Ephesians 4:17

The apostle having gone through his exhortation to mutual love, unity, and concord, in the foregoing verses, there follows in these an exhortation to Christian purity and holiness of heart and life, and that both more general (Eph 4:17-24) and in several particular instances, Eph 4:25-32. This is solemnly introduced: "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord; that is, seeing the matter is as above described, seeing you are members of Christ's body and partakers of such gifts, this I urge upon your consciences, and bear witness to as your duty in the Lord's name, and by virtue of the authority I have derived from him." Consider,

I. The more general exhortation to purity and holiness of heart and life.

1. It begins thus, "That you henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk - that for the time to come you do not live, and behave yourselves, as ignorant and unconverted heathens do, who are wholly guided by an understanding employed about vain things, their idols and their worldly possessions, things which are no way profitable to their souls, and which will deceive their expectations." Converted Gentiles must not live as unconverted Gentiles do. Though they live among them, they must not live like them. Here,

(1.) The apostle takes occasion to describe the wickedness of the Gentile world, out of which regenerate Christians were snatched as brands out of the burning. [1.] Their understandings were darkened, Eph 4:18. They were void of all saving knowledge; yea, ignorant of many things concerning God which the light of nature might have taught them. They sat in darkness, and they loved it rather than light: and by their ignorance they were alienated from the life of God. They were estranged fRom. and had a dislike and aversion to, a life of holiness, which is not only that way of life which God requires and approves, and by which we live to him, but which resembles God himself, in his purity, righteousness, truth, and goodness. Their wilful ignorance was the cause of their estrangement from this life of God, which begins in light and knowledge. Gross and affected ignorance is destructive to religion and godliness. And what was the cause of their being thus ignorant? It was because of the blindness or the hardness of their heart. It was not because God did not make himself known to them by his works, but because they would not admit the instructive rays of the divine light. They were ignorant because they would be so. Their ignorance proceeded from their obstinacy and the hardness of their hearts, their resisting the light and rejecting all the means of illumination and knowledge. [2.] Their consciences were debauched and seared: Who being past feeling, Eph 4:19. They had no sense of their sin, nor of the misery and danger of their case by means of it; whereupon they gave themselves over unto lasciviousness. They indulged themselves in their filthy lusts; and, yielding themselves up to the dominion of these, they became the slaves and drudges of sin and the devil, working all uncleanness with greediness. They made it their common practice to commit all sorts of uncleanness, and even the most unnatural and monstrous sins, and that with insatiable desires. Observe, When men's consciences are once seared, there are no bounds to their sins. When they set their hearts upon the gratification of their lusts, what can be expected but the most abominable sensuality and lewdness, and that their horrid enormities will abound? This was the character of the Gentiles; but,

(2.) These Christians must distinguish themselves from such Gentiles: You have not so learned Christ, Eph 4:20. It may be read, But you not so; you have learned Christ. Those who have learned Christ are saved from the darkness and defilement which others lie under; and, as they know more, they are obliged to live in a better manner than others. It is a good argument against sin that we have not so learned Christ. Learn Christ! Is Christ a book, a lesson, a way, a trade? The meaning is, "You have not so learned Christianity - the doctrines of Christ and the rules of life prescribed by him. Not so as to do as others do. If so be, or since, that you have heard him (Eph 4:21), have heard his doctrine preached by us, and have been taught by him, inwardly and effectually, by his Spirit." Christ is the lesson; we must learn Christ: and Christ is the teacher; we are taught by him. As the truth is in Jesus. This may be understood two ways: either, "You have been taught the real truth, as held forth by Christ himself, both in his doctrine and in his life." Or thus, "The truth has made such an impression on your hearts, in your measure, as it did upon the heart of Jesus." The truth of Christ then appears in its beauty and power, when it appears as in Jesus.

2. Another branch of the general exhortation follows in those words, That you put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man, etc., Eph 4:22-24. "This is a great part of the doctrine which has been taught you, and which you have learned." Here the apostle expresses himself in metaphors taken from garments. The principles, habits, and dispositions of the soul must be changed, before there can be a saving change of the life. There must be sanctification, which consists of these two things: - (1.) The old man must be put off. The corrupt nature is called a man, because, like the human body, it consists of divers parts, mutually supporting and strengthening one another. It is the old man, as old Adam, from whom we derive it. It is bred in the bone, and we brought it into the world with us. It is subtle as the old man; but in all God's saints decaying and withering as an old man, and ready to pass away. It is said to be corrupt; for sin in the soul is the corruption of its faculties: and, where it is not mortified, it grows daily worse and worse, and so tends to destruction. According to the deceitful lusts. Sinful inclinations and desires are deceitful lusts: they promise men happiness, but render them more miserable, and if not subdued and mortified betray them into destruction. These therefore must be put off as an old garment that we should be ashamed to be seen in: they must be subdued and mortified. These lusts prevailed against them in their former conversation, that is, during their state of unregeneracy and heathenism. (2.) The new man must be put on. It is not enough to shake off corrupt principles, but we must be actuated by gracious ones. We must embrace them, espouse them, and get them written on our hearts: it is not enough to cease to do evil, but we must learn to do well. "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind (Eph 4:23); that is, use the proper and prescribed means in order to have the mind, which is a spirit, renewed more and more." And that you put on the new man, Eph 4:24. By the new man is meant the new nature, the new creature, which is actuated by a new principle, even regenerating grace, enabling a man to lead a new life, that life of righteousness and holiness which Christianity requires. This new man is created, or produced out of confusion and emptiness, by God's almighty power, whose workmanship it is, truly excellent and beautiful. After God, in imitation of him, and in conformity to that grand exemplar and pattern. The loss of God's image upon the soul was both the sinfulness and misery of man's fallen state; and that resemblance which it bears to God is the beauty, the glory, and the happiness, of the new creature. In righteousness towards men, including all the duties of the second table; and in holiness towards God, signifying a sincere obedience to the commands of the first table; true holiness in opposition to the outward and ceremonial holiness of the Jews. We are said to put on this new man when, in the use of all God's appointed means, we are endeavouring after this divine nature, this new creature. This is the more general exhortation to purity and holiness of heart and life.

II. The apostle proceeds to some things more particular. Because generals are not so apt to affect, we are told what are those particular limbs of the old man that must be mortified, those filthy rags of the old nature that must be put off, and what are the peculiar ornaments of the new man wherewith we should adorn our Christian profession. 1. Take heed of lying, and be ever careful to speak the truth (Eph 4:25): "Wherefore, since you have been so well instructed in your duty, and are under such obligations to discharge it, let it appear, in your future behaviour and conduct, that there is a great and real change wrought in you, particularly by putting away lying." Of this sin the heathen were very guilty, affirming that a profitable lie was better than a hurtful truth; and therefore the apostle exhorts them to cease from lying, from every thing that is contrary to truth. This is a part of the old man that must be put off; and that branch of the new man that must be put on in opposition to it is speaking the truth in all our converse with others. It is the character of God's people that they are children who will not lie, who dare not lie, who hate and abhor lying. All who have grace make conscience of speaking the truth, and would not tell a deliberate lie for the greatest gain and benefit to themselves. The reason here given for veracity is, We are members one of another. Truth is a debt we owe to one another; and, if we love one another, we shall not deceive nor lie one to another. We belong to the same society or body, which falsehood or lying tends to dissolve; and therefore we should avoid it, and speak truth. Observe, Lying is a very great sin, a peculiar violation of the obligations which Christians are under, and very injurious and hurtful to Christian society. 2. "Take heed of anger and ungoverned passions. Be you angry, and sin not," Eph 4:26. This is borrowed from the Septuagint translation of Psa 4:4, where we render it, Stand in awe, and sin not. Here is an easy concession; for as such we should consider it, rather than as a command. Be you angry. This we are apt enough to be, God knows: but we find it difficult enough to observe the restriction, and sin not. "If you have a just occasion to be angry at any time, see that it be without sin; and therefore take heed of excess in your anger." If we would be angry and not sin (says one), we must be angry at nothing but sin; and we should be more jealous for the glory of God than for any interest or reputation of our own. One great and common sin in anger is to suffer it to burn into wrath, and then to let it rest; and therefore we are here cautioned against that. "If you have been provoked and have had your spirits greatly discomposed, and if you have bitterly resented any affront that has been offered, before night calm and quiet your spirits, be reconciled to the offender, and let all be well again: Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. If it burn into wrath and bitterness of spirit, O see to it that you suppress it speedily." Observe, Though anger in itself is not sinful, yet there is the upmost danger of its becoming so if it be not carefully watched and speedily suppressed. And therefore, though anger may come into the bosom of a wise man, it rests only in the bosom of fools. Neither give place to the devil, Eph 4:27. Those who persevere in sinful anger and in wrath let the devil into their hearts, and suffer him to gain upon them, till he bring them to malice, mischievous machinations, etc. "Neither give place to the calumniator, or the false accuser" (so some read the words); that is, "let your ears be deaf to whisperers, talebearers, and slanderers." 3. We are here warned against the sin of stealing, the breach of the eighth commandment, and advised to honest industry and to beneficence: Let his that stole steal no more, Eph 4:28. It is a caution against all manner of wrong-doing, by force or fraud. "Let those of you who, in the time of your gentilism, have been guilty of this enormity, be no longer guilty of it." But we must not only take heed of the sin, but conscientiously abound in the opposite duty: not only not steal, but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing that is good. Idleness makes thieves. So Chrysostom, To gar kleptein argias estin - Stealing is the effect of idleness. Those who will not work, and who are ashamed to beg, expose themselves greatly to temptations to thievery. Men should therefore be diligent and industrious, not in any unlawful way, but in some honest calling: Working the thing which is good. Industry, in some honest way, will keep people out of temptation of doing wrong. But there is another reason why men ought to be industrious, namely, that they may be capable of doing some good, as well as that they may be preserved from temptation: That he may have to give to him that needeth. They must labour not only that they may live themselves, and live honestly, but they may distribute for supplying the wants of others. Observe, Even those who get their living by their labour should be charitable out of their little to those who are disabled for labour. So necessary and incumbent a duty is it to be charitable to the poor that even labourers and servants, and those who have but little for themselves, must cast their mite into the treasury. God must have his dues and the poor are his receivers. Observe further, Those alms that are likely to be acceptable to God must not be the produce of unrighteousness and robbery, but of honesty and industry. God hates robbery for burnt-offerings. 4. We are here warned against corrupt communication; and directed to that which is useful and edifying, Eph 4:29. Filthy and unclean words and discourse are poisonous and infectious, as putrid rotten meat: they proceed from and prove a great deal of corruption in the heart of the speaker, and tend to corrupt the minds and manners of others who hear them; and therefore Christians should beware of all such discourse. It may be taken in general for all that which provokes the lusts and passions of others. We must not only put off corrupt communications, but put on that which is good to the use of edifying. The great use of speech is to edify those with whom we converse. Christians should endeavour to promote a useful conversation: that it may minister grace unto the hearers; that it may be good for, and acceptable to, the hearers, in the way of information, counsel, pertinent reproof, or the like. Observe, It is the great duty of Christians to take care that they offend not with their lips, and that they improve discourse and converse, as much as may be, for the good of others. 5. Here is another caution against wrath and anger, with further advice to mutual love and kindly dispositions towards each other, Eph 4:31, Eph 4:32. By bitterness, wrath, and anger, are meant violent inward resentment and displeasure against others: and, by clamour, big words, loud threatenings, and other intemperate speeches, by which bitterness, wrath, and anger, vent themselves. Christians should not entertain these vile passions in their hearts not be clamorous with their tongues. Evil speaking signifies all railing, reviling, and reproachful speeches, against such as we are angry with. And by malice we are to understand that rooted anger which prompts men to design and to do mischief to others. The contrary to all this follows: Be you kind one to another. This implies the principle of love in the heart, and the outward expressions of it, in an affable, humble, courteous behaviour. It becomes the disciples of Jesus to be kind one to another, as those who have learned, and would teach, the art of obliging. Tender-hearted; that is, merciful, and having tender sense of the distresses and sufferings of others, so as to be quickly moved to compassion and pity. Forgiving one another. Occasions of difference will happen among Christ's disciples; and therefore they must be placable, and ready to forgive, therein resembling God himself, who for Christ's sake hath forgiven them, and that more than they can forgive one another. Note, With God there is forgiveness; and he forgives sin for the sake of Jesus Christ, and on account of that atonement which he has made to divine justice. Note again, Those who are forgiven of God should be of a forgiving spirit, and should forgive even as God forgives, sincerely and heartily, readily and cheerfully, universally and for ever, upon the sinner's sincere repentance, as remembering that they pray, Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Now we may observe concerning all these particulars that the apostle has insisted on that they belong to the second table, whence Christians should learn the strict obligations they are under to the duties of the second table, and that he who does not conscientiously discharge them can never fear nor love God in truth and in sincerity, whatever he may pretend to.

In the midst of these exhortations and cautions the apostle interposes that general one, And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, Eph 4:30. By looking to what precedes, and to what follows, we may see what it is that grieves the Spirit of God. In the previous verses it is intimated that all lewdness and filthiness, lying, and corrupt communications that stir up filthy appetites and lusts, grieve the Spirit of God. In what follows it is intimated that those corrupt passions of bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, and malice, grieve this good Spirit. By this we are not to understand that this blessed Being could properly be grieved or vexed as we are; but the design of the exhortation is that we act not towards him in such a manner as is wont to be grievous and disquieting to our fellow-creatures: we must not do that which is contrary to his holy nature and his will; we must not refuse to hearken to his counsels, nor rebel against his government, which things would provoke him to act towards us as men are wont to do towards those with whom they are displeased and grieved, withdrawing themselves and their wonted kindness from such, and abandoning them to their enemies. O provoke not the blessed Spirit of God to withdraw his presence and his gracious influences from you! It is a good reason why we should not grieve him that by him we are sealed unto the day of redemption. There is to be a day of redemption; the body is to be redeemed from the power of the grave at the resurrection-day, and then God's people will be delivered from all the effects of sin, as well as from all sin and misery, which they are not till rescued out of the grave: and then their full and complete happiness commences. All true believers are sealed to that day. God has distinguished them from others, having set his mark upon them; and he gives them the earnest and assurance of a joyful and glorious resurrection; and the Spirit of God is the seal. Wherever that blessed Spirit is as a sanctifier, he is the earnest of all the joys and glories of the redemption-day; and we should be undone should God take away his Holy Spirit from us.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

(17) This I say therefore.—The phrase “This I say” seems to be used by St. Paul in returning (so to speak) from some lofty aspiration or profound reasoning, in which some might not be able to follow him, to a solid, practical ground, which all may tread. (See, for example, 1Co_15:50.) Here he is not content to use this phrase simply, but he enforces it by the solemnity of the adjuration “I testify” (comp. Act_20:26; Gal_5:3), which properly means, “I call God to witness the truth of what I say”—a phrase found in express terms in Rom_1:9; 2Co_1:23; Php_1:8; 1Th_2:5. Nor was even this enough, for he adds “in the Lord”—that is, in the name, authority, and spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. The whole form is therefore one of peculiar force and solemnity.

The vanity of their mind.—In these words St. Paul describes the fundamental condition of heathenism. The “mind,” that is (as in Rom_7:23; Rom_7:25), the “inner man”—the spiritual intuition of invisible principles of truth and right, which is the true humanity—has become “subject to vanity” (Rom_8:20),—the vanity of which the Book of Ecclesiastes so often speaks. In losing the living conception of a living God, it has lost also the conception of the true object and perfection of human life; and so wanders on aimless, hopeless, reckless, as in a dream. With what absolute fidelity St. Paul describes the heathen world of his day, its history and its literature alike testify. Compare with the whole passage the picture drawn in Rom_1:21-32, “They became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened,” &c. The difference is that in the latter passage the prominent idea is mainly of “judicial blindness,” sent by God as a penalty on wilful apostasy from Him, whereas here St. Paul rather dwells on self-chosen blindness and hardness of heart.

[5. Practical Exhortation (Eph_4:17-21).

(1) THE NEW LIFE; first, taught in Christ and learning Christ; and secondly, regenerate in Him to the image of God (Eph_4:17-24).

(2) HENCE THE POWER OF CONQUEST OF SIN GENERALLY—

(a) Falsehood (Eph_4:25);

(b) Passionate anger (Eph_4:26-27);

(c) Dishonesty (Eph_4:28);

(d) Foulness of word (Eph_4:29-30);

(3) HENCE ITS POWER AGAINST THE SPECIAL BESETTING SINS OF—

(a) Bitterness and malice, unworthy of the love of Christ (Eph_4:31-32, and Eph_5:1-2);

(b) Fornication and lust, unworthy of the light of Christ (Eph_5:3-14);

(c) Recklessness and drunken excitement (Eph_5:15-21).]

(1) In Eph_4:17-24 we enter on the practical section of the Epistle, which, indeed, appears to begin in Eph_4:1, but is broken in upon by the magnificent digression of the doctrinal summary of Eph_4:4-16. It opens with a striking contrast of the past and the present—the life of the heathen in its “vanity,” with the two-fold result of blindness and callousness of soul; and the Christian life, which has in learning Christ found the secret of regeneration.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eph_4:17

This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.

Exhortation to converts

1. Ministers of the Word must both speak, and with protestation enforce, the ways of God.

2. We must do all good things in the Lords power.

3. Our estate which we have in Christ must avail with us to leave oar old ways.

4. We must not spend our time after grace as we did before.

(1) It is more to Gods dishonour, and our own danger, to sin after grace, for God will be sanctified in all that come near Him, or He will by His judgments sanctify Himself in them. The times of ignorance God does not so strictly look to.

(2) We should be worse servants to God and holiness, than we were to sin and the devil; for when we were in the flesh, we walked after the devil, and were free men from righteousness.

(3) The time of grace itself includes a persuasion, for it is a day wherein the Sun of Righteousness shines in our hearts, as the time before our conversion was a night. Now, the day is not for works of darkness, but of light.

(4) It is a great injustice to spend the time after grace in the lusts of our own hearts; for, would we not think ourselves wronged if, having hired one to work here or there, he should go loitering and wasting his time elsewhere?

5. Such as are called to faith, must not be like the world.

(1) Ministers must call off the godly from conforming to the world.

(2) We must not be afraid to be singular.

6. To walk after our vain minds is heathenish.

7. All the courses which the natural man can devise are vain. (Paul Bayne.)

Kept from mental vanity

A German writer says that the kings daughter had a very learned man come every day to instruct her in the sciences. He was very weak and sickly, dwarfed and deformed. One day the kings daughter said to him, How is it that you, a man with so much intelligence and such a wonderful intellect, should have such a miserable body? The teacher made no answer, but he said, Bring us some wine. The order was given, the wine was brought, and they drank it. He said, This is very pleasant wine; in which kind of vat do you keep it? She said, In an earthen vat. Oh, he said, it is strange that in such a beautiful palace as your father has he should have wine in an earthen vat. Why dont you put it in a gold or silver vat? The kings daughter said, So it shall be. One day the learned man was teaching the kings daughter, and he said, I am weary--bring me some wine. The wine was ordered. He tasted it; it was sour. He said, This is miserable wine. What is the matter with it? She said, I cannot understand it, for we have the wine in a golden vat. Ah! he said, thats whats the matter with it; thats what has spoiled and soured it. Now, he said, turning to the kings daughter, I will explain why God puts my mind in such a miserable body. Had He put my mind in a body that was golden, beautiful, and imposing, I should have been spoiled with vanity; but He put me in an earthen vessel, and so I have been kept humble. (Dr. Talmage.)

Vanity even in death

Dantons last words to Samson, the executioner, were, Thou wilt show my head to the people; it is worth showing. (Carlyles French Revolution.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eph 4:17-19. This I say, therefore — For your further instruction, how to walk worthy of your calling; (he returns to the subject which he began, Eph 4:1;) and testify in the Lord — In the name and by the authority of the Lord Jesus, that ye, being now happily brought into the Christian Church, and made partakers of all the privileges and advantages belonging to its members; henceforth walk not as other Gentiles — That ye live no longer as the unconverted heathen; in the vanity of their mind — Amused with the empty trifles of this world, and enslaved to low and mean pursuits, utterly unworthy of their rational and immortal nature; having the understanding darkened — With respect to all spiritual and divine things, which is the source of all foolish desires and pursuits; see Rom 1:21; being alienated from the life of God — Being estranged in affection, as well as in practice, from the divine and spiritual life, from all union with, and conformity to, the living and true God; or, from that noble principle of all piety and virtue, the life of God in the soul of man, forming it to the love, imitation, and service of him by whom it is implanted; through the ignorance — Of God and his will, and of their duty and happiness; that is inherent in them — Or natural to them, as fallen and depraved creatures; because of the blindness — Την πωρωσιν, the callousness, or insensibility; of their hearts — This is explained by Chrysostom, Whitby, and some other commentators, as referring to their Gentile state; but though there is no doubt but it partly refers to that, yet there can be no sufficient reason to limit such a description to dark and ignorant heathen; it is but too just a representation of all unregenerate men. Who being past feeling — The original word, απηλγηκοτες, is peculiarly significant, properly meaning, past feeling pain, or void of distress — Pain urges the sick to seek a remedy, and distress, the distressed to endeavour, if possible, to procure relief; which remedy or relief is little thought of where pain and distress are not felt. Thus, those who are hardened against all impressions of grief on account of their former sins, are not excited to seek either for the pardon of them or deliverance from them. Some MSS. read απηλπικοτες, hoping for nothing. These wicked men, disbelieving the resurrection of the body, and the immortality of the soul, have no hope of any happiness after this life, and therefore they have given themselves over — Have abandoned themselves freely, of their own accord; to lasciviousness — To wantonness, to unchaste imaginations and desires, words and actions; to work all uncleanness — Impurity of every kind; with greediness — The word εν πλεονεξια, thus rendered, is commonly used to denote covetousness; because the more the covetous man possesses, the more he desires. Hence the word is used (2Pe 2:14) to denote inordinate desire in general.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2. To be a Church in double contrast to the anti-Church of Gentilism, Eph_4:17 to Eph_5:21.

First Contrast—Sins of the spirit, Eph_4:17 to Eph_5:3.

a. In contrast with the Gentilism which you have left, Eph_4:17-19.

17. I say… and testify—I declare and protest.

Therefore—In view of your being the model Church described in the last paragraph. Other is omitted by the best readings. Thereby the apostle, by a new antithesis, holds his converts as not now Gentiles but Christians.

Walk—Note, Eph_4:1. This outward walk springs from internal pravation, located by St. Paul in mind, understanding, inner life, and heart.

Mind—Νους, equivalent to the spirit—the high intuitive faculty, the intellect in its ethical sphere, in which the theory of religion and the sense of conscientious morality dwell. Here should be the divine residence of eternal truth, God, Christ, and holiness. But with these Gentiles here is only vanity, which was a common Hebrew term for idolatry; and here with St. Paul it is a name for all the utter worthlessness of the apostate antitheism of Gentilism. And in this vanity of their highest region of intuition they walked. From that region was shed a haze and a darkness over the ground they walked.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

Eph_4:17. That ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk.—In this and the two following verses we have again the lurid picture of Eph_2:2-3 : “in the vanity of their mind.”

“The creature is their sole delight,

Their happiness the things of earth.”

Eph_4:18. Having the understanding darkened.—Remembering our Lord’s saying about the single eye and the fully illuminated body we might say, “If the understanding—by which all light should come—be darkened, ‘how great is that darkness’!” Because of the blindness.—R.V. “hardness.” The word describes the hard skin formed by constant rubbing, as the horny hand of a blacksmith.

Eph_4:19. Who being past feeling.—Having lost the “ache” which should always attend a violation of law. An ancient commentator uses the now familiar word “anæsthetes” to explain the phrase. Have given themselves over.—“Given” represents a word which often connotes an act of treason—and “themselves” is emphatic—“the most tremendous sacrifice ever laid on the altar of sin” (Beet). To lasciviousness.—“St. Paul stamps upon it the burning word ἀσέλγεια like a brand on the harlot’s brow” (Findlay). To work all uncleanness with greediness.—R.V. margin, “to make a trade of all uncleanness with covetousness.’ Their “sin’s not accidental, but a trade”; and a trade at which they work with a “desire of having more.”

Eph_4:20. No not so.—As differently as possible. The same mode of speech which led St. Paul to say to the Galatians, “Shall I praise you?… I praise you not”—i.e. “I blame you highly.”

