Ephesians 4
LenskiCHAPTER IV
The Second Half of the Epistle
Again Three Chapters
Paul Reminds the Ephesians of:
The Obligations of Their Membership in the Una Sancta as It Is now in Christ
The Admonition to Unity
Ephesians 4:1
1 First, doctrine which consists of the clear statement of the divine facts on which alone faith rests. Next, admonition which presents the obligations involved in the faith that relies on the doctrine and thus deals with life and conduct in detail. The two stand in a vital connection, which fact also appears where the admonitions are supported by brief doctrinal additions.
After having set forth the great doctrine of the Una Sancta‚ Paul now tells his readers how their lives should be shaped in order to accord with the facts of this doctrine. This is very fitting after having shown that by faith in Christ they are all one in Christ in the Una Sancta although they were formerly Jews or Gentiles. Paul’s first admonition to the Ephesians is an exhortation that they keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (v. 1–3). He elucidates and strengthens this first admonition by an explanation of the organism of the church which is so fitted together as to constitute a great unity in its members, their activity and work producing and conserving unity (4–16).
The Admonition
I accordingly admonish you, I, the prisoner in the Lord, to walk worthily of the calling wherewith you were called with all humility and meekness, with longsuffering, bearing up with each other in love, being diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
The connective οὖν cannot refer to the doxology immediately preceding so as to make our walk according to our blessed calling the outcome of our fervent praise to God. Not only is this connection of thought rather artificial, it also ignores the idea of keeping the unity, the real point in this first admonition, which rests on the substance of the preceding chapters, on the very idea of the Una Sancta Paul has described. We, therefore, regard “accordingly” as connecting with all that precedes.
Παρακαλῶ means to call upon someone in order to say something to him, to speak to him in a friendly and helpful way, thus to admonish, to comfort, to encourage, or to cheer. Here “I admonish you” is in place and not “I beseech” as though Paul were pleading. Paul’s letters contain much admonition. “You,” of course, means all the Ephesians.
Note the juxtaposition of ὑμᾶς and ἐγώ, and the apposition to the latter, “the prisoner in the Lord.” This emphasis on “I” is not a call for sympathy on Paul’s part nor is his being a prisoner in the Lord the motive that should prompt the Ephesians to heed his admonition. We recall 3:1; but there the addition is “in behalf of you, the Gentiles,” which is a reference to Paul’s office and work especially among the Gentiles. This is absent here. While Paul’s belonging to Christ Jesus in 3:1 is similar to his being in the Lord, even these expressions differ in what they convey regarding Paul, the prisoner. In 3:1, etc., Paul speaks of the mystery that is now revealed regarding the Gentiles, and of the fact that this has brought him into prison as Christ’s own apostle to the Gentiles; here he admonishes his readers (Jews and Gentiles alike) and does this as “the prisoner in the Lord,” the one whose long imprisonment is evidence of his being fidele Christi membrum as it has been well put.
His entire imprisonment was due to his connection with the Lord. In 3:1 the thought is that of special office, here the thought is that of faithfulness to the Lord. As one who is himself faithful he admonishes others. He does not here, as he does at other times, offer himself as an example, this admonition is not of that kind. But from him who has come to be “the prisoner in the Lord” the Ephesians will gladly accept any needful admonition.
The comprehensive sum of this first admonition is at once stated as is done in Rom. 12:1 and is then amplified by means of closer specifications. The sum is “to walk worthily of the calling wherewith you were called.” Ἀξίως has the idea of equal weight. Conduct and calling are to balance in weight. The aorist is constative and includes the entire walk of the Ephesians: viewed as a whole, it is to have the mark of worthiness. More is implied than likeness between calling and conduct, namely also corresponding weight and value. God called the Ephesians through the gospel; this call proved effective in bringing them to faith.
This was their κλῆσις or calling. In the epistles the noun and the verb and also the verbal κλητοί, “the called,” are used in the effective sense: the call that has produced acceptance. Ἧς is attracted from the cognate accusative ἥν. Note that κλῆσις and ἐκλήθητε correspond to ἐκκλησία in 3:21: the calling and having been called makes the Ephesians members of the called assembly (ecclesia), whose conduct must be according. To be in the Una Sancta‚ the Communion of Saints, carries with it the obligation of living as saints in Christian sanctification.
