This I say therefore, and testify in [the] Lord, that ye should no longer walk as [the rest of] the nations walk in [the] vanity of their mind,
Paul has spent the earlier chapters describing what God has made believers in Christ. Now he turns to daily life, starting with a warning about the way the nations around them lived — and why that way must stop.
Everything from here on rests on the truth already taught. One writer marks the change and explains the word behind "futility":
Verse 17 begins a distinct new division in the letter to the Ephesians. This section stresses personal responsibility, resting on the solid, precious truth we have already considered. Paul urged the Ephesians to no longer walk as the unsaved masses of Gentiles walked. Their new Christian condition and position stood in contrast to that of the nations, and their conduct should stand in contrast too. He describes the condition and walk of the ungodly to show that it is the complete opposite of the walk of faith. The unsaved are turned only toward vanity — emptiness or futility — which comes to nothing of any value.
Paul does not simply advise here. He says and testifies:
In verse 17 the practical exhortations take a different shape. In verses 1-16 the instruction concerns mainly our shared walk as one body; here it is individual. He presses a fitting and separate walk. The apostle puts it solemnly: "Now this I say and testify in the Lord." He knows the dangers the believers faced everywhere, and that the Lord's honour was bound up with them. That is why his tone is so striking.
You might expect the cure for a pagan past to be a set of rules. It is not:
The apostle has shown how a believer can walk worthy of the calling he has received in the church. He now shows how the believer should carry out the same principle towards other people, whether believers or unbelievers. He does not put Gentile converts under law. He does not bring them onto Jewish ground, yet he does remove them from Gentile ground.
Paul does not start with pagan behaviour. He starts with the mind:
Here he begins with what is inside. Our tendency is to busy ourselves and others with something outward. But the apostle goes to the root of the evil walk of the Gentiles. Their minds were vain and empty. So is every mind that does not keep God clearly, firmly and knowingly in view, whatever it is dealing with. These Gentiles had God before them in nothing; they were "without God in the world." So there was nothing left but the empty, boasting mind and mouth of man, imagining one thing and saying another.
One writer traces how a life empties out, step by step:
So we learn that the evil lives men live harden the heart. The hardened heart darkens the understanding. The darkened understanding leaves men a prey to every vanity.
What guides a life like that? Another writer points to the hardened heart that darkens the understanding, leaving people led only by "the vain, sinful desires and feelings of the natural heart" (The Christian's Friend).
It would be easy to file this description under the pagan world of Paul's day. One writer will not leave it there:
At this point the exhortations to walk in separation begin. Here we are shown once more what Gentiles are in their natural condition, and how solemn that description is! The grace of God takes the believer out of these conditions and gives us power to "no longer walk as the Gentiles do." And we must not overlook this: beneath the thin veneer of the civilization we boast in, which rejects Christ and the gospel, there is the same darkened understanding, the same alienation from God, the same blindness and uncleanness that these words describe.
- Foundation — a new section starts here. Conduct grows out of the truth already taught, and rests on what God has made the believer.
- Testify — Paul's words are weighty on purpose. The Lord's honour is bound up with how His people live.
- Vanity — the word means emptiness and futility. Such a life comes to nothing of value, because God is nowhere in its thoughts.
- Root — Paul starts with the mind, not the behaviour; the outward walk is fruit, and the empty mind is the root.
- Freedom — the answer is not law but separation. Grace lifts the believer out of that old condition and gives power for a new walk.
being darkened in understanding, estranged from the life of God by reason of the ignorance which is in them, by reason of the hardness of their hearts,
Paul has just told believers not to live like the world around them. Here he names what lies underneath that way of living: a darkened understanding, a life cut off from God, ignorance, and a hard heart.
Paul does not start with what the Gentiles — the non-Jewish world — do. He starts with what they are.
Here he begins with the inner thing. We tend to busy ourselves and others with something outward. But the apostle goes to the root of the evil walk of the Gentiles. Their minds were empty. That must be true of anyone who does not have God clearly, firmly and knowingly before them in anything at all... These are various descriptions, not of the outward walk, but of the root of all the evil fruit they bore. God was not in all their thoughts.
Where the ESV says "hardness," older versions say "blindness." The word never pointed to eyesight.
"Blindness" is a very strong word. It means being hardened like a stone. The noun in Romans 11:25 is a medical term, "callus" — the hardening of skin. This is the moral state of God's earthly people. And it is not limited to Israel. Ephesians 4:18 uses the same word for the condition of the Gentiles.
The "ignorance that is in them" is not innocent lack of information. It is a refusal. The same minds are sharp enough everywhere else.
It is terrible ignorance, certainly, but it is the result of the hardness of their own hearts. Ignorance is not just a lack of knowledge; it is ignoring facts that can be known. For example, people will work out their tax returns carefully to their own advantage. They will plan their business affairs to get the most out of them... Yet at the same time they tell us that the marvellous organization of the whole universe required no mind at all — it just happened to come together!
The verse ties ignorance to hardness of heart. One writer traces the chain back a step further, to the way people live.
So we learn that the evil lives men live harden the heart. The hardened heart darkens the understanding. And the darkened understanding leaves men easy prey to every empty thing.
