We also all once lived among them in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
Parallel Translations
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We also all once lived among them in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
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amonge which we also had oure conversacion in tyme past in the lustes of oure flesshe and fullfilled the will of the flesshe and of the mynde: and were naturally the children of wrath even as wel as other.
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Among whom we also had our conuersation in time past, in the lustes of our flesh, in fulfilling the will of the flesh, and of the minde, and were by nature the children of wrath, as well as others.
Cross-references (46)
Passages linked to Ephesians 2:3 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Titus 3:3 For we were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.
- Galatians 5:16-24 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, that you may not do the things that you desire. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the deeds of the flesh are obvious, which are: adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, lustfulness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousies, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these; of which I forewarn you, even as I also forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit God’s Kingdom. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts.
- Ephesians 4:22 that you put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit,
- 1 Peter 1:14 as children of obedience, not conforming yourselves according to your former lusts as in your ignorance,
- Romans 13:14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, for its lusts.
- Psalms 51:5 Behold, I was born in iniquity. My mother conceived me in sin.
- Romans 6:12 Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
- 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Or don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s Kingdom? Don’t be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortionists, will inherit God’s Kingdom. Some of you were such, but you were washed. But you were sanctified. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God.
- Romans 8:7-8 because the mind of the flesh is hostile toward God; for it is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed can it be. Those who are in the flesh can’t please God.
- Ephesians 2:2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience.
- Ephesians 4:17-19 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their hearts. They, having become callous, gave themselves up to lust, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
- 1 John 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, isn’t the Father’s, but is the world’s.
- Galatians 2:15-16 “We, being Jews by nature, and not Gentile sinners, yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law, because no flesh will be justified by the works of the law.
- 1 Peter 2:10-11 In the past, you were not a people, but now are God’s people, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. Beloved, I beg you as foreigners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;
- John 8:44 You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and doesn’t stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and the father of lies.
- 1 Peter 4:2-3 that you no longer should live the rest of your time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough of our past time doing the desire of the Gentiles, and having walked in lewdness, lusts, drunken binges, orgies, carousings, and abominable idolatries.
- 1 John 1:8-10 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we haven’t sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
- Genesis 6:5 Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was continually only evil.
- Job 15:14-16 What is man, that he should be clean? What is he who is born of a woman, that he should be righteous? Behold, he puts no trust in his holy ones. Yes, the heavens are not clean in his sight; how much less one who is abominable and corrupt, a man who drinks iniquity like water!
- Mark 4:19 and the cares of this age, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
- Acts 17:30-31 The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent, because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.”
- Romans 3:9-19 What then? Are we better than they? No, in no way. For we previously warned both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written, “There is no one righteous; no, not one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God. They have all turned away. They have together become unprofitable. There is no one who does good, no, not so much as one.” “Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have used deceit.” “The poison of vipers is under their lips.” “Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways. The way of peace, they haven’t known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” Now we know that whatever things the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be closed, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God.
- Romans 3:22-23 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all those who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;
- Romans 7:18 For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing. For desire is present with me, but I don’t find it doing that which is good.
- 1 Corinthians 4:7 For who makes you different? And what do you have that you didn’t receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?
- 2 Corinthians 7:1 Having therefore these promises, beloved, let’s cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
- Genesis 8:21 Yahweh smelled the pleasant aroma. Yahweh said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. I will never again strike every living thing, as I have done.
- Job 14:4 Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one.
- Job 25:4 How then can man be just with God? Or how can he who is born of a woman be clean?
- Isaiah 53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
- Daniel 9:5-9 we have sinned, and have dealt perversely, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even turning aside from your precepts and from your ordinances. We haven’t listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. “Lord, righteousness belongs to you, but to us confusion of face, as it is today; to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, who are near, and who are far off, through all the countries where you have driven them, because of their trespass that they have trespassed against you. Lord, to us belongs confusion of face, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness; for we have rebelled against him.
- Mark 7:21-22 For from within, out of the hearts of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, sexual sins, murders, thefts, covetings, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness.
- John 1:13 who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
- John 3:1-6 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to him by night, and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do, unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Most certainly, I tell you, unless one is born anew, he can’t see God’s Kingdom.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?” Jesus answered, “Most certainly I tell you, unless one is born of water and spirit, he can’t enter into God’s Kingdom. That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
- Romans 9:22 What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
- Romans 11:30 For as you in time past were disobedient to God, but now have obtained mercy by their disobedience,
- Jude 1:16-18 These are murmurers and complainers, walking after their lusts—and their mouth speaks proud things—showing respect of persons to gain advantage. But you, beloved, remember the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, walking after their own ungodly lusts.”
- Isaiah 64:6-7 For we have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteousness is like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have consumed us by means of our iniquities.
- Romans 1:24 Therefore God also gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves;
- Romans 5:12-19 Therefore as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin; so death passed to all men, because all sinned. For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not charged when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those whose sins weren’t like Adam’s disobedience, who is a foreshadowing of him who was to come. But the free gift isn’t like the trespass. For if by the trespass of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not as through one who sinned; for the judgment came by one to condemnation, but the free gift came of many trespasses to justification. For if by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; so much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. So then as through one trespass, all men were condemned; even so through one act of righteousness, all men were justified to life. For as through the one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one, many will be made righteous.
- Galatians 3:22 But the Scripture imprisoned all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
- 1 Timothy 6:9 But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation, a snare, and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction.
- James 4:1-3 Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members? You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask. You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
- 2 Peter 2:14 having eyes full of adultery, and who can’t cease from sin; enticing unsettled souls; having a heart trained in greed; children of cursing;
- 2 Peter 2:18 For, uttering great swelling words of emptiness, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by licentiousness, those who are indeed escaping from those who live in error;
- 1 John 2:8 Again, I write a new commandment to you, which is true in him and in you; because the darkness is passing away and the true light already shines.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (19 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 3. Among whom also we all had our conversation.…
3. Among whom also we all had our conversation. Lest it should be supposed that what he had now said was a slanderous reproach against the former character of the Ephesians, or that Jewish pride had led him to treat the Gentiles as an inferior race, he associates himself and his countrymen along with them in the general accusation. This is not done in hypocrisy, but in a sincere ascription of glory to God. It may excite wonder, indeed, that he should speak of himself as having walked “in the lusts of the flesh,” while, on other occasions, he boasts that his life had been throughout irreproachable.
“Touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.” (Philippians 3:6.)
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And again,
“Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily, and justly, and unblamably, we behaved ourselves among you that believe.” (1 Thessalonians 2:10)
I reply, the statement applies to all who have not been regenerated by the Spirit of Christ. However praiseworthy, in appearance, the life of some may be, because their lusts do not break out in the sight of men, there is nothing pure or holy which does not proceed from the fountain of all purity.
Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. To fulfill these desires, is to live according to the guidance of our natural disposition and of our mind. The flesh means here the disposition, or, what is called, the inclination of the nature; and the next expression (τῶν διανοιῶν) means what proceeds from the mind. Now, the mind includes reason, such as it exists in men by nature; so that lusts do not refer exclusively to the lower appetites, or what is called the sensual part of man, but extend to the whole.
And were by nature children of wrath. All men without exception, whether Jews or Gentiles, (Galatians 2:15,16,) are here pronounced to be guilty, until they are redeemed by Christ; so that out of Christ there is no righteousness, no salvation, and, in short, no excellence. Children of wrath are those who are lost, and who deserve eternal death. Wrath means the judgment of God; so that the children of wrath are those who are condemned before God. Such, the apostle tells us, had been the Jews, — such had been all the excellent men that were now in the Church; and they were so by nature, that is, from their very commencement, and from their mother’s womb.
This is a remarkable passage, in opposition to the views of the Pelagians, and of all who deny original sin. What dwells naturally in all is certainly original; but Paul declares that we are all naturally liable to condemnation; therefore sin dwells naturally in us, for God does not condemn the innocent. Pelagians were wont to object, that sin spread from Adam to the whole human race, not by descent, but by imitation. But Paul affirms that we are born with sin, as serpents bring their venom from the womb. Others who think that it is not in reality sin, are not less at variance with Paul’s language; for where condemnation is, there must unquestionably be sin. It is not with blameless men, but with sin, that God is offended. Nor is it wonderful that the depravity which we inherit from our parents is reckoned as sin before God; for the seeds of sin, before they have been openly displayed, are perceived and condemned.
But one question here arises. Why does Paul represent the Jews, equally with others, as subject to wrath and curse, while they were the blessed seed? I answer, they have a common nature. Jews differ from Gentiles in nothing but this, that, through the grace of the promise, God delivers them from destruction; but that is a remedy which came after the disease. Another question is, since God is the Author of nature, how comes it that no blame attaches to God, if we are lost by nature? I answer, there is a twofold nature: the one was produced by God, and the other is the corruption of it. This condemnation therefore which Paul mentions does not proceed from God, but from a depraved nature: for we are not born such as Adam was at first created, we are not
“wholly a right seed, but are turned into the degenerate” (Jeremiah 2:21)
offspring of a degenerate and sinful man.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain The conclusion: All men are born subject to the…
The conclusion: All men are born subject to the wrath and curse of God.
