The Expositor's Bible: Ephesians Part 21

The witness of the Holy Spirit is the seal of G.o.d's possession in us;[129] it is the a.s.surance to ourselves that we are His sons in Christ and heirs of life eternal. From the day it is affixed to the heart, this seal need never be broken nor the witness withheld, "until the day of redemption." Dwelling within the Church as the guard of its communion, and loving us with the love of G.o.d, the Spirit of grace is hurt and grieved by foolish words coming from lips that He has sanctified. As Israel in its ancient rebellions "vexed His Holy Spirit"

(Isai. lxiii. 10), so do those who burden Christian fellowship and who enervate their own inward life by speech without worth and purpose. As His fire is quenched by distrust (1 Thess. v. 19), so His love is vexed by folly. His witness grows faint and silent; the soul loses its joyous a.s.surance, its sense of the peace of G.o.d. When our inward life thus declines, the cause lies not unfrequently in our own heedless speech. Or we have listened willingly and without reproof to "words that may do hurt," words of foolish jesting or idle gossip, of mischief and backbiting. The Spirit of truth retires affronted from His desecrated temple, not to return until the iniquity of the lips is purged and the wilful tongue bends to the yoke of Christ. Let us grieve before the Holy Spirit, that He be not grieved with us for such offences. Let us pray evermore: "Set a watch, O Jehovah, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips."

5. In his previous reproofs the apostle has glanced in various ways at love as the remedy of our moral disorders and defects. Falsehood, anger, theft, misuse of the tongue involve disregard of the welfare of others; if they do not spring from positive ill-will, they foster and aggravate it. It is now time to deal directly with this evil that a.s.sumes so many forms, the most various of our sins and companion to every other: "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing be put away from you, with all malice."

The last of these terms is the most typical. _Malice_ is badness of disposition, the aptness to envy and hatred, which apart from any special occasion is always ready to break out in bitterness and wrath.

_Bitterness_ is malice sharpened to a point and directed against the exasperating object. _Wrath_ and _anger_ are synonymous, the former being the pa.s.sionate outburst of resentment in rage, the latter the settled indignation of the aggrieved soul: this pa.s.sion was put under restraint already in verses 26, 27. _Clamour_ and _railing_ give audible expression to these and their kindred tempers. Clamour is the loud self-a.s.sertion of the angry man, who will make every one hear his grievance; while the railer carries the war of the tongue into his enemy's camp, and vents his displeasure in abuse and insult.

These sins of speech were rife in heathen society; and there were some amongst Paul's readers, doubtless, who found it hard to forgo their indulgence. Especially difficult was this when Christians suffered all manner of evil from their heathen neighbours and former friends; it cost a severe struggle to be silent and "keep the mouth as with a bridle"

under fierce and malicious taunts. Never to return evil for evil and railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing,--this was one of the lessons most difficult to flesh and blood.

_Kindness_ in act, _tenderheartedness_ of feeling are to take the place of malice with its brood of bitter pa.s.sions. Where injury used to be met with reviling and insult retorted in worse insult, the men of the new life will be found "forgiving one another, even as G.o.d in Christ forgave" them. Here we touch the spring of Christian virtue, the master motive in the apostle's theory of life. The cross of Jesus Christ is the centre of Pauline ethics, as of Pauline theology. The sacrifice of Calvary, while it is the ground of our salvation, supplies the standard and incentive of moral attainment. It makes life _an imitation of G.o.d_.

The commencement of the new chapter at this point makes an unfortunate division; for its first two verses are in close consecution with the last verse of chapter iv. By kindness and pitifulness of heart, by readiness to forgive, G.o.d's "beloved children" will "show themselves imitators" of their Father. The apostle echoes the saying of his Master, in which the law of His kingdom was laid down: "Love your enemies, and do good, and lend never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and you shall be called children of the Highest: for He is kind to the thankless and evil. Be ye therefore pitiful, as your Father is pitiful"

(Luke vi. 35, 36). Before the cross of Jesus was set up, men could not know how much G.o.d loved the world and how far He was ready to go in the way of forgiveness. Yet Christ Himself saw the same love displayed in the Father's daily providence. He bids us imitate Him who makes His sun shine and His rain fall on the just and unjust, on the evil and the good. To the insight of Jesus, nature's impartial bounties in which unbelief sees only moral indifference, spoke of G.o.d's compa.s.sion; they proceed from the same love that gave His Son to taste death for every man.