This phrase goes deepest of all. The rest of the verse gathers around it.
We get right to the bottom of things when we find that we have been "alienated from the life of God." Tied to this alienation are things like emptiness, darkness, ignorance, blindness, sensuality and impurity. That is no surprise, for the life of God is the exact opposite of all of them. Sin has alienated us from God, and so has cut us off from everything that makes up life according to Him.
This alienation is not a neutral distance. Where the life of God shows itself, it meets hostility. Religion is no shelter.
If he is a religious man he may pride himself on not being an unbeliever. But his heart is as dark as the heart of the worst unbeliever could be. The life of God, where he sees it in the children of God, is hateful to him... He may do his best to hide his disgust at it, but the hostility is there, though covered up.
The phrase describes man in his natural state. Christians stand on the other side of it, and that sets the standard for how they live.
It is a remarkable expression for the state of man in nature: "alienated from the life of God"... Someone will say, "You do not mean that I am to walk down here as having the life of God?" Yes. "God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son." From that time they were called to walk, not as good men, but as having the life of God... I have taken off the uniform of Satan and put on the uniform of Christ.
- Root — Paul starts inside, not with conduct. The empty way of living grows out of a mind with God nowhere in it.
- Hardness — the heart hardens like a callus. The same word describes Israel.
- Ignorance — not missing facts, but ignoring facts anyone can know; it comes from a hard heart.
- Alienation — cut off from the life of God: this is the bottom of the ruin. Emptiness, darkness and impurity are its signs.
- Reversal — God gives that life in His Son, so a Christian starts from a life the world does not have.
who having cast off all feeling, have given themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greedy unsatisfied lust.
Paul is describing life outside Christ, and this verse is the bottom of it — not a few extreme people, but what human nature does when it shuts God out. Commentators trace a chain here: the way a person lives hardens the heart, the hardened heart darkens the mind, and then nothing is left to hold a person back.
The verse is the end of a sequence, not the start of one. One writer sets out the order, and it runs opposite to how most people picture moral decline.
They do not know God because the evil lives they live have hardened their hearts, for such people have given themselves over to sensuality. So we learn this: the evil lives men live harden the heart; the hardened heart darkens the understanding; and the darkened understanding leaves men easy prey to every empty thing.
Older translations read "past feeling." What has gone silent is the conscience.
"Past feeling" (v. 19) means a seared and hardened conscience, with no sense of their own sensuality.
That deadness is itself something a person has done to himself, by repetition. The habits come first; the numbness follows.
Corrupt appetites, followed without restraint, soon deaden the conscience and poison the affections, so that every right natural feeling dies... They are "past feeling." Conscience no longer restrains them, and neither does decency... So it was with the world before the flood, when corruption and violence filled the whole earth. So it was with the cities of the plain, until God rained fire and burning sulphur on them from heaven.
Nobody forced this handover. And it does not always look ugly — the same surrender can wear a respectable face.
In such a state people cast off all feeling. Things that ought to move them no longer touch them. Instead they give in to the pull of bodily desire, with its moral uncleanness and greed. Sometimes this surrender looks plainly disgusting. Sometimes it hides under a thin coat of refinement and apparent dignity, and then it has simply added deceit to everything else.
The Greek word behind "greedy" is not mainly about money. It means wanting more than you need, and it covers bodily appetite too.
The word pleonexia (from pleon, "more," and echo, "to have") is not limited to money, and it often goes with open wickedness. Its force is "desiring more than is necessary," and so "an over-reaching to get." It is therefore applied to the lusts of the flesh, Rom. 1:29; Eph. 4:19, where it is translated "greediness"; Eph. 5:3; and so on. It is declared to be idolatry, Col. 3:5.
This explains why the pursuit never ends in satisfaction. Unsatisfied desire only drives it harder, and one writer sets it against a life of a different order.
Grossness and hardness of heart lead them to cast off every refined and even proper natural feeling. As a result they give themselves up to sensuality, while unsatisfied lust drives them all the more eagerly to work every kind of uncleanness and greed. They still share the life of the old self, which corrupts itself through deceitful desires. Those who share in the mystery have put off the old self and put on the new, and the new is created in "true righteousness and holiness."
It would be easy to read this as a picture of ancient pagans only. One writer closes that door.
This is the truth about man, whoever he is and wherever he lives. The light of Christianity may hold him back, so that he shows his true character only in secret. But everything said here about the Gentiles is true of the whole Christless world, whatever people profess.
- Practice hardens. The evil life comes first. The hardened heart follows. Then the understanding goes dark. Decline runs from conduct inward, not from ideas outward.
- Hardening numbs. A callous conscience is seared. It no longer registers its own wrongdoing, and even ordinary decency loses its hold.
- Numbness surrenders. No one is dragged. People hand themselves over to bodily desire. Sometimes it is open, sometimes it hides under a polish of refinement — which only adds deceit.
- Surrender grows greedy. The word means wanting more than is necessary, an over-reaching to get. Unsatisfied desire drives the pursuit harder, and Scripture calls this greed idolatry.
- Only new creation reverses it. The cure is not better habits but a new life: the old self put off, the new self put on, created in true righteousness and holiness. And the diagnosis fits the whole Christless world, whatever people profess.