We are his workmanship,— "In this new state in the kingdom of God, we are, and ought to look upon ourselves, not as deriving any thing from ourselves, but as the mere workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus, to the end that we should do good works, for which he hath prepared and fittted us to walk in them. It is not by any works of the law, nor in consideration of our submitting to the Mosaical institution, or having any alliance with the Jewish nation, that we Gentiles are brought into the kingdom of Christ: we are in this entirely the workmanship of God; we are as it were created therein, framed, and fitted by him to the performance of those good works in which we were thenceforth to live; and so owe nothing of this our new being, in this new state, to any preparation or fitting that we received from the Jewish church, or any relation that we stood in thereunto." The latter part of the verse before us is conformable to what he says, Ephesians 2:5 that those who were dead in trespasses and sins, God quickened with Christ; they being by faith united to him, and partaking of the same Spirit of life, which raised him from the dead; whereby, as men brought to life, they were enabled, if they would not resist or quench that Spirit, to live unto God in righteousness and holiness, as before they were under the absolute dominion of Satan and their lusts.

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