Ephesians 2:2 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Ephesians 2:2

Comments

Now the apostle goes into greater detail. He is addressing believers. ‘Wherein in time past.’ It is not true of them now that they have been brought to know God. ‘Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world.’ You could translate that more simply – according to this age, a world away from God. What is the course of this age? Well, according to material things. When we are spiritually dead, only material things interest us, only fleshly things. We accept the world and we loved its teaching and all that it tells us: that there is no God and everything can be explained in rational terms. ‘According to the prince of the power of the air.’ What unusual language this is. We are under the influence of the prince, that is the ruler. Ruler of what? Ruler of demons – the fallen angels, together with himself. Ruler of the world too, not by rights but in effect, he governs so much of what happens in the world. ‘The prince of the power of the air,’ of the atmosphere. The prince of the invisible realm, the realm of ideas, attitudes, all that the world pumps out into the minds of unsuspecting people to take them away from God. Of course, we can understand this language so much better now that we have radio. The power of radio, the television, internet – by invisible waves, you might say, reaching around the world, able to be translated into sound and vision and brought right into our minds. The spirit, the evil spirit, the devil, the prince. ‘The spirit that now,’ even now, at this very moment works, operates ‘in the children of disobedience.’ What a term! Who are the children of disobedience? What does the apostle mean? Children of disobedience. It is a family likeness, a family trait, that is described. Everybody in the family of people in this unconverted world are described as children of disobedience. It is their great characteristic. They are people who are obstinate against God. They are stubborn and will not listen. They are unmoveable, even by the most tender things, the love of God and the death of Christ and the mercy of God and his readiness to forgive. Nothing moves them, and they cannot be touched.

Application

We see it with social media too and youngsters particularly so connected to their phones, so subject to all the propaganda and all the news that comes to them bitesize over the media. It is invisible but it is so powerfully influential and it also serves to illustrate this – the prince of the power of the air. How modern now the apostle’s terms seem.

Questions

But don’t some people worship without believing the way of salvation in the Bible? You paint a picture of everybody away from God but there are many people, different religions, who worship. Isn’t there some virtue in that? Well, a person who worships without understanding, that we need Christ and him alone, no ceremonial, no works of our own, but what he has done on Calvary, seeking him for forgiveness and conversion; that person usually gets very cross when you start talking about needing a personal Saviour, needing real communion with God, needing to walk with him, needing to renounce all self-righteousness of your own and trust in Calvary exclusively. There are many who worship but you discover, sadly, it is proud worship, it is a self-trusting worship, it is a kind of works-worship. ‘This is a virtue on my part, that I worship God and any talk of humbling oneself before God, of needing Christ, his shed blood, his atoning death as the only means of forgiveness, because we are so far from him and so lost and condemned, it is offensive talk. Oh, no, dear friends, even worshippers can worship wrongly and selfishly.

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Ephesians 2:2 Commentary and Bible Study

Explain meaning of Ephesians 2:2