In chapter iv. 32-v. 2 the Father's love and the Son's self-sacrifice are spoken of in terms precisely parallel. They are altogether one in quality. Christ does not by His sacrifice persuade an angry Father to love His children; it is the Divine compa.s.sion in Christ that dictates and carries into effect the sacrifice. At the same time it was "an _offering_ and a _sacrifice_ to G.o.d." G.o.d is love; but love is not everything in G.o.d. Justice is also Divine, and absolute in its own realm. Law can no more forgo its rights than love forget its compa.s.sions. Love must fulfil all righteousness; it must suffer law to mark out its path of obedience, or it remains an effusive, ineffectual sentiment, helpless to bless and save. Christ's feet followed the stern and strait path of self-devotion; "He humbled Himself and became obedient," He was "born under law." And the law of G.o.d imposing death as the penalty for sin, which shaped Christ's sacrifice, made it acceptable to G.o.d. Thus it was "an odour of a sweet smell."

Hence the love which follows Christ's example, is love wedded with duty.

It finds in an ordered devotion to the good of men the means to fulfil the all-holy Will and to present in turn its "offering to G.o.d." Such love will be above the mere pleasing of men, above sentimentalism and indulgence; it will aim higher than secular ideals and temporal contentment. It regards men in their kinship to G.o.d and obligation to His law, and seeks to make them worthy of their calling. All human duties, for those who love G.o.d, are subordinate to this; all commands are summed up in one: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The apostle p.r.o.nounced the first and last word of his teaching when he said: _Walk in love, as the Christ also loved us._

6. Above all others, one sin stamped the Gentile world of that time with infamy,--its _uncleanness_.

St Paul has stigmatized this already in the burning words of verse 19.

There we saw this vice in its intrinsic loathsomeness; here it is set in the light of Christ's love on the one hand (ver. 2), and of the final judgement on the other (vv. 5, 6). Thus it is banished from the Christian fellowship in every form--even in the lightest, where it glances from the lips in words of jest: "Fornication and all uncleanness, let it not even be named among you." Along with "filthiness, foolish talk and jesting" are to be heard no more. Pa.s.sing from verse 2 to verse 3 by the contrastive _But_, one feels how repugnant are these things to the love of Christ. The perfume of the sacrifice of Calvary, so pleasing in heaven, sweetens our life on earth; its grace drives wanton and selfish pa.s.sions from the heart, and destroys the pestilence of evil in the social atmosphere. l.u.s.t cannot breathe in the sight of the cross.

The "good-for-nothing speech" of chapter iv. 29 comes up once more for condemnation in the _foolish speech_ and _jesting_ of this pa.s.sage. The former is the idle talk of a stupid, the latter of a clever man. Both, under the conditions of heathen society, were tainted with foulness.

Loose speech easily becomes low speech. Wit, unchastened by reverence, finds a tempting field for its exercise in the delicate relations of life, and displays its skill in veiled indecencies and jests that desecrate the purer feelings, while they avoid open grossness.

St Paul's word for "jesting" is one of the singular terms of this epistle. By etymology it denotes a _well-turned_ style of expression, the versatile speech of one who can touch lightly on many themes and aptly blend the grave and gay. This social gift was prized amongst the polished Greeks. But it was a faculty so commonly abused, that the word describing it fell into bad odour: it came to signify banter and persiflage; and then, still worse, the kind of talk here indicated,--the wit whose zest lies in its flavour of impurity. "The very profligate old man in the _Miles Gloriosus_ of Plautus (iii. I. 42-52), who prides himself, and not without reason, upon his wit, his elegance and refinement [_cavillator lepidus_, _facetus_], is exactly the e?t??pe???.

And keeping in mind that e?t?ape??a, being only once expressly and by name forbidden in Scripture, is forbidden to Ephesians, it is not a little notable to find him urging that all this was to be expected from him, being as he was an Ephesian by birth:--

Post _Ephesi sum natus_; non enim in Apulia, non Animulae."[130]

In place of senseless prating and wanton jests--things unbefitting to a rational creature, much more to a saint--the Asian Greeks are to find in _thanksgiving_ employment for their ready tongue. St Paul's rule is not one of mere prohibition. The versatile tongue that disported itself in unhallowed and frivolous utterance, may be turned into a precious instrument for G.o.d's service. Let the fire of Divine love touch the jester's lips, and that mouth will show forth His praise which once poured out dishonour to its Maker and shame to His image in man.

