Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Ephesians 4:18

Ephesians 4:18. This verse is made up of four clauses, which may be thus arranged:

Being darkened in their understanding,

Being alienated from the life of God,

Because of the ignorance that is in them,

Because of the hardness of their heart.

Some find a correspondence between the first and third, and the second and fourth clauses, the alternative being regarded as due to the interaction of the results set forth in the first and second clauses. Others join the third to the first, and the fourth to the third, taking ignorance as the cause of darkness, and hardness as the cause of ignorance, alienation being the result of darkness. The former view seems preferable (see below). In any case the whole is descriptive of the walk of the heathen ‘in the vanity of their mind,'

Being darkened in their understanding. The participle points to a condition which has been effected in the past, and the seat of this darkened condition was the intellectual part of our nature.

Being alienated from the life of God; comp. chap. Ephesians 2:12. The participle here has the same force as that of the previous clause. ‘The life of God' means the true spiritual life which belongs to God, and which He bestows on men. The two clauses stand related, the one is the internal condition, the other the external result

Because of the ignorance, etc. Not ‘through.' This is an ‘ignorance' which is now natural and peculiar to them. It is the ground of the darkening of the understanding. Against this view of the connection, it is urged that' ignorance' is not the cause of darkness. But in the first clause a present condition is spoken of, the result of something in the past, or rather of a continued process. The ignorance peculiar to heathenism was the ground of growing mental obscuration.

Because of the hardening of their heart ‘Hardening ‘is more exact than ‘blindness' (comp. Romans 11:7). This is the ground, the alienation from the life of God; but it should be remembered that the two causes interact, as do the two results. ‘There is not intellectual obscuration be-side practical estrangement from God, nor ignorance beside hardness of heart; the one conditions the other, working destructively as they reciprocally affect each other' (Braune). Whatever view be taken of the interdependence of the clauses, the verse, as a whole, asserts that depravity had affected the entire man, and that this condition was a lapse, not an original one.

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Ephesians 4:18

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