Spiritual Blindness or Callousness?
Ephesians 4:17–18
Ephesians Lesson #156
July 10, 2022
Dr. Robert L. Dean, Jr.
www.deanbibleministries.org
Opening Prayer
“Father, we’re so thankful that we have Your Word, and throughout Your Word there are so many times that we are reminded that it is Your Word that is the basis for enlightening our minds to reality as You created it. It has been corrupted by sin.
“A reality that is defined by Your Word and is explained by Your Word on how we ought to live in conformity to Your Word that we might be able to enjoy stability, tranquility, and contentment no matter what happens in this ever-changing, ever-more-corrupt world in which we live.
“Father, we pray that as we study today, we can come to understand more fully what You have taught about this, especially in the realm of the corruption of a culture. No matter who we are, believers or unbelievers, we have lived since the fall of Adam in a corrupt culture.
“The only way to deal with that is to be transformed by the renewing of our minds according to Scripture. So we pray that You would help us to understand these things. In Christ’s name. Amen.”
Slide 2
We are continuing our study in Ephesians, where we have been about three years. This is the 156th lesson. One of the reasons that we have taken so much time is because this Epistle is filled with such rich information. Yet it is written in a way that is not always easily accessible to us because of a lack of background in scriptural knowledge because of the ways that many of these passages have been historically either mistranslated or misinterpreted.
Often in reading certain verses, we just basically put it in a mental file because we really don’t understand what it is talking about. We’ve heard others who have taught about it, and they have gone in directions that we just don’t think is right. But then on the other hand, we don’t know exactly why or what the background is on some of these things, so it’s important to take our time.
What we have seen as sort of the core bedrock of this whole Epistle is what Paul is teaching about the significance of this new entity that came into existence on the Day of Pentecost, described in Acts 2 and identified as the Church. Prior to AD 33 on the Day of Pentecost there was no such entity as the Church. God was doing something completely new.
Part of this that Paul emphasizes is that in the Old Testament time God was working primarily through the Jewish people. But now there was this new entity that He was calling out—the Church—that was to be comprised of Jew and Gentile, who were now equal in the body of Christ. This entity—the Church, the corporate group, has been appointed to a task, to a mission.
We have been given four different metaphors to try to help us understand what this entity is. In Ephesians 2 it is a called a “new man,” a “new building,” a “new temple,” and a “new body.” All these metaphors have different aspects that are foundational for us.
Paul explained this in detail in Ephesians 2–3. Then we came to Ephesians 4 where he said, “I, therefore …” “Therefore” tells us that it’s a conclusion from what he has said in Ephesians 2–3.
It’s fundamental to think in terms of this corporate entity of the Church when we think in terms of the commands for the Christian way of life in Ephesians 4–5. That may reshape some of our understanding in what is going on in these chapters. We will deal with that, but we have to keep this context in mind here.
Starting in Ephesians 4:7, Paul then talks about how Christ is working to prepare, equip, and mature this body of believers—this Church, this new entity. Of course, that involves the individuals within it, but the framework is corporate.
The framework is who we are in Christ and what Christ is doing to equip and train and prepare and mature this new entity, this new body, viewed as a corporate whole. It’s not at the expense of the individuals. Because when we came to the end of that section, Paul was talking about the individuals.
Ephesians 4:16, “… from whom the whole body—that is, Christ—joined and knit together by what every joint supplies…—speaking of the whole corporate body, composed of individuals, represented by the phrase ‘every joint’—… according to the effective working by which every part—every individual within the corporate entity of the body of Christ—does its share—which is part of how God produces spiritual growth in the body—for the edifying of itself in love.”
We spent about six months studying that whole section, which I keep summarizing for us from Ephesians 4:7–16. It becomes the steppingstone to the next verse, Ephesians 4:17, which we started about three lessons back, “This I say, therefore …”
As we get into what he is saying here, I want you to again note that it begins with “therefore.” “Therefore” is a conclusion that is related to what we just studied related to Christ equipping, preparing, and maturing the body of Christ and the role of each individual part within the function of that body.
He started off saying “walk worthy of that high calling with which you are called,” then he takes a break in Ephesians 4:7–14 to talk about how Christ is preparing, equipping, and maturing that body. Now he is tying that back to the main point that he started with in Ephesians 4:1, to walk worthy. We need to understand this.
Here he contrasts that worthy walk with how the rest of the Gentiles walk. Part of this deals with the sinfulness and the depravity of the culture around them, which is not a whole lot different from the culture around us.
Hopefully we will get there today but we have to build these steps. If you forget the steps, and just jump in, you can lose sight of the significance of the conclusion.