Eph_4:21. If so be that ye have heard Him.—The emphasis is on “Him”—“assuming, that is, that it is He, and no other.”

Eph_4:22. That ye put off concerning the former conversation.—It is no “philosophy of clothes” inculcated here. It is a deliverance from “the body of death,” like stripping oneself of his very integument. Conversation.—R.V. “manner of life.” Which is corrupt.—R.V. much more strikingly—“waxeth corrupt.” St. Paul’s figure elsewhere is appropriate—“like a gangrene eating into the flesh.”

Eph_4:23-24. The stripping off being complete, and the innermost core of the man being renewed, the investiture may begin. The “habit” laid aside is never to be resumed, and the new robes, “ever white,” are not to be soiled. Righteousness and true holiness.—R.V. “Righteousness and holiness of truth.” See the “dealing truly” of Eph_4:15, R.V. margin.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Eph_4:17-24

A Thorough Moral Transformation—

I. Contrasted with a former life of sin.—

1. A state of self-induced mental darkness. “Having the understanding darkened, … because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph_4:18). Infidelity is more a moral than a mental obliquity. The mind is darkened because the heart is bad. Men do not see the truth because they do not want to see it. The light that would lead to righteousness and to God is persistently shut out.

2. A state of moral insensibility that abandoned the soul to the reckless commission of all kinds of sin.—“Who being past feeling have given themselves over … to work all uncleanness with greediness” (Eph_4:19). Sin is made difficult to the beginner. The barriers set up by a tender conscience, the warnings of nature, the teachings of providence, the light of revelation, the living examples of the good, have all to be broken down. Early transgressions are arrested by the remorse they occasion; but gradually the safeguards are neglected and despised, until the habit is acquired of sinning for the love of sin. A spirit of recklessness ensues, the reins are relaxed and then thrown upon the neck of the passions, and the soul is abandoned to the indulgence of all kinds of iniquity.

“We are not worst at once. The course of evil

Is of such slight source an infant’s hand

Might close its breach with clay;

But let the stream get deeper, and we strive in vain

To stem the headlong torrent.”

3. A state that rendered all mental activities worthless.—“Walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind” (Eph_4:17). The art of right thinking was lost. For the man that will not think, think clearly and justly, the calamities and the raptures of life, the blessing and the curse, have no meaning. They evoke neither gratitude nor fear. The beauties of nature, as they sparkle in the stars, or shine in the flowers, or gleam in the coloured radiance of the firmament, are unheeded. The voice of God that speaks in the events of daily life has no lesson for him. The senses, which are intended as the avenues of light and teaching to the soul, are dulled by inaction, clogged by supine indifference, and polluted and damaged by inveterate sin. When the reason is poisoned at its source, all its deductions are aimless and worthless.

II. Effected by the personal knowledge of the truth in Christ.—“But ye have not so learned Christ, … as the truth is in Jesus” (Eph_4:20-21). The gospel has introduced to the world the principles of a great moral change. It announces Christ as the light of the world—a light that shines through all the realms of human life. The diseased reason is restored to health, the intellectual faculties have now a theme worthy of their noblest exercise, and are made stronger and more reliable by being employed on such a theme, and the moral nature is lifted into a purer region of thought and experience. The world is to be transformed by the moral transformation of the individual, and that transformation is effected only by the truth and a personal faith in Christ.

III. Involves the renunciation of the corrupting elements of the former life.—“That ye put off … the old man, which is corrupt” (Eph_4:22). The inward change is evidenced by the outward life. The old man dies, being conquered by the new. Corruption and decay marked every feature of the old Gentile life. It was gangrened with vice. It was a life of fleshly pleasure, and could end in only one way—in disappointment and misery. The new moral order inaugurated by the gospel of Christ effected a revolution in human affairs, and the corrupting elements of the old order must be weeded out and put away. An excellent man in London kept an institution near the Seven Dials at his own expense. He spent his nights in bringing the homeless boys from the streets into it. When they came in he photographed them, and then they were washed, clothed, and educated. When he sent one out, having taught him a trade, he photographed him again. The change was marvellous, and was a constant reminder of what had been done for him. The change effected in us by the grace of God not only contrasts with our former life, but should teach us to hate and put away its corrupting sins.

IV. Evidenced in investing the soul with the new life divinely created and constantly receiving progressive renewal by the Spirit (Eph_4:23-24).—It is a continual rejuvenation the apostle describes; the verb is present in tense, and the newness implied is that of recency and youth, newness in point of age. But the new man to be put on is of a new kind and order. It is put on when the Christian way of life is adopted, when we enter personally into the new humanity founded in Christ. Thus two distinct conceptions of the life of faith are placed before our minds. It consists, on the one hand, of a quickening constantly renewed in the springs of our individual thought and will; and it is at the same time the assumption of another nature, the investiture of the soul with the divine character and form of its being. The inward reception of Christ’s Spirit is attended by the outward assumption of His character as our calling amongst men. The man of the coming times will not be atheistic or agnostic; he will be devout: not practising the world’s ethics with the Christian’s creed; he will be upright and generous, manly and God-like (Findlay).

Lessons.—

1. Religion is a complete renewal of the soul.

2. The soul is renewed by the instrumentality of the truth.

3. The renewal of the soul is the renewal of the outward life.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

Eph_4:17; Eph_4:19. The Gentile Life—a Warning.

I. The Gentiles walked in the vanity of their minds.—The false deities the Gentiles worshipped are called vanities. The prevalence of idolatry is a melancholy proof of the depravity of human nature. Atheism and idolatry proceed not from the want of sufficient evidence that there is one eternal, all-perfect Being, but from that corruption of heart which blinds the understanding and perverts the judgment.

II. The heathens were darkened in their understanding.—Not in respect of natural things, for in useful arts and liberal sciences many of them greatly excelled; but in respect of moral truth and obligation. Their darkness was owing, not solely to the want of revelation, but to the want of an honest and good heart. Religion consists not merely in a knowledge of and assent to divine truths, but in such conformity of heart to their nature and design, and in such a view of their reality and importance as will bring the whole man under their government.

III. They were alienated from the life of God.—They walked according to the course of the world, not according to the will of God. Their alienation was through ignorance. Particular wrong actions may be excused on the ground of unavoidable ignorance. This ignorance had its foundation in the obstinacy and perverseness of the mind. Such a kind of ignorance, being in itself criminal, will not excuse the sins which follow from it.

IV. They were become past feeling.—This is elsewhere expressed by a conscience seared with a hot iron. By a course of iniquity the sinner acquires strong habits of vice. As vicious habits gain strength, fear, shame, and remorse abate. Repeated violations of conscience blunt its sensibility and break its power.

V. They gave themselves over to lasciviousness.—If we break over the restraints the gospel lays upon us, and mock the terrors it holds up to our view, we not only discover a great vitiosity of mind, but run to greater lengths in the practice of iniquity. As water, when it has broken through its mounds, rushes on with more impetuous force than the natural stream, so the corruptions of the human heart, when they have borne down the restraints of religion, press forward with more violent rapidity, and make more awful devastation in the soul than where these restraints had never been known.

Reflections.—

1. How extremely dangerous it is to continue in sin under the gospel.

2. You have need to guard against the beginnings of sin.

3. Christians must be watchful lest they be led away by the influence of corrupt example.

4. Religion lies much in the temper of the mind.—Lathrop.

Eph_4:17-18. The Life of God.

I. There is but one righteousness, the life of God; there is but one sin, and that is being alienated from the life of God.—One man may commit different sorts of sins from another—one may lie, another may steal; one may be proud, another may be covetous; but all these different sins come from the same root of sin, they are all flowers off the same plant. And St. Paul tells us what that one root of sin, what that same devil’s plant, is, which produces all sin in Christian heathen. It is that we are every one of us worse than we ought to be, worse than we know how to be, and, strangest of all, worse than we wish or like to be. Just as far as we are like the heathen of old, we shall be worse than we know how to be. For we are all ready enough to turn heathens again, at any moment. They were alienated from the life of God—that is, they became strangers to God’s life; they forgot what God’s life and character was like; or if they even did awake a moment, and recollect dimly what God was like, they hated that thought. They hated to think that God was what He was, and shut their eyes and stopped their ears as fast as possible. And what happened to them in the meantime? What was the fruit of their wilfully forgetting what God’s life was? St. Paul tells us that they fell into the most horrible sins—sins too dreadful and shameful to be spoken of; and that their common life, even when they did not run into such fearful evils, was profligate, fierce, and miserable. And yet St. Paul tells us all the while they knew the judgment of God, that those who do such things are worthy of death.

II. These men saw that man ought to be like God; they saw that God was righteous and good; and they saw, therefore, that unrighteousness and sin must end in ruin and everlasting misery.—So much God had taught them, but not much more; but to St. Paul He had taught more. Those wise and righteous heathen could show their sinful neighbours that sin was death, and that God was righteous; but they could not tell them how to rise out of the death of sin into God’s life of righteousness. They could preach the terrors of the law, but they did not know the good news of the gospel, and therefore they did not succeed; they did not convert their neighbours to God. Then came St. Paul and preached to the very same people, and he did convert them to God; for he had good news for them, of things which prophets and kings had desired to see, and had not seen themselves, and to hear, and had not heard them. And so God, and the life of God, was manifested in the flesh and reasonable soul of a man; and from that time there is no doubt what the life of God is, for the life of God is the life of Christ. There is no doubt now what God is like, for God is like Jesus Christ.

III. Now what is the everlasting life of God, which the Lord Jesus Christ lived perfectly, and which He can and will make every one of us live, in proportion as we give up our hearts and wills to Him, and ask Him to take charge of us and shape us and teach us? And God is perfect love, because He is perfect righteousness; for His love and His justice are not two different things, two different parts of God, as some say, who fancy that God’s justice had to be satisfied in one way and His love in another, and talk of God as if His justice fought against His love, and desired the death of a sinner, and then His love fought against His justice, and desired to save a sinner. The old heathen did not like such a life, therefore they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They knew that man ought to be like God; and St. Paul says they ought to have known what God was like—that He was love; for St. Paul told them He left not Himself without witness, in that He sent rain and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. That was, in St. Paul’s eyes, God’s plainest witness of Himself—the sign that God was love, making His sun shine on the just and on the unjust, and good to the unthankful and the evil—in one word, perfect, because He is perfect love. But they preferred to be selfish, covetous, envious, revengeful, delighting to indulge themselves in filthy pleasures, to oppress and defraud each other.

IV. God is love.—As I told you just now, the heathen of old might have known that, if they chose to open their eyes and see. But they would not see. They were dark, cruel, and unloving, and therefore they fancied that God was dark, cruel, and unloving also. They did not love love, and therefore they did not love God, for God is love. And therefore they did not love each other, but lived in hatred and suspicion and selfishness and darkness. They were but heathen. But if even they ought to have known that God was love, how much more we? For we know of a deed of God’s love, such as those poor heathen never dreamed of. And then, if we have God abiding with us, and filling us with His eternal life, what more do we need for life, or death, or eternity, or eternities of eternities? For we shall live in and with and by God, who can never die or change, an everlasting life of love.—C. Kingsley.

Eph_4:19. Past Feeling.—

1. Though original sin has seized upon the whole soul, yet the Lord has kept so much knowledge of Himself and of right and wrong in the understanding of men as they may know when they sin, and so much of conscience as to accuse or excuse according to the nature of the fact, whereupon follows grief or joy in their affections. Wicked men may arrive at such a height of sin as to have no sense of sin, no grief, nor check, nor challenge from conscience from it.

2. A watchful conscience doing its duty is the strongest restraint from sin; and where that is not, all other restraints will serve for little purpose. For a man to be given over to lasciviousness without check or challenge argues a great height of impiety.

3. As upon senseless stupidity of conscience there follows an unsatiableness in sinning, especially in the sin of uncleanness, so when a man comes to this, he is then arrived at the greatest height of sin unto which the heathens, destitute of the knowledge of God, ever attained.—Fergusson.

Eph_4:20-24. Putting off the Old Nature and putting on the New.

I. The change here spoken of is radically seated in the mind.—These terms do not import the creation of new powers and faculties, but the introduction of new tempers and qualities. The renovation enlightens the eyes of the understanding, and gives new apprehensions of divine things. It purifies the affections and directs them to their proper objects. There are new purposes and resolutions.

II. He who is renewed puts off the old man.—The new spirit is opposite to sin and strives against it. The Christian mortifies the affections and lusts of the flesh because he has found them deceitful. He in deliberate and hearty purpose renounces all sin. He abstains from the appearance of evil.

III. He puts on the new man.—As the former signifies a corrupt temper and conversation, so the latter must intend a holy and virtuous disposition and character. The new man is renewed in righteousness and true holiness. He not only ceases to do evil, but learns to do well.

IV. The pattern according to which the new man is formed is the image of God.—The likeness must be understood with limitations. The image of God in us bears no resemblance to the perfections in the divine nature, such as immensity, immutability, and independence. There are some essential properties of the new man to which there is nothing analogous in the deity. Reverence, obedience, trust, and resignation are excellencies in rational creatures; but cannot be ascribed to the Creator. In those moral perfections in which the new man is made like God there is only a faint resemblance, not an equality. The new man resembles God in mercy and goodness, in holiness, in truth.

V. This great change is effected by the gospel.—It was the consequence of their having learned Christ. The first production and improvement of this change is the work of divine grace, and the Spirit of God works on the soul by means of the word. To this change the use of means and the grace of God are both necessary.

VI. The change is great.—Let none imagine he is a subject of this change merely because he entertains some new sentiments, feels transient emotions, or has renounced some of his former guilty practices. The real nature and essence of conversion is the same in all.—Lathrop.

Religious Affections are attended with a Change of Nature.

I. What is conversion?—

1. A change of nature.

2. A permanent change.

3. A universal change.

4. A union of God’s Spirit with the faculties of the soul.

5. Christ by His grace savingly lives in the soul.

II. Its connection with sanctification.—

1. All the affections and discoveries subsequent to the first conversion are transforming.

2. This transformation of nature is continuous until the end of life, when it is brought to perfection in glory.

III. Reflections.—

1. Allowance must be made for the natural temper.

2. Affections which have no abiding effect are not spiritual and gracious.

3. In some way it will be evident, even to others, that the true disciple has been with Jesus.—Lewis O. Thompson.

Eph_4:23. The Christian Spirit, a New Spirit.

I. There are some changes in men which come not up to the renewed spirit, and yet are too often rested in.—

1. The assuming of a new name and profession is a very different thing from a saving change in the temper of the mind. We may be of any profession, and yet be unrenewed. People value themselves upon wearing the Christian name, instead of that of Pagan, or Jew, or Mahometan; or upon being styled Papists or Protestants; or upon their attaching themselves to one or another noted party, into which these are subdivided, and upon such a new appellation they are too ready to imagine that they are new men: whereas we may go the round of all professions, and still have the old nature remaining in full force.

2. A bare restraint upon the corrupt spirit and temper will not come up to this renovation, though the one may sometimes be mistaken for the other. The light of nature may possess conscience against many evils, or a sober education lay such a bridle upon the corrupt inclination as will keep it in for a season, the fear of punishment or of shame and reproach may suppress the outward criminal act, while the heart is full of ravening and wickedness. Therefore, though it is a plain sign of an unrenewed mind if a man live in any course of gross sin, yet it is not safe to conclude merely from restraints that a man is truly renewed.

3. A partial change in the temper itself will not amount to such a renovation as makes a true Christian. Indeed, in one sense the change is but partial in any in this life; there will be remains of disorder in all the powers of the soul, so as to exclude a pretence to absolute perfection. It is not enough to have the mind filled with sound knowledge and useful notions, nor barely to give a dead assent to the doctrines of the gospel, unless we believe with the heart, and the will and affections be brought under the power of those truths; and even here there may be some alternation, and yet a man not be renewed. Nor is it sufficient that we should find ourselves disposed to some parts of goodness, while our hearts are utterly averse to others which are equally plain. And therefore, though we should be of a courteous, peaceable, and kind temper towards men; though we should be inclined to practise justice, liberality, truth, and honesty in our transactions with them, and to temperance and chastity in our personal conduct; though these are excellent branches of the Christian spirit; yet if there be not a right temper towards God also, if the fear and love of God are not the ruling principles of the soul, there is an essential defect in the Christian spirit.

II. A particular view of this renovation in some principal acts of the mind.—

1. The mind comes to have different apprehensions of things, such as it had not before. The new creation begins with light, as the old is represented to do. Light bearing in, and the mind being fixed in attention, man discerns the great corruption of his heart, and the badness of the principles and ends which governed him in the appearances of goodness, upon which he valued himself before. And so the excellency and suitableness of Christ, in all His offices, and the necessity of real, inward holiness, appear in quite another manner to his soul than hitherto.

2. The practical judgment is altered. This light, shining with clearness and strength into the mind, unsettles and changes the whole practical judgment by which a man suffered himself to be governed before in the matters of his soul. He judges those truths of religion to be real which once had no more force with him than doubtful conclusions, and accordingly he cannot satisfy himself any longer barely not to disbelieve them, but gives a firm and lively assent to them.

3. A new turn is given to the reasoning faculty, and a new use made of it. When the word of God is mighty it casts down imaginations; so we render the original word (2Co_10:5). It properly signifies “reasonings.” Not that the faculty itself is altered, or that when men begin to be religious they lay aside reasoning: then in truth they act with the highest reason; they reason most justly and most worthy of their natures. But now the wrong bias, which was upon the reasoning faculty from old prejudices and headstrong inclinations, is in a good measure taken off; so that instead of its being pressed at all adventures into the service of sin, it is employed a better way, and concludes with more truth and impartiality.

4. There is an alteration in a man’s governing aim, or chief end. This is like the centre, to which all inferior aims and particular pursuits tend. The original end of a reasonable creature must be to enjoy the favour of God as his supreme happiness, to be acceptable and pleasing to him. By the disposition of depraved nature we are gone off from this centre, and have changed our bias, from God to created good, to the pleasing of the flesh, to the gratification of our own humour, or to the obtaining of some present satisfaction, according to the prevailing dictate of fancy or appetite. This makes the greatest turn that can be in the spirit of the mind; all must be out of course till this be set right. Now it is the most essential part of the new nature to bring a sinner in this respect to himself, that is, to bring him back to God. All the light he receives, all the rectification of his judgment, is in order to this; and when this is well settled, everything else, which was out of course before, will return to its right channel.

5. There is hereupon a new determination to such a course of acting as will most effectually secure this end. As long as this world is the chief good which a man has in view, he contrives the best ways he can think of to promote his particular ends in it. But when the favour of God comes to have the principal share in his esteem, he carefully examines and heartily consents to the prescribed terms of making that sure. Now he is desirous to be found in Christ upon any terms.

6. The exercise of the affections becomes very different. A change will appear in this respect, through the different turns of his condition as well as in the prevailing tenor of his practice. While a man is a stranger to God and blind to the interests of his soul, he is little concerned how matters lie between God and him. But a sinner come to himself is most tenderly concerned at anything that renders his interests in God doubtful or brings his covenant-relation into question; and nothing sets the springs of godly sorrow flowing so much as the consciousness of guilt, or of any unworthy behaviour to God.

Lessons.—

1. Let us seriously examine our own minds, whether we can discern such an alteration made in our spirit.

2. If we must answer in the negative, or have just ground to fear it, yet let us not despair of a change still, but apply ourselves speedily in the appointed way to seek after it.

3. Let the best retain a sense of the imperfection of the new nature in them, and of their obligation still to cultivate it, till it arrive at perfection.—Dr. Evans.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

3. General Christian Duties

Eph_4:17 to Eph_5:21.

a. The principle of the new walk, with reference to the contrast of the old and the new man

Eph_4:17-24.

17This I say therefore [therefore I say], and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not [no longer walk] as other Gentiles [the rest of the Gentiles]53 walk, in the vanity of their mind. 18Having the understanding darkened [Being darkened54 in their understanding], being alienated from the life of God [,] through [because of] the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness [hardness] of the heart: 19Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness [to wanton-ness], to work all uncleanness with [in] greediness. 20But ye have not so learned 21[did not so learn] Christ; If so be that ye have heard [If indeed ye heard] him, and have been [were] taught by [in] him, as the truth is [as is truth]55 in Jesus: 22That ye put off concerning the former conversation [as regards your former way of life] the old man, which is [waxeth] corrupt according to the deceitful lusts [lusts 23of deceit]; And be [become] renewed in the spirit [or by the Spirit]56 of your mind; 24And that ye put on the new man, which after God is [hath been] created in righteousness and true holiness [holiness57 of the truth].

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Eph_4:17 a. The connection. This therefore I Say [τοῦτο οὖν λέγω].—Τοῦτο refers to what follows, and with emphasis (Winer, p. 152); οὖν, however, as the subsequent context shows, going back of the digression (Eph_4:4-16), which contains the motives of the exhortation (Eph_4:1-3), refers to “walk worthy.” Theodoret: πάλιν ἀνέλαβε τῆς παρανέσεως τὸ προοίμιον.58 But the simple “I say” is not enough for the Apostle; he adds: And testify in the Lord, καὶ μαρτύρομαι ἐν κυρίῳ.—He presents himself in his apostolic authority as a witness, not in his own, but in the Lord’s cause. [“By thus sinking his own personality, the Apostle greatly enhances the solemnity of his declaration” (Ellicott).—R.] It is similar to Rom_9:1; 1Th_4:1. The Lord is the element in which he lives and in this case bears witness, and at the same time the ground on which he stands in common with the Ephesians; on this account he reckons on their acceptance of his urgent appeal. It is not=πρὸς κυρίου, per Dominum (even the Greek Fathers, and many others).

The heathen walk as a type of the natural walk in general; Eph_4:17 b–19.

Eph_4:17 b. That ye no longer walk [μηκέτι ὑμᾶς περιπατεὶν.—This infinitive is the object of λέγω (it being unnecessary to understand δεῖν) expressing, however, what ought to be (Eadie) more than what is; Ellicott thinks an imperative sense involved (“that ye no longer must walk”), as indeed the context indicates (Alford).—R.] This says negatively what is expressed positively in Eph_4:1 : “walk worthy.” “No longer” denotes their once walking, as they should not and dare not now, being Christians.—As the rest of the Gentiles walk.—[See Textual Note!] Καθώς introduces the kind of walk which they should avoid. Καί is joined with emphasis and admonitory force to τὰ λοιπά ἔθνη to which class they belong.59 The heathen are those who remained behind, they no longer belong to the heathen who now “walk,” and how?

In the vanity of their mind, ἔν ματαιότητιτοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν.—This is the briefest characterization of the natural heathen walk, presenting both its religious and moral side. It is the explanation of Theodoret (τὰ μὴ ὄντα θεοποιε͂ιν) in accordance with Rom_1:21; Rom_8:20; 1Pe_1:18. This “vanity” [betokening a waste of the whole rational powers on worthless objects (Alford).—R.] is, of course, one brought about through sin, another nature as it were. It has penetrated even the will of the human spirit, corrupting this high faculty, the ἡγεμονικόν in the nature of man.60 Hence there is no special reference to philosophy (Grotius). To this general sketch are added special traits in Eph_4:18-19.

Eph_4:18. Being darkened in their understanding, ἐσκοτωμένοι τῇ διανοίᾳ ὄντες.—The masculine form indicates the reference to persons, to particular individuals, and not to the whole, τὰ ἔθνη, as such. The verb (σκοτόω), only here and Rev_16:10, instead of the more usual σκοτίζω, is in the perfect, to denote a state not previously existing, but having come into being, which the present participle, (ὄντες) designates as present. That to which the darkness clings is set forth by τῇ διανοίᾳ,61 which means the intellectual power of the mind, the mode of thought, the character, since the reference is not to the formal faculty, but to its condition. Comp. Rom_1:21 f.; Rom_11:10. It is incorrect to join ὄντες with what follows (Rueckert) [Eadie]; it follows thus in Tit_1:16 also, and τῇ διανοίᾳ forms one conception, together with the participle in its emphatic position.

