Chapter 12. Holy Results of Heavenly Blessing: Total Abstinence from Sinning in the Forgiven Life

Chapter 12.
Holy Results of Heavenly Blessing: Total Abstinence from Sinning in the Forgiven Life Ephesians 4:25toEphesians 5:2

"Je n’ai plus de force que pour m’occuper de l’amour de Dieu. Dieu nous a aimé: c’est toute la doctrine de l’Évangile. Aimons Dieu: e’en est toute la morale."
—Monod, Adieux "Order my footsteps in Thy Word, And make my heart sincere;

Let sin have no dominion, Lord, But keep my conscience clear."

—Watts IN the last chapter we watched the Apostle’s actual approach to the treatment of the practical holiness of the disciples, and his first words about some great details. In particular, he has put his readers face to face with the awful facts of the corruption of man’s heart apart from God, and so of the unspeakable corruption of current human life. And he has reminded them that they "have not so learned our Christ." Yet still we have had to wait for the full stream of explicit precepts. The Epistle to the Ephesians has been powerfully characterized, I think by the late Dr C. J. Vaughan, as a writing so full of eternity that, even when it stoops to the earth, its heavenly wings, by their slightest waft, bear it aloft again to the regions of transcendent truth. So here the Apostle, laying down for his converts the rule of purity, rises for a moment to the mystery of the Old Man and the New, and so to the wonder of our vital union with "the Second Man" as the ultimate account of our power to be really holy at all. Here, as everywhere, such digressions upward are pregnant with the suggestion of the living bond between the really spiritual and the really practical. Nothing indeed is meant to be more matter-of-fact, or, if I may use the phrase, more workmanlike, than the Christian’s attention to right-doing in his common life this hour. Nothing is more remote from his Master’s mind, or from the mind of his Master’s Apostle, than that he should think it really a "stoop to the earth" to be careful to be pure and true in the next little thing, as if it was something greater and higher to muse upon eternal principles. Yet it is as certain as both revelation and experience can make it that a sure grasp upon eternal principles is of infinite importance for the really right doing of the duties of time. Of this we have been just reminded, then, and we shall have it set before us again and again in the remaining pages of the Epistle. But now comes in at length the fuller and more particular treatment of duty. The long wings of the angel of truth are folded, though ever ready to expand again, and his white feet walk upon the familiar surface of our common life.

Ephesians 4:25. Wherefore, because you have "learned Christ," and have "put on the New Man," coming out of the polluted darkness into the clear, clean light, laying aside decisively ἀποθέμενοι, aorist) the falsehood,τὸψεῦδος, the whole class of thought and speech which falls under the head of untruth, speak truth each with his neighbour, particularly now his Christian neighbour, his fellow-believer; because we are one another’s limbs, one spiritual organism in our Head, and thus vitally related to each other, with an absolute obligation to serve each other’s good. To all men, indeed, you will act as under the law of truth, for you belong to Him who is the Truth itself; your lie, to the veriest pagan, would belie Him. But this wider circle of duty will be all the better fulfilled fora special fidelity to the inner circle, the family of faith. So glorify God by a truthful tongue. Glorify Him also by a kindly temper. Be angry

Ephesians 4:26. and do not sin;[1] if wrath must sometimes be, (and it sometimes must be, while wrong is in the world,) see to it that it is unsinful wrath, wrath in the line of God’s will, pure displeasure at evil, not partisanship for self. And where there has been failure of patience, be prompt to return to love; let not the sun set upon your exasperation[2]; lay feeling of all grievance at the Lord’s feet absolutely, before you part for the night; dare not to refuse your "neighbour" a farewell

Ephesians 4:27. in the peace of Christ; nor give place to the devil, who, "wherever he finds a heart shut, finds a door open," and who knows too well how to use it, till he fills the inner chamber with his dreadful presence, and the man "who hateth his brother knoweth not whither he goeth" ( 1 John 2:11)—from sin to sin. As with truth of word and gentleness of temper, so

