When I meet with you, I’m both studying and I’m communicating with you. At the same time. In my head, it seems like the most effective way to show you what I’m doing. This is actually how I study the Bible. These Bible Study Bites are not refined devotionals for simple consumption like a Spurgeon devotional or a John Piper book. Together, we are in the trenches where real, live learning is taking place. If I go down a path of investigation and find the obvious, we’ve found the obvious together. And sometimes when investigating, I will go down a path where there just are no satisfactory answers. The questions I have for the text are answered by God as “You don’t need to know that right now.”
Sigh. Yes, Lord.
Whatever the case, we are adventuring together. Do you have your adventuring tools? Your Bible, paper, pencil? Even your structural diagram? It’s not too late to join in the fun. You can print your structural diagram from here, at the end of that article.
What Has God Done?
To keep ourselves grounded, let’s read the verses we will be focusing on (5-6) within the context of the passage.
2 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:1–10 (ESV)
Focusing on God’s activity in giving salvation, I know we have our paper copies of the sentence diagram, but let’s make sure we can muse over it together.
even when we were dead in our trespasses
made us alive
together
with Christ
by grace you have been saved
and raised us
up
with him
and seated us
Laying three actions out clearly for his audience, Paul explained what God did in salvation.
- Made them alive
- Raised them
- Seated them
They are all past tense, so they are all things God has done. In our investigation today, we will look at how God made the recipients alive and then we will look at the raised and seated together.
“Made Us Alive”
Before we look at cross references, let’s make sure we wring out at least some of the information Paul provided in Ephesians 2:5. Looking at the verse, there are opposites.
even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
When we study, one of the things we want to watch for are opposites. For example, we’ve already examined this word dead in Bite 28 and found that it has a sense which Logos explained as characterized by lack of spiritual life or vigor; being completely indifferent toward the things of God. Now we have the opposite, alive, so we can flip the dead information to see better what alive means.
When we do this exercise, alive can be explained by being characterized by lack abundance of spiritual life or vigor; being completely indifferent passionate toward the things of God. Can you see how having an eye for opposites might aid you in your understanding? This is another “crayon drawing” for our comprehension; it’s not a photograph with all the details, but a rough image to give our brains something to gnaw on.
Continuing on, we can see that there are three modifiers in our English translation associated with alive. The recipients were made alive together, with Christ, and by grace. Just within the verse itself, we have been given quite a bit of information. Let’s list it out.
- Characterized by spiritual life or vigor
- Leaning toward the things of God
- In this life there is some kind of community (together)
- In this life the recipients are like Jesus in some way (with Christ)
- Being made alive is also being saved
- Salvation is by grace
Remembering that Colossians is a letter that was written in close time proximity to Ephesians, we know that what was on Paul’s mind in our passage, was also on his mind when he wrote Colossians. In fact, here is an example:
12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,
Colossians 2:12–13 (ESV)
Do you see the correlations between the two passages? I find it overwhelming if I try to take it in all at once. So I don’t. We are currently looking at the concept of being made alive and so we will zero in on that concept.
“God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses…” There are two English words here that are juxtaposed which helps us understand Paul’s intent when he wrote them: alive and forgiven. The forgiven is dependent on the previous phrase. Without being made alive, there would not be forgiveness.
- Characterized by some spiritual life or vigor
- Leaning toward the things of God
- In this life there is some kind of community (together)
- In this life the recipients are like Jesus in some way (with Christ)
- Being made alive is also being saved
- Salvation is by grace
- Because of forgiveness, there is alive-ness
There are points in this list that we may think, “Ooh! I need to do that!” I’m not saying to avoid leaning toward the things of God, but I want to emphasize that this is a list of what has been done for believers. You don’t accomplish anything here to receive salvation. The interaction that should occur with this list is the asking of questions. By way of example, a question that comes to my mind looking over the list is “Am I characterized by some spiritual vigor?” We are not our own savior, but we are investigating the God who has provided us a real Savior. If the truth of this list is not true about you, God does not despise a humble heart. Ask him to make you alive.
Moving through our section, let’s look at being raised and seated under the same heading.
Raised Us and Seated Us
Looking around for some cross references that have to do with these actions, the only places this combination of words is used is here in Ephesians and over in Colossians. There isn’t much information conveyed in scripture about these two words in particular. Since that is the case, I am going to go straight to the original language and see what I can see there.
Before we look at what I found, would you do me a favor? Please go here and read a brief article about original language study. In an effort to keep our current Bite a manageable size (I’m failing. This Bite is already pretty big…Sorry about that. Here’s a napkin for when the crumbs fall out of your mouth.), I took a few paragraphs in a Basics Bite to explain some background I want us to be aware of.
Now that we are on the same page let’s chat about these three words, alive and raised and seated. Well, I’m actually not going to show you the information about alive, but know that it shares the same characteristics that we will discuss about the other two. You will be able to go look at alive on your own.
The Greek word for raised and for seated both include in the word itself the companionship that we see with multiple words in the English. Let me show you in the reverse interlinear; highlighted words in the text indicate the English words required to convey the meaning of the original word.