Being alienated from the life of God, ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι τῆς ζωῆς τοῦ θεοῦ.—See on Eph_2:12 : “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel.” The perfect participle must be noted here also; Bengel correctly remarking: participia præsupponunt, gentes ante defectionem suam a fide patrum—fuisse participes lucis et vitæ. Conf. renovari Eph_4:23.—Ζωή, the opposite of θάνατος (Eph_2:1), is the intensive spiritual, eternal life, belonging to God (τοῦ θεοῦ), vita, quæ accenditur ex ipsa Dei vita (Bengel), qua Deus vivit in suis (Beza), vera vita, qui est Deus (Erasmus); Luther: the life, that is out of God. [Comp. Trench, Syn. § XXVIII; Olshausen, Stier in loco.—R.] See Winer, p. 175. Thus “the vanity of their mind” is designated as to its two sides, the ethically intelligent, and the ethically practical. [This clause sets forth an “objective result of the subjective ‘being darkened’ ” (Alford).—R.] To this corresponds what is immediately added.

Because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart, διὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τὴν οὖσαν ἐν αὐτοῖς, διὰ τὴν πώρωσιν62 τῆς καρδίας αὐτῶν.—These two clauses are added without a connecting particle, because they refer to the two preceding ones, as their purport requires, and because the one requires and furthers the other. “Because of the ignorance that is in them,” points to an ignorance which has become immanent, is now natural and peculiar (Act_3:17; Act_17:30; 1Pe_1:14), as the ground (διὰ. with the accus., see Winer, p. 372) of the darkening, and which is ever increasing, going from ignorance to ignorance. “Because of the hardness of their heart,” renders prominent in the same way the hardness, unsusceptibility of the heart as the ground of the estrangement from the life of God. The two are ever conjoined in the natural man: There is not intellectual obscuration beside practical estrangement from God, nor ignorance beside hardness of heart; the one conditions the other, working destructively as they reciprocally affect each other. Hence it cannot be affirmed, that the former applies more to the Gentiles, the latter to the Jews (Stier and others); the Gentiles alone are spoken of, as a type of the natural character. But at the same time the “ignorance” is not to be regarded as merely a consequence, and these two clauses (with διά) referred to the last participial clause alone (Meyer).

[This parallelism of construction in which the first and third, second and fourth clauses are connected together is accepted, by Bengel, De Wette, Olshausen, Forbes (Symmetrical structure of Scripture, p. 21), Schenkel and others. It is opposed by Meyer, Hodge, Eadie and Ellicott; but the objection they urge, that “ignorance” is not the cause of “darkness,” loses its force when it is remembered that the Apostle is speaking of a process rather than a condition. Nor is it contrary to the Apostle’s style, in which parallelisms abound, far less so than to explain: “Darkness of mind is the cause of ignorance, ignorance and consequent obduracy of heart are the cause of alienation from God” (Hodge), thus trajecting the third and fourth clauses between the first and second. This is the view of Meyer, who makes the last clause subordinate to the third (though both are introduced by διά): a needless complication, which leads to the removal of the comma, while the view of Braune requires the insertion of one after θεοῦ. See Textual Note2.—R.]

Eph_4:19. Who οἵτινες [men who, such as], introduces the explanation, the proof of this condition.—Being past feeling have given themselves over [ἀπηλγηκότες ἑαυτοὺς παρέδωκαν].—Ἀπηλγηκότες; (from ἀπὸ and ἄλγος, ἀλγέω,), unsusceptible of pain, and according to the context, in the heart, the moral consciousness, hence not feeling the unrest and punishment of conscience, the correction of God (Jer_5:3), they have given themselves over, ultro (Bengel); that is the ἀγαισθησία, sponte sese in gurgitem omnium vitiorum præcipitans. Calvin: Homines a Deo relicti, sopita conscientia, exstincto divini judicii timore, amisso denique sensu tanquam attoniti, belluino impetu se ad omnem turpitudinem projiciunt. [The pronoun ἑαυτούς is used “with terrible emphasis” (Meyer).—R.] Self-reprobation is consummated in becoming apathetic, just as Rom_1:24 : “God delivered them over, in the lusts of their hearts.” Our passage marks the freedom and guilt of men, the passage in Romans the rule, will and power of God, but both of them indicate the means: the lust corrupting even unto want of feeling; here prominence is given to the consequence, the condition which has arisen and becomes aggravated (ἀπηλγηκότες),63 there to the ground, the active power (“lusts”).

To wantonness, τῇ άσελγείᾳ.—The term, apparently from θέλγω, schwelgen [allied to the English swell, and meaning to over-eat, carouse, debauch], occurs quite frequently (Mar_7:22; Rom_13:13; 2Co_12:21; Gal_5:19; 1Pe_4:3; 2Pe_2:2; 2Pe_2:7; 2Pe_2:18; Judges 4), almost always in connection with sensual sins, denoting, however, not special sin, but reckless, unbridled, extravagant and excessive character in general. Comp. Tittmann, I, p. 150 ff., on ἀσέλγεια and ἀκαθαρσία, [Trench, § 16., and Exeg. Notes on Gal_5:19, in this volume.—R.] It is not to be limited to sensual lasciviousness (Meyer).

To work all uncleanness, εἰς ἐργασίαν ἀκαθαρσίας πάσης.—[The preposition introduces the conscious aim of this self-abandonment.—R.] Ἐργασία marks the managing, the assiduous, connected labor [the working at it as though it were a trade], and ἀκαθαρσία, extended by πάσης,64 sets forth what has come to pass in the service of ἀσέλγεια. We should apply it to all kinds of uncleanness, especially libidinous, but also to the lust of the eye and pride, natural and unnatural, refined and coarse, solitary and social, in thought, word and deed (Rom_1:24-32). Still less is this to be limited to libidinous filthiness (Meyer), or to trade in harlotry, quæstus ex impudicitia (Grotius, Bengel and others). The next phrase will not justify this.

In greediness, ἐν πλεονεξίᾳ.—This word means to want to have more, greediness, avarice, graspingness, limited usually to earthly possession, to money (Eph_5:3; Col_3:5; Mar_7:22; Luk_12:15); but the limitation arises from the context, not from the word itself. The context here does not admit of any such limitation: ἐν, in, marks the ground on which the “uncleanness” moves, and this is not avarice, but greed in general unto insatiableness. Hence the Greek Fathers thus explain it (Chrysostom: ἀμέτρως, Theodoret: ἀμετρία, Œcumenius: κωθ̓ ὑμερβολήν καὶ ἀνενδότως. Ἐν is not=σύν (Luther: together with avarice); there is not a new special vice, avarice, added to another special one, unchastity (Meyer, Schenkel); neither the context nor the word itself favors the explanation: gluttony (Harless).65

Reminder respecting Christ and Christian instruction; Eph_4:20-21.

Eph_4:20. But ye, ὑμεῖς δἐ, in opposition to “the rest of the Gentiles” [just described].—Did not so learn Christ.—Οὑχ οὕτως is a very emphatic litotes=entirely otherwise, not at all in such a way that you can live afterwards as you did before. Ἐμάθετε [the historical aorist] τὸν Χριστόν marks Christ as the object, the substance of the preaching of the Apostles and of Christ. Himself; His person we must attain to; He Himself must be accepted and appropriated in us (Eph_4:13; Eph_4:15; Col_2:6; 1Co_1:23; 2Co_1:19). Hence it is not=the doctrine of Christ, as was once almost generally thought. [This use of the verb with an accusative of the person is probably unique (Ellicott), and properly so, for in no other learning is a Person so directly and fully the object. Hence the explanation: learnt to know is inadmissible as without lexical authority and insufficient. Beza’s exegesis is totally unwarranted: “Ye are not so—ye have learned Christ.”—R.]

Eph_4:21. If indeed ye heard him [εἴγε αὐτὸν ἠκούσατε]—̓́Ειγε, as in Eph_3:2, marks in a fine turn of expression a definite, undoubted fact (“that he heard him”), particula non miruit, sed auget vim admonitionis (Bengel). It is not however—“so as” (Stier). Αὐτόν is in emphatic position; “heard” denotes the beginning of the discipleship; hence it is not merely, heard of Him (Luther), but heard Him Himself in spirit, even though through the instrumentality of others. He is the subject of the very first instruction. Hence Paul adds:

And were taught in him, καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ ἐδιά χθητε.—The two designations66 correspond to those in Mat_28:19-20 : “disciple all nations”—“teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” “In,” ἐν, is neither=περί, concerning (Piscator), nor ὑπό (Flatt), nor διά, by (Beza) [E. V.], nor illius nomine, quod ad illum attinet (Bengel), but an instruction not merely having its result, a being or living in Him, but in accordance with the fellowship with Him (Winer, p. 366); in ipso=ipsi insiti and docti are equivalent (Bucer); doceri is inseri.

As is the truth in Jesus [καθώς ἐστιν ἀλήθεια ἐν τῷ Ἰησοῦ].—“As” refers only to the instruction, to its quality; it corresponds to “not go” (Eph_4:20); what was there negatively and briefly indicated, is here positively expressed, and then given in detail.67 “Is truth” gives prominence to the agreement of the teaching with the reality: in the instruction they hear Him really, possess Him as He is. Ἐστιν, coming first, denotes the existence, the reality, and that, too, as a present, now valid and continuing reality.

Consequens (τοῦ audire. et τοῦ doceri est τὸ discere Bengel): they have therefore learned, as truth is in Him. “Truth” is here opposed to the heathen “vanity;” as the latter was a self-made foundling, the former is something bestowed, real, excluding the subtleties of human origin or change of any kind. [The notion of the Greek adjective αληθινός is thus included by Dr. Braune. The clause setting forth the manner of the instruction (the substance follows in Eph_4:22-24), may be thus explained: If ye were taught so that what you received was according to what is true (true and real) as embodied in a personal Saviour: The literal rendering: “as is truth in Jesus” gives most nearly the exact force.—R.] In the expression ἐν τῷ Ἰησοῦ, the article is significant, pointing to the known Person, the personal name being chosen instead of the official title, Christ. Bengel: Expressius ponit nomen Ἰησοῦ. Christi, ideam perfectissime et fulgidissime explevit Jesus; this preserves the received instruction from obliteration.—The clause is, therefore, not parenthetical (Beza, Rueckert and others), “truth” is neither agnitio Dei (Bengel), nor true doctrine of Christ (Piscator and others), nor true holiness, goodness (Erasmus, Harless [Hodge] and others). We should not connect “in Jesus” with what follows (Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, II, 2, p. 291).

The Christian walk; Eph_4:22-24, a. Negative side; Eph_4:22, b. Positive side; Eph_4:23-24.

Eph_4:22. That ye put off, ἀποθέσθαιὑμᾶς.—This infinitive depends grammatically on the entire thought, that they heard Him and were taught in Him, as the truth in Jesus is (Bleek), although Stier and Bengel are not incorrect in connecting it in sense with “I say and testify” (Eph_4:17); they recognise, however, “a certain reference to the nearest words” (Eph_4:21). The emphasis rests on the verb, coming first, which has its antithesis in “put on” (Eph_4:24). It is incorrect to accept a dependence on the last clause alone (Meyer) and a contrast between “Jesus” and “ye” (Jerome, Harless, and others), which would be indicated by an emphatic position for ὑμᾶς and the insertion of οὕτως.68 In the frequently occurring figures of putting on and off the clothes to represent the external appearance from which the internal state may be inferred, it is not necessary to find an allusion to a race before which, or a baptism (of a proselyte) at which the clothes should be taken off; the context gives no warrant for either. The Lord Himself (Luk_24:49) transferred into the New Testament the usage of the Old Testament in describing an instantaneous, sudden inspiration. Comp. Stier, Words of Jesus, 7 p. 323 f. Paul extended the figure (Eph_4:25; Eph_6:11; Eph_6:14; Rom_13:12-13; Col_3:8-10; 1Co_15:53-54; Gal_3:27; 1Th_5:8). The verb includes the sense of a decided casting away, not merely a gentle putting off, since this is required of the followers of Jesus, among whom a preserving of the old man and the heathen walk is intolerable.

As regards your former way of life [κατὰ τὴν προτέραν ἀναστροφήν.—Κατά introduces that with respect to which the putting off takes place. The substantive (αναστροφή), like the verb, includes a course of conduct arising from a corresponding disposition, the manifestation of what is within, as Gal_1:13; 1Pe_2:11-12; 1Pe_1:17-18 (Stier), and is more than περιπατεῖν, preparing the way for the mention of the internal disposition which should be put off. It is not enough to put off merely the former heathen (προτέραν) walk.69 Antitheton versus 23 totus (Bengel).

The old man [τὸν παλαιὸν ἄνθρωπον].—“Man” denotes here the Ego (ἐγώ, Rom_7:9-10; Rom_7:17-21). “Old” designates that it is condemned to be put away, old over against Jesus the second Adam; hence “the old man” (Col_3:9; Rom_6:6) means the sinful Ego deranged by sin, the natural man in the corruption of his sin.70 This condition is then described:

Which waxeth corrupt according to the lusts of deceit [τὸν φθειρόμενον κατὰ τὰς ἐπιθυμίας τῆς ἀπάτης].—The present participle denotes the present condition, which is not however a purely passive one: “which is corrupted,” but in accordance with Eph_4:19 : “which corrupts himself.” It is then neither imperfect: which corrupted himself (Bengel), nor to be taken as referring to the future judgment (Rueckert and others); yet it is not merely=morally destroying himself (Harless). The antithesis is creatum (Bengel) and the use of φθορά and φθείρεσθαι (Gal_6:8; Rom_8:20-21) points to the whole man, body and soul. [Meyer and Hodge refer it to eternal destruction: “which tends to destruction,” but this does not do justice to the present participle, the peculiar force of which, as indicating a process not entirely passive, is brought out by “waxeth corrupt” (Ellicott). Hodge’s objection, that “old” already expresses the idea of corruption, has no force against this description of the progressive character, while his own view introduces an objective element into a delineation which is strictly subjective.—R.]

The accomplishment of the corruption is more closely defined by the phrase: “according to the lusts of deceit,” The corruption is accomplished in accordance with the lusts, the factors of the corruption; and these are affairs of sin, which are here personified in accordance with the power of deceiving and betraying inherent in it (Rom_7:11; 1Co_11:3; 2Th_2:9). The genitive, which is that of the subject, is not to be resolved into an adjective (Grotius [E. V.] and thus weakened, nor applied merely to error technicus (Bengel). The antithesis is secundum Deum—in justitia et sanctitate veritatis (Bengel).

Eph_4:23. And become renewed [ἀνανεοῦσθαι δέ],—The contrast is marked by δέ, which introduces the positive side (Eph_4:23-24), The verb in the passive71 points to the fact that a work and operation of God is spoken of (Eph_2:10; Eph_4:24; κτισθέντα; see Tit_3:5, 2Ti_1:9). The present refers to an operation which is not concluded in a moment, but continues. The roots of the word (νέος [recent], new) points to a becoming rejuvenated, to the beginning, the coming into being, of what was not, or not yet, or no longer; καινός [novus] refers to the character of that which exists, as compared with its former condition; άνακαινουν is to put away the ruins of the present condition and to supply new powers, to transfer into a condition of newness, as distinguished from the previous one. Hence we never find νέα κτίσις, but καινή, since νεότης is already implied in κτισις. See Tittmann, Syn. I., p. 60 f. [Trench, Syn. (§ xviii; Colossians, p. 65,) Alford and Hodge in loco.—R.] Ἁνά indicates not merely a setting up, but according to the participles in Eph_4:18-19, a restitution of the original creation. The infinitive is in the same dependence as ἀποθέσθαι, although in these infinitives there is latent, a hortatory imperative, which comes out in Eph_4:25. Still this inheres in the thought, not in the form.

In the Spirit [or by the Spirit] of your mind [τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ νοὸς ύμῶν].—The renewal, the letting themselves be renewed, is accomplished in this. The dative is one of reference, the genitive that of the subject. Harless says: ψυχή designates the immediateness of the personal life, καρδία the same as the internal life of a human person, νοῦς is the habitus corresponding to this existence and life, πνεῦμα the motive power which calls forth and conditions this habitus. To this the organism of the human spirit corresponds. Bengel: spiritu mentis, 1Co_14:14. Spiritus est intimum mentis. That inexplicabile coming from God (Oetinger) must be renewed, is seized by the corruption of sin, needs redemption from “the vanity of the mind.” We may not take πνεύματι as instrumental on account of the genitive and understand it of the Holy Spirit (Oekumen, and others), nor can both explanations be combined (Stier: through the Spirit yet living in you); in that case the middle, contrary to the usage which gives it an active sense, and contrary to the Biblical view, which never speaks of men renewing themselves, is taken as reflexive. Nor is the “spirit” of man to be regarded as opposed absolutely to the “flesh,” as if it could never be subject to the latter (Schenkel).

[The view of Braune, which takes τῷ πνεύματι as a dative of reference referring exclusively to the human spirit, is accepted by most commentators. Hodge takes πνεῦμα here as the “interior life—that of which the νοῦς, καρδία, ψυχή are the modes of manifestation,”—a psychological statement inferior to that of Harless, and probably resulting from the desire to avoid any trichotomic opinion.—Meyer has wavered in his views: adopting in the 1James , 3 d and 4th eds. the usual opinion, and in the second that of Fritzsche, Alford, Ellicott and others. This takes the dative as instrumental, and as referring to the human spirit acted upon by the Holy Spirit (see Romans, p. 235), or to the Holy Spirit in a gracious union with the human spirit (Ellicott, 3d ed.). To this view I incline, but not decidedly. The other interpretation is open to objections both of an exegetical and psychological nature. This sense of πνεῦμα is now clearly established, and indispensable in exegesis. In fact as Alford says: “the πνεῦμα a of man is only then used ‘sensu proprio’ as worthy of its place and governing functions, when it is one Spirit with the Lord.” The trouble is, that this πνεῦμα would hardly be spoken of as the instrument; the answer being that a process is described as going on, the agent being “the restored and Divinely informed leading principle of their νοῦς.”—The genitive is their possessive.—R.]

Eph_4:24. And that ye put on, καὶἑνδύσασθαι, is an internal act done by us, having an effect upon the walk and thus manifesting itself.—The new man, τὸν καινὸν ἄνθρωπον, we have as present, given, outside of ourselves, in Christ; hence Rom_13:14 : “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Who after God hath been72 created [τὸν κατὰ θεὸν κτισθέντα].—This marks both the reality and the character of the new man. The designation evidently points to Gen_1:26-27; which is even more prominent in the parallel passage, Col_3:10 (“after the image of Him that created”). Comp. 1Pe_1:15. It should be noticed that this qualification compels us not to take “new man” as exactly=Christ; for He is not “created,” but rather “God, the image of Him who creates,” after whom (κατὰ) the new man is created. Hence we should refer it to the new human personality as respects Christ, which the Christian should become. Thus in the Epistle to the Colossians we find: τὸν νέον τὸν ἀνακαινόμενον, the young, tender, newly born, which is renewed, developed in contrast with the previous one. The creation of the protoplast is however merely recalled; the expressions are borrowed from it, to designate the new creation taking place in Christ and to put it in relation to the first.73

In righteousness and holiness of the truth [ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ ὁσιότητιτῆς ἀληθείας].—This characterizes the new man and sets forth the distinguishing marks of its character; the preposition adjoining to “created” that in which the created man appears, with which he is endowed, equipped. The Apostle proceeds from without to within. The two notions are united together and applied to God (Rev_16:5), to men (1Th_2:10; Tit_1:1; Luk_1:75), ὄσιος is predicated of God (Rev_15:4), of Christ (Heb_7:26; Act_2:27; Act_13:35), of men (1Ti_2:8). ̔Οσιότης refers to the inmost nature, the disposition, the immaculate purity of love (Eph_1:4; Eph_5:27; Heb_7:26), δικαιοσύνη to the action and mode of dealing, which keeps all relations within the bounds of truth and right (Stier). Tittmann, Syn. I. 25 ff. Here we may not apply the frequent usage of Plato, who joins both notions, of which Philo says: ὀσιότης μὲν πρὸς θεόν, δικαιοσύνη δὲ πρὸς ἀνθρώπους θεωρεῖται. Meyer regards δικαιοσύνη as moral rectitude in itself, ὁσιοτης specially in reference to God. Schenkel takes the former as respecting the world, the latter God; the latter is evidently opposed to “uncleanness” (Eph_4:19) and the former to “wantonness” and “greediness.” [So Stier and Ellicott]. The genitive sets forth the ground of both; “the truth” is personified, like “love” (Eph_4:22), the cause of the righteousness and holiness; out of the eternal Divine basis of truth springs the ethical personal life, which is conditioned by this as true: without this man would lapse into “vanity” (Eph_4:17). Luther incorrectly renders the genitive by an adjective: in real righteousness and holiness. [So Calvin, Beza, Holzhausen and the E. V., while Pelagius explains: “in the truth,” καὶ ἐν ἀληθείᾳ (the reading of D. F. and some fathers) There seems to be an antithesis between “truth” here and “deceit” in Eph_4:22 (Hodge, Eadie and others), which suggests that the notion “real” is prominent here.—R.] It is incorrect to take the preposition as instrumental (Morus), or as=εἰς. The new man is not created by this ethical quality but by God, nor is this the end, but the accompanying gift of this creation, as is manifest in Christ, to whom this belonged from the beginning, not becoming His in the course of His life.

[Olshausen’s remarks are generally accepted: Δικαιοσύνη, betokens a just relation among the powers of the soul within, and towards men and duties without. But ὁσιότης, like the Hebrew תָּמִים, betokens the integrity of the spiritual life, and the piety towards God of which that is the condition. Hence both expressions together complete the moral idea of perfection. As here the ethical side of the Divine image is brought out, Col_3:10 brings out the intellectual. The new birth alone leads to ἐπίγνωσις: all knowledge which proceeds not from renewal of heart, is but outward appearance; and of this kind was that among the false Colossian teachers. On the other hand, in Wis_2:23 the physical side of the Divine image is brought out.” Ellicott deems the last reference somewhat doubtful—R.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The nature of the heathen life is “vanity of the mind.” This designates the type of the natural character among Jews and Christians [“The ethical and religious element of their life was unsatisfactory and cheerless, alike in worship and in practice, the same as to present happiness as to future prospect, for they knew not man’s chief end” (Eadie).—R.]

2. The “vanity of the mind” is the result of a fall from a previous possession and enjoyment of original gifts, which is accomplished in a twofold series of acts reciprocally requiring and furthering each other; the intellectual and moral side of man’s nature being in turn solicited, and thus roused in selfishness, it is ever further removed from the truth in God and from the God of truth. Indeed, the result, the vanity of the mind, is itself capable of increase and must develop into extreme corruption, if aid does not come and a retrograde movement begin.

3. The intellectual and moral side of man require and promote each other. The Reason cannot remain healthy and clear, or susceptible, as from the beginning, if the will is or becomes warped or weakened. The obscuration, weakening of the Reason necessarily enters with the enfeebling and confusion of the will. The Apostle comprises both under the term πνεῦμα74 (Eph_4:23); the former he designates νοῦς (Eph_4:17; Eph_4:23), δι νοια (Eph_4:18); the latter καρδια (Eph_4:18). The Apostle Paul places the initiative in the lusts (Eph_4:22 : “corrupted according to the lusts of deceit”), as Luther sharply indicates in his incorrect translation (which corrupts itself through lusts in error). The perverted will, executing what is wrong, makes the understanding a sophistical attorney, a crafty counsellor for its unrighteousness.

4. The factors of corruption are three: God, who hardens (Exo_4:21; Exo_7:3; Exo_14:4; Exo_14:8; Joh_12:40; Rom_9:18; Rom_1:24), man himself (1Sa_6:6; Psa_95:8; Heb_3:8), the surrounding circumstances, through which and under which it takes place (Gen_7:13; Gen_8:15; Heb_3:13). According to the context man is here described as the cause of the corruption (Eph_4:19), because personal guilt and the evoking of self-activity is treated of, while in Rom_1:24 God is termed the Author in the same matter, since there the final and deepest ground is touched upon. Usually its consummation appears as a history, which is pragmatically sketched by the external circumstances, the Power above the man and the concealed doings within him not being brought into prominence. What comes to pass is never loosed from the dealings of God and His holy rule, nor from the consent and opposition of man or without the influences of historical circumstances and persons. Consider, however, that thy guilt is at once God’s punishment and thine own guilt, and forget not that the two appear together as a developing history.

5. The dangerous element of sin is the deceit of lust, which plays the role of pleasure, and is not really ἡδονή, but φθορά and φθεί. ει. This is God’s appointment, that what is unholy should be unwholesome, as wrong is ill; the lustful one, turning away from God, naturally ruins himself, which is possible only in self-deception.

6. Renewal is not accomplished by man in his own strength, but only in the acceptance and use of the vital strength promised and imparted to him with justification, hence in the appropriated power of God, in the strength of Divine life. Comp. notes 8, 10.

