Both Jews and Gentiles are saved by grace
God’s love and mercy in action, converting and making spiritually dead people alive, is such a marvelous and amazing thing that Paul spontaneously exclaims, “It is by grace you have been saved.” Together with love and mercy, “grace” is the third term that requires our attention. But actually, Paul is getting a little ahead of himself. He’ll treat the concept of grace more fully beginning at verse 8. First he continues to explain what God’s love and mercy have done for us.
And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Paul sketches the whole cycle of the Christian’s life: past, present, and future. In the past the Ephesians—and Paul too—were spiritually dead, as shown by the Ephesians’ evil deeds and Paul’s evil thoughts and desires. But now, having been brought to faith in Christ, they are spiritually alive. That opens up grand new possibilities. In a manner of speaking, Christians already have everything. Even now, in their lives of faith, they are as good as in heaven with Christ. Recall Paul’s bold statement at the close of the first chapter: “God placed all things under his [Christ’s] feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body.” Christ has all power on earth and in heaven, and he uses it all for the benefit of his believers. This is why Paul can say that even while living here on earth, they have been raised with Christ and are actually seated with him in heaven.
The full realization of the bliss of heaven is, of course, still in the future. But God did not make us alive just to give us a small foretaste of heaven. He did so “in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” As great and glorious as God’s present blessings to us are, they don’t begin to compare with what God will do for his believers in heaven.
Scripture tries to help us form some concept of heaven. For example, it refers to life in heaven as a gala wedding banquet, or it compares heaven to a glorious city paved with gold and set with precious gemstones. All those pictures, however, fall short of the real thing—as they must, of course— because what God has in store for us is “incomparable,” by Paul’s definition. There simply is nothing in our present range of experience that can compare with heaven, so great is the love and mercy of our God, “expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”