2 Timothy 1:9

τοῦ σώσαντος, κ. τ. λ.: The connexion, as has been just remarked, is that our recognition at our baptism of God's saving and calling grace He saved us and called us at a definite point of time (aor.) ought to strengthen our faith in the continuance in the future of His gifts of power to us. On the insistence in this group of epistles on God's saving grace, see notes on 1Ti 1:1; 1 Timothy 2:4.

καλέσαντος κλήσει ἁγίᾳ : To a holy calling, i.e., to a life of holiness, is less ambiguous than with a holy calling, which might mean “a calling uttered by a Holy One,” or “in holy language”. κλῆσις does not here mean the invitation (as in Romans 11:29), but, when qualified as here by an adj., it means the condition into which, or the purpose for which, we have been called (so ἡ ἄνω κλ., Philippians 3:14, ἐπουράνιος κλ., Hebrews 3:1; and cf. 1 Corinthians 7:20). We have been “called to be saints,” Romans 1:7, “called into the fellowship of God's Son,” 1 Corinthians 1:9.

οὐ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα : The sentiment is more clearly expressed in Titus 3:5, οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων … ἃ ἐποιήσαμεν ἡμεῖς. There is an echo in both places of the controversy, now over, concerning works and grace. Perhaps κατά is used in this clause to mark more vividly the antithesis to the next, κατὰ ἰδ. πρόθ., in which its use is more normal. See Ephesians 2:8, οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν, θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον.

ἀλλὰ κατὰ ἰδίαν πρόθεσιν, κ. τ. λ.: The grace in which the divine purpose for man expresses itself was given to mankind before times eternal; mankind, sons of God, being summed up, concentrated, in the Son of God, whom we know now as Christ Jesus. In Him was present, germ-wise, redeemed humanity, to be realised in races and individuals in succeeding ages.

We have here the same teaching about the Church and Christ as is more fully given in Ephesians and Colossians (see especially Ephesians 1:4). In Romans 16:25 the antithesis between a reality veiled in the past and now unveiled, or manifested, is expressed in language very similar to that of the passage before us: κατὰ ἀποκάλυψιν μυστηρίου χρόνοις αἰωνίοις σεσιγημένου φανερωθέντος δὲ νῦν.

πρὸ χρόνων αἰωνίων : expresses the notion of that which is anterior to the most remote period in the past conceivable by any imagination that man knows of.