Ephesians 2:2

“wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience”

“Wherein”: “In which” (NASV). “In the midst of which” (Gspd). In which sins and trespasses. “Trespasses and sins were the domain in which they had their habitual course of life in their former heathen days” (Gr. Ex. N.T. p. 283). “Once”: They had stopped the practice of habitual sin (1 John 3:9). “Walked”: “Once lived” (Gspd). “Passed your lives” (Mon). See Colossians 3:7. “It was not just an isolated failure here or there in their lives that separated them from God; it was their whole way of life” (Boles p. 220). “According to”: Even sinners follow, submit and obey someone (Matthew 6:24; Romans 6:13; Romans 6:16). “The course of this world”: “Ways of the world” (TCNT). “Lived under the control of the present age” (Gspd). '”Lived in accordance with the spirit of this present world” (Wms). “Denotes. life shaped by the goddess standards and aims which result in moral ruin” (Erdman p. 49). “As we might say---secularism. So both words age and world express. whole social value-system. It permeates, indeed dominates, non-Christian society and holds people in captivity. People tend not to have. mind of their own, but to surrender to the pop-culture and television and the glossy magazines. It is. cultural bondage. We were all the same until Jesus liberated us. We ‘drifted along the stream of this world's ideas of living' (JPB)” (Stott p. 73). “It is life lived in the way this present age lives it. That is to say, it is life lived on the world's standards and with the world's values. The essence of the world's standard is that it sets self in the center; the essence of the Christian standard is that it sets Christ and others in the center. The essence of the worldly man is, as someone has said, that ‘ He knows the price of everything and the value of nothing ". (Barclay p. 99). The sinner is not. “free-thinker”, but rather they are conforming to. definite course. We get into sin, when we start listening and believing the wrong ideas (James 1:14). “According to”: The present age, the opinions and views of the world, did not originate with mankind. The Christian listens and submits to God's viewpoint, the non-Christian is listening to the devil's viewpoint. “Prince of the powers of the air”:. reference to Satan (John 12:31; John 14:30; John 16:11; 2 Corinthians 4:4). “Powers”: The term here means mastery, authority or jurisdiction. “Collective, the whole empire of evil spirits” (Vincent p. 374) (Ephesians 6:12). “Of the air”: “Some of the early church fathers connected of the air with storms and atmospheric disturbances, which supposedly were caused by the devil” (Boles p. 221). Others felt that the literal air above our heads was literally filled with evil spirits.. more logical view is the following:

“The atmosphere or climate of thought which influences people's minds against God” (Bruce p. 283). “ The moral atmosphere of the world, the air that men breathe, the ‘spirit of the age', is vitiated by Satan with evil” (Erdman p. 50). “It is preferable to understand of the air as explained by the phrase which follows it in the text itself” (Boles p. 221).

“Of the spirit that now worketh”: “The Devil is operating. He is not still or indifferent. When we adopt the spirit which characterizes him, we become like him” (Caldwell p. 71). The Devil works in people, not by personally indwelling them, but by getting them to listen to his lies. Falsehood does work or makes progress in people. When you get. hold some false concept, in any form, it never stays still (2 Timothy 3:13). Some people naively think that they can reject God, but they can still maintain. proper grasp of reality. Every false concept can be tied to the devil (John 8:44; 1 Timothy 4:1). Every opponent to the truth is. servant and slave of the devil (2 Timothy 2:25). Hence, such people need to be pitied and every effort needs to be made in the attempt to save them. The devil is. real being! “Such things as psychology, social pressures, and poverty are simply not an adequate explanation of evil. ‘Simple folk are often better theologians than the learned of the schools'” (Coffman p. 141). “The sons of disobedience”: People characterized by disobedience “Defines those persons of whom it can be said that disobedience is the characteristic feature of their relation to God” (Erdman p. 50) (Ephesians 5:6).