Profane people which knew not God.
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After that he hath severally condemned the Gentiles, he confesseth that the Jews, amongst whom he numbereth himself, are not a whit better.
By the name of flesh in the first place, he meaneth the whole man, which he divideth into two parts: into the flesh, which is the part that the Philosophers term without reason, and into the thought, which they call reasonable: so that he leaveth nothing in man half dead, but concludeth that the whole man is of nature the son of wrath.
Men are said to be children of wrath passively, that is to say, guilty of everlasting death by the judgment of God, who is angry with them.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 3 Among whom also we all had our conversation…
3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
Ver. 3. Among whom also we all, &c.] Let the best look back often on what they were before calling, that they may thankfully cry out with Iphicrates, εξ οιων εις οια, from what misery to what dignity are we advanced!
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Fulfilling the desires] Gr. the wills of the flesh. Now therefore we must as diligently fulfil not the will, but the wills of God, as David did, Act 13:22.
The children of wrath] De ires. Gregory the Great said of the English boys that were presented to him, Angli quasi Angeli, English just as Angels. And demanding further what province they were of in this island, it was returned, that they were called De ires; which caused him again to repeat the word, and to say, that it were great pity but that by being taught the gospel, they should be saved de ira Dei, from the wrath of God. (Abbot’s Geog.) Whereunto we are subject, even as in nature a child is to the commands and restraints of his father; being damnati priusquam nati, as Augustine hath it, damned ere born into the world.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Among whom also we all; we apostles and believers…
Among whom also we all; we apostles and believers of the Jews. Either Paul by a coenosis reckons himself among them, though not guilty with them; or rather, though he were not an idolater as the Ephesians, yet he had been a blasphemer, and a persecutor, 1Ti 1:13; and though he were blameless as to the righteousness of the law, Phi 3:6, yet that was only as to his outward conversation, and still he might fulfil the desires of a fleshly mind.
Had our conversation; walked in the same way after the course of the world, &c.
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In the lusts of our flesh: flesh is here taken more generally for depraved natures, the whole principle of corruption in man.
Fulfilling the desires of the flesh; the inferior and sensitive faculties of the soul, as appears by the opposition of the flesh to the mind.
And of the mind; the superior and rational powers, to denote the depravation of the whole man even in his best part, and which seems to have rectitude left in it: to the former belongs the filthiness of the flesh, to the latter that of the spirit, 2Co 7:1; see Rom 8:;7 Gal 5:19-21.
And were by nature; not merely by custom or imitation, but by nature as now constituted since the fall.
The children of wrath, by a Hebraism, for obnoxious to wrath; as sons of death, 1Sa 26:16, for worthy of or liable to death.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain Our apostle in these words is supposed to set…
Our apostle in these words is supposed to set forth the condition of the Jews by nature, as he had done before of the Gentiles; and that he declares, that even they had their conversation amongst the number of disobedient persons, and were no less obstinately rebellious against God than the disobedient Gentiles, following the motions of their corrupt lusts and vile affections; nay, he affirms roundly, concerning himself and all the Jews, without exception, that as to their way and course, whilst unregenerate, they did whatsoever their corrupt minds willed, liked, and inclined to; and as to their state, were by nature children of wrath, as much as others; yea, even as much as the despised Gentiles were.
Here note, 1. The case of all men, Jews and Gentiles, alike described, children of wrath; that is, our estate and course is such by nature as deserves destruction, as tends to and will end in destruction, without the renewing grace of God.
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Note 2. The rise of this case, expressed by nature, which implies,
1. The term from which this commences, namely, from the first receiving of our beings and natures from our immediate parents, and together with the depravation of our natures we received an obnoxiousness to the wrath and curse of God.
2. It implies the ground for which this wrath doth impend and hang over us, namely, for that depravity of nature which since the fall is found with us.
Learn hence, 1. That original corruption is universal to all mankind, both Jew and Gentile.
2. That this original corruption leads to, and will lodge under, eternal wrath, every person in whom regeneration and transplantation into Christ are not found: We were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Among whom also we all had our conversation in…
Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past,.... What the apostle says of the Gentile Ephesians before conversion, he says of himself and other Jews; and this he does, partly to show that it was not from ill will, or with a design to upbraid the Gentiles, that he said what he did; and partly to beat down the pride of the Jews, who thought themselves better than the sinners of the Gentiles; as well as to magnify the grace of God in the conversion of them both: the sense is, that the apostle and other Jews in the time of their unregeneracy, had their conversation according to the customs of the world, and to the prince of the air, and among unbelievers, as well as the Gentiles; and that they were equally sinners, and lived a like sinful course of life:
in the lusts of our flesh; by "flesh" is meant, the corruption of nature; so called, because it is propagated by natural generation; and is opposed to the Spirit, or principle of grace; and has for its object fleshly things; and discovers itself mostly in the body, the flesh; and it makes persons carnal or fleshly: and this is called "our", because it belongs to human nature, and is inherent in it, and inseparable from it in this life: and the "lusts" of it, are the inward motions of it, in a contrariety to the law and will of God; and are various, and are sometimes called fleshly and worldly lusts, and the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life: and persons may be said to have their conversations in these, when these are the ground of their conversation, when they are solicitous about them, and make provision for the fulfilling of them, and constantly employ themselves in obedience to them, as follows:
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fulfilling the desires of the flesh, and of the mind: or the wills of them; what they incline to, will, and crave after: various are the degrees of sin, and its several motions; and universal is the corruption of human nature; not only the body, and the several members of it, are defiled with sin, and disposed to it, but all the powers and faculties of the soul; even the more noble and governing ones, the mind, understanding, and will, as well as the affections; and great is the power and influence which lust has over them:
and were by nature children of wrath, even as others: by which is meant, not only that they were wrathful persons, living in malice, hateful, and hating one another; but that they were deserving of the wrath of God, which comes upon the children of disobedience, among whom they had their conversation; and which is revealed from heaven against such sins as they were guilty of, though they were not appointed to it: and they were such "by nature"; really, and not in opinion, and by and from their first birth: so a Jewish commentator (s) on these words, "thy first father hath sinned", Isa 43:27 has this note;
"how canst thou say thou hast not sinned? and behold thy first father hath sinned, and he is the first man, for man , "is naturally in sin";''
or by nature a sinner, or sin is naturally impressed in him; and hence being by nature a sinner, he is by nature deserving of the wrath of God, as were the persons spoken of:
even as others; as the rest of the world, Jews as well as Gentiles; and Gentiles are especially designed, in distinction from the Jews, the apostle is speaking of; and who are particularly called in the Jewish dialect "others"; See Gill on Luk 18:11.
(s) Kimchi in loc.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Among whom we - Jews. Also, formerly had our…
Among whom we - Jews. Also, formerly had our conversation: doing the will of the flesh - In gross, brutal sins. And of the mind - By spiritual, diabolical wickedness. In the former clause, flesh denotes the whole evil nature; in the latter, the body opposed to the soul. And were by nature - That is, in our natural state. Children of wrath - Having the wrath of God abiding on us, even as the gentiles. This expression, by nature, occurs also, Gal. iv, 8; Rom. ii, 14; and thrice in the eleventh chapter. But in none of these places does it signify, by custom, or practice, or customary practice, as a late writer affirms. Nor can it mean so here For this would make the apostle guilty of gross tautology, their customary sinning having been expressed already, in the former part of the verse. But all these passages agree in expressing what belongs to the nature of the persons spoken of.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 3. Among whom also we all had our…
Verse 3. Among whom also we all had our conversation] We JEWS, as well as you Gentiles, have lived in transgressions and sins; ανεστραφημεν, this was the course of our life; we lived in sin, walked in sin, it was woven through our whole constitution, it tinged every temper, polluted every faculty, and perverted every transaction of life. The lusts - the evil, irregular, and corrupt affections of the heart, showed themselves in the perversion of the mind as well as in our general conduct. The mind was darkened by the lusts of the flesh, and both conjoined to produce acts of unrighteousness. It was not the will of God that was done by us, but the will of the flesh and of the mind.
And were by nature the children of wrath] For the import of the phrase, by nature, φυσει, See Clarke on Ga 2:15, and See Clarke on Ro 2:14. To what is said on those passages, I may add, from Dr. Macknight: - "Nature often signifies one's birth and education, Ga 2:15: We, who are Jews BY NATURE. Also, men's natural reason and conscience, Ro 2:14: The Gentiles who have not the law, do BY NATURE the things contained in the law, c. Also, the general sense and practice of mankind, 1Co 11:14: Doth not even NATURE itself teach you, that if a man have long hair, c. Also, the original constitution of any thing, Ga 4:8: Who are not gods BY NATURE, Also, a disposition formed by custom and habit thus Demetrius Phalereus said of the Lacedemonians: φυσει εβραχυλογουν λακωνες. The Lacedemonians had naturally a concise mode of speaking. Hence our word laconic a short speech, or much sense conveyed in a few words." The words in the text have often been quoted to prove the doctrine of original sin, but, though that doctrine be an awful truth, it is not, in my opinion, intended here; it is rather found in the preceding words, the lusts of the flesh, and the desires of the flesh and of the mind. The apostle appears to speak of sinful habits; and as we say HABIT is a second nature, and as these persons acted from their originally corrupt nature - from the lusts of the flesh and of the mind, they thus became, by their vicious habits, or second nature, children of wrath - persons exposed to perdition, because of the impurity of their hearts and the wickedness of their lives. Here we see that the fallen, apostate nature produces the fruits of unrighteousness. The bad tree produces bad fruit.
