Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the, life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.
Spiritual blindness
A coward never knows what the ecstasy of courage is; and if you ask me why, my reply is, that he has not that in him by which he can know it. A man hearing a magnificent symphony of Beethoven says, “I would give more for ‘Yankee Doodle’ than for a thousand such symphonies.” Why? Because he has not that in him by which he can appreciate Beethoven’s music. A man says in regard to a magnificent work of art, “I would rather see the sign that hangs over the door of the tavern in our town than any picture that Raphael ever painted.” Very likely he would. That sign is just coarse enough for him to understand; and he has not that in him which would enable him to interpret the paintings of a great master. Many men would rather read a ballad than Milton’s “Lycidas” or “Comus” or “Paradise Lost.” (H. W. Beecher.)
The immorality of the heathen
We are environed by an invisible, Divine, and eternal world. It does not lie far away from us in the remote future, but surrounds us now as the starry heavens surround the common earth, There is a faculty in us which, when inspired and illuminated by the Spirit of God, enables us to see it. When once that world is revealed to us our whole conception of human duty and of human destiny is changed. We discover that the pleasures and pains of this brief and transitory life, its poverty and its wealth, its honours and its shame, are of secondary importance, that there is a kind of unreality in them all, that they are external to us, that they are rapidly passing away. In this life indeed it is impossible for us not to be affected by them; and they have their place in the discipline of our righteousness. But our horizon has widened, and we see beyond them. We discover that it is only the larger world which has been revealed to us by Christ that is real and enduring; and that compared with its august and glorious realities “things seen and temporal,” are but passing shadows. We see that the true life of man is the eternal and Divine life by which he is related to what is eternal and Divine; that the true honour, the true wealth, the true wisdom, the true happiness of man are found in that eternal and Divine kingdom. But Paul says that heathen races are living among things seen and temporal, not among things unseen and eternal. The faculty by which they should be brought into contact with what is real and enduring, is impaired, so that it mistakes shadows for substances, dreams for realities: they “walk in the vanity of their mind.” And as no light reaches them from the infinite and eternal world, they are “darkened in their understanding.” Darkness and death go together. Man was so created that the root of his perfection is in God. But where the knowledge of God is lost the life of God is lost. Heathen men are living in regions of moral darkness, in which the life of God cannot be theirs. They are separated, estranged, “alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.” But the ignorance is not a mere intellectual defect involving no moral fault; they are “alienated from the life of God … because of the hardening of their heart.” Their increasing moral insensibility was the real cause of their ignorance; and their ignorance and moral insensibility were the causes of their alienation from the life of God. What kind of men they had become through this hardening of their heart Paul describes in words which it is not possible to read without a sense of horror. They were “past feeling.” They had ceased to he sensitive to the obligations of truth, of honesty, of kindness, of purity; and to the guilt of falsehood, of injustice, of cruelty, of sensual sin. They committed the grossest vices, and were conscious of no shame. Their imagination was no longer fascinated by the beauty and nobleness of virtue. No sentiment of personal dignity checked the indulgence of the foulest and most disgraceful passions. They had no reverence for the purer and loftier traditions of better times. They were untouched by the censure and scorn of the wiser and nobler of their contemporaries. All the inducements that draw men to virtue and all the restraints that hold them back from vice were destroyed. They were “past feeling.” Their sin was therefore gross and habitual. They were not betrayed into sin, against their better purposes; they were not merely overcome now and then by the violence of their passions; they were not mastered by some malignant power, against which they struggled in vain; nor were their worst excesses followed by any remorse. They sinned deliberately and without any protest from their reason or their conscience, or any purer and more generous affections in their moral life. “They gave themselves up”--it was their own act, done with set purpose and with the consent of their whole nature--“they gave themselves up to lasciviousness”--to a life in which there was a wilful, reckless, wanton defiance of all moral restraints. Vice, by their own choice and intention, was not to be an occasional incident in their life, it was to be their main business, the employment at which they were to “work”; and as some men have an insatiable desire for money, these men had an insatiable desire for every kind of impurity, “they gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” It is a horrible picture. But Paul was describing the men among whom he had lived and among whom the Christians at Ephesus were living still. The morality of the Greek cities of Asia Minor was so base and so foul that we wonder that the fires of God did not descend to destroy them. Is it surprising that with such a moral environment the Christians at Ephesus, who a few years before had been heathen men themselves, required the ethical teaching contained in the later chapters of this Epistle?(R. W. Dale, LL. D.)
