Ephesians 4:10Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

He descended, he says, into the very lowest divisions of the earth, beyond which there are no others. And He ascended above all, beyond which there is nothing else. This signifies His power and authority, because even before this all things were filled by Him. What he says elsewhere, "Therefore God also highly exalted Him" (Phil 2:9), he expresses here by the words, "He who descended is the same who also ascended." The descent into the lower parts of the earth did Him no harm at all, and in no way prevented Him from being above the heavens. Thus the more one humbles himself, the more he is exalted. So it is with water: the deeper one plunges into it, the more strongly it raises him upward. And the nearer the distance from which an arrow is shot, the more surely it hits the target. So also it is with humility. Yet when we speak of God's ascent, we must first conceive His descent. With regard to man, this is not necessary.

Therefore He descended into the very lowest regions, beyond which there is nothing else, and ascended above all, beyond which there is nothing higher. This descent did not hinder His ascent. Therefore you too, if you humble yourselves, will be exalted. He did this in order to fill all things with His dominion and power according to the flesh, since according to His Divinity He already filled all things before. All this is against Paul of Samosata and Nestorius. For He who descended, evidently as one dwelling above, both through the Incarnation to earth and through death into Hades, is one and the same, not another.

Yet even there He remained the same Being that He always is, eternally, that is, God. There, as King, He subdued our enemy, destroyed his kingdom and his power, and led out of Hades the people who with faith awaited His coming. Then He rose and ascended above all the heavens, in order to fill all things, heaven, earth, and the nether regions, with His divine glory, and to benefit souls everywhere.

He who descended is also He who ascended far above all the heavens, that is, above all the heights of heaven, in order to fulfill all that He said. And what He said was this: the Holy Spirit whom you receive not many days from now, but even before Pentecost (Lk 24:49; Acts 1:4; Acts 1:8).

Either He bodily passed through all the heavens and all the heights, and, ascending, stood at the summit of the vault. Or we must believe that He stood above heaven, that is, above the invisible world, rejecting and setting aside everything bodily and contemplating the eternal. Therefore the Son of God descended into the lower regions of the earth and ascended above all the heavens, in order to fulfill not only the Law and the prophets, but also certain hidden purposes known only to Him and the Father.

For it was not one who descended and another who ascended. To speak briefly, He descended in one manner and ascended in another. For having descended without a body, He ascended with a body. The descent does not signify any local lowering, but shows the greatness of the divine economy, namely, that the Most High accepted such great self-emptying upon Himself.

There is nothing that has not been filled by Christ, since He both descends into the lower parts of the earth and ascends above all the heavens. Some count these heavens as three, others as more (cf. 2 Cor 12:2). And what does it matter? In ascending, Christ ascends above all the heavens, for He is eternity, incorruptible life, and everything that lives by the Spirit. Before Christ's descent, all this existed in another condition. But after the mystery was accomplished, that is, after Christ's sufferings and His Ascension, it received salvation and was made perfect. In addition, Paul adds, "that He might fill all things," in other words, that He might make all things perfect and bring them to fullness, so that nothing would remain deficient. Or this should be understood as referring to His commandments, that they should have no defect and nothing could add perfection to them.

When you hear of descent, do not take this as a change of place. That descent was divine, not a local change. Understand here abasement, humility, and becoming man, as the same Apostle teaches elsewhere (Phil 2:7-8). It is not one who descended from heaven and another who ascended into it. Rather, the one and the same Son of God descended from heaven, was incarnate in the womb of the Ever-Virgin Mother, and ascended into heaven. He descended to earth as God and ascended to heaven as man. He descended bodiless and ascended incarnate. He ascended, he says, "above all the heavens." Concerning this, note that there are three heavens. Moses mentions two when he says: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen 1:1). Here is one heaven. "And God said, Let there be a firmament.

The moral part of the epistle. General foundations of the Christian life. Rules for all believers in general. Eph 4:2-3. The Apostle commands them humility of mind, meekness, longsuffering, loving forbearance toward one another, and unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. The grounds for this then follow. Eph 4:4-6. Christians, having one hope of salvation, one faith, one God and Father, and one Lord and Savior, compose one body. "One body, one Spirit, as you were also called," and so forth. Eph 4:7-10. To each believer, as to a separate member in the organism, a special grace or gift is given from the dead, risen, and glorified Christ, for the body's common and harmonious growth. "Therefore it says: When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive and gave gifts to men," and so forth.

Teaching mutual communion, the Apostle commands us to serve one another according to the measure of the gift each has received through Christ. He cites David's mystical prophetic foretelling of the Son of God's descent to earth, for the distribution of grace-filled gifts, and of His ascent into heaven after the victorious accomplishment of salvation on earth. "He did not leave believers orphaned, but sent them the Holy Spirit, the source of all grace-filled gifts. The Spirit was not given while the Lord had not yet been glorified. But when He was glorified and received the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, then the Holy Spirit, the source of the gifts of grace, descended to earth.

Although grace, or more precisely its source, is one and the same for all Christians, they nevertheless receive various gifts from this source. Christ distributes them not according to any human merits, but according to His own judgment (v. 7). That Christ has the full right and power to act in this way was already understood by the holy men of the Old Testament. In Psalm 67, which is messianic, it was foretold that the Messiah, Christ, would seize the captives held by His enemy. Then He would lead them after Himself in a triumphal procession, and afterward distribute to these men the gifts He had acquired for them. Explaining how great the authority of Christ the Triumpher is, the Apostle draws a conclusion from the psalm's expression "He ascended," ἀνέβη.

"He who descended is the same who also ascended." He was not exalted for an earthly exploit, but received what He had with the Father before the world was. "It was not one who descended and another who ascended, but one and the same, though He descended without flesh and ascended with flesh" (Theodoret). "This passage strikes down Ebion and Photinus. For if He who ascended into the heavens is the very one who first descended from the heavens, how can it be said that our Lord Jesus Christ did not exist before Mary, but began to be after Her? It also strikes down those who, in their madness, invented two sons, namely the Son of God and the Son of Man. For here it is said very plainly that the one ascending and the one descending are one and the same" (Jerome).