Ephesians 4:28. with honesty and honour. The stealer, the man once used to pilfer or to plunder as if it were but a foible—" everybody does it!"—let him no longer steal; let him put a quiet, decisive, close to the whole habit in every form. Nor only so; let him aim at a positive and not merely a negative repentance; let him resolve upon a life-long course of reparation, in the way of active distribution of his own to others[3]; rather than the slightest further trifling with the old sin, let him be a toiler, labouring hard (κοπιάτω) as for a main object, working with his own hands (ταῖςἰδίαις χερσίν) what is good, making honest gains by honest pains, that he may not merely "recover his character" but have what he may share with the man who is in want,[4] and so reverse the past into a delightful contrary. Then again, let the disciple remember to sanctify his tongue. He has been warned already to use it only for what is true; let him equally take heed to use it only for what is

Ephesians 4:29. pure. All speech corrupt,[5] all talk tainted with moral decay, the miserable innuendo, the vile double entendre of sin, as well as more avowed impurity, let it not issue out of your mouth; see that "the Lord’s watch" ( Psalms 141:3) is set before that mouth; that will absolutely bar such outgoings. But no artificial silence, meanwhile, will be the alternative; the mouth, perhaps once greatly defiled, will now "give goodly words." While the "speech corrupt" is for ever hushed, let there issue from you whatever speech is good, tending to upbuilding in faith and purity, as the need may be,[6]that it may give grace to those who hear it; "giving," as an instrument in the Lord’s hands to benefit the souls and wills to which you speak. Thus living, thus speaking, see to it that you "walk and please God";

Ephesians 4:30. and put not to pain the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, of our (τοῦ) God, wherein (as you were embraced in His[7] gracious power) you were sealed—as the purchased property of your King—in view of the day of redemption, that bright day, the goal of hope, the stimulus of holiness, when He shall claim the property He has purchased and has sealed, to take it home with Him for ever for His own heavenly use.[8] As the Apostle pauses, his thought gathers up the whole matter again into one comprehensive appeal. He calls for a total abstinence from sins of temper, and of tongue; for the deep secret of the peace of the Church, and of the home, and of the heart, in a life of love learnt at the Lord’s own feet.

Ephesians 4:31. All bitterness of spirit and tone, and wrath (θυμός), the habitual readiness to be inflamed, and anger (ὀργή), the eruption of the habit, and all outcry of intemperate, uncontrolled, assertion of grievance, and railing, abusive words against others, aye, even down to the most easily allowed expressions of harsh and loveless criticism, let it all be taken away from you, lifted clean out of your lives, as a thing utterly incongruous with a Christian’s first rules of conduct, with all malice, all the wretched native soil of these miserable growths, all the underlying unkindness from which spring the careless anger and the cruel word.[9] Yes, let it be dealt with in a holy intolerance; in the Lord’s name take it away; bid it be gone; give it over to Him who knows how to "lift it out of" your spirit and your practice, and to place Himself

Ephesians 4:32. where it was. And so become, grow ever more and more, in a developed manifestation of His power within you, towards one another, kindly, gentle-hearted,[10]mutually forgiving[11]—that duty so easily confessed but often so impossible to flesh and blood, impossible without a divine motive and a divine power. And here that need is supplied; just as actually (καί) our (ὁ) God, in Christ, did forgive you[12]—in that sublime "accomplished fact" of pardon. It was done in eternity from one viewpoint; it was done at Calvary from another; from yet another, it was done on your personal coming into union with Christ by faith; but from all points of view it was an act towards you of immeasurable and wholly unmerited mercy, which must for ever give tone to all your thoughts when you have to consider the duty of forgiving. Yes, it calls you to an "imitation," which shall penetrate to the very springs of life, and shall always find its possibility in the fact of your own salvation.

