Ephesians 4:17-24

THE CONTRAST IN PRINCIPLE

μαρτύρομαι. Of solemn protest. Acts 20:26 (at Ephesus), Acts 26:22; Galatians 5:3; 1 Thessalonians 2:12.

ἐν κυρίῳ. Ephesians 2:21; Ephesians 4:1.

περιπατεῖν. Cf. on Ephesians 2:2.

ἐν ματαιότητι τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν. The picture of the ‘gentile’ manner of life should be compared with the fuller treatment of the same subject in Romans 1:18-32; cf. 1 Peter 4:1-4. ματαιότητι, cf. Romans 1:21; 1 Peter 1:18. On the latter passage Hort says: ‘Its vanity’ (i.e. of a life not guided by belief in the true God) ‘consists in its essential unreality and want of correspondence to the truth of things, its inability to fulfil the promises which it suggests, and its universal unproductiveness.’

τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν. Cf. Ephesians 4:23. νοῦς in St Paul (esp. note Romans 1:28; Romans 7:23; Romans 7:25; Romans 12:2; Colossians 2:18; 1 Timothy 6:5; 2 Timothy 3:8) is the faculty pre-eminently of moral discernment—blunted by sin, but capable of renewal in Christ.