3. also we--that is, we also. Paul here joins himself in the
same category with them, passing from the second person
(Eph 2:1, 2)
to the first person here.
all--Jews and Gentiles.
our conversation--"our way of life"
(2Co 1:12;
1Pe 1:18).
This expression implies an outwardly more decorous course, than
the open "walk" in gross sins on the part of the majority of
Ephesians in times past, the Gentile portion of whom may be specially
referred to in
Eph 2:2.
Paul and his Jewish countrymen, though outwardly more seemly than the
Gentiles
(Ac 26:4, 5, 18),
had been essentially like them in living to the unrenewed flesh,
without the Spirit of God.
fulfilling--Greek, doing.
mind--Greek, "our thoughts." Mental suggestions and purposes
(independent of God), as distinguished from the blind impulses of "the
flesh."
and were by nature--He intentionally breaks off the construction,
substituting "and we were" for "and being," to mark emphatically his and
their past state by nature, as contrasted with their present state
by grace. Not merely is it, we had our way of life fulfilling our
fleshly desires, and so being children of wrath; but
we were by nature originally "children of wrath," and so consequently
had our way of life fulfilling our fleshly desires. "Nature," in
Greek, implies that which has grown in us as the peculiarity of
our being, growing with our growth, and strengthening with our
strength, as distinguished from that which has been wrought on us by
mere external influences: what is inherent, not acquired
(Job 14:4;
Ps 51:5).
An incidental proof of the doctrine of original sin.
children of wrath--not merely "sons," as in the Greek,
"sons of disobedience"
(Eph 2:2),
but "children" by generation; not merely by adoption, as
"sons" might be. The Greek order more emphatically marks this
innate corruption: "Those who in their (very) nature are children of
wrath";
Eph 2:5,
"grace" is opposed to "nature" here; and salvation (implied in
Eph 2:5, 8,
"saved") to "wrath." Compare Article IX, Church of England Common
Prayer Book. "Original sin (birth-sin), standeth not in the
following of Adam, but is the fault and corruption of the nature of
every man, naturally engendered of Adam [Christ was
supernaturally conceived by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin],
whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his
own nature inclined to evil; and therefore, in every person born into
this world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation." Paul shows that
even the Jews, who boasted of their birth from Abraham, were by natural
birth equally children of wrath as the Gentiles, whom the Jews despised
on account of their birth from idolaters
(Ro 3:9; 5:12-14).
"Wrath abideth" on all who disobey the Gospel in faith and
practice
(Joh 3:36).
The phrase, "children of wrath," is a Hebraism, that is, objects of
God's wrath from childhood, in our natural state, as being born in the
sin which God hates. So "son of death"
(2Sa 12:5,
Margin); "son of perdition"
(Joh 17:12;
2Th 2:3).
as others--Greek, "as the rest" of mankind are
(1Th 4:13).
JFB.
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