Ephesians 5:1.Become ye therefore, with the perpetual "becoming" of a still developing practice, imitators of our (τοῦ) God, in a life in which (in a sense of entire reverence and humility) He is reproduced, in His essential Character; as children beloved, children of such a Father, shewing the family likeness of the Home

Ephesians 5:2. of Grace; and, in this condition, in the joy and power of this divinely given relationship, walk along the path of actual human intercourse, with all it brings to you to do or to bear, in love, the spirit which "seeks its happiness in another’s good," just as actually (καί) our (ὁ) Christ did love us,[13] in all our lost and polluted estate, unlovely and unloving, and gave Himself over on our behalf, an Offering and Sacrifice to our (τῷ) God, for an odour of fragrancy; "a savour of repose," in the language of the ancient Law,[14] the vehicle and the token of the wonderful reconciliation of offended Holiness to us miserable sinners, who now for ever must live as those who owe all to the mercy and the love which provided, which made, and which accepted, the Atonement of the Cross.

Here let our paraphrase pause awhile. It is difficult, in this context, to say of any given sentence that it is the climax of a paragraph, so intimate and pregnant are the connexions. We go forward at once from this verse, for example, into precepts about purity which have the closest possible relation to the fact of our salvation by the mysterious mercy of a holy God who accepted the sacrifice of "the Son of His Love" on our behalf when we lay condemned. But we may lawfully pause here, if we remember meantime that the delay is only provisional. For here, with this second verse of the new chapter of the Epistle, closes the special reference to the Lord’s Sacrifice, which began to be made at the end of the chapter previous. And it does so in immediate connexion still with the theme of forgiving love which was the’ matter of appeal there.

What shall we say then of the messages of the portion now before us? They group themselves into messages of eternal truth and of minutest present duty. In the order of statement, the words upon duty come first, and the eternal truths are given at the close. But let us work backwards in our meditation, and think a little first of the Apostle’s language upon "the Sacrifice of the Death of Christ, and the benefits which we receive thereby."

I. We observe first how the whole subject comes in here incidentally, and for a special and practical purpose. He is wholly intent upon bringing home to their wills and affections the blessed duty of a loving life, which forgets self and remembers others, and meets if need be the wrongs done by others with love in the form of forgiveness, full and free. To give that duty all its sacred weight upon their hearts he brings in two sublime facts of salvation, infinitely mysterious, perfectly genuine. The first is the love of the Father, who has forgiven us, and with so great a forgiveness, nothing less than a forgiveness lodged "in" His dear Son, and therefore given "in" the gift of Him. The second is the love of that Son, "our Christ," who, in order to make that forgiveness actually ours, in fruition, offered Himself up on our behalf, as an altar-sacrifice.

II. We notice that we are not to expect here a complete and reasoned exposition of the Atonement; if we seek that, we must go rather to such Scriptures as Isaiah 53, (holding the lamp of the New Testament to our feet as we traverse it,) or Romans iii., or large portions of the Epistle to the Hebrews; remembering that even there we never get, in any one place, the subject treated from all its sides. Here, manifestly, one side only is prominent in view—the side of Example, the Example of the Father, and the Example of the Son, as illustrating the glory of the law of love, and the infinite obligation upon us to be forgiving. Very little is said here (almost nothing required to be said, in this view) upon the truth of the Atonement with regard to its eternal principles, its line of efficacious, action, its precise regard towards God, or towards our race, as a sacrificial act. All that was needed was the solemn reminder that it was a process, a work, of immeasurable mercy, springing out of the depths of divine forgiving love. And may that aspect of it be ever present, ever living, in our hearts, as a thing far too deep within them to need to be quickened into operation by a perpetual restatement of the dogmatic certainties of the sublime "plan" of mercy. May we "walk in love" along our common path, as those who habitually breathe the air and power of just that fact—I am wonderfully forgiven; freely, fully, certainly, but withal wonderfully; in the words of the Moravian hymn, "It is mere mercy;

Remains a wonder Of Christ’s longsuffering, when thereon I ponder, Now and always."

