The following is an excerpt on Eph 4 from JE.

“You should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God.”

Ephesians 4:17-18

The lusts of the human heart—prejudicing it in favor of sinful practices to which those lusts tend, and in which they delight—stir up carnal reason and cause persons, with all the subtlety of which they are capable, to invent pleas and arguments to justify such practices. When people are very strongly inclined and tempted to any wicked practice, and conscience troubles them about it, they will rack their brains to find out arguments to stop the mouth of conscience and make themselves believe that they may lawfully proceed in that practice.