01.13. ESSAY NO. 13

ESSAY NO. 13

After teaching that if Christians are to walk worthily of their calling, to detect false teaching, and to grow up in truth and love, they must humbly and unitedly, welcome Christ as an indwelling person to work out his will in them and through them to oth­ers, Paul, in the second half of Ephesians 4:1-32, con­tinues his exhortation for worthy Christian living. A Clean Break With the World In a paragraph of eight verses (Ephesians 4:17-24), Paul in­sists on the utter incompatibility between unregenerate and regenerate men. According to him, they have no fellowship at all, for the former ends when the lat­ter begins; they are mutually exclusive as are dark­ness and light. Before Jacob finally went back to Bethel (God’s house) to dwell, he hid the foreign gods, possessed by his household "under the oak which was by Shechem" (Genesis 35:4). When these Ephesians themselves who practiced magical arts became Chris­tians, they burnt their books of sorcery (Acts 19:10). This paragraph shows that when men accept Christ, many things must be buried or burned. They "put away . . . the old man . . . and put on the new man." Christians being no longer "alienated from the life of God," leave off their ignorance, vanity of mind, darkness of understanding, and hardness of heart. No portion of the Bible draws the contradiction between fleshly and spiritual men more fully, or portrays the depraved, wretched, natural man in more colorful terms than Ephesians does.

Man’s Nadir The last item in this description of humanity with­out God, "being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greedi­ness," descends to the depths. Inasmuch as Christi­anity has its origin in God’s heart and makes its de­cisive and final appeal to man’s heart, when men get "past feeling," they are beyond God’s moral reach. All Christians, like Matthias, successor to Judas, are chosen by their hearts (Acts 1:24). The human heart is the arena in which God and Satan continue their world-old struggle for the ownership of mankind. When Adam sinned, his capacity to feel shame and unworthiness before God was the human ground of God’s further dealings with him. When men’s hearts become so "hardened by the deceitfulness of sin" that they are past feeling, they are indeed hopeless—hope­less as beasts, and more beastly. Because man is more than animal, when the animal in him dominates his higher nature, he is capable of sinking below the ani­mal level. To call the conduct of shameless, reprobate men down through the ages "beastly" is to slander beasts. As long as a man can feel deeply enough for his conscience really to hurt, let him thank God and take courage, because even yet there is hope.

Men of today need to realize that their vaunted education and science can neither present nor correct this appalling waste of human life. With shame for crime and for the breakdown of common decency growing less and less, and the failure of human wis­dom to cope with the conflicting interests of the na­tions becoming more and more manifest, why cannot unchristian men see that they are so "darkened in their understanding" "that their hands cannot per­form their enterprise?" (Job 5:12). Why should Amer­icans think they are immune to the destruction that has overtaken all godless civilizations of the past? That men professing themselves to be wise should unconsciously become fools and invite God to take them "in their craftiness" is the grand irony of hu­man history. Do all Christians see the need of this clean break with the world? If so, why so much worldliness in the church? If so, why do we not pay more attention to Paul’s triple exhortation to the Corinthians? "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers . . . Come out from among them . . . Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God" (2 Corinthians 6:14-18, 2 Corinthians 7:1). When we do this, God promises to be our Father and to make us his "sons and daughters." Christ advised, not paring the nails of an offending hand, but cutting off the hand.

Particular Sins

Following the foregoing paragraph on general fun­damentals of worthy behavior, Paul closes the chapter with a paragraph of equal length dealing with four particular sins, which still vex the church and grieve "The Holy Spirit which dwelleth in us" (2 Timothy 1:14).

First, falsehood among the brethren, who are all parts of Christ’s body, "each for all and all for each," is as dangerous and senseless as my eye misleading my hand into harm. Second, anger is legitimate some­times, but since it gives Satan an opportunity and hatches sin when brooded upon, it must be banished before the set of the sun. As fire from flint, it should be hard to kindle and quick to go out. "He who goes to bed angry has the devil for a bedfellow." Chris­tians therefore should not be angry with others even momentarily, unless they love them. Third, thievery is to be cured by the thief’s cleanly breaking with dishonesty and going to work that he may have to give to others. And fourth, idle, worthless speech is to be crowded out by gracious, edifying speech. Observe that good supplants evil as in the spring new leaves on some trees push off old leaves that have clung to them all winter. Christianity never ends with nega­tives.

Next comes a moving exhortation not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, who seals us as God’s possession until our redemption in Christ culminates in the res­urrection of our bodies at Christ’s coming. Were not the Spirit a person, he could not be grieved. Were he not a person who cares, he would neither be grieved nor pleased with us. The pollution of his temple, our bodies, grieves him. The chapter closes with a list of six vices—all ex­pressions of ill-temper belonging to the old man— which saints are happy, because they cannot do it by mere self-effort, to let the Spirit, in his own way, push out of their lives to make room for the peculiarly Christian virtues: kindness, tender-heartedness, and forgiveness of each other "even as God also in Christ forgave you." Could an appeal be more tender and strong? Are we "kind one to another" in heart? If so, it will show up in our words, deeds, and manners.