III. But then all the more observable it is that into such an incidental, passing, reference to atoning mercy the Apostle cannot help (so to speak) putting much which illuminates our doctrinal vision of the mystery. Here, for example, we have emphasized that fact, ever prominent in Scripture, that it is distinctively the Lord’s Death which is our pardon and our peace. Not Incarnation per se but the Death of the Incarnate is our redemption. He "gave Himself over for us"; words which obviously point to that supreme surrender when He "took the cup of trembling," and willed to die, with all that death meant for Him, "a ransom for many"; assuredly because, for eternal Holiness, no other and smoother way was possible to liberate eternal Love upon a rebel race. Further in the same connexion manifestly, we see Him self-given to be an "offering and sacrifice to God"; not merely an exhibition of divine love to melt the hard heart of man, but a sacrifice, an altar-sacrifice, θυσίαν, to God. God-wards first looks the work of Calvary, that then, and not before, it may look man-wards. "The savour of rest" must ascend to the throne of violated Holiness, before the rainbow-shower of infinitely willing forgiveness can come down from that throne upon our guilty heads.

IV. Then, for the actual possession and fruition of the blessing, that we may indeed drink in that "great rain of His" love, we have here the revealed law that we get it only in union with our atoning Lord. "God in Christ did forgive you." "For Christ’s sake," says our Authorized Version there; and the words are absolutely true. Their truth depends not so much upon one passage, or upon several, as upon the whole view given us in Scripture, first of the Father’s infinite and eternal complacency in the Son, then of the Son’s undertaking our cause as Propitiation and as Advocate, "the Just for the unjust." "For His sake" is a phrase inadequate indeed fully to express that truth; but it is true to the idea. But here we have, in the literal and just rendering, this and more. "In Christ, He did forgive," The forgiveness is what it is—for His sake. It is imparted, in all it is, not only for His sake, but—to those who so come to Him as to be embodied, involved, "in" Him, taken up into membership with Him their blessed Head. Such is the Son to the Father, that the Father enspheres His actual mercies all in the Son. Such are we to the Father that He welcomes us, poor sinners, for pardon, holiness, and heaven, into the depths of union with the Son; that He may "love us" with no mere benignant amnesty, but "even as He loveth Him" (see John 17:23).

V. So we come, stepping backwards, to the opening verses of our paragraph, its precepts of holiness, the holiness of truth, of purity, of kind speech, of self-forgetting love. As the paraphrase proceeded we have seen something of their incidence in detail. So our only comments now shall be summary, general, and of the briefest.

1. Observe afresh, and carry it into every hour of waking life, yes, every hour, that we are called here to total abstinence from sin; "let all be put away"; "let all be lifted off."

2. Observe, similarly, that we are called, with equal directness, to a positive practice of good, always, as well as to a perpetual abstinence from evil.

3. Observe, lastly, that the idea of such a life will be the mockery of all our hopes, and our very Christianity will be embittered by a long inward disappointment, unless it is lived in the full sunlight of personal forgiveness, enjoyed in personal union with the Christ of God. Lived there, it will be life indeed, loving, lasting, overcoming, serving, even to the end.

^[1]"The words are verbatim the LXX. version ofPsalms 4:4. The literal Hebrew there is, ’tremble, and sin not.’And the verb rendered ’tremble’ may denote the tremor of grief, awe, or anger indifferently. The question of interpretation thus becomes one of context, and it has been suggested (by Dr Kay) that the reference is to the temptation to David’s followers, during Absalom’s rebellion, to give way to unholy wrath against the rebels. Bishop Perowne, though saying that the LXX. Greek is ’certainly a possible rendering,’ refers the words to the tremor of awe before God. And he remarks that St Paul gives here the Greek version ’not in the way of direct citation,’ [but as using its words as the vehicle of his thought]. This last remark is important. The N.T. does not necessarily endorse a certain version of the O.T. by adopting its wording for a special purposewithoutthe decisive formula, ’it is written,’ or the like. Still the suggestion of Dr Kay is noteworthy in itself, and it would give a peculiar point and force to the words here." (Note in theCambridge Bible.)

