preparedness being on the part of the believer.  2 Timothy 2:21 speaks of the

believer being prepared unto every good work.  The Emphatic Diaglott translates

Ephesians 2:10:

`Good works, for which God prepared us, that we might walk in them'.

This is but an expansion of the great passage in Ephesians 1:4:

`Chosen us in Him before the foundation (overthrow) of the world, that we

should (might) be holy and without blame (blemish)'.

Here then is a new creation, and there is accordingly a new walk suitable

to the new creation.  This walk is expressed in good works, and for these good

works each member of the Body has been before prepared.

In this section of Ephesians (chapters 1 to 3), which is mainly devoted to

the unfolding of doctrine, while the question of walk is raised, no details are

given.  That is supplied in the practical portion (chapters 4 to 6), which opens

with the exhortation to `walk worthy'.  In Ephesians 2, the two walks are just

put into their categories.  It is either the walk of the unregenerate `In time

past ye walked according to the course of this world', or it is the walk of the

newly-created `good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in

This brings us to the end of the smallest section of this epistle, The

Almonry, Ephesians 2:8-10.  Yet what wealth is here, wealth not merely stored

up, but out-poured.  A glance back to verses 2 and 3 will show the condition,

viewed spiritually, in which the recipients of this grace were `by nature'.  The

next section opens up the equally dark prospect that was before those thus

saved, when looked at as they were nationally, Gentiles in the flesh.

We saw when examining Ephesians 2:1-4 that the interposition of the words

`But God' changes the whole doctrinal position of the unsaved Gentile.  On the

one side of this gracious interposition was sin, with an energizing spirit of

evil, on the other side salvation by grace, and His workmanship.  So we now see

that the interposition of the words `But now' in Ephesians 2:13 changes the

whole dispensational disability of the Gentile from distance to nearness, giving

him access in `one spirit' and exchanging citizenship for alienation, and the

creation of a new man in the place of the hopeless condition of the Gentile in

the flesh and in the world.  These Gentiles were `far off'.  In the Old

Testament this term `far off' was used of the people of Israel in the lands of

their captivity, and the same Greek word makran that is used here, is used in

the Septuagint.

`If they sin against Thee, (for there is no man which sinneth not,) and

Thou be angry with them, and deliver them over before their enemies, and

they carry them away captives unto a land far off or near' (2 Chron.

`And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters unto all the Jews that

were in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, both nigh and far' (Est.