Transcript Document

Hypocrites and Backsliders
H and B-025:
Understanding Spiritual Death
Spiritual Death
• The HAMs
• Ga 4:8 But at that previous time, when you
had not come to be acquainted with and
understand and know the true God, you
[Gentiles] were in bondage to gods who by
their very nature could not be gods at all.
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Spiritual Death
• 17So this I say, and affirm together with the
Lord, that you walk no longer just as the
Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind,
18being darkened in their understanding,
excluded from the life of God because of the
ignorance that is in them, because of the
hardness of their heart; 19and they, having
become callous, have given themselves over
to sensuality for the practice of every kind of
impurity with greediness.
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Spiritual Death
• Col 1:21 And although you at one time were
estranged and alienated from Him and were
of hostile attitude of mind in your wicked
activities…
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Spiritual Death
• By one man's sin, death reigned (Romans
5:17);
• Through one man's disobedience a vast
crowd were made sinners (Rom. 5:19);
• or, in 1 Cor. 15:22, In Adam all die.
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Spiritual Death
• Ephesians 2:1-3:
• "And you were dead in your trespasses and
sins, in which you formerly walked according
to the course of this world, according to the
prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that
is now working in the sons of disobedience.
Among them we too all formerly lived in the
lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the
flesh and of the mind, and were by nature
children of wrath, even as the rest."
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Human Life and the Soul
• “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and
•
•
•
that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John
3:6).
The Bible says; “There is a Spirit in man; and
the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them
understanding” (Job 32:8).
Here we are told that it is the spirit of man that
is given understanding.
The materialist tells us that the spirit of man is
the air that he breathes, and that man’s body
isH &all
there is to his LWBC
personality.
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Spiritual Death
• 17So this I say, and affirm together with the
Lord, that you walk no longer just as the
Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind,
18being darkened in their understanding,
excluded from the life of God because of the
ignorance that is in them, because of the
hardness of their heart; 19and they, having
become callous, have given themselves over
to sensuality for the practice of every kind of
impurity with greediness.
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Spiritual Death: Eph 4:17
• 17So this I say, and affirm together with the
Lord, that you walk no longer just as the
Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their
mind,
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Eph 4:17 - Affirm
• Paul uses a word which causes the reader to sit
up.
• Τουτο λεγω ουν and then there is the long verb
μαρτυορομαι = which means to make a solemn
statement (without any injection of humor).
• It excludes anything which is superficial, anything
which is light, and anything which is humorous.
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Spiritual Death: Eph 4:17
• “Therefore” resumes the exhortation of 4:1–3.
• “This” (touto) refers to the words of exhortation
which follow.
• “Testify” is martureō which is used of a solemn
declaration, protest, or injunction of the nature of
an appeal to God.
• In the words, “in the Lord,” the writer is seen
“identifying himself with Christ and giving the
exhortation as one made by Christ Himself”
(Expositors).
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Spiritual Death: Eph 4:17
• "He then says, do not imitate the unbeliever. "Do
not walk as the Gentiles walk".
• These Gentiles are unbelievers who are in a
frantic search for happiness.
• The more they search, the more they seek, they
cannot get it.
• They see a woman, and they reach for her, and
happiness is gone; they see a bag of money and
reach for it, and happiness is gone.
• How many times have you said, “If I just had this
or that, I would be happy.” (Thieme)
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Spiritual Death: Eph 4:17
• And since you acquired it, have you been happy?
• No, you were just as miserable.
• The Gentiles are making a frantic search for
happiness.
• There is Religion, a member of the opposite sex,
friends, money, things, food and drink,
achievement, power, and the details of life.
• These are the things which they chase after.
(Thieme)
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Eph 4:17 - Walk
• Ephesians 4:17
• That ye no longer walk (μηκετι ὑμας ｹεριｹ
ατειν [mēketi humas peripatein]).
• “Walk” is peripateō (πu949 ρu953 πu945 τu949 ω),
“to conduct one’s self, order one’s behavior.”
• Infinitive (present active) in indirect command
(not indirect assertion) with accusative ὑμας
[humas] of general reference.
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Spiritual Death
• "To walk," in Scripture, includes all the manifestations of life,
inner and outer, seen and unseen.
• It does not merely express the outer, visible action.
• People are said to walk with God, which refers to the secret
fellowship of the soul with its Maker, more than to the outer
life.