^[2]"Wetstein quotes a parallel from Plutarch... who says of the Pythagoreans that it was their rule, if betrayed into angry reviling, to shake hands before the sun set." (Note in theCambridge Bible.)

^[3]Assuredly St Paul would desire, as in the case of Onesimus (Philemon 1:18), that, wherever possible, restitution should be made to theinjured party.See Zaccheus’ words (Luke 19:8);"I restore himfourfold." But he is here concerned with the widest and most permanent aspects of the case. The man who has ever been a defrauder of others must all his life now feel bound specially to be the benefactor of others.

^[4]Μεταδιδόναιis not only to "distribute," which might be done by a mere agent or official; it involves the thought of share-and-share between giver and receiver.—Ἴναἔχῃ...τῷχρείανἔχοντι. It is just possible that there is an intended antithesis inἔχῃandἔχοντι—onehasthe need, the otherhasthe supply. But the phraseχρείανἔχεινis too common to make this very probable.

^[5]Σαπρός: lit. "corrupt, putrid." The Latin Versions render simplysermo malus. And the Greek word is certainly used with considerable latitude. But here, surely, is the very place for its more proper and narrow meaning. The thought is of the sort of speech which reeks of moral pollution, coming from "the throat which is an open sepulchre" (Psalms 5:9), "full of all uncleanness."

^[6]Lit. "towards upbuilding of the need"; i.e. towards such spiritual and moral benefit as the particular occasion calls for.

^[7]I do not hesitate to indicate in the paraphrase the Personality of the Holy Spirit ("Hisgracious power"). Only a Person can be "put to pain" by moral wrong.

^[8]See above,Ephesians 1:13.

^[9]Κακία: sometimes the word signifies "evil" in a very general sense, as when we have "the evil of the day," "the trouble the day brings" (Matthew 6:34). But in a passage like this, where vices are spoken of in some detail, the narrower meaning is more appropriate; it is "malice," the deepunkindnessof the self-centred, Christless heart.

^[10]Εὔσπλαγχνοι: theσπλάγχναare the "nobler" interior organs of the body, including the heart. Hence the word and its cognates, in figure, signify much what we signify by "the heart" and its actions.

^[11]Lit. "forgivingyourselves,"ἑαυτοῖς. But the idiom is well known, and unmistakable here. It differs from the same construction withἀλλήλοιςonly by somewhat accentuating the "solidarity" of the parties concerned; the forgiveness would as it were circulate within the complex "self" of the deeply united community. This however, in view of the familiarity of the construction, must not be pressed far.

^[12]Note the aorist,ἐχαρίσατο, as it points to an act past and done.—"You": another reading, with considerable support, is us." Internal evidence is in favour ofὑμῖν.

^[13]Another reading, with considerable but not decisive evidence, givesὑμῖν, "you." But there is no doubt thatἡμῶν, five words below, is the right reading there; and it is most unlikely that in that short space the Apostle would vary the reference.Ἡμῖν, "us," should be retained here accordingly.

^[14]רֵיחַנִיחֹחַ,rêach nîchôach(see e.g.Leviticus 1:9). The altar-victim was regarded as emitting, so to speak, its "savour" to the Deity, as a token of submission and surrender; so the thought of the Deity’s pleasure and pacification was conveyed under the imagery of a welcome odour, "redolent" of the "repose" of restored relation between the Deity and the worshipper. "Pagan sacrificial language has many parallels; see e.g. Homer,Il., viii. 549. Cowper renders this passage—
’Next the gods
With sacrifice they sought, and from the plain,
Upwafted by the wind, the smoke aspires,
Savoury, but unacceptable to those
Above, such hatred in their hearts they bore,’ etc."
(Note in theCambridge Bible.)