Charles Ellicott Commentary Ephesians 4:19

"who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness." — Ephesians 4:19 (ASV)

Who being past feeling . . .—We note that St. Paul, passing lightly over the intellectual loss, dwells on the moral with intense and terrible emphasis. They are (he says) past feeling; or, literally, carrying on the metaphor of callousness, they have lost the capacity of pain—the moral pain which is the natural and healthful consequence of sin against our true natures.

Consequently, losing in this their true humanity, they give themselves over to lasciviousness. The word used here (as also in Mark 7:22; Romans 13:13; 2 Corinthians 12:21; Galatians 5:19) signifies a lust devoid of all sense of decency, recklessly and grossly animal.

Hence, its result is not only to work out uncleanness of every kind but to do so with greediness—with a reckless delight in foulness for its own sake. The union of this brutality of sensual sin with intellectual acuteness and aesthetic culture was the most horrible feature of that corrupt Greek civilization, tainted with Oriental grossness, of which he was especially writing.