[Note: this is not Desiderius Erasmus, Luther’s humanist opponent.]

Sarcerius:

Sins of the world:

1) For Saint John in his gospel begins thus of the second person, saying: “In the beginning was the Word,” &c, [John 1:1], whereunto Paul agrees in his epistle to the Philippians , where he writes: ‘Which when he was equal with the Father,” [Phil. 2]. Lo here he makes the same equal with the Father. Also Christ says himself: “I am my Father be one.” Now, to Adam promise was made of Christ in Gene. iii. To Abraham in Gene. xii, & xvii. To the other holy fathers the promises made be spread in sundry places of Scripture. The end of the promises is the redemption of mankind, Gene. iii. (Ipsum conteret caput tuum), that is to say: ‘That seed” (meaning Christ) “shall tread thee on thy head,” [Gen. iii.]. In Gene. xvii, to Abraham, he said: “In thy seed all nations shall be blessed,” [Ge. xvii]. The occasion of the redemption was the damnation gotten by the fall of the first parents. Of the manhood of Christ, teaches us the prophet Isaiah, saying: “Lo, a virgin shall conceive,” [Isa. vii]. Also in the epistle to the Hebrews, where it says: “In all things it became him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be merciful,” [Hebr. iia]. The common creed says: “Born of the virgin Mary,” which proves also the rest, how Christ suffered and was crucified. Also how he rose again, which was not only for this purpose, to take away the sins of the world, [Isa. liiia]. This was long before prophesied by Isaiah, which says: “But he was wounded for our wickedness: he was smitten for our offences.” And John in his Epistle says: “for the sins of the whole world,” [1 John a d]. And lest we should think that Christ has now fully executed his office, and has nothing a do, you shall wonder that “he sits on the right hand of God the Father, making intercession for us,” [ Rom. 8 f]. Erasmus Sarcerius, Common Places of Scripture, trans., Richard Tauerner (Imprinted at London by Nycolas Nyll for Abraham Vele, dwelling in Pauls church yarde at the signe of the Lambe, 1553), folios iiii b-va. [Some reformatting, some spelling modernized; marginal references cited inline; side-headers included; and underlining mine.]

2) The effects
or works
of Christ

The works or offices of Christ ought to be gathered of the whole Christ, which now sits on the right hand of God the Father, very God and man, the works of his mankind, as to eat, drink, sleep, wake and such like now that he is glorified he ceased, neither came Christ to the purpose that he should exercise them perpetually. But besides those effects and works of the manhood, there be yet other appertaining chiefly to our salvation, which shall endure perpetually: as to save the from their sins: “To take away the Sins of the world,” as John Baptist witnesses, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world.” To justify, as the Apostle Paul reads, saying: “Being justified of faith by Jesus Christ,” [Ro. v]. To satisfy for our sins [Isa. liii], to be a mercy stock for our sins, as John the apostle writes in his epistle [1 Joh. ia]. To be our mediator and peace maker: to become the priest and bishop for evermore [Gal. iii, Tim. ii, Psa. cix]. Erasmus Sarcerius, Common Places of Scripture, trans., Richard Tauerner (Imprinted at London by Nycolas Hyll for Abraham Vele, dwelling in Pauls church yarde at the signe of the Lambe, 1553), folio v a-b. [Some reformatting, some spelling modernized; marginal references cited inline; side-headers included; and underlining mine.]

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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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Charles Hodge:

1)

§ 13. The Goodness of God.

A. The Scriptural Doctrine.

Goodness, in the Scriptural sense of the term, includes benevolence, love, mercy, and grace. By benevolence is meant the disposition to promote happiness; all sensitive creatures are its objects. Love includes complacency, desire, and delight, and has rational beings for its objects. Mercy is kindness exercised towards the miserable, and includes pity, compassion, forbearance, and gentleness, which the Scriptures so abundantly ascribe to God. Grace is love exercised towards the unworthy. The love of a holy God to sinners is the most mysterious attribute of the divine nature. The manifestation of this attribute for the admiration and beatification of all intelligent creatures, is

declared to be the special design of redemption. God saves sinners, we are told, “That in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us, through Christ Jesus.” (Eph. ii. 7.) This is the burden of that Epistle.

As all the modifications of goodness above mentioned are found even in our dilapidated nature, and commend themselves to our moral approbation, we know they must exist in God without measure and without end. In him they are infinite, eternal, and immutable.

Benevolence.

The goodness of God in the form of benevolence is revealed in the whole constitution of nature. As the universe teems with life, it teems also with enjoyment. There are no devices in nature for the promotion of pain for its own sake; whereas the manifestations of design for the production of happiness are beyond computation. The manifestation of the goodness of God in the form of love, and specially of love to the undeserving, is, as just stated, the great end of the work of redemption. “God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John iii. 16.) “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John iv. 10.) The Apostle prays that believers might be able to comprehend the height and depth, the length and breadth, of that love which passes knowledge. (Eph. iii. 19.)

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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.]