Ephesians 4:18

Unbelievers' minds are darkened and cut off from God's life because of ignorance and hardened hearts. Sin is rooted in a moral, not merely intellectual, blindness.

Cross-references · 24

• Matt 13:15For this people’s heart has grown callous; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.’
• Eph 2:12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.
• Rom 1:21–23For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and darkened in their foolish hearts.
• John 12:40“He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so that they cannot see with their eyes, and understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them.”
• 1 Th 4:5not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God;
• 2 Cor 4:4The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
• Jas 4:4You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.
• Col 1:21Once you were alienated from God and were hostile in your minds, engaging in evil deeds.
• 1 Jn 2:11But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness. He does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
• Gal 4:8Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods.
• Rom 8:7–8because the mind of the flesh is hostile to God: It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.
• Rom 11:25I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you will not be conceited: A hardening in part has come to Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.
• Acts 17:30Although God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, He now commands all people everywhere to repent.
• Rom 1:28Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
• Rom 2:19if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those in darkness,
• Ps 74:20Consider Your covenant, for haunts of violence fill the dark places of the land.
• Dan 5:20But when his heart became arrogant and his spirit was hardened with pride, he was deposed from his royal throne, and his glory was taken from him.
• Isa 44:18–20They do not comprehend or discern, for He has shut their eyes so they cannot see and closed their minds so they cannot understand.
• Isa 46:5–8To whom will you liken Me or count Me equal? To whom will you compare Me, that we should be alike?
• Acts 26:17–18I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them
• Ps 115:4–8Their idols are silver and gold, made by the hands of men.
• 1 Cor 1:21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.
• Mark 3:5Jesus looked around at them with anger and sorrow at their hardness of heart. Then He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out, and it was restored.
• 2 Cor 3:14But their minds were closed. For to this day the same veil remains at the reading of the old covenant. It has not been lifted, because only in Christ can it be removed.

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