The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians Part 20

Borne on the stream of his evil pa.s.sions, we saw "the old man" in his "former manner of life," hastening to the gulf of ruin. For the man renewed in Christ the stream of life flows steadily in the opposite direction, and with a swelling tide moves upward to G.o.d. His knowledge and love are always growing in depth, in refinement, in energy and joy.

Thus it was with the apostle in his advancing age. The fresh impulses of the Holy Spirit, the unfolding to his spirit of the mystery of G.o.d, the fellows.h.i.+p of Christian brethren and the interests of the work of the Church renewed Paul's youth like the eagle's. If in years and toil he is old, his soul is full of ardour, his intellect keen and eager; the "outward man decays, but the inward man is renewed day by day."

This new nature had a new birth. The soul reanimating itself perpetually from the fresh springs that are in G.o.d, had in G.o.d the beginning of its renovated life. We have not to create or fas.h.i.+on for ourselves the perfect life, but to _adopt_ it,--to realize the Christian ideal (ver.

24). We are called to put on the new type of manhood as completely as we renounce the old (ver. 22). The new man is there before our eyes, manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom we live henceforth.

When we "learn the Christ," when we have become His true disciples, we "put on" His nature and "walk in Him." The inward reception of His Spirit is attended by the outward a.s.sumption of His character as our calling amongst men.

Now, the character of Jesus is human nature as G.o.d first formed it. It existed in His thoughts from eternity. If it be asked whether St Paul refers, in verse 24, to the creation of Adam in G.o.d's likeness, or to the image of G.o.d appearing in Jesus Christ, or to the Christian nature formed in the regenerate, we should say that, to the apostle's mind, the first and last of these creations are merged in the second. The Son of G.o.d's love is His primeval image. The race of Adam was created in Christ (Col. i. 15, 16). The first model of that image, in the natural father of mankind, was marred by sin and has become "the old man" corrupt and peris.h.i.+ng. The new pattern replacing this broken type is the original ideal, displayed "in the likeness of sinful flesh"--wearing no longer the charm of childish innocence, but the glory of sin vanquished and sacrifice endured--in the Son of G.o.d made perfect through suffering.

Through all there has been only one image of G.o.d, one ideal humanity.

The Adam of Paradise was, within his limits, what the Image of G.o.d had been in perfectness from eternity. And Jesus in His human personality represented, under the changed circ.u.mstances brought about by sin, what Adam might have grown to be as a complete and disciplined man.

The qualities which the apostle insists upon in the new man are two: "_righteousness_ and _holiness_ [or _piety_] of the truth." This is the Old Testament conception of a perfect life, whose realization the devout Zacharias antic.i.p.ates when he sings how G.o.d has "shown mercy to our fathers, in remembrance of His holy covenant, ... that we being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life."

Enchanting vision, still to be fulfilled! "Righteousness" is the sum of all that should be in a man's relations towards G.o.d's law; "holiness" is a right disposition and bearing towards G.o.d Himself. This is not St Paul's ordinary word for holiness (_sanctification_, _sanct.i.ty_), which he puts so often at the head of his letters, addressing his readers as "saints" in Christ Jesus. That other term designates Christian believers as devoted persons, claimed by G.o.d for His own;[125] it signifies holiness as a calling. The word of our text denotes specifically the holiness of temper and behaviour--"that becometh saints." The two words differ very much as _devotedness_ from _devoutness_.[126]

A religious temper, a reverent mind marks the true child of grace. His soul is full of the loving fear of G.o.d. In the new humanity, in the type of man that will prevail in the latter days when the truth as in Jesus has been learnt by mankind, justice and piety will hold a balanced sway.

The man of the coming times will not be atheistic or agnostic: he will be devout. He will not be narrow and self-seeking; he will not be pharisaic and pretentious, practising the world's ethics with the Christian's creed: he will be upright and generous, manly and G.o.dlike.

FOOTNOTES:

[118] Quid si post ??t?? distinctionem ascribas? _Vos autem non ita_ (subaudi _facere convenit_), _qui didicistis_, etc.

[119] Comp. Numb. xii. 7; Ps. i. 4; Luke xxii. 26, for this Hebraistic turn of expression.

