<p>2:2 <i>In which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, according to the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience</i>- The transformation of the believer from dead in sins to alive in Christ is by his Spirit. But this Spirit is antithetical to the spirit of the world, whereby sin and selfishness are the spirit which shapes all thought and action.</p><p>&ldquo;The prince of the power of the air&rdquo; is one of the references in Ephesians which specifically refers to problems in Ephesus. This clearly alludes to the mythological concepts of Zoroaster &ndash; the kind of thing which Paul&rsquo;s readers in Ephesus once believed. Paul says that they once lived under &ldquo;the prince of the power of the air&rdquo;. In the same verse, Paul defines this as &ldquo;the spirit (attitude of mind) that&hellip; works&rdquo; in the natural man. Previously they had believed in the pagan concept of a heavenly spirit&ndash;prince; now Paul makes the point that actually the power which they were formally subject to was that of their own evil mind. Thus the pagan idea is alluded to and spoken of, without specifically rebuking it, whilst showing the truth concerning sin.</p><p>But Paul re-casts the &quot;prince of the air&quot; as essentially referring to the life of the flesh, and thereby makes his specific allusion to a problem in Ephesus relevant to all believers (see on :1).&nbsp; &ldquo;Walking&rdquo; (i.e. living) according to the prince of the power of the air, is defined in :3 as living according to the lust of our fleshly mind. The &ldquo;lusts of our flesh&rdquo; come from within us (Mk. 7:21&ndash;23; James 1:14) not from anything outside of us. &ldquo;The prince&rdquo; is &ldquo;the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience&rdquo;. The spirit frequently refers to an attitude of mind (e.g. Dt. 2:30; Prov. 25:28; Is. 54:6; 61:3; Ez. 18:31; Mk.14:38; Lk. 2:40; 2 Cor. 2:13; 12:18; Eph. 4:23). This is confirmed by :3 &ndash; such peoples&rsquo; lives are controlled by &ldquo;fulfilling the lusts of our flesh (which come from our heart &ndash; James 1:14), fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind&rdquo;. Fleshly people do not allow their lives to be controlled by a physical &ldquo;prince&rdquo; outside of them, but by following their fleshly desires which are internal to their minds. A physical being cannot exist as a &ldquo;spirit&rdquo; in the sense of an intangible essence. A spirit does not have flesh and bones, i.e. a physical body (Lk. 24:39); therefore because &ldquo;the prince&rdquo; is a &ldquo;spirit&rdquo;, this must be a figurative expression, rather than referring to a physical being. The &ldquo;spirit&rdquo; or attitude of mind is a figurative prince, as sin is a figurative paymaster (Rom. 6:23). This passage (and :11) speaks of their former Gentile lives. 1 Pet. 4:3 speaks of life before conversion as: &ldquo;In the time past we wrought the will of the Gentiles&hellip; we walked in <i>lusts</i>&rdquo;. Their own flesh was their &ldquo;prince&rdquo;. Thus walking according to the prince of the air is parallel with walking in the flesh (:11). The more common antithesis to walking in spirit is walking after the <i>flesh</i> &ndash; here termed &ldquo;the course of this world&rdquo;. George Lamsa, a native speaker of Aramaic, understands &ldquo;the prince of the power of the air&rdquo; to be the dynamic equivalent of the Arabic / Aramaic <i>resh shultana</i>, which he claims would&rsquo;ve been understood as meaning simply &lsquo;the head of the government&rsquo;, with no intended reference to the literal air (George Lamsa, <i>New Testament Light</i> (San Francisco: Harper &amp; Row) p. 24). So the allusion could be to how they had lived under Roman or Jewish spiritual domination, which they were now liberated from in Christ.</p><p>Athanasius argued that the death of Jesus cleansed the air where the demons / fallen angels now live, and therefore physically opened up a way for supposed immortal souls to find a way into Heaven (See Nathan K. Ng, <i>The Spirituality of Athanasius </i>(Bern: Lang, 2000)). Not only was all this unBiblical, it reflects a literalism which reduces God to a being hopelessly bound by physicality. In short, this kind of thinking arose from a basic lack of faith in God as the Almighty, who doesn&rsquo;t need to build bridges over problems which men have created for Him in their own minds. It should be noted that the idea of saying &ldquo;Bless you&rdquo; when someone sneezes derives from Athanasius&rsquo; idea that demons can become so small that they enter a person from the literal air. This is what happens if we insist that the Devil was thrown out of heaven and some of his angels are still in the literal air &ndash; it&rsquo;s literalism gone wrong.</p><p>Verse 1 defines the &ldquo;you&rdquo; as the believers at Ephesus who had formerly been dead in sins. Verses 2 and 3 then express the reason for this in four parallel ways:<br />(a) &ldquo;...you walked according to the course of this world&rdquo; <br />(b) &ldquo;...according to the prince of the power of the air&rdquo;<br />(c) &ldquo;...the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience&rdquo;<br />(d) &ldquo;...were by nature the children of wrath&rdquo;.</p><p>The &ldquo;whole world lays in wickedness (1 Jn. 5:19). &ldquo;The children of disobedience&rdquo; show this by their lives &ldquo;fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind&rdquo; (vv. 1,3). Thus &ldquo;the prince of the power of the air&rdquo; is re-cast as our evil, fleshly mind, i.e. the real Devil. There are many links between Ephesians and Colossians. One of the clearest is between these verses and Colossians 3:3&ndash;7. Colossians 3:3 speaks of us having died to sin as Ephesians 2:1 does. Verses 5&ndash;7 amplify what are &ldquo;the lusts of the flesh&rdquo; which &ldquo;the children of disobedience&rdquo; fulfil: &ldquo;Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things&rsquo; sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: in the which you also walked some time, when you walked in them&rdquo;. These things of v. 5 are &ldquo;the works of the flesh&rdquo; mentioned in Galatians 5:19. These things come from within us, not from anything outside (Mk. 7:21&ndash;23). Therefore the prince of the power of the air, which causes these things, is again redefined as our evil desires.</p>