7. Renewal too, like corruption, has its history. As the latter proceeds from ἀνομία to ἀνομία, even to the end, θάνατος (Rom_6:19; Rom_6:21), so in the former advance is made from hearing Christ to being taught in Him, from the scholar to the friend, the intimate of Christ, and from the servant of God, who permits himself to be thus termed, to heirship and participation in His kingdom. [Comp. Exegetical Notes on Eph_4:23.—R.]

8. The beginning of the Christian walk is the putting off the previous vices (Eph_4:28-32), and from resistance, even if with feeble result, advance is made to victorious crucifixion of the flesh and its lusts (Gal_5:16-17; Gal_5:24).

9. In this too knowing and willing stand in reciprocal action conditioning each other: learning Christ and putting on Christ, Christian science and Christian life. Theological faculties and the Church of Christ belong together. No knowledge should sunder itself from life, nor the science of Theology from the Christian Church. Where faith in Christ is not active, the scientific culture of individuals and churches will fare badly enough.

10. The vital power of faith must in the moral life-process prove itself real (τῆς ἀληθείας) and permeate the whole mode of life (ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ) from within to without (ἐν ὁσιότητι) and thus manifest itself in the walk. Faith, in itself a moral act, must prove itself in an ethical life-process.

[11. “This passage is of special doctrinal importance, as teaching us the true nature of the image of God in which man was originally created. That image did not consist merely in man’s rational nature, nor in his immortality, nor in his dominion, but specially in that righteousness and holiness, that rectitude in all his principles, and that susceptibility of devout affections, which are inseparable from the possession of the truth, or true knowledge of God. This is the Scriptural view of the original state of man, or of original righteousness, as opposed, on the one hand, to the Pelagian theory, that man was created without moral character; and, on the other, to the Romish doctrine, that original righteousness was a supernatural endowment not belonging to man’s nature. Knowledge, and consequently righteousness and holiness, were immanent or con-created in the first man, in the same sense as were his sense of beauty and susceptibility of impression from the external world.” Hodge.—R.]

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

Deal earnestly with the conduct of those committed to you, as did the Apostle, and take care that none of your children can say: Father and mother have not told me of it.—Much depends upon this, that every one in his circle and place bears witness against the walk of the natural character and in favor of Christian conduct.—Consider, no one is lost except through his own fault; but perhaps through yours too!—Sin binds the will, so that it is not free, and blinds or darkens the Reason, so that it is not healthy. The two faculties act and react upon each other; it is madness for a sinner to boast of a sound reason. It is a fearful truth however, thou wilt have life, enjoy the world and yet thou destroyest thyself, most certainly thy soul at least. Where God’s life and gift, peace and pure pleasure of the heart is wanting, there man wastes himself away, grasping in darkness for light, in emptiness for fulness, in apathy for life, aiming at these, and yet, at last, comfortless and unsatisfied.—Hold to Christian instruction and constantly try, whether thou art learning Christ: He is the measure of all truth.—Never forget: He is the Light; whoso is athirst, let him come to Him—and drink! You may know everything in the world, but not knowing Him, thy knowledge is nothing; you may know nothing of the world, knowing Him, trusting in Him, thy knowledge is rich.—The toil of self-denial and denial of the world cannot be spared you; but begin in the centre, in thyself, thy will and heart. What avails external alteration: that is by no means growing better. One must not be ever setting the tools and the plough in order; draw furrows through the field of thy heart and sow good seed therein, thus wilt thou reach the harvest and the harvest home. The sun makes the Spring and rejuvenates the earth, not single sunbeams, however, but the sun itself ever mounting higher, ever working longer. So Christ, who renews thee. Look how Peter with his sanguine temper became the rock-man, became constant, and John with his choleric disposition (Mar_3:17; Luk_9:54) was renewed into the Apostle of energetic love.

Starke:—The natural knowledge of God is not the right one, and is far from sufficing for salvation, 1Co_1:21.—The origin of all our sins is the “vanity of the mind” and the darkened understanding. We do not understand what the true good is, nor how we can attain to it. If we are to be helped, we must be helped in these respects, else a hardening results, and we become at last “without feeling.”—All, even the best, in man is corrupted by nature, accordingly nothing is to be expected from his own strength.—Mark, man, the stripes of thy conscience, they are a favor from God; despise them not, lest thy heart be gradually led by the deceit of sin into obduracy.—He who does not live devoutly has not rightly learned or heard Christ.—In Christ Jesus is the truth, not a doctrine merely, but a righteous life, and this truth consists in a putting off of the old man and a putting on of the new.—He who rightly knows Christ, must, to honor Him, live holily.—It is a sheer impossibility to be a Christian and to be willing to continue walking in heathenish lusts.—Through a long habit of sinning, the understanding at length becomes so darkened, the conscience so insensible, the will so stubborn, that the man no longer perceives the danger of his sinful condition, has no more conscience about sin, and no desire to desist from sin.—Where sin began, there repentance must begin.

Rieger:—The understanding would otherwise be a pre-eminent ornament of man, but it too has suffered much from the inroads of sin.—A proper character begins in us with the knowledge and confession of the might of sin, how it has clung to us from the time of our birth and extended itself as an old man over all our powers and members.

Heubner:—Where the will is corrupt, the understanding is darkened; blindness is the result of hardening.—Heathenism is life without God, Christianity life from God.—The Christian must ever begin anew and at the same time afresh. Daily repentance is needed, if we know the weakness, impurity, inconstancy of our hearts.—We will be ever seeing remnants of the old man appearing and returning here and there, and then a putting off of the old and putting on the new man is at once necessary again, and a purging process must be begun as in the case of sick people.—There is no more certain sign of an unspiritual mind, than the question: What then is so bad in me? Am I then so entirely unlike the image of God?

Passavant:—The history of the heathen of all ages and countries is a history of such vanity of mind, and of vanities; and all this vain character and action is renewed, re-decked and increased in the history of the character and doings of the heathen now-a-day, of the unbelieving and God-forsaken in Christendom. In the latter case the guilt is indeed greater, the injury deeper and the vanity worse.—This story of the origin of all heathen character and action, and of all idolatry in the world, repeats itself in every heart, which permits itself to be led through lustfulness and vanity of the mind away from the only true God into unbelief, disobedience and ingratitude. The will becomes perverted and evil, seducing in its turn the understanding and all the senses of man; and the mind, when it has once become false and vain, seduces in turn the impure heart, which has forsaken truth and faith; and here, in this impurity is the damnable ground and beginning of all ignorance and obduracy. That which is most exalted in us, which shall inherit immortality, our most beautiful, thinking, poetizing, loving, that which moves our whole heart and soul, what is inmost and most intellectual, our most profound life, our “spirit” itself must be renewed within us.

Stier:—The natural man in the vanity of his mind chooses what is void, empty and perishing, instead of what is Divinely real. Lust and deceit are akin.—Hearing, learning, becoming learned, are the three orderly degrees.—Man, corrupt by nature, destroys that which was created, God’s Spirit in our spirit breaks anew the first creation. Once for all in the Person of Christ is that created and prepared for us, which we are to put on.

Gerlach:—The lusts paint joy for us and then bring misery, place man in opposition to his Creator, his eternal destiny, himself, making out of the whole character a lie.

Ziel: The heathenish nature in our Christian congregations of to-day. From the text (Eph_4:17-32) we may perceive as in a mirror: 1) In what inward character of the heart (Eph_4:17-19), 2) in what outward form of the conduct it still manifests itself among us (Eph_4:25-32). Conclusion: To extirpate it by the roots, each one for himself, puts and must put it away from him.

On the Epistle for the 19th Sunday after Trinity, Eph_4:22-28.—Langbein: How it is chiefly shown in social life, that something really new is born within us? When there is found, 1) in our mouth, instead of a lie, the truth, 2) in our heart, instead of wrath, placability, 3) in our hands, instead of unjust property, the gift of mercy.

Tholuck: The virtue of Christian love of truth. 1. How does it manifest itself a) toward God, b) toward our neighbor, c) towards ourselves? 2. How do we attain to it? a) Through the consciousness of the continued presence of that eye, which sees in secret and to which a lie is an abomination, b) by taking the right standard, the Word of God.

F. A. Wolf: On the proper conduct of all in authority for the promotion of fidelity and probity in their subordinates. 1. Strict love of truth. 2. Forbearing earnestness in discipline and admonition. 3. Zeal for the public good in our own place and calling.

Florey:—A new man, a new life! 1) In words of truth, 2) mastery over the passions, 3) blamelessness in walk, 4) turning away from what is unjust, 5) activity in one’s calling, 6) brotherly love in the heart.—Some principles for Christian parents in the education of their children. 1. To convince them of the evil nature of their hearts. 2. To be helpful to the renewal of their mind in the Holy Ghost (Baptism, Home, School, Church). 3. To contend against their darling sins (lying, quick temper, slandering, purloining, tattling) and to help to the opposite virtues.

Brandt: The new man in Christ. 1. Truthfulness his ornament. 2. His heart breathes love. 3. He allows himself to be guided by benevolence and trustfulness. 4. Faithful and honorable, is his watchword.—A rich harvest blessing is an urgent demand to put off the old man and to put on the new. Without this 1) we do not fulfil the design of God in bestowing this blessing, 2) with all our thanksgiving we cannot please God; 3) we are in danger of turning the blessing into a curse.

Spitta: Believing and pious Christians should not walk as the heathen. 1. How the heathen walk. 2. Why Christians should not walk thus? 3. How they show proper earnestness in this.

Genzken (Preparatory discourse): The blessed barter (after Mat_9:16 f.). The old ragged mantle of the old man is cast away (the web of lust and error); 2. The Lord Jesus is put on (the garment of righteousness and honor).

[Eadie: Eph_4:17. In the case of the heathen, all the efforts and operations of their spiritual nature ended in dreams and disappointment.

Eph_4:18. Deep shadow lay upon the Gentile mind, unrelieved save by some fitful gleams which genius occasionally threw across it, and which were succeeded only by profounder darkness. A child in the lowest form of a Sunday School, will answer questions with which the greatest minds of the old heathen world grappled in vain.—There could be no light in their mind, because there was no life in their hearts, for the life in the Logos is the light of men.

Eph_4:19. Self-abandonment to deeper sin is the Divine judicial penalty of sin.—Self was the prevailing power—the gathering in of all possible objects and enjoyments on one’s self was the absorbing occupation. This accompaniment of sensualism sprang from the same root with itself, and was but another form of its development.

Eph_4:20. Once dark, dead, dissolute and apathetic, they had learned Christ as the light and the life—as the purifier and perfecter of His pupils.

Eph_4:22. This deceit is not simply error. It has assumed many guises. It gives a refined name to grossness, calls sensualism gallantry, and it hails drunkenness as good cheer. It promises fame and renown to one class, wealth and power to another, and tempts a third onward by the prospect of brilliant discovery. But genuine satisfaction is never gained, for God is forgotten.

Eph_4:24. While this spiritual creation is God’s peculiar work—for He who creates can alone recreate—this truth in Jesus has a living influence upon the heart, producing, fostering, and sustaining such rectitude and piety.—R.]

[Schenkel:—The characteristic marks of heathenish disposition: 1. Darkening of the mind, where the knowledge of what is Divine is concerned; 2. Hardening of the heart, where the repression of their own evil lusts is concerned.—Lust and greed the two fundamental sins of the natural man: 1. Their internal connection; 2. Their external difference.—To learn Christ 1) the Christian’s first duty, 2) his highest wisdom.—The seal of true Christianity is the new birth; for 1) where this is wanting, all good works are but seeming, and 2) where it is present the life with good works must really he teeming.—The deceit of sin and the truth of redemption: 1. Sin corrupts man under the deceitful representations of evil lust; 2. Redemption heals man by restoring his original truth, in righteousness and holiness.—R.]

Footnotes:

[53]Eph_4:17.—[The reading is doubtful: א3 D.2 3 E. K. L., most cursives, Syriac, Chrysostom (Rec., Tischendorf, Meyer, Eadie, Braune), sustain λοιπά; it is wanting in א.1 B. D.1 F. G., 5 cursives, Vulgate and other versions, and rejected by Lachmann, Alford, Ellicott. The external evidence against it is slightly preponderating, but internal grounds are in its favor. It was probably misunderstood, and the omission further confirmed by 1Th_4:5.—R.]

[54]

Eph_4:18.—[א. A. B.: ἐσκοτωμένοι, which, as more rare, is preferred by most recent editors to ἐσκοτισμένοι (Rec., D. F. K. L.). The comma after “God,” is required by the view taken of the construction as a parallelism:

a Being darkened in their understanding,

b Being alienated from the life of God,

a Because of the ignorance that is in them,

b Because of the hardness of their heart.

The first and third, second and fourth members correspond, the alternation being probably due to the reciprocal interaction which is also implied.—R.]

[55]Eph_4:21.—[This rendering is literal, see Exeg. Notes.—The aorists in Eph_4:20-21 are best rendered by the English past tense.—In is substituted for by, as is so often necessary.—R.]

[56]Eph_4:23.—[The two leading interpretations are suggested by the two readings given above. See Exeg. Notes.—Became renewed is adopted (from Ellicott) to indicate the force of the present, which here marks a continuing process.—R.]

[57]Eph_4:24.—[א.1 gives: ὁσιότητι καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ.—The hendiadys of the E. V. here (and at the close of Eph_4:22 : “deceitful lusts”) must be guarded against.—Hath been created is preferable here to was created, for though the Greek aorist is historical, the latter rendering “tends to throw the κτίσις further back than is actually intended; the reference being to the new κτίσις in Christ” (Ellicott).—R.]

[58][The οὖν is resumptive rather than illative, but as Alford says: “The digression is all in the course of the argument. The fervid style of St. Paul will never divide sharply into separate logical portions—each runs into and overlaps the other.” Eadie defends the connection with what immediately precedes.—R.]

[59][If λοιπά be rejected, there is still an allusion in καί to the fact that they were once thus walking, i. e., were once Gentiles. The only point of difference is, that the fuller reading implies they are so still. “Though the Ephesians did not walk so now, their returning to such a course is made the logical hypothesis” (Alford).—R.]

[60][So Eadie and most; Hodge however takes νοῦς as the whole soul, just as on the other hand in Rom_7:23-25, he refers it to the renewed nature, in both cases sacrificing exactness to doctrinal considerations.—R.]

[61][This is a dative of reference, giving the sphere or element m which. On the difference between it and the accusative it may be said that the latter is more objective, denoting that the darkness extended over the mind, the former more subjective, denoting that it has its seat in the mind. The word itself is here=the understanding (Verstand).—R.]

[62][On the etymology and meaning of πώρωσις. See Fritzche, Rom_11:7. It undoubtedly means hardness, obduracy (not blindness), used by medical writers of the “callus” at the extremity of fractured bones.—R.]

[63][Some textual variations occur, but not sufficiently supported to raise any question. From ἀπηλπικότες (D. and others) the sense desperantes seems to have come. But it is incorrect; the semi-technical term πώρωσις suggests a continuation of the figure.—R.]

[64][The unusual position of πάσης leads Ellicott to render: “uncleanness of every kind.”—R.]

[65][Hodge renders: “together with covetousness,” “which is doubly objectionable. The wider sense of πλεονεξία is accepted by Eadie, Alford and Ellicott. The last named, however, properly objects to obliterating the underlying notion of covetousness and self-seeking which seems bound up in the word. Comp. Col_3:5, p. 64; and Trench, Syn. §24, who links it most closely with sins of lust.—R.]

[66][Alford renders: “If, that is, it was Him that ye heard and in Him that ye were taught” following Meyer in regarding both as included in “ye learned Christ,” the first clause referring to the first reception, the second to further instruction. So Ellicott. Perhaps Alford restricts the meaning too much when he explains “heard Him,” “if ye really heard at your conversion the voice of the Shepherd Himself calling you as His sheep.”—R.]

[67][This view properly excludes the interpretation “inasmuch,” which Dr. Hodge here, as elsewhere, attaches to καθώς.—R.]

[68][Meyer insists that ὑμᾶς forbids the dependence on ἐδιδάχθητε, but Ellicott suggests that it marks a contrast, not with “Jesus,” but with the “Gentiles” and their own previous condition as implied in the next phrase. The infinitive has, not in itself, but from its independence, an imperative force, as in “walk” (Eph_4:1): “that ye must put off.” As an aorist it probably refers to the speedy and single nature of the act. The dependence on the entire preceding thought is a satisfactory solution: The substance of what you heard, were taught, when yon heard Him and were taught in Him in the correct way “as is truth in Jesus,” was “to put off,” “that you must put off,” etc.—R.]

[69][Alford) thus indicates the train of thought: “for you were clothed with it (the old man) in your former conversation.” The phrase qualified the verb, not the substantive: “That as regards your former way of life you put off.”—R.]

[70][The reader is referred to Romans, p. 203; comp. pp. 235–244. The opinions there advocated are expressed in Ellicott’s notes on “the old man:” “personification of oar whole sinful condition before regeneration, opposed to the καινος or νέος ἄνθρωπος (Eph_4:24; Col_3:10) and the κὰινὴ κτίσις (Gal_6:15), or, if regarded in another point of view to the ἔσω ἄνθρωπος (Eph_3:16; Rom_7:22).”—R.]

[71][The middle form of the verb is active in meaning (Harless), so that we must insist on the passive here. Stier objects that “to be renewed” is not a proper subject of exhortation. But the Apostle is giving the substance of the teaching (Eph_4:21), and as Alford well remarks: “we have perpetually this seeming paradox of God’s work encouraged or checked by man’s co-operation or counter-action,” He renders: “undergo renewal.”—R.]

[72][“Not created in the case of each individual believer, but created once for all (initio rei Christianæ, Bengel) and then individually assumed” (Ellicott). Comp. Textual Note 5.—R.]

[73][The doctrine of the restoration to us of the Divine image in Christ, as here implied, is not to be overlooked. Mueller, Lehre von der Sünde, ii. p. 485 ff., denies any allusion to it here, but on insufficient grounds, as indeed he himself virtually allows. Not the bare fact of Gen_1:27, but the great truth which that fact represents is alluded to. The image of God in Christ is a far more glorious thing than Adam ever had, or could have had: but still the κατ̓ εἰκονα θεοῦ=κατᾶ θέόν, is true of both” (Alford). Comp. Colossians, p. 68.—R.]

[74][Whatever view may be taken of Eph_4:23, or whatever psychological distinctions may be allowable in the exegesis of the New Testament, there is nothing here or elsewhere to indicate that man has a “spirit” unsubdued by the “flesh,” unaffected by the fall. The natural state is the more awful, because the “spirit,” the higher part, the point of connection with Divine influences, is under the dominion of sin.—R.]

[75]Eph_4:26.—[Ye is omitted for the sake of euphony, and is inserted in Eph_4:25 for the same reason.—On the other changes Bee Exeg. Notes.—R.]

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

3. The Walk in Holiness and Righteousness

CHAPTERS 4:17-5:21

1. Not as the Gentiles walk (Eph 4:17-19)

2. The putting off and putting on (Eph 4:20-32)

3. Followers of God (Eph 5:1-2)

4. Exhortations (Eph 5:3-21)

At this point the exhortations to walk in separation begin. The “therefore” of Eph 4:17 refers us to the “wherefore” of Eph 2:11-12. What Gentiles are in their natural condition is here once more put before us. The grace of God takes the believer out of these conditions and puts power on our side to walk “no longer as the Gentiles walk.” And how solemn is the description of what Gentiles are by nature! Nor must we overlook the fact, that beneath the thin veneer of our boasted civilization, which rejects Christ and the gospel, there is the same darkened understanding, the same alienation from God, the same blindness and the uncleanness of which these words speak.

Saved by grace these Gentiles had heard Christ and had been taught by Him. To walk according as the truth is in Jesus is the responsibility of all who know and follow Him. He is our pattern. The old man is put off and the new man is put on. We are not told to put off the old man by all kinds of endeavors and resolutions; it is already done. The old man was put away by the cross of Christ (Rom 6:6). This is the blessed truth which delivers from doubt and bondage. And then we receive something in Christ, the new man, the new nature. Grace unclothed us and clothed us. Grace made an end of the old man and put upon us the new man. And this new man, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness, which calls for a corresponding walk. But there is also a practical putting off and putting on. Of this we read in Eph 4:25-29. In Eph 4:26 there is a command to be angry and sin not. There is a righteous anger which is not sinful. The Lord Jesus exhibited that (Mar 3:5). When truth is perverted, or that blessed and worthy name is dishonored, a righteous feeling of displeasure arises in the heart, which is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Such a feeling is not sin. But we are warned “let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” The wrath of man, if nourished, worketh not the righteousness of God (Jas 1:20). How easy it is to harbor feelings which are sinful, and in doing so give place to the devil. Corrupt communications are not to proceed out of the mouth of a member of the body of Christ, “but that which is good for needful building up, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” Speech is always to be with grace, seasoned with salt (Col 4:6). In view of such exhortations, the practice of certain evangelists to use “slang,” vulgar and common expressions in public speech stands condemned.

“And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, by whom ye have been sealed unto the day of redemption.” We are His temple and all must be avoided which displeases the holy guest. That He dwells in us and we are sealed by Him is the evidence of our eternal security. We are sealed by Him unto the day of redemption. We may grieve Him, but He will never leave those who are washed in the blood of the Lamb. He abides with us forever. in Eph 4:32 we find another exhortation how the members of the body of Christ should act towards each other.

We are to be imitators of God, as dear children and walk in love as Christ also hath loved us and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. Then there are additional exhortations about fornication, all uncleanness, or covetousness, as well as other things. It shows the possibility of a child of God falling into these things. The true believer knows that in his flesh dwelleth no good thing, and that only the power of the Holy Spirit can deliver him from the power of the flesh; therefore he walks in the Spirit. There can be no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God for such whose life is in these things. A child of God may fall and commit some of these things, but no true believer will continue to live in them.

“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them” (Eph 5:10.) when our Lord was on earth He reproved the unfruitful works of darkness. His condemnation was aimed at the religious Pharisees and rationalistic Sadducees. He pronounced His solemn “woes” upon them. Walking as the children of light, therefore, means separation from evil, moral and religious, and a definite witness against it.

The exhortation in Eph 5:14, to awake and arise, is not addressed to an unsaved person, but to a Christian. Many believers are in the state of spiritual sleep among the spiritually dead in the world; but the promise is given, that Christ will give light when the awakening comes. Another important exhortation is found in Eph 5:18: “And be not drunken with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.” “Be filled with the Spirit” does not mean another outpouring of the Holy Spirit, another Pentecost. The Holy Spirit dwells in every child of God; He is the abiding guest. He is in us to fill us, and He will do so if we walk in the Spirit. May we open our whole heart to Him and walk in obedience, abiding in Christ, occupied with Christ, exalting Christ, and we shall know what it means to be filled with the Spirit. Some of the effects of it are mentioned in the verses which follow (Eph 5:19-21). There is worship and thanksgiving. He is also the Spirit of love and grace--”submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.”

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Division 4. (Eph 4:17-32; Eph 5:1-21.)

Ways that suit this.

The fourth division brings us, as always, to the ways that suit what has been already before us. We find, however, simply what is individual here. The Church as such, the relationship of the members to one another, and what would result from that relationship does not come before us.

1. In the first place, we have the truth "as it is in Jesus" and "the new man created in righteousness and holiness of truth." The apostle appeals to them, that now, God having separated them from all that they were in nature away from Himself, they must now walk not as other Gentiles walk but according to the truth in Jesus. He draws a strong picture of that old Gentile walk. It was "in the vanity of their minds," he says, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in them because of the blindness of their heart." How solemn a picture of the darkness of the natural condition, and ignorance which is moral; by which, therefore, everything is distorted. On the other hand, as he will presently say to us, the holiness which belongs to us is holiness of truth.

We are delivered from the shadows, brought into the reality of things. So that holiness is never less than treating things, in fact, as they are. Faith is not an enthusiastic view of life or of anything. It is simply the true view gained by God being before the soul, the light having arisen upon it. Christ was now the Object before them. They had heard Him and "been instructed in Him, as the truth is in Jesus." He does not say, as the truth is in Christ. The truth "in Jesus" is the practical walk, such as His walk was. He says "Jesus," therefore, because he is thinking, not of a place that we have in Him or of the results of His work for us, but simply His example, and Jesus is the name belonging to Him as here in the world, but it was die Christ that they had learned. It is as we see Him in the world that we realize what He is. Christ, as such, is an Object of faith, as we may say, while as Jesus He has come into the sphere of practical life, lived before our eyes. We see the truth in Him. "As long as I am in the world," He says, "I am the Light of the world." Consequently, everything takes its true shape in connection with Him; but it is thus, in fact, that we know Christ, -Christ is His official title. It is that which speaks of Him as the Doer of the blessed work which He has accomplished for us. It is thus that we must learn Him first, before we are competent to realize in any measure His life in the world. Having learned the value of His work for us, we must then remember that we are to walk as He walked. We must look back to that walk of His. It is in putting these things together that our practical ways become what God would have them.