• So here the walk which the apostle tells us to avoid is not
only the visible actions which characterize the Gentiles, but
also the inner life which the outer actions reveal. (Hodge)
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Eph 4:17 - Vanity
• In vanity of their mind (ἐν ματαιοτητι του νοος
αὐτων [en mataiotēti tou noos autōn]).
• In emptiness (from ματαιος [mataios], late and rare
word.) of their intellect [nous]).
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Eph 4:17 - Vanity
• Μετιοτης = emptiness, the vacuum created
in the soul by negative volition toward God.
• False doctrine, religion, legalism, the
emphasis upon the details of life, mental
attitude sins, etc. are sucked into the soul.
This is an Unbeliever frantically searching
for happiness.
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Eph 4:17 - Vanity
• A vacuum is created in the mentality of the
soul. Negative volition in the νους sucks in
false doctrine and kooky thinking.
• As an unbeliever, negative toward God, you
will be miserable; and your soul will be a
vacuum which will suck in every false
doctrine and empty promise of happiness.
• The mind of the unbeliever is like a vacuum
cleaner looking for some form of pseudohappiness dirt to pick up.
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Eph 4:17 - Vanity
• 17 So this I say and solemnly testify in [the
name of] the Lord [as in His presence],
• that you must no longer live as the heathen
(the Gentiles) do in their
• vanity, perverseness [in the folly, and
emptiness] (mataiotes) of their minds
(nous).
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Spiritual Death: Eph 4:18
• 18being darkened in their understanding,
alienated from the life of God because of the
ignorance that is in them, because of the
hardness of their heart;
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Spiritual Death: Eph 4:18
• In v. 17: a person on negative volition toward God
is suffering a vacuum of the mind (νους), called
ματιοτης.
• You have a mind where you do your thinking.
• The Appraisal Process is δισνοια.
• There is darkness in the Appraisal Process: false
happiness, emphasis on the details of life, religion;
and it goes through cosmos diabolicus and picks
up all the false concepts like a vacuum.
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Eph 4:18 - Darkened
• Ephesians 4:18Being darkened
(ἐσκοτωμενοι ὀντες [eskotōmenoi ontes]).
Periphrastic perfect passive participle of
σκοτοω [skotoō], old verb from σκοτος
[skotos] (darkness), in N.T. only here and
Rev. 9:2; 16:10. In their understanding (τῃ
διανοιᾳ [tēi dianoiāi]). Locative case.
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Eph 4:18 (Darkness)
• σκοτόω, 

1. Usage.The masc.

σκότος
obscurity, darkness.
• Meaning.The whole range of meaning may
be understood in terms of the basic sense:
darkness, not in connection with its optical
effect,
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but experienced as an enveloping
sphere and described in its significance for
existence, i.e., as a hindrance to movement
and action, to foresight, as the sphere of
objective peril and subjective anxiety.
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Eph 4:18 (Darkness)
• If light is the sphere of true potentiality (φῶς),
cutting off from light, going into the dark, means
death .
• Death is dark, In Hom. σκότος is almost always
the encompassing darkness of death, Hades is
dark as the realm of the dead
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and the place of
punishment:
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shadowy existence in it is no true
life. The underworld already projects into the
present life.
• The dark can affect man in the form of
blindness.
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Eph 4:18 (Darkness)
• For the Greek sight is quite simply the possibility
of life and self-orientation in it.
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This helps us to
understand the transition from a literal to a
transferred use in the case of both φῶς and
σκότος:
• 1. Darkness as an objective situation is
concealment, obscurity, and as a subjective
attitude secrecy, deception;
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• 2. it is the obscurity of a thing or a speaker;
19
and
• 3. it is a lack of knowledge or insight, i.e., error.
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Eph 4:18 (Darkness)
• Darkness as it is experienced can serve to
describe the human situation (Jer. 13:16),
especially as life is lived in this world, in the
sphere of brightness (light == life), or, where there
is greater reflection, of the ordered alternation of
brightness and darkness → 429, 18 ff.
• Darkness denotes the whole range of what is
harmful, or evil-in the sense of the threat to life, of
what is bad for me, as well as in that of moral evil,
or fatal.
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Eph 4:18 (Darkness)
• Darkness is also an expression for captivity (Ps. 107:10 ff.), evil (Ps.
44:19; Job 19:8; 22:10 f.; 30:26), and wickedness (Ps. 10:7 ff.; 11:2;
74:20; 82:5).