[120] Comp. Phil. iii. 2, 18; t.i.tus i. 16.

[121] See pp. 47, 83, 169, 189.

[122] ?st?? ????e?a ?? t? ??s??. The article with the proper name is most significant. It points to the definite image of Jesus, in His actual person, that was made familiar by the preaching of Paul and the other apostles.

[123] _L'Antechrist_, pp. i. ii. 1, 2. This is a powerful and impressive work, of whose value those who know only the _Vie de Jesus_ can have little conception. Renan's faults are many and deplorable; but he is a writer of genius and of candour. His rationalism teems with precious inconsistencies. One hears in him always the Church bells ringing under the sea, the witness of a faith buried in the heart and never silenced, to which he confesses touchingly in the Preface to his _Souvenirs_.

[124] ??a?e??s?a? d? t? p?e?at? t?? ???? ???, ?a? ??d?sas?a? t??

?a???? ?????p??, t?? ?at? Te?? ?t?s???ta.

[125] Comp. pp. 29, 30.

[126] It is important to distinguish the Greek adjectives ????? and ?s???, with their derivatives. See Cremer's _N. T. Lexicon_ on these words, and Trench's _N. T. Synonyms_, -- lx.x.xviii. Of the latter word, 1 Thess. ii. 10; 1 Tim. i. 9, ii. 8; 2 Tim. iii. 3; t.i.t. i. 8 are the only examples in St Paul.

CHAPTER XXI.

_DISCARDED VICES._

"Wherefore, having put away falsehood, 'speak ye truth each one with his neighbour': for we are members one of another.

"'Be ye angry, and sin not': let not the sun go down upon your provocation: neither give place to the devil.

"Let him that stole steal no more; but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have whereof to give to him that hath need.

"Let no worthless speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them that hear. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of G.o.d, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption.

"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as G.o.d also in Christ forgave you. Be ye therefore imitators of G.o.d, as beloved children; and walk in love, even as the Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to G.o.d for an odour of a sweet smell.

"But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as becometh saints; nor filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not befitting: but rather giving of thanks. For this ye know of a surety, that no fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and G.o.d. Let no man deceive you with empty words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of G.o.d upon the sons of disobedience."--EPH. iv. 25--v. 6.

The transformation described in the last paragraph (vv. 17-24) has now to be carried into detail. The vices of the old heathen self must be each of them replaced by the corresponding graces of the new man in Christ Jesus.

The peculiarity of the instructions given by the apostle for this purpose does not lie in the virtues enjoined, but in the light in which they are set and the motives by which they are inculcated. The common conscience condemns lying and theft, malice and uncleanness; they were denounced with eloquence by heathen moralists. But the ethics of the New Testament differed in many respects from the best moral philosophy: in its direct appeal to the conscience, in its vigour and decision, in the clearness with which it traced our maladies to the heart's alienation from G.o.d; but most of all, in the remedy which it applied, the new principle of faith in Christ. The surgeon's knife lays bare the root of the disease; and the physician's hand pours in the healing balm.

Let us observe at the outset that St Paul deals with the actual and pressing temptations of his readers. He recalls what they had been, and forbids them to be such again. The a.s.sociations and habits of former life, the hereditary force of evil, the atmosphere of Gentile society, and added to all this, as we discover from chapter v. 6, the persuasions of the sophistical teachers now beginning to infest the Church, tended to draw the Asian Christians back to Gentile ways and to break down the moral distinctions that separated them from the pagan world.

Amongst the discarded vices of the forsaken Gentile life, the following are here distinguished: _lying_, _theft_, _anger_, _idle speech_, _malice_, _impurity_, _greed_. These may be reduced to sins of temper, of word, and of act. Let us discuss them in the order in which they are brought before us.

1. "The falsehood"[127] of verse 25 is the ant.i.thesis of "the truth"

from which righteousness and holiness spring (ver. 24). In accepting the one, Paul's Gentile readers "had put off" the other. When these heathen converts became Christians, they renounced the great lie of idolatry, the system of error and deceit on which their lives were built. They have pa.s.sed from the realm of illusion to that of truth. "Now," the apostle says, "let your daily speech accord with this fact: you have bidden farewell to falsehood; _speak_ truth each with his neighbour."