After the quails, the Manna. The quails, the life given up, must be the first, for us. We must know Him as the Victim and the Saviour, and this is what introduces us to Him as the Manna, the Bread from heaven. It is thus alone we are able to walk in His company, and all that we have learned of His work is to make us more completely His in our ways down here. As a consequence, the truth for us is that we "have put off according to the former conversation, the old man which corrupts itself according to the deceitful lusts." We have renounced this. It is always said, if we speak of the "old man," that we have put it off, and of the "new man," therefore, that we have put it on. The one has come in the place of the other. The two are not existent side by side. The man that we were, the man away from God, the man walking after the imaginations of his own heart, that is the man that we have renounced. He has come to an end for us at the cross, whose judgment we have seen there. Our own wills and ways are judged. We have been renewed in the spirit of our mind; we have "put on the new man," the man of the new creation, created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth. It is the man, therefore, who belongs to another scene than any this world can furnish. It is a scene in which Christ is the centre and indeed, in one sense, everything. The epistle to the Colossians gives us this character of the new man; that is, that he is one for whom there is "neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free." Plainly those are the differences which obtain upon earth, in a fallen world. The new man has lost sight of these. He is "renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him," where Christ is all and in all. Here in Ephesians, we have, rather, the effect of this. The character manifested is "righteousness and holiness of truth," but "holiness" is not here the word which stands for separation from evil. It is that, rather, which speaks of piety towards God, which puts Him in His place, the place which is necessarily His, which He can never be absent from, except as the darkness of mind resulting from the condition of the soul may be unable to see Him.

2. Thus, all falsehood is put off. We "speak truth every one with his neighbor." Here indeed is a glance at a motive which comes from our relationship to one another in the Church. We are "members one of another." The eye must not deal falsely with the foot or hand; but for the members to defraud one another is to deal untruly with themselves. If we are angry, we must take care that sin does not come in upon the heels of it. There is an anger which we read of in the Lord’s case. "He looked round about upon them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts." If we nurse even such anger it will be sure to degenerate. We are, therefore, not to let the sun set upon our wrath, nor to give room, in this way, to the devil. In a world in which sin is, we can have no heart for God if we do not feel it, nay, if we are not aroused by it; but if the personal element is allowed, there will soon be a wrath which is not of God. Now for him that stole, he is to steal no more, but that negative character is not enough for him. "Rather let him toil, working with his hands that which is honest, that he may have to distribute to him that needeth." No corrupt word is to be allowed out of the mouth, but again "that which is good" in the way of positive ministry, "that it may give grace to those that hear it." Then we are not to "grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom we have been sealed to the day of redemption." Notice how there is brought in here the motive derived from the grace which has come in to deliver and bring us through the peril of the way. The sealing, as we have seen elsewhere, implies our security. We are not threatened with the Holy Spirit leaving us if we grieve Him. He has come to abide, but on that very account, we must not grieve the gracious Visitor. How the word speaks of His personal interest in us, the One who has come to make good Christ’s interest in His own. This bears, of course, upon every other matter here. Again, "bitterness, heat of passion, wrath, clamor, injurious language" have all to be removed from us, with all malice," and the opposite character is to be maintained: "Kindness, compassion, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ," as it should read, "hath forgiven us." It is not "God for Christ’s sake," which would seem to intimate as if God acted in it simply for Another, whereas "God in Christ" speaks of the way in which He forgives, what He has done, in fact, for us, that He might be able to forgive us, and this brings out His whole heart as well as what righteousness has necessitated. We are thus to be "imitators of God as dear children," those who express and commend their Father’s character, and we are to walk in love, after the pattern of that love which Christ had to us when He gave Himself up for us "an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savor." It is the burnt offering, of which the apostle is reminding us here, that offering which speaks of the perfect obedience of One who came here to do the will of God, nothing else. The offering was to God for men, and in the remembrance of this we are to walk in love, which we have learnt in Him.

3. The character and effect of the light into which we are brought is now urged upon us. There are things which are not even to be named by those who would act in character according to their name. Saints are thus set apart to God, and those who are His must be separate from the breath of defilement; nay, there are things which are less gross than these which are still not convenient, not fitting to the character of those who should walk seriously as before God, for life is serious, and as those, also, who realize the goodness of God and walk, therefore, in the spirit of praise which becomes those who recognize this. He warns us distinctly here, that no one characterized by such things as he names has any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God. Men might deceive them with vain words, they might prate of Christian liberty and what not, but "on account of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the children of disobedience." He is speaking, of course, of the world, and not of Christians. He does not threaten Christians with the wrath of God. It is not the way in which the Spirit of God works upon us. At the same time, that this wrath does come upon the children of disobedience, necessarily gives intense solemnity to it. Christians, therefore, must not be in any sense partakers with them. There must be the fullest possible separation. Men could do in the darkness what they cannot do in the light, and therefore the sins of Christians have, in fact, a worse character than those even of the men around them. We were once darkness, we are now "light in the Lord." The title again brings in the thought of His authority over us. We have learned to recognize this and to walk as children of the light, because "the fruit of the light" (so it should read) "is in all goodness and righteousness and truth." How blessed and cheering the light is! And such is the path which God has ordained for us and which the light increases to the perfect day. We prove herein by practical ways what is acceptable to the Lord. We are not to have "fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness," but to reprove them. The very moderation here of his words is striking. He does not say works fruitful in evil. It should be enough to say "unfruitful" for us. "What fruit had ye then," asks the apostle, "in those things whereof ye are now ashamed?" What we want is not merely a correct walk, but what God Himself shall find fruit in. Our character, therefore, as manifested in our ways, is to reprove these unfruitful works beneath which is also a secret depth of evil which it would be a shame even to speak of; but the light makes everything manifest. The Christian, alas, may sleep in the light itself, wherefore he says: "Awake thou that sleepest and arise from among the dead and Christ shall give thee light." To sleep among the dead, how terrible a thing! But the Christian abides, as we see here, always in the light. He may forget it, he may be untrue to it, but the light is there, and the light for him is in the face of Christ. There is no other test for anything but how it looks in His presence. We are to walk carefully, therefore. We are in a world which requires this. We must have the wisdom which is the application of the truth to all the circumstances of the way, and we must redeem the opportunity, the season; for the power of evil is such that unless we are careful, ready to lay hold of every opportunity for God, we shall find ourselves soon unable to make head against the power of Satan which is in the world around today. We are not to be foolish, therefore, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. Then comes a beautiful word. We are not to be "drunk with wine," not carried away from our sober senses, "in which is excess," but to "be filled with the Spirit." Here there is no excess. Yet, when the Spirit came at Pentecost, men said, in their perplexity, "These are filled with new wine;" and indeed the power of the Spirit carries us so outside of the things which are natural to men and in which the heart is, that those whom the Spirit actuates will be counted to have lost their sober senses; but the power of it is manifest in the way in which the truth enjoyed makes music in the heart, -as he says here: "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord." Notice that he puts it upon us to be thus tilled. He does not even bid us pray for it. He will not allow us to think, as it were, that our dullness can be anything except the result of the way in which we straiten and limit the Spirit that God has given us. The spring will necessarily spring up and overflow. It would have to be kept down, as it were by force, if it did not do this, and it is the power of other things entering in which hinders thus the blessed Spirit in giving us that which is the proper effect of the blessed truth He ministers. With this, how naturally and necessarily goes the spirit of thankfulness! "Giving thanks at all times," he says, "for all things to Him who is God and Father, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

He could give thanks at all times. He goes out with a hymn to His agony in the garden. For us, how simple, where there is nothing of this sort really awaiting us, no darkness such as He was in, nothing but the blessed light itself, how easy it should be for us to give thanks! "Submitting yourselves one to another," he says finally, "in the fear of Christ;" an unusual expression, as one might expect the fear of the Lord, or the fear of God, but the "fear of Christ" may have its suited place here, for there is a fear which springs out of the very consciousness of the love which His Name expresses.

F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 19

ON CHRISTIAN MORALS

Eph_4:17-32; Eph_5:1-21

THE WALK OF THE GENTILES

Eph_4:17-19

CHRIST has called into existence and formed around Him already a new world. Those who are members of His body are brought into another order of being from that to which they had formerly belonged. They have therefore to walk in quite another way-"no longer as the Gentiles." St. Paul does not say "as the other Gentiles" (A.V); for his readers, though Gentiles by birth, {Eph_2:11} are now of the household of faith and the city of God. They hold the franchise of the "commonwealth of Israel." As at a later time the apostle John in his Gospel, though a born Jew, yet from the standpoint of the new Israel writes of "the Jews" as a distant and alien people, so St. Paul distinguishes his readers from "the Gentiles" who were their natural kindred. When he "testifies," with a pointed emphasis, "that you no longer walk as do indeed the Gentiles," and when in Eph_4:20 he exclaims, "But you did not thus learn the Christ," it appears that there were those bearing Christs name and professing to have learnt of Him who did thus walk. This, indeed, he expressly asserts in writing to the Philippians: {Php_3:18-19} "Many walk, of whom I told you oftentimes, and now tell you even weeping,"-the enemies of the cross of "Christ; whose god is their belly, and their glory in their shame, who mind earthly things." We cannot but associate this warning with the apprehension expressed in Eph_4:14 above. The reckless and unscrupulous teachers against whose seductions the apostle guards the infant Churches of Asia Minor, tampered with the morals as well as with the faith of their disciples, and were drawing them back insidiously to their former habits of life.

The connection between the foregoing part of this chapter and that on which we now enter, lies in the relation of the new life of the Christian believer to the new community which he has entered. The old world of Gentile society had formed the "old man" as he then existed, the product of centuries of debasing idolatry. But in Christ that world is abolished, and, a "new man" is born. The world in which the Asian Christians once lived as "Gentiles in the flesh," is dead to them. They are partakers of the regenerate humanity constituted in Jesus Christ. From this idea the apostle deduces the ethical doctrine of the following paragraphs. His ideal "new man" is no mere ego, devoted to his personal perfection: he is part and parcel of the redeemed society of men; his virtues are those of a member of the Christian order and commonwealth.

The representation given of Gentile life in the three verses before us is highly condensed and pungent. It is from the same hand as the lurid picture Rom_1:18-32. While this delineation is comparatively brief and cursory, it carries the analysis in some respects deeper than does that memorable passage. We may distinguish the main features of the description, as they bring into view in turn the mental, spiritual, and moral characteristics of the existing Paganism. Mans intellect was confounded; religion was dead; profligacy was flagrant and shameless.

I. "The Gentiles walk," the apostle says, "in vanity of their mind"-with reason frustrate and impotent; "being darkened in their understanding"-with no clear or settled principles, no sound theory of life. Similarly he wrote in Rom_1:21 : "They were frustrated in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened." But here he seems to trace the futility further back, beneath the "reasonings" to the "reason" (nous) itself. The Gentile mind was deranged at its foundation. Reason seemed to have suffered a paralysis. Man has forfeited his claim to be a rational creature, when he worships objects so degraded as the heathen gods, when he practises vices so detestable and ruinous.

The men of intellect, who held themselves aloof from popular beliefs, for the most part confessed that their philosophies were speculative and futile, that certainty in the greatest and most serious matters was unattainable. Pilates question, "What is truth?"-no jesting question surely-passed from lip to lip and from one school of thought to another, without an answer. Five centuries before this time the human intellect had a marvellous awakening. The art and philosophy of Greece sprang into their glorious life, like Athene born from the head of Zeus, full-grown, and in shining armour. With such leaders as Pericles and Phidias, as Sophocles and Plato, it seemed as though nothing was impossible to the mind of man. At last the genius of our race had blossomed; rich and golden fruit would surely follow, to be gathered from the tree of life. But the blossoms fell, and the fruit proved as rottenness. Grecian art had sunk into a meretricious skill; poetry was little more than a trick of words; philosophy a wrangling of the schools. Rome towered in the majesty of her arms and laws above the faded glory of Greece. She promised a more practical and sober ideal, a rule of world-wide justice and peace and material plenty. But this dream vanished, like the other. The age of the Caesars was an age of disillusion. Scepticism and cynicism, disbelief in goodness, despair of the future possessed mens minds. Stoics and Epicureans, old and new Academics, Peripatetics and Pythagoreans disputed the palm of wisdom in mere strife of words. Few of them possessed any earnest faith in their own systems. The one craving of Athens and the learned was "to hear some new thing," for of the old things all thinking men were weary. Only rhetoric and scepticism flourished. Reason had built up her noblest constructions as if in sport, to pull them down again. "On the whole, this last period of Greek philosophy, extending into the Christian era, bore the marks of intellectual exhaustion and impoverishment, and of despair in the solution of its high problem" (Dollinger). The world itself admitted the apostles reproach that "by wisdom it knew not God." It knew nothing, therefore, to sure purpose; nothing that availed to satisfy or save it.

Our own age, it may be said, possesses a philosophic method unknown to the ancient world. The old metaphysical systems failed; but we have relaid the foundations of life and thought upon the solid ground of nature. Modern culture rests upon a basis of positive and demonstrated knowledge, whose value is independent of religious belief. Scientific discovery has put us in command of material forces that secure the race against any such relapse as that which took place in the overthrow of the Graeco-Roman civilisation. Pessimism answers these pretensions made for physical science by her idolaters. Pessimism is the nemesis of irreligious thought. It creeps like a slow palsy over the highest and ablest minds that reject the Christian hope. What avails it to yoke steam to our chariot, if black care still sits behind the rider? to wing our thoughts with the lightning, if those thoughts are no happier or worthier than before?

"Civilisation contains within itself the elements of a fresh servitude. Man conquers the powers of nature, and becomes in turn their slave" (F.W. Robertson). Poverty grows gaunt and desperate by the side of lavish wealth. A new barbarism is bred in what science grimly calls the proletariate, a barbarism more vicious and dangerous than the old, that is generated by the inhuman conditions of life under the existing regime of industrial science.

Education gives man quickness of wit and new capacity for evil or good; culture makes him more sensitive; refinement more delicate in his virtues or his vices. But there is no tendency in these forces as we see them now in operation, any more than in the classical discipline, to make nobler or better men. Secular knowledge supplies nothing to bind society together, no force to tame the selfish passions, to guard the moral interests of mankind. Science has given an immense impetus to the forces acting on civilised men; it cannot change or elevate their character. It puts new and potent instruments into our hands; but whether those instruments shall be tools to build the city of God or weapons for its destruction, is determined by the spirit of the wielders. In the midst of this splendid machinery, master of the planets wealth and lord of natures forces, the civilised man at the end of this boastful century stands with a dull and empty heart-without God. Poor creature, he wants to know whether "life is worth living"! He has gained the world, but lost his soul. In vanity of mind and darkness of reasoning men stumble onwards to the end of life, to the end of time. The worlds wisdom and the lessons of its history give no hope of any real advance from darkness to light until, as Plato said, "We are able more safely and securely to make our journey, borne on some firmer vehicle, on some Divine word." Such a vehicle those who believe in Christ have found in His teaching, The moral progress of the Christian ages is due to its guidance. And that moral progress has created the conditions and given the stimulus to which our material and scientific progress is due. Spiritual life gives permanence and value to all mans acquisitions. Both of this world and of that to come "godliness holds the promise." We are only beginning to learn how much was meant when Jesus Christ announced Himself as "the light of the world." He brought into the world a light which was to shine through all the realms of human life.

II. The delusion of mind in which the nations walked resulted in a settled state of estrangement from God. They were "alienated from the life of God."

"Alienated from the commonwealth of Israel," St. Paul said in Eph_2:12, using as he does here, the Greek perfect participle, which denotes an abiding fact. These two alienations generally coincide. Outside the religious community, we are outside the religious life. This expression gathers to a point what was said in verses 11, 12 of chapter 2 (Eph_2:11-12), and further back in Eph_2:1-3; it discloses the spring of the souls malady and decay in its separation from the living God. When shall we learn that in God only is our life? We may exist without God, as a tree cast out in the desert, or a body wasting in the grave; but that is not life.

Everywhere the apostle moved amongst men who seemed to him dead-joyless, empty-hearted, weary of an idle learning or lost in sullen ignorance, caring only to eat and drink till they should die like the beasts. Their so-called gods were phantasms of the Divine, in which the wiser of them scarcely even pretended to believe. The ancient natural pieties-not wholly untouched by the Spirit of God, despite their idolatry-that peopled with fair fancy the Grecian shores and skies, and taught the sturdy Roman his man, fulness and hallowed his love of home and city, were all but extinguished. Death was at the heart of Pagan religion; corruption in its breath. Few indeed were those who believed in the existence of a wise and righteous Power behind the veil of sense. The Roman augurs laughed at their own auspices; the priests made a traffic of their temple ceremonies. Sorcery of all kinds was rife, as rife as scepticism. The most fashionable rites of the day were the gloomy and revolting mysteries imported from Egypt and Syria. A hundred years before, the Roman poet Lucretius expressed, with his burning indignation, the indisposition of earnest and high-minded men towards the creeds of the later classic times:-

"Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret, In terris oppressa gravi sub religione, Quae caput e coeli regionibus ostendebat Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans. Primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra." -" De Rerum Natura," Bk. 1., 62-67.

How alienated from the life of God were those who conceived such sentiments, and those whose creed excited this repugnance. And when amongst ourselves, as it occurs in some unhappy instances, a similar bitterness is cherished, it is matter of double sorrow, -of grief at once for the alienation prompting thoughts so dark and unjust towards our God and Father, and for the misshapen guise in which our holy religion has been presented to make this aversion possible. The phrase "alienated from the life of God" denotes an objective position rather than a subjective disposition, the state and place of the man who is far from God and his true life. God exiles sinners from His presence. By a necessary law, their sins acts as a sentence of deprivation. Under its ban they go forth, like Cain, from the presence of the Lord. They can no longer partake of the light of life which streams forth evermore from God and fills the souls that abide in His love. And this banishment was due to the cause already described, -to the radical perversion of the Gentile mind, which is re-affirmed in the double prepositional clause of Eph_4:18 : "because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart." The repeated preposition (because of) attaches the two parallel clauses to the same predicate. Together they serve to explain this sad estrangement from the Divine life; the second because supplements the first. It is the ingrained "ignorance" of men that excludes them from the life of God; and this ignorance is no misfortune or unavoidable fate, it is due to a positive "hardening of the heart."

Ignorance is not the mother of devotion, but of indevotion. If men knew God they would certainly love and serve Him. St. Paul agreed with Socrates and Plato in holding that virtue is knowledge. The debasement of the heathen world, he declares again and again, was due to the fact that it "knew not God." The Corinthian Church was corrupted and its Christian life imperilled by the presence in it of some who "had not the knowledge of" 1Co_15:33-34. At Athens, the centre of heathen wisdom, he spoke of the Pagan ages as "the times of ignorance"; {Act_17:30} and found in this want of knowledge a measure of excuse. But the ignorance he censures is not of the understanding alone; nor is it curable by philosophy and science. It has an intrinsic ground, -"existing in them."

Since the worlds creation, the apostle says, Gods unseen presence has been clearly visible. {Rom_1:20} Yet multitudes of men have always held false and corrupting views of the Divine nature. At this present time, in the full light of Christianity, men of high intellect and wide knowledge of nature are found proclaiming in the most positive terms that God, if He exists, is unknowable. This ignorance it is not for us to censure; every man must give account of himself to God. There may be in individual cases, amongst the enlightened deniers of God in our own days, causes of misunderstanding beyond the will, obstructing and darkening circumstances, on the ground of which in His merciful and wise judgment God may "overlook" that ignorance, eve as He did the ignorance of earlier ages. But it is manifest that while this veil remains, those on whose heart it lies cannot partake in the life of God. Living in unbelief, they walk in darkness to the end, knowing not whither they go.

The Gentile ignorance of God was attended, as St. Paul saw it, with an induration of heart, of which it was at once the cause and effect. There is a wilful stupidity, a studied misconstruction of Gods will, which has played a large part in the history of unbelief. The Israelitish people presented at this time a terrible example of such guilty callousness. {Rom_11:7-10, Rom_11:25} They professed a mighty zeal for God; but it was a passion for the deity of their partial and corrupt imagination, which turned to hatred of the true God and Father of men when He appeared in the person of His Son. Behind their pride of knowledge lay the ignorance of a hard and impenitent heart.

In the case of the heathen, hardness of heart and religious ignorance plainly went together. The knowledge of God was not altogether wanting amongst them; He "left Himself not Without witness," as the apostle told them. {Act_14:17} Where there is, amid whatever darkness, a mind seeking after truth and right, some ray of light is given, some gleam of a better hope by which the soul may draw nigh to God, in coming whence or how perhaps none can tell. The gospel of Christ finds in every new land souls waiting for Gods salvation. Such a preparation for the Lord, in hearts touched and softened by the preventings of grace, its first messengers discovered everywhere, -a remnant in Israel and a great multitude amongst the heathen.

But the Jewish nation as a whole, and the mass of the pagans, remained at present obstinately disbelieving. They had no perception of the life of God, and felt no need of it; and when offered, they thrust it from them. Theirs was another god, "the god of this world," who "blinds the minds of the unbelieving". {2Co_4:3-4} And their "ungodliness and unrighteousness" were not to be pitied more than blamed. They might have known better; they were "holding down the truth in unrighteousness," putting out the light that was in them and contradicting their better instincts. The wickedness of that generation was the outcome of a hardening of heart and blinding of conscience that had been going on for generations past.

III. By two conspicuous features the decaying Paganism of the Christian era was distinguished, - its unbelief and its licentiousness. In his letter to the Romans St. Paul declares that the second of these deplorable characteristics was the consequence of the former, and a punishment for it inflicted by God. Here he points to it as a manifestation of the hardening of heart which caused their ignorance of God: "Having lost all feeling, they gave themselves up to lasciviousness, so as to commit every kind of uncleanness in greediness."

Upon that brilliant classic civilisation there lies a shocking stain of impurity. St. Paul stamps upon it the burning word Aselgeia (lasciviousness), like a brand on the harlots brow. The habits of daily life, the literature and art of the Greek world, the atmosphere of society in the great cities was laden with corruption. Sexual vice was no longer counted vice. It was provided for by public law; it was incorporated into the worship of the gods. It was cultivated in every luxurious and monstrous excess. It was eating out the manhood of the Greek and Latin races. From the imperial Caesar down to the horde of slaves, it seemed as though every class of society had abandoned itself to the horrid practices of lust.

The "greediness" with which debauchery was then pursued is at the bottom self-idolatry, selfdeification; it is the absorption of the God-given passion and will of mans nature in the gratification of his appetites. Here lies the reservoir and spring of sin, the burning deep within the soul of him who knows no God but his own will, no law above his own desire. He plunges into sensual indulgence, or he grasps covetously at wealth or office; he wrecks the purity, or tramples on the rights of others; he robs the weak, he corrupts the innocent, he deceives and mocks the simple-to feed the gluttonous idol of self that sits upon Gods seat within him. The military hero wading to a throne through seas of blood, the politician who wins power and office by the sleights of a supple tongue, the dealer on the exchange who supplants every competitor by his shrewd foresight and unscrupulous daring, and absorbs the fruit of the labour of thousands of his fellow-men, the sensualist devising some new and more voluptuous refinement of vice-these are all the miserable slaves of their own lust, driven on by the insatiate craving of the false god that they carry within their breast.

