Ephesians 2:8

Ephesians 2:8. For by grace, etc. The Apostle now reverts to the means by which deliverance has been wrought, repeating the clause introduced parenthetically in Ephesians 2:5. Here, however, the article is used with ‘grace,' pointing to God's grace, already defined in Ephesians 2:7.

Are, or, ‘have been,' saved. ‘Ye have been saved, and ye are now in a state of salvation.'

Through faith. This is not the emphatic phrase, but adds the subjective means, as so often in Paul's writings. ‘Salvation by grace is not arbitrarily attached to faith by the mere sovereign dictate of the Most High, for man's willing acceptance of salvation is essential to his possession of it' (Eadie). Comp. Augustine: ‘He who created thee without thee, will not save thee without thee.'

And this not of yourselves; the gift is God's. ‘This' might with correctness refer either to salvation or to ‘faith;' but the mass of recent commentators accept the former view, as more grammatical, as preserving better the parallelism of the passage (‘not of your-selves;' ‘not of works'). The gender of ‘this' in Greek differs from that of the word ‘faith.' The last clause is a positive statement added to the negative one: the gift of salvation comes from God, by whose grace we have been and are saved.