Ephesians 2:5

Even when we were dead, &c.— "In this wonderful love, with which he of his own good pleasure has loved us, even when we Jews, as well as Gentiles, one as much as another, were in such forlorn, wretched, and desperate circumstances, as to be dead in sin, and so helpless, hopeless, and loathsome in our fallen state; he even then quickened us;"—that is, by the Spirit given to those who by faith in Christ were united to him, became his members, and sons of God, partaking of the adoption: by which Spirit they were put into a state of life, (see Romans 8:9.) and made capable, if they would, to live to God, and not to obey sin in the lusts thereof, nor to yield their members instruments of sin unto iniquity; but to give up themselves to God, as men alive from the dead. See Romans 6:11 and, concerning the last clause of this verse, the Inferences and Reflections.