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Children of wrath is the same as son of perdition, son of death, c. i.e. persons exposed to God's displeasure, because of their sins.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Eph 2:3. Among whom also we — Jews, as…
Eph 2:3. Among whom also we — Jews, as well as you Gentiles; had our conversation — That is, our course of life; in times past — At least in some degree, whatever our education or religious profession might have been. Here the apostle speaks in the name of the generality of the converted Jews, as his changing the expression from ye Ephesians to we, plainly declares; including himself and all other Christians, whose former character and state he affirms to have been the same with respect to sin and misery, with the character and state of the children of disobedience: and it is so professedly the design of the beginning of his epistle to the Romans, to prove that the Jews had not, in point of justification, any advantage above the Gentiles, (Rom 3:9,) that it is surprising any men of learning and knowledge should contend for the contrary. In the lusts of our flesh — To the base appetites of which we were enslaved, so as to forget the true dignity and happiness of rational and immortal spirits: fulfilling the desires of the flesh — Yielding to, and suffering ourselves to be governed by those corrupt appetites, inclinations, and passions, which had their seat in our fallen body, or in our evil nature; and of the mind — The earthly and devilish mind, that is, the desires, lusts, and passions, which were inherent in our still more corrupted souls. Observe, reader, the desires or lusts of the flesh, lead men to gluttony, drunkenness, fornication, adultery, and other gross, brutal sins: and the inclinations or desires of the mind, or imaginations, (as διανοιων may be rendered,) prompt them to ambition, revenge, covetousness, and whatever other earthly and diabolical wickedness can have place in the fallen spirit of man. And were by nature — That is, in our natural state, or by reason of our natural inclination to all sorts of evil, and this even from our birth; children of wrath — Having the wrath of God abiding on us; even as others — As well as the Gentiles. This expression, by nature, occurs also Gal 4:8; Rom 2:14; and thrice in chap. 11. But in none of those places does it signify by custom, or practice, or customary practice, as some affirm. Nor can it mean so here. For this would make the apostle guilty of gross tautology, their customary sinning having been expressed already in the former part of the verse. But all these passages agree in expressing what belongs to the nature of the persons spoken of.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain We all had our conversation - see the notes…
We all had our conversation - see the notes at 2Co 1:12; compare 1Pe 4:3.
In the lusts of our flesh - Living to gratify the flesh, or the propensities of a corrupt nature. It is observable here that the apostle changes the form of the address from “ye” to “we,” thus including himself with others, and saying that this was true of “all” before their conversion. He means undoubtedly to say, that whatever might have been the place of their birth, or the differences of religion under which they had been trained, they were substantially alike by nature. It was a characteristic of all that they lived to fulfil the desires of the flesh and of the mind. The “design” of the apostle in thus grouping himself with them was, to show that he did not claim to be any better by nature than they were, and that all which any of them had of value was to be traced to the grace of God. There is much delicacy here on the part of the apostle. His object was to remind them of the former grossness of their life, and their exposure to the wrath of God. Yet he does not do it harshly. He includes himself in their number. He says that what he affirms of them was substantially true of himself - of all - that they were under condemnation, and exposed to the divine wrath.
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Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind - Margin, as in Greek, “wills.” Complying with the wishes of a depraved nature. The “will of the flesh” is that to which the flesh, or the unrenewed nature of man, prompts; and Paul says that all had been engaged in fulfilling those fleshly propensities. This was clearly true of the pagan, and it was no less true of the unconverted Jew that he lived for himself, and sought to gratify the purposes of a depraved nature, though it might manifest itself in a way different from the pagan. The “will of the mind” referred to here relates to the wicked “thoughts and purposes” of the unrenewed nature - the sins which relate rather to the “intellect” than to the gross passions. Such, for instance, are the sins of pride, envy, ambition, covetousness, etc.; and Paul means to say, that before conversion they lived to gratify these propensities, and to accomplish these desires of the soul.
And were by nature - Φύσει Fusei. By birth, or before we were converted By conversion and adoption they became the children of God; before that, they were all the children of wrath. This is, I think, the fair meaning of this important declaration. It does not affirm “when” they began to be such, or that they were such as soon as they were born, or that they were such before they became moral agents, or that they became such in virtue of their connection with Adam - whatever may be the truth on these points; but it affirms that before they were renewed, they were the children of wrath. So far as This text is concerned, this might have been true at their very birth; but it does not directly and certainly prove that. It proves that at no time before their conversion were they the children of God, but that their whole condition before that was one of exposure to wrath; compare Rom 2:14, Rom 2:27; 1Co 11:14; Gal 2:15. Some people are born Jews, and some pagan; some free, and some slaves; some white, and some black; some are born to poverty, and some to wealth; some are the children of kings, and some of beggars; but, whatever their rank or condition, they are born exposed to wrath, or in a situation which would render them liable to wrath. But why this is, the apostle does not say. Whether for their own sins or for the sins of another; whether by a corrupted soul, or by imputed guilt; whether they act as moral agents as soon as born, or at a certain period of childhood, Paul does not say.
The children of wrath - Exposed to wrath, or liable to wrath. They did not by nature inherit holiness; they inherited that which would subject; them to wrath. The meaning has been well expressed by Doddridge, who refers it “to the original apostasy and corruption, in consequence of which people do, according to the course of nature, fall early into personal guilt, and so become obnoxious to the divine displeasure.” Many modern expositors have supposed that this has no reference to any original tendency of our fallen nature to sin, or to native corruption, but that it refers to the “habit” of sin, or to the fact of their having been the slaves of appetite and passion. I admit that the direct and immediate sense of the passage is that they were, when without the gospel, and before they were renewed, the children of wrath; but still the fair interpretation is, that they were born to that state, and that that condition was the regular result of their native depravity; and I do not know a more strong or positive declaration that can be made to show that people are by nature destitute of holiness, and exposed to perdition.
Even as others - That is, “do not suppose that you stand alone, or that you are the worst of the species. You are indeed, by nature, the children of wrath; but not you alone. All others were the same. You have a common inheritance with them. I do not mean to charge you with being the worst of sinners, or as being alone transgressors. It is the common lot of man - the sad, gloomy inheritance to which we all are born.” The Greek is, οἱ λοιποί hoi loipoi “the remainder, or the others,” - including all; compare the notes at Rom 5:19. This doctrine that people without the gospel are the children of wrath, Paul had fully defended in Rom. 1–3. Perhaps no truth is more frequently stated in the Bible; none is more fearful and awful in its character. What a declaration, that we “are by nature the children of wrath!” Who should not inquire what it means? Who should not make an effort to escape from the wrath to come, and become a child of glory and an heir of life?
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Among whom, &c. St. Jerome (p. 3) refers it…
Among whom, &c. St. Jerome (p. 3) refers it to trespasses or sins. --- Were by nature; not by nature according to the state of man’s first creation in paradise, but by nature infected with original sin by the fall of our first parents. --- Even as the rest; that is, all mankind. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain also we--that is, we also. Paul here joins himself…
also we--that is, we also. Paul here joins himself in the same category with them, passing from the second person (Eph 2:1-2) to the first person here.
all--Jews and Gentiles.
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our conversation--"our way of life" (Co2 1:12; Pe1 1:18). This expression implies an outwardly more decorous course, than the open "walk" in gross sins on the part of the majority of Ephesians in times past, the Gentile portion of whom may be specially referred to in Eph 2:2. Paul and his Jewish countrymen, though outwardly more seemly than the Gentiles (Act 26:4-5, Act 26:18), had been essentially like them in living to the unrenewed flesh, without the Spirit of God.
fulfilling--Greek, doing.
mind--Greek, "our thoughts." Mental suggestions and purposes (independent of God), as distinguished from the blind impulses of "the flesh."
and were by nature--He intentionally breaks off the construction, substituting "and we were" for "and being," to mark emphatically his and their past state by nature, as contrasted with their present state by grace. Not merely is it, we had our way of life fulfilling our fleshly desires, and so being children of wrath; but we were by nature originally "children of wrath," and so consequently had our way of life fulfilling our fleshly desires. "Nature," in Greek, implies that which has grown in us as the peculiarity of our being, growing with our growth, and strengthening with our strength, as distinguished from that which has been wrought on us by mere external influences: what is inherent, not acquired (Job 14:4; Psa 51:5). An incidental proof of the doctrine of original sin.
children of wrath--not merely "sons," as in the Greek, "sons of disobedience" (Eph 2:2), but "children" by generation; not merely by adoption, as "sons" might be. The Greek order more emphatically marks this innate corruption: "Those who in their (very) nature are children of wrath"; Eph 2:5, "grace" is opposed to "nature" here; and salvation (implied in Eph 2:5, Eph 2:8, "saved") to "wrath." Compare Article IX, Church of England Common Prayer Book. "Original sin (birth-sin), standeth not in the following of Adam, but is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, naturally engendered of Adam [Christ was supernaturally conceived by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin], whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil; and therefore, in every person born into this world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation." Paul shows that even the Jews, who boasted of their birth from Abraham, were by natural birth equally children of wrath as the Gentiles, whom the Jews despised on account of their birth from idolaters (Rom 3:9; Rom 5:12-14). "Wrath abideth" on all who disobey the Gospel in faith and practice (Joh 3:36). The phrase, "children of wrath," is a Hebraism, that is, objects of God's wrath from childhood, in our natural state, as being born in the sin which God hates. So "son of death" (Sa2 12:5, Margin); "son of perdition" (Joh 17:12; Th2 2:3).
as others--Greek, "as the rest" of mankind are (Th1 4:13).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 3. Among whom—Namely, the children of disobedience.
