Among whom also we all... — Up to this point St. Paul had addressed himself especially to the Ephesians as Gentiles: now he extends the description of alienation to “all,” Jews and Gentiles alike, as formerly reckoned among the children of disobedience. It is indeed the great object of this chapter to bring out the equality and unity of both Jews and Gentiles in the Church of Christ; and this truth is naturally introduced by a statement of their former equality in alienation and sin.
In the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. — The parallelism of these two clauses illustrates very clearly the extended sense in which the word “flesh” is used by St. Paul, as may indeed be seen by the catalogue of the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:19-20. For here “the flesh,” in the first clause, includes both “the flesh and the mind” (or, more properly, the thoughts) of the second; that is, it includes both the appetites and the passions of our fleshly nature, and also the “thoughts” of the mind itself, so far as it is devoted to this visible world of sense, alienated from God, and therefore under the influence of the powers of evil. In fact, in scriptural use the sins of “the flesh,” “the world,” and “the devil” are not different classes of sins, but different aspects of sin, and any one of the three great enemies is made at times to represent all.
And were by nature the children of wrath, even as others (or rather, the others — that is, the heathen). — From this passage the phrase “children of wrath” has passed into Christian theology as an almost technical description of the unregenerate state. Hence it needs careful examination. (1) Now the phrase “children of wrath” (corresponding almost exactly to “children of a curse,” in 2 Peter 2:14) seems borrowed from the Hebrew use in the Old Testament, by which (as in 1 Samuel 20:30; 2 Samuel 12:5) a “son of death” is one under sentence of death, and in Isaiah 57:4 (the Greek translation) “children of destruction” are those doomed to perish. In this sense we have, in John 17:12, “the son of perdition;” and in Matthew 23:15, “the son of hell.” It differs, therefore, considerably from the phrase “children of disobedience” (begotten, as it were, of disobedience) above. But it is notable that the word for “children” here used is a term expressing endearment and love, and is accordingly properly, and almost invariably, applied to our relation to God. When, therefore, it is used as in this passage, or, still more strikingly, in 1 John 3:10, “children of the devil” (comp. John 8:44), there is clearly an intention to arrest the attention by a startling and paradoxical expression. “We were children,” not of God, not of His love, but “of wrath” — that is, His wrath against sin; “born (see Galatians 3:10-22; Galatians 4:4) under the law,” and therefore “shut up under sin,” and “under the curse.” (2) Next, we have the phrase “by nature,” which, in the true reading of the original, is interposed, as a kind of limitation or definition, between “children” and “of wrath.” In the first instance it was probably suggested by the reference to Israel, who were by covenant, not by nature, the chosen people of God. Now the word “nature,” applied to humanity, indicates what is common to all, as opposed to what is individual, or what is inborn, as opposed to what is acquired. But whether it refers to humanity as it was created by God, or to humanity as it has become by “fault and corruption of nature,” must always be determined by the context. Here the reference is clearly to the latter. “Nature” is opposed to “grace” — that is, the nature of man as alienated from God, to the nature of man as restored to his original birthright, the “image of God,” in Jesus Christ. (See Romans 5:12-21.) The existence of an inborn sinfulness needs no revelation to make it evident to those who have eyes to see. It needs a revelation — and such a revelation the gospel gives — to declare to us that it is not man’s true nature, and that what is really original is not sin, but righteousness. (3) The whole passage, therefore, describes the state of men before their call to union with Christ, as naturally “under wrath,” and is well illustrated by the full description, in Romans 1:18; Romans 2:16, of those on whom “the wrath of God is revealed.” There man’s state is depicted as having still some knowledge of God (Romans 1:19-21), as having “the work of the law written on the heart” (Romans 2:14-15), and accordingly as being still under a probation before God (Romans 2:6-11). Elsewhere we learn that Christ, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” died for all, even “the ungodly” (Romans 5:6-8; Revelation 13:1); and that none are wholly excluded from His atonement but those who “tread under foot the Son of God, and count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing” (Hebrews 10:29). Hence that state is not absolutely lost or hopeless. But yet, when the comparison, as here, is with the salvation of the gospel, they are declared “children of wrath” who are “strangers to the new covenant of promise,” with its two supernatural gifts of justification by faith and sanctification in the Spirit, and their condition is described, comparatively but not absolutely, as “having no hope, and without God in the world.”