A dark place
18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. (Ephesians 4:18–ESV)
Look how Paul paints the Gentile life. Their insight, their understanding of important things is diminished. Good choices depend upon good understanding.
Suppose you need to change a flat tire on your car. Let us consider but two important steps in that process. First, you have to jack the car up. Second, you have to take off the lug nuts. After these steps, the wheel will come off the car. What if you get the order backward and take the nuts off first? Or, suppose you do get the car jacked up, but then try to loosen the nuts by turning them clockwise. “Righty-loosey”? Nope. That is not going to work. It does not matter whether you understand this or not. Do it wrong and get a variety of bad.
Paul says that on the journey through life people who follow their inclinations rather than Christ’s do not live life with the right understanding. They walk in the twilight of a fading day. Their understanding is dimming; it is darkening. Do you like being lost? Do you like it when you are a tourist in a cave, and they turn out the lights on you? Life this way is life a dangerous way.
Alienated
Let us continue with the tire changing analogy. Usually, when the car begins to roll poorly, you deduce that your tire is flat. Driving on the rim will sort of work for a little while. Cars don’t do well on wheel rims alone, and eventually, you will grind to a halt. The other vehicles, with their inflated tires, keep flying on down the road. You, though, are separated from them. If you do not know how to change the tire, you will remain by the side of the road, alienated from the journey.
God has given life to each person, but you only complete the journey down life’s highway on his tires. People can and do try to drive on rims, but the sparks fly, and the rims grind. The engine works harder, and the journey falters. Sometimes the music of life is so loud in the car they may not know what is happening on the outside. Eventually, though, they do. Even if they can change their tires, they will never catch up with the rest of the cars.
Personal ignorance
Look at how Paul describes the origins of this situation. Ignorance alienates them from life after God’s fashion. Knowledge is not in them; it is out of them; they lack this. They are ignorant.
Sometimes I want to blame God for the bad things in the world. “If you would not have created things this way…” go my whimpers. Look how Paul casts the situation. He indicates that ignorance was not the only option. When God left the human heart, he set a candle burning on the table: the conscience. Just like mice and squirrels have an instinct to run in wheels people have an instinctual knowledge of right and wrong.
People, though, love darkness rather than light. Knowing both they all too often choose the dark. In certain times they will grasp the good seeing it shine right beside the bad, but then harden their hearts and swim deeper in their sin. They get further from the surface; pressure builds up, things get colder, darker. As a result, they grind deeper and deeper into ignorance.
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