Ephesians 4:2
2 Considered by itself, walking worthily would include the entire Christian conduct. Paul has in mind that part of the worthiness which conserves true Christian unity. We must read v. 1–3 as a unit admonition. While we consider each item, each must be viewed in its place as bringing out the worthiness here referred to. In the one Una Sancta we must walk in true oneness. We find four modifiers, two μετά phrases and two participial clauses.
The change from phrases to weightier participles should not be overlooked; also the fact that the second participial modifier is the climax of the worthy walking so that the other modifiers support this climax. Humility, meekness, longsuffering as aids to bearing up with each other in love are to attain to the diligence in conserving unity in the bond of peace. To extend the second μετά phrase so as to include the participle: “with longsuffering bearing up with one another,” destroys the symmetry of the two participial modifiers. Both are headed by participles in equal, natural fashion; hence “in love” is to be construed with the first participle. The nominative case needs no explanation, for it agrees with the subject of “you were called.”
Why does Paul write two phrases instead of placing the three nouns after one preposition? Scarcely because humility and meekness are combined with “all” as applying to our attitude toward God as well as toward men. More probably because these two are broader, and longsuffering is more specific. Humility or lowliness is an attitude of mind, meekness or gentleness likewise, so that the two are combined. The opposite of the former is pride, self-assertion, which make arrogant claims. This virtue fosters Christian unity and, as in Rom. 12:16 and Phil. 2:3, refers to our attitude toward the brethren.
The opposite of meekness is violence. “Meek” occurs often in the Scriptures and refers to those who suffer wrong and commit themselves to God (C.-K. 962, etc.). “All” applies to both terms; the article is not needed with abstract nouns (compare 2:21). “All lowliness and meekness” is the opposite of anything that manifests these virtues only in part. Our entire walk is to be accompanied (μετά) by these two; we are to walk arm in arm with them.
Trench defines “longsuffering”: “A long holding out of the mind before it gives room to action or passion.” It is attributed also to God as his patience toward men while ὑπομονή is patience with respect to things and is thus not attributed to God. The idea of humility and meekness advances to the more specific longsuffering as the outgrowth of the other two.
“Forbearing one another in love” is the preliminary exercise of longsuffering; each is to do this with the faults and the failings of the other: “holding up” under a load of vexations piled upon us. Yet only “in love,” the love which understands and has the high purpose of seeking to do what is best for the faulty brother. The idea of standing anything and everything and for any length of time is excluded by ἐνἀγάπη. Even “longsuffering” has its limits when “love” (in the sense indicated) is no longer able to pursue its purpose by this means and must resort to others.
Ephesians 4:3
3 The semicolon in our versions intends to indicate that, while the two participles are alike in form and construction, the second brings the real point of the admonition: by means of lowliness of mind, inner mildness, longsuffering, and loving forbearance when provoked, we are to do all that we can to keep our unity intact. The durative present participle again denotes constant action and matches “all” in the first phrase; τηρεῖν = ever to guard, thus to preserve and to keep that the unity may not be damaged or even lost to anyone who has entered its holy bond.
“The unity (oneness) of the Spirit” (genitive of author) is established by the Holy Spirit when by regeneration, faith, and a new life he joins us all spiritually. Once established, the oneness is not only to remain but is to manifest itself. In v. 13 Paul calls it “the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” Doctrine and life, confession and practice are to be one. There are to be no sects, divisions, schisms; also no strife, dissention, and the like. The Una Sancta as such is ever one and cannot be rent. In John 17 it is not this oneness for which Jesus prays.
Existing as it does, it is the subject neither for prayer nor for admonition. It is the manifestation of this oneness for which Jesus prays and unto which Paul admonishes: that we may all stand as one in the Name (revelation, John 17:6, 11, 12), the Word (John 17:6, 8, 14, 17) and the truth (17, 19), the knowledge (John 17:3, 7, 8), our hearts and lives being ruled by these alone.