• Cosmologically the idea of the underworld merges into that of the
ocean depths; both are dark spheres of non-being. The world of the
dead is not depicted as it is in Homer.
• Most instructive in this regard is Ez. 32:17-32. Similarly Job 10:20-22
declares: As light means happiness and life, so darkness means
disaster and death. Hence the realm of the dead is the land of
darkness.
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Eph 4:18 (Darkness)
• Death is a complete termination with no return to
the light and with not the least spark of life.
• It is also characterised as the supreme terror,
especially as darkness represents something
dreadful for the Israelites.
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The psalmist feels
that he is already cast into it, Ps. 88:6, 12; Job
17:12 f. The expression has, of course, become a
figure of speech and is no longer to be taken
mythically in the strict sense.
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Eph 4:18 - Darkness
• "Darkness" is the "shadow of Death"
• Matthew 4:16 (AMP)
• 16 The people who sat (dwelt enveloped) in
darkness have seen a great Light, and for
those who sat in the land and shadow of
death Light has dawned.
•
• Luke 1:79 (AMP)
• 79 To shine upon and give light to those who
sit
in darkness andLWBC
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the shadow of death,29 to
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direct and guide our feet in a straight line into
Eph 4:18 - Darkness
• (4:18) “Darkened” is the perfect participle of
skotoō (σu954 οu964 οu969 ), “to darken or blind
the mind.” The perfect tense speaks of a process
completed in past time having present results.
Paul uses the perfect tense here to show the
finished and permanent result of the blinding of the
mind by sin.
• “Understanding” is dianoia (δu953 αu957 οu953
α), “the mind as the faculty of understanding,
feeling, desiring.” The translation reads; “being
those who have been permanently blinded with
respect to the mind.”
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Eph 4:18 - Darkness
• 4:18 "being darkened in their understanding"
• This is a PERFECT PASSIVE PARTICIPLE. Their current
state of spiritual blindness (as is ours) is a result of (1)
supernatural temptation, (2) heretical influence, and (3)
personal choice.
• "excluded from the life of God" This is another PERFECT
PASSIVE PARTICIPLE. This refers to separation from the
OT covenant God and His promises (cf. 2:12).
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Eph 4:18 - Ignorance
• "because of the ignorance that is in them"
• This refers to self-willed ignorance (cf.
Romans 1:18ﾐ3:20).
• "because of the stubbornness of their
hearts"
• This is the abiding result of the fall (cf. Gen.
3; John 3:17-25).
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Eph 4:18
• 18 Their understanding, their Appraisal Process (dianoia)
is darkened (skotao) and their reasoning is beclouded .
• [They are] alienated (estranged, self-banished) from the life
of God [with no share in it]
• because of the ignorance (the want of knowledge and
perception, the willful blindness)
• that is deep-seated in them,
• due to their hardness (porosis) of heart (Kardia)
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Eph 4:18 - Understanding
• The thinking part of the mind is going to be
definitely hurt by the vacuum.
• The Vacuum of the Soul has only one "inlet"
from which to suck information - The Sin,
the Sin Nature residing in the Human Flesh.
• Having the understanding darkened.
Διανοια = thinking through, understanding.
This refers to the conscious part of the mind
where you do your actual thinking.
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Eph 4:18 - alienated
• This is described by being alienated,
described by απατριολα = to be alienated
from an ultimate source; to be estranged.
• If you have accepted the plan of God, you
are not estranged.
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Eph 4:18 - Alienated
• “Alienated” is apallotriō (ἀu960 αu955 λu959
τu961 ιu969 ), “to be estranged,” used of
those who have estranged themselves from
God. It means also, “to shut out from one’s
fellowship and intimacy.” Expositors says:
“Being in a state of moral darkness, they
also become alienated from the true life.”
The life of God is the life that God
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Eph 4:18 - Alienated
• It is possible to take ὀντες [ontes] with ἀｹ
ηλλοτριωμενοι [apēllotriōmenoi] (see 2:12)
which would then be a periphrastic perfect
passive participle.
• From the life of God (της ζωης του θεου [tēs
zōēs tou theou]). Ablative case (Ablative of
Source) ζωης [zōēs] after ἀｹηλλοτριωμενοι
[apēllotriōmenoi] (2:12).
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Eph 4:18 - Alienated
• John 3:3,5,6 (YLT) If any one may not be
born from above, he is not able to see the
Kingdom-reign of God;
• 5 he is not able to enter into the Kingdomreign of God;
• 6 that which hath been born of the flesh is
flesh, and that which hath been born of the
Spirit is spirit.
