must be given full validity if we are to understand what the apostle was impressing with such earnestness upon the Ephesians. The first of them is the idea of power.
Grace is power.
And it is only because grace is power that it can save, save dead men, men dead in trespasses and sins. If men were not dead, possibly they might be saved by something else than power. The law tells us what we ought to do. Because the law is the law of God, perfect and holy and just and good, it tells us perfectly what we ought to do. But it is of no avail to tell dead men what they ought to do.