Those damage or destroy this oneness who deviate from the Word in any way. Thus they often also separate themselves from the Una Sancta herself. We “guard or keep” this oneness by making our faith and our life conform to the Word. In John 17 Jesus stresses the Word; in the following Paul stresses its contents (v. 4–6), the apostolic faith (v. 7–16), the corresponding life (v. 17, etc.), note v. 21. The virtues he has just mentioned in v. 2 are the subjective aids for conserving the oneness in its manifestation.
When dealing with this subject the prayer of Jesus as well as Paul’s admonition are often misunderstood so that the inherent oneness of the Una Sancta and the manifestation of it in our unified adherence to the Word, and its substance in our confession of lip and life, are confused. Many pray for what needs no prayer and forget to pray and to work for what Jesus did pray for, unto what Paul also admonished. The fact that we can do the guarding here enjoined only by the Spirit’s help need not be stated.
“Of the Spirit,” as in v. 4, must mean the Holy Spirit; for “the oneness of the spirit” as only the concordia animorum or the “community spirit” might be a wrong concord. Many are today in great concord in some error, some wrong type of worship, some mode of life (monks). “In the bond of the peace” rounds out this particular modifier as “in love” does the one preceding; hence it cannot be drawn to v. 4. The genitive is not objective: “the bond that binds peace,” but appositional: “the bond consisting of peace”; σύν in the word conveys the idea of “together,” the bond joins most closely. In the Greek as in the German abstracts may have the article whereas the English does without: des Friedens‚ “of peace.” Ἐν denotes the ethical sphere of the action of guarding and scarcely the instrument employed even as peace is not an instrument.
The Unit Basis
Ephesians 4:4
4 This is presented in a triad, each member of which is itself a triad. Yet sufficient variation avoids what some might call formalism. There is no connective, no verb; just the nine items which are simply set down as such for the readers and thus are made the more striking. These three verses are not an admonition so that “let there be” is implied; they state facts. Our versions add: “There is,” which, however, weakens the effect. Stroke by stroke Paul simply points to what forms the basis of the unity on which his previous admonition rests.
In v. 7, etc., he will say still more. All of the nine points are objective. They stand as such. One may leave this great basis, it remains nonetheless what it is. One may rest on it wholeheartedly or weakly, that, too, does not change it in the least.
Although nine items are listed, Paul has written “one” only seven times. Neither number is accidental: 9 = 3 × 3, the Trinity is the basis, the multiplication emphasizes this fact; 7 = 3 + 4, the three are for us and for all men, we are to be joined with them, for four is the number of the earth. In v. 6 three phrases with the article are joined appositionally to God the Father and thus in a new way express unity. This listing is masterly and expressive in the highest degree. It stands out even in Paul’s inspired writing.
One body—and one Spirit—even as also you were called in one hope of your calling. One Lord—one faith—one baptism. One God and Father of all—he over all and through all and in all.
“One body” (see 2:16) = the corpus mysticum‚ the Una Sancta‚ the church. This body is spiritual and hence is invisible: “I believe in the Holy Christian Church, the Communion of Saints.” It is “one,” without a division, nor can it be divided; nor is there another body besides this one.
“And one Spirit” completes the idea of “one body” since σῶμα and πνεῦμα are correlatives and are always found together in a living body. In this spiritual body God’s own Holy Spirit dwells; not a single part of this body, not a single member of it is without the Spirit. Again, he, too, is “one,” there is no duality, no division.
The third member of this triad is not stated by the one term: “one hope” but more lucidly and richly: “even as also you were called in one hope of your calling.” This is the one item that contains a personal reference to the Ephesians. It reverts to v. 1 in a marked way: “the calling with which you were called.” When this item is made personal, all the others also receive a personal touch. The κλῆσις involves the gospel which thus does not need to be named. “One hope” involves eternal salvation. The emphasis is on “one hope,” another is inconceivable. Since Paul refers to the Ephesians as being called “in one hope” he includes their subjective hope, yet as including the one Hoffnungsgut‚ for this entire basis of Christian oneness is objective. What is true of the “one hope” is true of the one body, Spirit, Lord, etc. The Ephesians are personally involved, yet this basis of unity stands even apart from them. “In” one hope = in connection with it, the ethical union or sphere as in v. 2 and 3.