The true religion breeds truthful men; a sound faith makes an honest tongue. Hence there is no vice more hateful than jesuitry, nothing more shocking than the conduct of those who defend what they call "the truth"

by disingenuous arts, by tricks of rhetoric and the s.h.i.+fts of an unscrupulous partizans.h.i.+p. "Will you speak unrighteously for G.o.d, and talk deceitfully for Him?" _As Christ's truth is in me_ cries the apostle, when he would give the strongest possible a.s.surance of the fact he wishes to a.s.sert.[128] The social conventions and make-believes, the countless simulations and dissimulations by which the game of life is carried on belong to the old man with his l.u.s.ts of deceit, to the universal lie that runs through all unG.o.dliness and unrighteousness, which is in the last a.n.a.lysis the denial of G.o.d.

St Paul applies here the words of Zechariah viii. 16, in which the prophet promises to restored Israel better days on the condition that they should "speak truth each with his neighbour, and judge truth and the judgement of peace in their gates. And let none of you," he continues, "imagine evil in his heart against his neighbour; and love no false oath. For all these things do I hate, saith the Lord." Such is the law of the New Covenant life. No doubt, St Paul is thinking of the intercourse of Christians with each other when he quotes this command and adds the reason, "For we are _members one of another_." But the word _neighbour_, as Jesus showed, has in the Christian vocabulary no limited import; it includes the Samaritan, the heathen man and publican. When the apostle bids his converts "Follow what is good towards one another, and towards all" (1 Thess. v. 15), he certainly presumes the neighbourly obligation of truthfulness to be no less comprehensive.

Believers in Christ represent a communion which in principle embraces all men. The human race is one family in Christ. For any man to lie to his fellow is, virtually, to lie to himself. It is as if the eye should conspire to cheat the hand, or the one hand play false to the other.

Truth is the right which each man claims instinctively from his neighbour; it is the tacit compact that binds together all intelligences. Without neighbourly and brotherly love perfect truthfulness is scarcely possible. "Self-respect will never destroy self-seeking, which will always find in self-interest a side accessible to the temptations of falsehood" (Harless).

2. Like the first precept, the second is borrowed from the Old Testament and shaped to the uses of the New. "_Be ye angry_, and sin not": so the words of Psalm iv. 4 stand in the Greek version and in the margin of our Revised Bible, where we commonly read, "Stand in awe, and sin not. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still." The apostle's further injunction, that anger should be stayed before nightfall, accords with the Psalmist's words; the calming effect of the night's quiet the apostle antic.i.p.ates in the approach of evening. As the day's heat cools and its strain is relaxed, the fires of anger should die down. With the Jews, it will be remembered, the new day began at evening. Plutarch, the excellent heathen moralist contemporary with St Paul, gives this as an ancient rule of the Pythagoreans: "If at any time they happened to be provoked by anger to abusive language, before the sun set they would take each other's hands and embracing make up their quarrel." If Paul had heard of this admirable prescription, he would be delighted to recognize and quote it as one of those many facts of Gentile life which "show the work of the law written in their hearts"

(Rom. ii. 15). The pa.s.sion which outlives the day, on which the angry man sleeps and that wakes with him in the morning, takes root in his breast; it becomes a settled rancour, prompting ill thoughts and deeds.

There is no surer way of tempting the devil to tempt us than to brood over our wrongs. Every cherished grudge is a "place given" to the tempter, a new entrenchment for the Evil One in his war against the soul, from which he may shoot his "fire-tipped darts" (vi. 16). Let us dismiss with each day the day's vexations, commending as evening falls our cares and griefs to the Divine compa.s.sion and seeking, as for ourselves, so for those who may have done us wrong forgiveness and a better mind. We shall rise with the coming light armed with new patience and charity, to bring into the world's turmoil a calm and generous wisdom that will earn for us the blessing of the peacemakers, who shall be called sons of G.o.d.