3. Among whom—Namely, the children of disobedience.
Conversation—Daily intercourse and conduct.
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Flesh—Animal appetites and mind governed by them.
Desires—Wills or volitions.
Flesh and… mind—The lower and the higher depraved tendencies.
Were—This verb corresponds with had and walked. Contemporaneously with our evil courses, and underlying them, was a nature by which we were children of wrath. The divine wrath condemned not only our guilty persons, but it reached more deeply—to our very nature. On the phrase children of wrath, consult what we have said on the phrase children of disobedience, in Eph_2:2. But the Greek in Eph_2:2 is, properly, sons; here, children. Robinson’s New Testament Lexicon says: “By Hebrew genitive case, the child of any thing is one connected with, partaking of, or exposed to, any thing; often put instead of an adjective.” Mat_11:19 and Luk_7:35, “Wisdom is justified of her children.” Eph_5:8, “Children of light,” that is, enlightened. 1Pe_1:14, “Obedient children.” 2Pe_2:14, “Cursed children.” So Septuagint, “Children of perdition.” A survey of these cases will show:—1. The absurdity of understanding that the expression children of wrath, has the least shadow of implying that men are born of the wrath of God. 2. A survey of such phrases as “child of hell,” “son of perdition,” shows that it will not do to affirm, with Eadie, that the phrase means more than exposed to the matter of which one is child. The “child of hell” was yet untouched by hell, though exposed to it.
So the child of wrath may be not touched by the wrath of God, yet liable to become so.
A thing is said to be thus or so by nature when it is so by birth or origin, or by growth, in distinction from being made so. A free agent is so by nature when he grows so in regular and normal conditions. See our work on “The Will,” p. 249. Now the question here is, (overlooked by commentators like Eadie and Hodge,) Does the phrase by nature children of wrath mean that the wrath lies upon the child at birth, or not? We affirm the negative, and believe it can be overwhelmingly proved. It is essentially the question of “infant damnation.” Josephus says, that David was “just and pious by nature;” certainly not in his infancy, but as he developed into manhood. Herodian says, that “barbarians are property-loving by nature;” not, certainly, in infancy, but in their adult development. AElian says, “The Cean is silver-loving by nature;” that is, when he has grown old enough to contract that love. AElian says, “The Athenians were envious by nature;” not so at birth, certainly, but by the character into which they grew. So AElian again, “warlike by nature;” and Philo, “peaceful by nature.” All the examples (most of which we take from Wetstein) imply, to be sure, a natural tendency at birth to the condition or character into which they grow; but not the condition itself. That is, they prove that the infant possesses the tendency apart from grace, to come into a subjection to the wrath of God, and so prove innate depravity; but do not prove that it is born under the wrath of God. The words do not decide that the infant is responsible for its inborn tendency, and so deserving of damnation at birth. The doctrine that the child is born under damnation lies in the very centre of the standard predestinarian system. That system assumes that any and every infant might be sent to hell forever, justly, and without a Saviour. On that assumption it bases its views of the mercy of God in redemption. Arbitrary reprobation is claimed to be just because all might be justly so doomed for original sin alone, without the commission of a single sin.
We hold, on the contrary, that though sinward tendencies exist in germ in the infant, yet there is no responsibility, and no damnability, until these tendencies are deliberately and knowingly acted in real life, and by that action appropriated and sanctioned. Then the man is condemned both for the guilt of the act and the pravity of his nature, now responsibly assumed and ready to be acted out, as described in Eph_2:1-2. See note, Rom_5:18.
But if the infant is irresponsible, how can Christ be to him a pardoner of sin and a Saviour? We might reply, that it does not make Christ any pardoner of sin to imagine a factitious sin, or a guilt which has no foundation in the nature of things. The pardon will remain just as factitious, just as merely verbal, as the guilt to be pardoned. But Christ still stands a Saviour to the infant, as we hold, in the following respects: 1. We have elsewhere shown that had Christ not been given the race would, in all probability, not have been permitted to be propagated after the fall. Notes on Joh_14:19, and Rom_11:32. So the grace of Christ underlies the very existence of every human being that is born. 2. Between the infant descendant of fallen Adam and God there is a contrariety of moral nature, by which the former is irresponsibly, and in undeveloped condition, averse to the latter, and so displacent to Him. By Christ, the Mediator, that averseness is regeneratively removed, and the divine complacency restored: so that the race is enabled to persist under the divine grace. 3. Christ, in case of infant death, entirely removes the sinward nature, so as to harmonize the being with the holiness of heaven. 4. Christ is the infants’ justifier against every accuser, (note on Rom_8:29,) whether devils, evil men, or mistaken theologians; asserting their claim through his merits, in spite of their fallen lineage, to redemption and heaven. Being thus purified, justified, and glorified by Christ, none are more truly qualified to join in the song of Moses and the Lamb.
If it be said, Yes, the infant sinned in Adam, we reply, (as in our note on Rom_5:12,) that the New Testament nowhere says that he “sinned in Adam.” It is contrary to fact that he did so thousands of years before he had any existence. Still, as there are in law what are called “legal fictions,”
so in theology there may be “theological fictions.” Such fictions are modes of figurative idea by which surrounding or analogous truths may be more vividly realized; as, for instance, where it is said of man and wife, “they twain are one flesh.” But such fictions must be so applied as not to contradict axiomatic truth and good. If from the oneness of man and wife theologians literally infer that the wife must die when the husband does, and so burn her on the funeral pile, they transform the fiction into a direful lie. And yet this would not be a millionth part as bad as the theologians picture God to be, when they make him hold infants to be justly condemnable to hell forever because, forsooth, “they sinned in Adam!”
If, however, we must say that infants “sinned in Adam,” let us be consistent, and add, but they also became justified in Christ. So Fletcher of Madeley beautifully puts it; as the entire race, infants and all, sinned, died, and went to hell before they were born, but only “seminally” and conceptually in Adam, so they are all redeemed and saved conceptually in Christ; and so are born into the world justified heirs of the atonement and heaven. Then fiction meets fiction; and beauty, truth, and reason are the outcome.
But if infants die, and death is the consequent of sin, why do sinless infants die? Because, we reply, in the fall the supernatural Spirit of holiness, by which man was raised above the natural law of death, was withdrawn from Adam and his posterity; and he and they were surrendered over to nature. See notes on Rom_5:12-19; Rom_11:32. And by nature, as an animal being, and by the law of material nature, he disintegrates and dies. So the justified and sanctified adult dies. For such are, under Christ, the laws of our probationary being, established after the fall, that death arising from nature is not repaired by immediate immortality of body, but by a bodily resurrection after the era of mere nature with us has past.
Even as others—Literally, as also the rest. The rest of whom? All the commentators that we have consulted, Alford, Ellicott, Eadie, Meyer, etc., have, obviously, missed the true answer. Some, as Meyer, make it the Gentiles, as in addition to Jews; but nothing has been said of Jews or Gentiles thus far. Others, as Ellicott and Alford, make it signify the rest of mankind; but the words are too slight to cover so wide an extent. The true meaning is, the rest of the children of disobedience, in Eph_2:2. Paul’s train of ideas is: The devil worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom we indulged the same lusts, and were by nature as depraved even as the rest.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 3. also we all] Better we also all, the…
3. also we all] Better we also all, the “also” emphasizing the “we.”—“We all:”—all present Christians, whether Jews or heathens by origin. St Paul often insists on this one level of fallen nature, wholly unaffected by external privilege. Cp. Rom_3:9; Rom_3:23; Gal_3:22. It is met by the glorious antithesis of equal grace. Cp. just below, and Rom_1:16; Rom_3:29, Rom_10:12, &c.—Observe the emphatic statement that man as (fallen) man, whether within or without the pale of revelation, begins as a “child of disobedience.”—Observe too the change of person, from the second (Eph_2:2) to the first. The Apostle willingly, and truly, identifies his own experience with that of his converts.
had our conversation] Lit., moved up and down; engaged in the activities of life. Conversatio in Latin, like the Gr. word here, means precisely this; the goings in and out of human intercourse; not specially the exchange of speech, to which the word “conversation” is now restricted.—In Php_3:20 the Gr. original is different.
