Ephesians 2:3 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Among whom also we Jews, as well as you Gentiles; had our conversation That is, our course of life; in times past At least in some degree, whatever our education or religious profession might have been. Here the apostle speaks in the name of the generality of the converted Jews, as his changing the expression from ye Ephesians to we, plainly declares; including himself and all other Christians, whose former character and state he affirms to have been the same with respect to sin and misery, with the character and state of the children of disobedience: and it is so professedly the design of the beginning of his epistle to the Romans, to prove that the Jews had not, in point of justification, any advantage above the Gentiles, (Romans 3:9,) that it is surprising any men of learning and knowledge should contend for the contrary. In the lusts of our flesh To the base appetites of which we were enslaved, so as to forget the true dignity and happiness of rational and immortal spirits: fulfilling the desires of the flesh Yielding to, and suffering ourselves to be governed by those corrupt appetites, inclinations, and passions, which had their seat in our fallen body, or in our evil nature; and of the mind The earthly and devilish mind, that is, the desires, lusts, and passions, which were inherent in our still more corrupted souls. Observe, reader, the desires or lusts of the flesh, lead men to gluttony, drunkenness, fornication, adultery, and other gross, brutal sins: and the inclinations or desires of the mind, or imaginations, (as διανοιων may be rendered,) prompt them to ambition, revenge, covetousness, and whatever other earthly and diabolical wickedness can have place in the fallen spirit of man. And were by nature That is, in our natural state, or by reason of our natural inclination to all sorts of evil, and this even from our birth; children of wrath Having the wrath of God abiding on us; even as others As well as the Gentiles. This expression, by nature, occurs also Galatians 4:8; Romans 2:14; and thrice in chap. 11. But in none of those places does it signify by custom, or practice, or customary practice, as some affirm. Nor can it mean so here. For this would make the apostle guilty of gross tautology, their customary sinning having been expressed already in the former part of the verse. But all these passages agree in expressing what belongs to the nature of the persons spoken of.