Is John Stott Right to Contrast the “Universal Human Condition” with Particular Corruption? (Ephesians 2:1)

Some more on John Stott and Ephesians…

1. Man by nature, or the human condition (verses 1-3)
Before we look in detail at this devastating description of the human condition apart from God, we need to be clear that it is a description of everybody. Paul is not giving us a portrait of some particularly decadent tribe or degraded segment of society, or even the extremely corrupt paganism of his own day. No, this is the biblical diagnosis of fallen man in fallen society everywhere. True, Paul begins with an emphatic you, indicating in the first place his Gentile readers in Asia Minor, but he quickly goes on to write (verse 3a) that we all once lived in the same way (thus adding himself and his fellow Jews), and he concludes with a reference to the rest of mankind (verse 3b). Here then is the apostle’s estimate of everyman without God, of the universal human condition. It is a condensation into three verses of the first three chapters of Romans, in which he argues his case for the sin and guilt first of pagans, then of Jews, and so of all mankind. Here he singles out three appalling truths about unredeemed human beings, which includes ourselves until God had mercy on us.

John Stott, The Message of Ephesians, The Bible Speaks Today (IVP) [Originally published as God’s New Society, 1979]

IF someone claimed that Ephesians 2:1ff had nothing to do with the universal human condition, of course, I would agree with John Stott over against such error.

But pointing out the degradation of a “particularly decadent tribe” or of a generation, is normally taken as a sign of the “human condition.” And it should be.

When we read,

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

Genesis 6:5–6 ESV

we are reading about the “general human condition” as revealed by how corrupt a generation became over time. Not everyone gets that bad and no one gets that bad instantly. The Canaanites were not exterminated in Abraham’s day because “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). Sodom and Gomorrah were a kind of an inverted “firstfruits” that arrived in Hell ahead of schedule. But Gospel preachers know that the judgement on Canaan was a foretaste of the sentence that awaits all humanity apart from redemption and grace. The “general condition of humanity” is revealed through the “particularly decadent tribe or degraded segment of society” that were the Canaanites in Joshua’s day.

Thus, when Jesus condemns the leaders in Judah in his generation (Matthew 23), it is to be taken, not as a special exception, but as an accurate representation of the human race. It is especially noteworthy that Jesus includes the “Diaspora” in what is going on:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

Matthew 23:15 ESV

This seems especially relevant because Stott appeals (correctly) to Romans 1-3. But Paul seems to have Jesus’ charge against the Jews in mind:

You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

Romans 2:15 ESV

In Acts, we find that the people of God outside of Judah have been learning magic. After Philip, Peter, and John encounter Simon “the Great,” a magician in Samaria, Paul has to deal with “a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet named Bar-Jesus” (Acts 13:6). Then, in Ephesus, we learn of seven “itinerant Jewish exorcists,” the sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva, who attempt to use Jesus’ name as a magic spell (Acts 19:11-20). This is then followed by a description of many who had practiced magic but now admitted it and renounced it.

But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

Acts 19:15-22 ESV

The question is, how do these things fit together? Were unbelieving pagans ashamed of magic and keping it secret? Or were they keeping this secret because these “Jews and Greeks” were not pagans but known worshippers of God who had begun to compromise their faith by dabbling in magic? Since the incident with the Jewish exorcists is the context of them repenting, it seems related. Both Jews and god-fearing Gentiles had gotten interested in the occult (like Simon Magus in Samaria and Bar-Jesus, but not openly). When these people heard about Jesus they believed, but they hadn’t yet come clean about their interest in magic. The power Paul displayed and the humiliation of the sons of Sceva reached their consciences and they publicly repented and repudiated their sin.

So the Jews and god-fearing Gentiles in the Mediterranean world were arguably involved in compromise, unbelief, and sin, just like the Jews whom Jesus confronted. And Jesus didn’t just confront them over the “universal human condition,” but on how they were displaying the worst of it: “Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers” (Matthew 23:32 ESV). And again:

Finally he sent his son to them, saying, “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, “This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.” And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

Matthew 21:37–39 ESV

Stott was right to appeal to Romans 1-3. Paul, however, doesn’t point to verses supporting the “universal human condition” (such as First Kings 8.46; Psalm 130.4; 143.2; Proverbs 20.9; Ecclesiastes 7.20). He points to sins that spread through Israel (and the nations) without involving every person in history.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen

Romans I:18-25

Even the homosexuality described in Romans 1:26-27 is only distinctively Gentile with regard to females. Male homosexuality was a common practice in Judah from the time of Rehoboam. Asa (1 Kings 15:12) and then Jehoshaphat (1 Kings 22:46) stopped the practice but Judah returned to it. Finally, Josiah put an end to the practice (2 Kings 22:46; 23:7). Furthermore, this sin was directly tied to idolatry, just as in Romans 1:18ff.

Now Rehoboam the son of Solomon reigned in Judah. Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city that the LORD had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, to put his name there. His mother’s name was Naamah the Ammonite. And Judah did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins that they committed, more than all that their fathers had done. For they also built for themselves high places and pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree, and there were also male cult prostitutes in the land. They did according to all the abominations of the nations that the LORD drove out before the people of Israel.

I Kings 14:21-24

What is more, Israel’s slide into idolatry and sexual perversion was started by Solomon! (1 Kings 11:1-8). His temples to other gods were never destroyed until Josiah, when it was too late for Judah as an independent nation:

And the king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Sidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites.

2 Kings 23:13 ESV

So we have in Israel the ultimate case of wisdom (Solomon) being replaced with folly, just as the Apostle Paul describes (Romans 1:21-23).

But this description of humanity in Romans 1-3 reveals the universal human condition through the corruption of Paul’s and Christ’s own generation. Indeed, God’s wrath was provoked to the point that God revealed it… on Jesus!

But now the God’s righteousness has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—God’s righteousness through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, through faithfulness. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Romans 3:21-26

Romans is more detailed than Ephesians and deals with objections to the Gospel that Paul isn’t facing in Ephesians. But Stott was right to see them covering the same history and thus having similar implications. Not every Jew or Gentile dabbled in extreme sins. But the way tribes, nations, and entire generations became corrupt demonstrated a problem in the human condition that no one could solve. Like (but worse than) Israel in exile, the entire world was “dead” and only Jesus could save us and solve our problem by taking that death on himself.