Morris:

Children of Wrath

Paul now turns from the evil one and his miserable works to the plight of his dupes. Here the apostle does not take up some superior stance but classes himself with his readers. We all, he says, “formerly had our manner of life in the lusts of our flesh.” “Formerly” looks back to pre-Christian days–before he came to know the saving power of Christ, Paul was just as much entangled in sin as anyone else. He makes it clear that the Ephesians to whom he writes were in the same condemnation. He is not leaving open the possibility that there might be some people who escaped the bondage of which he writes. We were “all” in this position.

The apostle is not referring to occasional lapses but to a way of life. His verb (which, interestingly, in some contexts has meanings like “turn back,” Acts 5:22; 15:16) came to have the meaning “behave,” a meaning that is well attested in the papyri. This earlier manner of life, Paul says, was lived “in the lusts of our flesh.” The word for “lusts” is neutral in Greek generally, and it simply refers to strong desires, good or bad. We occasionally find the term used in a good sense in the New Testament, as when Paul speaks of his strong desire to see the Thessalonians again (1 Thess. 2:17). But in the overwhelming majority of cases the strong desire is for something evil, as here. Although the expression “the lusts of the flesh” quite often means sexual desire, it can also signify other strong longings.

Paul goes on to bring out his meaning by saying that the lusts of which he was speaking were “willed by [more literally, “doing the wills of”] the flesh and the minds.” Paul recognizes that there are some lusts that refer specifically to bodily functions, and it is possible for us to sin by giving way to such lusts. But if we think we are in control of ourselves in respect to lusts like this, that does not mean that we are safe from the temptation to lust. There are lusts of the mind, intellectual lusts, perfectly respectable lusts in the eyes of our community (and perhaps of ourselves, too). The word for “minds” is usually in the singular (this is the only occurrence of the plural in the New Testament). The plural may be meant here in the sense of “thoughts,” or the plurality of “minds” may come from the fact that there is a plurality of people, each of whom has a mind. But after the singular “the flesh we would certainly have expected “the mind.” Whatever the reason, Paul is saying that any strong desire that leads us away from God is to be reckoned as a lust; and when we constantly are found “doing the things willed by the flesh and the minds,” we are falling below the level that is demanded of us and are sinning against God.

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Lincoln:

kai emetha tekna phusei orges os kai loipoi, “and we were by nature children of wrath like the rest.” When they once lived their lives in such total absorption with the flesh, the writer and all believers were tekna. . . orges, “children of wrath.” This is a Hebraism, like “sons of disobedience” in v 2, which means they were deserving of and liable to wrath. This wrath is clearly God’s wrath (cf. Eph 5:6; also Col 3:5,6) rather than merely an impersonal process of cause and effect or a principle of retribution in a moral universe. The wrath of God is a concept which occurs frequently in Paul’s letter to the Romans. It refers to God’s active judgment going forth against all forms of sin and evil and is evidence of his absolute holiness (cf. Rom 1:18; 2:5,8; 3:5; 4:15; 5:9; 9:22; 12: 19; 13:4,5). The Hebraistic expression used here in Eph 2:3 reminds one of the way in which in the OT a person deserving of punishment is spoken of as a “son of stripes” (Deut 25:2) or a person doomed to die is spoken of as a “son of death” (cf. 1 Sam 26: 16; 2 Sam 12:5; Ps 102:20). It is also reminiscent of the way in which in apocalyptic literature Cain, in being marked out for judgment, is described as a “son of wrath” (Apoc. Mos. 3). In the NT also, Jesus is represented as condemning the proselytizing of the Pharisees, declaring that when they made a convert he was twice as much a “son of Gehenna” as they themselves (Matt 23: 15). The children of wrath, then, are those who are doomed to God’s wrath because through their condition of sinful rebellion, they deserve his righteous judgment.

As does Paul in Rom 1:18-3:20, the writer makes this category cover all humanity outside Christ. os kai oi loipoi means “like the rest of humanity,” and in this way the sinful condition and its consequences, which the writer has been describing, become all-embracing in their extent. What was once true of the readers (vv 1,2) was also once true of all believers (v 3a), and what was once true of all believers is also true of the rest of humanity (v 3b). The human condition of being destined to judgment in the day of God’s wrath is a condition that is “by nature.” What is the force of the term phusei here? Elsewhere the noun phusis can refer to the natural order of things (cf. Rom 1:26; 1 Cor 11:14), but the actual expression phusei the dative, “by nature,” occurs elsewhere in the NT in Gal 2: 15, “we who are Jews by nature,” where it refers to that which comes through birth rather than that which is acquired later (cf. also phuseos in Rom 2:27), in Gal 4:8, where it means “in reality,” and in Rom 2:14, 15, where it means “of one’s own free will, voluntarily, independently.” phusei in Eph 2:3 belongs with the first of these uses (cf. also A. Bonhoffer, Epiktet und das NT [Giessen: Topelmann, 19111 146-54; BAGD 869; Barth, 23 1; contra Gnilka, 117). So, in their natural condition, through birth, men and women are “children of wrath.”