From the screenshots of the reverse interlinears, you can see the words Paul uses are without modifiers. There are no Greek words under the English words that are needed to accurately translate the original words. He simply says the recipients are συνεγείρω and συγκαθίζω. If you look closely, even without knowing what the letters are, you can see the first three letters are the same in both words. Those letters, σύν, usually mean “with.”
Having this information in hand will help us since the entries don’t just say, “raised” or “seated”. There is within the words the ideas of union and community and participation. Not just the verb-parts. There are elements of how these actions were done as well.
Examine the definitions from two dictionaries for the Greek behind the word raised:
(BDAG) ⓑ of participating in the resurrection of Jesus; the believer, in mystic union w. him, experiences this ὁ θεὸς … ἡμᾶς συνήγειρεν Eph 2:6.—Pass. συνηγέρθητε τῷ Χριστῷ Col 3:1. ἐν ᾧ συνηγέρθητε 2:12.
1
(MCE) [5283] συνεγείρω synegeirō 3× to raise up with any one; to raise up with Christ by spiritual resemblance of His resurrection, Eph. 2:6; Col. 2:12; 3:1* [4891]
2
Let’s do the same for the word behind seated.
① cause to sit down with someone, trans. ἡμᾶς … συνεκάθισεν ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις (God) made us sit down with (Christ) in the heavenly realms or simply in heaven Eph 2:6.
3
[5154] συγκαθίζω synkathizō 2× trans. to cause to sit down with, seat in company with, Eph. 2:6; intrans. to sit in company with; to sit down together, Lk. 22:55* [4776]
4
Looking at these definitions we can see why the translators had to use modifiers with the simple definition of raised and seated, can’t we? Let’s start a list of these two words based on what we’ve seen so far.
| Raised | Seated |
| +Up +With Christ +The believer experiences this spiritual resemblance of His resurrection | +With Christ +The believer is caused to be seated in heaven in Christ |
I can read this list and agree that what Paul says must be true, but what does it mean? I can even look at the morphology of these words and see that these are simply realities that Paul was telling his audience. These verbs, actions (made alive, raised, and seated) that God has taken are all in the aorist tense and indicative mood. That basically means they described in the past tense (aorist) and that they “describe something that is, as opposed to something that may or might be”(indicative). 5
Do you remember in the last Bite that we were reminded that we need to ask questions of the text? We need to do that again. Why does Paul line the death and resurrection of Christ up with what has happened to believers? Let’s look at it.
| Believers | Jesus |
| Eph 2:5 dead in trespasses | Rom 4:25 dead for trespasses |
| Eph 2:5 made alive with Christ | Eph 2:5 made alive |
| Eph 2:6 raised with Christ | Eph 1:20 raised |
| Eph 2:6 seated with Christ | Eph 1:20 seated |
Paul is showing that in Christ, believers have had the same actions done for them that Christ had done. The difference is that believers were dead because of sin and Christ died for sin. After that, in Christ, believers have the same results that Jesus did.
Remember also that we’ve studied in Bite 22 what it means to be seated? I’ll quote myself, “But for people in Paul’s day and much of the world today, the way authority is shown is whether the person is sitting–particularly where the person is sitting.”
In our context, Paul tells the recipients that they are seated with Christ and in heavenly places. Further, elsewhere Paul speaks of saints (we learned who and what saints are in Bite 6) judging the world. And angels. In the future. See? Here:
6 When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? 2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!
1 Corinthians 6:1–3 (ESV)
Believers are already, in some way, raised and seated and in authority with Christ. And they will be in the future as well.
Does this clear anything up for you? Yeah, me neither. But let’s remember what Paul said earlier in the epistle:
19 (that you may know) what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,
Ephesians 1:19–20 (ESV)
Paul lined up the relationship between how God moved in the death and resurrection of Christ and how God moved in salvation for believers because the power used in the first is the same as the power used in the second. Do I understand this? Not even a little. But God says it and so I believe it.
Wrap Up
When the kids were growing up, my beloved would explain to them that there are file cabinets in their brains. There are the file drawers labeled “I know this” and file drawers labeled “maybe.” In my brain, I also have a file drawer labeled “God will tell me later.” Our Bible Study Bite for today is the reality that there has to be such a drawer.
There are truths that are evident from scripture and are firmly placed in the “I know this” drawer. For example, Jesus lived the life I could not live and died the death I should have died to save me from my sin.
There is content in the “maybe” drawer. For example, are you a pre-millennialist or a post-millennialist? If you make a choice between the two, that is a decision that should be in the “maybe” file. We shouldn’t be dogmatic about things that we don’t have enough information to know for sure.
What I know from this section is that God has made believers alive, raised them, and seated them. That is tucked into the “I know this” drawer. What it means? That is in the “God will tell me later” drawer.
It’s okay to study and not get a satisfactory amount of knowledge. For myself, as a mom, there are things that I have told my children. It is a certain way. No, you don’t need to know why, it just is. From what I can tell, God does the same thing about some truths with us. God said so; it is enough.
Share this:
- Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (2000). A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature (3rd ed., p. 967). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Mounce, W. D. (2006). Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words (p. 1282). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
- Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (2000). A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature (3rd ed., p. 951). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Mounce, W. D. (2006). Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words (p. 1277). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
- William D. Mounce, Greek for the Rest of Us (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan 2013), p 26.