Ephesians 2:22

you also He reminds them of the joyful fact that they are special examples of the general truth that "the Gentiles are fellow-heirs."

are builded A present tense in the Greek; are building, being builded. It is a process; carried on in new accessions of regenerate souls, and new and deeper "framing together" of the already regenerate.

for a habitation For the significance of "for," see remarks on "unto" in Ephesians 2:21. The word rendered "habitation" (elsewhere Revelation 18:2 only) means, by its form, emphatically a permanent abode. The true idea is of the eternal Indwelling of God in the glorified Church. But this is reached through the lasting, though partial, Indwelling now. See notes above; and below, on Ephesians 3:17.

God Not here specially Christ. The prospect is of the world where "God shall be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28), words which foretell no removal (God forbid) of "the Lamb" from "the Throne," but a manifestation of the Father supreme and unimaginable. Meanwhile, again, the present is the germ of that Future; "My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him" (John 14:23) [34]; and "ye are the temple of the living God" (2 Corinthians 6:16).

[34] The one passage where the coming of the Father is spoken of. What awful grandeur is bestowed by this -We" on the believer! (Note by the Dean of Peterborough).

through the Spirit Lit. and better, in (the) Spirit. The living Temple, in its every stone, is what it is by the immediate action of the Holy Spirit, "Who sanctifieth the elect people of God." They are thus "inthe Spirit"(Romans 8:9), surrounded, as it were, by His presence and power. And so it will be, as this passage indicates, in the final state where the "pure River" will still "proceed from the Throne of" the Father and the Son. Will not the Holy Spirit's work, far from ceasing, be supremely effectual, in the world of "spiritual bodies" (1 Corinthians 15:44)?

We undoubtingly explain "in spirit" here to mean "in the Spirit" (with A.V. and R.V.), remembering the prominence in the whole Epistle, and not least in this part, of the subject of the Holy Spirit's work.

Thus closes the special revelation of the plan and nature of the great Living Sanctuary, built on the Son, by the Spirit, for the Father, to be the scene of the manifestation of His Glory to whatsoever spectators Eternity shall bring to see it.