For the light-hearted Greeks, lovers of beauty and of laughter, self was deified as Aphrodite, goddess of fleshly desire, who was turned by their worship into Aselgeia, -she of whom of old it was said, "Her house is the way to Sheol." Not such as the chaste wife and house-keeping mother of Hebrew praise, but Lais with her venal charms was the subject of Greek song and art. Pure ideals of womanhood the classic nations had once known-or never would those nations have become great and famous-a Greek Alcestis and Antigone, Roman Cornelias and Lucretias, noble maids and matrons. But these, in the dissolution of manners, had given place to other models. The wives and daughters of the Greek citizens were shut up to contempt and ignorance, while the priestesses of vice-hetaerae they were called, or companions of men-queened it in their voluptuous beauty, until their bloom faded and poison or madness ended their fatal days. Amongst the Jews whom our Lord addressed, the choice lay between "God and Mammon"; in Corinth and Ephesus, it was "Christ or Belial." These ancient gods of the world-"mud-gods," as Thomas Carlyle called them-are set up in the high places of our populous cities. To the slavery of business and the pride of wealth men sacrifice health and leisure, improvement of mind, religion, charity, love of country, family affection. How many of the evils of English society come from this root of all evil!

Hard by the temple of Mammon stands that of Belial. Their votaries mingle in the crowded amusements of the day and rub shoulders with each other. Aselgeia flaunts herself, wise observers tell us, with increasing boldness in the European capitals. Theatre and picture-gallery and novel pander to the desire of the eye and the lust of the flesh. The daily newspapers retail cases of divorce and hideous criminal trials with greater exactness than the debates of Parliament; and the appetite for this garbage grows by what it feeds upon. It is plain to see whereunto the decay of public decency and the revival of the animalism of pagan art and manners will grow, if it be not checked by a deepened Christian faith and feeling.

Past feeling, says the apostle of the brazen impudicity of his time. The loss of the religious sense blunted all moral sensibility. The Greeks, by an early instinct of their language, had one word for modesty and reverence, for self-respect and awe before the Divine. There is nothing more terrible than the loss of shame. When immodesty is no longer felt as an affront, when there fails to rise in the blood and burn upon the cheek the hot resentment of a wholesome nature against things that are foul, when we grow tolerant and familiar with their presence, we are far down the slopes of hell. It needs only the kindling of passion, or the removal of the checks of circumstance, to complete the descent. The pain that the sight of evil gives is a divine shield against it. Wearing this shield the sinless Christ fought our battle, and bore the anguish of our sin.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

4:17–5:20 Paul gives believers specific guidelines for living a new life in Christ.

4:17 God’s people are called to a way of life that is different from that of the Gentiles (pagans, unbelievers) of the world.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Eph 4:17. Τοῦτο αὖν λέγω, this I say then) He returns to the point with which he set out, Eph 4:1.—μηκέτι ὑμᾶς περιπατεῖν, that ye henceforth walk not) This is an antithesis to Eph 4:1.—ἐν ματαιότητι, in vanity) The root of such walking, departure from the knowledge of the true God, Rom 1:21; 1Th 4:5: in (ἐν) is to be construed with they walk [ἔθνη περιπατεῖ, not with ὑμᾶς περιπατεῖν]. Vanity is explained at large in Eph 4:18; walking in Eph 4:19.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eph_4:17. That οὖν, like the Latin ergo, here resumes Eph_4:1 (Hartung, Partikell. II. p. 22 f.; Klotz, ad Devar. p. 718), is rightly assumed; since the exhortation begun Eph_4:1-3 is really interrupted by the digression, Eph_4:4-16, and the duty now following μηκέτι περιπατεῖν κ.τ.λ., is but the negative side of the ἀξίως περιπατῆσαι κ.τ.λ. of Eph_4:1. Theodoret aptly observes: πάλιν ἀνέλαβε τῆς παραινέσεως τὸ προοίμιον.

τοῦτο] to be referred forwards: What follows then (now to return to my exhortations) I say and asseverate, etc.

μαρτύρομαι] does not signify obsecro, but I testify, i.e. I asseverate, aEphesians Ephesians 4 :See on Gal_5:3. Since, however, there lies in this expression and in λέγω the notion of exhortation and precept, there is no need of supplying δεῖν to the following infinitive. See Kühner, ad Xen. Mem. ii. 2. 1; Buttmann, neut. Gr. p. 235 [E. T. 273]; also Heind. ad Plat. Prot. p. 346 B.

ἐν κυρίῳ] not per Dominum (Theodoret: ὑπὸ μάρτυρι γάρ φησι τῷ κυρίῳ ταῦτα λέγω, so already Chrysostom and most expositors, including Koppe, Flatt, Holzhausen), which would be πρὸς κυρίου (comp. on Rom_9:1), and with μαρτύρομαι would have to be denoted by τὸν κύριον (I call the Lord to witness, Plat. Phil. p. 12 B; Eur. Phoen. 629; Soph. Oed. Col. 817); but rather, as at Rom_9:1, 1Th_4:1 : in the Lord, so that Paul expresses that not in respect of his own individuality does he speak and aver, but that Christ withal is the element, in which his thinking and willing moves,through which, therefore, the λέγω and μαρτύρ. has its distinctively Christian character.

μηκέτι] after that ye, from being Gentiles, have become Christians.

καθὼς καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ ἔθνη κ.τ.λ.] The καί has its reference in the former walk of the readers. These are no longer to have such a walk, as was, like their previous walk, that also of the other, i.e. the still unconverted (comp. Eph_2:3; 1Th_4:13) Gentiles.

τὰ λοιπά] for the readers, although Christians, belonged nationally to the category of Gentiles.

ἐν ματαιότητι τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν] (not αὑτῶν) is the subjective sphere, in which the walk of the other Gentiles takes place, namely, in nothingness (truthlessness) of their thinking and willing (νοῦς), which, however, neither denotes, after the Hebrew הֶבֶל, idol-worship (see, in opposition to this, Fritzsche, ad Rom. i. 21), nor is it to be referred, with Grotius, especially to the philosophers (comp. 1Co_3:20), but is to be understood of the whole intellectual and moral character (comp. 2Pe_2:18) of heathenism, in which the rational and moral principle (the νοῦς) is theoretically and practically estranged from the truth (Eph_4:18), and subject to error and the service of sin (Eph_4:19). We may add, that the ματαιότης is not an inborn one (Zanchius, Calovius, and others; comp. Calvin), but (Rom_7:7 ff.) one that has come to pass, although it has come to pass φύσει (Eph_2:3). Comp. Rom_1:21; Rom_2:15.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Eph 4:17-24 . A paragraph which takes up again the practical address begun with the first verse of the chapter, but interrupted at Eph 4:4 , and contains solemn exhortations to withdraw from all conformity with the old vain pagan life.

Eph 4:17 . τοῦτο οὖν λέγω καὶ μαρτύρομαι ἐν Κυρίῳ : this I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord . The οὖν has here its simple, resumptive force ( cf. Donald., Greek Gram. , § 548, 31; Win.-Moult., p. 555). It takes up the train of thought which had been broken off at Eph 4:4 . The τοῦτο refers to the exhortation that follows. μαρτύρομαι is used of a solemn declaration, protest, or injunction of the nature of an appeal to God ( cf. Act 20:26 ; Act 26:22 ; Gal 5:3 , etc.). ἐν Κυρίῳ , not = by the Lord , nor on the Lord’s authority , but in the Lord, the writer identifying himself with Christ and giving the exhortation as one made by Christ Himself ( cf. Rom 9:1 ; 2Co 2:17 ; 1Th 4:1 ; also the classical εἶναι ἔν τινι , as in Soph., Oed. Tyr. , 314; Oed. Col. , 247, etc., and Abb., in loc. ). μηκέτι ὑμᾶς περιπατεῖν : that ye no longer walk . The exhortation began (Eph 4:1 ) as a positive injunction to a worthy walk. It is now resumed in the negative form of an injunction against an unworthy Pagan walk. The περιπατεῖν , the ordinary objective inf., expresses the object of the ruling verb. After verbs like μαρτύρομαι such inf. conveys the idea of what ought to be and has something of the force of an imper. ( cf. Act 21:4 ; Act 21:21 ; Tit 2:2 , etc.). It requires no δεῖν to be supplied (see Jelf, Greek Gram. , p. 884, 4; Buttm., Gram. of N. T. Greek , p. 273; Win.-Moult., pp. 403, 405). καθὼς καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ ἔθνη περιπατεῖ : as the [ rest of the ] Gentiles also walk . λοιπὰ is inserted by the TR before ἔθνη , and is supported by [425] 4 [426] 2, 3 [427] [428] , Syr., Goth., Chrys., etc. It is omitted, however, by [429] [430] [431] [432] [433] * [434] , Boh., Eth., Vulg., etc., and must be deleted here (with LTTrWHRV). The καί associates the walk which they are charged to continue no longer with that of the Gentiles generally, and with their own former walk in their non-Christian days. ἐν ματαιότητι τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν : in the vanity of their mind . νοῦς is not merely the intellectual faculty or understanding, but also the faculty for recognising moral good and spiritual truth (Rom 1:28 ; Rom 7:23 ; 1Ti 6:5 , etc.). ματαιότης , a peculiarly biblical and ecclesiastical term, occurring in NT only here and in Rom 8:20 ; 2Pe 2:18 , and corresponding to the Heb. הֶבֶל , שָׁוְא , means vanity in the sense of purposelessness, uselessness . There is nothing in the clause to restrict it to the case of idol-worshippers or to that of the heathen philosophers (Grot.). It is a description of the walk of the heathen world generally a walk moving within the limits of intellectual and moral resultlessness, given over to things devoid of worth or reality ( cf. Rom 1:21 , ἐματαιώθησαν ἐν τοῖς σιαλογισμοῖς αὐτῶν ).

[425] Codex Sinaiticus (sæc. iv.), now at St. Petersburg, published in facsimile type by its discoverer, Tischendorf, in 1862.

[426] Codex Claromontanus (sæc. vi.), a Græco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.

[427] Codex Mosquensis (sæc. ix.), edited by Matthæi in 1782.

[428] Codex Angelicus (sæc. ix.), at Rome, collated by Tischendorf and others.

[429] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.

[430] Autograph of the original scribe of א .

[431] Autograph of the original scribe of א .

[432] Codex Alexandrinus (sæc. v.), at the British Museum, published in photographic facsimile by Sir E. M. Thompson (1879).

[433] Codex Claromontanus (sæc. vi.), a Græco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.

[434] Codex Boernerianus (sæc. ix.), a Græco-Latin MS., at Dresden, edited by Matthæi in 1791. Written by an Irish scribe, it once formed part of the same volume as Codex Sangallensis ( δ ) of the Gospels. The Latin text, g, is based on the O.L. translation.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17–5:14. THE GREAT CONTRAST

17–24. THE CONTRAST IN PRINCIPLE

μαρτύρομαι. Of solemn protest. Act 20:26 (at Ephesus), Act 26:22; Gal 5:3; 1Th 2:12.

ἐν κυρίῳ. Eph 2:21, Eph 4:1.

περιπατεῖν. Cf. on Eph 2:2.

ἐν ματαιότητι τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν. The picture of the ‘gentile’ manner of life should be compared with the fuller treatment of the same subject in Rom 1:18-32; cf. 1Pe 4:1-4. ματαιότητι, cf. Rom 1:21; 1Pe 1:18. On the latter passage Hort says: ‘Its vanity’ (i.e. of a life not guided by belief in the true God) ‘consists in its essential unreality and want of correspondence to the truth of things, its inability to fulfil the promises which it suggests, and its universal unproductiveness.’

τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν. Cf. Eph 4:23. νοῦς in St Paul (esp. note Rom 1:28; Rom 7:23; Rom 7:25; Rom 12:2; Col 2:18; 1Ti 6:5; 2Ti 3:8) is the faculty pre-eminently of moral discernment—blunted by sin, but capable of renewal in Christ.

17. St Paul resumes the exhortation begun in Eph 4:1. But this time from the negative side—the side of the evil habits that have to be given up. This section extends to Eph 4:14. It falls into two divisions: Eph 4:17-24. The contrast between the old and the new in principle. Eph 4:25 to Eph 5:14. The contrast in detail.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

4:17-6:9.] Exhortations to a course of walking and conversation, derived from the ground just laid down, and herein (4:17-5:21) general duties of Christians as united to Christ their Head.

17.] This (which follows) then (resumptive of ver. 1; as Thdrt., πάλιν ἀνέλαβε τῆς παραινέσεως τὸ προοίμιον. This is shewn by the fact that the μηκέτι περιπατ. here is only the negative side of, and therefore subordinate to, the ἀξίως περιπ. of ver. 1. Vv. 4-16 form a digression arising out of τ. ἑνότητα τ. πν. in ver. 3. Still this must not be too strictly pressed: the digression is all in the course of the argument, and μηκέτι here is not without reference to μηκέτι in ver. 14. The fervid style of St. Paul will never divide sharply into separate logical portions—each runs into and overlaps the other) I say (see Rom 12:3. There is no need to understand δεῖν before the infinitive which follows. The μηκ. ὑμ. περιπατεῖν is the object of λέγω expressed in the infinitive, just as regularly as in βούλομαί σε λέγειν. That an imperative sense is involved, lies in the context) and testify (see reff.: cf. Plato, Phileb. p. 47 d, ταῦτα δὲ τότε μὲν οὐκ ἐμαρτυράμεθα, νῦν δὲ λέγομεν: Thuc. vi. 80; viii. 53, Duk.) in the Lord (element; not ‘formula jurandi,’ see 1Th 4:1, note), that ye no longer (‘as once:’ implied also by καί below) walk as also (besides yourselves: though the Ephesians did not walk so now, their returning to such a course is made the logical hypothesis) the Gentiles (ye being now distinguished from them by being members of God’s church, though once Gentiles according to the flesh. Perhaps from this not being seen, λοιπά was inserted) walk in (element) vanity (see Rom 1:21: they ἐματαιώθησαν in their downward course from God. But we must not restrict the word to idolatry: it betokens the waste of the whole rational powers on worthless objects. See also on Rom 8:20) of their mind (their rational part), being (beware of referring ὄντες to ἀπηλλ. with Eadie. Besides its breaking the force of the sentence, I doubt if such an arrangement is ever found) darkened (see again Rom 1:21, and the contrast brought out 1Th 5:4, 1Th 5:5, and ch. 5:8) in (the dative gives the sphere or element in which. The difference between it and the accusative of reference (τὴν διάνοιαν ἐσκοτισμένους, Jos. Antt. ix. 4. 3) is perhaps this, that the dative is more subjective—The man is dark:—wherein? in his διάνοια: the accusative more objective—Darkness is on the man:—in him, whereon? on his διάνοια) their understanding (perceptive faculty: intellectual discernment: see note, ch. 2:3), alienated (reff.: objective result of the subjective ‘being darkened’) from the life of God (not ‘modus vivendi quem Deus instituit,’ as the ancients (Thdrt., Thl., and Grot., al.), for ζωή in N. T. never has this meaning (see the two clearly distinguished in Gal 5:25), but always life, as opposed to death. Thus ‘the life of God’ will mean, as Beza beautifully says, ‘vita illa qua Deus vivit in suis:’ for, as Beng., ‘vita spiritalis accenditur in credentibus ex ipsa Dei vita.’ Stier makes an important remark: “The Apostle is here treating, not so much of the life of God in Christ which is regenerated in believers, as of the original state of man, when God was his Life and Light, before the irruption of darkness into human nature”) on account of the ignorance (of God: see ref. 1 Pet.) which is in them (not, by nature: cf. Rom 1:21-28: they did not choose to retain God in their knowledge, and this loss of the knowledge of Him alienated them from the divine Life), on account of (second clause, subordinate to ἀπηλλ.: not subordinate to and rendering a reason for τὴν ἄγν. τ. οὖσαν, as Meyer, which would be awkward, and less like St. Paul) the hardening (‘πώρωσις est obduratio, callus. Rem quæ hac voce significatur, eleganter describit Plutarchus, de auditione p. 46, ubi nullo monitorum ad vitam emendandam sensu duci, negotium esse dicit ἀνελευθέρου τινὸς δεινῶς κ. ἀπαθοῦς πρὸς τὸ αἰδεῖσθαι νέου διὰ συνήθειαν ἁμαρτημάτων κ. συνέχειαν, ὥσπερ ἐν σκληρᾷ σαρκὶ κ. τυλώδει τῇ ψυχῇ, μώλωπα μὴ λαμβάνοντος.’ Kypke. The sense ‘blindness’ is said by Fritzsche, on Rom 11:7, to be invented by the grammarians. Thdrt. says πώρωσιν τὴν ἐσχάτην ἀναλγησίαν λέγει· καὶ γὰρ αἱ τῷ σώματι ἐγγινόμεναι πωρώσεις οὐδεμίαν αἴσθησιν ἔχουσι διὰ τὸ παντελῶς νενεκρῶσθαι) of their heart,

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ephesians 4:17-5:2

Analysis

This Section contains first a general exhortation to holiness, Eph_5:17-24; and secondly, injunctions in respect to specific duties, Eph_4:25. The exhortation to holiness is, agreeably to the apostles manner, first in the negative form not to walk as the heathen do, Eph_4:17-19, and secondly, positive, to walk as Christ had taught them, Eph_4:20-24. The heathen walk in the vanity of their mind, i.e. in a state of moral and spiritual fatuity, not knowing what they are about, nor whither they are going, Eph_4:17; because they are in mental darkness, and are alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, and through the hardness of their hearts, Eph_4:18; as is evinced by their giving themselves up to uncleanness and avarice, Eph_4:19. The Christian walk is the opposite of this because believers have been taught. Instead of ignorance, truth dwells in them, enlightening and purifying. Hence they are led to put off the old man and to put on the new man, which is more and more conformed to the image of God, Eph_4:20-24. Therefore, they must avoid lying and speak the truth, Eph_4:25; abstain from anger and guard against giving Satan any advantage, Eph_4:26, Eph_4:27. Avoid theft, and be diligent and liberal, Eph_4:28. Avoid all corrupting language, but let their conversation be edifying, so as not to grieve the Holy Spirit, Eph_4:29, Eph_4:30. Instead of malicious feelings, they should exercise and manifest such as are mild, benevolent, and forgiving, being in this matter the followers of God, Eph_4:31.

Commentary

Eph_4:17

The apostle, having in the preceding section taught that Christ had destined his church to perfect conformity to himself, and made provision for that end, as a natural consequence, solemnly enjoins on those who profess to be Christians to live in accordance with this high vocation. This therefore I say and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as the other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind. To testify, in this case, is solemnly to enjoin, as, a man does who calls upon God to bear witness to the truth and importance of what he says. Μαρτυρέω is to act as a witness, and μαρτύρομαι to invoke as a witness. The latter is the word here used. In the Lord, means in communion with the Lord. Paul speaks as one who had access to the mind of Christ, knew his will, and could therefore speak in his name. The exhortation is, not to walk as the Gentiles do. To walk, in Scripture language, includes all the manifestations of life, inward and outward, seen and unseen. It does not express merely the outward, visible deportment. Men are said to walk with God, which refers to the secret fellowship of the soul with its Maker, more than to the outward life. So here the walk, which the apostle enjoins us to avoid, is not only the visible deportment characteristic of the Gentiles, but also the inward life of which the outward deportment is the manifestation.

They walk in the vanity of their mind. The language of the New Testament being the language of Jews, is more or less modified by Hebrew usage. And the usage of Hebrew words is of course modified by the philosophy and theology of the people who employed them. There are two principles which have had an obvious influence on the meaning of a large class of Hebrew words, and therefore on the meaning of the Greek terms which answer to them. The one is the unity of the soul which forbids any such marked distinction between its cognitive and emotional faculties, i.e. between the understanding and the heart, as is assumed in our philosophy, and therefore is impressed on our language. In Hebrew the same word designates what we commonly distinguish as separate faculties. The Scriptures, speak of an understanding heart, and of the desires of the understanding, as well as of the thoughts of the heart. They recognize that there is an element of feeling in our cognitions and an element of intelligence in our feelings. The idea that the heart may be depraved and the intellect unaffected is, according to the anthropology of the Bible, as incongruous, as that one part of the soul should be happy and another miserable, one faculty saved and another lost.

Another principle nearly allied to the former is the moral and spiritual excellence of truth. Truth is not merely speculative, the object of cognition. It has moral beauty. In scriptural language, therefore, knowledge includes love; wisdom includes goodness; folly includes sin; the wise are holy, fools are wicked. Truth and holiness are united as light and heat in the same ray. There cannot be the one without the other. To know God is eternal life; to be without the knowledge of God is to be utterly depraved. Saints are the children of light; the wicked are the children of darkness. To be enlightened is to be renewed; to be blinded is to be reprobated. Such is the constant representation of Scripture.

The νοῦς, mind, therefore, in the passage before us, does not refer to the intellect to the exclusion of the feelings, nor to the feelings to the exclusion of the intellect. It includes both; the reason, the understanding, the conscience, the affections are all comprehended by the term. Sometimes one and sometimes another of these modes of spiritual activity is, specially referred to, but in the present case the whole soul is intended. The word ματαιότης, vanity, according to the Scriptural usage just referred to, includes moral as well as intellectual worthlessness, or fatuity. It is of all that is comprehended under the word νοῦς, the understanding and the heart, that this vanity is predicated. Everything included in the following verses respecting the blindness and depravity of the heathen is; therefore comprehended in the word vanity.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

If the noblest parts of the soul be corrupt, what is man but corruption only?

He descendeth to the fruits of Christian doctrine, and reasoneth first upon the principles of manners and actions, setting down a most grave comparison between the children of God, and them which are not regenerate. For in these men, all the powers of the mind are corrupted and their mind is given to vanity, and their senses are darkened with most gross mistiness, and their affections are so accustomed by little and little to wickedness, that at length they run headlong into all uncleanness, being utterly destitute of all judgment.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

therefore--resuming the exhortation which he had begun with, "I therefore beseech you that ye walk worthy," &c. (Eph 4:1).

testify in the Lord--in whom (as our element) we do all things pertaining to the ministry (Th1 4:1 [ALFORD]; Rom 9:1).

henceforth . . . not--Greek, "no longer"; resumed from Eph 4:14.

other--Greek, "the rest of the Gentiles."

in the vanity, &c.--as their element: opposed to "in the Lord." "Vanity of mind" is the waste of the rational powers on worthless objects, of which idolatry is one of the more glaring instances. The root of it is departure from the knowledge of the true God (Eph 4:18-19; Rom 1:21; Th1 4:5).

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 17. Walk not as other Gentiles walk] Ye are called to holiness by the Gospel, the other Gentiles have no such calling; walk not as they walk. In this and the two following verses the apostle gives a most awful account of the conduct of the heathens who were without the knowledge of the true God. I shall note the particulars.

1. They walked in the vanity of their mind, εν ματαιοτητι του νοος αυτων. In the foolishness of their mind; want of genuine wisdom is that to which the apostle refers, and it was through this that the Gentiles became addicted to every species of idolatry; and they fondly imagined that they could obtain help from gods which were the work of their own hands! Here their foolishness was manifested.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

17. This I say therefore. That government which Christ has appointed for the edification of his church has now been considered. He next inquires what fruits the doctrine of the gospel ought to yield in the lives of Christians; or, if you prefer it, he begins to explain minutely the nature of that edification by which doctrine ought to be followed.

That ye henceforth walk not in vanity. He first exhorts them to renounce the vanity of unbelievers, arguing from its inconsistency with their present views. That those who have been taught in the school of Christ, and enlightened by the doctrine of salvation, should follow vanity, and in no respect differ from those unbelieving and blind nations on whom no light of truth has ever shone, would be singularly foolish. On this ground he very properly calls upon them to demonstrate, by their life, that they had gained some advantage by becoming the disciples of Christ. To impart to his exhortation the greater earnestness, he beseeches them by the name of God, — this I say and testify in the Lord, — reminding them, that, if they despised this instruction, they must one day give an account.

As other Gentiles walk. He means those who had not yet been converted to Christ. But, at the same time, he reminds the Ephesians how necessary it was that they should repent, since by nature they resembled lost and condemned men. The miserable and shocking condition of other nations is held out as the motive to a change of disposition. He asserts that believers differ from unbelievers; and points out, as we shall see, the causes of this difference. With regard to the former, he accuses their mind of vanity: and let us remember, that he speaks generally of all who have not been renewed by the Spirit of Christ.

In the vanity of their mind. Now, the mind holds the highest rank in the human constitution, is the seat of reason, presides over the will, and restrains sinful desires; so that our theologians of the Sorbonne are in the habit of calling her the Queen. But, Paul makes the mind to consist of nothing else than vanity; and, as if he had not expressed his meaning strongly enough, he gives no better title to her daughter, the understanding. Such is my interpretation of the word διανοία; for, though it signifies the thought, yet, as it is in the singular number, it refers to the thinking faculty. Plato, about the close of his Sixth Book on a Republic, assigns to διανοία an intermediate place between νόησις and πίστις but his observations are so entirely confined to geometrical subjects, as not to admit of application to this passage. Having formerly asserted that men see nothing, Paul now adds, that they are blind in reasoning, even on the most important subjects.