The first triad centers in the “one Spirit‚” i. e., as related to the Una Sancta. Hence the call, the treasure which it brings, namely the hope of salvation, and the body possessing this treasure. One might say that already this is basis enough. It is.
Ephesians 4:5
5 As Paul proceeds he presents the same basis, but he does so from the angle of the Second Person. “One Lord” is meant soteriologically, in the sense of “our Lord Jesus Christ,” he to whom we belong, who bought us to be his own with a great price (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23), whom we serve in innocence and blessedness, in whom we have salvation now and forever. He is “one,” there is no division in him, not even a possible division; thus on his oneness rests ours.
“One faith,” followed by “one baptism,” connects us with this “one Lord,” makes us his own. These two are generally conceived as being subjective and objective, and some question whether “faith” is ever objective. We have found it so quite a number of times, it is then generally written with the article, “the faith.” Here “one faith” is like “one hope.” The list presents objective items, our basis of oneness is objective, must be so in order to be such a basis. Yet, as we have indicated regarding “hope,” “Spirit,” “body,” these are ours, for this is our basis throughout. Hence “one faith” includes our personal believing, but the stress is on the Christian faith as such, on what constitutes its substance. This is one even as it centers on one Lord, one, whether you and I embrace it or not.
It is all very true that subjective fiducia is the same in every believer whether it be strong or weak, and that in erring denominations, where the gospel is not wholly lost, “children of God are still born”; but this is not the point of Paul’s item. It is the fact that the ground, substance, and truth on which all saving fiducia rests, are one and only one. In the Una Sancta no believing saves except that which holds the “one faith” and trusts that. As hope is Hoffnungsgrund‚ so faith is Glaubensgrund.
“One baptism,” one divine door into the Una Sancta‚ one sacrament of initiation for all who enter and by which they enter. The relation is obvious: one Lord to whom we belong; one truth that joins us to him; one sacrament that seals us as his. “One—one—one” throughout whether we look at the Spirit, at the Lord, or at the Father. R., W. P.‚ makes this objective act of God a subjective act of ours by saying: “There is only one act of baptism for all who confess Christ by means of this symbol, not that they are made disciples by this one act, but merely so profess him, put on Christ publicly by this ordinance.” Yet in Matt. 28:19 Jesus himself says: “Make disciples of all nations by baptizing them in the Name,” etc. Baptism is the washing of regeneration and is thus never a mere symbol. Nor is it an act of ours by which we merely confess; it is an act upon us by which God bestows the treasures of salvation upon us.
It has been asked why Paul does not list also the Lord’s Supper for the oneness he presents. Inadequate answers are offered: that it is in a way included when he names the one sacrament; that what the Lord’s Supper conveys lies in “one Lord, one faith”; that only the most basic parts are listed; that faith and baptism belong especially close together as being subjective and objective (this regarding faith as being subjective). The answer is that the Una Sancta includes also a host of babes and children, none of whom are able to receive the Lord’s Supper.
The second triad centers in “one Lord.” The oneness to which Paul admonishes the Ephesians has him who is one as its basis and thus “one faith” and “one baptism” containing him. The omission of “and” lends incisiveness.
Ephesians 4:6
6 The third triad, which is entirely different from the other two, consists of the unit: “one God and Father of all” in three relations to the Una Sancta: “he over all and through all and in all.” These “all” are not only masculine (persons) but are the ones who constitute the “one body” with which Paul begins in v. 4, the Una Sancta. This appears from the individualization, “to each one of you,” in v. 7. Note that the singular “one body” is now expressed by the plural “all,” a thing that is so often done by Paul who truly sees the object as it is. Each “all” takes in the entire sacred, spiritual body, but as composed of the many persons it includes. Paul does not say only “one God” but “one God and Father,” thus expressing his soteriological relation to the “all” here referred to. These “all” are his children. In 2:18 we have already had “the Father,” and in 3:14, “the Father, from whom the whole family is named.” “All” = “the whole family,” the οἰκεῖοι of God (2:19), his house or family members.