7. At the end of the Ephesian catalogue of vices, as at the beginning (iv. 19), uncleanness is joined with _covetousness_, or _greed_.

This, too, is "not even to be named amongst you, as becometh saints."

_Money! property!_ these are the words dearest and most familiar in the mouths of a large cla.s.s of men of the world, the only themes on which they speak with lively interest. But Christian lips are cleansed from the service both of Belial and of Mammon. When his business follows the trader from the shop to the fireside and the social circle, and even into the Church, when it becomes the staple subject of his conversation, it is clear that he has fallen into the low vice of covetousness. He is becoming, instead of a man, a money-making machine, an "idolater" of

"Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From heaven."

The apostle cla.s.ses the covetous man with the fornicator and the unclean, amongst those who by their worship of the shameful idols of the G.o.d of this world exclude themselves from their "inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of G.o.d."

A serious warning this for all who handle the world's wealth. They have a perilous war to wage, and an enemy who lurks for them at every step in their path. Will they prove themselves masters of their business, or its slaves? Will they escape the golden leprosy,--the pa.s.sion for acc.u.mulation, the l.u.s.t of property? None are found more dead to the claims of humanity and kindred, none further from the kingdom of Christ and G.o.d, none more "closely wrapped" within their "sensual fleece" than rich men who have prospered by the idolatry of gain. Dives has chosen and won his kingdom. He "receives in his lifetime his good things"; afterwards he must look for "torments."

FOOTNOTES:

[127] ??? ?p???e??? t? ?e?d??. Despite the commentators, we must hold to it that _the lie_, _the falsehood_ is objective and concrete; not _lying_, or _falsehood_ as a subjective act, habit, or quality,--which would have been rather ?e?d?????a (comp. ???????a, v. 4; and 1 Tim. iv.

2, ?e?d??????), or t? ?e?d??. So in Rom. i. 25, t? ?e?d?? is "the [one great] lie" which runs through all idolatry; and in 2 Thess. ii. 11 it denotes "the lie" which Antichrist imposes on those ready to believe it,--viz., that he himself is G.o.d. Accordingly, we take the participle ?p???e??? to signify not what the readers are to do, but what they _had done_ in renouncing heathenism. The apostle requires consistency: "Since you are now of the truth, be truth-speaking men."

[128] 2 Cor. i. 18, 19, xi. 10.

[129] See ch. i. 13, 14, and 18 (last clause).

[130] Trench: _N. T. Synonyms_, -- x.x.xiv.

CHAPTER XXII.

_DOCTRINE AND ETHICS._

"We are members one of another....

"Let the thief labour ... that he may have whereof to give to him that hath need....

"Grieve not the Holy Spirit of G.o.d, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption....

"Forgive each other, even as G.o.d also in Christ forgave you. Be ye 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....

"No fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and G.o.d."--EPH. iv. 25-v. 6.

The homily that we have briefly reviewed in the last Chapter demands further consideration. It affords a striking and instructive example of St Paul's method as a teacher of morals, and makes an important contribution to evangelical ethics. The common vices are here prohibited on specifically Christian grounds. The new nature formed in Christ casts them off as alien and dead things; they are the sloughed skin of the old life, the discarded dress of the old man who was slain by the cross of Christ and lies buried in His grave.

The apostle does not condemn these sins as being contrary to G.o.d's law: that is taken for granted. But the legal condemnation was ineffectual (Rom. viii. 3). The wrath revealed from heaven against man's unrighteousness had left that unrighteousness unchastened and defiant.

The revelation of law, approved and echoed by conscience, taught man his guilt; it could do no more. All this St Paul a.s.sumes; he builds on the ground of law and its acknowledged findings.

