Ephesians 2:3

Williams

Ephesians 2:3

Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Summary

Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

We

1 John 1:8

In times

In the

Fulfilling

Romans 8:7

2 Corinthians 7:1

Galatians 5:19

Desires

John 1:13

By

Galatians 2:15

Even

Romans 3:9

1 Corinthians 4:7

General references

1 John 4:19

Bible References

We

What is our conclusion then? Is it that we Jews are better than they? Not at all! For we have already charged that Jews and Greeks alike are all under the sway of sin,

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not have a share in the kingdom of God? Stop being misled; people who are sexually immoral or idolaters or adulterers or sensual or guilty of unnatural sexual vice

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not heathen sinners, and yet,

But the Scripture pictures all mankind as prisoners of sin, so that the promised blessing through faith in Christ might be given to those who have faith.

For once we too were without understanding, disobedient, misled, habitual slaves to all sorts of passions and pleasures, spending our lives in malice and envy.

For the time that is past is enough for you to have accomplished what the heathen like to do, leading lives that are steeped in sensuality, lustful desires, drunkenness, carousing, revelry, dissipation, and idolatry that leads to lawlessness,

If we claim "We are already free from sin," we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in our hearts.

In times

So I mean this and now testify to it in the name of the Lord: You must now stop living as the heathen usually do, in the frivolity of their minds,

In ages past He let all the heathen go on in their own ways;

Though God overlooked those times of ignorance, He now commands all men everywhere to repent,

For just as you once disobeyed God, but now have had mercy shown you because of their disobedience,

Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once His mercy had not been shown you, but now it has.

Yet it is a new command that I am writing you; it is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

In the

to lay aside, with your former way of living, your old self which is on the way to destruction in accordance with its deceptive impulses;

but the worries of the times, the deceiving pleasures of being rich, and evil desires for other things, creep in and choke the truth out, and it yields nothing.

You sprang from the devil, your real father, and you want to practice your father's wishes. He was a murderer from the very start, and he does not stand by the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks out of his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies.

So God has given them up to sexual impurity, in the evil trend of their heart's desires, so that they degrade their own bodies with one another,

Accordingly, sin must not continue to reign over your mortal bodies, so as to make you continue to obey their evil desires,

Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and put a stop to gratifying the evil desires that lurk in your lower nature.

I mean this: Practice living by the Spirit and then by no means will you gratify the cravings of your lower nature.

But men who keep planning to get rich fall into temptations and snares and many foolish, hurtful desires which plunge people into destruction and ruin.

What causes wars and quarrels among you? Is it not your different desires which are ever at war within your bodies? You desire things and cannot have them, and so you commit murder.

As obedient children, stop molding your character by the evil desires you used to cherish when you did not know any better,

Dearly beloved, I beg you as aliens and exiles to keep on abstaining from the evil desires of your lower nature, because they are always at war with the soul.

so that he no longer can spend the rest of his earthly life in harmony with human desires but in accordance with God's will.

For by uttering arrogant nonsense, through base desires of the lower nature, they entice into immorality men who are just escaping from those who live in error,

because everything that is in the world, the things that our lower nature and eyes are longing for, and the proud pretensions of life, do not come from the Father, but from the world;

These persons are grumblers, ever complaining about their lot. They live to satisfy their evil passions, their lips boast arrogant things, and they flatter others for personal gain.

Fulfilling

Because one's thinking the things suggested by the lower nature means enmity to God, for it does not subject itself to God's law, nor indeed can it.

So, since we have such promises as these, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that defiles our bodies and spirits, and in reverence to God carry on our consecration to completeness.

Now the practices of the lower nature are clear enough: Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,

Desires

who were born of God and not of natural blood nor of physical or human impulse.

By

for from the inside, that is, from the hearts of men, designs for doing evil come, sexual immorality, stealing, murder,

Now there was a man named Nicodemus, who belonged to the party of the Pharisees and was a leader among the Jews.

So here is the comparison: As through one man sin came into the world, and death as the consequence of sin, and death spread to all men; because all men sinned.

For I know that nothing good has its home in me; that is, in my lower self; I have the will but not the power to do what is right.

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not heathen sinners, and yet,

Even

What is our conclusion then? Is it that we Jews are better than they? Not at all! For we have already charged that Jews and Greeks alike are all under the sway of sin,

For who makes you superior? And what do you have that you did not get from someone? But if you got it from someone, why do you boast as though you had not?

General references

We love, because He loved us first.