Ephesians 4:18Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

If their condition was the result of ignorance and hardness, why blame them? The ignorant should be taught what he does not know, but it is unjust to subject him to reproach and punishment. Yet see how the Apostle immediately deprives them of such an excuse: “They,” he says, “having become callous...”

“Because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts.” If they are in ignorance, why do you blame them? The ignorant man should be taught, not accused. Yet this ignorance, he says, arose in them because of hardness, that is, insensibility.

Insensibility arose because of their inclination toward an unclean life, so that they are worthy of blame. Listen also to what follows next.

We have known no other such way without Christ. They walk in the blindness of their heart. May God grant that their sins appear sufficient to them.

May they at least late bring repentance and condemn the vices toward which they have continually been drawn with passion. This would be a means for them to recover their senses after error.

But now, in despair and sunk in filth and the abyss of evil, they gave themselves over to shamelessness like irrational beasts. They did whatever the body pricks, the soul desires, and lust suggests.

Since they omitted nothing unclean, they did this with greediness. They were never satisfied in excesses, and their lust had no limit.

Thus, undoubtedly, beyond the permitted union of a man with a woman, they went further. Men with men committed shameful acts and received in themselves the satisfaction of their perverted sense.

Vanity of sense and darkening of mind move in two directions: toward the works of this age and toward temporal wisdom. This occurs when we cling to what belongs to this age and quickly passes away.

It also occurs when we do not turn our thought to what will be profitable. Does he not seem to you to walk with vain sense and darkened mind who is tormented day and night by twists of thought?

Or the one who, as a careful investigator of nature, directs his eyes beyond heaven? He penetrates beyond the limits of the earth and into some boundless emptiness of the abyss.

Or the one who constructs an iambic verse, and carefully distinguishes and compares in his soul the great confusion of poetic meters? Finally, to turn to another field, consider the man who seeks riches by justice and injustice.

He flatters masters, seizes another’s inheritance, and gathers property, though he himself does not know when he must leave it behind.

His words, “having despaired of themselves,” aphlghcotej eautouj, have in Greek an entirely different meaning than in Latin. Those in despair are called aphlghcotej.

These are people who do not grieve after sin. Not feeling their own ruin, they rush downward and throw themselves into death like wild beasts that see the deadly iron.

Show me two people given over to one and the same vice. One understands what he has done and is tormented by it. The other delights in the crime.

He not only does not grieve, but even boasts. He imagines that he has received some palm of victory and superiority in doing what is shameful.

Does it not seem to you that the first suffers, while the second scarcely suffers at all? If possible, let us express it literally and say that aphlghcotej means not suffering, or not having grief.

For a certain philosopher also proclaimed freedom from grief, analgtpan.

Those who assert the existence of different natures should know this. The Gentiles walked with darkened mind in vanity of sense because they gave themselves over to ignorance and blindness.

Only one who can know and see is called ignorant and blind. We do not say that a stone is blind, or that a wild animal lacks knowledge.

No account is demanded of the animal, nor does it belong to its nature to know. Nor does it belong to a stone to see.

If there was no capacity in the nature of Gentiles to know and behold the life of God, then this follows. In fleshly people, choicorum, and spiritual people, it is not nature that differs, but will.

Above we spoke of working every uncleanness with greediness. This refers not to avarice, as it may simply seem, but to lust and luxury.

We can confirm this meaning by the testimony of another passage. In the First Epistle to the Thessalonians it is written: “For this is the will of God, namely your sanctification.”

“That you abstain from fornication, that each of you know how to possess his vessel in holiness and honor, not in passionate desires like the Gentiles who do not know God.”

“And that no one transgress or deceive his brother in the matter, because the Lord is the avenger in all these things, as we also told you before and testified.”

“For God has not called you in uncleanness, but in sanctification” (1 Thess 4:3-7).

Observe carefully that, when calling us to purity and wishing us to be content with our own wives alone, he said this. “That no one transgress or deceive his brother in the matter.”

This means that no one should attempt to defile another’s wife, leaving his own. Where we have, “not deceive his brother in the matter,” the Greek reads: Kai pleonektein en ty prag ma ti ton adelfon autou.

Pleonxia, πλεονξία, means greediness. Yet when transmitting the force of the word, we cannot now translate this passage as, “that no one transgress or deceive his brother in the matter.”

Indeed, what sequence is there in both passages? I mean both the passage we have now presented as an example, and the thought we are chiefly trying to expound in Ephesians.