Nor does the apostle make use of the principles of philosophical ethics, which in their general form were familiar to him as to all educated men of the day. He says nothing of the rule of nature and right reason, of the intrinsic fitness, the harmony and beauty of virtue; nothing of expediency as the guide of life, of the inward contentment that comes from well-doing, of the wise calculation by which happiness is determined and the lower is subordinated to the higher good. St Paul nowhere discountenances motives and sanctions of this sort; he contravenes none of the lines of argument by which reason is brought to the aid of duty, and conscience vindicates itself against pa.s.sion and false self-interest. Indeed, there are maxims in his teaching which remind us of each of the two great schools of ethics, and that make room in the Christian theory of life both for the philosophy of experience and that of intuition. The true theory recognizes, indeed, the experimental and evolutional as well as the fixed and intrinsic in morality, and supplies their synthesis.

But it is not the apostle's business to adjust his position to that of Stoics and Epicureans, or to unfold a new philosophy; but to teach the way of the new life. His Gentile disciples had been untruthful, pa.s.sionate in temper, covetous, licentious: the gospel which he preached had turned them from these sins to G.o.d; from the same gospel he draws the motives and convictions which are to shape their future life and to give to the new spirit within them its fit expression. St Paul has no quarrel with ethical science, much less with the inspired law of his fathers; but both had proved ineffectual to keep men from iniquity, or to redeem them fallen into it. Above them both, above all theories and all external rules he sets the law of the Spirit of life in Christ.

The originality of Christian ethics, we repeat, does not lie in its detailed precepts. There is not one, it may be, even of the n.o.blest maxims of Jesus that had not been uttered by some previous moralist.

With the New Testament in our hands, it may be possible to collect from non-Christian sources--from Greek philosophers, from the Jewish Talmud, from Egyptian sages and Hindoo poets, from Buddha and Confucius--a moral anthology which thus sifted out of the refuse of antiquity, like particles of iron drawn by the magnet, may bear comparison with the ethics of Christianity. If Christ is indeed the Son of man, we should expect Him to gather into one all that is highest in the thoughts and aspirations of mankind. Addressing the Athenians on Mars' Hill, the apostle could appeal to "certain of your own poets" in support of his doctrine of the Fatherhood of G.o.d. The n.o.blest minds in all ages witness to Jesus Christ and prove themselves to be, in some sort, of His kindred.

"They are but broken lights of Thee; And Thou, O Lord, art more than they!"

It is Christ in us, it is the personal fellowship of the soul with Him and with the living G.o.d through Him, that forms the vital and const.i.tutive factor of Christianity. Here is the secret of its moral efficacy. The Christ is the centre root and of the race; He is the image of G.o.d in which we were made. The life-blood of mankind flowed in Him as in its heart, and poured forth from Him as from its fountain in sacrifice for the common sin. Jesus gathered into Himself and restored the virtue of humanity broken into a thousand fragments; but He did much more than this. While He re-created in His personal character our lost manhood, by His death and resurrection He has gained for that ideal a transcendent power that seizes upon men and regenerates and transforms them. "With unveiled face beholding in the mirror the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image, [receiving the glory that we see] as from the Lord of the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18).

There is, therefore, an evangelical ethics, a Christian science of life.

"The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" has a system and method of its own. It has a rational solution and explanation to render for our moral problems. But its solution is given, as St Paul and as his Master loved to give it, in practice, not in theory. It teaches the art of living to mult.i.tudes to whom the names of ethics and moral science are unknown. Those who understand the method of Christ best are commonly too busy in its practice to theorize about it. They are physicians tending the sick and the dying, not professors in some school of medicine. Yet professors have their use, as well as pract.i.tioners. The task of developing a Christian science of life, of exhibiting the truth of revelation in its theoretical bearings and its relations to the thought of the age, forms a part of the practical duties of the Church and touches deeply the welfare of souls. For other times this work has been n.o.bly accomplished by Christian thinkers. Shall we not pray the Lord of the harvest that He will thrust forth into this field fit labourers; that He will raise up men mighty through G.o.d to overthrow every high thing that exalts itself against His knowledge, and wise to build up to the level of the times the great fabric of Christian ethics and discipline?

There emerge in this exhortation four distinct principles, which lay at the basis of St Paul's views of life and conduct.

I. In the first place, the fundamental truth of _the Fatherhood of G.o.d_, "Be imitators of G.o.d," he writes, "as beloved children." And in chapter iv. 24: "Put on the new man, which _was created after G.o.d_."