Ephesians 2:2 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Wherein in time past ye walked— The Ephesians were remarkable, in the midst of all their learning, for a most abandoned character. They banished Hermodorus merely for his virtue; thereby in effect making a law, that every modest and temperate man should leave them. The word αιων, rendered world, may be observed in the New Testament to signify the lasting state and constitution of things in the great tribes or collections of men, considered in reference to the kingdom of God; whereof there were two most eminent, and principally intended by the word αιωνες, when that is used alone; and that is ο νυν αιων, this present world, which is taken for that state of the world wherein the children of Israel were God's people, and made up his kingdom upon earth; the Gentiles, that is to say, all the other nations of the world, being in a state of apostacy and revolt from him, the professed vassals and subjects of the devil, to whom they paid homage; and αιων μελλων, the world to come,—i.e. the time of the gospel, wherein God, by Christ, broke down the partition-wall between Jew and Gentile, and opened a way for reconciling the rest of mankind, and taking the Gentiles again into his kingdom, under the Lord Jesus Christ, under whose peculiar rule he had put it. The phrase, prince of the power of the air, whatever it may mean besides, intimates, that Satan possessed great power; and, consequently, that our Saviour's virtue, which was able to struggle with and conquer him, both in the wilderness and in the garden of Gethsemane, was inconceivablygreat, and remarkably illustrious. The original, which we render, now worketh in the children of disobedience, is very strong and emphatical, both in the denomination it gives to the heathen in general, as children of rebellion and obstinacy, who would yield to no persuasion which would urge them to a better course of life (as the etymology of the word απειθεια imports) and in the forcible manner in which it expresses the influence of Satan over them—as inspired, or possessed by him. The words might be rendered here, even that Spirit who now operates powerfully in the children of disobedience.