How does the Apostle suddenly and unexpectedly name greediness between shamelessness and uncleanness, purity and brotherly love?

Do not find it burdensome that we have lingered long over obscure places. At the beginning, we were compelled to declare that among all Paul’s epistles this one is especially difficult to understand, both in expression and in meaning.

I call God to witness my words, namely, that I have not kept silence, but have said how you must conduct yourselves.”

Noting the vanity of pagan minds, St. John Chrysostom says: “When they are told about the debauchery of their gods, they do not call these stories fables, but believe them. But when people begin to speak to them about punishments in Hades, they say that poets invented these things. Yet they themselves derive human souls from the souls of dogs, and claim that at some time one or another of them was a dog, a lion, or a fish.”

“Those who have become vain in mind do and say everything as though they were in darkness. They fear what is not sin, such as bodily uncleanness and ill-omened days. But what is sin, such as sensuality and adultery, they do not think to count as sin. A pagan washes himself after contact with a dead person, but does not wash himself from dead works. He is greatly concerned about money and thinks that a hen crowing like a rooster can influence his fortune. Thus they are darkened in understanding.”

“Their life was such through their carelessness and negligence. He says, ‘They gave themselves up.’ Therefore, when you hear that God ‘gave them over to a debased mind’ (Rom. 1:28), remember that they gave themselves over. The word ‘gave over’ means ‘permitted.’ They gave themselves up to the working of uncleanness. Do you see how the Apostle deprives them of excuse?”

Whoever is not so blind as to see in the world the dominion of neither one nor the other, neither sin nor death, can understand how greatly the world needs deliverance from destruction and the renewed gift of eternal life.

The cause of the second was the dulling of moral feeling, δια τὴν πώρωσιν τῆς καρδίας. Portraying this dullness more closely, the Apostle says that the pagans lost the capacity to feel pain, ἀπηλγηκότες. This means grief at the shame in which they found themselves because of their vices.

Therefore they gave themselves over to complete licentiousness. Their sensuality ceased to be restrained by any limits and expressed itself chiefly in immoral acts and in covetousness (vv. 17-19).

Incontinence and covetousness arise equally from the depths of sensuality. They differ from one another only in this, that the latter presupposes calm possession of an object, while the former seeks momentary enjoyment of it.

They were these: that the present life is everything, that its means are in your hands, and that you yourself, with your reason and powers, are the maker and guardian of your lot.

You need nothing more. Stand up for yourself, guard yourself, feed yourself, and that is enough.

Such and similar convictions form the guiding principles for those in whom the mind has become vain, or the spirit has fallen and been stifled.

St. Chrysostom says that whatever a man’s life is like, doctrines of the same kind are devised by him. Since they are all false, and falsehood is darkness, they surround man with darkness.

“Just as, when we sink deep into water, we cannot see the sun because the water above us forms a kind of wall, so also in the intellectual eyes” darkening occurs from the perverse concepts that fill the head.

There too “the numerous convergence of worldly affairs darkens the clarity of the mind and keeps us in darkness.” This is what “darkened in understanding” means.

This darkening is expressed especially in relation to the protection and security of life. Having taken it upon himself to guard and provide for himself, the man vain in mind is constantly in fear, despite all his powerful means.

St. Chrysostom depicts this condition at length. It is the fruit of darkening superstition, set in the place of God’s Providence.

“Those who have become vain in mind, both concerning doctrines and concerning life, say and do everything as if they were in darkness.

“A man surrounded by darkness sees nothing before him. He takes a rope for a crawling serpent. Or, entering a dark place, he thinks that a man or a demon is ready to seize him.

“How much fear and anxiety there is in this. The Gentiles fear similar things. ‘There they feared with fear,’ it is said, ‘where there was no fear’ (Ps 13:5).

“What they ought to fear, they do not fear. Like children in the arms of their nurses, they senselessly stretch out their hands toward fire and boldly rush toward a burning lamp.

“Meanwhile they are afraid of a man in a garment of goats’ hair. So too these Hellenes are true children, as someone said of them: ‘The Hellenes are always children.’

“They fear what does not constitute sin, such as bodily uncleanness, the bed occupied by a corpse, the burial of the dead, fatal days, and the like.

“But what constitutes real sin, such as lustful love of boys, adultery, and fornication, they do not even think to count as sin.

“You may see a pagan wash himself after a corpse, but he never washes himself from dead works. He takes great care to acquire money, and at the same time thinks that a hen crowing like a rooster can influence his happiness.

