Ephesians Series: Ephesians 2:10a-The Church Age Believer is the Father’s Creative Workmanship

Ephesians 2:10 For each and every one of us are His creative workmanship. For each and every one of us has been created by means of our faith in and union and identification with Christ Jesus in order to produce actions, which are divine good. These God prepared in advance so that each of us would conduct our lives by means of them. (Lecturer’s translation)

Ephesians 2:10 completes a section of this epistle, which began in Ephesians 2:1 and discusses the purpose of the church age believer’s justification and union and identification with Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 2:1-3 describes the unregenerate state of the church age believer prior to their justification by means of faith in Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 2:4-10 describe how the Father made the church age believer alive with His Son at their justification (2:5), which is then described as the Father identifying the church age believer with His Son in His resurrection and session at His right hand (2:6).

He did all this despite the fact that they were spiritually dead because of their transgressions, which they committed against Him (2:1-5).

These actions on the part of the Father on behalf of the church age believer were to display for His own glory in future ages the incomparable wealth, which is the product of His grace because of His kindness.

He also did this because of the church age believer’s faith in His Son at justification and correspondingly, their union and identification with His Son at justification (2:7).

Ephesians 2:10 begins with the causal clause autou gar esmen poiēma (αὐτοῦ γάρ ἐσμεν ποίημα), “For each and every one of us are His creative workmanship.”

This is followed by the causal participial clause ktisthentes en Christō Iēsou (κτισθέντες ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ), “For each and every one of us has been created by means of our faith in and union and identification with the one and only Christ who is Jesus.”

It is modified by the prepositional phrase epi ergois agathois (ἐπὶ ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς), “in order to produce actions, which are divine good” and the relative pronoun clause hois proētoimasen ho theos (οἷς προητοίμασεν ὁ θεός), “which God prepared in advance.”

Lastly, the verse concludes with the hina (ἵνα) purpose-result clause hina en autois peripatēsōmen (ἵνα ἐν αὐτοῖς περιπατήσωμεν), “so that each of us would conduct our lives by means of them.”

Now, the causal clause autou gar esmen poiēma (αὐτοῦ γάρ ἐσμεν ποίημα), “For each and every one of us are His creative workmanship” presents the reason for the assertions in Ephesians 2:8-9.

As we noted, in Ephesians 2:8, Paul asserts that the church age believer is saved because of the Father’s grace policy towards them by means of faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.

He then explains this statement by asserting that the church age believer’s salvation never originated from them as a source but rather originated as a gift from God the Father.

The statement in Ephesians 2:9 explains the last statement in Ephesians 2:8.

It asserts that the church age believer’s salvation does not originate from meritorious actions as a source so that the church age believer cannot for their own glory enter into the state of boasting that they merited their salvation.

Therefore, the causal clause, which begins Ephesians 2:10 indicates that the church age believer’s salvation is a gift from God the Father and was never received based upon their own merits “because” the church age believer is the Father’s workmanship.

In other words, the reason why the church age believer’s salvation is a gift from God the Father and never based upon their own merits is that they are His creative workmanship.

In this causal clause, the first person plural present active indicative conjugation of the verb eimi (εἰμί) pertains to certain persons who exist in the state or condition of belonging to a particular group of human beings who possess a particular characteristic.

The referent of the first person plural form of this verb is of course to church age believers.

The first person plural form of this verb is Paul and the recipients of the Ephesian epistle, who we noted were Gentiles who belonged to not only the Christian community in Ephesus but also who belonged to the various Christian communities throughout the Roman province of Asia.

Ultimately, the referents are believers throughout the church age, which began on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem in approximately 33 A.D. and will end with the rapture or resurrection of the church, which imminent.

The first person plural form of this verb is not only referring to church age believers as a corporate unit but is also used in a distributive sense emphasizing no exceptions.

Therefore, each and every church age believer as a corporate unit functions as the subject of this verb indicating that they perform the action of this verb.

The particular group of human beings and characteristic which they possess are identified by the nominative neuter singular form of the noun poiēma(ποίημα), “creative workmanship.”

This word is used by Paul in a figurative sense in order to describe church age believers as God the Father’s “workmanship” or “creative workmanship” in that they were brought into existence by the Father’s creative actions.

The first of these creative actions was His Son, Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection and session at the Father’s right hand.

These events in His Son’s life delivered the church age believer from eternal condemnation, condemnation from the Law, enslavement to the sin nature, Satan and his cosmic system, spiritual and physical death, and personal sins.

The second of these creative actions took place when the church age believer exercised faith in the Father’s one and only Son, Jesus Christ.

At that moment, the Father imputed or credited to the church age believer His Son’s righteousness, which resulted in the Father acknowledging this imputed righteousness in the church age believer, which resulted in the Father declaring them justified.

Simultaneously, at the moment of the church age believer’s justification, the Father regenerated the church age believer by means of the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit (John 3:1-16; Titus 3:5).

By regenerating the church age believer, the Father made them a new spiritual species, which means that they were new creation, and which creation corresponds to the image of His Son.

The third of these creative actions also took place the moment the Father declared the church age believer justified, namely He identified the church age believer with His Son in His crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection and session at His right hand.

He accomplished this through the baptism of the Spirit the moment He declared the church age believer justified through faith in His Son.

This resulted in the church age believer being delivered or saved in a positional sense at their justification and guaranteed them being delivered or saved in a perfective sense at the rapture of the church when they receive their resurrection body.

It also results in them having the potential to experience this deliverance or salvation after justification by appropriating by faith their union and identification with Christ.

They would do this by considering themselves dead to the sin nature and the cosmic system of Satan and alive to God because they are identified with Jesus Christ in crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection and session at the Father’s right hand.

The church age believer’s union and identification of Christ would also restore humanity as the ruler over the works of God’s hand.

Adam and Eve’s authority over God’s creation was usurped by Satan in the garden of Eden when the devil deceived Eve into to disobeying the Lord’s command to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Adam went along with her disobedience because his love for Eve was greater than his love for God.

Now, the noun poiēma(ποίημα), “creative workmanship” is directly related to the expression kainē ktisis (καινὴ κτίσις), which appears in 2 Corinthians 5:17 and Galatians 6:15.

The latter refers to the church age believer as being a new spiritual species or in other words that they belong to the new humanity, which is under the head of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The referent of the genitive third person masculine singular form of the intensive personal pronoun autos (αὐτός) is God the Father since the word’s nearest antecedent is the genitive masculine singular form of the noun theos (θεός), which appears at the end of Ephesians 2:8 and whose referent is the Father.

It functions as a genitive of possession, which takes place when the substantive in the genitive possesses the thing to which it stands related.

In other words, the head noun is owned by the genitive noun and in Ephesians 2:10, the head noun is the nominative neuter singular form of the noun poiēma(ποίημα).

Therefore, this would indicate that the Father “possesses” this noun, which we noted means “creative workmanship,” and refers to the church age believer.

Thus, the Father “owns” the church age believer because they are His creation.

Interestingly, the genitive third person masculine singular form of the intensive personal pronoun autos(αὐτός) is fronted at the beginning of this causal clause in order to emphasize with the reader that the church age believer is the possession of the Father because they are His creative workmanship.