The King James Version refers to “blind hearts.” The New International Version reads, “the hardness of their hearts.” The difference in the translation of Ephesians 4:18 sent me to my Greek New Testament and appropriate commentaries.
What I learned made me wonder if the apostle Paul might have been describing conditions in the present-day church as well as the pattern of the heathen of his day.
Blindness is a valid translation of the Greek word porosis when one is referring to the eye, the scholars said. Otherwise the translation refers to hardening. Thus the NIV preferred “hardening of their hearts.”
But “hardening” fails to grasp the implication of the word. Porosis connotes something more like “petrified.”
The word came to refer to the substance that forms in joints that restricts movement and causes paralysis. It is also used for the callus that forms on breaks in bones, a substance that is harder than bone itself.
Ultimately, the word came to mean the loss of sensation.
When Paul wrote Ephesians 4:18, he was saying the hearts of the heathen were petrified to the point that they had no feelings at all. They had no moral consciousness.
So long had they lived in sin that it had deadened their moral sensitivity. Now they could do the most shameful things without any feeling.
Most of us have witnessed such actions. We have seen the alcoholic, the drug addict, the one who lusts for power or money or some other such thing. We have seen their single-minded pursuit of whatever it takes to satisfy them.
They express no concern for others, no qualms about their actions. They act in shameful and shameless ways.
Their hearts — their moral consciences — are petrified and there is no feeling left in them at all.
The Greek words also add insight to verse 19. There, Paul writes of the heathen that they “have given themselves over to sensuality (NIV).” The meaning of the Greek for “sensuality” is “insatiable lusts.” These can be sexual sins.
They can be material things. The meaning can even be trampling on others in order to get one’s own way. The common element of all is the selfish, arrogant, greediness of the individual so possessed. There is a love of possessing.
As this one is possessed by sin, so the one desires to possess others or things or status or whatever. It is a vile drive that propels such a person. Such a one does not care who is hurt or what methods are used to get one’s own way.
That is why the word porosis came to have a still darker connotation. It came to refer to “unlawful desire for things which belong to another.”
The last phrase of the verse says such people practice “every kind of impurity with greediness.” The Greek provides another insight into the last word of the phrase. Its meaning is “shameless wantonness.”
Such a one cannot stand discipline or restraint. The goal is pleasure.
One writer shared, “The great characteristic is this. The man who has shameless wantonness in his soul does not care how much he shocks public opinion, how much he defies and insults all decency so long as he can gratify his desires.”
Sin robs such a person of the traits of humanity, and that one reverts to behaving like nothing more than a beast.
These are the ways of the heathen, not the ways of the Christian. These are the traits that are to be “laid aside” (v. 22). In their place the Christian is to put on a “new self” characterized by righteousness and holiness and truth (v. 24).
Unfortunately, recent publicity about some in God’s church reflect more of the old man than the new. Despicable behavior is flaunted. It is as if the conscience is petrified with no feeling at all.
An arrogant greediness is displayed as some seem not to care who get hurt — individuals, families, even the church — as long as their goals are attained. Self is at the forefront. Discipline has no place. Decency does not matter.
Paul is clear. “You did not learn Christ in this way (v. 20). May God save us all from petrified, unfeeling hearts; from arrogance and greed that trample on others; from selfish, shameless pursuits of our own desires and lusts.
May God help us to learn righteousness and holiness and truth.
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