The Children of Wrath—

I. Are spiritually dead.—“Who were dead in trespasses and sins” (ver. 1). The only life of which they are conscious, and in which all their activities are displayed, is a life of sin. They have no conception of a higher life. They are capable of a higher life and know it not. The spiritual, the higher form of life, is entombed and buried under a mass of sin. It is inert, dead, in process of corruption. Dante refers to such as, “These wretched ones who never were alive; I ne’er forsooth could have believed it true, that death had slain such myriads of mankind.” Sin first benumbs, then paralyses, and finally slays our spiritual sensibilities. The soul dead to God shall not be insensible to the reality of the Divine wrath.

II. Are under the spell of an unseen evil power (ver. 2).—“The children of disobedience” are those who are withholding their allegiance from the Lord Jesus Christ, all those who are unconverted; not mere gross sinners and open profligates, but such persons as are strangers to the spiritual life, although they may have many excellencies of nature and disposition. The apostle plainly asserts that before he was brought to the knowledge of Christ he was under the influence of the “prince of the power of the air.” This is a startling statement. It is more startling still if we consider what sort of man Paul was before his conversion—how excellent, how earnest, how devoted to the external duties of a religious life. But startling as it is, it is the apostle who makes it of himself; and the inference is unavoidable, that all that mass of persons who are out of Christ and who are not partakers of His resurrection life, who have given their hearts to the world and not to the Saviour, are just the captives of Satan, and, without knowing it, are doing his lusts and accomplishing his will. The disease is not less deadly because it eats out the life without inflicting pain. The pestilence is not the less awful because it comes without giving notice of its presence, borne on the balmy breezes of the bright, cloudless, summer eve. The vampire does not do its work the less effectually because it fans its victim with its perfumed wings into an unconscious slumber whilst it drains away his life-blood and leaves him a corpse. And Satan is not the less real or the less destructive because he works his fatal work upon our souls without our even being conscious of his approach.

III. Are prompted to sin by the instincts of a depraved nature (ver. 3).—There is the twofold province of a man’s being, by the lower of which he is allied to the brute creation, and by the higher to the angels, both being under the dominion of sin. There is the corrupt body of flesh, and in a higher sense there is the fleshly mind. Every unregenerate person lives more or less in one or the other of these provinces—either in the sphere of fleshly lusts or in the sphere of the fleshly mind. Either he lives simply an animal life, and is in consequence a fleshly man, whose life consists only in fulfilling the desires of his lower nature; or he lives in the higher province of the mind, but it is nevertheless the mind in darkness, in uncertainty, in doubt—mind and heart alike alienated from God through the unbelief which is in them. It would not do to argue from this that our passions are our sins. Sin is not in appetite but lies in the insubordination of appetite. There is need of a curbing and governing will, and our discipline consists in subjugating the lower to the higher. A due balance between the two regions must be preserved, and it is when passion becomes master and the lower invades the province of the higher, when the subordinate becomes insubordinate, that appetite and passion become sin. The flesh is the great rival of the Spirit, for it asserts that dominion over a man which the Holy Spirit alone ought to occupy, and these two are constantly opposed to each other. The depravity within, working in the thoughts of the mind and the passions of the flesh, prompts to a course of disobedience and sin.

IV. Are exposed to condemnation.—“And were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness and ungodliness of men.” The apostle shows that even the Jews, who boasted of their birth from Abraham, were by natural birth equally children of wrath, as the Gentiles whom the Jews despised on account of their birth from idolaters. The phrase “children of wrath” is a Hebraism, meaning we are objects of God’s wrath from childhood, in our natural state, as being born in sin, which God hates. Wrath abides on all who disobey the Gospel in faith and practice.

Lessons.—1. Sin when it is finished bringeth forth death. 2. Your adversary the devil walketh about seeking whom he may devour. 3. Because there is wrath, beware!

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES.

Ver. 1. A State of Sin a State of Death.

I. There are some respects in which the death of the soul does not resemble the death of the body.—1. It does not involve the extinction of faculties and affections. The dead body moves not, nor feels, nor acts. The dead soul still thinks and feels and wills. 2. It does not exempt from responsibility. The dead soul is commanded to repent and believe and obey. 3. It is not incapable of restoration on earth. The spiritually dead may become spiritually alive here.

II. There are some respects in which the death of the soul does resemble the death of the body.—1. In its cause. Sin. 2. In its extent. All men without exception. 3. In its consequences. The dead are utterly insensible, they fulfil none of the functions or duties of the living, they can be reanimated only by Divine power. Address: (1) Those who are spiritually dead. (2) Those who have reason to believe that they are spiritually alive.—G. Brooks.