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the lusts of our flesh] Better, the desires. “Lusts” is narrowed in modern usage to a special class of sensual appetites, but the older English knew no such fixed restriction; see e.g. Psa_34:12, in the Prayer Book (Cranmer’s) Version; “what man is he that lusteth to live?” and Gal_5:17, where the Spirit, as well as the flesh, “lusteth.”—Sinful “lusts” are thus all desires, whether gross or fine in themselves, which are against the will of God.
“Our flesh:”—this important word, wherever it occurs in N.T. in connexion with the doctrine of sin, means human nature as conditioned by the Fall, or, to word it otherwise, either the state of the unregenerate being, in which state the sinful principle dominates, or the state of that element of the regenerate being in which the principle, dislodged, as it were, from the centre, still lingers and is felt; not dominant in the being, but present. (For its permanence, till death, in the regenerate, see the implied statements of e.g. Gal_5:16; Php_3:3.) We may account for the use of the word flesh as a symbol for this phenomenon by the fact that sin works so largely under conditions of bodily, fleshly, life in the literal sense of those words. See further, note on Rom_8:4 in this Series.
fulfilling the desires] Lit., doing the wishes. This (see last note) does not mean that “we” were loose livers, in the common sense; we might or might not have been such. But we followed the bent of the unregenerate Ego, whatever on the whole it was.
of the mind] Lit., of the thoughts; in the sense generally of reflection and impression. The word is used (in the singular) e.g. Mat_22:37; “with all thy mind,” representing the Heb. “heart” in Deu_6:5; and 1Jn_5:20; “He hath given us an understanding.” Here probably the distinction is between sin in imagination and sin in positive action (“of the flesh”); one of the many warnings of Scripture that moral evil lies as deep as possible in the texture and motion of the fallen nature. Cp. Mat_15:19; 2Co_7:1, and see Pro_24:9.
by nature the children of wrath] On the phrase “children of wrath” see last note on Eph_2:2. “By nature we were connected with, we essentially were exposed to, wrath, the wrath of God.” It has been suggested that “children of wrath” may mean no more than “beings prone to violent anger,” or even to “ungoverned impulse” generally. But the word “wrath” is frequent with St Paul, and in 13 out of the 20 places it unmistakably means the Divine wrath, even where “of God” is not added, and where the definite article is absent. See for passages specially in point Rom_4:15; Rom_5:9; Rom_9:22; below, ch. Eph_5:6; 1Th_5:9. Add to this that this passage deals with the deepest and most general facts, and it is thus unlikely that any one special phase of sin would be instanced.—N. T. usage gives no support to the suggested explanation “ungoverned impulse” mentioned above. The word must mean “wrath,” whether of man or of God.—Translate, certainly, with A. V. and R. V.—On the truth that the fallen being, as such, lies under Divine “wrath,” see Joh_3:36, where “the wrath of God remaineth against” the soul which does not submit to the Son. Not to “possess eternal life” is to have that “wrath” for certain still impending.
And what is the Divine wrath? No arbitrary or untempered passion in the Eternal, but the antagonism of the eternal Holiness to sin; only—the antagonism of an Eternal Person. Von Gerlach, quoted by Monod on this verse, writes: “The forgetfulness at the present day of the doctrine of the wrath of God has exercised a baneful influence on the various relations in which man holds the place of God, and in particular on the government of the family and the state.” The antithesis to the truth about it is the dictum of the “Absolute Religion,” that “there is nothing in God to fear;” words in complete discord with great lines of revelation.
“By nature:”—i.e., by our unregenerate state in itself, not only by circumstances. For illustration see Gal_2:15, (“Jews by nature”) and Eph_4:8, (“by nature no Gods”). Such was our state antecedent to the new process, ab extra, of regeneration. We have here the doctrine of “Original or Birth Sin,” as given in Art ix. of the Church of England. “That which provokes the wrath of God is not only in the individual, but in the race and in the nature” (Monod). A greater mystery we could not state; but neither could we name a surer fact “Original sin is, fundamentally, simply universal sin. That is the fact which is at once the evidence and the substance of it … Universal sin must receive the same interpretation that any other universal does, namely that it implies a law, in consequence of which it is universal. Nobody supposes that anything takes place universally by chance … we know there must be some law working in the case … What we call the law is a secondary question. The great thing is to see that there is a law. If all the individuals who come under the head of a certain nature have sin in them, then one mode of expressing this law is to say that it belongs to the nature, the nature being the common property and ground in which all meet” (J. B. Mozley, Lectures, ix. pp. 136, &c.). See further, Appendix B.
even as others] Lit, as also the rest; the unregenerate world at large.
C. ORIGINAL SIN. (Ch. Eph_2:3.)
The theological literature, ancient and modern, of this great subject (the title of which we owe to St Augustine), is very extensive. The English reader will find information in Commentaries on the XXXIX Articles, such as those of Bps Beveridge and E. H. Browne. Art. ix deals expressly with the subject, and its statements underlie those of several following Articles, especially x, xi, xiii, xv, xvii. Among English discussions of the subject we specially recommend three of the late Prof. Mozley’s Lectures (one of which is quoted in the notes); “Christ alone without Sin,” “Original Sin,” and “Original Sin asserted by Philosophers and Poets.” To the quotations given in this last Essay we may add the lines of Mr Browning:
“I still, to suppose it” [the Christian faith] “true, for my part,
See reasons and reasons; this, to begin;
’Tis the faith that launched point-blank her dart
At the head of a lie—taught Original Sin,
The Corruption of Man’s Heart.”
Gold Hair; a story of Pornic.
See, for some admirable pages on Original Sin, Prof. Shedd’s Sermons to the Natural Man, especially Sermons v. and xiv. On the Pelagian Controversy, see Hagenbach’s Dogmengeschichte, or English Translation (History of Doctrines), and Period, B., i. 2; Shedd’s Hist. of Christian Doctrine, Book iv. ch. 4; Cunningham’s Historical Theology, Vol. i. ch. 11. A popular but able account of the controversy is given in Milner’s History of the Ch. of Christ, Cent. 5, cch. 3, 4.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (3) Among whom also we all . . .—Up…
(3) Among whom also we all . . .—Up to this point St. Paul had addressed himself especially to the Ephesians as Gentiles: now he extends the description of alienation to “all,” Jews and Gentiles alike, as formerly reckoned among the children of disobedience. It is indeed the great object of this chapter to bring out the equality and unity of both Jews and Gentiles in the Church of Christ; and this truth is naturally introduced by a statement of their former equality in alienation and sin.
In the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.—The parallelism of these two clauses illustrates very clearly the extended sense in which the word “flesh” is used by St. Paul, as may indeed be seen by the catalogue of the works of the flesh in Gal_5:19-20. For here “the flesh,” in the first clause, includes both “the flesh and the mind” (or, more properly, the thoughts) of the second; that is, it includes both the appetites and the passions of our fleshly nature, and also the “thoughts” of the mind itself, so far as it is devoted to this visible world of sense, alienated from God, and therefore under the influence of the powers of evil. In fact, in scriptural use the sins of “the flesh,” “the world,” and “the devil” are not different classes of sins, but different aspects of sin, and any one of the three great enemies is made at times to represent all.