The apposition: “he over all,” etc., is thus also soteriological. The three prepositions radiate from “one God and Father.” They cannot be referred to the whole world of nature (as a neuter “all”) or to the whole world of men (masculine, indeed, but disregarding the Una Sancta as such: “each one of you,” v. 7). The three prepositions are quite different and form the third triad, but a triad anchored in the great unit: “one God and Father of all.” In a supreme way the unit basis thus stands forth even in the very midst of the multiplicity of “all” these who are “one body.” Look at “all” of us believers. No matter from what angle you look, one God-Father (in Christ) is over, through, and in us all, not two, not more.
The three prepositions ἐπί‚ διά, and ἐν cover all relations so that Paul is now at an end. He has omitted nothing in the nine items and the seven “ones” and nothing could be added for properly presenting the basis of oneness. The whole presentation is a perfect pattern as to substance and formulation, a spiritual gem in every way. Ἐπί is the German ob‚ “over,” which is better than “above” (our versions) and = exaltation and supremacy, but that of the Father: “our Father who art in heaven,” with all that this implies for the family of the saints, a part of whom are already in heaven (3:15). Διά = operative power that makes us all his saints, the means through which this Father’s hands work. Ἐν = immanence and indwelling, the unio mystica of spiritual union. “One” such God and Father “of all” of us and in all relations; a unit basis, indeed. None that is other, different, or greater, can be conceived. On this basis rests the oneness we should ever guard.
Some, especially the more ancient commentators, find a reference to the Trinity in the three prepositions; others voice their objection since all the prepositions are connected with the First Person alone. We do find the Trinity but not as some think and others deny, namely that “he over all” = the Father; “through all” = the Son; “in all” = the Spirit. The one article used with the three phrases makes them a unit, an apposition to “one God and Father.” But this one God and Father, who is through all, is this by means of our one Lord as the Mediator, mediation (διά) involving a Mediator. Likewise, this one God and Father in all is in them by means of the Spirit even as ἐν is the preposition to express immanence that involves the Spirit. So also when we consider how this one God is the Father of us all in the Una Sancta‚ our answer is: through the Son and the Spirit. While v. 6 completes one Spirit and one Lord by adding one God and Father, it at the same time unites all Three Persons in their soteriological relation to us all.
This carries the idea of oneness to its absolutely highest pitch. To know Paul is to know that he would do no less. The reality is exhausted. No man, not even Paul, could add even one more thought when depicting the basis of the oneness of the Una Sancta.
The Unifying Work
Ephesians 4:7
7 The unit basis has been presented. Now, on this basis, how is the oneness of Paul’s admonition to be attained and kept? For there is an endless diversity in the members of the Una Sancta. This very diversity is to keep and maintain the oneness of the admonition. Its end and goal is ever one and only one, its entire operation is unifying and constantly excluding all that would divide. This is the burden of v. 7–16.
Now to each single one of us there has been given a grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.
Transitional δέ introduces the new subject. To call it adversative as placing “each single one” over against the preceding “all” overlooks the fact that it introduces the whole statement including what follows and does not set one term against another. There is an immediate connection with v. 6, and the thought does not leap back to v. 3 or v. 1. The great unit basis involves “all” (four “all” in v. 6), involves all alike no matter how different the individuals constituting this number are. Δέ proceeds to take up the differences found in the individuals: “to each single one of you (now speaking personally of the Ephesians) there was given (the English prefers: has been given) a grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” Not one of you, Paul says, is without his special grace. The article, which is absent in good texts, is due to the following phrase: “grace according to,” etc. Whatever the grace that each one of you has, it accords with the measure applied by the Giver, Christ. The context following shows that “grace” does not refer to forgiveness, life, and salvation, but, as in 3:2, 7, to what is usually called a charisma in the widest sense of this word, some endowment with which to serve the church.
Saving grace is alike for all, but each believer’s endowment is different. It is “according to the measure of the gift of Christ.” The usual interpretation regards “of Christ” as the subjective genitive: the endowment is measured by the gratuitous gift which in his wisdom and love Christ is pleased to bestow just as this is said of the Spirit in 1 Cor. 12:11. But this genitive seems to be objective: our endowment is in accord with the measure of the gift bestowed upon Christ. In Matt. 28:19 he says, “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth”; in Phil. 2:9 “the name above every name” is granted to him; compare Matt. 11:27; Luke 1:32; 10:22; John 3:35; 13:3; 17:2. Christ himself received “all things,” “all power” as a gift to his human nature, and in accord with the vast measure of this gift to him he dispenses to every single one of us the grace or gift we are to use. It was thus that Paul, for instance, was given the grace of being an apostle to the Gentiles.
