The Old Man’s Intellectual Deficiency

The Apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 4:17-19 that the true Christian no longer conducts himself (or herself) like the non-Christian. He then actually lists a few characteristics that can really be boiled down to three traits.

First, the Old Man is characterized by the vanity of their mind, that is, Intellectual Deficiency (v. 17b). You know, men are very clever. There is no denying their staggering advancements and accomplishments. Computer technology, for example, is utterly amazing. Today’s computers are capable of doing trillions of calculations per second, enabling us to accomplish tasks in minutes or seconds rather than months or days.

Yet, in all that genius, and many other examples we could list, the unregenerate man is still intellectually deficient. In other words, he thinks differently. Paul speaks here of the vanity of the mind. The Greek behind mind (nous) speaks of intellect, thought, reason, and understanding. Vanity (mataiotes) is that which is aimless, futile, empty, fruitless, and worthless. Men were smart in Paul’s day and even before that. Even in our day, for example, engineers can’t figure out how the Egyptians built the pyramids, how they could have designed them and how they moved stones weighing several tons. Still Paul says men’s minds are vain.

Second Timothy 3:7 sums it up best: “Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Does that not say it perfectly? Men are smart, ever coming up with new technology, inventing clever devices. But while clever, he is foolish, while smart, he is stupid, for “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Ps. 14:1).

One commentator illustrates our text by picturing a soap bubble. It’s perfectly symmetrical, colorful, and pretty, but it bursts and leaves nothing. Many people are living such a life. When the bubble bursts, there is nothing left. All the accomplishments of man’s cleverness, all the benefits it brought are in the end nothing because they leave out God and are only temporal.

The Greek for vanity (mataiotes) appears only two other places in the New Testament. In Romans 8:20, Paul uses it to describe the misery of nature, that, “The creature was made subject to vanity.” Peter used it to describe apostates, that they “are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest . . . they speak great swelling words of vanity” (II Pet. 2:17-18). In the end, all man’s thinking is aimless and futile because it is totally of self, without regard for God.

As one Greek authority comments on our text: “According to Eph. 4:17, mataiotēs is the characteristic of the pagan way of thought and life. In ingratitude man forsakes God, the fountain of life. In his thought he takes counsel only for himself, and in carrying out his vain thoughts he thwarts himself and the world he lives in.”

Likewise, as the Greek 4^th Century expositor Chrysostom wrote: “That is called ‘vain,’ which is bare and purposeless, which is of no use . . . What then, tell me, is the end? Corruption. Let us put on clothing and raiment. And what is the result? Nothing. Such are the lives of the Greeks. They philosophized, but in vain. They made a show of a life of hardship, but of mere hardship, not looking to any beneficial end, but to vainglory, and to honor from the many. But what is the honor of the many? It is nothing.”

While technology is certainly useful, while it certainly makes life easier, even it is empty because God is ignored. Further, man will do anything and think it’s alright to do. Left to his own aimless thoughts, he recognizes no absolutes.