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And were by nature the children of wrath, even as others (or rather, the others—that is, the heathen).—From this passage the phrase “children of wrath” has passed into Christian theology as an almost technical description of the unregenerate state. Hence it needs careful examination. (1) Now the phrase “children of wrath” (corresponding almost exactly to “children of a curse,” in 2Pe_2:14) seems borrowed from the Hebrew use in the Old Testament, by which (as in 1Sa_20:30; 2Sa_12:5) a “son of death” is one under sentence of death, and in Isa_57:4 (the Greek translation) “children of destruction” are those doomed to perish. In this sense we have, in Joh_17:12, “the son of perdition;” and in Mat_23:15, “the son of hell.” It differs, therefore, considerably from the phrase “children of disobedience” (begotten, as it were, of disobedience) above. But it is notable that the word for “children” here used is a term expressing endearment and love, and is accordingly properly, and almost invariably, applied to our relation to God. When, therefore, it is used as in this passage, or, still more strikingly, in 1Jn_3:10, “children of the devil” (comp. Joh_8:44), there is clearly an intention to arrest the attention by a startling and paradoxical expression. “We were children,” not of God, not of His love, but “of wrath”—that is, His wrath against sin; “born (see Gal_3:10-22; Gal_4:4) under the law,” and therefore “shut up under sin,” and “under the curse.” (2) Next, we have the phrase “by nature,” which, in the true reading of the original, is interposed, as a kind of limitation or definition, between “children” and “of wrath.” In the first instance it was probably suggested by the reference to Israel, who were by covenant, not by nature, the chosen people of God. Now the word “nature,” applied to humanity, indicates what is common to all, as opposed to what is individual, or what is inborn, as opposed to what is acquired. But whether it refers to humanity as it was created by God, or to humanity as it has become by “fault and corruption of nature,” must always be determined by the context. Here the reference is clearly to the latter. “Nature” is opposed to “grace”—that is, the nature of man as alienated from God, to the nature of man as restored to his original birthright, the “image of God,” in Jesus Christ. (See Rom_5:12-21.) The existence of an inborn sinfulness needs no revelation to make it evident to those who have eyes to see. It needs a revelation—and such a revelation the gospel gives—to declare to us that it is not man’s true nature, and that what is really original is not sin, but righteousness. (3) The whole passage, therefore, describes the state of men before their call to union with Christ, as naturally “under wrath,” and is well illustrated by the full description, in Rom_1:18; Rom_2:16, of those on whom “the wrath of God is revealed.” There man’s state is depicted as having still some knowledge of God (Rom_1:19-21), as having “the work of the law written on the heart” (Rom_2:14-15), and accordingly as being still under a probation before God (Rom_2:6-11). Elsewhere we learn that Christ, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” died for all, even “the ungodly” (Rom_5:6-8; Rev_13:1); and that none are wholly excluded from His atonement but those who “tread under foot the Son of God, and count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing” (Heb_10:29). Hence that state is not absolutely lost or hopeless. But yet, when the comparison, as here, is with the salvation of the gospel, they are declared “children of wrath” who are “strangers to the new covenant of promise,” with its two supernatural gifts of justification by faith and sanctification in the Spirit, and their condition is described, comparatively but not absolutely, as “having no hope, and without God in the world.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Among whom we also all once spent our life…
Among whom we also all once spent our life in the lusts of our flesh. The apostle here brings Jews and Gentiles together. "We also," as well as you we were all in the same condemnation, all in a miserable plight, not merely occasionally dipping into sin, but spending our very lives in the lusts or desires of our flesh, living fro" no noble ends, but in an element of carnal desire, as if there were nothing higher than to please the carnal nature. Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Desires of the flesh, the grosser and more animal propensities (the flesh, in Scripture, has often a wider sense; see; (Gal_5:19-21) and of the mind or thoughts, dianoiwn, the objects that we thought about, whatever they might be, the waywardness of our thoughts seems to be denoted, the random roaming of the mind hither and thither, towards this pleasure and that, sometimes serious, sometimes frivolous, but all marked by the absence of any controlling regard to the will of God. The life indicated is a life of indulgence in whatever natural feelings may arise in us-be they right or be they wrong. And we were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. This is a substantive clause, standing on its own basis, a separate fact, not merely an inference from the previous statements. The life described would have exposed us to wrath; but beyond and before this we were by nature children of wrath. "By nature" denotes something in our constitution, in our very being; and "even as the rest" denotes that this was universal, not a peculiarity affecting some, but a general feature applicable to all. "Children of wrath" denotes that we belonged to a race which had incurred the wrath of God; our individuality was so far absorbed by the social body that we shared the lot under which it had come. If there be something in this that seems contrary to justice, that seems to condemn men for the sins of others, we remark
(1) that in actual life we constantly find individuals suffering for the sin of the corporation, domestic, social, or national, with which they are identified;
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(2) that apart from this altogether, our individual offenses would expose us to God"s wrath; and
(3) that the moral and legal relations of the individual to the corporation is a subject of difficulty, and in this ease makes a strong demand on our faith. We should accept the teaching of the Word of God upon it, and leave our righteous Judge to vindicate himself. "Wrath," as applied to God, must be regarded as essentially different from the same word when used of man. In the latter case it usually indicates a disorderly, excited, passionate feeling, as of one who has lost self-control; when used of God, it denotes the holy, calm, deep opposition of his nature to sin, compelling him to inflict the appropriate punishment.
The true fountain of spiritual death.
were by nature children of wrath, even as others." The apostle traces the pedigree of all the elements that enter into this spiritual death up to our birth itself. He does not say that it is on account of "nature" or natural depravity that we are children of wrath, but "by nature;" that is, we are simply born in a state of condemnation. There is no express reference here to Adam or to our relation to his sin, though it is certainly implied that we had our probation in Adam, and are therefore born in a state of condemnation. To say that we are condemned on account of our hereditary depravity is to say that we are condemned without a probation. The doctrine of original sin is one of the" deep things of God." Pascal well says, "Original sin is folly in the sight of man, but this folly is wiser than all the wisdom of man. For without it who could have said what man is? His whole condition depends upon this imperceptible point." The recognition of the doctrine is the starting-point of the doctrines of special revelation, of redemption through Christ"s blood, of regeneration through the Holy Spirit. This passage implies
I THAT WE NEED REDEMPTION FROM THE MOMENT OF OUR BIRTH The sacrament of baptism is meaningless on any other theory. "The wicked are estranged from the womb." Why do all men certainly sin from the beginning?
II THAT ALL MEN, JEWS AND GENTILES, ARE BORN IN THIS STATE OF CONDEMNATION. Because "all in Adam die". (1Co_15:22)
III THAT GOD"S WRATH IS A REALITY. It is grounded in his essential holiness, as appears from the fact that God swears in his wrath, (Heb_3:11) and it belongs to the idea of the personal God as he acts in history, who cannot look with equal indifference or equal satisfaction upon virtue and vice, piety and impiety, wisdom and folly. It is not to be regarded as a mere modification of Divine love, as either love-sorrow or the anger of love. It is not Biblical to say that a God who has wrath is not a God of love. The objective reality of Divine wrath on account of sin is an axiom of natural theology (Rom_1:32) as well as of revealed; it is presupposed in the atonement, and must be carried into any conception we may form of future retribution. T.C.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Among whom also we all had our conversation in…
Eph_2:3
Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of Our flesh.
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All men by nature alike
1. The chosen of God have, before conversion, nothing differing from other sinners. Even those whom God takes to mercy were sinful as others, before by His grace they are changed. And why?
(1) That the mercy of God may be magnified, and made manifest in the free grace of justification.
(2) That love may be engendered in us who have been justified. Mary, who had many sins forgiven, loved much.
2. Where there is no fear of God, no outward privileges will procure us His favour. When Gods people do not obey Him, their circumcision is made uncircumcision. How can this be, seeing the one profess the true God, while the other does not?
(1) In deeds they deny Him.
(2) In deeds they set up false gods--their lusts, pleasures, riches, etc.
3. We must not be ashamed to confess ourselves sinners with the worst. The most upright are most forward in confession. It is the proper fruit of grace, to freely confess and give glory to God.
4. By nature the state of all is such that Gods wrath abides on them.
(1) We are born separated from God.
(2) We are given up to Satan.
(3) Subject to every curse in this life, whether spiritual or corporal.
(4) To death temporal.
(5) To death eternal.
5. By nature all of us are sinful; not only in regard of Adams sin imputed, but of corruption or concupiscence with which we are conceived (Psa_51:5; Psa_58:3; Gen_8:21; Eze_16:4-6; Isa_53:6; Isa_1:4).
6. Even the children of the godly are by nature children of wrath. (Paul Bayne.)
The misery of mans natural state
A sinful state cannot but be a miserable state. If sin goes before, wrath follows of course. In the text we have four things.
1. The misery of a natural state; it is a state of wrath, as well as a state of sin. The natural man is a malefactor, dead in law, lying in chains of guilt; a criminal, held fast in his fetters, till the day of execution; which will not fail to come, unless a pardon be obtained from his God, who is his judge and his opponent too.
2. Here is the rise of this misery; men have it by nature. They owe it to their nature, not to their substance or essence; for that neither is nor was sin, and therefore cannot make them children of wrath; though, for sin, it may be under wrath: not to their nature, as qualified at mans creation by his Maker; but to their nature, as vitiated and corrupted by the Fall; to the vicious quality, or corruption of their nature, as before noticed, which is their principle of action, and, ceasing from action, the only principle in an unregenerate state.
3. The universality of this misery. All are by nature children of wrath, we, says the apostle, even as others; Jews as well as Gentiles. Those that are now, by grace, the children of God were, by nature, in no better case than those that are still in their natural state.
4. Here is a glorious and happy change intimated. We were children of wrath, but are not so now; grace has brought us out of that state. And thus, it well becomes the people of God to be often standing on the shore, and looking back to the Red Sea, or the state of wrath, which they were once weltering in, even as others. The state of nature is a state of wrath.
I. What the state of wrath is. No one can fully describe it. Enough may be discovered, however, to convince men of the absolute necessity of fleeing to Jesus to escape it.
1. There is wrath in the heart of God against the natural man.
(1) His person is under Gods displeasure (Psa_5:5).
2. There is wrath in the Word of God against him (Rev_2:16).
3. There is wrath in the hand of God against him. He is under heavy strokes of wrath already, and is liable to more.
(1) There is wrath on his body (Gen_2:17).
(2) Wrath, on his soul.
