<p>4:18 <i>Being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart</i>- The language of darkening and hardening could suggest that &quot;the Gentiles&quot; in :17 refer to those who have left the Lord's way. Perhaps those who left were labelled &quot;the Gentiles&quot; as a kind of technical term in the early church. Their &quot;ignorance&quot; was not natural ignorance, but the ignorance that comes from a darkening and hardening of the heart, which resulted in an alienated position. These people had stopped &quot;feeling&quot; and had given themselves over to immorality (:19). This is all the language of those who leave one way of life for another, rather than those who had never known the way of righteousness. Paul has prayed that the eyes of the Ephesians will be enlightened- and yet the work of the Holy Spirit in achieving this is matched by &quot;an evil spirit from the Lord&quot; of the type which pushed king Saul into a downward spiral, and which hardened Pharaoh's heart because he himself hardened his heart. &quot;The life of God&quot; would then refer to the gift of the Spirit which these people had been given at baptism, but they were now alienated from it. The life given by God is the concept used by John to describe what Paul would term the gift of the Holy Spirit; for John's writings speak of the eternal life given by God into the heart of the believers, the power to live now as we shall eternally live. The Corinthians were given the Spirit but were not spiritual (1 Cor. 3:1), and the burden of Paul's writings is that we are to make use of the potential of the Spirit which we have within us. Those who leave the faith are alienated from that potential life or spirit within them.</p>