The Depth of Depravity (Ephesians 4:17-19)

There is a great depth of depravity in the lives of unbelievers. And while selfishness and sin once marked our lives (in the past), it should no longer be a part of how we live.

In Ephesians 4:17–19, Paul describes the old life (and the current life of unbelievers) and boldly argues that this is NOT how we are to live. We are, as Paul exhorts, to put off this former way of living because we have been clothed with Christ.

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Key Passage: Ephesians 4:17–19

Therefore this I say, and testify in the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their mind, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. And they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.
– Ephesians 4:17–19

Context and Contrast

The outflow of life in Christ and unity with the body

• Paul is showing the contrast between who we once were and who we are now (the old and new man)
• Has done several times throughout Ephesians but here he makes a strong contrast:
  • new man (4:13)
  • old man (4:14)
  • new man (4:15-16)
  • old man (4:17-19)
  • new man (4:20-21)
  • old man (4:22)
  • new man (4:23-24)
  • old/new examples (4:25–5:18)
• My life is NOT to be like the world around me!

The Depth of Depravity

1. In the futility of their mind (the umbrella statement) 

• “no longer walk as the Gentiles walk in the tragic stupidity of their philosophy” ⁽¹⁾
• –} do not walk after the pattern of the world
• –} do not live influenced by the perverse devoid-of-truth mentality of the world
• –} you may live in the world but the world should not live in you

2. Being darkened in their mind (Darkness)

• Mind: more than just the mind – often relates to feeling, desire, understanding, mind/spirit, the way of thinking and feeling, disposition 
• Darkened: to darken, deprived of light

3. Alienated from the life of God

• Alienated: estranged, shut out, a stranger
• Life: two predominate kinds of life in NT
  • bios (biology): physical life
  • zoe: same life that Jesus talks about having “eternal” life
    • flow of the Spirit, the life of Christ

4. Ignorance

• Three ways you can understand the concept:
  • you didn’t realize what you were doing was sin
  • an ignorance where you no longer realize you are sinning (a searing of the conscience)
  • or a deliberate ignorance (willful blindness)
• Paul says their ignorance is because of the hardness of their hearts – so it appears that they are willfully choosing blindness/ignorance so that they can live in sin

5. Hardness [blindness] of their heart

• Hardness: covering with a callous, dulled perception, the mind of one that has been blunted (stubbornness)
  • porosis = petrified (turned to stone)
  • comes from poros: “originally meant a stone that was harder than marble. It came to have certain medical uses (used for chalk stone which can form in the joints and completely paralyze action. It was used of the callus that forms where a bone has been broken and reset, a callus which is harder than the bone itself. Finally the word came to mean the loss of all power of sensation; it described something which had become so hardened, so petrified that it had no power to feel at all.” // W. Barclay
  • sin leads to blindness, a hardening of the heart
• Ethiopian Proverb: Evil [Sin] enters like a needle and spreads like an oak tree. 
• Pebble in the Shoe
  • Started as a small thing, a pebble in the shoe,
  • Grew into a boulder, crushing down you.
  • Started as a notion, knocking at the heart,
  • Grew into disaster, tearing you apart.
  • Started as a needle, pricking at the skin,
  • Grew into a dagger, digging deep in.
  • Started as a small thought, harmless at the time,
  • Became an obsession, filling up the mind. ⁽²⁾

6. Having become callous

• Callous – Past feeling (a lack of concern or care)
• “having got over the pain”
• Peter Thomas O’Brien – “Here it means to ‘lose the capacity to feel shame or embarrassment’, while the perfect tense describes a state of affairs that led to (or else accompanied) the loss of all self-control.” ⁽³⁾
• reality of sin (conscience is alerted and pained then if I do not heed, it becomes quieter until I have gotten over it and I no longer feel any shame or conviction)

7. Have given themselves over

• a willingness to hand over, surrender, give up the power, deliver

7a. to sensuality [lewdness]

• unbridled lust, excess, licentiousness, wantonness, outrageousness, shamelessness, insolence
  • Self-abandonment (unrestrained sinful indulgence)
• Greek: concept of “anything goes” (total permissiveness)
  • “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”

7b. to practice of every kind of impurity 

• Practice: an exertion of work or pursuit. Labor that is marked by exertion or habit.
  • To strive for something
  • Business, work, labor
• Every kind of impurity:
  • Used especially for sexual sin but includes all immoral, riotous, and excessive living
  • What I want, how I want, when I want
• For more study: Mat 23.27, Rom 1.24, 6.19 Gal 5.19, E4.19, 5.3, 1 Thes 4.7

7c. with Greediness

• a greedy desire to have more (a continual lust for more)
• Greeks defined the word as “arrogant greediness”
• contains the idea of coercion or intense pressure
• not just a giving over to sin but an internal pressure where there is a compulsion for sin
• A mentality where anything goes, an arrogant greediness and desire for the perverseness of sin; not caring about consequences and eventually a lack of care for how it is perceived
  • ie: alcohol (first you hide it then you don’t care)
  • ie: lust
• Peter Thomas O’Brien – “The pagan way of life was characterized by an insatiable desire to participate in more and more forms of immorality. ‘Ultimately, it becomes a vicious circle because new perversions must be sought to replace the old’.” ⁽⁴⁾

But … (Ephesians 4:20)

• Ephesians 4:20 – But you did not learn Christ in this way …
• Romans 1:21–23 – For even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the likeness of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
• John 3:19 – And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.
• Ephesians 2:1–4 – And you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God …

FOOTNOTES

(1) Randolph O. Yeager, Renaissance NT Commentary, Ephesians (Pelican Publishing , 1998).
(2) Pebble in the Shoe (song) by The Diehm Project
(3) Peter Thomas O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999), 322.
(4) Peter Thomas O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999), 323.

Photo Credit: Mathew MacQuarrie

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In Our Next Study Together …

I invite you to join me on this journey from the book of Ephesians to discover God’s eternal purpose, His plan for your life, and learn how to practically live out an abundant and fruitful Christian life. 

• The focus of our next study: Ephesians 4:20
  • We are going to dive into the redemptive reality of what Jesus Christ has done to rescue us from our “depth of depravity.”
  • I encourage you to read through Ephesians a couple of times this week and focus specifically on Ephesians 4.