Ephesians 4:8
8 In Ps. 68:18 the Old Testament speaks about this distribution of charismata to every member in the church according to the measure of the gift made to Christ. Wherefore the declaration is:
Having gone up on high, he made captive captivity
And gave gifts to men.
Because Christ makes the gift for us according to the gift made to him, for this reason (διό) Scripture speaks of it. We think it best to regard λέγει as being impersonal, es heisst‚ “the declaration is,” and to leave the subject unexpressed instead of trying to supply “the Scripture,” “the Spirit,” or “God.” One may, however, make the subject the same as that of the agent implied in ἐδόθη in v. 7, which would be “one God and Father” in v. 6; yet the simple λέγει points only to the statement as such, and the stress is on “wherefore,” the statement is based on the fact expressed in v. 7. So many Old Testament statements read as they do because of what occurred afterward in the person of Christ. The idea that v. 7, 8 imply something like an objection is unwarranted.
This citation is regarded as a crux for interpreters as is also the whole psalm which one has denominated the Titan among the psalms, while another confesses that some of its passages are impenetrable. Yet contents and purpose of Paul’s quotation are plain. Read both v. 18 and 19 of Ps. 68.: “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men, yea, for the rebellious also, that the LORD God might dwell among them. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.” Jehovah ascends in victory and dispenses gifts to “us,” his people. The realization of this statement in the highest degree has occurred in Christ Jesus who ascended into heaven in victory and triumph and gives all kinds of gifts to all the members of the Una Sancta.
The thought is simple. What Jehovah did the psalmist describes in figurative language because (διό) it was to fit Christ, his ascent to heaven and his dispensing of gifts. The passage is plainly Messianic.
The change of the second person of the psalm into the third is merely formal, so also is the change of the first finite verb into the corresponding participle. In the LXX and in Paul this brings out the thought that the ascending is subsidiary to the making captivity captive, which it, of course, is. What troubles the commentators is the fact that the Hebrew and the LXX have, “thou hast received gifts for men” (ἔλαβες), while Paul has, “he gave gifts to men.” So Paul is charged with altering the essential word to suit his purpose, doing so deliberately, or due to faulty memory, or by using such liberty as we should not use “in modern times” (for instance, Expositor’s Greek New Testament). Those who shrink from such charges labor to remove the contradiction: Paul had a different Hebrew text; or laqach means to fetch in order to give; or Paul offers only an application of the Messianic import of the psalm and not a translation. Some shorten the quotation to one line and consider the words “he gave gifts to men” words of Paul’s. All this is done because received and gave sound like a direct contradiction, the one verb being the opposite of the other.
But the crux and the contradiction are not so serious. The reception for men includes the giving to men. If Christ received gifts for men, i. e., intended for them, how could he withhold them from men and not give them to those for whom the gifts were intended? Even if the Hebrew ba’adam is regarded as meaning an Menschen or inter homines‚ “thou didst receive gifts consisting of men” (Ps. 2:8: “the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession”), these men would certainly share in what Christ has.
But much more must be said. In v. 7 the gift made to each one of us is in accord with the measure of the gift received by Christ (see this verse) since what Christ received he was to distribute to us. Many other passages state this same truth. Therefore, because all power was given to Christ, he gives to the disciples their mission and their gifts for this mission on earth (Matt. 28:19, 20). The words the Father gave to Jesus the latter gave to the apostles (John 17:8); the mission he had received from the Father he bestows on the apostles (v. 18); the glory the Father gave him he gave to them (v. 22); where he is they, too, are to be (v. 24). So it is throughout: what Christ in his human nature by which he ascended on high received he was to give to us who are his own. These δόματα or “gifts” include far more than endowment for the spiritual work in the Una Sancta; these are only the small things that go with the supreme ones.