Christians must live above the world
To ourselves the ethical condition of the Ephesian Christians is profoundly suggestive, perhaps I ought to say that it is very alarming. English society is free from the gross, the sensual, the brutal vice which infected the great heathen cities of Asia Minor. There is a strong public sentiment on the side of truthfulness, honesty, temperance, purity, industry, self-control, kindliness, and public spirit. We inherit these virtues from our parents; we have been disciplined to them by all the complex influences that have contributed to form our character. In a very true sense they are natural to us, and we practise them without effort. And so it is assumed that when a man receives the life of God there is no reason for any great change in his moral habits. There may be defects of temper which have to be corrected, and in some of the details of moral conduct we may recognize the necessity for amendment; but if he has lived among good moral people he takes it for granted that in working out his own salvation he has to think almost exclusively of his spiritual life; his moral character is already what it should be. He attends public worship more frequently than before; secures more time for private prayer, for religious thought, for reading the Bible and other religious books; he tries to increase the fervour of his love for God and the steadfastness of his faith in God; he takes up some kind of religious work. About moral discipline he thinks very little. About the necessity of reconstructing his whole conception of moral duty, adding to it new elements, resting it on new foundations, he thinks still less. The results of this grave error are most disastrous. The ideal of the ethical life is no higher in the Church than it is in the world. But if the morals of the Church, as a whole, are not distinctly in advance of the morals of society as a whole, if when a man becomes a Christian his moral life is not governed by nobler laws and inspired with a new generosity and force, the power of the Church will be seriously impaired, and its triumphs will be only occasional and intermittent. At times a great passion of religious enthusiasm may enable it to count its converts by thousands; but the fires of enthusiasm soon sink, and for its permanent authority the Church should rely on steadier forces. In heathen countries, although the morality of Christian converts may be grossly defective, it is in advance of the morality of the mass of their fellow countrymen. The darkness of their old life is about them still, but their faces are towards the light. In countries described as Christian there should be the same difference between the morality of those that are in Christ and the morality of those that are not. The revelation of the Divine love and the Divine righteousness, of our kinship to God, of the glorious immortality which is the inheritance of all that have received the Divine life, should ennoble our ideal of every moral virtue, and should inspire us with a more ardent passion for moral perfection. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)
Ignorance of religion
It’s ignorance of the price of pearls that makes the idiot slight them. It’s ignorance of the worth of diamonds that makes the fool choose a pebble before them. It’s ignorance of the satisfaction learning affords that makes the peasant despise and laugh at it; and we very ordinarily see how men tread and trample on those plants which are the greatest restoratives, because they know not the virtue of them; and the same may justly be affirmed of religion, the reason why men meddle no more with it is--because they are not acquainted with the pleasantness of it. (Anthony Horneck.)
Ignorance of a depraved heart
But there is another sort of ignorance which is not an ignorance of an empty understanding, but of a depraved heart; such an ignorance as does not only consist in a bare privation, but in a corrupt disposition; where the understanding is like that sort of blind serpents, whose blindness is attended with much venom and malignity. This was such a blindness as struck the Sodomites; there was darkness in their eyes, and withal villany in their hearts. (Dr. South.)
Guilty ignorance
There is also an affected ignorance, such a one as is contracted by a wilful neglect of the means; and this is not excusing but condemning … In the midst of light to be in darkness; for an Israel to have an Egypt in a Goschen; this is highly provoking, and may justly cause God to lay hold on vengeance. (Dr. South.)
Innocent ignorance
Is any father so cruel, or hard hearted, as to disown and cast off his son, because he is a fool? No; an innocent ignorance excuses from sin, both before God and man; and God Himself will own that maxim of equity, “Ignorantia excusat peccatum.” (Dr. South.)
Different kinds of ignorance
Ignorance may be distinguished into five kinds; human, natural, affected, invincible, proud, and puffed up.
1. Human.
This is not sinful, as in Adam not to know his nakedness nor Satan’s subtlety; as in the angels, and even Christ, as man, not to know the latter day.
2. Natural.--The ignorance of infirmity, incident to man’s nature since the Fall.
3. Affected ignorance (see Joh_3:19).--These shut their ears when God calleth; and, being housed in their security, will not step to the door to see if the sun shines. This ignorance, if I may say so, doth reside rather in their affection than understanding part.
4. Invincible ignorance.--When God hath naturally darkened the understanding by a sore punishment of original sin.
5. A proud ignorance.--Whereof there is no hope, saith Solomon (Pro_27:1). The other is invincible, indeed this more invincible: a fool is sooner taught. (T. Adams.)
Natural ignorance
We read of an ancient king, who being desirous to know what was the natural language of men; in order to bring the matter to a certain issue, made the following experiment:--He ordered two infants, as soon as they were born, to be conveyed to a place prepared for them, where they were brought up without any instruction at all, and without ever hearing a human voice. And what was the event? Why, that when they were at length brought out of their confinement they spake no language at all, they uttered only inarticulate sounds like those of other animals. Were two infants in like manner to be brought up from the womb without being instructed in any religion, there is little room to doubt but (unless the grace of God interposed) the event would be just the same. They would have no religion at all: they would have no more knowledge of God than the beasts of the field, than the wild ass’s colt. Such is natural religion l abstracted from traditional, and from the influences of God’s spirit. (J. Wesley.)
