Ephesians 2
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[
a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.
Why Calvinists are wrong:
1) As for
you, you were dead in
your transgressions and sins...
Emphasis is personal sin, not inherited sin.
2) Paul affirms that all of us “were. . . children of wrath.” The verb emetha (“were”) is an imperfect tense, middle voice form. The imperfect tense describes on-going action as viewed in the past.
Thus, here it depicts the
style of life which had characterized these saints prior to their conversion. Had the apostle intended to convey the notion of inherited sinfulness he would have stated BORN children of wrath.
Salmon, S. D. F.
Expositor’s Greek Testament. Vol. 3. Ed. W. Robertson Nicoll. New York: George H. Doran Company.
3) It is possible that the King James Version, and most subsequent translations, reflect a Calvinistic bias in the rendition, “by nature children of wrath.” The Greek word phusei rendered “nature” in our common versions can denote “a mode of feeling and acting which by long habit has become nature” (Thayer, 660).
Clearly, these people by
habitual practice had become worthy of divine wrath. McCord’s translation suggests that the Ephesians had “by custom” become children of wrath.
Therefore “Nature” >>>>
Habitual Practice.
Winer contended that their trespasses and sins had made them “natural children of wrath” (270). His understanding of the Greek are consistent with the immediate context of this passage and the tenor of the Bible as a whole.
Winer, G. B. 1825. A Treatise on the Grammar of New Testament Greek. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.
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