The Hebrew hammarom means “on high” and never merely the height of Mount Zion. Jehovah ascended to heaven. Some date in the history of Israel is sought as to when the ascent took place; this effort considers an ascent to Mt. Zion and results in a variety of surmises which also involve and usually question the authorship of the psalm. In regard to this let us say that the psalm is too “titanic” to match any one incident in Israel’s history. The more important question is passed by as to how David could say that Yahweh could receive gifts. This is the word which clearly points to the Messiah. David saw the God-man in Yahweh. He could receive. Verse 17 of the psalm with its “thousands of angels” depicts a victorious ascent into heaven.
When Paul reproduces “received” by “gave” he translates interpretatively. Delitzsch, Psalmen‚ 4th ed., 488: “They are gifts which he now divides among men and which also benefit those that have strayed away. Thus the apostle understands the words when he changes ἔλαβες into ἔδωκε. The gifts are the charismata coming down from the Exalted One upon his congregation, a grant of blessing connected causally with his victory; for as Victor he is the possessor of the blessing, his gifts are like the spoils of his victory achieved over sin, death, and Satan.” R. Kittel, the latest German commentator on the Psalms, does not consider Paul’s citation of this psalm.
“He made captive captivity” (verb and noun are used with reference to war captives, 2 Cor. 2:5) describes Jehovah (Christ) as the supreme Victor. This is not a cognate accusative or an abstract used for a concrete, “captivity” for “captured ones.” This is a plain accusative and is highly significant as such. “Captivity” itself was taken captive (Col. 2:15); the captivity in which principalities and powers, the hellish kingdom, held and tried to keep men, this was made captive, i. e., abolished (1 Cor. 15:57). Thus Christ now divides the spoils.
Ephesians 4:9
9 With δέ Paul expounds; the parenthesis of our versions is unnecessary. More must be said about this Ascender, regarding his victory and his ability to give these gifts. Now this “He ascended,” what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth? The One that descended himself is also the One that ascended far above all the heavens in order to fill all the things.
With τό Paul introduces the Greek word “He ascended” and uses the finite form in place of the participle used in v. 8. He is not speaking abstractly and saying that every ascent is connected with a descent; nor does he place the descent after the ascent—good texts insert “descended first” (A. V.). Paul is speaking of the One referred to in the psalm, Christ; his ascent was preceded by a descent.
What this descent was depends on the meaning of “into the lower parts of the earth.” Is the genitive appositional, the lower parts = the earth? Then the descent of the Son for the purpose of the Incarnation would be referred to, but the expression would then be without parallel and too strange. Is the genitive partitive or ablative (lower than the earth, R. 499)? Then hell is referred to and Christ’s descent into hell. This expression is so used in Ps. 63:9, compare Ezek. 32:18, 24. It is asked why Paul does not say “into hades.” The answer is that, when he is expounding an Old Testament term, he uses an Old Testament expression. The Incarnation will not do because the psalm describes the supreme Victor, and the Incarnation is not a victory.
We disregard the figment of a Totenreich‚ a realm of the dead which is situated between heaven and hell, into which also the soul of Christ passed at death and from which it emerged at his resurrection. He placed his spirit into his Father’s hands and entered Paradise (heaven) together with the malefactor’s soul. This fiction of the death realm is often embellished by having Christ execute a ministry there, releasing the Old Testament saints from the Limbus patrum‚ proclaiming grace to all the dead or to a certain number of them. Some, indeed, retain the Descent into hell but have Christ complete his suffering there during the time that he was dead; or by the Descent they understand only the sinking into death and the tomb and call the latter “the lower parts of the earth.”
This Descent means victory, the capture of captivity itself. Vivified in the tomb, timelessly Christ (body and soul) descended into hell and proclaimed (κηρύσσω) his victory to the damned, 1 Pet. 3:19. This has nothing to do with 1 Pet. 4:6, for the gospel was not preached to the dead when they were dead and in hell but while they were yet alive on earth. This summary must suffice for the passages found in Peter’s letters. The cross references of the A. V. to John 3:13; 6:33, 62 are misleading as to the descent referred to in our passage.