Let men now go and be proud of free-will, whose guidance is here marked by so deep disgrace. But experience, we shall be told, is openly at variance with this opinion; for men are not so blind as to be incapable of seeing anything, nor so vain as to be incapable of forming any judgment. I answer, with respect to the kingdom of God, and all that relates to the spiritual life, the light of human reason differs little from darkness; for, before it has pointed out the road, it is extinguished; and its power of perception is little else than blindness, for ere it has reached the fruit, it is gone. The true principles held by the human mind resemble sparks; but these are choked by the depravity of our nature, before they have been applied to their proper use. All men know, for instance, that there is a God, and that it is our duty to worship him; but such is the power of sin and ignorance, that from this confused knowledge we pass all at once to an idol, and worship it in the place of God. And even in the worship of God, it leads to great errors, particularly in the first table of the law.

As to the second objection, our judgment does indeed agree with the law of God in regard to the mere outward actions; but sinful desire, which is the source of everything evil, escapes our notice. Besides, Paul does not speak merely of the natural blindness which we brought with us from the womb, but refers also to a still grosser blindness, by which, as we shall afterwards see, God punishes former transgressions. We conclude with observing, that the reason and understanding which men naturally possess, make them in the sight of God without excuse; but, so long as they allow themselves to live according to their natural disposition, they can only wander, and fall, and stumble in their purposes and actions. Hence it appears in what estimation and value false worship must appear in the sight of God, when it proceeds from the gulf of vanity and the maze of ignorance.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

17–24. Practical Results: a spiritual revolution of principle and practice. The Old Man and the New

17. testify] A word of solemn appeal occurring elsewhere in N. T. only Act_22:26 (St Paul speaking) and Gal_5:3.

in the Lord] As myself being “in Him,” and as to those who are in the same union. Cp. Gal_5:10 (“I have confidence towards you in the Lord,” Gr.); below, Eph_6:1 (“obey in the Lord”); &c. The phrase “in the Lord” occurs 45 times in St Paul; “in Christ,” or closely kindred phrases, nearly 80 times.

henceforth, &c.] More lit., no longer walk. At their conversion “old things were passed away” (2Co_5:17) as to principle. Let this be now realized, continuously and ever more completely, in practice. On the metaphor “walk,” see above on Eph_2:2; Eph_2:10.

other Gentiles] Read, probably, the Gentiles. (On the word see above, on Eph_2:11.) In a spiritual sense the Ephesians were no longer “Gentiles,” for they were spiritual “Israelites” (Gal_6:16); hence the true form of the phrase here.

vanity of their mind] “Vanity” here is not self-conceit, which would require another Gr. word. It is the “emptiness” of illusion, specially of the state of illusion which sees pleasure in sin. In Rom_8:20 the word is used of evil, whether physical or moral, regarded as (what all evil ultimately proves to be) delusion and failure.

“Of their mind”:—the “mind” sometimes denotes specially the reason, as distinguished e.g. from spiritual intuition (1Co_14:14-15). Sometimes (Col_2:18) it apparently denotes the rational powers in general, as in the unregenerate state; and again those powers as regenerate (Rom_12:2). Here the unrenewed “Gentile” is viewed as living on principles which reason can approve only when the eternal facts are hidden from it.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

This I say therefore and testify in the Lord,.... These words may be considered either as an assertion, and so a testimonial of the different walk and conversation of the saints at Ephesus, from the rest of the Gentiles; or as an exhortation in the name of the Lord to such a walk, the apostle here returning to what he stirs them up to in Eph 4:1

that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind; every natural man walks in a vain show; the mind of man is vain, and whoever walk according to the dictates of it, must walk vainly: the phrase is expressive of the emptiness of the mind; it being naturally destitute of God, of the knowledge, fear, and grace of God; and of Jesus Christ, of the knowledge of him, faith in him, and love to him; and of the Spirit and his graces; and it also points at the instability and changeableness of the human mind, in which sense man at his best estate was altogether vanity; as also the folly, falsehood, and wickedness of it in his fallen state: and the mind discovers its vanity in its thoughts and imaginations, which are vain and foolish; in the happiness it proposes to itself, which lies in vain things, as worldly riches, honours, &c. and in the ways and means it takes to obtain it, and in words and actions; and the Gentiles showed the vanity of their minds in their vain philosophy and curious inquiries into things, and in their polytheism and idolatry: to walk herein, is to act according to the dictates of a vain and carnal mind; and it denotes a continued series of sinning, or a vain conversation maintained, a progress and obstinate persisting therein with pleasure: now God's elect before conversion walked as others do, but when they are converted their walk and conversation is not, at least it ought not to be, like that of others: the Alexandrian copy, and some others, the Vulgate Latin and Ethiopic versions, leave out the word "other", and only read, "as the Gentiles", &c.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

17 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,

Ver. 17. This I say therefore] Matters of great importance must be urged and pressed with greatest vehemence.

As other Gentiles walk] Singular things are expected from saints; who are therefore worse than others, because they should be better.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord - I bear witness in the name of the Lord Jesus, or ministering by his authority. The object of this is, to exhort them to walk worthy of their high calling, and to adorn the doctrine of the Saviour. With this view, he reminds them of what they were before they were converted, and of the manner in which the pagan around them lived.

That ye henceforth walk not - That you do not henceforth live - the Christian life being often in the Scriptures compared to a journey.

As other Gentiles walk - This shows that probably the mass of converts in the church at Ephesus were from among the pagan, and Paul regarded them as Gentile converts. Or it may be that he here addressed himself more particularly to that portion of the church, as especially needing his admonition and care.

In the vanity of their mind - In the way of folly, or in mental folly. What he means by this he specifies in the following verses. The word “vanity” in the Scriptures means more than mere “emptiness.” It denotes moral wrong, being applied usually to those who worshipped vain idols, and then those who were alienated from the “true” God.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord; I beseech or adjure you by the Lord: see the like, Rom 12:1; Phi 2:1.

That ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind; their minds themselves, and understandings, the highest and noblest faculties in them, being conversant about things empty, transient, and unprofitable, and which deceive their expectations, and therefore vain, viz. their idols, their worldly enjoyments, &c.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 17-24. CONSTRASTED PRINCIPLES OF GENTILE AND CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.

This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord. There is no sign of the apostle, when he comes to the practical part of Iris Epistle, deeming it of less importance than the doctrinal. The formula is very expressive; the apostle sinks his personality, and brings forward Christ as the Exhorter. That ye no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk. First, he indicates what they are not to be. "Be not conformed to this world." In four particulars they are to be different from Gentiles. The first of these is in the vanity of their mind. The allusion is to their frivolous, empty aims in life, and their unfixed, unsettled impulses. The Gentiles were chasing shadows, blowing bubbles, doing anything to make time pass agreeably; not considering or knowing either what they were, or whence they came, or whither they were going.

Vers. 17-24.

Contrasted principles of Gentile and Christian character.

We now come more explicitly to the details of Christian duty. The apostle had presented a very high standard of Christian privilege in the preceding chapters, and now he presents an equally high standard of Christian duty. What God gives in the one form is to be given back in the other, and in corresponding proportion. The importance of the subject is indicated by the formula, "This I say, and testify in the Lord." The apostle contrasts the Christian with the Gentile walk, and indicates wherein the latter is to differ from the former,

(1) in what the Christian is not to be, and

(2) in what he is to be.

I

1. In the vanity of their mind.

2. In the darkness of their understanding.

3. In their alienation from the life of God.

4. In their abandonment to lasciviousness.

Thus even Christian converts need to remember the duty to keep themselves unspotted by the world. There is a world of guilt and godlessness from which it is necessary for them to keep themselves unstained.

II POSITIVE RULES OF CHRISTIAN LIFE.

1. Their Source. "Ye have not so learned Christ, if so be ye heard him," etc. (ver. 20). The whole tenor of Christ"s teaching and influence is against these things. Only make sure that you have come under it.

2. What they are.

(1) "Put off the old man," etc. Comprehensiveness of the word "man;" his tendency is to rottenness or corruption; the lusts of deceit which are connected with him are pernicious and ruinous.

(2) "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind." Renewal begins within by the Holy Spirit rousing in you a desire for it, and urging you to use the means towards it. Accept and improve these movements of the Spirit within you.

(3) In this way, "put on the new man," and especially encourage and seek to have developed these two features of the new creation righteousness and holiness. Righteousness, including integrity, honest, true, fair, open dealing; doing justly out and out, in every place and in every relation in the house, the market, the counting-house, the shop, among neighbors, among strangers, everywhere and at all times. Holiness of truth, including high reverence for God and all that is Divine, sympathy and congeniality of heart with God, cleanness of nature, purity of soul, conformity to the image of Christ, who is the Image of the invisible God. No professing Christian can be exempted from this rule of life. Nor should any assume too readily that he is thoroughly conforming to it. "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." Christianity in its practical relations is very searching and thorough. It demands a high standard of life and practice. But no wonder, if Christ be the Head, the Source of all vital power, and if there be a complete provision by which the needed power may be communicated to all the members. Never let it be said to Christians, "What do ye more than others?

Vers. 17-19.

The moral characteristics of heathenism.

The apostle warns the saints of Ephesus not to walk in the ways of paganism. These ways are vividly described.

I THE HEATHEN WALK IN THE VANITY OF THEIR MIND. This vanity has its intellectual and its moral side.

1. Intellectually, it represents the waste of speculative power upon questions of the profoundest importance, ending usually in pantheism, atheism, or polytheism. The pagan intellect groped in vain amidst the darkness for light upon duty, upon providence, upon the future life of man. The heathen became vain in their imaginations.

2. Morally, the heathen walked in a vain show, looked for happiness in riches, honors, and power, and pursued foolish or wicked courses in the effort to attain these objects of desire. The end of such a walk must always be disappointing.

II EXPLANATION OF THIS VAIN LIFE. It is twofold.

1. It arises out of intellectual obscuration. "Having the understanding darkened." Not that the natural genius of the heathen was obscured, for the world must always admire the classics of Greece and Rome; but there was all but utter extinction of spiritual light in the heathen mind. There was no saving knowledge. The god of this world had blinded their minds, and their growing apostasy entailed a judicial blindness which issued in utter darkness.

2. It arises out of moral estrangement from God, "being alienated from the life of God." There could be no light in the mind, because there was no life in the heart. The life of God is not his own life, but the life he lives in his people, which is manifest in their faith and holiness; but the heathen were estranged from that life, so as to have no liking for it and no inclination to it, but rather a love for the life of sin.

(1) This moral estrangement is caused by "the ignorance that is in them;" for where men are ignorant of God, they have no desire after him, no faith in him, no communion with him, no living according to his will.

(2) And this ignorance, in turn, springs out of "the hardness of their hearts." The callous heart was proof against all impression from without, and thus kept the mind uninformed or apathetic, till heart and mind were both buried in the gloom of hopeless paganism.

III ULTIMATE RESULTS OF THIS VAIN LIFE. "Who being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness." When the hardness of the heart has followed close upon the steps of the darkened mind, conscience loses its power; it becomes seared as with a hot iron; the sense of sin is lost; the fear of guilt dies out; and now the way is open to measureless moral disorder. The sinner plunges into all forms of impurity, with the spirit of covetousness, as if he could never be satisfied with sinning, but sought ever new enormities of lawless desire. This is, in brief, the tremendous picture of heathenism given by an inspired apostle. T.C.

Vers. 17-32.

Raw material for Christian unity.

It comes upon us with something like a surprise, the exhortations of the present passage after the glories which have gone before. But they are instructive in that they bring out the raw material out of which Paul hoped to manufacture Christian unity. It is evident that he despaired of none, even supposing they had been guilty of the gravest crimes and characterized by the deepest pollution. Does not his grand hope rebuke our faintheartedness?

I CONSIDER THE MORAL BEACONS HERE BROUGHT BEFORE THE EPHESIANS. (Vers. 17-20) Paul presents in the beginning of the Epistle to the Romans a frightful picture of the immorality of the heathen. He had studied the question carefully, as a missionary to the heathen must. He here gives a briefer analysis, but one exceedingly vivid and instructive. The terrible fact was that many of the Gentiles had "given themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness," and Paul gives us here the reason of it. They had got utterly "hardened" and "past feeling." This was through their ignorance of the holy God, from whose life, with all its purifying power, they were consequently alienated. They had nothing for it in these circumstances but to follow the glimmer of their own darkened understandings, and to walk in the vanity of their minds. It was a case of alienation and isolation from the only Source of purity and of life. Paul consequently holds up the licentious Gentiles as beacons to warn the Ephesians away from the paths of sin, that they may walk worthily as the children of God.

II CONSIDER THE SPIRITUAL RENEWAL TO WHICH HE SUMMONS THEM". (Vers. 21-24.) The unconverted and lascivious heathen only showed to what excess of sin the old nature within each of us will proceed, if it be not put away. The beacons show the possibility of every sinful soul if it be not converted unto God. Hence Paul counsels the Ephesians to "put away, as concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit; and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth" (Revised Version). The "old man" is the sinful nature which we all possess as children of Adam; the "new man" is the better nature which God creates within us. But this new nature does not assert itself as new faculties and new powers, but utilizes the understanding and affections and will, which it finds already within us, so that according to proper mental laws we experience our renewal. The means by which this renewal is brought about are Christ and his offices and benefits; in other words, it is effected by "the truth as it is in Jesus." The moral manifestation is in "righteousness and holiness of truth.

III CONSIDER THE SERIOUS SINS AGAINST WHICH HE WARNS THE EPHESIANS. (Vers. 25-29.) It is evident, from the way in which he mentions them, that they prevailed in heathenism, and that the Ephesians had been previously guilty of them. They bring out vividly the raw material with which he had to work, and they should sustain the hope of missionaries still.

1. Falsehood. It is evident that the veracity of the heathen could not be calculated on; and what was true in Paul"s time is true still. The testimony of missionaries is to this effect, that you cannot rely on the word of the heathen. An interesting fact may here be quoted in illustration. "A Christian Santal was once going through several villages to make an extensive purchase of rice. In the first of the villages he got part of what he required, in the second also he got some baskets, and so forth, all for cash payments. But when he had brought out his money at the last village, he saw that he had not enough. He was twelve shillings short of the sum necessary to pay what he had bought. It is a thing unheard of among the Santals to give any goods on credit, so that the man saw that he had no alternative but to ask the seller to take back twelve shillings" worth of the rice. Meantime the seller had perceived that he had to do with a Christian, and as this impression was confirmed on his directly putting the question, he declared, without more ado, that he would be content in the mean time with the partial payment, and would trust to the buyer that he would soon bring him the balance. Unfortunately, the tax-collector came next day to the village to collect the dues. The man who had given his rice on credit was not able to pay his dues fully at once, and told, by way of excuse, what had befallen him. But the official deemed it incredible that a Santal should part with his goods without getting the money for them. His suspicion was confirmed by the fact that the man could give neither the name nor the residence of his debtor, and only took his stand upon this, that he was a Christian, and would certainly pay the twelve shillings ere long. Even the other villagers did not believe the story, and the collector sentenced the supposed liar to a suitable measure of stripes. A few days after, that Christian returned and paid his debt. His creditor had scarcely recovered from his undeserved ill treatment; but he forgot his pains through the joy of being able to vindicate himself and his honorable debtor before his neighbors and acquaintances. He called them all together and said triumphantly, "You laughed at me lately because I trusted the word of a Christian. There he is. Look well at him. I have not dunned him for his debt. I knew neither his name nor where he lives, and yet he has come to pay me the twelve shillings." "This interesting circumstance brings out at once the falsehood that exists in heathenism and the veracity fostered by the gospel. Before leaving this first sin, however, it is well to notice on what Paul grounds his appeal for veracity. It is on our being "members one of another." "Truth-speaking," says Mozley, "is not a universal isolated obligation which we are under a law to say truth under all circumstances, and in whatever relations we stand to the other party; but it supposes certain relations, viz. the ordinary relations of man with man, the natural terms of fellowship with man that we are bound to perform all the offices of humanity to him, and to behave to him as a brother. When we speak of the certain and obvious obligation to sincerity, these are the relations which we suppose; and St. Paul places the duty of veracity upon its proper basis, and gives the law of truth its proper position in the frame and system of morals, when he assigns the duty of truth-speaking this large and deep source, this intelligible connection, and this inclusive rationale." We do not proceed further in the quotation, but he infers that the relations of man to man may so vary, as when a man turns out assassin, that we are under no obligation to tell truth to him, if it would further his diabolical designs.

2. Sinful anger. This is another sin which is prevalent among unregenerate men. Paul"s appeal implies that there is such a thing as sinless anger. God is angry with the wicked, for example, every day. David, again, at the very time when he was calling on God to search him and to try him, could say calmly in the Divine presence, Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies". (Psa_139:21, Psa_139:22) But a great deal of the anger indulged in, both in heathen and in Christian lands, is selfish passion, and so sinful anger. It is against this selfish phase Paul warns them, and as we are peculiarly open to assaults from Satan when thus angry, the Ephesians are warned in this connection not to give place to the devil.

3. Laziness. The heathen will not work if they can help it. They would rather steal than work. Hence the gospel has always had an important mission in the "exaltation of labor." The monks in the Middle Ages did immense service in this direction, and really prepared Europe for the vast development of modern industry. This is one great feature also of modern missions. They give an impulse to industry wherever they are established. But it is to be observed that "the apostle does not honor all industry: far from it. He always reprobates the covetous, money-getting spirit. Fie even says, "The love of money is the root of all evil," and he calls covetousness idolatry.... He admires industry, but it must be industry which is consecrated by the nature which he requires; for it is that of duty when a man fulfils in the fear of God the task which is allotted to him." In the present instance he exhorts them to give up the laziness which would prompt a man to steal, and to work earnestly that they may be able to help others. Labor is exalted when disinterestedness enters in and consecrates it.

4. Filthy conversation. We need not tarry upon this. It is known to be one of the great trials of missionary life in heathen lands. What they hear is something awful. Some time since an enterprising and able young man disguised himself and spent some nights in the model lodging-houses of Glasgow, to report on the way in which they are conducted. His testimony was that it was not so much what he saw or smelt which gave him such pain, as what he heard. This exactly illustrates the point before us. Paul"s ear, we may be sure, had been the avenue of exquisite torture as he heard "the filthy conversation of the wicked." He calls upon his converts, consequently, to cultivate a gracious and edifying discourse. It is by speaking that human usefulness is chiefly realized. Men are to be talked into better things. (Rom_10:17)

IV CONSIDER HIS WARNING AGAINST GRIEVING THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD. (Ver. 30.) Now, if Paul"s ears were grieved with the immoralities of heathenism, how much more must we believe will the Holy Spirit be offended! How needful that those in whose hearts he dwells should abstain from all appearance of evil, and so give no offence to the holy Guest! More especially should this be the case when he condescends to seal souls "unto the day of redemption." If he has come to abide with us forever, surely we ought not to trifle in his presence or to offend his pure and blessed Being!

V LASTLY, CONSIDER HIS APPEAL FOE MUTUAL FORBEARANCE AND KINDLINESS. (Vers. 31, 32.) He brings in the forgiveness of God to us as a reason why we should be forbearing and forgiving to one another. In this way he expects to bring the Ephesians, who bad been so unholy, into the glorious unity of Christian love. The material on which he worked was raw and rough indeed, but not worse than human nature still. But out of the roughest stone hewed from the quarry of nature Divine grace can make polished stones fitted for God"s palace. R.M.E.

Vers. 17-24.

Exhortation resumed.

I say therefore, and testify in the Lord." It is characteristic of the apostle to sink his own personality, and to put forward Christ. He wishes it to be understood that it is not in his own thought, but in the thought of him whom he calls Lord, that he makes his statement and gives his solemn asseveration regarding their duty.

I EXHORTATION DIRECTED AGAINST GENTILISM. "That ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk." They had formerly been Gentiles in walk or character, as Gentiles in name. Now they were religiously the people of God. It became them, therefore, to have done with Gentile ways.

1. General character of Gentilism. "In the vanity of their mind." That was the moral atmosphere with which they were surrounded. In Rom_1:21 it is said that they "became vain in their reasonings." The wordtranslated mind" clearly refers to the governing part of the nature. And the meaning is that they wasted their "rational powers on worthless objects." They were made to have to do with great realities; but they were taken up instead with vanities. They were made to worship God, "who is, and is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him;" but they were idolaters, making gods of things that were not. They were made for immortality; but amid the trifles of time they had little or no thought of a hereafter. Of the most privileged populace in ancient heathenism it is said that "they spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

(1) Gentilism on its intellectual side. "Being darkened in their understanding." We are not to understand that they were unable to use their intellectual powers. For though heathenism has been largely associated with degradation of intellect, yet there have been some marked intellectual developments in the heathen world. A pagan, such as Euclid, was able most successfully to prosecute mathematical science. But it is true that, as they came near the center of human interest, they were dimmed in their vision, they were enveloped in darkness. For want of the Divine light they had no right conception of God, or of the meaning of human life. They called evil good, and good evil; they put darkness for light, and light for darkness.

(2) Gentilism on its practical side. "Alienated from the life of God," There was much inertness with which heathenism was chargeable. But at the same time, it is true that there were busy mercantile cities in the old heathen world. And a very great amount of energy was spent by heathen peoples on war. It can only he said that their higher energies were not called forth, and that none of their energies (not even those directed to ordinarily useful pursuits) were penetrated with the life of God. They were alienated from that life, self-pleasing having taken the place of the glory of God; and therefore in all their energies there was the coldness of death, the rottenness of the grave. These two clauses on which we have been commenting are closely related. For what is light but the life of God within the intellectual sphere? And what again is it that utilizes our energies but light? There are subjoined now other two clauses of a causal nature. "Because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart." It does not seem natural to connect these two clauses with only the second of the preceding clauses. But rather retaining both in our mind, are we to connect the ignorance that is in them with the darkening of their understanding, and the hardening of their heart with their alienation from the life of God. It is true that ignorance is a form of spiritual darkness, but not otherwise than hardening is a form of spiritual death. Ignorance is both a result and a cause. And, in so far as it has resulted from a refusal to have light, it is a cause from which there is not dissociated blame. As an abiding state (the result of a previous course), it is a source whence there is a perpetual irruption of darkness within the circle of the thoughts. Hardening of the heart also is both a result and a cause. It has been defined as such a suppression of moral and religions feeling as to imply a total disregard of Divine calls and warnings, and an insensibility to their importance? In so far as obduracy is formed, it has resulted from disregard of calls and warnings, and therefore it may be assigned as a cause (with which blame is associated) for alienation from the life of God. By cultivating sensitiveness to good we prevent hardening in evil, and therefore hardening is blameworthy.

2. Gentilism in its most offensive form. Who being past feeling." This was one form of the hardening. The result of a course of dissoluteness was that they were past all feeling, i.e. of shame. That feeling of shame is given as guardian of the purity of the body. But habitually disregarded, it is lost. "Gave themselves up to lasciviousness." Such was their fearful self-abandonment. Instead of abandoning themselves to God (which would have been deliverance from all possible thraldom), they abandoned themselves to what (with specialty) is called lust. That is, they made a god of lust. They degraded self, their glorious personality, by. making it a means to lust. Thus abandoned to lust, it became their conscious aim or business " to work all uncleanness." And that does not complete the description of their guilt and degradation. For it is added, as indicating the frame of mind in which they wrought uncleanness, that they did it "with greediness." And there is no reason to think that this description, or the description in Ro 1, is exaggerated, Not that there were not some virtuous heathen; but impurity was so rife as to be characteristic of heathenism. And when it is considered how it was not an object of public reprobation, and how it was associated with religion and also with art, it can be understood what foul shapes (amid a certain refinement and luxury) it would take.