But in the last phrase of Ephesians 4:18, “the blindness of the heart,” we have to ask, “Does this refer to spiritual blindness? If so, what is that? Or does it refer to callousness or hardness?”
It’s not even a textual problem. There are two different ways in which this word is understood, and that has shaped some “troublesome theology,” shall we say. So we have to look at some details.
Slide 3
Ephesians 4:17, “This I say, therefore” is a conclusion related to what he has said before: he’s tying this command to walk a certain way to his audience, “you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind,—we got that for the last time.”
Ephesians 4:18, “having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness—or hardness—of their heart—some of your translations are one way, some the other way.”
Ephesians 4:19–20 “who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ.”
Slide 4
We’ve seen that this description of “the futility of their thinking” ends up with “the blindness of their heart,” so I want to review what we have focused on, especially last week.
Slide 5
His command is “that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk.”
We have to understand that this phrase “walk” is a metaphor. He is not talking about literal walking. He is using this as a picture of how we live our life: how you conduct your life, how you think, how you plan, how you structure the priorities in your life, and how you live out your beliefs.
He contrasts what they are now with what they were before. Before they were saved, they weren’t living or operating or thinking any differently from the pagans around them. Like all of us, they picked up their values, picked up their rationales, picked up their morality or lack of it, from the culture around them.
Paul is saying something different now: because we have “… been made alive together with Christ, we have been raised with Him, and we have been seated together with Him in the heavenlies …” Ephesians 2:5–7.
Because of that reality, we are not to live the same way as the Gentiles around us. We’re not to think the same way. We don’t have the same value system. We have a completely new identity now that we are in Christ.
Slide 6
He is reminding them of the way they were before they were saved, Ephesians 4:18–19, which expands on that last phrase we looked at last week, “in the futility of their mind” and describes the nature of the thought life and the lifestyle of those Gentiles in the culture around them.
Ephesians 4:18, “having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because …—the ING endings of ‘having’ and ‘being’ are causal participles in the Greek, so it’s ‘because’—… their understanding was darkened …”
How did they get this futile or useless way of thinking? Because their understanding was darkened, because they were alienated from the life of God—“because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of the heart;”
Ephesians 4:19, “who, being past feeling have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.”
Slide 7
The point is they should not walk like the Gentiles walk.
Slide 8
Which takes us back to those introductory verses in Ephesians 4:1–3, that we are to conduct our life in a manner worthy of the exalted position, that new identity in Christ, to which you were called, to which you were summoned.
Slide 9
He gives this new command. “Walk” is used twice here. It’s that you and I should not live or conduct our lives like the rest of the Gentiles. We should “no longer walk like the Gentiles walk …” It’s that second walk that he is describing: How do the Gentiles walk? How do they live?
I’ve covered three things that are important here because we have to recognize that it starts with how we think. How you live, how you choose, how you operate your life, how you establish your priorities, how you spend your time is determined by what goes on between your ears: the values and the priorities you have.
Slide 10
The believer should and ought to think differently than those around us. It’s not just what we think about, but how we think. That always gets difficult because it’s hard enough to think. And it’s more difficult to think about how we think—the structure of our thinking.
It really becomes clear that this is a cultural thing when you do a deep dive into language and its structure. If you are around somebody, as I am, who is bilingual and bicultural, then you begin to learn that if you speak another language …
… for example, if you grow up in an Asian culture and you are speaking Chinese or Japanese or another Asian language, because of words they have and words they don’t have, it expresses a certain worldview just in the structure of the language. That is related to culture. This gets into some very complicated and complex issues.
But no language is perfect, and every language is tied to the cultural framework, the worldview, of the culture that speaks that language. So there’s a deep, deep connection there. Language shapes how we think. If you don’t have words for certain things, you can’t think about those things.
That’s one of the things that’s notable when you work in cultures that have not been impacted by the Bible. You realize that English has a rich, rich theological vocabulary, and all of our language is shaped by the Bible.
There are so many idioms and metaphors in English that come out of the Bible. And whether we even have a biblical worldview anymore or not, and many people do not, they still have a lot of these phrases. They have a lot of this language that is Bible-dependent.
Slide 11
It’s very interesting how these things all interact, but the important thing here is we have to learn how to think biblically, and that starts with our authority. Last time we saw that our authority is different as believers because we go to Scripture for our authority and not to the culture, or to our friends, or to some other philosophy or religion.
Psalms 36:9, “For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light.”
Slide 12
The starting point of authority is different; the content of our thinking is different. Philippians 4:8–9, we will think about certain things and not think about other things.
Slide 13
Then it involves the renovation or the overhaul of our thinking.
