2:4 Mercy removes misery: love confers salvation.

Ephesians 2:4 Parallel Commentaries

The Resurrection of Dead Souls
'God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.'--Eph. ii. 4, 5. Scripture paints man as he is, in darker tints, and man as he may become, in brighter ones, than are elsewhere found. The range of this portrait painter's palette is from pitchiest black to most dazzling white, as of snow smitten by sunlight. Nowhere else are there such sad, stern words about the actualities of human nature; nowhere else such …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians, Peter,John

The Scripture Way of Salvation
"Ye are saved through faith." Ephesians 2:8. 1. Nothing can be more intricate, complex, and hard to be understood, than religion, as it has been often described. And this is not only true concerning the religion of the Heathens, even many of the wisest of them, but concerning the religion of those also who were, in some sense, Christians; yea, and men of great name in the Christian world; men who seemed to be pillars thereof. Yet how easy to be understood, how plain and simple a thing, is the genuine …
John Wesley—Sermons on Several Occasions

Spiritual Resurrection
The apostle is here speaking, you will observe, of the church at Ephesus, and, indeed, of all those who were chosen in Christ Jesus, accepted in him, and redeemed with his blood; and he says of them, "You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." What a solemn sight is presented to us by a dead body! When last evening trying to realize the thought, it utterly overcame me. The thought is overwhelming, that soon this body of mine must be a carnival for worms; that in and out of these …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 3: 1857