Ver. 20. +Being built upon the foundation.+--From the future of a household St. Paul passes easily to the structure, based on "the Church's One Foundation." +The chief corner-stone.+--"The historic Christ, to whom all Christian belief and life have reference, as necessarily conditions through Himself the existence and endurance of each Christian commonwealth, as the existence and steadiness of a building are dependent on the indispensable cornerstone, which upholds the whole structure" (_Meyer_). The difference between our passage and 1 Cor. iii. 11 is one of figure only. Ver. 21. +All the building.+--R.V. "each several building." +Fitly-framed-together.+--One word in the original, found again only in ch. iv. 16 in this form. Ver. 22. +For a habitation.+--The word so translated is found again only in Rev. xviii. 2, a sharp contrast to this verse. _MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 1-3. _The Children of Wrath_-- +I. Are spiritually dead.+--"Who were dead in trespasses and sins" (ver. 1). The only life of which they are conscious, and in which all their activities are displayed, is a life of sin. They have no conception of a higher life. They are capable of a higher life and know it not. The spiritual, the higher form of life, is entombed and buried under a mass of sin. It is inert, dead, in process of corruption. Dante refers to such as, "These wretched ones who never were alive; I ne'er forsooth could have believed it true, that death had slain such myriads of mankind." Sin first benumbs, then paralyses, and finally slays our spiritual sensibilities. The soul dead to God shall not be insensible to the reality of the Divine wrath.