Slide 14
We saw this in Romans 12:2, which I have retranslated, “And do not be pressed into the mold of the thinking of the world—the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, the world around you,—but be transformed by the renewing—or the renovation—of your mind—your thinking, the Greek word NOUS,—that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
I went there because of the word used for the renewing of our mind, which takes us back to our passage in Ephesians 4:17–18, that we are not to walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk “in the futility of their mind.”
The statement in Romans 12:2 is that we are to renew our mind. Ephesians 4:17 tells us why: because of the emptiness, the futility, of our thinking as an unbeliever without an ultimate reference point to the absolute truth of Scripture.
Slide 15
The next verse will expand on that, but before we get there, I want to say a couple of other things that we covered last week. The result of what the believer does, our overt lifestyle, is a result of what goes on inside. This is one of the reasons Jesus condemned the Pharisees. He said, “You clean the outside of the cup, but you leave the inside of the cup dirty.”
He meant that your inner spiritual life is no different from anybody else; you just clean things up on the outside. Many Christians do this; it’s just superficial and legalistic. We are to think differently and live differently because everything we think and do should be oriented towards the glory of God.
Slide 16
This last phrase of Ephesians 4:17 pulls us into the next verse. Paul says we should not conduct our lives as the rest of the Gentiles conduct their lives. That’s the meaning of “walk.”
The second use of “walk” is a main verb that is the reference point for the participles in the next verse. That’s just basic grammar; participles either function as nouns or they function as adverbs. All of them here function as adverbs, which means they modify a verb. You have to find the verb; otherwise, you don’t know what they’re talking about.
Slide 17
The finite verb is the second “walk;” and is talking about the futility of it, further described in Ephesians 4:18. “Futile” has the idea of something that serves no useful purpose or is completely ineffective.
Slide 18
The Greek word can mean futility, absurdity, or purposelessness. Some have said this is like a vacuum in the soul and sucks in other things. I pointed out last time that just because a word can mean something doesn’t mean it means that in this context.
It is true that when we’re operating on human viewpoint, we have a vacuum in the soul that sucks in false teaching. But that’s not what he’s talking about here. It’s also true that pagan thinking is absurd. I lean towards that. But I can’t choose that as a meaning because it’s not what he’s saying in the context.
I pointed out a couple of other verses where this word is used, that it has this idea of something that is meaningless, purposeless, or empty. It’s not achieving the purpose for which God created it. And that fits what he is saying in this verse. The futility of the mind is because it no longer is oriented to God’s purpose for man and is no longer fulfilling God’s intent and purpose for human thought.
Slide 20
It reflects the main idea that you find in the Old Testament where this word is used in translating into the Septuagint, the Greek translation, that was done around 200–300 BC, where it always has the idea of vanity or purposelessness. In few places absurdity or worthlessness would work.
The Gentile world around us has a purposeless, meaningless way of thinking. The details may be good in some areas. They can think great thoughts. They can get us to the moon and back. They can create incredible thing, inventions of all kinds. But that doesn’t mean that they understand reality. And that’s what starts with God is that understanding of reality.
Slide 21
When we look at the way the sin nature operates in Ephesians 4:18–19, it reminds us of the vocabulary of Romans 1:20–23. This is important because this introduces a word that is at the beginning of Ephesians 4:18, “darkened” or “darkness.” We will go to Romans briefly, then back to Ephesians 4.
Romans 1:20–21, “For since the creation of the world His–God’s—invisible attributes are clearly seen—notice that juxtaposition: they’re invisible but everybody sees them,—being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God …”
Every unbeliever knows God exists. It’s been made evident to them and within them, externally and internally. That is an unavoidable interpretation of this passage. I don’t think anybody disagrees with that.
The implication is that even when you’re talking to an atheist, they’re not really an atheist because deep in the cellar of their mind, they’ve got God stuck in a sub-cellar, and they don’t want to let Him out; but they know [He’s there].
That’s why they get so mad sometimes; when Christians do certain things, they just go ballistic! Because God is using something to bring that awareness of God’s existence to their mind, and they’re trying to suppress it in unrighteousness.
Romans 1:21, “… even though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile—there’s our word again: they lost the meaning and purpose God created them for—in their thoughts … It doesn’t say they couldn’t think. It says their thinking becomes disoriented and; therefore, they lose that purpose.
“… and their foolish hearts—‘heart’ is parallel to thinking. The heart isn’t the seat of emotions in the Bible, it is the seat of your thinking—were darkened—SKOTIZO is the keyword word that ties several passages together.”