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Eph 4:18 - Alienated
• Eph 2:12 [Remember] that you were at that time
separated (living apart) from Christ [excluded from
all part in Him], utterly estranged and outlawed from
the rights of Israel as a nation, and strangers with
no share in the sacred compacts of the [Messianic]
promise [with no knowledge of or right in God’s
agreements, His covenants]. And you had no hope
(no promise); you were in the world without God.
•
• The Amplified Bible, Containing the Amplified Old
Testament and the Amplified New Testament. La
Habra, CA : The Lockman Foundation, 1987, S.
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Eph 4:18 - Ignorance
• Δια + the accusative = because of
ignorance. A total lack of understanding.
• Αγνοια = no knowledge, ignorance.
• Now there is a vanity of the soul, a vacuum
of the soul, and it sucks in any false
doctrine.
• This is why unbelievers get caught up in one
or more of the Happiness Attainment
Motivators of life.
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Eph 4:18 - Ignorance
• ἄγνοια, ἀγνωσία. 1. The Philosophical and Legal
Usage.ἄγνοια, meaning "ignoranceﾓ in all the
difference nuances of the Greek concept of
knowledge (→ γινώσκω), is used in the first
instance of ignorance of something specific. Yet
the term was obviously used in Greek earlier than
γνῶσις in an absolute sense to denote ignorance
generally in the sense of not knowing essentials
and therefore of being "uncivilised."
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Eph 4:18 - Ignorance
• In this sense it found its opposite not merely in γνῶσις but
especially in σοφία 
According to Diog. the Stoics teach
that ignorance is the basis of wickedness; the Stoic usage
has also penetrated the LXX in the modified sense that
absolute ἄγνοια is used of the state of heathenism, God
obviously being the object of ἀγν.
• Judaism could adopt this usage, for among the Rabbis we
find the view worked out that education and knowledge,
i.e., knowledge of the Torah and tradition, are the
presupposition of piety.
• In Wis. 13:1 it is used, like ἄγνοια elsewhere, to describe
the state of the Gentile world: ἀγνωσία θεοῦ.
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Eph 4:18 - Ignorance
• 2. The Dualistic Gnostic Usage of Hellenism:
• Both ἀγνωσία and ἄγνοια (also ἀγνοεῖν) are used quite
characteristically in the dualistic Gnostic language of
Hellenism, which offers a parallel to the Stoic usage and is
obviously influenced by it.
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The term ἀγνωσία now
signifies lack of the knowledge essential to the salvation of
the soul, i.e., the knowledge of God, of the fate of the soul
and of true direction for life (→ γινώσκω). Men are
entangled in such ἀγνωσία before they receive revelation,
i.e., before they believe, and so long as the intoxication of
the senses holds them captive. Hence ἀγνωσία is again
κακία (τῆς ψυχῆς), except that now this is not equated with
lack of culture, and we thus have a parallel to the Jewish
modification of Stoic usage.
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Eph 4:18 - Ignorance
• In the NT Stoic influence has been seen in the passages
already quoted from Ac. 17:30, 1 Pt. 1:14 and especially
Eph. 4:17 f. It is also plain in 1 C. 15:34. Early Christianity
could accept this usage to the extent that it expresses the
destiny of the world's alienation from God, its fallen estate,
and its dependence upon revelation, and therefore to the
extent that it rests on a view of man in which the idealistic
Greek understanding of man is broken.
• But the Christian usage is naturally not the same as the
Gnostic, since the ideas of sin and grace are very different.
For this reason it is characteristic that early Christianity, like
Hellenistic Judaism, could appropriate the language of the
Stoa, in which man's responsibility for his knowledge is
asserted.
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Eph 4:18 - Ignorance
• Because of the ignorance (δια την ἀγνοιαν
[dia tēn agnoian]). Old word from ἀγνοεω
[agnoeō], not to know. Rare in N.T. See Acts
3:17.
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Spiritual Death: Eph 4:18
•
• Romans 8:6 (AMP)
•
• 6 Now the mind of the flesh is death.
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Definition Resource
• Kittel, Gerhard (Hrsg.) ; Bromiley,
Geoffrey William (Hrsg.) ; Friedrich,
Gerhard (Hrsg.): Theological Dictionary
of the New Testament. electronic ed.
Grand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans, 1964c1976, S. 5:1022
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