In Ephesians we find that the whole wide world presents to the eye of God nothing but what I might call a moral graveyard. There is not a single pulse in the heart of man toward God. If this is our spiritual condition, how is anything to be got out of it? The answer is that nothing can be got out of it. God, if He is to work at all, must work from Himself absolutely and independently, for there is no material to work upon. Hence, what we find in the Scriptures is that an absolutely new creation is called into being by God, perfectly distinct from the former creation, but no less real. Just as God, when there was nothing, spoke into existence all that is, so when morally there was not a living thing for God’s eye to rest on, He, not by the mere breath of His mouth, but by “the exceeding greatness of His power,” by the might of His strength, wrought to bring into moral existence a creation, absolutely new and distinct from anything that ever existed before. To this new creation believers belong.
W. Kelly