Still the apostle says: "_Be angry_, and sin not." He does not condemn anger in itself, nor wholly forbid it a place within the breast of the saint. Wrath is a glorious attribute of G.o.d,--perilous, indeed, for the best of men; but he who cannot be angry has no strength for good. The apostle knew this holy pa.s.sion, the flame of Jehovah that burns unceasingly against the false and foul and cruel. But he knew its dangers--how easily an ardent soul kindled to exasperation forgets the bounds of wisdom and love; how strong and jealous a curb the temper needs, lest just indignation turn to sin, and Satan gain over us a double advantage, first by the wicked provocation and then by the uncontrolled resentment it excites.

3. From anger we pa.s.s to _theft_.

The eighth commandment is put here in a form indicating that some of the apostle's readers had been habitual sinners against it. Literally his words read: "Let him _that steals_ play the thief no more." The Greek present participle does not, however, necessarily imply a pursuit now going on, but an habitual or characteristic pursuit, that by which the agent was known and designated: "Let the thief no longer steal!" From the lowest dregs of the Greek cities--from its profligate and criminal cla.s.ses--the gospel had drawn its converts (comp. 1 Cor. vi. 9-11). In the Ephesian Church there were converted thieves; and Christianity had to make of them honest workmen.

The words of verse 28, addressed to a company of thieves, vividly show the transforming effect of the gospel of Christ: "Let him toil, working with his hands what is good, that he may have wherewith to give to him that is in need." The apostle brings the loftiest motives to bear instantly upon the basest natures, and is sure of a response. He makes no appeal to self-interest, he says nothing of the fear of punishment, nothing even of the pride of honest labour. Pity for their fellows, the spirit of self-sacrifice and generosity is to set those pilfering and violent hands to unaccustomed toil. The appeal was as wise as it was bold. Utilitarianism will never raise the morally degraded. Preach to them thrift and self-improvement, show them the pleasures of an ordered home and the advantages of respectability, they will still feel that their own way of life pleases and suits them best. But let the divine spark of charity be kindled in their breast--let the man have love and pity and not self to work for, and he is a new creature. His indolence is conquered; his meanness changed to the n.o.ble sense of a common manhood. Love never faileth.

4. We have pa.s.sed from speech to temper, and from temper to act; in the warning of verses 29, 30 we come back to speech again.

We doubt whether _corrupt talk_ is here intended. That comes in for condemnation in verses 2 and 3 of the next chapter. The Greek adjective is the same that is used of the "_worthless_ fruit" of the "_worthless_ [_good-for-nothing_] tree" in Matthew xii. 33; and again of the "_bad_ fish" of Matthew xiii. 48, which the fisherman throws away not because they are corrupt or offensive, but because they are useless for food. So it is against _inane_, inept and useless talk that St Paul sets his face. Jesus said that "for _every idle word_ men must give account to G.o.d" (Matt. xii. 36).

Jesus Christ laid great stress upon the exercise of the gift of speech.

"By thy words," He said to His disciples, "thou shalt be justified, and by thy words condemned." The possession of a human tongue is an immense responsibility. Infinite good or mischief lies in its power. (With the tongue we should include the pen, as being the tongue's deputy.) Who shall say how great is the sum of injury, the waste of time, the irritation, the enfeeblement of mind and dissipation of spirit, the destruction of Christian fellows.h.i.+p that is due to thoughtless speech and writing? The apostle does not simply forbid injurious words, he puts an embargo on all that is not positively useful. It is not enough to say: "My chatter does n.o.body harm; if there is no good in it, there is no evil." He replies: "If you cannot speak to profit, be silent till you can."

Not that St Paul requires all Christian speech to be grave and serious.

Many a true word is spoken in jest; and "grace" may be "given to the hearers" by words clothed in the grace of a genial fancy and playful wit, as well as in the direct enforcement of solemn themes. It is the mere talk, whether frivolous or pompous--spoken from the pulpit or the easy chair--the incontinence of tongue, the flux of senseless, graceless, unprofitable utterance that St Paul desires to arrest: "let it not proceed out of your mouth." Such speech must not "escape the fence of the teeth." It is an oppression to every serious listener; it is an injury to the utterer himself. Above all, it "grieves the Holy Spirit."