(3) Wrath on his enjoyments.
(4) He is under the power of Satan (Act_24:18).
(5) The natural man hath no security for a moments safety from the wrath of God coming on him to the uttermost.
The curse of the law, denounced against him, has already tied him to the stake: so that the arrows of justice may pierce his soul. Does he lie down to sleep? There is not a promise that he knows of, or can know, to secure him that he shall not be in hell ere he awake. He walks amidst enemies armed against him: his name may be Magor-missabib, that is, terror round about (Jer_20:3). Thus the natural man lives, but he must die too; and death is a dreadful messenger to him. It comes upon him armed with wrath, and puts three sad charges in his hand.
1. Death charges him to bid an eternal farewell to all things in this world; to leave it, and haste away to another world.
2. Death charges soul and body to part, till the great day. His soul is required of him (Luk_12:20). O what a miserable parting must this be to a child of wrath! Care was indeed taken to provide for the body things necessary for this life; but, alas! there is nothing laid up for another life. As for the soul, he was never solicitous to provide for it.
3. Death charges the soul to appear before the tribunal of God, while the body lies to be carried to the grave (Ecc_12:7).
II. I shall confirm the doctrine of the state of wrath. Consider--
1. How peremptory the threatening of the first covenant is: In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die (Gen_2:17).
2. The justice of God requires that a child of sin be a child of wrath; that the law being broken, the sanction thereof should take place.
3. The horrors of a natural conscience prove this. Conscience, in the breasts of men, tells them that they are sinners, and therefore liable to the wrath of God.
4. The pangs of the new birth, the work of the Spirit on elect souls, in order to their conversion, demonstrate this. Hereby their natural sinfulness and misery, as liable to the wrath of God, are plainly taught them, filling their hearts with fear of that wrath. As it is the Spirits work to convince of sin, righteousness, and judgment (Joh_16:8), this testimony must needs be true; for the Spirit of truth cannot witness an untruth.
5. The sufferings of Christ plainly prove this doctrine. Wherefore was the Son of God a son under wrath, but because the children of men were children of wrath?
III. I now proceed to apply this doctrine of the misery of mans natural state. Is our state by nature a state of wrath? Then--
1. Surely we are not born innocent. Those chains of wrath, which by nature are upon us, show us to be born criminals.
2. What desperate madness is it for sinners to go on in their sinful course! What is it but to heap coals of fire on thine own head! to lay more and more fuel to the fire of wrath! (Rom_2:5).
3. Thou hast no reason to complain as long as thou art out of hell. Wherefore doth a living man complain? (Lam_3:39).
If one, who has forfeited his life, be banished from his native country, and exposed to many hardships; he may well bear all patiently, seeing his life is spared.
1. To you that are yet in an unregenerate state, I would sound the alarm, and warn you to see to yourselves, while there is yet hope. O you children of wrath, take no rest in this dismal state; but flee to Christ, the only refuge. The state of wrath is too hot a climate for you to live in. But if any desire to flee from the wrath to come, and for that end to know what course to take, I offer them these few advices.
(1) Retire to some secret place and there meditate on this your misery.
(2) Consider seriously the sin of your nature, heart, and life. A proper sight of wrath flows from a deep sense of sin.
(3) Labour to justify God in this matter. To quarrel with God about it, and to rage like a wild bull in a net, will but fix you the more in it.
(4) Turn your eyes towards the Lord Jesus Christ, and embrace Him as He offers Himself in the gospel.
2. I Shall drop a few words to the saints.
(1) Remember, that in the day our Lord first took you by the hand, you were in no better a condition than others.
(2) Remember there was nothing in you to engage Him to love you, in the day He appeared for your deliverance.
(3) Remember, you were fitter to be loathed than loved in that day.
(4) Remember, you are decked with borrowed feathers. It is His comeliness which as upon you (Eph_2:14).
(5) Remember your faults this day, as Pharaohs butler, who had forgotten Joseph. Mind how you have forgotten, and how unkindly you have treated, Him who remembered you in your low estate.
(6) Pity the children of wrath, the world that lies in wickedness. Can you be unconcerned for them, you who were once in the same condition?
(7) Admire that matchless love, which brought you out of the state of wrath. (T. Boston, D. D.)
Inherited depravity
When, nine years after his marriage, the birth of his son Nero was announced to him, he (Neros father) answered the congratulations of his friend with the remark, that from himself and Agrippina nothing could have been born but what was hateful and for the public ruin. (Archdeacon Farrar.)
The mind sinful
The wall thought it very unfair to influence a childs mind by inculcating any opinions before it should have come to years of discretion and be able to choose for itself. I showed him my garden, and told him it was my botanical garden. How so? said he, it is covered with weeds. Oh, I replied, that is only because it has not yet come to its age of discretion and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries. (Coleridges Table Talk.)
Fleshly depravity
Conversation does not mean talking. There is no instance where it has this signification in the English Bible. It means, as the Greek original does, deportment, conduct, character, as in the following passages: 2Co_1:12; Gal_1:13; Eph_2:3; Eph_4:22; 1Ti_4:12; Heb_13:5; Heb_13:7; Jam_3:13; 1Pe_1:15; 1Pe_1:18; 1Pe_2:12; 1Pe_3:1-2; 1Pe_3:16; 2Pe_2:7; 2Pe_3:11. In Php_1:27, conversation signifies citizenship; so that to have a good conversation is to act worthy of the New Jerusalem to which grace has called you. But this former conduct or conversation of theirs was in the lusts of the flesh. This refers--
1. To carnal or sensual appetites, in which the heathen world was sunk, and Paul asserts in the text that the Jews were the same (Rom_6:12; Rom_7:8-9; 1Ti_6:9, and many others). This implies and includes luxuries, the pleasures of the table, drunkenness, and all such forbidden pleasures.
2. These fleshly desires are seen most perfectly in the systems of false worship adopted by the heathen world in general. Baalim was the embodiment of lewdness; Buddhism is the embodiment of the dogma of priestly rule; so is Hindooism and other forms of religion. The Greeks and the Romans deified nature and the dead. The flesh is the teeming fountain of vileness from which all these and similar systems flow:--the picture, the image, the idol, the oracle are the four head forms or developments of false worship, and they all come from the flesh.
3. Flesh is always contrasted with spirit, and in general denotes alienation from God. The law of the flesh is sin; the works of the flesh are evil; the carnal mind is enmity against God (Rom_8:6-7); to walk after the flesh is ungodliness; to be in the flesh is not to know or please God. Jesus Christ crucified it, and He gives us the principle and power of doing the same. (W. Graham, D. D.)
Original sin, a fact
Original or birth sin is not merely a doctrine in religion, it is a fact in mans world acknowledged by all, whether religious or not. Let a man be providing for an unborn child; in case of distribution of worldly property, he will take care to bind him by conditions and covenants which shall guard against his fraudulently helping himself to that which he is to hold for or to apportion to another, He never saw that child; he does not know but that child may be the most pure and perfect of men; but he knows it will not be safe to put temptation in his way, because he knows he will be born in sin, and liable to sin, and sure to commit sin. (Dean Alford.)
Man innately bad
Many inquirers find it difficult to believe themselves innately bad, simply because they have been told that such a belief is required of them. No man taught the doctrine of original sin, commonly so called, so impressively as Jesus Christ, and yet He never mentioned it. His whole scheme was founded upon the assumption that men were wrong. Every call to a new point, every frown upon sin, every encouragement of well-doing, meant that society needed regeneration. Men may come upon the doctrine of original depravity in one of two different ways; for example, they may come upon it as a dogma in theology. The first thing that some theologians do is to abuse human nature, to describe it as being, covered with wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, and as deserving nothing but eternal burning. Human nature resists this as a slander: it says, No; I have good impulses, upward desires, generous emotions towards my fellow creatures; I resent your theological calumnies. So much for the first method of approaching the doctrine. The second is totally unlike it. A man, for example, heartily accepts Jesus Christ, studies Him with most passionate devotion, and grows daily more like Him in all purity, gentleness, and self-oblivion. From this attitude he looks back upon his former self; he compares the human nature with which he started with the human nature he has attained, and involuntarily, by the sheer necessity of the contrast, he says, I was born in sin and shapen in iniquity. This conclusion he comes to, not by dogmatic teaching, but by dogmatic experience; what he never could have understood as an opinion he realizes as a fact. Suppose a tree to be conscious, and let it illustrate what is meant by growing into a right understanding of this hard doctrine. Tell the tree in April that it is bare and ungainly in appearance; very barren and naked altogether. The tree says, Nay; I am rooted in the earth; my branches are strong; I live in the light; I drink the dew; and I am beautiful; the winds rock me, and many a bird twitters on my boughs. This is its April creed. Go to the same tree after it has had a summers experience: it has felt the quickening penetration of the solar fire, quenched its thirst in summer showers, felt the sap circulating through its veins; the leaves have come out on branch and twig; the blossoms have blushed and bloomed through long days of light; fruit has been formed, and mellowed into maturity. Now hear the tree! I am not what I was in April; my very identity seems to be changed; when men called me bare and rugged I did not believe them a few months ago; now I see what they meant--their verdict was sound; I thought the April light very beautiful, but it is nothing to the blazing splendour of the later months; I liked the twitter Of the spring birds, but,. it is poor compared with the song of those that came in June. I feel as if I had been born again. The parable is broad enough to cover this bewildering, and at times horrifying, doctrine of hereditary depravity. Men cannot be in April what they will be in September. Each year says to growing hearts, I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. In old age men may accept the rejected doctrines of their youth. Experience brings us round many a rugged hill, and gives us better views of condemned, because misunderstood, opinions. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Universal depravity a proof of original sin
As it is absolutely impossible for a man to believe, when the dice are thrown sixes successively a thousand times, that the dice are not loaded, so is it a thousand times more impossible to believe, when every human being of all nations and generations, without a single exception, begins to sin the instant he enters moral agency, that his will is not biassed by a previous effectual tendency in his nature to sin. (Hodge.)