“Thus they are darkened in understanding. They have many omens that terrify them. For example, one says: such a man was the first to meet me when I left the house. A thousand unpleasant things will certainly come upon me.

“Today a hateful servant, while giving me my sandals, brought the left one first. Great troubles and calamities will come. I myself, when leaving the house, stepped over the threshold with my left foot. This too foretells misfortune.

“These are household misfortunes. But when I left the house, my right eye twitched. This foretells tears.

“Likewise women, when during weaving one thing catches against another, or a sound is made, count this as a foretelling of misfortune. They have a thousand other laughable superstitions.

“Whether a donkey or a rooster cries out, or someone sneezes, whatever happens alarms them. As I said, they seem bound by thousands of bonds and are in darkness. They are in far greater bondage than bondservants.

“But we will not be such. On the contrary, having laughed at all such superstitions, as children of light and citizens of heaven who have nothing in common with the earth, let us count only sin and offense against God as fearful.

“If we withdraw from sin and strive not to offend God, we shall laugh at everything else, and also at the first author of sin, the devil.”

“Being alienated from the life of God,” that is, “from life according to God” (Theophylact). “The Apostle rebukes the lawlessness of their life, for he called the virtuous life the life of God” (Theodoret).

When the light of truth illumines man’s intellectual realm, the path of true life is made clear in that light. The energy of the active powers is then strongly awakened to hasten along this path.

But when the understanding is darkened, the path of true life is closed, and the energy to walk it falls. Those darkened in understanding naturally do not live the true life. They become alienated from it and abandon it.

By the life of God, the Apostle could not have meant the life of grace. He meant that life according to God which the Gentiles could have had by following the indications given by the remnants of God’s image in fallen man.

Man’s mind, or spirit, was originally appointed for life in God and according to God. After the fall it was weakened, but not destroyed.

The conviction that God exists and that one ought to please Him remained in all. Where it was not stifled, it manifested its fruits.

All Gentiles could have lived under the action of the fear of God, according to the demands of conscience, in hope of future recompense.

This is the essence of natural religion, and the life of God possible for all outside grace. Whoever does not have it is guilty.

The Apostle rebukes all in this guilt, because the prevailing spirit of Gentile life was such. They forgot God, did not heed conscience, and lived only for the present, as though there were no God and no other life.

Such is also the life of those who serve sin and the passions even among Christians. Whole cities and societies can be such.

Then the apostolic word applies to them as well: alienated from the life of God.

“Because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts.” Some say that darkening of understanding comes from ignorance, and alienation from the life of God from hardness of heart.

But darkening of understanding and ignorance are one and the same. Therefore it is better to refer both to alienation from life, as cause, assistance, or punishment.

Alienation from the life of God followed ignorance and hardness of heart as an effect. When such alienation began, ignorance and hardness of heart helped it take root.

When it had taken root, God confirmed it in them as punishment: “God gave them over to a debased mind, to do what is not fitting... He gave them over in the lusts of their hearts... He gave them over to dishonorable passions” (Rom 1:28, Rom 1:24, Rom 1:26).

Strictly speaking, however, all three go together as the direct consequence of the mind’s vanity, or the stifling of the spirit.

These three are the darkening of understanding with ignorance, alienation from the life of God, and hardness of heart.

The brightness of understanding, or knowledge of truth, falls upon the heart, awakens sympathy with itself, and forms impulses toward life according to truth, or according to God.

When the understanding is darkened and truths fall out of it, the heart receives no impressions and gives no impulses toward life. Life stops, and its paths are closed.

Alienation from life, beginning in this way, coarsens the heart. The heart that grows coarse in turn strengthens alienation from life and thickens the darkness in the understanding.

Thus one supports the other, and the circulation of life not according to God comes to maturity. What is God’s becomes incomprehensible, unpleasant, and does not enter one’s plans. Spiritual life has frozen.

This deadness is expressed most visibly in hardness of heart, yet all the rest is present together with it. The holy fathers express this condition by the conjunction of ignorance, negligence, and insensibility.

Those awakening from such a life suffer most of all from insensibility. When, when will the deadened heart come alive?

Such is the inward life of the Gentiles, and in general of persons without grace, who have not received grace or have stifled it in themselves by a life not corresponding to it.

But as the inward order is, so also is the outward life, or deeds and conduct. The holy Apostle depicts it thus: