Ephesians 4:25

Eph_4:25

Wherefore, putting away lying.

Lying

I. Lying is an abominable habit.

1. To lie is diametrically opposed to truth, therefore to the whole Diving law, and not to one commandment only, as other sins.

2. Truth is a perfection of the Godhead, while lying is the sin of the devil.

3. Lying is very detrimental to human society. The greatest blessing in the world is the intercourse--the communion--of man with man. If this blessing be taken away, the whole world would be turned into chaos. Such would be the inevitable result, if all men were addicted to lying; and it is partly so now.

II. Lying is a habit which is punished here on earth.

1. Telling lies degrades a man in the estimation of his fellow men. If a lie were not a foul blot in a man, why are even bad men so cautious not to be caught in a lie?

2. God will punish the liar (Psa_5:7).

3. If God hates and punishes lying so severely, how great will be His hatred of perjury, which is lying confirmed by oath! The confirmation of testimony by oath has been ordained by God Himself (Deu_6:18). An oath is for confirmation. For men it is the end of all controversy. It follows that the perjurer, as far as in him lies, abolishes the last means of ascertaining the truth. Shall not God avenge? (Zec_5:4.) (J. B. Campadelli.)

Christian truth

I. This precept assumes a preliminary condition: putting away lying. This touches the root of the matter. It points to the entire and thorough abandonment and renunciation, not in outward speech only, but in the inmost heart, of all falsehood. You put away the thing that is false, all false dealing in your inmost mind and spirit with any person or any thing. We must connect this with what goes before. At Eph_4:22, we are exhorted to put off the old man, which is corrupt after the lusts of deceit, i.e., to put away the lusts of deceit in which its corruption consists. Here we are assumed to put away the deceit itself to which the lusts belong, and by means of which they wield their corrupting influence.

II. The injunction itself. The condition and the precept are closely connected. And the connection is natural. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. If there is no falsehood in the heart, it may be anticipated that there will be truth in the lips. And the converse holds good. So far, generally, the connection here indicated is clear enough. I am persuaded, however, that this is not all. Bear in mind what putting away falsehood really means. It describes a state or frame of mind, a character of the inner man, peculiar to the real Christian, the true believer. If so, it would seem to follow that by speaking truth every man with his neighbour, is meant a habit or mode of speech also peculiar to such a one. The true speaking must correspond to the putting away lying with which it is associated; out of which, in fact, it springs. They are both of them Christian graces and attainments, and not common virtues; excellences of which the renewed man is capable, but which are beyond the reach of the old.

III. The reason annexed to this precept. Christians are formed into one body, having a common Head; from whom they all derive a common life, and in whom they all are one. There are not, therefore--there cannot be, if they realize and act out this great ideal--separate interests among them. They are not isolated from one another, and independent of one another. Nor are they simply a community of individuals, voluntarily associated together for certain common ends. On either of these suppositions there might still be room for concealment and caution on many points there might be some apology for reticence and silence. But believers are a divinely constituted, a divinely created corporation. Their unity is of the Spirit. It is the work of the Holy Ghost. They are more intimately bound and knit together in one than are the limbs of mans corporeal frame. They have absolutely, in the highest sense, all things in common. There is one body, etc. Surely, in such a society, there might be expected to be the most outspoken freedom of utterance; the fullest and frankest speaking of the truth. As members one of another, you should have no secrets to keep from one another. There ought to be no cold reserve; no jealousy; no suspicion; none of that wary prudence, that wise doubting of your neighbour, which prompts the keeping back of the truth from him, and the leaving of him in ignorance or in error. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)

On truth

Not only is the Second Person in the adorable Trinity revealed to us as the Son and the Word of God, but He is also exhibited as the archetypal Verity. I am the truth, saith our Lord of Himself, and when He was made flesh He dwelt among men, full of grace and truth. That inherent attribute which had been in God from the beginning, which had been exercised in the beneficent act of creation (for all His works are faithful), was in the last days shown forth to mortal eyes in the lowly guise of the Carpenter of Nazareth, as their God in truth and in righteousness (Zec_8:8). Now if truth be thus--not only a part of that righteousness in which God constituted all things--but actually a form and mode of the Divine Being Himself; if it be, not only that, in which God caused all things to be according to their law, but the manifestation of Himself in His Blessed Son; it will follow that anything contrary to this truth will be of the most abominable nature. If truth be the exhibition of the Son of God Himself, we shall not wonder at the whole constitution of the world being founded in it. The condition on which society holds together is perfect truth. The nearer we approach to perfect truth in any society, the more perfect is the credit, and the more sure is the basis on which that society stands.

I. The opposite of truth is a lie; and in order to get at our duty on this head, it may be well to inquire into its nature and kinds. The common division of lying is into pernicious lies, those that are said with an evil intent--officious lies, those that are said to screen a fault or with other less culpable object--and lastly, lies of jesting, which may be dismissed in one word of the apostle--that they are--not convenient, being at best of a very low style of wit, and always dangerous. But I think that a fuller and more complete distinction of these may not be without advantage.

1. The first and most heinous of all lies are those that are perpetrated in religion. A falsehood concerning God is the worst form of this sin.

2. And connected with this--is the heinous iniquity of what are called pious frauds, where a religious system is propped up by deceit of any kind, false miracles, false legends, and the like.

3. The next most heinous form of deceit is the lie of malignity, where a falsehood is told with the deliberate purpose of injuring the happiness of another. Remember you have no right to spread any report till you have taken, some means to test its authenticity. If you give currency and fresh importance to a false report, you commit a great sin, and owe a heavy debt to the person you have helped to calumniate. The law prevents our being lied out of property, but who can arrest the evil effects of backbiting? who can restore the friendship it has broken?

4. The next kind of lying is that lying for lyings sake, which we find sadly prevalent among certain individuals and certain nations.

5. We now come to the case where the lie is told to obtain some immediate or eventual good. It is a very wide subject, because from the simple lie to serve an immediate purpose up to the difficult question of casuistry, whether a man may tell a lie to save life or reputation, the circumstances and degrees are various to infinitude. Of course we affirm broadly that a man may not tell a lie to obtain for himself any good, and that if suffering follows on telling the truth, a man must be contented to suffer. The whole question turns on this: Is there anything more valuable than the soul? if there be, you may lie to obtain it; but if God has said that He will destroy all such as speak leasing, it is clear that we may not commit that sin for anything which the world can give. It is staking our eternal welfare against our temporal good. The matter becomes more difficult, when the object for which a lie is told is a fine or noble one, like the faithful servant well known in Scottish history, who perjured himself before the judges to save his masters life. Yet even here the same law of distinction comes in, which is the more valuable--this world or the next? St. Augustine maintains that you may not say what is untrue, even if that untruth were to save a friends life, because your friends temporal life is less valuable than your own eternal life forfeited by the lie. If persons in pursuit of one who has thrown himself upon your mercy for concealment, demand of you where he is, you may not deny that you have seen him, but you may refuse to answer; you may throw the pursuers off the scent by any ingenious escape, but you may not say what is untrue, even in such an extreme case. You will recollect that noble fiction in which a person of low estate refuses to save a sisters life at the expense of a lie, and afterwards obtains her pardon under circumstances of unparalleled energy and exertion. The morality here is perfect. It is best to leave the issue of things in the hand of God, and not to do evil that good may come.

6. We next proceed to a less heinous sort of lying, that which arises from the desire to please man--the lie of polite society. Here no one is injured, very deep interests are not affected--the subjects lied about are trifles--the motives are amiable or innocent--and yet here is positive sin. A desire to shine in society may not be wrong, but it must not be compassed by such means. Or the love of society may take the shape of boastful falsehood.

7. A more excusable form is that lying which comes from fear of offending those we live with. This is the special sin of some weak natures, and belongs rather to cowardice of character than to actual deceit. It often arises from the injudicious severity of parents, and the rough discipline of a public school, or from that feeble temperament which never should have been sent there. It is as much a misfortune as a fault, and is to be met by strengthening the moral character generally, and by seeking to bring out in the disposition all those habits of self-respect, which, under the Divine blessing, give dignity to man.

8. The last and most venial form of falsehood consists in those slight inaccuracies which slip out in the haste and thoughtlessness of conversation. These can hardly be called lies, because they are not uttered with the deliberate intention of deceiving, and are intellectual rather than moral faults. Some have very incorrect memories, others have quick minds which lead them to speak before they think, or even without thinking at all. Some persons find it impossible to repeat a thing exactly as they heard it, and without conscious deceit convey a different impression in their narration. Many of strong imagination unconsciously colour facts which in other respects they rightly describe. In short, there is a large region on the confines between truth and falsehood which requires some vigilance on our parts. People should be cautious about this inaccuracy, because like all bad habits it is apt to increase.

II. And now that we have defined these different sorts of lying, let us think of their gratity and their cure. The record of the sacred Scripture is very strong against this sin. Nothing but the presence of the Blessed Truth, which is Christ Himself, in the heart, can give that pellucid and crystal soul which will bear the light at every angle. He who speaks the truth from worldly motives is only careful about that which the world censures, and in cases where the conventional morality of society allows of false vows and protestations, has no feeling about these; but the true Christian, while he is not over-scrupulous about trifles, has a conscience which ever announces the approach of fraud, for he is stayed on God, who is the immutable Truth, who cannot be deceived. (Bishop A. P. Forbes.)

On the nature of lying

I. The nature of a lie. A lie, strictly and properly so called, is such a manner of speaking, wherein, according to the ordinary signification of words, a man signifies that to another as true which he himself either certainly knows or believes to be false, and that, with a design of imposing upon him.

II. Several kinds of lies. Much needs not to be said concerning that sort of lying, which yet is of all others the most generally practised; namely, those mean ways of deceiving and over-reaching one another, which are so frequently used in traffic and bargaining. I shall proceed now to the consideration of such cases, wherein many even learned men have pleaded with very plausible reasons, in justification and defence of the use of divers manners of falsifying. And--

1. In the case of those, to whom we have openly and justly declared ourselves enemies, as in the case of a lawful and necessary war.

2. In the education of children; that is, of such as are already arrived to some, though not a perfect, use of their reason. To these, the persons I am speaking of, conceive, we are not obliged to speak the truth; not because they have no right to truth, or have lost that right by any forfeiture, but because they are not capable of receiving and judging of it; so that because they are not come to a full use of their reason and judgment.

3. The last case, wherein falsehood has been by many thought justifiable, is when some public benefit is thereby promoted; in which case they fancy they may presume upon mens consent, that they are willing to be deceived; that they would give up their right by which they might exact truth of us, did they know the reasons that moved us to deceive them. These are the chief cases in which some have thought falsehood allowable, or at least excusable. Whether they had any just and sufficient reason to do so, will best appear by inquiring first into the nature of truth, and the foundation of our obligation to speak always what we think agreeable to it; and their applying it to the particular cases. Now they who think a lie, properly so called, to be in several cases lawful; consider truth merely as a civil compact. They look upon truth as a matter of private concern, as if one man laid upon another all the obligation he has to it, and consequently could release him from that obligation either by his fault, or his incapacity, or his consent. Thus truth becomes merely one and the same thing with justice; and falsehood ceases to be a fault, unless when it is joined with manifest injury and wrong. From hence it follows, that, since when a man has forfeited or voluntarily receded from his right to anything, it may without injustice be withheld from him; in such cases as those, according to this notion, a lie will seem to be no longer blameworthy.

But now that we are, on the contrary, really under an obligation to truth, distinct from, and independent on that of mere justice, may appear from the following considerations.

1. That every mans conscience naturally convinces him that he is under an obligation to truth, distinct from all other considerations; so that it will not without reluctance suffer him to deceive his neighbour with a lie, even though he does not foresee any real injury or damage that will there upon accrue to him.

2. That our obligation to truth is distinct from that of merely not injuring our neighbour, appears further from this consideration, that in our notion of the supreme and most perfect Being, veracity and justice are two distinct perfections or attributes.

It remains that after what has been said, I make a practical observation or two, and so conclude. And--

1. Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, saith Solomon (Pro_12:22; and Pro_6:16. etc.).

2. As lies are thus abominable in the sight of God, so are they also to all good men (Pro_13:5).

3. This sin of lying tends in its own nature to the destruction of all civil society. (S. Clarke, D. D.)

The virtues which have truthfulness for their basis

The quality of truthfulness, or of allegiance to truth, in the character, extends far beyond the point of scrupulously avoiding untrue statements. A person may never tell what would usually be called a falsehood, and yet may have a thoroughly insincere, hypocritical, or artificial character.

1. And may I not mention first, as worthy of being in general avoided, the quality of dissimulation, or the concealment of our real opinions, which has been contrasted with simulation, or the pretending to be, or to think, something other than the reality. It has been laid to the charge of Cromwell that he was a dissembler, who allowed others to interpret his silence as they would, and then surprised them by acting otherwise than they expected. His most favourable biographers have defended him on the ground that he told no lies, and that being in the midst of dangerous plotters, he was unable to save himself or his cause in any other way. I will not dispute the justice of the defence, but I notice the instance as showing how men confound dissembling with falsehood, and therefore how these must border on one another; and as showing also that a high religionist like Cromwell, by his dissembling, gave colour to the charge that his religion was insincere.

2. Next to dissimulation I mention pretence, which implies an intentional concealment of the reality by something false or feigned offered to the inspection of others. Thus a merchant who has no capital makes a false impression on others in regard to his pecuniary ability, that he may obtain a loan of money; or a sciolist pretends to have learning, when he is ignorant; or a libertine to be moral when he is immoral; or a hypocrite in religion to be a believer or a good man when he is neither.

3. There is a less obvious kind of pretence into which we are all apt to fall, which, however, cannot stand on its defence, when tried by the laws of truth. It is what is called cant; a word which denotes the aping of others in expressions of feeling and opinion, by the use of set, stereotyped words which pass current in a certain circle of religion, fashion, or taste.

4. We mention next, as closely bordering on the vice of character already named, insincerity, especially in professions of regard and in the bestowment of praise. When a person puts on the semblance of friendship for another, expressing it in warm terms to his face, while he laughs at him behind his back, we call this hypocrisy of a black dye. But some insincere ways of making another believe that you are his friend are not so obviously wicked as this. You thus present yourself to others as ready to do for them what is beyond your intention, and when the test comes and you fail, they are wounded, and feel that they have been falsely dealt with. Most of such insincere professions are the refuges of selfishness ashamed to come to the light and putting on the forms of goodwill.

5. We pass on next to the faults of character opposed to simplicity. This word denoted at first the quality of being unfolded, as contrasted with that which was folded together, and so simplicity in a moral sense and duplicity are moral opposites. But the word has a wide application; when used in reference to taste it denotes the avoidance of the artificial, the overwrought, the overloaded with ornament, the pretentious. When used in reference to our purposes it denotes that two motives, as self-interest and goodwill, are not mixed in producing the same act, or that we aim at truth rather than at impression. As a moral quality it denotes the absence of guile, a character without artifice.

6. Another and a kindred fault opposed to a spirit of truthfulness is inaccuracy in representation and reports.

7. Another of the truthful virtues is candour, which partakes of the nature also of justice. It admits the weight of what makes against ourselves and confesses this with readiness. It acknowledges mistakes out of a spirit of fairness. In argument it gives an impartial view of the reasons urged by the opposite side. (T. D. Woolsey.)

The evil of lying

Wherein lies the evil of lying? We observe--

1. That a lie is the nearest thing possible to suicide, being a denial of the personality which God has given us, and calculated to reduce the order of Gods creation to confusion.

2. It is contrary to the nature and use of language, and the purpose of God Himself in giving us the organs of speech.

3. It makes men like devils, and destroys all confidence in human society. Two men give each other the lie, and you have a duel; one mob gives another the lie, and there is a riot; two nations give each other the lie, and you have war; our race gave God the lie in paradise, and we have the Fall--the heaven and the earth in conflict with each other. Such are the effects of a lie!

4. We add that the liar is shut out from the kingdom of heaven by the authority of God, being both by nature and practice unfitted for the heavenly home. (W. Graham, D. D.)

Various kinds of lies

There are thousands of ways of telling a lie. A mans whole life may be a falsehood, and yet never with his lips may he falsify once. There is a falsehood by look, by manner, as well as by lip. There are persons who are guilty of dishonesty of speech, and then afterward say may be, call it a white lie, when no lie is that colour. The whitest lie ever told was as black as perdition. There are those so given to dishonesty of speech that they do not know when they are lying. With some it is an acquired sin, and with others it is a natural infirmity. Misrepresentation and prevarication are as natural to them as the infantile diseases, and are a sort of moral croup or spiritual scarlatina. Then there are those who in after life have opportunities of developing this evil, and they go from deception to deception, and from class to class, until they are regularly graduated liars. At times the air in our cities is filled with falsehood, and lies cluster around the mechanics hammer, blossom on the merchants yardstick, and sometimes sit in the doors of churches. They are called by some fabrication, by some fiction. You might call them subterfuge, or deceit, or romance, or fable, or misrepresentation, or delusion; but as I know nothing to be gained by covering up a God-defying sin with a lexicographers blanket, I shall call them, in plainest vernacular, lies.

I. First of all, I speak of agricultural falsehoods. There is something in the presence of natural objects that has a tendency to make one pure. The trees never issue false stock. The wheat fields are always honest. Rye and oats never move out in the night, not paying for the place they occupy. Corn shocks never make false assignments. Mountain brooks are always current. The gold of the wheat fields is never counterfeit. But, while the tendency of agricultural life is to make one honest, honesty is not the characteristic of all who come to the city markets from the country districts. Milk cans are not always honest.

II. I pass on to consider commercial lies. There are those who apologize for deviations from the right and for practical deception by saying it is commercial custom. In other words, a lie by multiplication becomes a virtue. A merchant says: I am selling these goods at less than cost. Is he getting for these goods a price inferior to that which he paid for them? Then he has spoken the truth. Is he getting more? Then he lies. A merchant says: I paid $25 for this article. Is that the price he paid for it? All right. But suppose he paid for it $23 instead of $25? Then he lies. But there are just as many falsehoods before the counter as there are behind the counter. A customer comes in and asks: How much is this article? It is five dollars. I can get that for four somewhere else. Can he get it for four somewhere else, or did he say that just for the purpose of getting it cheap by depreciating the value of the goods? If so, he lied. There are just as many falsehoods before the counter as there are behind the counter. A man unrolls upon the counter a bale of handkerchiefs. The customer says: Are these all silk? Yes. No cotton in them? No cotton in them. Are those handkerchiefs all silk? Then the merchant told the truth. Is there any cotton in them? Then he lied. Moreover, he defrauds himself, for this customer coming in from Hempstead, or Yonkers, or Newark, will, after awhile, find out that he has been defrauded, and the next time he comes to town and goes shopping he will look up at that sign and say: No, I wont go there; thats the place where I got those handkerchiefs. First, the merchant insulted God; and secondly, he picked his own pocket.

III. I pass on to speak of mechanical falsehoods. I am speaking now of those who promise to do that which they know they will not be able to do. They say they will come on Monday; they do not come until Wednesday. They say they will come on Wednesday; they do not come until Saturday. They say they will have the job done in ten days; they do not get it done before thirty.

IV. I pass on to speak of social lies. How much of society is insincere! You hardly know what to believe. They send their regards; you do not exactly know whether it is an expression of the heart or an external civility. They ask you to come to their house; you hardly know whether they really want you to come. We are all accustomed to take a discount from what we hear. Not at home, very often means too lazy to dress. I was reading this morning of a lady who said she had told her last fashionable lie. There was a knock at her door, and she sent down word, Not at home. That night her husband said to her, Mrs. So-and-so is dead. Is it possible? she said. Yes; and she died in great anguish of mind. She wanted to see you so very much; she had something very important to disclose to you in her last hour; and she sent three times today, but found you absent every time. Then this woman bethought herself that she had had a bargain with her neighbour that when the long protracted sickness was about to come to an end, she would appear at her bedside and take the secret that was to be disclosed; and she had said she was not at home. Social life is struck through with insincerity. They apologize for the fact that the furnace is out; they have not had any fire in it all winter. They apologize for the fare on their table; they never live any better. They decry their most luxuriant entertainment to win a shower of approval from you. They point at a picture on the wall as a work of one of the old masters. They say it is an heirloom in the family. It hung on the wall of a castle. A duke gave it to their grandfather. People that will lie about nothing else will lie about a picture. On small income we want the world to believe we are affluent, and society today is struck through with cheat, and counterfeit, and sham.

V. I pass on to speak of ecclesiastical lies, those which are told for the advancement or retarding of a Church or sect. It is hardly worth your while to ask an extreme Calvinist what an Arminian believes. He will tell you an Arminian believes that man can save himself. An Arminian believes no such thing. It is hardly worth your while to ask an extreme Arminian what a Calvinist believes. He will tell you that a Calvinist believes that God made some men just to damn them. A Calvinist believes no such thing.

VI. Let us in all departments of life stand back from deception. Oh! says someone, the deception that I practise is so small it dont amount to anything. Ah! my friends, it does amount to a great deal. Oh! you say, when I deceive, it is only about a case of needles, or a box of buttons, or a row of pins. The article may be so small you can put it in your vest pocket; but the sin is as big as the Pyramids, and the echo of your dishonour will reverberate through the mountains of eternity. (Dr. Talmage.)

Commercial untruthfulness

Closely akin to the grossest form of dishonesty, comes that commercial untruthfulness of which we hear so much in the world of business. The selling of adulterated goods as genuine, the advertising of useless nostrums as specific remedies, the daily issue of prospectuses of investments offering more interest for the money than any sane and honest investment can really produce, seem, when described in simple language, undistinguishable from gross deception. And yet newspapers are full of them: every post delivers some of them. We dare not think that they are all the handiwork of cunning rogues. No; they are not. They can justify themselves by the assertion that the exaggerations of their statements are a fashion of speech, a trick of trade; that the purchaser of the adulterated goods buys at his peril, and knows, or ought to know, that he cannot have the genuine thing at so cheap a rate; that the advertisement is part of a joke; that the prospectuses, to be read at all, must be read with an amount of discount that will turn the policies into puffs, and categorical statements into probabilities or chances; that the promises of gain are not intended to deceive, but to call attention to the thing proposed; and that, at all events, it is the duty of the investor to ascertain the truth of them before he invests, or to complain only of his stupidity if he is deceived. And yet, although they who do such things must know that they are shutting their eyes to their own crime; that they do deceive the unwary; that they ruin the poor; that they tantalize and aggravate the miseries of the sick; that they take an unfair advantage, primarily, of those who cannot help themselves; still they persist, and are greatly offended if personally they are stigmatized by the name they deserve. If they do not live by deceit they live by gain purchased by deceit, and it takes a good deal of self-deceit to enable them to fancy that they can see the difference. (Bishop Stubbs.)

The palace of truth

I remember reading a story when I was a child, which struck me very forcibly even then as illustrating the deceit and wickedness of the human heart. The writer describes a place into which every person who enters is bound by a certain spell, so that they speak actually the thoughts of their hearts, whatever they be, while at the same time, they are not at all conscious of the power that influences them, or of the words they utter, but imagine they are saying what they would intend to say, in the ordinary language of the duplicity or compliment of the world. Therefore, when friends meet friends, and relatives meet relatives, while they are carrying on the farce which in too many instances they do carry on in social life, expressing, as they imagine, regret or kindness, compliments or pleasure, they are really giving vent to the genuine feelings of their heart. When they are brought into the test of the palace of truth, the mask is there torn off, and all the vain fantastic mockery of kindness, of regard, or of affection, they had once professed, is new exchanged for the genuine expression of envy, malice, hatred, or disgust, and all the other passions which really possess their breasts. Then they are manifested in their true character to each other, and consequently all these evil passions produce their natural result, in severing almost all the ties of social and domestic life. (R. J. McGhee, M. A.)

Truth-speaking

Christians are to speak the whole truth without distortion, diminution, or exaggeration. No promise is to be falsified--no mutual understanding violated. The word of a Christian ought to be as his bond, every syllable being but the expression of truth in the inward parts. The sacred majesty of truth is ever to characterize and hallow all his communications. (J. Eadie, D. D.)

The mutual dependence of Christians on one another forbids falsehood

Christians are bound by reciprocal ties and obligations, and falsehood wars against such a union. Trusting in one God, they should, therefore, not create distrust of one another; seeking to be saved by one faith, they should not prove faithless to their fellows; and professing to be freed by the truth, they ought not to attempt to enslave their brethren by falsehood. Each is bound up with the other, and lying recoils upon him who deviates from fact. Truthfulness is an essential and primary virtue, and the opposite vice is mean and selfish. (J. Eadie, D. D.)

Social unity forbids lying

Let not the eye lie to the foot, nor the foot to the eye. If there be a deep pit, and its mouth covered with reeds shall present to the eye the appearance of solid ground, will not the eye use the foot to ascertain whether it is hollow underneath, or whether it is firm and resists? Will the foot tell a lie, and not the truth as it is? And what again if the eye were to spy a serpent or a wild beast, will it lie to the foot? (Chrysostom.)

Need of speaking the truth

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is one of the best characteristics of the Christian conversation. The reason is, For we are members one of another--that is, we all belong to the same body of Christ--to the same human family--to the same universe of God, and the life that pervades it all is truth, the circulating medium in the celestial corporation. In speaking lies you vitiate the blood by the infusion of a foreign, poisonous element, and, as it flows through the whole, it will weaken the whole. A hint, an innuendo, uttered in the privacy of the tea-table, may ruin the character at the distance of thousands of miles. We are wonderfully knit together in the wide-spreading, entangled, many-coloured web work of humanity; and the great bond of union is the truth, is the true one, in whom, as a centre, all that is truthful, and beautiful, and serene, find their resting place and their home! (W. Graham, D. D.)

Penalty of lying

When martial law was proclaimed in Devonshire and Cornwall in 1549, there was a miller who had been out with Arundel, and, expecting inquiry, had persuaded a servant to take his place and name. Sir Anthony Kingston, the provost Marshall, came riding up to the door one day. Are you the miller? said he. If you please, yes, was the unsuspecting answer. Up with him, said Kingston. He is a busy knave; hang him up. In vain the poor man called out then that he was no miller, but an innocent servant. Thou art a false knave, then, said the provost-marshall, to be in two tales; therefore hang him--and he was hanged forthwith.

Love of truth

A ragged little nine-year-old boy, stowed away on board a steamer bound for New York, was discovered and questioned by the mate of the vessel. The little fellows story was that his stepfather had smuggled him on board, so that he could get out to an aunt living in Halifax, who was well off. The mate, in spite of the lads sunny face and truthful-looking eyes, doubted his tale, thinking he had been brought on board and fed by the sailors, and handled the little fellow rather roughly. He was questioned and requestioned, but always with the same result. At last the mate, wearied by his persistence, seized him one day by the collar, and told him that unless he told the truth in ten minutes from that time he would hang him from the yard arm. He then made him sit down under it on the deck. All around him were the passengers and sailors of the midday watch, and in front of him stood the inexorable mate with his chronometer in his hand. When eight minutes had fled the mate told him he had but two minutes to live, and advised him to speak the truth and save his life; but he replied, with the utmost simplicity and sincerity, by asking the mate if he might pray. The mate said nothing, but nodded his head, and turned as pale as a ghost, and shook with trembling like a reed shaken with the wind. And there, eyes turned on him, the brave and noble little fellow, this poor waif whom society owned not, and whose own stepfather could not care for him--there he knelt with clasped hands and eyes upturned to heaven, while he repeated audibly the Lords prayer, and prayed the dear Lord Jesus to take him to heaven. Sobs broke from strong, hard hearts as the mate sprang forward to the boy and clasped him to his bosom, and kissed him and blessed him, and told him how sincerely he now believed his story, and how glad he was that he had been brave enough to face death and be willing to sacrifice his life for the truth of his word.

The power of truth

How simply and beautifully has Abd-el-Kadir, of Ghilon, impressed us with the love of truth in his childhood! After stating the vision which made him entreat of his mother to go to Bagdad and devote himself to God, he thus proceeds:--I informed her what I had seen, and she wept; and taking out eighty dinars, she told me, that as I had a brother, half of that was all my inheritance. She made me swear, when she gave it to me, never to tell a lie, and afterwards bade me farewell, exclaiming, Go, my son; I consign thee to God; we shall not meet until the day of judgment. I went on well till I came near Hamandnal, when our Kafillah was plundered by sixty horsemen. One fellow asked me what I had got. Forty dinars, said I, are sewed up under my garments. The fellow laughed, thinking I was joking. And what have you got? said another. I gave him the same answer. When they were dividing the spoil I was called to an eminence where the chief stood. What property have you got, my little fellow? said he. I have told two of your people already, I replied. I have forty dinars sewed in my garments. He ordered them to be ripped open, and found my money. And how came you, he said, in surprise, to declare so openly what had been so carefully concealed? Because I will not be false to my mother, to whom I have promised I would never tell a lie. Child, said the robber, hast thou such sense of duty to thy mother at thy years, and am I insensible, at my age, of the duty I owe to God? Give me thy hand, innocent boy, he continued, that I may swear repentance upon it. He did so. His followers were all alike struck with the scene. You have been our leader in guilt, said they to their chief; be the same in the path of virtue. And they instantly, at his order, made restitution of their spoil, and vowed repentance on his hand.

Speaking the truth

During the Chartist agitation many of Kingsleys friends and relations tried to withdraw him from the peoples cause, fearful lest his prospects in life might be seriously prejudiced; but to all of them he turned a deaf ear, and in writing to his wife on the subject he says--I will not be a liar. I will speak in season and out of season. I will not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. My path is clear, and I will follow in it. (Alex. Bell, B. A.)

Members of each other

When the knitter has completed the sock, there is no part of it in which the yarn, in and of itself, is of great value; and yet, take away any thread of it and you leave a hole. So in life things are important not according to their individual measurement or emphasis, not according to their report to the eye or to the ear, but according to ,their relationship to the multitude. Singly they are like grains of sand, but united they are vast as the shore. The shore cannot spare its sand. Human life makes itself by its little deeds, and becomes great by the sum of all its minute things; but there is a universal contention of men to seek great things.

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

Eph 4:25-27. Wherefore — Since you have been thus taught what is your duty and interest, let it appear in your tempers, words, and works, that there is such a change wrought in them; and that, having received a new nature, you live in a new manner. The apostle now proceeds to caution them against particular sins, to which they had been habituated, and to urge them to the pursuit of particular graces, and the practice of particular virtues, which they had formerly neglected. Putting away lying — Which many of your philosophers have thought allowable, in certain cases; (so Whitby has shown in his note here;) speak every man truth with his neighbour — In your converse with your fellow-creatures; for we are members one of another — By virtue of our union with Christ our common head, to which intimate union, all deceit is quite repugnant. Be ye angry, and sin not — That is, if at any time ye are angry, take heed ye do not sin. We may be angry, as Christ was, and not sin; when he looked round about upon the people with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts; (Mar 3:5;) that is, we may be displeased and grieved at the sin or folly of others, and not sin by being so. Indeed, if we should observe people to do or say what we know to be sinful, or should see them indulging evil tempers and vile affections, and should not be displeased and grieved, we would commit sin. For to be insensible, and without emotion, when we observe God to be dishonoured, his laws violated, his presence, power, and holiness disregarded, and his justice and wrath contemned, certainly manifests a state of soul devoid of all proper religious feeling. But in what sense we may be angry and not sin, see explained more at large in the note on the above-cited text. Let not the sun go down on your wrath — If at any time you be in such a sense angry as to sin — if your anger imply resentment of an injury or affront received, or ill-will and bitterness of spirit, look to God for grace to enable you to suppress this kind of anger or wrath speedily: reprove your brother for the offence he has given you, and be reconciled immediately: lose not one day. A clear, express command this; but, alas! how few observe it. Neither give place to the devil — By delaying to cast the fire out of your bosom; remembering how much that enemy of mankind labours to inflame the spirits of men with mutual animosity, malevolence, and hatred; and, in order thereto, induces them to give ear to slanderous reports and accusations, that he may make their state and character miserable and detestable, like his own.

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

25. Wherefore—In view of your sustaining this new contrast to your old Gentilism, put away in detail the individual Gentile vices. He is not satisfied with a conceptual contrast that may end in theory. He would root out every outward evil practice under the power of this inward renewal.

Putting—Rather, having put away; having at start renounced and stopped it.

Lying—Literally, the lie; the universal lie, outside and inside, vocal, acted, or purposed. This lie is identical with the deceit of Eph_4:22 and the fraud of Eph_4:19.

Speak—The vocal species of truth.

Members… another—Said in accordance with the general idea of the epistle—a model Church.

c. By putting off the (five) Gentile vices, Eph_4:25 to Eph_5:2.

The five Gentile vices here are: 1. Lying, Eph_4:25;

2. Anger, Eph_4:26-27;

3. Stealing, Eph_4:28;

4. Ribaldry, Eph_4:29-30;

5. Brawling, Eph_4:31; and Eph_5:1-2.

To his warning against each vice St. Paul adds either its aggravation, as in 1 and 4; or a contrasted picture of the reverse virtue, as in 3 and 5. The contrast in Eph_4:5 is impressively extended.

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_4:25. Putting away lying.—Findlay holds to it that “the lie, the falsehood, is objective and concrete; not lying, or falsehood, as a subjective act, habit, or quality.” Members one of another.—Let there be “no schism in the body.”

Eph_4:26. Let not the sun go down on your wrath.—The word for “wrath” is not the usual one. It almost seems as if the compound form had reference to the matter “alongside which” wrath was evoked. If “curfew” could ring out the fires of wrath at sundown, we might welcome the knell. Meyer quotes the Pythagorean custom of making up a quarrel by the parties “shaking hands” before sunset.

Eph_4:28. Let him that stole steal no more.—Though we have not here the word for “brigand,” we may think that the thieving had not always been without violence. That he may have to give.—Not the profits of wickedness, but “the good” results of his own labour, and may give it to the needy “with cheerfulness” (Rom_12:8), with a “hilarity” beyond that of “those who divide the spoil” (Isa_9:3).

Eph_4:29. Let no corrupt communication.—R.V. “speech.” Putrid speech can never come forth from any but a bad person, “for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” But that which is good to the use of edifying.—The word in season “fitly spoken” has an æsthetic charm (Pro_25:11), but it was more necessary to teach these loquacious Asiatics the utilitarian end of having a human tongue. “It is the mere talk, whether frivolous or pompous—spoken from the pulpit or the easy-chair—the incontinence of tongue, the flux of senseless, graceless, unprofitable utterance that St. Paul desires to arrest” (Findlay).

Eph_4:30. Grieve not.—“Do not make Him sorrow.” A strong figure like that which says that God was sorry that He had made man (Gen_6:6). Whereby ye are sealed.—Cf. Eph_1:13. “In whom ye were sealed” (R.V.)

Eph_4:31. Let all bitterness.—I.e. “of speech.” “Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil,” said one liberally endowed with it. The satirist Hipponax—a native of Ephesus—was called “the bitter.” Such a man as “speaks poniards,” and whose “every word stabs,” may be brilliant and a formidable opponent; he will never be loved. Wrath and anger.—The former is the fuming anger, “the intoxication of the soul,” as St. Basil calls it; the latter is the state after the paroxysm is over, cherishing hatred and planning revenge. Clamour and railing.—“Clamour” is the loud outcry so familiar in an Eastern concourse of excited people (Act_23:9), like that hubbub in Ephesus when for two hours the populace yelled, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians” (Act_19:28). “Railing,” blasphemy—speech that is calculated to do injury. Malice.—“Badness.” “This last term is separated from the others as generic and inclusive” (Beet).

Eph_4:32. Be ye kind.—The word is found in Christ’s invitation to the weary—“My yoke is easy.” It is characteristic of the Father that “He is kind to the unthankful.” The man who drinks wine that is new and harsh says, “The old is good” (mellow). Tenderhearted.—Soon touched by the weakness of others. Forgiving … as God … forgave you.—The motive and measure of our forgiveness of injuries is the divine forgiveness shown to “all that debt” of our wrong-doing (Mat_18:32).

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Eph_4:25-32

Christian Principles applied to Common Life.

Let us put these principles into the form of concrete precepts.

I. Be truthful.—“Putting away lying, speak every man truth, … for we are members one of another” (Eph_4:25). Society is so closely welded together and interdependent that the evil effects of a falsehood not only damage others but rebound ultimately towards the man who uttered it. A lie is a breach of promise; for whosoever seriously addresses his discourse to another tacitly promises to speak the truth, because he knows the truth is expected. Truth never was indebted to a lie. “In the records of all human affairs,” writes Froude, “it cannot be too often insisted on that two kinds of truths run for ever side by side, or rather crossing in and out with each other form the warp and woof of the coloured web we call history: the one the literal and eternal truths corresponding to the eternal and as yet undiscovered laws of fact; the other the truths of feeling and thought, which embody themselves either in distorted pictures of outward things or in some entirely new creation—sometimes moulding and shaping history; sometimes taking the form of heroic biography, tradition, or popular legend.”

II. Avoid sinful anger.—“Be ye angry, and sin not: … neither give place to the devil” (Eph_4:26-27). Anger is not forbidden. A nature ardent for truth and justice burns with indignation against cruelty and wrong. But it is a dangerous passion even for the best of men, and is apt to exceed the limits of prudence and affection. To nurse our wrath and brood over our imagined wrongs is to give place to the devil, who is ever near to blow up the dying embers of our anger. Plutarch tells us it was an ancient rule of the Pythagoreans that, if at any time they happened to be provoked by anger to abusive language, before the sun set they would take each other’s hands, and embracing make up their quarrel. The Christian must not be behind the pagan in placability and forgiveness.

III. Be honest.—“Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour” (Eph_4:28). Laziness is a fruitful source of dishonesty, and is itself dishonest. There are sensitive natures to whom it is very difficult to be dishonest. In Abraham Lincoln’s youthful days he was a storekeeper’s clerk. Once, after he had sold a woman a little bill of goods and received the money, he found on looking over the account again that she had given him six and a quarter cents too much. The money burned in his hands until he had locked the shop and started on a walk of several miles in the night to make restitution before he slept. On another occasion, after weighing and delivering a pound of tea, he found a small weight upon the scales. He immediately weighed out the quantity of tea of which he had innocently defrauded the customer, and went in search for her, his sensitive conscience not permitting any delay. The thief is not reformed and made an industrious worker by simply showing him the advantages of honesty. The apostle appeals to a higher motive—sympathy for the needy—“That he may have to give to him that needeth.” Let the spirit of love and brotherhood be aroused, and the indolent becomes diligent, the pilferer honest.

IV. Be circumspect in speech.—“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth” (Eph_4:29). The possession of a human tongue is an immense responsibility. Infinite good or mischief lies in its power. The apostle does not simply forbid injurious words; he puts an embargo on all that is not positively useful. Not that he requires all Christian speech to be grave and serious. It is the mere talk, whether frivolous or pompous—spoken from the pulpit or the easy-chair—the incontinence of tongue, the flux of senseless, graceless, unprofitable utterance, that he desires to arrest (Findlay).

V. Grieve not the Holy Spirit (Eph_4:30).—Perhaps in nothing do we grieve the Spirit more than by foolish and unprofitable speech, or by listening willingly and without protest to idle gossip and uncharitable backbiting. His sealing of our hearts becomes fainter, and our spiritual life declines, as we become indiscreet and vain in speech.

VI. Guard against a malicious disposition.—“Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, and evil speaking be put away, with all malice” (Eph_4:31). Malice is badness of disposition, the aptness to envy and hatred, which apart from any special occasion is always ready to break out in bitterness and wrath. Bitterness is malice sharpened to a point and directed against the exasperating object. Wrath and anger are synonymous, the former being the passionate outburst of resentment in rage, the latter the settled indignation of the aggrieved soul. Clamour and railing give audible expression to these and their kindred tempers. Clamour is the loud self-assertion of the angry man who will make every one hear his grievance; while the railer carries the war of the tongue into his enemy’s camp and vents his displeasure in abuse and insult. Never to return evil for evil and railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing—this is one of the lessons most difficult to flesh and blood (Findlay).

VII. Cherish a forgiving spirit.—“Be ye kind, … forgiving one another, even as God hath forgiven you” (Eph_4:32). It is man-like to resent an injury; it is Christ-like to forgive it. It is a triumph of divine grace when the man who has suffered the injury is the most eager to effect a reconciliation. Dean Hook relates he was once asked to see a gentleman who had ill-treated him. Found him very thin and ill. Told me that he was conscious that his feelings and conduct had not been towards me what they ought to have been for years. I told him that whenever there was a quarrel there were sure to be faults on both sides, and that there must be no question as to the more or less, but the forgiveness must be mutual. I kissed his hand, and we wept and prayed together. O God, have mercy on him and me for Jesu’s sake! I have had a taste of heaven where part of our joy will surely consist in our reconciliations.

Lessons.—

1. Religion governs the whole man.

2. True religion is intensely practical.

3. Religion gives a nameless charm to the commonest duties.

GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES

Eph_4:25. Truth between Man and Man.

I. The duty of veracity here recommended.—

1. Truth is to be observed in common conversation. People have more special need, in some respects, to be admonished of their obligations inviolably to maintain truth here; for many are more ready to allow themselves to transgress in what they account trivial instances than upon solemn occasions; and yet by such beginnings way is made for the disregard of truth, in the most considerable matters, in process of time.

2. Truth should be maintained in bearing testimony. A conscientious regard to truth will engage us to be very careful that we spread nothing to the lessening or reproach of our neighbour, of which we have not good assurance; that we publish not a defamation upon hearsay, nor take up, without sufficient grounds, “a report against our neighbour.” If we are called to give public testimony between man and man, a sincere respect to truth will engage us to a careful recollection, before we give our testimony, as to what we can say upon the matter. It will dispose to lay aside affection on one hand and prejudice on the other, and impartially to relate the true state of things as far as we can bear witness to them, nakedly to represent facts as they have come within our notice.

3. Truth must be exercised in our promises and engagements, and veracity requires two things in relation to them:

(1) That we really intend to perform them when they are made;

(2) That we are careful of performance after they are made.

II. The reason the apostle gives for the inviolable maintenance of truth: because we are members one of another.—

1. This argument is applicable to mankind in general. We are members one of another, as we partake of the same human nature, and in that respect are upon a level. We are members of society in common, entitled to the same rights, claims, and expectations one from another as men, and are mutually helpful and subservient as the members of the body are to each other; and the principal link that holds us together is mutual confidence, founded upon the hope of common fidelity. Now, lying makes void and useless the great instrument of society, the faculty of speech or writing. The power of speech was given us by our Creator, and the art of writing, since found out, on purpose that we might be able so to convey our sense to others, that they may discern it, where we pretend to express it, just as if they were so far privy to what passed in our minds. And unless truth be inviolably observed in everything, the bonds of human society cannot fail to be weakened.

2. This argument may be particularly applicable to Christians. We are members one of another in a more distinguishing sense, as we belong to the body of Christ. And this lays additional engagements upon all the visible members of that body to put away lying and to speak the truth one to the other,—in conformity to the common Father, to whom we belong, who is eminently styled “a God of truth”; in conformity to our head the Lord Jesus, there should be a strict observation of truth among Christians; in conformity to the Spirit that animates us, who is eminently described by this attribute, “the Spirit of truth.”

Inferences.—

1. This is one remarkable evidence how much Christianity is calculated for the benefit of mankind and the good of society at present, as well as for our everlasting welfare, in that it so strictly enjoins and enforces the exacted regard to truth.

2. We see thence upon how good reason the Christian religion strictly forbids common swearing.

3. All that name the name of Christ are concerned to see that they comply with the exhortation.

4. Christians should do all they can to promote truth among others, both for the honour of God, and the spiritual and eternal good of their neighbours, and the general interest of society.—Jeremiah Seed.

The Sin of Falsehood.

I. There are cases in which one may speak that which is not true and yet not be chargeable with lying, for he may have no intention to deceive.

II. The grossest kind of lying, or speaking a known falsehood under the awful solemnity of an oath.—Men violate truth when they affix to words an arbitrary meaning or make in their own minds certain secret reservations with a design to disguise facts and deceive the hearers. When we express doubtful matters in terms and with an air of assurance, we may materially injure as well as grossly deceive our neighbour. Men are guilty of malicious falsehood when they repeat with romantic additions and fictitious embellishments the stories they have heard of a neighbour that they may excite against him severer ridicule or cast on his character a darker stain. Men may utter a falsehood by the tone of their voice, while their words are literally true.

III. We are bound to speak truth in our common and familiar conversation.—We must speak truth in our commerce with one another. In giving public testimony we must be careful to say nothing but truth, and conceal no part of the truth. We must adhere to truth when we speak of men’s actions or characters. We must observe truth in our promises.

IV. A regard to truth is a necessary part of the Christian character.—Deceitfulness is contrary, not only to the express commands of the gospel, but to the dictates of natural conscience.

V. The argument the apostle urges for the maintenance of truth.—“We are members one of another.” As men we are members one of another. As Christians we are children of the same God, the God of truth; we are disciples of the same Lord, the faithful and true Witness. If we walk in guile and deceit, if we practise vile arts of dishonesty, we contradict our human and our Christian character. We see the danger of profane language, as it leads to the grossest kind of falsehood, even to perjury in public testimony. We see how dangerous it is to practise those diversions which are attended with temptations to fraud.—Lathrop.

College Life. “For we are members one of another.”

I. It is for us who govern and teach to remember how great is our responsibility in those respects.—We are not merely instructors but educators of youth. The question of what books we use or what vehicles of teaching we employ sinks into insignificance compared with the question what end it is we design in our teaching. Are we prepared to abdicate our higher functions of educators and to sink down to the lower one of teachers? Must we not, if we are true to our calling, strive to instil into you that manliness which springs from the fear of God, that truthfulness which is seen in the frank look and unshrinking eye, that obedience which is rendered in no spirit of servility as unto the Lord and not as unto men, that self-mastery which is the foundation of all wisdom and all power? If the soul is of more value than the body, if the life to come is of more importance than the life that now is, if the knowledge of God and His Christ is infinitely more precious than all the knowledge of this world and all the distinction to which it leads—then there can be no question that education is infinitely before instruction, that principles are higher than knowledge, that knowledge is only of value in proportion as it is pervaded and sanctified by the Spirit of Christ. But precept without example is powerless. A man whose life is pure and high may not open his lips, yet his very silence shall be eloquent for God. Day by day a virtue is going out of him; day by day he is giving strength to one who is wrestling with doubt or temptation; day by day he is a beacon to those who are tossed on the waves of irresolution and uncertainty. The teacher, if he is to produce a powerful moral effect, if he is to mould character, if he is to leave an impress upon the minds and hearts of those whom he teaches, must be what he teaches, must live what he inculcates.

II. And now I would place before you your duties.—

1. Keep distinctly before you the end and aim of your coming here—the ministry of Christ’s Church. 2. You are members of a community. You are all united to one another. You have all common pursuits, common ends, common interests. You may all help greatly to make or to mar the lives and characters of those with whom you are in such constant and daily intercourse. Let this consideration have its full weight with you. Be but true to yourselves, and to the God who has called you to the knowledge of Himself and His Son Jesus Christ, and by you this college shall grow and prosper. If principles and aims such as those I have endeavoured to indicate prevail in a college, there will be a real and substantial harmony between those who govern and those who are governed. Let us strive one and all, teachers and taught, to make this our college a college of which none can be ashamed.—J. J. Stewart Perowne (preached on the forty-sixth anniversary of St. David’s College, Lampeter).

Eph_4:26-27. Sinful Anger.

I. These words are not an injunction to be angry, but a caution not to sin when we are angry.—As there is in our nature a principle of resentment against injury, so there is in us a virtuous temper, a holy displeasure against moral evil.

II. Anger is sinful when it rises without cause.—Rash anger is sinful. Anger is sinful when it breaks out into indecent, reviling, and reproachful language; when it prompts to designs or acts of revenge; when it settles into malice.

III. Neither give place to the devil.—See that you subdue your lusts and rule your spirits. Arm yourselves with the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Take time to consider whether any motive suggested in favour of sin is so powerful as the arguments the Scriptures offer against it. Our greatest danger is from ourselves.—Lathrop.

Eph_4:26. Anger and Meekness.

I. In what cases our anger may be innocently indulged.—

1. On the approach of any injurious aggressor threatening our destruction, or using any act of violence that may endanger our safety.

2. How far soever the harsh gratings of anger may seem to be removed from the soft motions of benevolence, yet these sometimes, as oil does to steel, give an edge to our resentment; where it will be found not only innocent and excusable, but even commendable and generous. As in the natural system of the world there are some repelling qualities, which yet must conspire to aid the grand power of attraction; so even those passions which, considered in a simple view, have but an unfriendly and unsociable aspect, are yet, in their general comprehension, aiding and assisting to preserve inviolable the bonds of the great community.

3. Our anger is apt to kindle at the apprehension of a slight or an affront, a contempt or reproach thrown upon us; on which occasions, if the apprehension be well grounded, our resentment, to a certain degree, must be allowed to be excusable, and so not sinful. Our tameness in these instances would be construed into stupidity, and be treated as such by the pert and petulant.

4. We may not only be angry without sinning in the instances alleged, as we sometimes may sin in not being angry. God, who designed human society, designed the good of it; and that good to be promoted by every individual to the utmost of his power. Hereby there is tacitly committed to every man a kind of trust and guardianship of virtue, whose rights obliged to support and maintain in proportion to his abilities; not only by example, by advice and exhortation, but even by reproof and resentment, suitable to the circumstances of the offender and the offence.

II. When our anger becomes intemperate and unlawful.—

1. When it breaks out into outrageous actions; for then, like a boisterous wind, it quite puts out that light which should guide our feet in the way of peace; it dethrones our reason, and suspends its exercise. An extravagance of this kind is the more dangerous, and therefore the more sinful, because, though the impulse of passion should meet with no opposition to inflame it—which, however, is generally the case—yet, when it has worked the blood into so violent a ferment, it is apt of itself to redouble its force. And no one can tell what fury, wound up to the highest pitch, may produce.

2. Anger becomes unlawful when it vents itself in unseemly and reviling language. It were to be wished that those who have such a peculiar delicacy of feeling when they are affronted would abstain from all appearance of an affrontive and disrespectful behaviour to others; that they who are so quick to receive would be as slow to give an affront. On the contrary, it often happens that they only feel for themselves; they are not the least sensible of the indignities offered to others. How frequently do those who are highly enraged pass a general and undistinguishing censure upon a man’s character?

3. We are not always to judge of the sinfulness of anger from the open and undignified appearance of it, either in our words or actions; it may be concealed and treasured up in our thoughts, and yet retain as much malignity as when it immediately breaks out and discovers itself in contumelious language or acts of violence. For by brooding in the mind it becomes the parent of a very untoward issue, malice, and hatred. Malice is a cool and deliberate resentment; but sometimes more keen and malevolent than that which is rash and precipitate. It is like a massive stone, slowly raised, but threatening the greater danger to him on whom it shall fall. Anger is yet sinful when encouraged in our thoughts to the degree of hatred.

III. Consider its opposite virtue, meekness.—Meekness is, as Aristotle long ago defined it, a due mean between tameness and stupidity on the one hand, and rage and fury on the other. It is not absolute freedom from passion, but such a command over it as to prevent our being transported beyond the bounds of humanity and good sense. It is this virtue which, if it does not give a man such a glaring and shining figure as some other good qualities, yet constitutes the most lovely, beautiful, and agreeable character, and gains unenvied praise.

1. A meek man will have sense enough to know when he is injured, and spirit enough to resent it; but then he will consider whether he can do more good by openly resenting the offence and punishing the offender than by overlooking it and passing it by.

2. A man of a meek temper will distinguish between a man’s general standing sentiments when he is perfectly calm and undisturbed and his occasional sentiments when his spirits are ruffled and overheated.

3. A meek man will never be angry with a person for telling him what he imagines to be a fault in him, provided it be done in a private manner, and the advice be conveyed in the most palatable vehicle.

4. A man of a meek spirit is glad to be reconciled to the person who has offended or injured him, and therefore is ready to hearken to all overtures of accommodation. A meek man will show such an inclination and readiness to forgive the offences of others as if he had perpetual need of the same indulgence, but will so carefully avoid giving the least offence as if it might be thought he would forgive nobody.

Lessons.—

1. Let us endeavour to acquire a greatness of mind: by this I do not mean arrogance, for that bespeaks a little mind—a mind that can reflect on nothing within itself that looks great except arrogance; but a true greatness of mind arises from a true judgment of things, and a noble ascendency of the soul inclining us to act above what is barely our duty. It is rising to the sublime in virtue. This will create a reverence for ourselves, and will set us as far above the mean gratification of giving any real occasion of passion to others, as of being susceptible of it when an occasion may be given to us.

2. One of the ancients said that he had gained one advantage from philosophy: that it had brought him to wonder at nothing. But it looks as if we, the generality of us, were strangers in the world; we are ever expressing our surprise and wonder at everything; and thus surprise prepares the way for passion. We wonder that we should meet with such a behaviour, such a treatment, such an affront; whereas the greatest wonder is that we should wonder at it.

3. Nothing can have so prevalent a power to still all the undue agitations of passion so apt to arise from the various connections we have with the prejudices and passions of others, nothing so fit to induce a smooth and easy flow of temper, as a frequent application to the throne of grace, to beseech Him, who is the God of Peace, that His peace may rule in our hearts, that it may be the fixed and predominant principle there.—Jeremiah Seed.

Eph_4:28. A Warning against Theft.

I. Here is a general prohibition of theft.—This supposes distinct rights and separate properties. Stealing is taking and carrying away another’s goods in a secret manner and without his consent. The prohibition relates to every unfair, indirect, dishonest way by which one may transfer to himself the property of another.

II. This prohibition of theft is a virtual injunction of labour.—If a man may not live at the expense of others, he must live at his own; and if he has not the means of subsistence, he must labour to acquire them. No man has a right to live on charity so long as he can live by labour. The obligation to labour is not confined to the poor; it extends to all according to their several capacities.

III. Every man must choose for himself an honest calling, and must work that which is good.—A work in which a man makes gain by the expense and enriches himself by the loss of others is theft embellished and refined. Gaming, when it is used as an art to get money, is criminal, because it is unprofitable, and what one gains by it another must lose.

IV. In all our labours we should have regard to the good of others.—The man who is poor should aim to mend his circumstances and to provide not only for his immediate support but for his future necessities. The condition which subjects us to labour does not exempt us from obligations to beneficence. We must confine ourselves within our own proper sphere, for here we can do more good than elsewhere. In all our works, secular or spiritual, charity must direct us. Love is an essential principle in religion, and as essential in one man as another.—Lathrop.

St. Paul’s Exaltation of Labour.

I. St. Paul often recurs to the plain and quiet work of humble life.—He enforces not only the duty of it, but how high the duty ranks; and if it is well done, how it raises those who do it. Having worked with his own hands, he appreciated the sterling test of honest attention to work. He knew what temptations there were to relax and to give in to the sense of tediousness day by day and hour by hour. St. Paul, who honours the industry of a slave, will not allow it to be dishonoured by the slave himself thinking himself superior to it, and discourages all high flights which set him at enmity with his work and draw him away from the sterling Christian yoke of humble labour to which he has been called in God’s providence.

II. At the same time the apostle does not honour all industry; far from it. He always reprobates the covetous, money-getting spirit. He admires industry, but it must be industry which is consecrated by the motive; and the motive 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. Men form their religious standard by two distinct tests: one the law of conscience and obedience to God, the other what is striking to man. St. Paul’s standard is seen in his sympathy with the work of the ruler of a household, with the work of a father or mother of a family, the work of hospitality and attention to strangers, the work of common trades and callings, the work even of the slave in doing his assigned daily tasks.

III. We see the spirit of this great apostle—how it embraced the whole appointed lot of man, from his highest to his most humble field of employment. He rejected nothing as mean or low that came by God’s appointment; all was good, all was excellent, all was appropriate that He had commanded. The heathen valued all labour by which men became eloquent, or became able soldiers or statesmen; but they had not the slightest respect for the ordinary work of mankind. They thought this world made for the rich. How different is St. Paul’s view! No work allotted to man is servile work in his eyes, because he has an insight into what faithful labour is—what strength of conscience it requires, what resistance to temptations and snares it demands. The word of God consecrates the ordinary work of man—it converts it into every one’s trial, and as his special trial his special access to a reward also.—J. B. Mozley.

Eph_4:29. The Government of the Tongue.

I. The apostle cautions us against all loose and licentious language.

II. Enticing language is forbidden.

III. Corrupt communication includes all kinds of vain discourse; all such language as offends Christian sobriety, seriousness, and gravity, savours of profaneness and impiety, or borders on obscenity and lewdness.

IV. Instruction is useful to edifying.

V. Reproof conducted with prudence is useful to edifying.

VI. Exhortation is good for the use of edifying.

VII. Christians may edify one another by communicating things they have experienced in the course of the religious life.

VIII. Conversing on religious subjects in general is good for the use of edifying.—Lathrop.

Eph_4:30. The Benefit conferred by the Spirit on Believers.

I. That believers are sealed by the Spirit implies that they are recognised and set apart and in a peculiar sense the divine property.—

1. A seal is often a distinguishing mark or token by which a claim to property may be shown and established (Rev_3:2-3).

2. That believers are thus sealed proves that they are His in a peculiar manner.

3. The sense in which they are His is clearly brought out (1Co_3:23). They are Christ’s by gift, by purchase, by conquest, by surrender. Christ is God’s, and His people in Him.

4. They who are sealed are thus a peculiar people, separated to God’s worship, service, and glory.

5. Have you recognised practically that you are God’s?

II. That believers are sealed implies that attempts will be made to alienate them from God’s possession.—

1. A mark or token is affixed to that which is in danger of being taken away.

2. We are distinctly taught that believers are exposed to efforts to separate them from God (Joh_10:7-10; Joh_10:27-29).

3. The activity of the wicked one seems in a great measure directed to this point.

4. The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints does not lead him to indolence.

5. Your safety is not merely to get into the place of safety, but to continue there.

III. That believers are sealed implies that they have received the impress of the divine Image.—

1. The sealing is the work of the Spirit, whose office it is to regenerate and sanctify.

2. The seal is that which distinguishes the believer from the unbeliever, and the true distinguishing mark is regeneration.

3. We therefore conclude that the seal has engraven on it the image of God, which it leaves.

4. The confidence of no one should outrun his sanctification.

5. Can you discern the outline of the image? There are counterfeits.

IV. That believers are sealed implies that, though associated and mixed up with others, they are not confounded with them.—

1. A distinguishing mark is necessary when things which are again to be separated and classified are mingled with each other.

2. The seal leads to recognition. Hence the believer is known by himself, fellow-believers, the world, the devil, angels, Christ, the Father.

3. This recognition takes place in time, at the judgment, in eternity.

V. That believers are sealed implies that God will visit the earth with distinguishing judgments.—In proof and illustration (Ezekiel 9; Revelation 7, 9). The Passover. The destruction of Jerusalem. Now. The judgment day. Are you prepared for such a season?

VI. That believers are sealed implies that they are in a state of reservation.—A seal is a pledge, a signature. An engagement presently fulfilled needs no pledge.—Stewart.

The Office of the Holy Spirit and the Danger of grieving Him.

I. His office is to seal us unto the day of redemption.—That day in which the people of God will be put into complete possession of the blessings purchased for them by Christ. To seal us to this day is to prepare us and to set us apart from it, to fix such a mark on us as in that day shall distinguish us from others and make it fully appear to whom we belong. When a man sets his seal to a paper, he thereby declares his approbation of it and acknowledges it to be his own deed. Those who bear the seal of the Spirit will be approved by Christ and acknowledged for His own in the day of resurrection. A seal stamps its own image on the wax. The Spirit stamps on the soul the image of Himself. This seal is said to be the earnest of our inheritance. An earnest is a pledge of something to be bestowed and enjoyed hereafter—a part of it is already bestowed to assure us that in due time we shall receive the whole.

II. He is not to be grieved.—

1. Beware of doing anything which your conscience, enlightened by the word of God, forbids you to do.

2. Beware of running into temptation.

3. Beware of indulging fleshly lusts.

4. Beware of practising deceit and falsehood.

5. Beware of profaning the Lord’s Day.

6. Beware of cherishing evil and malignant tempers.—E. Cooper.

On Grieving the Holy Spirit.

I. Our duty is to render to the Holy Spirit cheerful and universal obedience.

II. The Spirit is the great Sanctifier.

III. We must co-operate diligently in the production of the fruits of the Spirit.

IV. Our danger is in quenching the Spirit.—Our light grows dim, and we gradually adopt evil habits. We neither see nor heed spiritual dangers. Religious sensibilities are blunted. How far any of us have gone in resisting the Spirit God alone knows. Many who resist great light and strong impressions seem never to feel again.—Olin.

Grieving the Spirit.

I. Indifference and carelessness in religion is opposition to the grace of God.

II. Spiritual pride grieves the divine Spirit.

III. The Spirit is grieved when we neglect the means appointed for obtaining His influence.

IV. Opposition to the strivings of the Spirit is another way in which He is often grieved.

V. There are particular sins which are opposite to the work of the Spirit. Impurity, intemperance, dissipation, and all the vices of sensuality. The indulgence of malignant passions grieves the Spirit. Contentions among Christians are opposite to the Spirit. Men grieve the Spirit when they ascribe to Him those motions and actions which are contrary to His nature. If they blindly follow every impulse of a heated imagination, every suggestion of the common deceiver, every motion of their own vanity and pride, they profane and blaspheme His sacred name.—Lathrop.

Grieve not the Spirit.—But wherewith can we so grieve Him? Alas! that one must rather ask, Wherein may he not? I fear that one of the things which will most amaze us when we open our eyes upon eternity will be the multitude of our own rudenesses to divine grace, that is, to God the Holy Ghost whose motions grace is. Oh, let not that His seal upon you, the gift of His Spirit, mark you as a deserter! O Holy Creator Spirit, come down once more into our souls in Thine own thrilling fire of life and light and heat, kindling our senses with Thy light, our hearts with Thy love! wash away our stains, bedew our dryness, heal our wounds, bend our stubbornness, guide our wanderings, that Thou, being the inmate of our hearts, the instructor of our reason, the strength of our will, we may see by Thy light whom as yet we see not and know Him who passeth knowledge, and through God may love God now as wayfarers, and, in the day of perfect redemption, in the beatific vision of our God!—E. B. Pusey.

The Sealing of the Spirit.—

1. The seal is used in conveying and assuring to any person a title to his estate, in delivering which a part is put into the hands of the new proprietor. We are sealed as an assurance of our title to our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession.

2. In sealing any person, the contra-part of the seal is impressed on that which is sealed. We are thus sealed by the Spirit, stamped with the image of God.

3. Sealing is used for preservation. It is by this we are to be preserved until that day. By grieving the Spirit we break this seal.—E. Hare.

Eph_4:31-32. Vices to be renounced and Virtues to be cherished.

I. Put away all bitterness.—All such passions, behaviour, and language as are disgusting and offensive to others, wound their tender feelings, and embitter their spirits. No temper is more inconsistent with the felicity of social life than peevishness.

II. Put away wrath and anger.—The former signifies heat of temper, the latter this heat wrought into a flame. Though anger, as a sense and feeling of the wrongs done us, is innocent and natural, all the irregular and excessive operations of it are sinful and dangerous.

III. Put away all malice.—This is a degree of passion beyond simple anger. It is a fixed, settled hatred, accompanied with a disposition to revenge. It is anger resting in the bosom and studying to do mischief. Malice is a temper which every one condemns in others, but few discern in themselves.

IV. Put away all clamour and evil speaking.—Clamour is noisy, complaining, and contentious language in opposition to that which is soft, gentle, and courteous. Never believe, much less propagate an ill report, of your neighbour without good evidence of its truth. Never speak evil of a man when your speaking may probably do much hurt, but cannot possibly do any good.

V. Christians are to be kind one to another.—Such kindness as renders us useful. Kindness wishes well to all men, prays for their happiness, and studies to promote their interest. It will reprove vice and lend its aid to promote knowledge and virtue.

VI. Christians should be tender-hearted.—They should not be guided by a blind, instinctive pity; but by habitual goodness of heart, cultivated with reason, improved by religion, and operating with discretion. While they commiserate all who appear to be in affliction, they should regard among them the difference of characters and circumstances.

VII. We are to forgive one another.—Forgiveness does not oblige us tamely to submit to every insult and silently bear every injury. To those who have injured us we should maintain goodwill and exercise forbearance. God’s forgiveness of our sins is urged as a motive to mutual forgiveness. “Even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” He who forgives not an offending brother will not be forgiven of his heavenly Father.—Lathrop.

Malice incompatible with the Christian Character.

I. That we may be convinced of the hatefulness of a malignant temper look to the source whence it proceeds.—From the bitterness of the fountain we may judge of the character of the water which it sends forth. From the corruptness of the tree we may estimate the character of the fruit. The author of malice is the devil.

II. Let us after the same manner proceed to appreciate the loveliness of the opposite quality, the quality of mercy and lovingkindness, by a reference to its Author. Malice is gratified by murder. In God we live and move and have our being. Malice is envious. God giveth us richly all things to enjoy. Malice is false and calumnious. God sent His Son into the world to give light to them that sit in darkness. Malice is resentful and vindictive, impatient of offence, and intemperate in requiring satisfaction. God is love.

III. Let us turn for a further motive to the character and conduct of the Son of God.—He has given us an example of the most profound humility, a temper in which malice has no portion, and which cannot exist independently of lovingkindness and tenderness of heart.

IV. To the example of our blessed Redeemer let us add His commandments; and there arises anotherforcible motive to put away all malice and to be kind one to another.—“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another.”

V. If we would avoid a malicious and cultivate a charitable temper, we must renounce the devil and all his works.—We must triumph over those passions which he plants and propagates in the heart of man.—R. Mant.

Eph_4:32. Errors respecting Forgiveness of Sin.

I. That forgiveness of sin is unnecessary.—Every sin is punished on the spot. This natural punishment is felt as long as the sin is indulged, and it ceases as soon as the sin is abandoned. This error may be exposed by a reference to the philosophy of human nature, to experience, and to Scripture.

II. That forgiveness of sin is impossible.—The consequences of every sin stretch out into infinity, and they cannot be annihilated without a supernatural interposition; but it would derogate from the supremacy of law to allow that a miracle is possible. The possibility of miracle is contrary neither to intuition nor to experience. A supernatural Being is the author of a supernatural system: creation, incarnation, the Bible, spiritual influence.

III. That forgiveness of sin might be dispensed without an atonement.—“If a man suffer insult or injury from his fellow-man, he ought to forgive him freely; why should not God?” Because He is God, and not man. He is the moral Governor of the universe, and must consult for the majesty of His law and the interests of His responsible creatures. Forgiveness without atonement would not satisfy the conscience of the awakened sinner.

IV. That forgiveness of sin will not be bestowed till the day of judgment.—Pardon through Christ is immediate. It is enjoyed as soon as we believe.

V. That forgiveness of sin as freely offered in the gospel is inimical to morality.—“Pay a workman before he begins his work, and he will be indolent; pay him when he has finished his work, and he will be diligent.” Not if he were an honest man, and no one is forgiven who is not sanctified. A sense of unpardoned guilt is the greatest hindrance to obedience. A sense of redeeming love the most powerful incentive.—G. Brooks.

Christian Forgiveness.

I. The reality of forgiveness, or the grace of a forgiving spirit in us, lies not so much in our ability to let go or to be persuaded to let go the remembrance of our injuries, as in what we are able to do, what volunteer sacrifices to make, what painstaking to undergo, that we may get our adversary softened to want or gently accept our forgiveness.

II. In all that you distinguish of a nobler and diviner life, in Christ’s bearing of His enemies and their sins, He is simply showing what belongs in righteousness to every moral nature from the uncreated Lord down to the humblest created intelligence. Forgiveness, this same Christly forgiveness, belongs to all—to you, to me, to every lowest mortal that bears God’s image.

III. Christ wants you to be with Him in His own forgiveness. He wants such a feeling struggling in your bosom that you cannot bear to have an adversary, cannot rest from your prayers and sacrifices and the lifelong suit of your concern, till you have gained him away from his wrong and brought him into peace. This in fact is salvation: to be with Christ in all the travail of His forgiveness. As Christ was simply fulfilling the right in His blessed ways of forgiveness, so we may conceive that He is simply fulfilling the eternal love. For what is right coincides with love, and love with what is right.

IV. When a true Christian goes after his adversary in such a temper as he ought—tender, assiduous, proving himself in his love by the most faithful sacrifices—he is not like to stay by his enmity long. As the heat of a warm day will make even a wilful man take off his overcoat, so the silent melting of forgiveness at the heart will compel it, even before it is aware, to let the grudges go. A really good man may have enemies all his life long, even as Christ had, and the real blame may be chargeable not against him, but against them.

V. Have then Christian brethren under Christ’s own gospel nothing better left than to take themselves out of sight of each other just to get rid of forgiveness, going to carry the rankling with them, live in the bitterness, die in the grudges of their untamable passion? What is our gospel but a reconciling power even for sin itself, and what is it good for, if it cannot reconcile? No, there is a better way. Christ laid it on them by His own dear passion when He gave Himself for them, by His bloody sweat, His pierced hands, and open side, to go about the matter of forgiving one another even as He went about forgiving them.—Bushnell.

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.

b. Special traits of the new walk

Eph_4:25-32

25Wherefore putting [having put] away lying [falsehood], speak every man truth [speak ye truth each one] with his neighbor: for we are members one of another. 26Be ye angry [Be angry],75 and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath 27[irritation]:76 Neither [Nor yet]77 give place to the devil. 28Let him that stole [who stealeth] steal no more [longer]: but rather let him labor, working with his hands78 the thing [that] which is good, that he may have to give [impart] to him that needeth [who hath need]. 29Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which [whatever] is good to the use of edifying [for the building up of the need],79 that it may minister [give] grace unto the hearers [to those who hear]. 30And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby [in whom] ye are [were] sealed unto the day of redemption. 31Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and 32clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be [become]80 ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another [each other], even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven [in Christ forgave]81 you.82

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

The general basis: no lie but the truth (Eph_4:25); the special points as respects disposition (Eph_4:26-27), as respects work (Eph_4:28), word (Eph_4:29-30); comprehensive conclusion (Eph_4:31-32).

Eph_4:25. The general basis. Wherefore, διό, gives the connection with what precedes (“no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk”), and, as the exhortations with their positive and negative sides show, with special reference to Eph_4:22-24. Hence immediately: having put away falsehood, ἀποθέμενοι τὸ ψεῦδος.—According to Psa_116:11 (“all men are liars”); Psa_62:10; Rom_3:4, the first duty of every natural man is to put away the lie, especially as the connection with the kingdom of darkness is thereby indicated. For the devil is the liar from the beginning, who slew man, leading him away out of the truth of life in God (Joh_8:44). Hence [the abstract]83 τὸ ψεῦδος, which is not τὸ ψεύδεσθαι, nor=lies (Luther); it is the opposite of the “truth as it is in Jesus.” Comp. 1Jn_2:4; 1Jn_4:20; 1Jn_5:10. It does not occur then, because it is the principal spiritual sin of heathenism and has as its result a darkening of the spirit (Schenkel). This requirement is of deeper scope than to allow it to be said that even heathen ethics could designate and forbid this as sin.

Speak ye truth each one with his neighbor [λαλεῖτε ἀλήθειαν ἕκαστος μετὰ τοὺ πλησίον αὐτοῦ].—This exhortation is [a reminiscence] from Zec_8:16 (LXX.): λαλεῖτε ἀλήθειαν ἔκαστος πρὸς τὸν πλησίον αὐτοῦ. The article is wanting with ἀλήθειαν, in order to mark that not the complete, entire truth is to be spoken; that cannot be done at the beginning; only let what you do say be true. Paul substitutes the preposition μετά for πρός, in order to give special prominence to the intercommunion in the speaking with each other [Stier] and to bring to mind the Christian brother, as the context requires. The reference is not to “neighbor” in the wider sense, to all men. The Apostle is treating of the Church of Christ.

For we are members one of another [ὄτι ἐσμὲν ἀλλήλων μέλη].—This is the motive: to be members one of another and to belie one another, how contradictory (Meyer)! Est enim monstrum, si membra inter se non consentiant imo si fraudenter inter se agant (Calvin). Christians are “members one of another,” not merely members of the body of Christ, but each has to do for the other, to give to him, as well as to receive from him and permit him to do in return. The reciprocal ἐπιχορηγία of speaking the truth (Stier) is marked. It is entirely similar to Rom_12:5-8; 1Co_12:15-27.84 The passage is full of significance, not inexact (Grotius, Rueckert and others), and is not to be applied to the Gentiles and the Jews, as is done even by Bengal.

The Particular Points: a.) As respects the disposition: anger without sin, since in the Church so great occasion to anger especially is given to the Christian with his natural man, and the fellowship is so easily disturbed thereby, and the Christian himself corrupted; Eph_4:26-27.

Eph_4:26. Be angry and sin not [ὀργίζεσθε καὶ μὴ ἁμαρτάνετε].—The first verb is to be taken as imperative, in this series of imperatives (Eph_4:25-32). This is further required by the circumstance, that it is a citation (Psa_4:5 : רִגְזוּ וְאַל־תֶּחֱטָאוּ translated by the LXX. precisely as Paul here writes it): the original and the Greek version are undoubtedly imperative. The passage in the Psalms is rendered by Luther: Be angry, so that ye sin not; this passage: Be angry and sin not. The sense is evidently equivalent to ὀργιζόμενοι μὴ ἁμαρτάνετε (Winer, p. 292), which not only states the case in which they would become angry, but also expresses that the anger is allowed, aye commanded and righteous. This is only the more strongly marked by the two imperatives joined with καὶ, the second of which only is negatived (μή); accordingly Paul used this form, this citation.85 The original text in the Psalm, in which the main matter is the transformation of the angry quousque tandem to rest and gentleness, is correctly rendered by the LXX. (Hengstenberg, Hitzig, Stier, against Ewald, Harless and others). It can only be affirmed that Paul did not wish to prove anything by the citation (Harless); he wishes only to use the words of David, but does not use the words of the LXX. to strengthen those which they are acquainted with; it is incorrect to suppose that nothing depends on the sense of the original passage (Rueckert). The Sacred Scriptures, which speak of the wrath of God, showing us Christ in anger at the cleansing of the temple (Joh_2:13-16; Mat_21:12-13), do not reject anger: Jam_1:19-20; Rom_12:19; Ecc_7:9. So here, for we do not read: Do not be angry and sin, the negative cannot be moved forward so as to qualify the first verb (Winer, p. 460). Hence we need not accept an unwilling permission of anger (De Wette, Winer); in that case ἀλλά would be found in place of καί. Nor is “be angry” in accordance with an assumed Hebraism to be taken conditionaliter on account of the connection with a following imperative (Rueckert, Zyro, Stud. u. Krit., 1841, p. 690), [Hodge apparently]; that would really mean: if ye are angry, ye will not sin. The limitation of “sin not” to reconciliation (Harless), to the exclusion of enmity against others (Zyro), is incorrect because not in accordance with the context. The acceptance of an interrogation (Grotius: are ye angry?) is inadmissible on account of the quotation.

Let not the sun go down upon your irritation [ὁ ἤλιος μὴ ἐπιδυέτω ἐπὶ τῷ παροργισμῷ ὑμῶν].—This thought is occasioned by the citation (Psa_4:5) and the matter itself. There is also in the expression “let not the sun go down,” a reminiscence of Deu_25:13; Deu_25:15, according to which the poor man should receive his cloak, given in pledge, and wages should be paid before sundown. There is no reference to the Pythagorean precept to be reconciled before sunset; and quite as little to Christ, the Sun of Righteousness (Augustine), certainly none to the Reason (Lombard). The [non-classical and rare] word παροργισμός occurs only here; it is related to παροργίζεσθαι (Eph_6:4; Col_3:21; Rom_10:19), meaning the anger aroused in us, the being or becoming angry, which should not continue, nor be carried about and nourished. Affectus noctu retentus alte insidet (Bengel). Anger thus becomes hate, rancor. What is right towards the occurrence, viz., being angry, should not when that is past, be retained against the person, who remains. The preposition παρά does not indicate something wrong (Zanchius), [Wordsworth], and the article, marking the momentary being angry, connected with ὀργίζεσθαι, is not incorrect (Stier). [Comp. Textual Note2. Alford brackets the article, suggesting that the omission gives the sense “upon any παροργισμός.” The word irritation preserves the reference to occasion given indicated by παρά, and at the same time distinguishes (in English) from the “wrath” which is forbidden in Eph_4:31.—R.]

Eph_4:27. Nor yet give place to the devil [μηδὲ δίδοτε τόπον τῷ διαβόλῳ.]—Μηδέ is disjunctive and adds something new (Mat_6:25); while μήτε is adjunctive, adding something which belongs to the foregoing (Mat_5:34-36). Comp. Winer, p. 457.86 Besides not sinning by prolonging wrath, they should not sin by giving place to the devil. Δίδοτε τόπον designates, as in Rom_12:19, affording free play, wide space, of course in the heart. But to whom? to the devil, as in Eph_6:11; 2Ti_2:26, even though it does not elsewhere occur in this sense in Paul’s writings, but more frequently describes slanderers, or a slanderous manner (1Ti_3:6-7; 1Ti_3:11; Tit_2:3).87 The antithesis is found in Eph_4:30. Hence it does not mean: the blasphemer (Luther and others) or talebearer, as many hold. Nor is the verse to be applied to social life (Harless); the context requires a reference to individuals. Sinful anger brings even the Christian’s heart into the power of Satan, from whom he was freed, destroying the fellowship with the Redeemer and His grace.

Eph_4:28 b. As respects work: Honesty reaching to benevolence. Let him who stealeth steal no longer [ὁ κλέπτων μηκέτι κλεπτέτω].—Ὁ κλέπτων, which is neither=ὁ κλέψας, nor=ὁ κλέπτης, marks the act or the action, not the character; hence it is stronger than “him who stole,” and weaker than “the thief.” Comp. Winer, p. 331. Luther is therefore incorrect [rendering as in E. V.]; Bengel also: qui furabatur, adding however: præsenti hic non excluso.88 The notion of stealing, however, must not be limited here by the definition of criminal law and police regulation, but be conceived of from the stand-point of Christian ethics, as in the case of the eighth commandment. That deportment of the natural man over against the possessions of his neighbor, which ought to be overcome, is here treated of. It is incorrect to suppose idle habitual thieves are meant (Schenkel).—In the Christian ethical sense there is added: μήκετι κλεπτέτω. Hence it is unnecessary to inquire why nothing is said of restitution (Michaelis), and the opinion that this exhortation is unsuitable, because it does not correspond with the Apostle’s strictness (De Wette), is not pertinent. The Apostle’s strictness and the Christian view follow immediately:

But rather let him labor, working with his hands that which is good [μᾶλλον δὲ κοπιάτω ἐργαζόμενος ταῖς χερσὶν τὸ ἀγαθόν. See Textual Note4.].—Μᾶλλον δέ gives prominence to the antithesis. With the emphatically placed κοπιάτω Paul includes laziness and idleness as the beginning and ground of theft (Bengel: sæpe furtum et otium sunt una), and all the more decidedly by designating as the antithesis: “working with his hands that which is good.” The participle denotes the active, assiduous performance, corresponding slightly with ἐργασία, Eph_4:19 (Stier); it is not earning, gaining, as the object is not external possessions, or handicraft, trade (Meyer, De Wette). Bengel is excellent: Antitheton ad furtum, prius manu piceata (i.e., hands to which whatever comes near sticks as to pitch, pix) male commissum; on “with his hands” (the hands of the thief), he adds: quibus ad furtum abusus erat.89 Rom_6:19. The hands should now do the good, that in its proper time and place must be done; then there will not be wanting something to bestow upon the needy.

That he may have to impart to him who hath need [ἴνα ἔχῃ μεταδιδόναι τῲ χρείαν ἔχοντι].—“That he may have” sets forth the purpose, not of him who labors, as if the work should be done on this account, but of the enjoining Apostle, the ruling Lord.90 He should have something to give (μεταδιδόναι), for “we are members one of another” (Eph_4:25). This should take the place of stealing. “To him who hath need,” to him from whom recompense is not to be expected. Instead of stealing there is required an honesty and activity, which impels to beneficence. Whether the question about restitution is necessary and ethical earnestness and depth are missed here—is evident enough. See Doctr. Notes.

c. As respects speech: no foul word, but gracious discourse tending to edification; Eph_4:29-30.

Eph_4:29. Let no corrupt communication proceed oat of your mouth [πᾶς λόγος σαπρὸς ἐκ τοῦ στόματος ὑμῶν μῆ ἐκ πορευέσθω].—The subject: πᾶς λόγος σαπρός is assumed as present in the mouth of the readers while the predicate forbids: let it not proceed out; not one such should be expressed, Eph_5:5; Joh_3:16; 1Jn_2:21. [Literally: “let every foul saying not come forth.”—R.] See Winer p. 162 f. Bengel: si jam in lingua sit, resorbete. Σαπρός, from αήπω, σαπῆναι, spoiled by putrefaction, corrupt, used of fishes (Mat_13:48), of fruit (Mat_12:33; Luk_6:43), of a tree (Mat_7:17-18; Mat_12:33; Luk_6:43), denotes according to the antithesis (αγαθὸς πρός) uselessness, but it is certainly chosen to designate both what is decayed, wornout, ruined, and what is disgusting and stinking; Bengel: vetustatem redolens. Comp. κενὸς λογός, Eph_5:6; ρῆμα ἀργόν, Mat_12:36. In these passages the emptiness and unprofitableness is more prominent, here however the loathsomeness. Theodoret: αἰσχρολογία, λοιδορία, συκοφαντία, βλασφημία, ψευδολογία καὶ τὰ τούτοις ποίσοιμα.

But whatever is good for the building up of the need.—Ἀλλὰ (sc. ἐκπορευέσθω), εἴ τις ἀγαθὸς (sc. ἐστι) πρὸς οἰκοδομὴν τῆς χρείας. Over against the prohibition the acceptance of wholesome speech takes a very modest attitude; over against πᾶς we have here εἴ τις. Bengel: non postulatur ab omnibus par facundia. ̓Αγαθός, however, as in Rom_15:2, designates what is internally, morally good, not merely what is fitting (Harless), [Hodge, Eadie, Alford, Ellicott]; that would be too external. The genitive of reference has been aptly rendered by Luther: where it is needed. This refers to the time when, to the place where, to the person to whom, to the method how, and to the purport which, we are to speak. “According to Jerome it applies also juxta opportunitatem loci, temporis et personæ ædificare audientes” (Stier). Col_4:6 : “How ye ought to answer every man.” [Ellicott also takes the genitive as one of reference; “edifying as regards the need, i.e., which satisfies the need.” Alford follows Meyer in regarding it as the regular objective genitive=“the defect to be supplied by edification,” so that the sense is “the edification of the present deficiency or need calling for it.” The hypallage of the Syriac, Beza, followed in the E. V., is clearly wrong, also qua sit opus (Erasmus and others).—R.]. It is incorrect to take ἡ χρεία=οἰ χρείαν ἔγοντες (Rueckert, Olshausen).

That it may give grace to those who hear [ἵνα δῷ χάριν τοῖς ἀκούουσι].—“That” refers to the design of the enjoining Apostle, not that of the obeying member of the congregation. The subject of “give grace” is “good word;” we do not then read “that ye may give.” Luther presents very well the manner, the esthetic side: “that it may be gracious;” for χάρις means also the gracefulness, agreeableness, of the discourse; just as in Col_4:6 : “in grace,” Luk_4:22. But the inner side, the matter, must not be overlooked, nor put in a secondary place; it must be a kindness. Harless includes this alone, but incorrectly; a befriending, agreeable act of kindness is meant, which should make this impression on the hearers: whether it profits them, is their own affair. Stier seems to be not incorrect, in finding here (δῷ) an echo of Eph_4:28 (μεταδιδόναι), and a spiritual gift in the seasoned but pleasant word spoken with unction. [Alford retains the theological meaning of χάρις: “minister spiritual benefit; be a means of conveying through you the grace of God” (so E. V.). Hodge on the other hand follows Harless, holding that the phrase always means to confer a favor; “that it may benefit the hearers.” Ellicott accepts the non-theological sense of χάρις, but adds that owing to its change of meaning in the New Testament, there seems to be even in this phrase a reference to spiritual benefit. He renders: “that it may impart a blessing.”—R.]

Eph_4:30. And, καί, connects closely with what precedes; so much depends on proper speech.—Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, μὴ λυπεῖτε πνεῦμα τὸ ἄγιον τοῦ θεοῦ.—The verb forbids injuring, disturbing, rendering sorrowful, pointing thus to an intimate fellowship, in which joyous love toward and among each other should prevail, and to a tender conduct and intercourse; for it happens per sermones putres (Bengel). The object is “the Holy Spirit of God.” This full designation shows the importance of the matter and compels us to recognize the objective reality and Personality of the Holy Ghost. Shepherd of Hermas, ii. Eph 10: μὴ θλῖβε τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον τὸ ἐν σοὶ κατοικοῦν, μήποτε ἐντεύξηται κατὰ σοῦ καὶ ἀποστῆ ἀπὸ σοῦ. He who speaks out the foul thing which comes from his mind to his lips, injures thus the Holy Spirit in himself, and in others also. The plural means also: Ye, each one in himself, or in others too. The Holy Ghost like God is not apathetic, but capable of being affected. Rom_8:26. He feels what occurs in us, as a loving Friend, who does not Himself change, but will help us and change us, so long as we grant that He be not rejected. This is a possible final result, in spite of the close connection in which He stands to us, and in spite of the help and blessedness, which He produces in us. Both ideas are added in the relative clause which follows:

In whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption, ἐν ᾦ ἐσφραγίσθητε εἰς ἡμέραν ἀπολυτρώσεως.—The first thought is contained in the expression: “in whom ye were sealed,” in whom91=in fellowship with whom, ye were sealed (Eph_1:13); the other is marked by “unto the day of redemption” (Eph_1:14); hic dies est novissimus, cujus representatio quædam est in die mortis; præsupponit dies citeriores (Rom_2:16); in illo maxime die referet, quis inveniatur obsignatus (Bengel). Isa_63:10 (where the LXX. have incorrectly rendered עִצְּבוּ, παρώξυναν; the Vulgate is better: (afflixerunt) should be compared, not as though this were a citation, but on account of the similar thought.

Accordingly λυπεῖν is not to be pared down to a mere troubling (Bengel: turbare), nor is the human spirit to be regarded as the object (De Wette; Christian feeling), nor is the capability of being affected which belongs to God and the Holy Ghost to be rejected or regarded as a mere anthropomorphism; the reference to the possibility of being forsaken by the Holy Ghost should not be denied (Schenkel). There is both great kindness and earnestness in the warning thus formulated and emphasized: “in the case of the unredeemed sin it is a transgression of the law (Rom_4:15, etc.), in the case of the redeemed it is a wounding of the Holy Ghost” (Harless), whose tempter he is (Eph_2:22). Not by threatenings respecting the punishment of hell, but by holy dread of grieving the Holy Ghost, and wholesome fear of the day of Judgment, which with Him is only the day of Redemption, does the Apostle seek to persuade and strengthen.92

Comprehensive conclusion; Eph_4:31-32. a. The negative side, Eph_4:31; b. The positive side, Eph_4:32.

Eph_4:31. Let all bitterness.—Πικρία (Heb_13:15; Act_8:23; Rom_3:14) is ill-temper, animosity, unholy indignation, as πικραιύρσθαι, Col_3:19. Comp. ζῆλος πικρός, Jam_3:14. It is entirely internal, concealed in the heart [“the prevailing temperament and frame of mind” (Ellicott).—R.].—And wrath.—θυμός is excitement, passionate movement of the temper, in selfishness, unrestrained and disorderly.—And anger.—Ὀργή is the passion concentrating itself, directed against a particular person with the purpose of hurting him. ̔Ο θυμὸς γεννητικός ἐστι τῆς ὁργῆς (Œcumenius). According to the context carnal anger is spoken of; hence there is nothing to be inferred respecting Eph_4:26 from this passage. Bengel is incorrect: hactenus descendit climax; but he properly compares the first with χρηστοί, the second with εὔσπλαγχνοι, the third with γαροζόμενοι (Eph_4:32) as their respective antitheses. Comp. Tittmann, Syn. I, p. 131 ff. [Also Trench, Syn. § 37; Donaldson, New Cratylus, §§ 476, 477; Gal_5:20.]

We now pass to the breaking out of what was within, to its becoming perceptible in look, mien and gesture: and clamor.—Κραυγή (Act_23:9) is wild, rough crying, refers to the voice, improperly strained and sharpened, as in scolding, upbraiding, to the casting about of words uninterruptedly. It is the steed of anger (Chrysostom).93—And evil speaking, βλασφημία, pointing to the purport of the speaking, is aspersion of one’s neighbor, λοιδορία (Col_3:18; 1Ti_6:4; Mat_12:31; Mat_15:19), yet sharper than this, not merely like “Raca “(Mat_5:22), abusing the mental or civil capacity of a brother, but like “thou fool,” the moral capacity for God’s kingdom, and hence not without a reference to God (Stier), blaspheming possibly or probably. “All,” which belongs to all the substantives, refers to the various degrees, from the coarsest among common people to the most refined among the educated; so θυμοί, 2Co_12:20.

Be put away from you.—̓Αρθήτω ἀφ̓ ὐμῶν is a stronger conclusion of “putting away” (Eph_4:25); it must take place with power in the mighty help of One stronger than we, to whom all this clings.—With all malice.—Σὺν πάσῃ κακίᾳ, the fermentum of the bitterness (Meyer) and the rest [“the active principle to which they are all due”], refers to malice, malignitas and malitia (Rom_1:29; Col_3:8), both the quality and its manifestation, in order to sum up in conclusion all that cannot be enumerated.

[Eadie: “This verse contains not only a catalogue, but a melancholy genealogy of bad passions; acerbity of temper exciting passion; that passion heated into indignation; that indignation throwing itself off in indecent brawling, and that brawling darkening into libel and abuse; a malicious element lying all the while at the basis of these enormities.”—R.]

Eph_4:32. The positive side. And become ye, γίνεσθε δέ.—Thus the antithesis is strongly marked at the very start, as not finished at one stroke, but having a development, a history.94—Kind one to another.—Εἰς ἀλλήλους is put first, marking chiefly the fellowship. Χρηστοί (Luk_5:39; Luk_6:35; 1Pe_2:3; Rom_2:4) helping the χρεία; ingeniosius quam verius is the reference to the name: Christians (Olshausen). Comp. Tittmann, Syn. I., 140, 195.—Tender-hearted, εὐσπλαγχςοι (like 1Pe_3:8) refers to sympathy, fellow-feeling, hearty compassion. [Comp. Colossians, p. 69].—Forgiving each other, χαριζόμενοι ἑαυτοῖς (2Co_2:7; 2Co_2:10; 2Co_12:13), marks the tender, considerate, forbearing, forgiving life among themselves; ἑαυτοῖς points more strongly than ἀλλήλοις to the existing unity, where one deals with another as himself (Col_3:13). [The former thought is from Stier, the latter from Origen, but they are not to be pressed too far.—R.]

Even as God in Christ forgave you [καθὼς καὶ ὁ θεὸς ἐν Χριστᾦ ἐχαρίσατο ὑμῖν],—Καθώχ95 is as in Eph_1:4 (Harless). Καί joins the readers to God, to the clause “God in Christ forgave you.” The notion is as in Mat_6:12; Mat_6:14. God’s mercy and grace is manifest in Christ, proved itself in Christ, in the death (2Co_5:19) of Him who accomplished the reconciliation of the world with God. “In Christ” belongs to the verb, the predicate, not to “God,” the subject. [Either connection presents a truth: God in Christ, manifested in Christ, forgave us, but God forgave in Christ, in giving Him to be a propitiation for our sins. The latter thought seems more appropriate with the aorist which refers to a definite past act; it is neither “hath forgiven” (E. V.), nor “will forgive,” a gloss our feeble faith puts on it.—R.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL.

1. The lie is put first by the Apostle as a fundamental vice. It is the loveless misuse of language and the means for communicating the thoughts of the heart, with the design of deceiving our neighbor. It injures love, therefore one’s own heart, and one’s neighbor, it injures fellowship and truth, and thus one’s own heart again, which needs these, and our neighbor, who needs them no less. The untruth must be intentional; otherwise it is merely not true, an error, not amounting to a lie. The deception must be intentional: Drama, irony, satire, joke, conventionalities are not lies; for in these it is presupposed that our neighbor understands this language and can translate it into his own. What is conventional is the language of humanity, which should come from the heart and become natural, as in Fenelon. A lie is an act of lovelessness against our neighbor, even when not intended to injure him, perhaps only to help or assure ourselves or others, to make preposterous stories, something out of nothing, like all frivolous lies, which, however innocent they may appear, are still the school for turning frivolity into mischief. The word itself does not necessarily make the lie; it may be consummated in silence, in countenance, in gesture or act; but at all events it is an abuse of God’s gift for the manifestation of our thoughts and perceptions. Its opposite is truthfulness, love of truth, which is at the same time love to mankind. It is indeed not possible without some circumspection and restriction, since it does not consist in having the heart on the tongue, but in having the tongue in the heart.

This vice is less strange among men than many others, so that even the better class of people, the pious world also, has an elastic conscience respecting this point. The conventional mode of life with its illusion and deception makes truthfulness utterly impossible, unless Christ becomes a living power in us. In lying as in stealing, a beginning is made in a little thing, and then come bolder advances, until an extreme is reached: one lie is told to conceal another, instead of forgiveness being sought, and then comes shameless, impudent untruth. If comes from the devil and leads to him; it is the devil’s own vice (Joh_8:44). The Scripture forbids it unconditionally, especially the Lord Himself (Mat_12:36-37); it does not approve of the untruths of the Hebrew midwives, of Michal, Jonathan, etc., only narrating them as facts. Although lying mainly injures fellowship, yet it is not to be so connected therewith as to be considered allowable where no fellowship exists; nor is it to be so contra-distinguished from love, that a lie is not to be regarded as such, where the latter is active, even though the untruth is spoken with an intention of deceiving. The former principle applies to robbers, murderers and thieves; the latter to children, lunatics, drunkards and passionate people. In the first case it is not allowable like stratagem in war or in peril of life, and in the other truth should not become poison or poniard.96 Over against the sophistry: verbal truth should not stand against hearty love, the rigoristic principle, which allows no lie in an emergency, is justified. It is better inconsistently to deny in books and in the pulpit the right of untruth, and in life and in the household to practise it, than at the expense of truth to serve a false one. To speak an untruth on account of a neighbor’s necessity out of love for him is still a lie; personal need, personal interest does not first give it this character; the necessity of a neighbor gives no justification to a lie in a case of emergency.

2. Anger, which, in God, is the energy of holy love against sin and corruption disturbing and perverting moral order, is justified in the Scriptures. Affirmed of God more than three hundred times, it cannot be wrong of itself in man who is created after the image of God; it is rather a witness and basis of active love in the surroundings of an unholy world. The right to he angry is admitted and granted, but to be angry rightly however. Loveless anger is as incorrect as angerless love. Without ardent hatred towards what is wicked, there can be no lawful anger towards those who are wicked. It is difficult to separate the two; comp. Jude 23; Rev_2:6; Rev_2:15; Rom_12:9; Psa_97:10; Amo_5:15. The Apostle here gives prominence to the pernicious element of that anger which becomes a lingering grudge, and to the danger of thus falling a prey to the devil; it corrupts man inwardly and makes him the slave of Satan; the “irreconcilable remains the unreconciled, incurring the wrath and judgment of God.” See Palmer, Moral, p. 373.

3. Property and Theft stand in the closest relation. The latter attaches not only to the lack of the former, but rather to its acquisition, preservation and expenditure. A Christian should have more than he requires for himself; there should be a surplus for others, even though he be a day-laborer. The opposite of thievishness is Industry, which leads to opulence; with this many continued and varied exercises of Christian virtue stand connected, and Benevolence, personal, private benevolence, both secret and open; this is required, not the public, municipal charity. The emphasis rests on personal benevolence, which succors and devotes itself to need, not on police alms. Honesty should proceed toward benevolence, and what hampers and weakens the latter, has the blot of dishonesty upon it. Avarice, dissipation, vanity, laziness, negligence, debauchery and idleness are theft. See Braune, Die heilig. 10 Gebote, pp. 178–189; Palmer, Moral, p. 375.

[The scope of the negative precept (“steal no longer”) may be inferred from the positive statement which follows: It forbids idleness in general (“labor”) and laziness (“working”), implying also that those who are neither idle nor lazy may yet “steal,” because their work is neither “with the hands” nor for “that which is good” (speculation, sinecures, sharp business habits, etc.). Further all labor, however assiduous, proper and honest, which does not aim at a surplus to give away is not distinctively Christian. Though no one has a right to demand from capital (i.e., the accumulated surplus of labor), yet here is the responsibility of the Christian capitalist. On the other hand, the positive principle of honesty here set forth bids us labor, that we may have a capital for benevolence; so that begging, combining to extort, or even legislating in favor of idleness, is not in accordance with the Apostle’s view. Paul by his example (Act_18:3; Act_20:34; 2Th_3:8), as well as by the strongest precepts (Act_20:35; 2Th_3:10) exalts the dignity of manual labor. To despise labor is a mark of barbarism, involving as a result either the indigence of savage freedom or the injustice of not less savage slavery. Unless the curse pronounced (Gen_3:19) upon the man be accepted and transformed by such acceptance into a blessing, it becomes a worse misfortune. As a working man then Paul appears equally removed from the capitalist hoarding only for self and from those champions of labor who talk too much to work and who ask the same wages for the ignorant and lazy as belongs of right to skill and industry. Appealing to his hands hardened by toil, he says: “So laboring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.”—R.]

4. The entire scope of speech is here in question: The essential characteristic of Christian speech, well-pleasing to God, is “good for the edifying of the need,” a furthering in accordance with the necessity of the case. This applies to the preacher and pastor, to the social circle, the popular orator, be he democratic or conservative, and to the statesman as well. To have regard to place, time and auditors, and to regulate both matter and manner accordingly: this is the conscientious scrupulousness of the Christian! The minister should spare all pious phraseology which is not to edification, and not be content with sharing and proving his Confession of Faith, without any regard to the necessities of the occasion. Magna vis est in colloquiis piis (Bengel). Much therefore depends on the fitting word; comp. Braune, Die heil. Gebote, p. 205 ff.

5. General remarks: a. Sin is universal; it attaches not to the heathen only, but to the natural, unregenerate man as a ruling power; nor is it to be found especially in one class, race or period.—b. Sin as a whole is referred to: sin of thought, word and deed; here too the coarser or finer form, the secret or open manner makes no difference.—The Apostle so sketches the substance of sin, that at first glance we are shocked, and can imagine, it exists only in numerous circles, strata and periods, in the heathen or the remarkably degraded; but if we look more closely, we find it everywhere and in all ages, often indeed under the gloss of culture and elegant manners. The appearance of sin is in the extremities, but its seat is in the very noblest organs, from which it extends through the whole body of our race, without He helps who is the Head of His Church.

6. The motives presented are: God’s mercy in Christ over us, the precious gift of the Holy Ghost in us, the thought of the day of decision before us. God’s own aim is what is morally good; to injure this is to injure Him, to obstruct, disturb and destroy His working for us and in us. God’s unchangeableness is not the impossibility of being affected; that would be imperfection, indolence (Jam_5:16-18). Our new birth may, like the life of one born, be again taken away, the sealing of the Holy Ghost be again taken from us. He who does not look at the goal not yet attained and still held up, does not preserve what he has received in his spirit from the Spirit of God. We can lose the grace of God, can again fall into condemnation without recovery, much as it is denied.97 Heb_6:4-6.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL.

Comp. Doctr. Notes.—On Eph_4:22-28 (the Epistle for the 19th Sunday after Trinity) see the preceding section.—Virtue helps to cast off vice, and the casting off of vice introduces virtue, both thus acting reciprocally.—Two classes of men sin against the Apostle’s precept respecting sinless anger: those who rage and those who can never be angry. Sinful anger is a raging storm which lays waste a planting of God’s; righteous anger is a priest, who slays the sacrifice of righteousness and casts all care and anxiety from herself upon the Lord with a Hosanna. As in the Psalm (Eph_4:5) so here the allusion is to night, to intercourse with one’s self, to quiescence about and in us; the day of anger should be the day of reconciliation; in prayer before God let all animosity be still; let not radiant love of God set for us, with the sun in the heaven. With anger we give a lodgement to the murderer of souls, the devil; who does not slay anger, him anger slays. Hot temples are the easiest bridges for the devil into our hearts.—As room can be given to the devil, so is there also a withdrawal of the Holy Ghost,—For the commonest virtues we need what is highest of all: the kindness of God in Christ; without this there is a relapse into the heathen vices.

Starke:—Truth is a lovely virtue, a glorious ornament, and sparkles brighter than the most beautiful diamond. If you have the truth, speak the truth from your heart, and walk in the truth, then are you certainly a beloved child of God.—Anger must not be taken to bed and allowed to go to sleep with us, lest it become hatred. Where anger takes the upper hand, Christ goes down with His gracious light.—The slanderer and blasphemer has the devil on his tongue, and whoever purposely listens to the slander gets him in his ears, and whoever takes delight in it, has him in his heart.—There is no dignity, no office, in which peculations are not practised by many. It is only a pity that they are so bedecked and behung with the fine show and appearance and well-adorned cloak of right. Not only are the rich bound to have compassion on the needy, but those who maintain themselves by labor, should share with those who cannot work.—See how put of the glow of sin one spark after another rises up, each greater than the last, until a great fire is made out of it.

The enigmatical, mysterious, unfathomable, people, who never let their hearts be seen, do not bear this Divine stamp; it is as if they did not wish their evil tricks to be betrayed.—The Christian should never lay his head unreconciled to rest, and he has no rest, if he has injured any one, or knows himself to be at enmity with any one. Gentle rest belongs only to a heart free from passion. Examine thyself, whether any one sighs over thee. The Pythagoreans, if they had fallen out with each other in words, gave each other the hand before sundown, kissed each other, and were reconciled.—The aim of labor, of earning, should be the weal of others. The worth of labor is this, that it furnishes us the means of doing good and tasting the sweetness of doing good.

The perceptible alterations, of life which must occur in the regenerate. 1. In general, in the prevailing mind, Eph_4:22-24. a) An entire laying off of the old evil mind, a cessation of the old lust. b) Putting on of an entirely new holy mind, of God’s likeness, like God to think and will, and daily renewed zeal in reaching after the likeness of God. 2. Specially, Eph_4:25-28. Through the virtues which the renewed man exhibits: a) Purity, chastity, b) Truthfulness, c) Gentleness, d) Inoffensiveness. e) Honesty and Rectitude.

The great difference between Christian culture and that of the world. 1. In general, a) The world’s culture leaves the old humanity untouched, unimproved, only whitewashes it. b) Christian culture ennobles man from the foundation up, by substituting the Divine mind for selfishness.

2. Specially. a. Culture hinders only the great outbreaks of vice, Christianity makes the heart pure. b. Culture teaches to shun great lies, Christianity makes inwardly true. c. Culture makes outwardly refined, Christianity gives true gentleness, d. Culture guards against coarse injustice, but Christianity makes truly honest, even where one is not remarked.—Real improvement must begin at the bottom of the heart.—Would not the world fare better, if all became real Christians?—Christians are new men.—The speech of a Christian should always have a moral purpose. Paul describes Christian eloquence both as to its matter: it speaks what is serviceable for improvement, awakens good impulses, leaves a sting behind it in the hearts of others; and as to its manner, which is to be kind, so that love is thereby expressed and made perceptible. The Christian is no babbler, does not allow himself to become a mountebank or court-fool!—The Holy Ghost can be grieved: 1. In Himself, one frustrates His work partly in his own heart, and partly in others, which especially happens through evil speeches. 2. In others, when one grieves the pious Christians, who are full of this Spirit. Consider, whom you should respect in such persons, the Holy Ghost dwelling in them!—The Christian should not be bitter, without on this account becoming sweet. Wrath is the full outbreak of hate against others. Clamor is a token of a hasty, vehement, uncontrolled, rough spirit.

Passavant:—All—liars, because all, sinners, for in every sin is falsehood, a denial of the truth, a deception upon and against ourselves and before God.—Better die than lie! says an old Church Father.—In the case of the unconverted every sin is a wrong against the holy law; in the case of the converted it is at the same time a wrong against the Holy Ghost.

Gerlach:—The Holy Ghost is estranged by empty, vain babbling, but grieved by foul talk.—Stier:—To drive out every sin dwelling in the old man, the practice of the opposite virtue must be employed.—Either we slay again, or it slays us. If a man goes to bed with poison, it creeps through all his members during sleep. Anger is a murderer. Who would sleep with a murderer? To be angry is human, but to cherish it long is devilish (Heinrich Mueller).

[Eadie:

Eph_4:26. Anger is not wholly for bidden; it is an instinctive principle—a species of thorny hedge encircling our birthright. But in the indulgence of it, men are very apt to sin.—“When the curfew bell rings, let us then also quench all sparks of anger and heat of passion” (Thos. Fuller).

Eph_4:27. Give the devil “place” but in a point, and he may speedily cover the whole platform of the soul.

Eph_4:29. Words so spoken may fall like winged seeds upon a neglected soil. Comp. Pro_25:11.

Eph_4:30. All this perverse insubordination is in utter antagonism to the essence and operations of Him who is the Spirit of truth, and inspires the love of it; who assumed, as a fitting symbol, the form of a dove, and creates meekness and forbearance; and who, as the Spirit of holiness, leads to the appreciation of all that is just in action, noble in sentiment, and healthful and edifying in speech.—It may be said to a prodigal son—grieve not your father lest he cast you off; or grieve not your mother lest you break her heart. Which of the twain is the stronger appeal?

Eph_4:31. “Anger sets the house on fire, and all the spirits are busy upon trouble, and intend propulsion, defence, displeasure or revenge; it is a short madness, and an eternal enemy to discourse, and sober counsels, and fair conversation; it is a fever in the heart, and a calenture in the head, and a fire in the face, and a sword in the hand, and a fury all over; and therefore can never suffer a man to be in a disposition to pray” (Jeremy Taylor).

Eph_4:32. In the exercise of Christian forgiveness his authority was their rule, and his example their model. They were to obey and also to imitate, nay, their obedience consisted in imitation.—R.]

[Eph_4:25. The ground of Christian truthfulness and its negative and positive sides.

Eph_4:26-27. Anger. 1) may be right; 2) is far more likely to be wrong; 3) certainly is, if it lasts long: 4) becomes worse yet by giving entrance to the devil.

Eph_4:28. Obedience here would stop many a business, and deplete the ranks of many a profession, by increasing the number of honest laborers; but how much it would do for the weal of mankind!—Legislative charity is not Christian charity, nor the payment of taxes for the support of the poor, an essentially Christian virtue.

Eph_4:29. The Apostle implies here: 1. That corrupt things rise very naturally to the lips, but should never be spoken; 2. That useful things are rarer.—Much speaking is likely to be evil-speaking.—Profitable conversation: 1. How rare; 2. Little sought for; 3. Selfishness the cause.—This verse would shut many a mouth in prayer-meeting, often enough in the pulpit too.—Would that it did, for is it not by unedifying words as well as evil ones, that the Spirit is grieved?

Eph_4:31. “Evil speaking,” i.e., slander, is “blasphemy” in Greek; it stands last in this catalogue. It always breaks the sixth and ninth commands, usually the seventh, and is an offence against the third also.

Eph_4:32. Kindness is well, compassion is better, but forgiveness is like God in Christ.—Who forgave us? God in Christ; how did He forgive us? in Christ; whom did He forgive? us in Christ.—R.]

Footnotes:

[76]Eph_4:26.—[The article τῷ is omitted in א.1 A. B.; rejected by Lachmann, Meyer, bracketed by Alford, but on the authority of א.3 D. F. K. L., fathers, retained (as in Rec.) by most editors. The probability of its being omitted because the substantive was defined by ὑμῶν is very great.—R]

[77]Eph_4:27.—[Instead of μήτε (Rec., a few cursives, Chrysostom) most modern editors accept μηδέ on the authority of all our MSS. (א. A. B., etc).—On the grammatical objection to the former reading, see Exeg. Notes.—Nor yet, see Ellicott’s note on the translation of 1Th_2:3.—R.]

[78]Eph_4:22.—[The variations are great: 1. We have the long reading ταἵς ʼιδιαις χερσὶν τὸ ἀγαθόν (א.1 A. D. E. F. G., many versions), accepted by Lachmann, Tischendorf (ed. 1), Wordsworth, Eadie, Ellicott and others; the same words appearing with τὸ ἀγαθόν coming first in K. and some cursives. 2. In many authorities ἰδίαις is omitted, and there is a strong suspicion of its interpolation from 1Co_4:12. Here too there is variety in the order; א.3 B. some fathers read: ταῖς χερσὶν τὸ ἀγαθόν (Meyer, Alford, 4th ed.), while the order is reversed in the Rec., L., majority of cursives, many fathers (Griesbach, Scholz, Tischendorf, eds. 2, 7). 3. We have besides two briefer readings, almost wholly conjectural, though each claims a Father in support; the one ταῖς χερσίν alone (regarding τὸ ἀγαθόν as interpolated from Gal_6:10), the other τὸ ἀγαθόν alone.—It will be seen then that the evidence strongly sustains the position of τὸ ἀγαθόν at the end of the clause; accepting this, the only other question deserving attention is the genuineness of ἰδἰαις. The mass of authority is in its favor, but very good authorities omit it. The internal evidence seems to be against it, for it may have been inserted from 1Co_4:12, and the special force attached to it by Ellicott (see Exeg. Notes) scarcely amounts to an argument for retaining it.—Braune’s preference is rendered uncertain by an evident typographical error, but he rejects ἰδίαις.—R.]

[79]Eph_4:29.—[D.1 F., some fathers read πίστεως instead of χρείας; an evident correction.—Give is more literal than minister, which at the same time puts upon grace the sense of “Divine grace,” hearers too is somewhat too technical in its present use.—R.]

[80]Eph_4:32.—[B. and some minor authorities omit δέ (Lachmann), while οὖν is found in D.1 F. G., both readings probably due to a misapprehension of the relation between Eph_4:31-32.—Become is more exact than be; each other (ἑαυτοῖς) than one another.—R.]

[81]Eph_4:32.—[Never was the E. V. more unfortunate in its rendering of the phrase ἐν Χριστῷ.—The aorist requires here: forgave.—R.]

[82]Eph_4:32—[B. (according to Alford’s personal inspection, not B.2) D. E. K. L. and a number of minor authorities read ἡμῖν; accepted by Lachmann. But א. A. F. and other authorities support ὑμῖν. The probability of an alteration from Eph_5:2 has decided most recent editors of the correctness of the second person.—R.]

[83][Notice the frequent use of abstract nouns, almost personifications, in this chapter. Here “the vice and habit of lying” is meant, which is a chief characteristic of the “old man,” a natural and immediate result of the essential selfishness of sin. The aorist participle is preferred here (=having put away), “because the man must have once for all put off falsehood as a characteristic before he enters the habit of speaking truth” (Alford).—R.]

[84][“The force of the exhortation does not rest on any mere ethical considerations of our obligations to society, or on any analogy that may be derived from the body (Chrysostom), but on the deeper truth that in being members of one another we are members of the body of Christ.”—Ellicott. The analogy Chrysostom draws is striking, however, and deserving of notice: “If the eye were to spy a serpent or a wild beast, will it lie to the foot?” etc.—R.]

[85][This is perhaps the view now generally received. Both imperatives are jussive; anger is not only allowable, but commanded in certain cases, yet the Apostle forbids the joining of sin with it; in so doing the emphasis resting on the second imperative obscures the jussive force of the first one, rendering it rather assumptive: Be angry (for this must be so) and do not sin. So Eadie, Alford, Meyer, Ellicott and others.—R.]

[86][In addition to the critical grounds for rejecting μήτε, the grammatical objection should be noted. Μήτε here would presuppose another μήτε, while μή precedes. The sequence is therefore abnormal. Meyer suggests that it might occur, if the second member were an after-thought, but it never does occur in Paul’s writings. This verse is therefore connected with the preceding, but as an affirmative sentence would be through δέ.—R.]

[87][In two of these instances the meaning is: the devil, in the other two, without the article, it may mean slanderous (as an adjective applied to women in both cases). Meyer is probably right in affirming that the substantive διαβολος in the New Testament always means: the devil. So Hodge, Alford and Ellicott. “A name derived from the fearful nature and, so to say, office of the Evil One.”—R.]

[88][Eadie: “Some, shocked at the idea that any connected with the Ephesian Church should be committing such a sin, have attempted to attenuate the meaning of the word.” So Jerome, Calvin, and Hodge who accepts the past sense. But such sinners may yet have been in the Church. See 1Co_5:1; 2Co_12:21. In the service of the Reformed Church for the ordination of Deacons, this gloss occurs: “Let him that stole (or who hath been burthensome to his neighbor),” as an admonition to those who too long depend on the charities of the Church.—R.]

[89][Ellicott retains ἰδίαις and says: “The thievish man lives by the labors and hands of others: he is now himself to labor, and with his own hands, not at τὸ κακόν, but at τὸ ἀγαθόν.” But such an antithesis seems doubtful. The verse is better explained thus: He who steals (whether a thief or a so-called “business-man”) should stop this, and go to work, to real labor. The participial clause then adds how: let him accomplish by assiduous effort with his hands something good, instead of this past evil. The purpose of the effort follows in the next clause. The sum of the whole is: Honest manual labor. 1. Labor, 2. better with the hands than with the dishonest wits; 3. above all let it be honest as to means and good as to end.—R.]

[90][This is evidently stated by the Apostle as “the true specific object of all Christian labor, and just to the extent that the work is done on this account, will it be itself Christian. The laborer may be unconscious of this end at times, but it is necessarily his end in labor as a Christian. The verse is worth a whole library of volumes on social science. Its precepts would make many a so-called merchant or professional man go to manual labor, while on the other hand this last clause would settle the “workman’s question” far more effectually than the whole array of socialistic theories, Agrarian appeals, trades unions and “strikes.” But Prud-homme is too often preferred to Paul.—R.]

[91][Not by whom (whereby, E. V.), Hodge, since God is the Sealer, the Spirit the seal; comp. Eph_1:13.—R.]

[92][It is precisely this thought of the Apostle, so correctly stated by Braune, which throws doubt upon the reference to the possibility of losing the seal, found here by Harless, Stier, Alford and Braune (Doctr. Note 6). But the mention of a seal is not suggestive of such a possibility, nor is “grieving the Spirit”=resisting the Spirit, the latter being predicated of unbelievers only (Acts 5:51). Besides had Paul wished to convey this idea παροξύνετε (from Isa_63:10, LXX.) was probably in his memory, and this would have expressed such a thought far better. Of course the caution assumes a logical possibility of falling, which is practical enough, but the appeal is to love not to fear. While the Scriptures always thus exhort men, it seems to be a species of anthropomorphism also, for the more theological and soteriological statements preclude such a possibility. Even here where the verse begins with such a caution, there is at once added a mention of the “seal” and of “the day of redemption” as the end, which suggests the doctrine of “final perseverance” rather than the opposite. Comp. Eadie and Hodge in loco.—R.]

[93][Chrysostom adds: “Let women especially attend to this, as they on every occasion cry out and brawl. There is but one thing in which it is needful to cry aloud, and that is in teaching and preaching.”—R.]

[94][Alford is scarcely justified in saying that “become” removes the precept too far from the present. Ellicott rightly takes the verb as implying evil elements among them, yet to be taken away; hence the appropriation of δέ. See Textual Note6.—R.]

[95][This particle introduces an example, having at the same time an argumentative force; not=because, as Hodge renders it here also.—R.]

[96][Lies to children are fearfully common. Surely the motive (“for we are members one of another”) in this case has unusual force. To say that such lies are necessary, is to say that it is necessary to blacken a child’s heart. In the liveliness of childish imagination they are great romancers themselves, but at the same time sensitive to an untruth told them. How can they have faith in God, when those who stand for the time being in the place of God prove unworthy of belief? What they cannot understand should be declared incomprehensible to them, not misstated. What would we think of our Heavenly Father, if He dealt otherwise with us?—R]

[97][In the original Dr. Braune adds: “by the Methodists and Baptists,” an oversight which is singular enough; it may be accounted for by remembering that these two denominations are almost the only ones which operate among German Protestants as missionaries. The representative of the State Church (Dr. Braune is General Superintendent) naturally classes them together. On the question whether the possibility of falling from grace is here taught, see Exeg. Notes. The passage in Hebrews teaches either: no fall is possible, or: the first fall is fatal, an alternative not usually accepted by the advocates of such a possibility.—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.

Chapter 21

DISCARDED VICES

Eph_4:25-32; Eph_5:1-6

The transformation described in the last paragraph (Eph_4:17-24) has now to be carried into detail. The vices of the old heathen self must be each of them replaced by the corresponding graces of the new man in Christ Jesus.

The peculiarity of the instructions given by the apostle for this purpose does not lie in the virtues enjoined, but in the light in which they are set and the motives by which they are inculcated. The common conscience condemns lying and theft, malice and uncleanness; they were denounced with eloquence by heathen moralists. But the ethics of the New Testament differed in many respects from the best moral philosophy: in its direct appeal to the conscience, in its vigour and decision, in the clearness with which it traced our maladies to the hearts alienation from God; but most of all in the remedy which it applied, the new principle of faith in Christ. The surgeons knife lays bare the root of the disease; and the physicians hand pours in the healing balm. Let us observe at the outset that St. Paul deals with the actual and pressing temptations of his readers. He recalls what they had been and forbids them to be such again. The associations and habits of former life, the hereditary force of evil, the atmosphere of Gentile society, and added to all this, as we discover from Eph_5:6, the persuasions of the sophistical teachers now beginning to infest the Church, tended to draw the Asian Christians back to Gentile ways and to break down the moral distinctions that separated them from the pagan world.

Amongst the discarded vices of the forsaken Gentile life, the following are here distinguished: lying, theft, anger, idle speech, malice, impurity, greed. These may be reduced to sins of temper, of word, and of act. Let us discuss them in the order in which they are brought before us.

I. "The falsehood" of Eph_4:25 is the antithesis of "the truth" from which righteousness and holiness spring (Eph_4:24). In accepting the one, Pauls Gentile readers "had put off" the other. When these heathen converts became Christians, they renounced the great lie of idolatry, the system of error and deceit on which their lives were built. They have passed from the realm of illusion to that of truth. "Now," the: apostle says, "let your daily speech accord with this fact: you have bidden farewell to falsehood; speak truth, each with his neighbour." The true religion breeds truthful men; a sound faith makes an honest tongue. Hence there is no vice more hateful than jesuitry, nothing more shocking than the conduct of those who defend what they, call "the truth" by disingenuous arts, by tricks of rhetoric and the shifts of an unscrupulous partisanship. "Will you speak unrighteously for God, and talk deceitfully for Him? "As Christs truth is in me, cries the apostle, when he would give the strongest possible assurance of the fact he wishes to assert. The social conventions and make-believes, the countless simulations and dissimulations by which the game of life is carried on, belong to the old man with his lusts of deceit, to the universal lie that runs through all ungodliness and unrighteousness, which is in the last analysis the denial of God.

St. Paul applies here the words of Zec_8:16, in which the prophet promises to restored Israel better days on the condition that they should "speak truth each with his neighbour, and judge truth and the judgment of peace in their gates. And let none of you," he continues, "imagine evil in his heart against his neighbour; and love no false oath, for all these things do I hate, saith the Lord." Such is the law of the New Covenant life. No doubt St. Paul is thinking of the intercourse of Christians with each other when he quotes this command and adds the reason, "For we are members one of another." But the word neighbour, as Jesus showed, has in the Christian vocabulary no limited import it includes the Samaritan, the heathen man and publican. When the apostle bids his converts "Follow what is good towards one another, and towards all," {1Th_5:15} he certainly presumes the neighbourly obligation of truthfulness to be no less comprehensive. Believers in Christ represent a communion which in principle embraces all men. The human race is one family in Christ. For any man to lie to his fellow is, virtually, to lie to himself. It is as if the eye should conspire to cheat the hand, or the one hand play false to the other. Truth is the right which each man claims instinctively from his neighbour; it is the tacit compact that binds together all intelligences. Without neighbourly and brotherly love perfect truthfulness is scarcely possible. "Self-respect wilt never destroy self-seeking, which will always find in self-interest a side accessible to the temptations of falsehood" (Harless).

II. Like the first precept, the second is borrowed from the Old Testament and shaped to the uses of the New. "Be ye angry, and sin not": so the words of Psa_4:4 stand in the Greek version and in the margin of our Revised Bible, where we commonly read, "Stand in awe, and sin not. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still." The apostles further injunction, that anger should be stayed before nightfall, accords with the Psalmists words; the calming effect of the nights quiet the apostle anticipates in the approach of evening. As the days heat cools and its strain is relaxed, the fires of anger should die down. With the Jews, it will be remembered, the new day began at evening. Plutarch, the excellent heathen moralist contemporary with St. Paul, gives this as an ancient rule of the Pythagoreans: "If at any time they happened to be provoked by anger go abusive language, before the sun set they would take each others hands and embracing make up their quarrel." If Paul had heard of this admirable prescription, he would be delighted to recognise and quote it as one of those many facts of Gentile life which "show the work of the law written in their hearts". {Rom_2:15} The passion which outlives the day, on which the angry man sleeps and that wakes with him in the morning, takes root in his breast; it becomes a settled rancour, prompting ill thoughts and deeds.

There is no surer way of tempting the devil to tempt us than to brood over our wrongs. Every cherished grudge is a "place given" to the tempter, a new entrenchment for the Evil One in his war against the soul, from which he may shoot his "fire-tipped darts". {Eph_6:16} Let us dismiss with each day the days vexations, commending as evening falls our cares and griefs to the Divine compassion and seeking, as for ourselves, so for those who may have done us wrong, forgiveness and a better mind. We shall rise with the coming light armed with new patience and charity, to bring into the worlds turmoil a calm and generous wisdom that will earn for us the blessing of the peace-makers, who shall be called sons of God.

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

III. From anger we pass to theft.

The eighth commandment is put here in a form indicating that some of the apostles readers had been habitual sinners against it. Literally his words read: "Let him that steals play the thief no more." The Greek present participle does not, however, necessarily imply a pursuit now going on, but a habitual or characteristic pursuit, that by which the agent was known and designated: "Let the thief no longer steal!" From the lowest dregs of the Greek cities-from its profligate and criminal classes-the gospel had drawn its converts. {comp. 1Co_6:9-11} In the Ephesian Church there were converted thieves; and Christianity had to make of them honest workmen.

The words of Eph_4:28, addressed to a company of thieves, vividly shows the transforming effect of the gospel of Christ: "Let him toil, working with his hands what is good, that he may have wherewith to give to him that is in need." The apostle brings the loftiest motives to bear instantly upon the basest natures, and is sure of a response. He makes no appeal to self-interest, he says nothing of the fear of punishment, nothing even of the pride of honest labour. Pity for their fellows, the spirit of self-sacrifice and generosity is to set those pilfering and violent hands to unaccustomed toil. The appeal was as wise as it was bold. Utilitarianism will never raise the morally degraded. Preach to them thrift and self-improvement, show them the pleasures of an ordered home and the advantages of respectability, they will still feel that their own way of life pleases and suits them best. But let the divine spark of charity be kindled in their breast-let the man have love and pity and not self to work for, and he is a new creature. His indolence is conquered; his meanness changed to the noble sense of a common manhood. Love never faileth.

IV. We have passed from speech to temper, and from temper to act; in the warning of Eph_4:29-30 we come back to speech again.

We doubt whether corrupt talk is here intended. That comes in for condemnation in verses 2 and 3 (Eph_5:2-3) of the next chapter. The Greek adjective is the same that is used of the "worthless fruit" of the "worthless [good-for-nothing] tree" in Mat_12:33; and again of the "bad fish" of Mat_13:48, which the fisherman throws away not because they are corrupt or offensive, but because they are useless for food. So it is against inane, inept and useless talk that St. Paul sets his face. Jesus said that "forevery idle word men must give account to God". {Mat_12:36}

Jesus Christ laid great stress upon the exercise of the gift of speech. "By thy words," He said to His disciples, "thou shalt be justified, and by thy words condemned." The possession of a human tongue is an immense responsibility. Infinite good or mischief lies in its power. (With the tongue we should include the pen, as being the tongues deputy.) Who shall say how great is the sum of injury, the waste of time, the irritation, the enfeeblement of mind and dissipation of spirit, the destruction of Christian fellowship that is due to thoughtless speech and writing? The apostle does not simply forbid injurious words, he puts an embargo on all that is not positively useful. It is not enough to say: "My chatter does nobody harm; if there is no good in it, there is no evil." He replies: "If you cannot speak to profit, be silent till you can."

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

The witness of the Holy Spirit is the seal of Gods possession in us; it is the assurance to ourselves that we are His sons in Christ and heirs of life eternal. From the day it is affixed to the heart, this seal need never be broken nor the witness withheld, "until the day of redemption." Dwelling within the Church as the guard of its communion, and loving us with the love of God, the Spirit of grace is hurt and grieved by foolish words coming from lips that He has sanctified. As Israel in its ancient rebellions "vexed His Holy Spirit," {Isa_63:10} so do those who burden Christian fellowship and who enervate their own inward life by speech without worth and purpose. As His fire is quenched by distrust, {1Th_5:19} so His love is vexed by folly. His witness grows faint and silent; the soul loses its joyous assurance, its sense of the peace of God. When our inward life thus declines, the cause lies not unfrequently in our own heedless speech. Or we have listened willingly and without reproof to "words that may do hurt," words of foolish jesting or idle gossip, of mischief and backbiting. The Spirit of truth retires affronted from His desecrated temple, not to return until the iniquity of the lips is purged and the wilful tongue bends to the yoke of Christ. Let us grieve before the Holy Spirit, that He be not grieved with us for such offences. Let us pray evermore: "Set a watch, O Jehovah, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips."

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

The last of these terms is the most typical. Malice is badness of disposition, the aptness to envy and hatred, which apart from any special occasion is always ready to break out in bitterness and wrath. Bitterness is malice sharpened to a point and directed against the exasperating object. Wrath and anger are synonymous, the former being the passionate outburst of resentment in rage, the latter the settled indignation of the aggrieved soul: this passion was put under restraint already in Eph_4:26-27. Clamour and railing give audible expression to these and their kindred tempers. Clamour is the loud self-assertion of the angry man, who will make every one hear his grievance; while the railer carries the war of the tongue into his enemys camp, and vents his displeasure in abuse and insult.

These sins of speech were rife in heathen society; and there were some amongst Pauls readers, doubtless, who found it hard to forego their indulgence. Especially difficult was this when Christians suffered all manner of evil from their heathen neighbours and former friends; it cost a severe struggle to be silent and "keep the mouth as with a bridle" under fierce and malicious taunts. Never to return evil for evil and railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing, -this was one of the lessons most difficult to flesh and blood.

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

The commencement of the new chapter at this point makes an unfortunate division; for its first two verses (Eph_5:1-2) are in close consecution with the last verse of chap. 4 (Eph_4:32). By kindness and pitifulness of heart, by readiness to forgive, Gods "beloved children" will "show themselves imitators" of their Father. The apostle echoes the saying of His Master, in which the law of His kingdom was laid down: "Love your enemies, and do good, and lend never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and you shall be called children of the Highest: for He is kind to the thankless and evil. Be ye therefore pitiful, as your Father is pitiful". {Luk_6:35-36} Before the cross of Jesus was set up, men could not know how much God loved the world and how far He was ready to go in the way of forgiveness. Yet Christ Himself saw the same love displayed in the Fathers daily providence. He bids us imitate Him who makes His sun shine and His rain fall on the just and unjust, on the evil and the good. To the insight of Jesus, natures impartial bounties in which unbelief sees only moral indifference spoke of Gods compassion; they proceed from the same love that gave His Son to taste death forevery man.

Eph_4:32, Eph_5:1-2 the Fathers love and the Sons self-sacrifice are spoken of in terms precisely parallel. They are altogether one in quality. Christ does not by His sacrifice persuade an angry Father to love His children; it is the Divine compassion in Christ that dictates and carries into effect the sacrifice. At the same time it was "an offering and a sacrifice to God." God is love; but love is not everything in God. Justice is also Divine, and absolutely in its own realm. Law can no more forego its rights than love forget its compassions. Love must fulfil all righteousness; it must suffer law to mark out its path of obedience, or it remains an effusive ineffectual sentiment, helpless to bless and save. Christs feet followed the stern and straight path of self-devotion; "He humbled Himself and became obedient," He was "born under law." And the law of God imposing death as the penalty for sin, which shaped Christs sacrifice, made it acceptable to God. Thus it was "an odour of a sweet smell."

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

VI. Above all others, one sin stamped the Gentile world of that time with infamy, -its uncleanness. St. Paul has stigmatised this already in the burning words of Eph_4:19. There we saw this vice in its intrinsic loathsomeness; here it is set in the light of Christs love on the one hand (Eph_5:2), and of the final judgment on the other (Eph_5:5-6). Thus it is banished from the Christian fellowship in every form-even in the lightest, where it glances from the lips in words of jest: "Fornication and all uncleanness, let it not even be named among you." Along with "filthiness, foolish talk and jesting" are to be heard no more. Passing from Eph_5:2 to Eph_5:3 by the contrastive But, one feels how repugnant are these things to the love of Christ. The perfume of the sacrifice of Calvary, so pleasing in heaven, sweetens our life on earth; its grace drives wanton and selfish passions from the heart, and destroys the pestilence of evil in the social atmosphere. Lust cannot breathe in the sight of the cross.

The "good-for-nothing speech" of Eph_4:29 comes up once more for condemnation in the foolish speech and jesting of this passage. The former is the idle talk of a stupid, the latter of a clever man. Both, under the conditions of heathen society, were tainted with foulness.

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

St. Pauls word. for "jesting" is one of the singular terms of this epistle. By etymology it denotes a well-turned style of expression, the versatile speech of one who can touch lightly on many themes and aptly blend the grave and gay. This social gift was prized amongst the polished Greeks. But it was a faculty so commonly abused, that the word describing it fell into bad odour: it came to signify banter and persiflage; and then, still worse, the kind of talk here indicated, -the wit whose zest lies in its flavour of impurity. "The very profligate old man in the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus" Eph_3:1, who prides himself, and not without reason, upon his wit, his elegance and refinement [cavillator lepidus, facetus], is exactly the ευτραπελος. And keeping in mind that ευτραπελια, being only once expressly and by name forbidden in Scripture, is forbidden to Ephesians, it is not a little notable to find him urging that all this was to be expected from him, being as he was an Ephesian by birth:-

"Post Ephesi sum natus; non enim in Apulia, nor Animulae."

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

VII. At the end of the Ephesian catalogue of vices, as at the beginning, {Eph_4:19} uncleanness is joined with covetousness, or greed.

This, too, is "not even to be named amongst you, as becometh saints." Money! property! these are the words dearest and most familiar in the mouths of a large class of men of the world, the only themes on which they speak with lively interest. But Christian lips are cleansed from the service both of Belial and of Mammon. When his business follows the trader from the shop to the fireside and the social circle, and even into the Church, when it becomes the staple subject of his conversation, it is clear that he has fallen into the low vice of covetousness. He is becoming, instead of a man, a money-making machine, an "idolater" of

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

The apostle classes the covetous man with the fornicator and the unclean, amongst those who by their worship of the shameful idols of the god of this world exclude themselves from their "inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."

A serious warning this for all who handle the worlds wealth. They have a perilous war to wage, and an enemy who lurks for them at every step in their path. Will they prove themselves masters of their business, or its slaves? Will they escape the golden leprosy, -the passion for accumulation, the" lust of property? None are found more dead to the claims of humanity and kindred, none further from the kingdom of Christ and God, none more "closely wrapped" within their "sensual fleece" than rich men who have prospered by the idolatry of gain. Dives has chosen and won his kingdom. He "receives in his lifetime his good things; afterwards he must look for "torments."

Chapter 22

DOCTRINE AND ETHICS

Eph_4:25-32; Eph_5:1-6

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

The apostle does not condemn these sins as being contrary to Gods law: that is taken for granted. But the legal condemnation was ineffectual. {Rom_8:3} The wrath revealed from heaven against mans unrighteousness had left that unrighteousness unchastened and defiant. The revelation of law, approved and echoed by conscience, taught man his guilt; it could do no more. All this St. Paul assumes; he builds on the ground of law and its acknowledged findings.

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

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

The originality of Christian ethics, we repeat, does not lie in its detailed precepts. There is not one, it may be, even of the noblest maxims of Jesus that had not been uttered by some previous moralist. With the New Testament in our hands, it may be possible to collect from non-Christian sources-from Greek philosophers, from the Jewish Talmud, from Egyptian sages and Hindoo poets, from Buddha and Confucius-a moral anthology which thus sifted out of the refuse of antiquity, like particles of iron drawn by the magnet, may bear comparison with the ethics of Christianity. If Christ is indeed the Son of man, we should expect Him to gather into one all that is highest in the thoughts and aspirations of mankind. Addressing the Athenians on Mars Hill, the apostle could appeal to "certain of your own poets" in support of his doctrine of the Fatherhood of God. The noblest minds in all ages witness to Jesus Christ and prove themselves to be, in some sort, of His kindred.

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

It is Christ in us, it is the personal fellowship of the soul with Him and with the living God through Him, that forms the vital and constitutive factor of Christianity. Here is the secret of its moral efficacy. The Christ is the centre root of the race; He is the image of God in which we were made. The lifeblood of mankind flowed in Him as in His heart, and poured forth from Him as from its fountain in sacrifice for the common sin. Jesus gathered into Himself and restored the virtue of humanity broken into a thousand fragments; but He did much more than this. While He re-created in His personal character our lost manhood, by His death and resurrection He has gained for that ideal a transcendent power that seizes upon men and regenerates and transforms them. "With unveiled face beholding in the mirror the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image" (receiving the glory that we see), "as from the Lord of the Spirit". {2Co_3:18}

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

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

I. In the first place, the fundamental truth of the Fatherhood of God. "Be imitators of God," he writes, "as beloved children." And in Eph_4:24 : "Put on the new man, which was created after God."

Mans life has its law, for it has its source, in the nature of the Eternal. Behind our race-instincts and the laws imposed on us in the long struggle for existence, behind those imperatives of practical reason involved in the structure of our intelligence, are the presence and the active will of Almighty God our heavenly Father. His image we see in the Son of man.

Here is the fountainhead of truth, from which the two great streams of philosophical thought upon morals have diverged. If man is the child of a Being absolutely good, then moral goodness belongs to the essence of his nature; it is discoverable in the instincts of his reason and will. Were not our nature warped by sin, such reasoning must have commanded immediate assent and led to consistent and self-evident results. Again, if man is the child of God, the finite of the Infinite, his moral character must, presumably, have been in the beginning germinal rather than complete, needing-even apart from sin and its malformations-development and education, the discipline of a fatherly providence, inculcating the lessons and forming the habits which belong to his ripe manhood and full-grown stature. Intuitional morals bear witness to the God of creation; experimental morals to the God of providence and history. The Divine Fatherhood is the keystone of the arch in which they meet.

The command to "be imitators of God" makes personality the sovereign element in life. If consciousness is a finite and passing phenomenon, if God be but a name for the sum of the impersonal laws that regulate the universe, for the "stream of tendency" in the worlds, Father and love are meaningless terms applied to the Supreme and religion dissolves into an impalpable mist. Is the universe governed by personal will, or by impersonal force? Is reason, or is gravitation the index to the nature of the Absolute? This is the vital question of modern thought. The latter is the answer given by a large, if not a preponderant body of philosophical opinion in our own day, -as it was given, virtually, by the natural philosophers of Greece in the dawn of science. Mans triumphs over nature and the splendour of his discoveries in the physical realm bewilder his reason. The scientists, like other conquerors, have been intoxicated with victory. The universe, it seems, was about to yield to them its last secrets; they were prepared to analyse the human soul and resolve the conception of God into its material elements. Religion and conscience, however, prove to be intractable subjects in the physical laboratory; they are coming out of the crucible unchanged and refined. We are able by this time to take a more sober measure of the possibilities of the scientific method, and to see what inductive logic and natural selection can do for us, and what they cannot do. We can walk in the light of the new revelation, without being dazzled by it. Things are less altered than we thought. The old boundaries reappear. The spirit resumes its place, and rules a wider realm than before. Reason refuses to be the victim of its own success, and to immolate itself for the deification of material law. "Forasmuch as we are Gods offspring," we ought not to think, and we will not think, that the Godhead is like to blind forces and reasonless properties of matter. Love, thought, will in us raise our being above the realm of the impersonal; and these faculties point us upward to Him from whom they came, the Father of the spirits of all flesh.

The great tide of joy, the victorious energy which the sense of Gods love brings into the life of a Christian, is evidence of its reality. The believer is a child walking in the light of his Fathers smile-dependent, ignorant, but the object of an Almighty love. A thousand tokens speak to him of the Divine care; his tasks and trials are sweetened by the confidence that they are appointed for wise ends beyond his present knowledge. To another in that same house there is no heavenly Father, no unseen hand that guides, no gleam of a brighter and purer day lighting up its dull chambers. There are human companions, weak, erring, and wearying like oneself. There is work to do, with the night coming swiftly; and the brave heart girds itself to duty, finding in the service of man its motive and employment-but, alas, with how poor success and how faint a hope! It is not the loss of strength for human service, nor the dying out of joy which unbelief entails, that is its chief calamity; but the unbelief itself. The sun in the souls heaven is put out. The personal relationship to the Supreme which gave dignity and worth to our individual being, which imparted sacredness and enduring power to all other ties, is destroyed. The heart is orphaned; the temple of the spirit is desolate. The mainspring of life is broken.

"Make haste to answer me, O Jehovah; my spirit faileth! Hide not Thy face from me, Lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit!"

II. The solidarity of mankind in Christ furnishes the apostle with a powerful lever for raising the ethical standard of his readers. The thought that "we are members one of another" forbids deceit. That he may "have whereof to give to the needy" is the purpose that provokes the thief to industry. The desire to "give grace" to the hearers and to "build them up" in truth and goodness imparts seriousness and elevation to social intercourse. The irritations and injuries we inflict on each other, with or without purpose, furnish occasion for us to "be kind one to another, goodhearted, forgiving yourselves"- for this is the expression the apostle uses Eph_4:32, and in Col_3:13. Self is so merged in the community, that in dealing censure or forgiveness to an offending brother the Christian man feels as though he were dealing with himself-as though it were the hand that forgave the foot for tripping, or the ear that pardoned some blunder of the eye. Showing grace is what the apostle literally says here, speaking both of human and Divine forgiveness. In this lie the charm and power of true forgiveness. The forgiver after the order of grace does not pardon like a judge moved by magnanimity or pity for transgressors, but in love to his own kind and desire for their amendment. He identifies himself with the wrong-doer, weighs his temptation and all that drew him into error. Such forgiveness, while it never ignores the wrong, admits every qualifying circumstance and just extenuation. This is the kind of pardon that touches the sinners heart; for it goes to the heart of the sin, isolating it from all other feelings and conditions that are not sin; it takes the wrong upon itself in understanding and perception; it puts its finger upon the aching, festering spot where the criminality lies and applies to that its healing balm.

"Even as God in Christ forgave you." And how did God forgive? Not by a grand imperial decree, as of some monarch too exalted to resent the injuries of men or to inquire into their futile proceedings. Had such forgiveness been possible to Divine justice, it could have wrought in us no real salvation. Our forgiveness is that of God in Christ. The Forgiver has sat down by the prisoners side, has felt his misery and the force of his temptations, and in everything but the actual sin has made Himself one with the sinner, even to bearing the extreme penalty of his guilt. In the act of making sacrifice, Jesus prayed for those that slew Him: "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!" This intercession breathed the spirit of the new forgiveness. There is a real remission of sins, a release granted justly and upon due satisfaction; but it is the act of justice charged with love, of a justice as tender and considerate as it is strong, and which eagerly takes account of all that bespeaks in the. offender a possibility of better things. It is a forgiveness that does justice to the humanity as well as the criminality in the sinner.

To proclaim by word and deed this forgiveness of God to the sinful world is the vocation of the Church. And where she does thus declare it, by whatever means or ministry, Christs promise to her is verified: "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted to them." We may so reconcile men to ourselves as to bring them back to God. Has some one done you a wrong? There is your opportunity of saving a soul from death and hiding a multitude of sins. Thus Christ used the great wrong we all did Him. It is your privilege to show the wrong-doer that you and he are made one by the blood of Christ. "Walk in love," St. Paul says, "as the Christ also loved us and gave Himself for us a sacrifice." When the apostle writes the Christ, he points us along the whole line of the revelation of the cross. We think of the Christhood of Jesus, of the Christliness of such love as this. Christs was a representative and exemplary love, with its forerunners and its followers all walking in one path. "The Christ loved and gave"; for love that does not give, that prompts to no effort and puts itself to no sacrifice, is but a luxury of the heart, -useless and even selfish. And He "gave up Himself"-the only gift that could suffice. The rich who bestow many gifts in furtherance of humanitarian and religious work and still do not bestow themselves, their sympathetic thought, their presence and personal aid, are withholding the best thing, the one thing required to make their bounties efficacious. In what we give and forgive, it is the accent of sympathy, the giving of the heart with it that adds grace to the act. "Though I dole out all my goods, though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing." We do a thousand things to serve and benefit our fellow-men, and yet evade the real sacrifice, -which is simply to love them.

In studying this epistle, we have felt increasingly that the Church is the centre of humanity. The love born and nourished in the household of faith goes out into the world with a universal mission. The solidarity of moral interests that is realised there, embraces all the kindreds of the earth. The incarnation of Christ knits all flesh into one redeemed family. The continents and races of mankind are members one of another, with Jesus Christ for head. We are brothers and sisters of humanity: He our elder brother, and God our common Father in heaven, -His Father and ours. Auguste Comte writes in his "System of Positive Polity": "The promises of supernatural religion appealed exclusively to mans selfish instincts The sympathetic instincts found no place in the theological synthesis." It would be impossible to affirm anything more completely at variance with the truth, anything more absolutely opposed to the doctrine of Christ and the theological synthesis of the apostles. And yet it was upon this ground that the great French thinker renounced Christianity, proposing his new religion of humanity as a substitute for a selfish and effete supernaturalism! Why did he not go to the New Testament itself to find out what Christianity means? "To combine permanently concert with independence," Comte excellently says, "is the capital problem of society, a problem which religion alone can solve, by love primarily, then by faith on a basis of love." Precisely so; and this is the solution offered by Jesus Christ. His selfsacrificing love is the basis on which our faith rests; and that faith works by love in all those who truly possess it. This is the evangelical theory. The morale of the Church, it is true, has fallen shamefully below its doctrine; but this doctrine is, after all, the one fruitful and progressive moral force in the world; and it is certain to be carried into effect.

In the darkest hour of Israels oppression and of international hate, one of her great prophets thus described the triumph of supernatural religion: "In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth; for that the Lord of hosts hath blessed them, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance". {Isa_19:24-25} This is our programme still.

III. Another of St. Pauls ruling ideas lying at the basis of Christian ethics is his conception of mans future destiny. The apostle warns his readers that they "grieve not the Holy Spirit, in whom they were sealed till the day of redemption." He tells them that "the impure and the covetous have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God."

There is thus disclosed a world beyond the world, a life growing out of life, an eternal and invisible kingdom of whose possession the Spirit that lives in Christian men is the earnest and firstfruits. This kingdom is the joint inheritance of the sons of God, brethren with Christ and in Christ, who are conformed to His image and found worthy to "stand before the Son of man." Those are excluded from the inheritance, who by their moral nature are alien to it: "Without are dogs, sorcerers, whoremongers, idolaters, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie." This revelation has had a most powerful influence on the progress of ethics. It has given a momentous importance to individual conduct, a new grandeur to the moral issues of the present life. "Mans life," viewed in the light of the Christian gospel, "has duties that are alone great, that go up to Heaven, and down to Hell." The tangled skein is at last to be unravelled, the mysterious problem of mortal life will have its solution at the judgment-seat of Jesus Christ.

It is true that the wicked flourish and spread themselves like green trees in the sunshine; and the covetous boast of their hearts desire. To see this was the trial of ancient faith; and the good man had to charge himself constantly that he should not fret because of evil-doers. It required a heroic faith to believe in Gods kingdom and righteousness, when the visible course of things made all against them, and there was no clear light beyond. Gods saints had to learn first that God is Himself the sufficient good, and must be trusted to do right. But this was the faith of defence rather than of victory, -of endurance, not enthusiasm. In the knowledge of Christs victory over death and entrance on our behalf into the heavenly world, "in hope of life eternal which God who cannot lie hath promised," men have fought against their own sins, have struggled for the right and spent themselves to save their fellows with a vigour and success never witnessed before, and in numbers far exceeding those that all other creeds and systems have enlisted in the holy cause of humanity.

Human reason had guessed and hope had dreamed of the souls immortality. Christianity gives this hope certainty, and adds to it the assurance of the resurrection of the body. Mans entire nature is thus redeemed. Chastity takes its due place amongst the virtues, and becomes the mark of a Christian as distinguished from a pagan life. "The body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. God who raised up the Lord Jesus, will raise us also through His power. Your bodies are limbs of Christ a temple of the Holy Spirit which you have from God Glorify God in your body." So St. Paul exhorts the Christians of Corinth, {1Co 6} living in the centre and shrine of heathen vice. This doctrine of the sanctity of the body has been the salvation of the family. It has saved civilisation from perishing through sexual corruption, and is still our chief defence against this fearful evil. Our bodily dress, we now learn, is one with the spirit that it infolds. We shall lay it aside only to resume it, - transfigured, but with a form and impress continuous with its presentbeing. This identical self, the same both in its outward and inward personality, will appear before the tribunal of Christ, that it may "receive the things done in the body." This announcement gives reasonableness and distinctness to the expectation of future judgment. The judgment assumes, with its solemn grandeur, a matter-of-fact reality, an immediate bearing on the daily conduct of life, which lends a powerful reinforcement to the conscience, while it supplies a fitting and glorious conclusion to our course as moral beings.

IV. Finally, the atonement of the cross stamps its own character and spirit on the entire ethics of Christianity. The Fatherhood of God, the unity and solidarity of mankind, the issues of eternal life or death awaiting us in the unseen world-all the great factors and fundamentals of revealed religion gather about the cross of, Christ; they lend to it their august significance, and gain from it new import and impressiveness.

The fact that Christ "gave Himself up for us an offering and sacrifice to God"-gave Himself, as it is put elsewhere, "for our sins"-throws an awful light upon the nature of human transgression. The blood spilt in the strife with our, sin and shed to wash out its stain, reveals its foulness and malignity. All that inspired men had taught, that good men had believed and felt, and penitent men confessed in regard to the evil of human sin, is more than verified by the sacrifice which the Holy One of God has undergone in order to put it away. It was felt that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins, that the sacrifices man Could offer for himself, or the creatures on his behalf, were ineffectual; the guilt was too real to be expiated in this fashion, the wound too deep to be healed by those poor appliances. But who had suspected that such a remedy as this was needed, and forthcoming? How deep the resentment of eternal Justice against the transgressions of men, if the blood of Gods own Son alone could make propitiation! How rank the offence against the Divine holiness, if to purge its abomination the vessel containing the most sweet fragrance of His sinless nature must be broken! What tears of contrition, what cleansing fires of hate against our own sins, what scorn of their baseness, what stern resolves against them are awakened by the sight of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!

This negative side of the ethical bearing of Christs sacrifice is implied in the words of the apostle in the second verse, and in the contrast indicated between its sweet savour and those unclean things whose very names it should banish from our midst (Eph_5:3). On its positive effects -the love and self-devotion it inspires, the conformity of our lives to its example-we have dwelt already. Let us add, however, that the sacrifice of Christ demands from us, above all, devotion to Christ Himself. Our first duty as Christians is to love Christ, to serve and follow Christ. "He died for all," says the apostle, "that the living should live no longer to themselves, but to Him that died for them and rose again." When Mary of Bethany poured on the Saviours head her box of precious ointment, the Master accepted the tribute and approved the act; and the poor have been gainers by it a thousand times the pence which Judas deemed wasted on the head he was watching to betray. There is no conflict between the claims of Christ and those of philanthropy, between the needs of His worship and the needs of the destitute and suffering in our streets. Every new subject won to the kingdom of Christ is another helper won for His poor. Every act of love rendered to Him deepens the channel of sympathy by which relief and blessing come to sorrowful humanity.

Let the gospel of Christs kingdom be preached in word and deed to all nations, let the love of Christ be brought to bear upon the great masses of mankind, and the time of the worlds salvation will be come. Its sin will be hated, forsaken, forgiven. Its social evils will be banished; its weapons of war turned to ploughshares and pruning hooks. Its scattered races and nations will be re-united in the obedience of faith, and formed into one Christian confederacy and commonwealth of the peoples, a peaceful kingdom of the Son of Gods love.

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.

4:25 Let us tell our neighbors the truth: Cp. Zech 8:16. • for we are all parts of the same body: See Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 12:12-13, 27.

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

Eph 4:25. Τὸ ψεῦδος, lying) The mentioning of lying and truth in conversation[70] is properly added to the universal commendation of truth.—ὍΤΙ, because) Col 3:11, note.—ἀλλήλων, of one another) Jews and Greeks, ibid.—μέλη, members) Eph 4:4.

[70] Ἀλήθειαν, truth, Eph 4:21; Eph 4:24.—V. g.

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

Eph_4:25. On the ground of what was previously said (διό), as application of ἐστιν ἀλήθεια ἐν τῷ Ἰησοῦ ἀποθέσθαι ὑμᾶς κ.τ.λ. on to Eph_4:24, there now follow various special (not systematically arranged) exhortations as far as Eph_4:32.

That the encouragement to lay aside lying and to speak the truth stands at the head, appears to be occasioned simply by the last uttered τῆς ἀληθείας; and the figurative form of the precept (ἀποθέμενοι) is an echo from what precedes. It is possible also, however, that the prohibitions of lying, wrath, stealing, as they are here given, had their concrete occasion with which we are not acquainted. The reasons which Zanchius, e.g., has discovered, are arbitrary. And Grotius says incorrectly: Hoc adversus eos dicit, qui, ut gratias captarent aut Judaeorum aut gentium, alia dicebant, quam sentirent. The subsequent ὅτι ἐσμὲν ἀλλήλ. μέλη shows, in fact, that Paul has thought merely of the relation of fellowship of Christians one with another, and has meant μετὰ τοῦ πλησίου αὐτοῦ of the fellow-Christian, not of the fellowman generally (Jerome, Estius, Grotius, Michaelis, and others).

λαλεῖτε … αὐτοῦ is a reminiscence from Zec_8:16.

ὅτι ἐσμὲν κ.τ.λ.] Motive (reminding them of Eph_4:12-16). Members one of another, and to lie one to another, how contradictory! Reciprocal membership is, in fact, a connection so intimate and vital, subsisting in constant mutual furtherance and rendering of service! est enim monstrum, si membra inter se non consentiant, imo si fraudulenter inter se agant, Calvin. Chrysostom shows at great length how the several members of the real body do not deceive one another, and Michaelis repeats it; but Paul says nothing of this.

ἀλλήλ. μέλη] members of each other, mutually the one of the other. The same conception is met with Rom_12:5, and is not inaccurate (Rückert), since, indeed, in the body of Christ, even as in the physical body, no member exists for itself, but each belonging to each, in mutual union with the other members, 1Co_12:15 ff.

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 4:25-32 . A paragraph containing a series of detached, practical exhortations, dealing with certain evils to be forsworn and duties to be fulfilled. These injunctions are all based on the preceding statement, or are delivered as applications of the foregoing charge to put off the old man and put on the new.

Eph 4:25 . Διὸ ἀποθέμενοι τὸ ψεῦδος , λαλεῖτε ἀλήθειαν ἕκαστος μετὰ τοῦ πλησίον αὐτοῦ : Wherefore, putting off falsehood, speak ye truth each one with his neighbour . διό , with the enlarged forms διότι , διόπερ , is rare in the NT except in Luke and Paul, but frequent with these, especially with the latter. It is = quamobrem, on which account , and refers here to what was said about the new man and his creation κατὰ Θεόν as the ground for what follows. τὸ ψεῦδος includes falsehood in every form, of which lying τὸ ψεύδεσθαι (Col 3:8 ) is one chief instance. The partic. has its proper aor. force, expressing a thing understood to be done, completely and finally, = “having put off then once for all falsehood in its every form”. λαλεῖτε , the continuous pres. following on the past act, has the force of “speak truth and speak it continually,” as the result of that prior “putting off”. The prep. μετά is appropriate here as the prep. of personal association and mutual action (Win.-Moult., pp. 470, 471). It is truth in intercourse between Christian brethren ( τοῦ πλησίον αὐτοῦ ), not between Christians and their fellowmen in general, that is in view here ( cf. Zec 8:16 ). ὅτι ἐσμὲν ἀλλήλων μέλη : for we are members one of another . Reason for this practice of truth a reason drawn not from the common conceptions of duty or social weal, but from the profound Christian idea of union one with another through union with Christ. As in the human body each member is of the other in connection and for the other in service, so in the spiritual body of which Christ is the Head the members belong one to another and each serves the other; cf. Rom 12:5 ; 1Co 12:15 . But can untruth consist with a union in which each is of and for the other? Why the sin of falsehood is first named, and why the sins of anger, dishonesty and corrupt speech are next dealt with, we have no means of determining. The explanation lies no doubt in local and congregational circumstances which Paul did not need to particularise.

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

Eph 4:25 to Eph 5:14. THE CONTRAST IN DETAIL

25. We pass on now to consider in detail special forms of evil that must be put off.

Διὸ ἀποθέμενοι τὸ ψεῦδος. τὸ ψεῦδος after ἡ ἀπάτη and ἡ πλάνη cannot be simply ‘the habit of lying,’ it must include the whole false attitude towards life, the principle of selfishness from which every form of evil springs.

λαλεῖτε ἀλήθειαν ἕκαστος μετὰ τοῦ πλησίον αὐτοῦ. The first result will be resolute truthfulness in speech. This quality according to Zec 8:3; Zec 8:16 f. (cf. Psa 15:2 and Joh 1:17) was to characterize the inhabitants of the restored Israel.

ὅτι ἐσμὲν ἀλλήλων μέλη. Cf. Rom 12:5; 1Co 12:25. At first sight this is a strange reason for speaking truth to one another. The ground of it becomes clearer on reflection. All hope of mutual understanding, all social intercourse, all effective corporate action is bound up with a deep sense of the sacredness of language as our chief means of communication. Lying is before all things an anti-social sin. In Col 3:9 the exhortation is given in the negative form μὴ ψεύδεσθε εἰς ἀλλήλους.

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.

Eph_4:25

Having enforced the general duty of holiness, or of being conformed to the image of God, the apostle insists on specific duties. It will be observed that in almost every case there is first a negative, then a positive statement of the duty, and then a motive. Thus here: lie not, but speak truth, for ye are members one of another. Wherefore, i.e. on the ground of the general obligation to be conformed to the divine image, putting away lying, as one part of the filthy garments belonging to the old man; speak every man truth with his neighbor. A neighbor, ὁ πλησίον, the Scripture teaches us, is any one near to us, a fellow man of any creed or nation; and to all such we are bound to speak the truth. But the context shows that Paul is here speaking to Christians and the motive by which the duty is enforced shows that by neighbor he here means a fellow Christian, as in Rom_15:2. The motive in question is the intimate relation in which believers stand to each other. They are all members of the same body intimately united, as he taught in Eph_4:16, with each other and with Christ their common head. As it would be unnatural and absurd for the hand to deceive the foot, or the eye the ear, so there is a violation of the very law of their union for one Christian to deceive another. It is characteristic of the apostle and of the Scriptures generally, to enforce moral duties by religious considerations. This method, while it presents the higher and peculiar ground of obligation, is not intended to exclude other grounds. The obligation of veracity rests on the intrinsic excellence of truth, on the command of God, and on the rights of our fellow men. They have the same right that we should not deceive them as that we should not defraud them. But all this does not hinder that the duty should be enforced by a reference to the peculiar relation of believers as united by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit into the mystical body of Christ.

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

He commendeth severally certain peculiar Christian virtues, and first of all he requireth truth (that is to say, sincere manners) condemning all deceit and dissembling, because we are born one for another.

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

Wherefore--From the general character of "the new man," there will necessarily result the particular features which he now details.

putting away--Greek, "having put away" once for all.

lying--"falsehood": the abstract. "Speak ye truth each one with his neighbor," is quoted, slightly changed, from Zac 8:16. For "to," Paul quotes it "with," to mark our inner connection with one another, as "members one of another" [STIER]. Not merely members of one body. Union to one another in Christ, not merely the external command, instinctively leads Christians to fulfil mutual duties. One member could not injure or deceive another, without injuring himself, as all have a mutual and common interest.

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 25. Wherefore putting away lying] All falsity, all prevarication, because this is opposite to the truth as it is in Jesus, Eph 4:21, and to the holiness of truth, Eph 4:24.

Speak every man truth with his neighbour] Truth was but of small account among many of even the best heathens, for they taught that on many occasions a lie was to be preferred to the truth itself. Dr. Whitby collects some of their maxims on this head.

Κρειττον δε ελεσθαι ψευδος, η αληθες κακον· "A lie is better than a hurtful truth."-Menander.

Το γαρ αγαθον κρειττον εστι της αληθειας· "Good is better than truth."-Proclus.

Ενθα γαρ τι δει και ψευδος λεγεσθαι, λεγεσθω. "When telling a lie will be profitable, let it be told."-Darius in Herodotus, lib. iii. p. 101.

"He may lie who knows how to do it εν δεοντι καιρῳ, in a suitable time."-Plato apud Stob., ser. 12.

"There is nothing decorous in truth but when it is profitable; yea, sometimes και ψευδος ωνησεν ανθρωπους, και τ' αληθες εβλαψεν, truth is hurtful, and lying is profitable to men."-Maximus Tyrius, Diss. 3, p. 29.

Having been brought up in such a loose system of morality, these converted Gentiles had need of these apostolic directions; Put away lying; speak the truth: Let lying never come near you; let truth be ever present with you.

We are members one of another.] Consider yourselves as one body, of which Jesus Christ is the head; and as a man's right hand would not deceive or wrong his left hand, so deal honestly with each other; for ye are members one of another.

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

25. Wherefore, putting away lying. From this head of doctrine, that is, from the righteousness of the new man, all godly exhortations flow, like streams from a fountain; for if all the precepts which relate to life were collected, yet, without this principle, they would be of little value. Philosophers take a different method; but, in the doctrine of godliness, there is no other way than this for regulating the life. Now, therefore, he comes to lay down particular exhortations, drawn from the general doctrine. Having concluded from the truth of the gospel, that righteousness and holiness ought to be true, he now argues from the general statement to a particular instance, that every man should speak truth with his neighbour. Lying is here put for every kind of deceit, hypocrisy, or cunning; and truth for honest dealing. He demands that every kind of communication between them shall be sincere; and enforces it by this consideration, for we are members one of another. That members should not agree among themselves, — that they should act in a deceitful manner towards each other, is prodigious wickedness.

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.

(25) For we are members.—Accordingly the reason given for “putting away lying” is that “we are members one of another.” Truth is the first condition of the mutual confidence which is the basis of all unity. Hence it is the first duty of that “membership one of another,” which follows from our being “one body in Christ” (Rom_12:5; 1Co_12:27). No doubt it is also the first duty to our own humanity, and to the God “who hateth a lie.” But these views, though true in themselves, would not be relevant to St. Paul’s great subject here.

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

25–32. The subject pursued: the revolution coming out in truthfulness, kindness, honesty, purity, patience, forgivingness

25. Wherefore] From these deep principles come now the more detailed inferences of holy practice, and these fill most of the rest of the Epistle. Here and there (as in this verse, and in ch. Eph_5:23) the basis of the whole in the relations of the Church to Christ appears explicitly.

putting away lying] Cp. Col_3:9-10, for a suggestive parallel. There, as here, truthfulness is connected with “new creation.” He who is “in Christ” is, above all things, in a region of light and of right, whose first result will be the aim to do and speak truth; the truth of entire and unselfish sincerity.—“Putting away” carries on the imagery of Eph_4:22. For the phrase, in reference to a definite break with sinful principle and practice, cp. Col_3:8; Heb_12:1; Jas_1:21; 1Pe_2:1 (A.V., “lay aside,” in the last three places). And see below, Eph_4:31.—This “putting away” may be viewed either as a thing done, in principle, for the member of Christ has, in respect of that union, definitely “done with sin”; or as a thing to be done (Col_3:8, imperative), in each application of sinless principle. The Gr. is an aorist participle, and thus, grammatically, allows either view. We recommend the former, as most in harmony with the previous context.

speak … truth] The application of the decisively accepted principle of truth. Observe the sober and humbling practicality of the Apostle’s precepts; as necessary now as ever. And earnestly observe the uncompromising condemnation, by the Gospel, of all kinds and phases of dishonesty. Nothing untruthful can possibly be holy. A pious fraud is, in the light of true Christianity, a most grievous sin.—The emphasis laid on truthfulness in Scripture is all the more significant of the character and origin of Scripture when we remember the proverbial Oriental laxity about truth. Lying is a vice deeply characteristic of heathenism. An Indian missionary said of his first convert, “he would often come to me with tears in his eyes, saying, ‘I told you a falsehood, but it seemed nature to me to say yes when I should say no, and no when I should say yes’.” (Communicated by the Dean of Peterborough).—Contrast Psa_15:2-3.

his neighbour] Primarily, the fellow-Christian is in view; see the next clause. But this first bearing of such a precept is pregnant with a universal reference. For to the believer his fellow-Christian is a fellow-member of Christ, his fellow-man may be.—On the word “neighbour” it is obvious thus to compare the Lord’s parable, Luk_10:29 &c.

for we are members one of another] Each vitally and directly joined to the Head (see on Eph_4:16) and so, through Him, incorporated into one another. And thus comes a profound correction to that selfishness which inheres in falsehood. The interests of each member centre not in itself but in the Head, and the Head is equally related to and interested in each member. In Him, therefore, each is as important to each as each to itself.—Cp. Rom_12:5; 1Co_12:12-27.—On the universal application latent in this argument, see last note.

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.

Neither give place to the devil. Or "to the accuser", or "slanderer"; that is, to any adversary, that takes delight in slandering and reproaching the saints; give such no room, nor reason, to calumniate the doctrine and ways of Christ, through an unbecoming conversation, by lying and sinful anger, or by other means; or rather the devil, the great accuser of the brethren is meant; and the Ethiopic version renders it, "do not give way to Satan"; which is done, when men indulge any lust or corruption; and when they easily fall in with his suggestions and temptations; when they are off of their watch and guard; and when they do not resist, but quietly yield unto him.

Neither give place to the devil. Or "to the accuser", or "slanderer"; that is, to any adversary, that takes delight in slandering and reproaching the saints; give such no room, nor reason, to calumniate the doctrine and ways of Christ, through an unbecoming conversation, by lying and sinful anger, or by other means; or rather the devil, the great accuser of the brethren is meant; and the Ethiopic version renders it, "do not give way to Satan"; which is done, when men indulge any lust or corruption; and when they easily fall in with his suggestions and temptations; when they are off of their watch and guard; and when they do not resist, but quietly yield unto him.

Ephesians 4:28

eph 4:28

eph 4:28

eph 4:28Let him that stole steal no more,.... Stealing, or theft, is a fraudulent taking away of another man's goods, without the knowledge and will of the owner, for the sake of gain; to which evil may be reduced, not making good, or not performing payments, all unjust contracts, detention of wages, unlawful usury, unfaithfulness in anything committed to trust, advising, encouraging, and receiving from thieves: theft is a very great evil; it is a breach of the common law of nature, to do to others, as we would be done by; it is contrary to particular laws of God, and is against common justice, and ought not to be continued in, and is punishable by God and man; it springs from a corrupt heart, and often arises from poverty, idleness, sloth, covetousness, and prodigality: the remedy against it follows,

but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good; labouring with diligence and industry, at any manufacture, trade, or business, which is honest, lawful, and of good report, is a proper antidote against theft; and ought to be preferred to such a scandalous way of living, and to be constantly attended to: and that for this end among others,

that he may have to give to him that needeth; and not take away another man's property; needy persons are the objects of charity; and what is given to them, should be a man's own; and what a man gets by his hand labour, he should not prodigally spend, or covetously lay up, but should cheerfully distribute it to indigent persons.

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

25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.

Ver. 25. Wherefore putting away lying] A base tinkerly sin, as Plutarch calls it, shameful and hateful: therefore the liar denies his own lie, as ashamed to be taken with it. Cicero indeed alloweth his orator the liberty of a merry lie sometimes; but Vives utterly disliketh it in him at any time. {a} And the apostle, Gal 1:10, shows that we must not speak truth to please men, much less lie; no, though we could win a soul by it, Rom 3:7. Where then will the Jesuits appear with their piae fraudes, holy delusions, as they call them? and Jacobus de Voragine, that loud liar; with his golden legend? It were much to be wished that that golden age would return, that the argument might proceed, Sacerdos est, non fallet. Christianus est, non mentietur.

For we are members] Of the same holy society. Shall we not be true one to another? shall we not abhor sleights and slipperiness in contracts and covenants?

{a} Lib. 2, de Oratore. Lib. 4, de trad. discip.

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.

Wherefore putting away lying - It may seem strange that the apostle should seriously exhort Christians to put away “lying,” implying that they were in the habit of indulging in falsehood. But we are to remember:

(1) That lying is the universal vice of the pagan world. Among the ancient pagans, as among the moderns, it was almost universally practiced. It has been remarked by a distinguished jurist who had spent much time in India, that he would not believe a Hindu on his oath. The same testimony is borne by almost all the missionaries. of the character of pagans everywhere. No confidence can be placed in their statements; and, where there is the slightest temptation to falsehood, they practice it without remorse.

(2) The Ephesians had been recently converted, and were, to a great extent, ignorant of the requirements of the gospel. A conscience has to be “created” when pagans are converted, and it is long before they see the evils of many things which appear to us to be palpably wrong.

(3) The effects of former habits abide long, often, after a man is converted. He who has been in the habit of profane swearing, finds it difficult to avoid it; and he who has been all his life practicing deception, will find himself tempted to practice it still. It was for reasons such as these, probably, that the apostle exhorted the Ephesians to put away “lying,” and to speak the truth only. Nor is the exhortation now inappropriate to Christians, and there are many classes to whom it would now be proper - such as the following:

(1) He who is in the habit of concealing the defects of an article in trade, or of commending it for more than its real value - “let him put away lying.”

(2) He, or she, who instructs a servant to say that they are not at home, when they are at home: or that they are sick, when they are not sick or that they are engaged, when they are not engaged - “let them put away lying.”

(3) He that is in the habit of giving a coloring to his narratives; of conveying a false impression by the introduction or the suppression of circumstances that are important to the right understanding of an account - “let him put away lying.”

(4) He that is at no pains to ascertain the exact truth in regard to any facts that may affect his neighbor; that catches up flying rumors without investigating them, and that circulates them as undoubted truth, though they may seriously affect the character and peace of another - “let him put away lying.”

(5) He that is in the habit of making promises only to disregard them - “let him put away lying.” The community is full of falsehoods of that kind, and they are not all confined to the people of the world. Nothing is more important in a community than simple “truth” - and yet, it is to be feared that nothing is more habitually disregarded. No professing Christian can do any good who has not an unimpeachable character for integrity and truth - and yet who can lay his hand on his breast and say before God that he is in all cases a man that speaks the simple and unvarnished truth?

For we are members one of another - We belong to one body - the church - which is the body of Christ; see the notes Rom 5:12. The idea is, that falsehood tends to loosen the bonds of brotherhood. In the “human body” harmony is observed. The eye never deceives the hand, nor the hand the foot, nor the heart the lungs. The whole move harmoniously as if the one could put the utmost confidence in the other - and falsehood in the church is as ruinous to its interests as it would be to the body if one member was perpetually practicing a deception on another.

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

Wherefore putting away lying; all fraudulency and dissimulation, and whatever is contrary to truth.

Speak every man truth; not only speak as things are, but act sincerely and candidly.

For we are members one of another; i.e. to or for one another, and therefore must be helpful to each other.

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

Eph_5:2. RAGS OF THE OLD MAN AND ROBES OF THE NEW.

Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak every man truth with his neighbor. Lying or falsehood is pre-eminently a heathen vice, as missionaries in India and other countries abundantly testify. It is an attribute of fallen humanity: "They go astray from the womb, speaking lies;" and one of the earliest vices that appear in children is deceit. Not only is it God"s will and command that we speak the truth, but it is peculiarly incumbent on Christians as children of the light, as followers of him who is the Truth, as having renounced the devil, who is the father of lies. Another reason is added. For ye are members one of another. Falsehood is always designed to mislead; but to deceive our own members is emphatically wicked. Says Chrysostom (quoted by Eddie), "Let not the eye lie to the foot, nor the foot to the eye. If there be a deep pit, and its mouth, covered with reeds, shall present to the eye the appearance of solid ground, will not the eye use the foot to ascertain whether it is hollow underneath or whether it is firm and resists? Will the foot tell a lie, and not the truth as it is? And what, again, if the eye were to spy a serpent or a wild beast, will it lie to the foot?

Eph_5:2. Rags of the old man and robes of the new.

The Christian Ephesians somewhat resembled Joshua the high priest, when standing before the angel of the Lord, and when Satan was standing at his right hand to resist him. Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and the angel spake to those that stood before him, "Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, "Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment." Rags of the old man still hang about these Ephesians, disfiguring their persons and giving them a very different appearance from that which befits the regenerated sons of God. The apostle is giving directions to take away each filthy rag and substitute for it the fair raiment of the new man. And he is doing this under a solemn sense of danger and responsibility, and with the feeling that two great spirits are also interested in the work and actively concerned in it the one, the spirit of evil, who is trying cunningly but earnestly to spoil the process, and induce the Ephesians to cling to their own garments; the other, the blessed Spirit of God, who in his infinite love is seeking to clothe the Corinthians in the garments of purity, to seal them unto the day of redemption, so that by the brightness of their appearance they shall be known to be God"s in the day when he makes up his jewels. And what makes the whole matter so solemn and momentous is that, unless they are ever on their guard, the subjects of this process are ever liable to give place to the one spirit and to grieve the other; the awful danger lying in this, that the spirit to whom they are prone to yield is the spirit of evil, and the Spirit they are apt to grieve is the Holy Spirit of God.

1. The rags of the old man to be put off are lying, anger, stealing, coarse language, bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil-speaking, and malice (see Exposition). Three reasons are given, more or less explicitly, why such things should be put away.

(1) We are members one of another (ver. 25), and ought to assist instead of injuring one another (ver. 28).

(2) We ought not to give place to the devil (ver. 27).

(3) We ought not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God.

2. The robes of the new man to be put on are truthfulness, honest industry, edifying speech, kindness, tenderness of heart, forgiveness, imitation of God, and the loving walk which becomes his followers. Three reasons are given likewise why these robes should be put on.

(1) God in Christ forgave us (ver. 32).

(2) Christ lured us.

(3) Christ gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God of a sweet-smelling savor.

This is one of the most comprehensive and beautiful summaries of the Christian life. It is the quintessence of practical Christianity. It furnishes an admirable rule for self-examination, and an admirable incentive to progress in the life of God. It is a passage, not only to be got by heart, but written on the heart. We may well say, as we read these verses, "This is Christianity; this is the walk worthy of our vocation." If the writer of the hundred and nineteenth psalm had such boundless delight in the Law of God, though it had not to him the delightful evangelical aroma it has to us, what ought our feelings to be? Under all dispensations of the covenant, the Law is still the rule of our life, though salvation is of grace; and the prayer that continually becomes us is, "Incline my heart unto thy testimonies; quicken thou me, that I may keep thy Law." Rags or robes: why should any hesitate between them?

To most men rags are most repulsive. To wear literal rags to appear shabby, dirty, untidy, is very unpleasant. How much more, in the eyes of God and the saints and angels, to wear moral rags! Many a one clothed in purple and fine linen wears the filthiest rags of the old man; and some, on the other hand, in the plainest and coarsest attire, have put on the beautiful robes of righteousness, and shall be crowns of glory in the hands of the Lord and royal diadems in the hands of their God.

Warning against falsehood.

As the saints had put off lying at their conversion, it was their duty henceforth to speak truth with their neighbor"s. Consider the social duty prescribed and the motive to its faithful performance.

I THE SOCIAL DUTY. "Speak every man truth with his neighbor." What is truth? There is truth as opposed to falsehood, which is an express intention to deceive. There is truth of character, which is opposed to insincerity. Both kinds of truth are manifest in three circumstances in common conversation, in bearing testimony, in making and in keeping promises.

(1) Christians ought to be truthful in ordinary conversation, on the most trivial as well as on the most solemn occasions, because if a strict veracity is not maintained in the unguarded moments of life, it seldom remains long unshaken under a stress of temptation. The slightest deviation from it, either in the way of exaggeration or distortion, is inconsistent with the candor and simplicity which ought to adorn a Christian. The prohibition of falsehood is absolute in Scripture. "Ye shall not lie to one another"; (Lev_19:11) "Lie not one to another"; (Col_3:9) "Speak every man truth with his neighbor". (Zec_8:16)

(2) Truth must be maintained in bearing testimony. "A false witness speaketh lies", (Pro_6:19) and thus "soweth discord among brethren." It is the characteristic mark of a citizen of Zion that he will not take up a report against his neighbor. (Psa_15:3) No affection, no prejudice, no fear of man, ought to lead to a false, or partial, or misleading representation of facts. Perjury undermines society more than murder.

(3) Truth must be kept in the matter of promises. There must be a real intention to fulfill them when they are made. The citizen of Zion "speaketh the truth in his heart". (Psa_15:2) Promises to men stand on the same footing with vows to God. "Better it is that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay". (Ecc_5:5) We must be as conscientious in performance as we are in promise. There may be cases, no doubt, in which the obligation is superseded by higher considerations. Herod was not bound by his oath to the daughter of Herodias. There may be cases likewise in which there is a providential disability to carry out a promise. But if we possess a full capacity of action, our duty is to fulfill our engagement. The citizen in Zion "sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth. (Psa_15:4)

II THE MOTIVE TO THIS SOCIAL DUTY. "Because we are members one of another." This is a religious consideration that is not designed to exclude other grounds of obligation to truthfulness.

1. But the principle here laid down applies equally to mankind in general.

(1) A lie is a breach of the social contract. It tends to make society impossible, for society only exists through the trust that man exercises in man. It turns that instrument of speech, which God has given us for our mutual comfort, into a means of estrangement. Therefore "the righteous man hateth lying". (Pro_13:5)

(2) It is a breach of the golden rule that we should do to others as we would have them do to us. Liars expect others to speak the truth to them, and complain when it is not done. Therefore truth is what every man has a right to expect and desire from another. We have no more right to deceive our neighbor than we have a right to defraud him.

(3) It destroys the comfort and peace of society. What a picture of its effects is in Jer_9:4, 5! ye heed every one of hisneighbor, and trust ye not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbor will walk with slanders. And they will deceive every one his neighbor, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity.

(4) It prepares the way for further demoralization of character.

2. The principle here laid down specially applies to Christians. They are not only members of Christ, but of one another. Chrysostom supposes the impossibility of the eye lying to the foot or the foot to the eye, in the presence of danger. Thus it would be equally unnatural, by the very law of their union, as members one of another, that believers should deceive one another by falsehood. The consideration of this membership suggests a relation

(1) to that God the Father who is "a God of truth", (Deu_32:4) who "is not a man that he should lie", (Num_23:19) who gave oath and promise as the two immutable things, in which it is impossible that God should lie"; (Heb_6:18)

(2) to that Savior who is the Truth as well as the Life faithful and true Witness having "no guile found in his mouth;

(3) and to that Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of truth, (Joh_14:17) and has given us the Scriptures of truth.

INFERENCES.

1. Let believers be careful as to truth. "If any man seemeth to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue particularly from lying man"s religion is vain." Let them pray with the psalmist, "Remove far from me the way of lying." Let them not tolerate liars in their society (Psalm ca. 7).

2. Mark how religion tends to promote the well-being and comfort of society. Truth is the cement of society.

3. Remember that the devil is the father of liars, (Joh_8:44) and that "whosoever loveth and maketh a lie" shall not enter the heavenly Jerusalem. T.C. (Rev_22:15)

Vers. 25-32.

Vices.

The apostle here enumerates five vices pertaining to the old man, or Gentile state, and shows how they are contradicted by Christianity.

I LYING.

1. The negative of Christianity. "Wherefore, putting away falsehood." Lying sufficiently indicates what is meant, if we take it as including falsehood in act as well as falsehood in speech. It is the intention to deceive that makes the lie, whatever its manifestations. The goodness of the motive does not alter its character. We may be saying what we do not think, to convey a compliment. Or we may be advancing an argument in which we do not believe, to serve our party. Or we may make a strong denial, to cover the fault of a friend. We may, by some half-truth, be getting rid of a slight inconvenience to ourselves. But all the same, there is an offence committed against truth. And we must understand from the teaching here that Christ emphatically says no to it in every form. We are to put away lying, and the context plainly suggests that we are to put it away as belonging to the old man. We need not wonder at it characterizing the old man, when we remember that Scripture dates the original of evil in us from the result of a lie told by the father of lies. Many of the heathen were like the Cretans, of whom Paul testified, in a quotation from one of their own poets, that they were always liars. It is a vice which is known to be very prevalent among non-Christianized peoples. There is not so much of shameless lying among Christian nations; but in less open forms, where there is not saving grace, there is the same disposition to be false, to state false reasons for our conduct, to keep up false appearances, to cover our faults by a denial of fact. "Do not," says Ruskin, "let us lie at all. Do not think of one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as unintended. Cast them all aside; they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit, and it is better that our hearth should be swept clean of them, without overcare as to which of them are largest or blackest.

2. The positive of Christianity. "Speak ye truth each one with his neighbor." In Zec_8:16 it is said, "Speak ye every man truth to his neighbor." The change from "to his neighbor" to "with his neighbor" has the effect of defining the circle contemplated here as the Christian circle. Why are we to hold the truth sacred? The ethical reason given by Kant is that we are to do so out of reverence to the humanity subsisting in our person. The Christian reason as given by the apostle here is virtually this, that we are to do so out of regard to the Christ that is in us. His words are, "For we are members one of another." That is, my Christian neighbor is a part of myself; and why should I wrong him? Not inaptly Chrysostom says, "If the eye were to spy a serpent or a wild beast, will it lie to the foot?" We must do by our Christian neighbor as we would do by a part of ourselves which we would not see hurt. But what is it that makes our Christian neigh-bout so closely related to us? It is the Christ that is in him and in us. And in lying we are not only dishonoring our common humanity, but, in the Christian circle, we are dishonoring Christ who has made us one. The habit of speaking the truth each one with his neighbor is of difficult acquisition. There is so much that is false in the conventionalism of society, and such a desire in men to appear better than they really are, that there is often the spectacle of truth "fallen in the street." The way to acquire it is to put Christ before us in our neighbor as him whom, by the slightest divergence from the truth, we must not demean.

II SINFUL ANGER.

1. The negative of Christianity. "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." The word is rather exasperation (already an evil form of feeling), which, if nursed, fast settles down into wrath. It was a custom of the Pythagoreans that, if betrayed into railing by passion, before the sun went down they shook hands, kissed one another, and were reconciled. It is one of the uses of night that it is a call to be placable. "We are not bad gods or demons in our impetuosity, but men, men that go to sleep as children do and. must. Being spaced off in this manner by stoppages, we consent to limits. We are softened and gentled in feeling more, perhaps, than we would like to be. A man must be next to a devil who wakes angry." The Christian reason against nursing wrath is that it is a giving place to the devil. For it is in connection with wrath that it is said, Neither give place to the devil." He who rises from his bed unsoftened, who seeks about for new reasons for his wrath, is giving the devil peculiar opportunity. And when the devil gets in through the door of passion that is nursed, a man will do deeds then that, in his cool moments, he would have shrunk from with the utmost abhorrence. Vindictiveness was a characteristic of the heroes of the ancient heathen world, and does not call forth from such a delineator of them as Homer an expression of disapprobation. It is still found in not dissimilar form in the savage, who ruthlessly pursues his enemy until he has scalped him. Within the Christian sphere indulgence of anger is peculiarly unbecoming, and must result in the ejection of Christ and, with him, of peace and right guidance.

2. The positive of Christianity. "Be ye angry." And we need not wonder at the injunction when we take into account that anger is a hundred times in Scripture attributed to God, and also that it is said of Christ that he looked round about on the hypocrites among his hearers with anger. "We are so made that pity is not more naturally awakened by the sight of suffering, fear by the approach of danger, delight by the vision of beauty, gratitude by deeds of generous kindness, than anger by many kinds of wrong-doing. The men whose hearts never glow with enthusiasm at witnessing lofty self-sacrifice, never burn with indignation against cowardice, falsehood, and profligacy; the men whose eyes never flash, whose pulse never quickens, whose words move on m an unbroken flow, and never rush along tumultuously like a cataract, either in praise or blame, never yet did any work worth doing either for God or man" (Dale). But, as if special danger attended anger, the injunction to it is followed up, and thrown into a certain subordination, by the caution sin not.

(1) Anger is to be proportioned to the offense. There must be justice in our anger. The passionate man is often causelessly angry. His passion is roused by a mere inconvenience to himself for which no one is to blame, or by a hasty view of the action at which he takes offence. A mere personal slight is not a sufficient cause for anger, especially when we remember him who was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. Rather are we to reserve our anger for what hurts the truth in us or in others. Let our indignation be poured out on the attempt to corrupt our principles, to steal our fair fame, on the cowardice that keeps a man from standing by his convictions, on the selfishness that can keep a wife and family miserable, on the dishonor that is done to God by our want of faith and niggardliness in supporting his cause. "It does not appear," says Butler, "that the feeling of indignation, generally speaking, is at all too high amongst mankind." "Yea, what indignation!" says the apostle, in enumerating the fruits of godly sorrow.

(2) Anger is not to interfere with love. While Christ looked round on the hypocrites with anger he was at the same time grieved because of the hardening of their hearts. And we must ever draw this distinction between the sinner and his sin. Grievedness of heart for the sinner and strong condemnation of his sin can and should go hand-in-hand. Even as we love him we must show him how we regard his conduct so far as that is calculated to do him good. Such going forth of anger (having justice in it) is fitted to sustain love.

III STEALING.

1. The negative of Christianity. "Let him that stole steal no more." Whether we translate the first part of the injunction "him that stole," or, as is often done, "him that steals," the latter part, "steal no more," implies that there was danger of some in the Ephesian Church falling into this sin. And we need not wonder at this, when we consider their pre-Christian state. They were accustomed, in heathen society, to theft being punished (which would keep up a certain moral sentiment against it), but at the same time, they were brought up in a certain laxity with regard to what was theirs and what was their neighbor"s. And is not the Ephesian Church in this respect representative? While there are very few connected with our Churches who will steal, so as to expose themselves to the punishment of the law, there are those who are chargeable with what, if strictly looked into, is dishonesty. They do not give value in labor for money received. Or they contract debts, or come under obligations which they have no reasonable expectation of meeting; or they are not doing their utmost, in the way of exertion and economy, to get out of debt. Or, under the pressure of competition, they fall in with the evil custom of the trade, and adulterate. There are many ways of unjustly hindering the wealth or outward estate of our neighbor. There may be dishonesty even in the desire to have what does not belong to us. But nothing could be more emphatic than the declaration here that, whatever our temptations, whatever losses it may entail, we are not to steal at all.

2. The positive of Christianity. "But rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have whereof to give to him that hath need." There is presented here the Christian aspect of labor. It is according to the rule of Christ that we should work and not be idle. And if it is in literally working with our hands that we spend our energies, yet is that not demeaning, for Christ sanctified such work by working as a carpenter. It is further according to the rule of Christ that we should work the thing that is good, that is to say, have an honest business and do our best (time and circumstance considered). There is further the motive with which we are to work. There is the incentive of providing for our own, and specially our own household, and of providing for our household not merely for the present, but, in view of the uncertainty of our life, also as we can for the future. And if any one of ours needed special nourishment or change of air, that would be a reason for our working hard that what was needed might be supplied. But in the language here employed there is a look to the needy in body or in soul beyond our own immediate circle. And it is taught that the Christian is to labor with the view and in the hope of having something over, after making all reasonable allowance for his own, to bestow on the poor and to send the gospel to the heathen. It is this in our aim which is needed to make labor, however assiduous and lawful, distinctively Christian. And the exhorter here himself set a Christian example, "In all things I gave you an example, how that so laboring ye ought to help the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, It is more blessed to give than to receive." And he, even the humblest laborer, who strives in his labor to have something over for Christ (in him that hath need), will not fail, or if he can be said to fail, yet will his effort lead to his labor being accepted of Christ. And if this is the true gospel of labor, then how much labor is there which must be rejected in which there is a wrong done to Christ in his not receiving his dues or acknowledgment?

IV UNWHOLESOME SPEECH.

1. The negative of Christianity. "Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth." "Perhaps the image which the word (corrupt) calls up was not distinctly present to the apostle"s mind; but it might have been, for it is a very just one. The epithet is used to describe vegetables, meat, and fish which are beginning to go bad; and there are some people whose conversation is quite as unwholesome as food which is not quite fresh. Unsound itself, it injures the moral health and vigor of those who listen to it." Without being poisonous, words may be unwholesome. Falsehood he has already condemned. Violence and detraction in speech fall under the next head. Filthiness and foolish talking and jesting come up in the beginning of the next chapter. Words may be neither false, nor violent, nor defamatory, nor foul, nor senseless, nor profane, and yet be unwholesome. And to such we limit our attention here. There are some who give the chief place in their conversation to business or household affairs. There are others who give it to fashion, pleasure, amusement. There are others again who give it to the little affairs of their neighbors or to politics. Conversation may properly enough turn upon these things; but when it is so occupied with them as to rouse the impression that the world in one or other of these forms is everything, as to shut out the thought of God, as to take away the feeling of the seriousness of life, then (like food that is not quite fresh) it is fitted to do harm. There is not, in such conversation, nutriment for the moral being, exercise for the moral powers. It is to be said, too, that the spirit of worldly conversation is gathered up in certain worldly maxims such as these: that we must look after ourselves; that we must take the good of the world; that we must have our time of gaiety; that we must be like our neighbors. These maxims (as excuses for selfishness, thoughtlessness) are unsound; and the apostle, speaking for Christ, would say emphatically, "Let no such corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth." And the peculiarly Christian reason against that kind of speech is given in the words, "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption." It will be seen that the apostle regards speech in a sacred light he would have it as a medium or organ of the Holy Spirit. It is taught that the Divine Spirit is intensely interested in all the movements of our life. There is not a department to which his interest does not extend, and which he would not have permeated with his holy influences. And when he is thwarted in his holy ends he is grieved as a mother is grieved when a son whom she loves as none else can is not acting according to her wishes and prayers. And it is to be noticed that what is represented as grieving the Spirit is that which is hurtful, not so much by its heinousness as by its commonness. Against graver faults we are placed more on our guard; but we do not think how we grieve the Holy Spirit by the feeble moral tone of our conversation. The Spirit is grieved with the conversation of the unconverted (which is necessarily unwholesome); but he is especially grieved when Christians thwart him by a conversation which is not of him. For on them, as already expressed in the first chapter, his seal was placed, against the day of their final redemption. You, then, who have the seal of the Holy Spirit of God on you, as marked for redemption, grieve him not by unedifying conversation.

2. The positive of Christianity. "But such as is good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them that hear." The Christian element in conversation is that a regard be paid to edification. We are made to communicate with others by speech, not that we may impose on them, or play with them, or regard them carelessly, but that we may edify them. There is not only that which is edifying, but edifying for the occasion. And "a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver." And what constitutes its fitness is not its mere artistic form or reconditeness, but especially a depth of feeling in it, and a moral discrimination, that make it meet a need and prove a blessing to them that hear. A word of this kind, that may not be wanting in sharpness, but can convey comfort too and direction and incitement to good, what an accomplishment it is to be able to speak it! And, however far we are behind, let us strive after the Christian ideal of conversation which is here placed before us.

V BAD TEMPER.

1. The negative of Christianity. "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and railing, be put away from you, with all malice." By bitterness here we are to understand all want of sweetness of temper. This is indicated by what are mentioned as its manifestations. It takes the form of wrath, or a sudden outburst of passion. Or it takes the form of the more settled feeling of anger. The wrath, again, takes the form of clamor, or violent speech. And the anger takes the form of railing, or more deliberate and continued speaking against a brother. And the evil temper in these its manifestations, in all the varieties that belong to it (as is indicated by the word "all"), is represented as having its subsistence in malice, by which we are to understand ill feeling, and that not simply in its worst form, but (as is also indicated by "all") in all its forms. This apostolic analysis of bad temper shows that he regarded it in a serious light. He did not regard it as some would, as a mere physical infirmity. Constitution has to do with it in this respect, that some have more to contend against than others. But, whatever our constitutional temper is, we are bound to bring it under law to Christ. Bad temper, therefore, is a sin, an unchristian state, of which we are to repent, and from which we are, according to the thought here, to be forcibly delivered. For "put away" here is stronger than "put away" in the twenty-fifth verse, and implies the putting forth of something like force upon us (by the stronger than we), in order that we may get rightly away from it.

2. The positive of Christianity. "And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you." The kindness here inculcated is that good feeling toward others which keeps us Prom unseemly manifestations, and sweetens our whole bearing as brethren. And this kindness is to extend (where there is occasion) to tenderness of heart (or, as it used to be in Col_3:12, with the same allusion as here, "bowels of mercies") And this tenderness of heart is to take the very beautiful and distinctively Christian form of forgivingness.

For God in Christ forgave us. The allusion is to the historical fact of Christ once for all putting away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Thus God not only showed himself forgiving, but actually made forgiveness a gospel reality. It is after the manner of the apostle to ground deep human duty. He has especially a satisfaction in falling back on the great fact of the atonement. Forgiveness is not an optional matter with us, or something that we may want without losing our Christianity; but it is that to which we are peculiarly, indissolubly bound by the fact that God has gone before us in it in his dealing with us. Let us, then, have that nobility, generosity of disposition, that emanation from God himself, which will lead us to forgive those that sin against us. R.F.

Vers. 25-32.

The abjured and the enjoined in Christian life.

etc. In the preceding verses, as we have seen, under the head of The true method of studying Christianity, the apostle exhorted the Ephesians "to put off the old man and to put on the new man." He here proceeds to particularize and urge this the great practical work of Christianity. He abjures the elements of the old man and enjoins the elements of the new. Our subject is the abjured and the enjoined in the Christian life .

I THE ABJURED IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. There are certain things here which are, alas! often found in connection with nominal Christians, and which are therefore too often regarded as identified with the Christian system, which are here abjured in language most earnest and strong. What are they?

1. Lying speech. "Putting away lying." A lie is a falsehood intended to deceive, with an immoral design; it is a misrepresentation of that to another about which he has a right to know the truth. What, then, is fiction and parable, say you? There is no justifiable fiction that does not agree with fact and serve the cause of reality and morals. Lying is one of the most prevalent sins. The ancient heathens everywhere practiced it, and moderns too. All travelers and missionaries bear testimony to this. Heathens are not to be believed on their oaths. Alas! the vice is not confined to heathendom; it prevails throughout the civilized world. Lies fill the social atmosphere. Men in every department of life are deceiving and being deceived by their fellow-men, and often for selfish and immoral ends. Christianity condemns lies. "Lying lips are an abomination unto the Lord." And "liars at last shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone." Christianity is essentially and eternally antagonistic to all insincerities and unrealities. Vanity, cowardice, and greed are the prolific factors of falsehoods,

2. Sinful anger. "Be ye angry, and sin not." We say, "sinful anger," for the text implies that there is an anger that is not sinful. Anger is the mind in emotional antagonism, and in a world of unreality, sin, and crime there is much to justify the strongest antagonism of the soul. Christ himself looked upon the conduct of the Jews with anger. (Mar_3:5) Indignation sometimes fired his breast, and "woes" like thunderbolts rolled from his lips. The stronger a being"s love for the right, the mightier his indignation for the wrong. The text implies two things concerning sinful anger.

(1) That it is abiding. Hence the command, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." Anger should not be allowed to continue in the mind, because it is painful to the soul; it is a fire that burns. He who cherishes it could not better gratify the vengeance of an enemy, for he is in agony all the while. The great Creator, in whose nature there is "no fury," never made the human soul for anger. "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." Do not take it to bed with you; it will break your slumber and it will breed the devils of revenge. "Anger resteth in the bosom of fools." There is another thing here implied concerning sinful anger.

(2) It is favorable to the devil. "Neither give place to the devil." An angry soul is just the sphere to which the devil has the freest access and can best work out his malignant ends. All the assassinations, murders, and wars he works through angry souls. Don"t give place to the devil. Human souls may keep the devil out. He cannot enter without their consent.

1. Social dishonesty. "Let him that stole steal no more." Stealing in some way or other is a vice as prevalent as lying. Our popular ideas of larceny are not deep or broad enough for Christianity. Englishmen regard those as thieves only whom the law has convicted of pilfering, and who are generally amongst the poor and needy. But in the eye of Christianity he is a thief who takes from another his rightful due. The tradesman who deals in short weights and measures, and overcharges for his wares, is a thief; the servant who does not occupy faithfully in his master"s service the hours and faculties for which he is paid, is a thief; the physician who prolongs his visit to his patient beyond what is necessary, in order to get gain, is a thief; the rulers who tax the people to pay them enormous salaries for offices inefficiently and often injuriously filled, are thieves. To all these Christianity says, "Let him that stole steal no more;" be honest.

2. Corrupt language. "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth." It is a putrescent language that is here abjured. What is a foul speech in the sense of Christianity? Not the ungrammarie in structure or the inelegant in style. The irreligious speech, which treats sacred things with frivolous profanity and sneering ridicule, is foul and corrupt; the selfish speech, which argues and persuades solely for personal gratification, is foul and corrupt; the malicious speech, which endeavors to undermine the influence, damage the interests, and injure the reputation of others, is foul and corrupt; the sensuous speech, that seeks to influence the animal passions and pollute the pure love of mankind, is foul and corrupt. All such language and, alas! it abounds amongst us is indeed putrescent. As heaps of decomposing vegetable and animal matter send forth gases into the atmosphere injurious to the physical health of the world, all corrupt communications proceeding from the mouths of men impregnate the mental atmosphere with elements damaging to the moral health of souls.

3. The anti-Divine. "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God." Of course we are not to suppose that the eternal Spirit literally endures grief. He is the ever-blessed God. What is meant is, "do not do that which is repugnant to the heart and desires of the infinite Spirit." And what is thus repugnant to the Spirit? All that the Spirit here abjures, as well as moral evil of all kinds. A good reason is here added by Paul, "Whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." This expression implies two things.

(1) There is a perfection awaiting the genuine disciples of Christ day of redemption redemption from all evils, corporeal, intellectual, social, spiritual. Blessed day!

(2) The Divine Spirit has secured them to this. They are sealed for it. How flagrant the ingratitude and impiety of opposing such a spirit! Another thing abjured here is:

4. Malevolent conduct. "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil-speaking, be put away from you, with all malice." Malice, or malevolence, is the root of all. It is malice that generates the bitter things in social life; it is malice that kindles the fires of "wrath and anger;" it is malice that makes the tumultuous "clamors" and the contentious brawls. Let this malice be destroyed, and social love and purity anti peace shall prevail. Such are some of the evils that Christianity abjures, and, in abjuring, it abjures that which is the disgrace, the guilt, and the curse of mankind. With an exulting confidence, I say to infidels that whatever is had in the world or the Church, instead of growing out of Christianity, is in direct antagonism to it. All wrong is antichrist; all right is Christian.

II THE ENJOINED IN CHRISTIAN LIFE. Christian life is not a negation. It does not consist in the mere deprivation of the morally wrong; its essence is the spirit of goodness love. This love, in its social character, is forcibly inculcated in these words. We are here taught:

1. That the social love enjoined is courteous. "Be ye kind one to another." Christianity requires us to cherish a benignant spirit, and maintain an amiable and considerate deportment towards all mankind. Where this kindness of nature is there will be true courtesy and a gentle bearing in all our intercourse with men. There is a politeness of manner in society which has no heart, no nature; it is mere mechanism and polish; it is often in alliance with the coarse in thought, the selfish in spirit, the putrid in moral feeling. Such politeness is theatrical. The coarse-minded churl on the stage assumes the costume and plays the part of a gentleman. The spirit of Christianity is antagonistic to all that is coarse, crabbed, and morose. Love doth not behave itself unseemly.

2. That the social love enjoined is compassionate. Tender-hearted." There is suffering in society physical, mental, moral, social. Children of sorrow and trial are found in every walk of life. Towards those Christianity inculcates tender-hearted" compassion. Put on ... as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye". (Col_3:12, Col_3:13) Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing". (1Pe_3:8, 1Pe_3:9)

3. That the social love enjoined is forgiving. Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ"s sake hath forgiven you." Few men pass through life without meeting with those who commit offences against them; those who seek to damage their secular interests, their social enjoyments, or their moral reputation. How does Christianity require its disciples to act towards them? Not with the spirit of vengeance, but with that of forgiveness. "Forgiving one another." The words contain three facts.

(1) That God hath forgiven Christians. Glorious fact this.

(2) That God in forgiving Christians has acted in Christ. As God for Christ"s sake hath forgiven you," Qeov ejn Cristw in Christ. God works through various organs, through material nature, through moral mind, and through Jesus Christ. But it is only through the last Christ that he forgives. God is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." It is only in Christ that he works in the sinner that state of mind which separates him from his sin.

(3) That God"s forgiveness of Christians is a rule for their forgiveness. Even as God." How does God grant forgiveness?

(a) Freely. No urging required, no constraint.

(b) Abundantly. "He will abundantly pardon." How oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times?" This was Peter"s question to Christ; and what was the reply? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven". (Mat_18:21, Mat_18:22)

4. That the social love enjoined is God-like. Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children." Become, then, followers of God, as beloved children (Ellicott). God is love." Seek to become like him in love. His love is disinterested, compassionate, forgiving, boundless, and ever-acting. This is the standard to be aimed at; nothing lower.

(1) God can be imitated in this respect. We cannot become like God in wisdom, power, sovereignty, hut we can in love. The child can love as well as the man, and the man as well as the seraph. The God of love hath made all souls to love.

(2) God must he imitated in this respect. It is essential to happiness. Heaven is in this love, and nowhere else. "He that loveth dwelleth in God, and God in him.

5. That the social love is self-sacrificing. 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.

(1) The self-sacrificing love which Christianity enjoins is like that exemplified in Christ. Christ hath given himself for us." He gave himself for our sins." He loved us, and gave himself for us." Christ so loved mankind that he sacrificed his time, energy, peace, reputation, life, all to save them. The love that Christianity enjoins must be like this, nothing inferior to this, nothing short of this; self-sacrificing love is the love of Christianity. It is the true heroic element.

(2) The self-sacrificing love which Christianity enjoins is acceptable to God. It is "a sweet-smelling savor." Its exhibition in Christ was delightful to the heart of God, and the same self-sacrifice in man can alone make man pleasing in his sight.

CONCLUSION. What a sublime system is Christianity! It abjures in the life of its disciples all that is false, malign, unjust, impure, and profane, and enjoins that spirit of love which purifies, ennobles, and beatifies. 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.

Wherefore - Seeing ye are thus created anew, walk accordingly, in every particular. For we are members one of another - To which intimate union all deceit is quite repugnant.

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

An instruction regarding individual sins:

v. 25. Wherefore, putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor; for we are members one of another.

v. 26. Be ye angry, and sin not; let not the sun go down upon your wrath.

v. 27. Neither give place to the devil.

v. 28. Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.

It is true indeed that a Christian, by virtue of his conversion, has his thoughts and interests directed to the virtues which are well-pleasing to God. But it is equally true that the old evil nature is still present with him, causing him to wage incessant warfare against ’its attempts to lead him into sin, as the apostle pictures it Rom 7:1-25. It is for that reason that Paul here mentions individual sins by name, as among those that are most dangerous for a Christian: Wherefore, having put away falsehood, speak truth every one with his neighbor because we are members one of another. A Christian’s life of sanctification, which appears in righteousness and holiness, places this obligation upon him. With the old man the Christians have put away lying; they no longer have pleasure in lying, they are no longer under the rule of falsehood, But the spirit of falsehood is continually endeavoring to regain lost ground, and, unfortunately, it will happen even in the case of Christians that they are overcome by the weakness of their flesh and become guilty of lying and deceit. Hence the admonition: Speak truth every one with his neighbor. Every Christian should diligently strive to make use of veracity over against all men at all times, over against friend and foe, unbeliever and believer. But this condition should obtain especially among Christians in their outward conduct toward one another, seeing we are members one of another. As members together of the body of Christ, under the headship of the Lord, this fellowship is more intimate than that of any physical organism. Nothing can be more disgraceful, therefore, than that Christians deliberately, maliciously, lie to one another. If they want to be true to their calling, they will walk in the truth, above all over against those that are of the household of faith.

A second admonition concerns an evil which is just as widely distributed: Be angry, and sin not; let not the sun go down upon your provocation. The apostle makes use of Psa 4:4, according to the Greek translation. It is a warning against the sin of anger. The emphasis being on the second part of the command, the meaning can best be given by the rendering: When you become angry, do not sin. The apostle is considering the fact that even Christians, being obliged still to contend with their old Adam, are harassed with angry thoughts. There are two things which the Christian will keep in mind: First, that he does not permit angry desires to break forth in words and deeds; and secondly, that he does not cherish anger in his heart. Should your heart be agitated by anger, Paul means to say, do not permit the desire to be realized, flee from the sin of anger in terror; and at any rate do not permit anger to take root in your heart overnight, let the provocation be what it may, lest the irritation become a steady feeling of resentment and hatred. To this the warning is attached: Neither give place to the devil. The Christians should always remember that, in letting anger control them, take possession of their heart and mind, they are giving opportunity to the devil to sow dissension and many other forms of mischief in the Church.

In explanation of the Seventh Commandment, the apostle writes: Let the stealer steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his own hands that which is good, that he may have to give to him that has need. It is not only thieving that is here condemned, but every form of appropriating one’s neighbor’s money or goods by methods that do not conform to the law of love, all cheating and profiteering, all the methods which are considered smart by the God-forsaken business men of the world. There is always danger that these methods make an impression upon Christian business men, causing them to ignore the warnings of conscience. But Paul’s call is to quit all shady methods entirely and to go to work in earnest. In this way every person will be able to obtain an honest return for his work. And he should always remember that the profit of such work is not to be kept in selfish greed, but should be shared freely with such as are really in need. The poor we always have with us, and charity need never be idle for want of suitable subjects. See Act 20:34-35; 2Th 3:11-13

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

Our apostle closes this chapter with an exhortation to several duties belonging to the second table; namely, to abstain from lying, from anger, from stealing, from corrupt communication, from all bitterness of spirit, from malice and revenge, and to exercise brotherly kindness and mutual forgiveness.

From whence note, That Christians must make conscience of the duties of the second table, as well as of the first, and perform their duty towards their neighbour, as well as towards God; for the law is one copulative.

God spake all these words; the authority of the lawgiver is despised in the violation of the least command; when therefore second-table duties are performed by us, from arguments and motives drawn from the first table, that is, when, inobedience to God’s command, and with an eye to his glory, we perform our duty to our neighbour, this is both an argument of our sincerity, and also an ornament to our profession.

Wherefore put away lying, & c. Lying was a vice very common among the heathens: it is likely, the Ephesians, in their heathen state, had been very guilty of it, for they thought it lawful, when it was beneficial, to lie: for they affirmed, that a lie was better than a hurtful truth.

Our apostle therefore exhorts them, now converted to Christianity, to speak exact truth one to another; and adds a forcible reason for it, because they were members one of another; that is, of human society, which by lying is destroyed; falsehood dissolves the bond of human society.

Learn hence, That there is no sin more unseeming in a Christian, more inconsistent with grace, more abominable to God, more like unto the devil, more injurious and prejudicial to human society, than the sin of lying; fidelity towards each other, and mutual confidence in each other, being that which makes human society both safe and easy.

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

25–28. Wherefore. Since you were so taught, putting away falsehood, speak the truth. We are members of one another. All members of one Christian household; hence every member has a right to the truth.

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.

get rid of lies

"stop telling lies"

we are members of one another

"we belong to one another" or "we are members of God's family"

Be angry and do not sin

"You may get angry, but do not sin" or "If you become angry, do not sin"

Do not let the sun go down on your anger

The sun going down represents nightfall, or the end of the day. AT: "You must stop being angry before night comes" or "Let go of your anger before the day ends" (See: Metonymy)

Do not give an opportunity to the devil

"Do not give the devil an opportunity to lead you into sin"

translationWords

true

neighbor

anger

sin

Satan

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

25.] Wherefore (because of the general character of the καινὸς ἄνθρωπος as contrasted with the παλαιός, which has been given: εἰπὼν τὸν παλαιὸν ἄνθρωπον καθολικῶς, λοιπὸν αὐτὸν κ. ὑπογράφει κατὰ μέρος, Chr.) having put off (the aorist should be noticed here: it was open to the Apostle to write ἀποτιθέμενοι, but he prefers the past—because the man must have once for all put off falsehood as a characteristic before he enters the habit of speaking truth) falsehood (abstract, see reff.), speak truth each one with his neighbour (‘sciamus de Zacharia propheta sumptum,’ Jer.: see ref. ‘We allow ourselves the remark, hoping it may not be over-refining, that the Apostle instead of πρὸς τὸν πλησίον with the LXX, prefers following the Hebrew text and writing μετά, to express by anticipation our inner connexion with one another as ἀλλήλων μέλη.’ Stier): for we are members of one another (Rom 12:5. The ἀλλήλων brings out the relation between man and man more strongly than if he had said, of one body: at the same time it serves to remind them that all mutual duties of Christians are grounded on their union to and in Christ, and not on mere ethical considerations).

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

25-32. Warning against special sins

25. Διὸ ἀποθέμενοι τὸ ψεῦδος. There is no need to render “having put away,” which would seem to imply a separation in time between the two actions. The aorist suits the Greek idiom, as falsehood is to be put away once for all; but “putting away” agrees better with the English.

ψεῦδος, “falsehood,” is, of course, suggested by ἀλήθεια; it is more general than “lying,” which is mentioned immediately after as the most obvious example of it. So Col 3:8, μὴ ψεύδεσθε. But τὸψεῦδος is falsehood in all its forms; cf. Rom 1:25; Rev 22:15.

μετά is more forcible than πρός (Zec 8:16), implying “in your mutual intercourse.”

ὅτι ἐσμὲν ἀλλήλων μέλη. Chrysostom carries out the figure in a striking manner, e.g. if the eye sees a serpent, does it deceive the foot? if the tongue tastes what is bitter, does it deceive the stomach? etc. This is passable in a homily, but in the text the argument is not at all founded on the figure, but on the fact that we are members of the body of Christ: “est enim monstrum si membra inter se non consentiant, imo se fraudulenter inter se agant,” Calvin; cf. Rom 12:5, τὸ δὲ καθʼ εἷς ἀλλήλων μέλη. As each member belongs to the rest, they may be called members one of the other. Comp. 1Co 12:15.

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

Falsehood [το ψευδος] . Lit., the lie; used abstractly. See on Joh 8:44.

Members one of another. Compare Rom 12:5; 1Co 12:12 - 27. Chrysostom says : "Let not the eye lie to the foot, nor the foot to the eye. If there be a deep pit, and its mouth covered with reeds shall present to the eye the appearance of solid ground, will not the eye use the foot to ascertain whether it is hollow underneath, or whether it is firm and resists? Will the foot tell a lie, and not the truth as it is? And what, again, if the eye were to spy a serpent or a wild beast, will it lie to the foot ?"

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