We have to understand who we are as human beings. You want to know real psychology? Don’t study Freud, Maslow, or Jung. Don’t go to some secular university and get your mind all screwed up. Start with the Bible because the Bible treats you as someone who’s created in the image and likeness of God, that God designed your immaterial soul. God designed you to be a reflection of who He is.
If you don’t start there, then you will never understand human behavior. If you don’t start with the effects of sin on the soul, then you’re never going to get anywhere. You’re going to really understand your spouse. You’re never going to figure out why you have problems in your marriage if you don’t understand the sin nature.
In premarital counseling, one of the things I ask is, do you understand your intended’s sin nature? Because if you can’t live in a compatible way with your spouse when they’re out of fellowship, and they can’t live with you when you’re out of fellowship because your sin natures aren’t compatible, then you’re going to have real problems.
Most people never think about it that way. But when you’re out of fellowship, when you get angry, how do you express your anger? When you get frustrated or you get in an argument, how do you express that? When you’re really self-absorbed and it’s just all about you, how do you express yourself? Can your spouse live with you like that?
If you can’t, well, maybe you’re going to have some real serious problems in your marriage. Because every couple, every believer gets out of fellowship for a while, and every believer gets out of fellowship and gets upset with their spouse.
You have to understand human behavior. It has nothing to do with anything that has come out of what is called “psychology” since the mid-1800s. It has everything to do with understanding the Bible and the sin nature and what Christ has done in providing forgiveness for us.
Romans 1:21-23, we are told that fallen man’s “… hearts are darkened. Professing to be wise, they become fools …” then they worship the creature rather than the Creator.
Slide 22
“Hearts are darkened:” The word for thoughts in the Greek is DIALOGISMOS. We will see a synonym of that in Ephesians 4:17. Their thinking, how they think and what they think, gets distorted, gets darkened.
Slide 23
4:17, “the futility of their mind,” the word NOUS.
Slide 24
This, retranslated is, “in the purposelessness of their thinking.”
That doesn’t mean that you go out and you find somebody who’s an unbeliever and tell them that they have no purpose in life. They have a purpose in life, but they don’t have God’s purpose for their life. They don’t understand they’re created to glorify God.
That God is the One who has gifted them and enabled them and given them the brains or whatever that they have, and that they are to use that for the glory of God and develop it for the glory of God. They are out of kilter with God’s plan for their life. So their thinking is distorted because of that.
Slide 25
Then these participles and explanations all relate back to “to walk not as the Gentiles walk.” In other words, don’t conduct yourselves as the Gentiles conduct themselves.
Now he describes how they conduct themselves. This gives us a great picture in biblical psychology: How and why do we think? And how and why do we do a lot of the things that we do? A lot of that just relates back to we’re still thinking and living like unsaved Gentiles. We haven’t had our thought processes sanctified yet.
Slide 26
First he says that the understanding is darkened. It is another form of the same word we saw in Romans 1, SKOTIZO; also SKOTOO. They both have the same idea of something that is darkened.
Notice here, for example, the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, shows that it has the sense of being darkened and also the sense of being blind. SKOTIZO, which we saw in Romans, has the sense of becoming darkened. What is darkened here? It is our understanding.
Slide 27
One of the other aspects of this that we ought to see is there is a spiritual dimension to this in terms of the angelic revolt.
Ephesians 6:2, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood …” That’s true. We have a struggle with our sin nature, but there’s also a struggle with the world forces of this darkness. So darkness relates in this sense to the evil production of that which comes out of the fall of Satan through the fallen angels.
What’s the solution to darkness? This is where we’re getting into one of the theological distortions that comes out of the Middle Ages and was repeated and held onto in the Protestant Reformation. This has to do with understanding man’s basic nature.
Is man irretrievably entrenched in darkness? Can the unbeliever have positive volition toward God? Or must we go with the deterministic framework that comes out of Augustinianism and later Calvinism? This will necessarily entail a couple of lessons. This is not simple material, but it’s important for us to understand it.
Slide 28
In Acts 26 when Paul was speaking before the authorities, giving his testimony, he made a couple of really important statements.
Acts 26:17–18, talking to King Agrippa about his conversion, he quoted the Lord Jesus Christ. When the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus, Paul was blinded by this light shining into the darkness of his soul.
Acts 26:15–16, “‘Who are you, Lord?’ and He said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. But rise, and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you.’”
Look at what the Lord will do through Paul:
Acts 26:17, “I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you,”
What’s the purpose for the sending? Acts 26:18, “to open their eyes …”
Wait a minute! If you listen to the explanations in Calvinism as to the effects of sin, which they called “total inability,” then God is the One who has to open their eyes, regenerate them, and give them faith before they can be saved.