The state of nature and the state of grace
I. Jews and Gentiles (i.e., all)
are by nature alike prone to and lovers of sin. Before and after the flood. In Asia, Europe, Africa, etc.
II. Believers can happily say that the time of their sinful conversation is past. (See text; Isa_55:13; Rom_6:17; Tit_3:8.)
III. When a man knows himself, he will confess that his nature is sinful as others. Job; David; Isaiah; Jeremiah; Paul.
IV. The corruption of nature is sinful before it appears in thoughts, words, etc. (Mat_15:19; Rom_9:11-13).
V. The sinfulness of every mans nature justly exposes him to the wrath of God.
VI. The Scriptures tell us satisfactorily how the world comes to be so wicked. Improvement: The necessity of regeneration. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, etc. (Joh_3:6-7). The necessity of daily self-denial. The fatal delusion of Pelagians. The fatal delusion of Arminians. Grace must make one to differ from another. (H. Foster, M. A.)
A misinterpreted proof text
It is assumed far too axiomatically that the wrath referred to can mean nothing else than Gods personal wrath against sin, whether original or actual. We are ready to admit that sin in any form must draw down the Divine displeasure. God would be less than God unless sin drew down on it that consuming fire by which at present it is punished, and so held in check, and by which it will ultimately be destroyed forever when He who sits as a refiner shall have purged His silver from the last speck of dross. In this sense Gods wrath against sin--a wrath punitive and a wrath purifying; for they are both, stages of the same process--is an essential conception of His character. But while admitting this, it is going too far to assume that this wrath of God descends on us at the beginning, instead of at the end, of our moral career. If we are children of wrath in this sense, by our descent from Adam, we can easily see how this view tends to efface all moral distinctions of good and evil. The race is a doomed one from the beginning, and we are all overwhelmed alike in the same whirlpool of perdition here and hereafter. Men may shrink from such remorseless logic, and seek to soften it down; but as long as the text, that we are by nature children of wrath, stands unrevised in our so-called Revised Version, is it strange that the English reader appeals to that text as decisive on the extreme or Augustinian doctrine of birth sin and its consequences? But is this the true interpretation of the text? Will the words bear any other rendering? There must be a mistake somewhere. May it not lie in the inattention of learned men to the fact that the Apostle Paul wrote in Greek, but thought in Hebrew, and that consequently Hebraisms crop up in cases where students of classical Greek are not on the lookout for them as they should be. The present is a case in point. In the previous verse the apostle has described mankind as children of disobedience, which is a strong adjectival form in Hebrew for children thoroughly disobedient. In this verse, returning to this thought and emphasizing it, he reminds us that we all once lived in the lusts of the flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath--i.e., children of a wicked, passionate impulse, even as others. The text in this sense not only confirms in this way what goes before, but it also throws a fresh, though lurid, light on human nature, Jew alike and Gentile. It reminds us that these lusts of the flesh and mind all had their root in a principle of passionate impulse (ὀργη) which is congenital to us, and which is so much our nature that we may in a sense be described as the children of this passionate desire, or the slaves of it, as we should say in modern phrase. Surely this is a dark enough description of human nature, without adding that other dark hue of Augustinian theology, that in consequence of this we are born under Gods wrath, and that the curse of God descends on us as a kind of birth, taint. (J. B. Heard, M. A.)
Children of wrath
What is it to be a child of wrath? It is to turn every blessing that this earth can give into aggravated misery. The happier we see a man--the more exalted in station, the more renowned by fame, the more endowed with wealth--the more miserable is his lot when precipitated from them all to everlasting ruin. Belshazzar was more to be commiserated and contemned than the poorest beggar within the city of Babylon, when the hand of fire came forth to write his doom upon the wall; the louder he had laughed--the more triumphantly he had praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone--the deeper draughts of luscious wine that he and all his court had quaffed from the golden vessels of Jehovahs temple--the deadlier was the livid paleness of his face, the loosening of his joints, and the smiting of his knees, when the fatal characters of death and judgment were traced, before his eyes. What profit in the vast domains of wealth, when the trumpet of eternal judgment shall awake their haughty owners from the death of trespasses and sins? When they shall call, but call in vain, upon those lofty mountains, of which, in their pride of heart, they had boasted as their own, to fall on them and cover them, and hide them from the wrath of that God whom they have dishonoured and despised? (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)
Natures testimony to the wrath of God
Wrath and threatening are invariably mingled with love, and in the utmost solitudes of nature the existence of hell seems to me as legibly declared by a thousand spiritual utterances as of heaven. It is well for us to dwell with thankfulness on the unfolding of the flower, and the falling of the dew, and the sleep of the green fields in the sunshine; but the blasted trunk, the barren rock, the moaning of the bleak winds, the roar of the black, perilous whirlpools and the mountain streams, the solemn solitudes of moors and seas, the continual fading of all beauty into darkness, of all strength into dust--have these no language for us? We may seek to escape their teachings by reasonings touching the good which is wrought out of evil, but it is vain sophistry. The good succeeds to the evil as the day succeeds to the night, but so also the evil to the good. Ebal and Gerizim, birth and death, light and darkness, heaven and hell, divide the existence of man and his futurity. (Ruskin.)
Discipline of the passions
The passions may be humoured till they become our master, as a horse may be pampered till he gets the better of his rider; but early discipline will prevent mutiny, and keep the helm in the hands of reason. (Cumberland.)
The power of religion
A clergyman, having made several attempts to reform a profligate, was at length met with the decided statement, It is all in vain, sir; you cannot get me to change my religion. I do not want that, replied the good man; I wish religion to change you.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 3. Among whom also we all had our conversation.…
3. Among whom also we all had our conversation. In verses 1 and 2 the second person is used, meaning the Ephesians; here the person is changed to the first. Meyer thinks that “ye” refers to Gentile Christians; “we” to Paul and his Jewish brethren. The Gentile Christians had been dead in trespasses and sins; nor had the Jewish Christians differed in this respect. Fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. Not only fleshly desires, but the impulses of a sinful mind, such as malice, envy, pride, etc. And were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. This declares that “we,” now Jewish Christians, were once, when in a state of nature, under condemnation, just as the “others,” the rest of the world, or the Gentiles. Some have held that this passage teaches innate, hereditary depravity. I am sure that this was not in the apostle's mind. (1) Two classes are spoken of, “you” and “we,” Gentiles and Jews. (2) Both were equally sinful, the first “dead in trespasses and in sins,” and the second “by nature the children of wrath, even as the others.” (3) The passage then simply affirms that Jews and Gentiles alike, before conversion, were dead in trespasses and sins, and under the divine condemnation. However, “by nature” is supposed to teach that the depravity is innate, and that all are born under the wrath of God. Such an interpretation would put the passage in conflict with Paul's teaching elsewhere, and with that of Christ. For instance, Matt. 18:3 and 19:14 are inconsistent with the view that little children are born “under the wrath of God.” Indeed, it is taught in this passage that both classes have been brought into this state of condemnation by walking in sin, not by their birth. But does not by nature imply that they are born “children of wrath?” The word rendered “by nature,” is found in Rom. 2:14; 1 Cor. 11:14; Gal. 2:15; Gal. 4:8. In only one of these passages can it refer to natural birth at all, and there it refers to race (Gal. 2:15). In not one passage does it describe what is innate. It does describe custom, practice, and unconverted state. No one would say that the Gentiles, who “do by nature the things of the law,” do so because it is innate. It means that they do so without the revelation. In a similar sense it is used here, and means that “we,” as well as others, before we were converted by the gospel, were dwelling in sin like others, and were like them, “the children of wrath.” The state of nature is the unconverted state.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 2:3 Unconverted people are naturally under the control of…
2:3 Unconverted people are naturally under the control of the passionate desires and inclinations of our sinful nature (see Rom 3:9-20, 23). Because of their sin, they are subject to God’s anger, because God hates sin (see Eph 5:6; Rom 1:18; 2:5, 8; 3:5, 19; 4:15; 5:9; 9:22; 12:19; 13:4-5; Col 3:6; 1 Thes 1:10; 2:16; 5:9).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.