II EPHESIANS REMINDED HOW GENTILISM IS CONTRADICTED BY CHRISTIANITY. "But ye did not so learn Christ." It will be observed that Christ is not put forward here as our Teacher, but as our Lesson. It is stronger language than is employed by Christ when he says, "Learn of me," where he puts himself forward as our Example. It corresponds to what the apostle says in 1Co_1:23, "We preach not "concerning," but) Christ crucified." A lesson is what we have to get into our minds; so we have, as it were, to acquire or get into ourselves, by learning, the person of Christ himself. There is the commencement of the lesson. "If so be that ye heard him? In this clause Christ is put forward as the Teacher of the lesson. They heard him when they were converted. At such a critical time it becomes us to know what we are really doing, under whose instructions we are putting ourselves. A parent sees to his son being put to a school or university where he thinks he will get for him satisfactory instruction. So we should be sure, as taught here, that at the great turning-point it was not the voice of a hireling or the mere echo of our own voice that we heard, but the voice of him who has authority to speak to us. There is the lesson in its continuance. "And were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus." This refers to the further instruction which they had received as those who had heard Christ. Here again Christ is the Lesson in him," as we might say taught in languages or in philosophy. And not merely so, but the historical Jesus is pointed to as the embodied Lesson "even as truth is in Jesus." He contains all the truth of God, and especially as he is brought before us in the Gospels, all that we need to know for salvation. He is a Lesson we cannot learn in a lay or in a lifetime. Even eternity will not suffice to exhaust its contents. But let us learn Christ as we can now, in the excellence of his character, in the greatness of his work, and in the purport of his doctrine.

1. Christianity in its negative aspect. "That ye put away, as concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit." He has in view, it will be seen, their former, i.e. their Gentile or pre-Christian manner of life. In this he sees what he calls the old man, viz. the sinful type of humanity. Originating in opposition to God, there is a type (such as there is in the development of a tree) according to which the corrupt development goes forward. There is a necessity of nature or of Divine government by which, as sinners, we grow worse and worse, and in the way in which we grow worse and worse. There is a law (appointed order) of sin and death under which we are placed. With the same essential type in all sinners, the corrupt development takes a special form from the lust (or desire in a sinful state) that is dominant, whether it is what is called lust, or the lust of money, or the lust of power. These lusts all agree in being intimately connected with or in the service of deceit. That is to say, under different disguises, we are promising ourselves independence and satisfaction, or making ourselves believe that we are pleasing God or benefiting men while really all our relations are wrong. The old man, then, as truth as it is in Jesus requires, is to be put away. That is better than the old translation. We are not merely to put it off, as we put off our clothes at night; but we are to put it away, as an old garment never to be put on again.

2. Christianity in its positive aspect. And that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth." The new man is the type of redeemed humanity, or, as it is put, the holy form of human life which results from redemption." A condition of this is renewing in the spirit of the mind. We are not to interpret this as though it were renewed by the Spirit in the mind. The spirit is the center where we appropriate the blessing of redemption, where we choose Christ instead of self, where we put ourselves in a right relation to the holy type of humanity. We are taught that renewal must be from within outwards. If there is only life lingering at the outside, it will never penetrate from thence to the center. But if there is still life at the center, though the old forms may have to be cast away, it will clothe itself in new forms. The new man is described as that which hath been created. In one view of it, this is what Christ did in his work. He created a holy type, which may be assumed by us sinners. And that was surely creation by pre-eminence. It was creation after God, even as man was created at first in the image of God. And we are here helped to the understanding of what that image was. It did not consist in anything accidental, but it consisted in what is most essential (what presupposes free-will), viz. rightness of moral disposition. It is here referred to as righteousness and holiness of truth. "Righteousness betokens a just relation among the powers of the soul within and towards men and duties without. But holiness betokens the integrity of the spiritual life, and the piety towards God of which that is the condition." There is a truth in such relations upon which righteousness and holiness are founded. We are made with a subordination of our lower powers to our higher. We are made to be mutually helpful. And we are made to be dependent on God and to trust in him. In all these respects man was rightly dispositioned at first. And what we lost in Adam we have more than regained in Christ in the creation of the new man. This new man, then, let us put on as that which we are never to put off. Let us pray for a constant renewing in the spirit of our mind, that, after God, we may have righteousness and holiness of truth that every relation which God has made for us may be honored by us. R.F.

Vers. 17-19.

Symptoms of moral madness.

I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness." In these verses the Christians at Ephesus are warned against the course of life pursued by the Gentiles, whom he describes as the prey of mental delusion, benighted in intellect, unbridled in licentiousness. Our subject is Symptoms of moral madness. What is "vanity of mind" in a scriptural sense? Not mere mental fatuity. Mataiothv, vanity, includes moral worthlessness and corruption. Sin is folly, and sinners are justly represented as fools. It is said of the prodigal son, that "when he came to himself" he began to inquire. A sinner is not himself. "We learn for the first time," says Dr. Arnot, "that the man has been mad by learning that his reason is restored. It is a characteristic of the insane that they never know or confess their insanity until it has passed away: it is when he has "come to himself" that he first discovers he has been beside himself. The two beings to whom a man living in sin is most a stranger are himself and God; when the right mind returns he becomes acquainted with both again. The first act of the prodigal, when light dawned on his darkness, was to converse with himself, and the second to return to his father." We learn from these verses that this moral madness is associated with several things.

I WITH AN INTELLECT WITHOUT TRUE LIGHT. There are two expressions here indicating the state of a sinner"s intellect. "Understanding darkened" and "ignorance that is in them." When we say that the sinner"s intellect is in the dark, we mean, of course, in respect to the spiritual realities and interests of his being. He may have the light of poetic fancy and of secular intelligence the stars of general science may beam on his horizon; but so far as moral light is concerned, he is in the dark. His eyes are blinded. Three things show this.

1. His adoption of the partial to the rejection of the complete in enjoyment. He has sensual pleasures, but these pleasures even in their highest measure constitute but an infinitesimal portion of those enjoyments for which human nature craves and for which it is organized the pleasures of holy loves, devout meditations, sublime fellowships, and uplifting hopes and aims. Is not the man mad who chooses the partial and rejects the complete?

2. His adoption of the fleeting to the rejection of the enduring in enjoyment. The pleasures and dignities he strives after are all connected with this life, which in its longest periods is brief and its securest conditions uncertain. What is our life? "A vapor." All is flowing as a stream, all is transient as a dream. The joys and honors of immortality he practically ignores and rejects. Is not this madness?

3. His adoption of the ruinous to the rejection of the restorative in enjoyment. By the adoption of the partial and the fleeting to the rejection of the complete and permanent, he pursues a course that involves the ruin of himself, the utter loss of all good. Are not these facts sufficient to show the darkness of the sinner"s mind and the dense ignorance that reigns within him?

II WITH A SOUL WITHOUT THE TRUE GOD. "Alienated from the life of God." No soul, no creature in the world can live a moment without God. "By him we live, and move, and have our being." Yet there is a solemn sense in which moral beings can and do live aloof from him, live without him. Sinners are "without God" in the world. "He is not in all their thoughts." They shut him out from the whole sphere of their feelings, thoughts, and activities. Not only do they practically ignore his presence and his claims, but his very existence. They are without God. Practical atheists. Is not this moral madness?

1. Is it not moral madness to shut the eye to the greatest Object in the universe One compared with whom the creation itself is as nothing?

2. Is it not moral madness to disregard the most absolute Master of our destiny the one Being in whose hand our breath is; One whose very word can make for us an eternal hell or heaven?

3. Is it not moral madness to have no sympathy with the best Being in existence the Fountain of all love, truth, and blessedness?

III WITH A HEART WITHOUT TRUE SENSIBILITY. "Blindness hardness of their heart." "Past feeling." This insensibility, whilst it has been brought about by moral irrationality and ignorance, reacts, deepens the darkness of the understanding, and intensifies the folly of the soul. When the man"s heart gets so hardened as to be "past feeling," he becomes utterly incapable of taking right views of spiritual things. The impure atmosphere of a corrupt and hardened heart will obscure the vision of the intellect. When the heart is "past feeling," man becomes so stupid in intellect as to be utterly incapable of seeing the beauty or feeling the force of spiritual truth.

1. To be "past feeling "is to be past the power of true improvement. Where there is no feeling there is no pain, and where there is no pain there will be no impulse for the search of a remedy. A bodily disease without pain is the most hopeless, and a moral disease without pain must prove fatal. "Past feeling." The moral heart run to "fat.

2. To be "past feeling" is to be past the power of true enjoyment. There is no pleasure without feeling.

IV WITH A LIFE WITHOUT TRUE "VIRTUE. "Given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness." The passage includes two things.

1. A voluntary abandonment to sin. "Given themselves over unto lasciviousness," etc. Having lost spiritual intelligence, God, and sensibility, the soul abandons itself to moral corruption. It does it voluntarily. "Given themselves." They are not forced by God or the devil. What a sight! souls made in the image of God plunging into a hideous, sunless, lifeless, lawless chaos!

2. An avaricious appetite for sin. "With greediness." The word "greediness" elsewhere means "covetousness a desire to have more.

CONCLUSION. Learn:

1. That a clear intellect requires a dean heart.

2. That a. clean heart requires a vital connection with God. Religion is essential to a sound intellect. D.T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

This therefore I say - He returns thither where he begun, ver. 1. And testify in the Lord - In the name and by the authority of the Lord Jesus. In the vanity of their mind - Having lost the knowledge of the true God, Rom. i, 21. This is the root of all evil walking.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

An admonition to spiritual renewal:

v. 17. This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,

v. 18. having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their he art;

v. 19. who, being past feeling, have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

v. 20. But ye have not so learned Christ,

v. 21. if so be that ye have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus;

v. 22. that ye put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,

v. 23. and be renewed in the spirit of your mind,

v. 24. and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

The apostle here takes up the thought of v. 1 again, which contains the fundamental admonition for the entire second part of the letter, namely, that the Christians should lead a life worthy of the calling wherewith they were called. He here brings out the contrast between the moral purity of the Christians and the social impurity of the Gentiles: This, then, I say and testify in the Lord, that you no longer lead your lives just as the Gentiles live theirs, in the vanity of their minds. It is a solemn protest and warning that Paul here issues in the Lord, for his exhortation was made in the interest of Christ and the Church, an earnest declaration and injunction in the nature of an appeal to God. As members of Christ’s body the Ephesian Christians should no longer have anything in common with their former companions, the members of their own race and nationality. For that is the characteristic of the unbelievers, the heathen of all times, that they walk in, that their entire conduct reveals, the vanity of their minds. The inner life of natural man, his thinking, willing, desiring, is vain, useless, purposeless, altogether without reality and worth before God. No unbeliever can have a conception of real moral values, for his mind is centered in nothingness.

This idea is now unfolded more completely: Being darkened in their understanding, estranged from the life of God by reason of the ignorance that is in them, by reason of the hardening of their hearts. The terms used by Paul presuppose a former, more enlightened condition of man. As God created man, his reason and mind were highly enlightened, especially also in their understanding of God and of things divine. Moreover, man, as created by God, had a blessed knowledge of God as of the heavenly Father. All this has been changed by sin. It is true of the Gentiles, as of natural man in general, that their minds, their thinking, their judgments, are darkened. Their understanding, their feeling, their desiring, is in such a condition as to make the distinction between good and evil impossible to them. And as far as their will is concerned, they have become alienated, estranged, from the life in God. They have no idea of the life which is from God, in and with God. Not a spark of fear, love, and trust in God is found in natural man. This condition is due to the inherited depravity of mankind; it is found in men because of the ignorance which is in them by birth and nature, because of the hardening of their hearts. They have been mentally and morally hardened against every influence for good, they have become blind, callous, insensible to everything that is truly noble and divine. This depraved condition of mind becomes evident in the lives of the Gentiles: Who, as men past feeling, have given themselves to lasciviousness, to the working of all uncleanness with greediness. They are no longer sensible to any higher moral influence, they have become abandoned to a state of heart without conscience. They have willingly yielded themselves, by their own guilty choice, to wantonness, to shameless, outrageous sensuality, to a reckless, unbridled behavior. So completely have they surrendered themselves in this respect that they make it their business to indulge in every form of uncleanness, together with greed or covetousness; for both vices are self-seeking. Paul purposely paints a picture from which the converted Gentile will turn with horror.

With this fact in mind the apostle now turns again to his readers: You, however, have not so learned Christ, if indeed you heard Him and in Him were instructed, as the truth is in Jesus, that you should put off, as regards your former way of life, the old man. There is a clear-cut, irreconcilable difference between the unregenerate and the regenerate person. The Ephesian Christians did not study the glorious news of their salvation through Christ in such a way as to suppose that they could continue in the sins which characterized the Gentiles. With delicate tact the apostle adds: If, as I assume it to be the case, as I take it to be a fact, Christ was indeed the subject, the sum and substance, of the preaching which you beard. As a matter of fact, they not only had heard Christ in the preaching of the Gospel, but had also been instructed in Him; as they received the instruction and progressed in the knowledge of their Savior, their union with Christ became ever more intimate, in their fellowship with Christ their knowledge of Him increased, as the truth, sound morality, and righteousness is in Christ. Jesus, holy and righteous in His person, gives to His disciples both the example and the proper instruction in holy life. He that has entered into the sphere of Jesus as His disciple is thereby under obligation to conduct himself in his entire life as Jesus walked.

The apostle now specifies a few points in the instruction which the Ephesians received: That you put off, as regards your former way of life, the old man, which becomes corrupt according to the lusts of deceit. The Ephesian Christians, at the time of their conversion, had renounced the devil and all his works and all his pomp. Still, the admonition is necessary that they, so far as their former manner of living is concerned, in order that their old heathenish conduct might definitely be put behind them, should put off the old man, the natural sinful corruption, the inherited evil inclination. As man is born into this world, not only are there a few objectionable traits in him, but his whole nature is absolutely and entirely perverted and corrupt, all his thoughts, imaginations, desires being directed against God and upon the vain things of this world. This old evil nature is found even in the regenerated Christians, for which reason it is necessary to exert eternal vigilance and to put off the old man, like a filthy garment, whenever he attempts to perform evil. The sinful words which rise to the tongue, the evil thoughts and intentions that desire to break forth out of the corrupt heart, must be brought into subjection and crucified before they find gratification. This is all the more a matter of necessity, since, if the old evil nature continues to rule in the heart of a person, the entire man, with body and soul, will share the fate of the old Adam, that of eternal damnation. For the lusts and desires of the old man are deceitful; they seem to promise happiness, joy, life, while in reality they ruin a person that follows their guidance, both in body and spirit, until he is lost forever.

The other side of the picture drawn by the apostle is more cheerful: That, on the other hand, you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man, who after God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. The putting off of the old man and the putting on of the new is done at the same time; the two events are simultaneous. In and by his conversion a person begins an entirely new life; he enters into a new existence so far as his spirit and mind are concerned. This regeneration must be continuous and steady, lest the old sinful nature once more gain the ascendency. It is a necessary part of Christian sanctification for a Christian always to begin anew, always to renew his spiritual youth, with every new day to withdraw with his heart and mind from the vain matters of this world. At the same time, therefore, he is also daily clothed anew with the new man, that state of mind, that moral habit which accords with the will of God. The new man is the sum total of all Christian virtues, the entire number of God’s moral demands in realization. To put on this summary of virtues, like a new, splendid garment, to be clothed and decorated with it at all times, to follow at all times the best thoughts and impulses of the new man, that must be the aim of every Christian. And this is possible for him, because the new man, in conversion, is created after God, in the image of God, Col 3:10, in the righteousness and holiness which are characteristic of true morality. In the same proportion as the Christian puts on the new man, gives evidence of his power in his entire life, in that measure the image of Christ, the image of God, makes its appearance in him.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Our apostle having finished this grand exhortation to love and unity amongst all christians, and enforced it with the most weighty arguments and motives in the former part of the chapter; comes now, in the latter part of it to press the Ephesians to the practice of particular duties.

The first of which is this, to take special care, that, being now converted christians, they walk no more like ignorant and unconverted heathens: Walk not as other Gentiles walk.

Next he gives particular instances how, and after what manner, the Gentiles, in the black night of paganism, did walk; namely,

1. In the vanity of their minds, following their own imaginations, and not any revelation from God, in the matters of his worship.

2. Having their understanding darkened; their minds void of saving knowledge.

3. They were alienated from the life of God: that is from a godly life: they were strangers to the life which God commanded, which God approved, and which God himself lived.

Here note, That holiness is called the life of God, because it is the life which God requires of us, it is the life which he works in us, it is the life whereby God liveth in us; the life whereby we live unto God; it is an everliving life; not obnoxious to death, as the Ephesians were: so every carnal man, before conversion, is alienated from this life of God; he has no liking of it, no inclination to it, but prefers a life of sin before it.

Lord, how many that are surrounded with the celestial beams of the gospel, are as impure and impenitent now as these Gentiles were then in the black night of paganism!

4. They were past feeling: their sottish stupidity had benumbed them, the flames of their lusts had seared their consciences to a desperate degree of hardness and insensibility: they were at once insensible of their sins and of their danger by reason of sin. A dead conscience, and a desperate dissolute life, are inseparable companions.

5.They gave themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. Here see how insensibility of sin begets insatiableness in sinning; they work uncleanness with insatiable greediness, who have once abandoned themselves to sin, especially to the sin of uncleanness.

Lord! this was the deplorable case of the heathen world, before the light of the gospel did arise and shine upon them.

But, alas! it is the case of multitudes that sit under the brightest beams of gospel light: they shut their eyes, and will not see; they extinguish all sense of immortality and a future state, and so abandon themselves to a life of brutish sensuality, working all uncleanness with greediness: but let them know assuredly, that though they live like beasts, yet they shall not die like them, nor shall their latter end be like theirs, the soul being under a divine ordination to an everlasting existence in a future state, in which it shall be eternally happy or intolerably miserable, according as we manage our deportment in this present world.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17–19. This I say, therefore. Now, after the statement of the great principles named in verses 3–16, Paul returns to the exhortation of verses 1–3. Walk not as other Gentiles. Having come out from the heathen and abandoned all their sins. The vanity of their mind. Vanity of mind means what is a waste of life.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

Connecting Statement:

Paul tells them what they should no longer do now that they as believers are sealed by the Holy Spirit of God.

Therefore, I say and insist on this in the Lord

"Because what I have just said, I will say something more to strongly encourage you because we all belong to the Lord"

that you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds

"stop living like the Gentiles with their worthless thoughts"

They are darkened in their understanding

They no longer think or reason clearly. AT: "They have darkened their thoughts" or "They are not able to understand" (See: Metaphor and Active or Passive)

alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them

This can be stated in active form. AT: "Because they do not know God, they cannot live the way God wants his people to live" or "They have cut themselves off from the life of God by their ignorance" (See: Active or Passive)

alienated

"cut off" or "separated"

ignorance

"lack of knowledge" or "lack of information"

because of the hardness of their hearts

Here "hearts" is a metaphor for people's minds. The phrase "hardness of their hearts" is a metaphor that means "stubbornness." AT: "because they are stubborn" or "because they refuse to listen to God" (See: Metonymy and Metaphor)

have handed themselves over to sensuality

Paul speaks of these people as if they were objects that they themselves were giving to other people, and he speaks of the way they want to satisfy their physical desires as if it were the person to whom they give themselves. AT: "only want to satisfy their physical desires" (See: Metaphor)

translationWords

exhort

lord

Gentile

life

God

heart

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

17-24. Admonition, that knowing how great the blessings of which they have been made partakers, they should fashion their lives accordingly, putting off that belongs to their old life, and putting on the new man.

17. τοῦτο οὖν λέγω καὶ μαρτύρομαι ἐν Κυρίῳ. Resumes from vv. 1-3. As Theodoret observes: πάλιν ἀνέλαβε τῆς παραινέσεως τὸ προοίμιον. οὖν, as often, has simply this resumptive force, and does not indicate any inference from what precedes; for the exhortation begun vv. 1-3 was interrupted, and the ἀξίως περιπατεῖν of ver. 1 is repeated in the negative form in ver. 17. The τοῦτο looks forward.

μαρτύρομαι, “I protest, conjure” = διαμαρτύρομαι. Polyb. p. 1403, συνδραμόντων τῶν ἐγχωρίων καὶ μαρτυρομένων τοὺς ἄνδρας ἐπανάγειν ἐπὶ τὴν ἀρχήν. Thucydides, viii. 53, μαρτυρομένων καὶ ἐπιθειαζόντων μὴ κατάγειν. The notion of exhortation and precept is involved in this and λέγω by the nature of the following context, μηκέτι περιπ., as in the passage of Thucydides, so that there is no ellipsis of δεῖν.

ἐν Κυρίῳ. Not either “per Dominum” or “calling the Lord to witness.” μάρτυρα τὸν Κύριον καλῶ, Chrys., Theodoret, etc. Some expositors have defended this on the ground that N.T. writers, following the Hebrew idiom, wrote ὀμόσαι ἔν τινι; but it by no means follows that ἔν τινι without ὀμόσαι could be used in this sense any more than κατὰ Διός could be used without ὀμόσαι instead of πρὸς Διός.

Ellicott says: “As usual, defining the element or sphere in which the declaration is made”; and so Eadie and Alford. This is not explanation. Meyer is a little clearer: “Paul does not speak in his own individuality, but Christ is the element in which his thought and will move.” εἶναι ἔν τινι is a classical phrase expressing complete dependence on a person. Soph. Oed. Col. 247, ἐν ὑμῖν ὡς Θεῷ κείμεθα: Oed. Tyr. 314, ἐν σοὶ γάρ ἐσμεν: Eurip. Alc. 277, ἐν σοι δʼ ἐσμὲν καὶ ζῆν καί μή. Compare Act 17:28, ἐν αὐτῷ ζῶμεν καὶ κινούμεθα καὶ ἐσμεν. In the N.T., indeed, the expression acquires a new significance from the idea of fellowship and union with Christ and with God. Whatever the believer does, is done with a sense of dependence on Him and union with Him. For example, “speaking the truth” “marrying” (1Co 7:39).

Here, where an apostolic precept is concerned, it is implied that the apostle speaks with authority. But the expression would hardly have been suitable had he not been addressing those who, like himself, had fellowship with the Lord. This interpretation is so far from being “jejune,” that it implies a personal and spiritual relation which is put out of sight by the impersonal figure of an “element.”

μηκέτι ὑμᾶς περιπατεῖν καθὼς καὶ τὰ ἔθνη περιπατεῖ. For the infinitive present compare the passages above cited from Thucyd. and Polyb. Also Act 21:2, λέγων μὴ περιτέμνειν: 21:4, ἔλεγον μὴ ἀναβαίνειν, where the imperative would be used in oratio directa. Demosth. xxvii. 7, λέγω πάντας ἐξιέναι. Aesch. Agam. 898, λέγω κατʼ ἄνδρα, μὴ Θεόν, σέβειν ἐμέ.

Text. Rec. adds λοιπά before ἔθνη, with א4 Dbc K L, Syr., Chrys., etc. The word is wanting in א A B D* G, Vulg., Boh.

The λοιπά is more likely to have been added in error than omitted. Assuming that it is not genuine, this is an instance of St. Paul’s habitual regard for the feelings of his readers. It suggests that they are no longer to be classed with the ἔθνη. They were ἔθνη only ἐν σαρκί, but were members of the true commonwealth of Israel.

ἐν ματαιότητι τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν. Although in the O.T. idols are frequently called μάταια (compare Act 14:15), the substantive is not to be limited to idolatry, to which there is no special reference here. It is the falseness and emptiness of their thoughts that are in question (cf. Rom 1:21, ἐματαιώθησαν ἐν τοῖς διαλογισμοῖς αὐτῶν). Nor, again, are we, with Grotius, to suppose any special reference to the philosophers, merely because in 1Co 3:20 it is said of the διαλογισμοὶ τῶν σοφῶν that they are μάταιοι. Rather, it refers to the whole moral and intellectual character of heathenism; their powers were wasted without fruit. As Photius (quoted by Harless) remarks: οὐ τὰ τῆς ἀληθείας φρονοῦντες καὶ πιστεύοντες καὶ ἀπο δεχόμενοι ἀλλʼ ἅπερ ἂν ὁ νοῦς αὐτῶν μάτην ἀναπλάσῃ καὶ λογίσηται. νοῦς includes both the intellectual and the practical side of reason, except where there is some ground for giving prominence to one or the other in particular. Here we have both sides, ἐσκοτωμένοι referring to the intellectual, ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι to the practical.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

This - therefore. Referring to what follows. Therefore, resuming the exhortation of vers. 1 - 3.

Testify. Solemnly declare. Compare Act 20:26; Gal 5:3.

Other Gentiles. Omit other.

Vanity of their mind [ματαιοτητι του νοος αυτων] . For vanity see on Rom 1:21; Rom 8:20. For mind, on Rom 7:23.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.