But Jesus is telling Paul “you are going to open their eyes.” How is Paul going to open their eyes? By preaching the gospel. It is the gospel that will open people’s eyes. It’s the preaching and teaching of God’s Word that God uses to open their eyes.
Acts 26:18, “… to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.”
Now you may be saying, “Well, I’ve heard this other Calvinistic view: how can a dead man believe?” Well, what does it mean to be dead? It means to be alienated from the life of God. It doesn’t mean you can’t hear, you can’t see, and you can’t think. It’s just that it’s been somewhat distorted, but you can look to Christ.
Jesus is talking about the future resurrection of dead people, and He says when He comes back the dead will hear. Wait a minute! I thought under the Calvinist argument, dead people can’t hear. But Jesus said that the dead will hear when He comes back, and they will rise from the dead. We will go through these passages in the next week or so.
Jesus said to Paul that he’s going to open their eyes, and he uses the Scripture.
Slide 29
To further develop this, their understanding is darkened, and there’s a similar phrase related to the mind, DIANOIA. Their understanding, that is their mind, their thoughts, their intentions, are darkened.
Slide 30
The parallel, Colossians 1:21, “And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind—describing their unsaved condition, alienated from the life of God, which we see in Ephesians 4—and enemies in your thinking by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled—you.” That helps illuminate the meaning of DIANOIA.
Slide 31
The fundamental problem:
Slide 32
We have to do a drill down with POROSIS. In some passages it’s translated “blindness;” in some it’s translated “hardness.” The bottom line that we will get to next time is that it’s really “hardness.” There’s a lot of support for that. It’s not a textual problem; it’s just the way word is used.
In classical Greek there are several cases where it was used for blindness, but in Koine Greek it’s used for hardness, a callousness. If you had calluses on your eyes, you would have your vision darkened and you would be blind. But the primary meaning is the idea of something that forms calluses or something that is hardened. That has a volitional element.
So we have to talk about this blindness because it’s translated that way in a couple translations, and that’s led to certain theological positions, which we have to recognize.
Slide 34 – Skipped
Slide 35
Concluding with this quote from Charles Hodge who is considered one of the foremost theologians in the mid-19th century, in his three-volume work, Systematic Theology:
“And this lack [or want] of power of spiritual discernment arises from the corruption of our whole nature, by which the reason or understanding is blinded, and the taste and feelings are perverted.”
By blindness he means that God has to basically regenerate you first before you can have faith and then be saved. So regeneration proceeds faith and the opening of the eyes is an act of God that is described as irresistible or efficacious grace.
This has set up the problem for next time, which we’ll talk about and look at some critical verses. For example, 2 Corinthians 4:4 tells us that Satan veils our minds so that we are blinded. The blinding comes because the veil is in front of our eyes. But why in the world does Satan need to blind us if we are constitutionally blinded by our fallen condition?
That’s a big problem for the Calvinist. Because if we are already so blind that we can’t see or desire truth, then why does Satan need to additionally blind us? We will look at that in several other passages to get a greater understanding. All of this is important because of where the text goes after we finish this reminder of our depravity.
As usual, there’s a lot more to the text than what we see when we just read through it. We have to stop and really think. Paul is so sophisticated and complex, but what we recognize as we look at all of this is that as unbelievers, and then as believers who still think like unbelievers, we’ve got some serious problems, and it’s sin.
Sin is a problem that has to be dealt with, and if you’re not looking at human behavior and social problems from the vantage point of sin, then you’re not living in the realm of reality and you’re never going to come up with helpful solutions.
Closing Prayer
“Father, we thank You for this opportunity to look at these things this morning, to reflect upon what Your Word says. It’s not a complimentary look at ourselves because we are creatures that have been severely impaired by sin, separating us from the life of God, darkening our understanding so that we do not see truth, we do not understand truth.
“But the light of Your Word is so powerful that it overcomes that blindness. It is through Your Word that we come to understand the truth, and we understand light. It is through Your Word that we come to recognize that You have called us through Your Word to an everlasting life in Heaven.
“Christ died for our sins, and just by trusting Him, believing on Him, then as a consequence of that faith in Christ, You regenerate us. You make us alive in Him, raise us together with Him, and seat us together in the heavenlies.
“For that we are so grateful, and we need to understand our new identity in Christ, for that becomes the basis for the challenge to no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk.
“I pray that You would help those who have never trusted Christ as Savior to understand this, that You would enlighten their thinking so that they can understand the offer of salvation because that is the light that shines in the darkness. We pray this in Christ’s name, amen.”