{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-4300","native_reference":{"book_number":560,"chapter_from":4,"chapter_to":4,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":19,"verse_to":19},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Ambrosiaster</b>: They have lost their moral compass through lack of hope in a future life. Living now as if they had no future, they pollute their own lives with the foulest behaviors. They refuse to submit themselves to the most elementary requirement of faith, which brings their pleasure-seeking into accountability in relation to the future life. It is this future life that these people declare to be ridiculous. Hence they pretend to have a right to debauch themselves. They covet the goods of others with ravenous greed, as though there were no life whatever after this little space.<br/><i>— EPISTLE TO THE Ephesians 4.19</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: \"Who being past feeling,\" saith he, \"gave themselves up.\"</p><p>Whenever then ye hear, that \"God gave them up unto a reprobate mind,\" remember this expression, that \"they gave themselves up.\" If then they gave themselves over, how did God give them over? and if again God gave them over, how did they give themselves over? Thou seest the seeming contradiction. The word, \"gave them over,\" then, means this, He permitted them to be given over. Seest thou, that the impure life is the ground for like doctrines also? \"Every one,\" saith the Lord, \"that doeth ill hateth the light, and cometh not to the light.\" For how could a profligate man, one more immersed in the practice of indiscriminate lewdness than the swine that wallow in the mire, and who is a lover of money, and has not so much as any desire after temperance, enter upon a life like this? They made the thing, saith he, their \"work.\" Hence their \"hardening,\" hence the \"darkness of their understanding.\" There is such a thing as being in the dark, even while the light is shining, when the eyes are weak; and weak they become, either by the influx of ill humors, or by superabundance of rheum. And so surely is it also here; when the strong current of the affairs of this life overwhelms the perceptive power of the understanding, it is thrown into a state of darkness. And in the same way as if we were placed in the depths under water, we should be unable to see the sun through the quantity of water lying, like a sort of barrier, above us, so surely, in the eyes of the understanding also a blindness of the heart takes place, that is, an insensibility, whenever there is no fear to agitate the soul. \"There is no fear of God,\" it saith, \"before his eyes\"; and again, \"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.\" Now blindness arises from no other cause than from want of feeling; this clogs the channel; for whenever the fluids are curdled and collected into one place, the limb becomes dead and void of feeling; and though thou burn it, or cut it, or do what thou wilt with it, still it feels not. So is it also with those persons, when they have once given themselves over to lasciviousness: though thou apply the word to them like fire, or steel, yet nothing touches, nothing reaches them; their limb is utterly dead. And unless thou canst remove the insensibility, so as to touch the healthy members, everything thou doest is vain.<br/><i>— Homily on Ephesians 13</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: \"With greediness,\" saith he.</p><p>Here he has most completely taken away their excuse; for it was in their power, if at least they chose it, not to be \"greedy,\" nor to be \"lascivious,\" nor gluttonous, and yet to enjoy their desires. It was in their power to partake in moderation of riches, and even of pleasure and of luxury; but when they indulged the thing immoderately, they destroyed all.<br/><i>— Homily on Ephesians 13</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: \"To work all uncleanness,\" saith he.</p><p>Ye see how he strips them of all excuse by speaking of \"working uncleanness.\" They did not sin, he means, by making a false step, but they worked out these horrid deeds, and they made the thing a matter of study. \"All uncleanness\"; uncleanness is all adultery, fornication, unnatural lust, envy, every kind of profligacy and lasciviousness.<br/><i>— Homily on Ephesians 13</i></p><p><b>Theodoret of Cyrus</b>: At first their sickness was lawlessness. Then it became indulgence. Having slipped then into a lawless way of life, they gradually came to suffer from lack of remorse. Finally they ventured out toward every sin without fear, living the life of corruption beyond indulgence. This is what he means by \"becoming greedy to practice every kind of uncleanness.\"<br/><i>— Interpretation of the Epistle to the Ephesians 4.19</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"12030f9122509da2a47702376f67797e28671adf0d4de91cb466679321fc1535","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":4300,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"30c40ad8828218c8eb93691bb67a1b51d2fc117294bcaa388c01d80e5d5a5f1a","translator":null,"work":null}