Ephesians 4:19Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Indeed, how could an unclean man resolve upon such a virtuous life? He wallows among the bodies of all sorts of women more than swine wallow in mud.

He is greedy for money and has no love at all for chastity. Their manner of action, says the Apostle, became for them something like a rule.

From this comes their hardening. From this comes the darkening of the mind. Even when light shines, it can be dark for us if our eyes are diseased.

They become diseased through the influx of bad humors and an excessive accumulation of fluids. So it is here also.

When the many pressures of worldly affairs darken the clarity of our mind, we are in darkness. When we have sunk deep into water, we cannot see the sun.

This is because abundant water above us forms something like a wall. So too, in the eyes of the mind, hardening of the heart occurs when no fear troubles the soul.

“There is no fear of God before his eyes,” he says (Ps 35:2). Again, “The fool said in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Ps 13:1).

Hardening comes from nothing other than insensibility. In this condition the pores are blocked. When thickened fluids gather in one place, that member dies and becomes insensible.

Even if you burn or cut it, whatever you do with it, it feels nothing. So too with them, the Gentiles.

Once and for all they fell into carelessness. Whatever you say to them, even if you threaten them with fire or sword, nothing affects them. Nothing persuades them.

The member, that is, the heart, has once and for all become dead. Until you destroy this insensibility in it, and until your touch is felt as it is in healthy members, all your efforts will be vain.

“With insatiability,” he says. By this word the Apostle especially removes from them the possibility of excuse. If they had wished, they could have avoided greed.

They could have avoided carelessness, slavery to the belly, and a soft life. They could have made moderate use of money, pleasures, and rest.

But since they did not observe moderation in this, they ruined everything. “They work,” he says, “every uncleanness.”

Do you see how the Apostle deprives them of excuse by speaking of the working of uncleanness? He says that they did not sin by some accidental impulse.

Rather, they performed all these criminal acts by caring for them themselves. “They work every uncleanness.” Every uncleanness means adultery, fornication, lustful love of boys, envy, every passion, and every lack of self-control.

Therefore, when elsewhere you hear that God “gave them over to a debased mind” (Rom. 1:28), remember these words as well. Compare the two and understand that God is said to give over those who give themselves over. That is, He permitted and abandoned them, because they themselves had made themselves worthy of this.

Even by the expression “with greediness,” he indicates the voluntary insensibility in them. For, he says, they could have used both money and pleasures moderately. But by giving themselves over to excess, they became coarse in everything and insensible to every good.

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?”

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.

Saint Chrysostom says: “The heart is hardened when no fear troubles the soul. This comes from insensibility. When some member in the body becomes insensible, even if you burn or cut it, it feels nothing.

“Whatever you do with it, it feels nothing. So too with them, the Gentiles. Once and for all they fell into carelessness. Whatever you say to them, even if you threaten them with fire or sword, nothing affects them.

“Nothing persuades them, for their heart has once and for all become dead. Until you destroy this insensibility in it, and until your touch is felt as it is in healthy members, all your efforts will be vain.”

Having come into such a state, “they gave themselves over to shamelessness, to work every uncleanness.” They surrendered themselves to every means of satisfying fleshly lust.

There are two opposites in us, spirit and flesh. When the spirit dies, the flesh grows fierce. A man gives himself over to every kind of sensual pleasure and delight.

“At first they suffered from lawlessness. Then, having slipped into a lawless life, they soon began to suffer from insensibility. Afterward they dared every sin without fear, giving themselves to a corrupt life to the point of satiety,” says Theodoret.

Saint Chrysostom says: “Their life was such through their own carelessness and negligence. ‘They gave themselves over,’ he says. Therefore, when you hear that ‘God gave them over to a debased mind’ (Rom 1:28), remember this saying too.

“They gave themselves over. How then did God give them over, when they gave themselves over? If they gave themselves over, how did God give them over? You think there is a contradiction here.

“But the word ‘gave over’ means ‘permitted.’ They gave themselves over to work uncleanness. Do you see how the Apostle deprives them of excuse by speaking of the working of uncleanness?

“He says they did not sin by some outside impulse, but performed all these criminal acts by caring to invent them themselves. ‘In every uncleanness’ they lived.

“Uncleanness is every adultery, fornication, lustful love of boys, and every lack of self-control. Their way of life, he says, had turned into something like a rule.”

Some understand the word “with greediness” to mean that, along with unclean works, they also gave themselves to the passion for possessions. In worldly vain life, this passion is no less strong than the first.

Saint John of Damascus writes: “Love of possessions is the necessary consequence of love of the flesh. They desire possessions so that they may have something to spend on pleasures.”

Others understand by this word a thirst for ever greater pleasures, the insatiability of pleasing the flesh. “By greediness the Apostle means ignorance of measure,” says Theodoret.

According to the flow of his speech, this is ignorance of measure in pleasing the flesh. Yet in Saint Chrysostom one sees the thought of ignorance of measure in everything.

This includes both acquiring money and living delicately. “They could have made moderate use of money, pleasures, and every comfort,” he says. “But since they did not observe moderation in this, they ruined everything.”

The same thought appears in Theophylact. Oecumenius writes: “He says ‘with greediness’ to indicate that they gave themselves over to two passions, shamelessness and love of possessions.

“These passions stand out more than the other passions in sinful life and govern it. Or he means that they gave themselves over to shamelessness and uncleanness excessively and greedily.”