Some commentators (e.g., J. A. Robinson, 50-51; Gnilka, 117; Barth, 231) wish to dissociate the thought expressed in this verse from any notion of original sin. (On the history of interpretation of this verse in connection with that doctrine, as seen mainly from a Catholic perspective, see Mehlmann’s Latin monograph, Natura filii Irae.) But if original sin refers to the innate sinfulness of human nature inherited from Adam in consequence of the fall, then such a notion is not entirely alien to the thought of this verse when it speaks of the impossibility of humanity of itself, in its natural condition, escaping God’s wrath. To be sure, the verse does not explicitly teach original sin by making a statement about how this tragic plight came to be humanity’s natural condition. Yet the idea of the natural condition in which one finds oneself by birth being a sinful state deserving of God’s judgment surely presupposes some such view of original sin as is found in Rom 5:12-21, where Paul recognizes that, as well as sinning themselves, men and women, in solidarity with Adam, inherit a sinful situation by sharing in the one sin of the one man (cf. also Schlier, 107; BAGD 869, where Eph 2:3 is translated “we were, in our natural condition [as descendants of Adam], children of wrath.”) “By nature” should not of course be taken to mean that sinfulness is of the essence of human nature. In Pauline thought sin is always abnormal, a disorder, but in a fallen world the natural condition of human beings involves experience of that abnormality and disorder. In this sense, Eph 2:l-10 contains a contrast between nature and grace, between fallen human existence in and of itself and the divine initiative required if human life is to be restored to what it was meant to be.

Andrew Lincoln “Ephesians,” Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas, Tex.: Word Books, 1990), 98-99. [Note: Liable should be understood in its legal sense, rather than its more general conversational sense.]

Bruce:

V. 3 among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind,

–Paul is writing to Christians of Gentile birth, but when he reminds them that they once lived in accordance with the standards accepted by the ‘sons of disobedience’, he makes haste to say that this was equally true of Christians of Jewish birth, not excluding himself. The ‘desires of the flesh’ may take many different forms, and Paul elsewhere lists the things in which he formerly took such patriotic and religious pride as samples of his ‘confidence in the flesh’ (Phil. 3. 4-6). For the ‘flesh’, the unregenerate nature of man, can manifest itself in respectable forms as well as in the disreputable pursuits of first-century paganism. For ‘the mind’ we might substitute ‘our minds’ or ‘our thoughts’, in order to indicate that the Greek word (dianoia) is plural here; these are minds, of course, which have not yet been renewed so as to approve the will of God (Rom. 12. 2).

and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest:

–We who were Jews by birth and upbringing, he says, were as much under the wrath of God as those who were born and reared as pagans. These few words sum up the argument of Rom. I. 18-2. 29, where Gentile and Jew alike are shown to have incurred the revelation of God’s wrath from heaven.

F.F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Ephesians: A Verse by Verse Exposition (New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1970), 48-49.

Fergusson:

8. As all men are guilty of their conception, Psal. 51:5, and therefore, in the course of divine justice, liable to the stroke of God’s vindictive wrath and justice, and this by nature also; So the misery of unregenerate men is never sufficiently seen, until it be traced up to this bitter root and fountain, even the sin and misery wherein they were born: for, saying they were children of wrath by nature, implies they were also sinners by nature; seeing wrath does always follow sin, and this he serves last, as that which was the root, fountain and head-stone of all their misery; And were by nature the children of wrath.

9. Though those, who are born within the visible Church, have a right to Church-priviledges even from their birth, and by nature, which others have not (See Gal. 2. Vers. 15. Doct. 1.), yet all men, whether born within, or within the Church, are alike by nature, sa to the point of original sin inherent in all, which wrath is due to all: for, says he, speaking fo the Jews, We were by nature the children of wrath, even as others, by which others he mean the unchurched Gentiles.

James Fergusson, A Brief Exposition of the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, (London: Printed for the Company of Stationers, 1659), 89-90.