Is hell, then, in the lower parts of the earth? and is this Paul’s conception? This question would never be asked if it is clear that in the other world time and space as we know them do not exist, also that in all their thinking our finite minds are now so chained to time and space that they cannot possibly conceive timelessness (“time no longer,” Rev. 10:6) or spacelessness so that, in order to be intelligible to us, even the Scriptures must condescend to use terms of time when speaking of eternity and terms of space when referring to places in the other world. Thus heaven with its glory is for us ever “up” and Christ ascended; and hell with its κατάκριμα or condemnation is ever κατά, “down,” the farthest down we can think, in “the lower parts of the earth,” the comparative being used in the sense of “lowest” (R. 668). Do not ask, then, how far the distance and how long the time for traversing it when in the Ascension a cloud hid the body of Christ. Do not ask, when considering the vivificatio in the tomb, how far the distance to hell, how long a time it took for Christ to get there, and how long a time he remained. What his κηρύσσειν (1 Pet. 3:19) means Col. 2:15 states, and no man knows more about it than is said there and in the present passage (v. 8, 9).
Ephesians 4:10
10 As v. 9 links up “he ascended” and “he descended” and makes them a whole, so v. 10 points to the identity of the Ascender and the Descender: he is the same person, could not have been the Ascender if he had not been the Descender, and vice versa.
Now, however, Paul explains the εἰςὕψος used in the passage cited from the psalm by the new expression: “away beyond and above all the heavens.” The plural “heavens” often = “heaven” in the Greek as in the English but it does not equal that here where we have “all the heavens.” In 2 Cor. 12:2, 4 three heavens are named, which are commonly thought to be the atmospheric, the sidereal, and the angelic heavens (Paradise). This suffices here. The seven heavens of the rabbis have no Scriptural warrant and cannot be attributed to Paul. But Christ’s ascent “far above” all the heavens must not be interpreted mechanically as implying a πού (somewhere) beyond all the heavens, beyond the place where God, the angels, and the blessed saints dwell; the sense is that the ascension gave Christ his exaltation and supremacy over all the heavens. We have the commentary in 1:20, 21; Phil. 2:9–11. To be far above the heavens is not to be somewhere that is not heaven—where would that be?
Christ ascended “into heaven” (Acts 1:11) but not as Elijah did only to dwell there but to be exalted also in his human nature above, far above this eternal heaven and those beneath it. All heaven bows to him, and hell must.
The ascension and the exaltation of Christ had the purpose “that he might fill all the things,” τὰπάντα, definite, all that exists. As the two participles are aorists and express definite historical past acts, so “might fill” is an aorist subjunctive that is likewise a definite past act which is simultaneous with the exaltation and of permanent effect. The purpose was attained: he did fill all the things, does so now. The A. V. margin “fulfill” is incorrect. Oecumenius: “For, indeed, he long ago filled all things with his bare deity; and having become incarnate, that he might fill all things with his flesh, he descended and ascended.” C.
Tr. 1145. “He has ascended, not merely as any other saint, but, as the apostle testifies, above all heavens, and also truly fills all things, and being everywhere present, not only as God, but also as man, rules from sea to sea, and to the ends of the earth.” C. Tr. 1025, also 821, 16.
This is the so-called ubiquity of the human nature of Christ, which goes beyond even Matt. 28:20b. It rests on the communicatio idiomatum‚ especially on the majestatic and the apotelesmatic genera. The ubiquity of Christ according to his human nature is best defined in conjunction with the omnipotence that is also bestowed on this nature: praesentissimum ac potentissimum in creaturas dominium; hence it is not an absolute presence (nuda essentia) but one connected with his universal dominion (“all things under his feet”).
To be sure, this is Dogmatics, but it is the dogmatical content of the Scriptural statement. All true Dogmatics merely restates Scripture, otherwise it is false Dogmatics. Dogmatic exegesis is a different thing, namely the predetermination of the exegesis itself according to erroneous dogmatical views. Nestorianism denies the ubiquity of Christ’s human nature. So does Calvinism on the plea finitum non est capax infiniti. So does the Einnaturenlehre of the modern Germans. Against all of them stands this statement of Paul’s and many others of Scripture.
Ephesians 4:11
11 Christ, the great Giver, has been described, also “the measure of the gift” he received in his human nature as “Christ,” according to which “he gave gifts to every single one of us” (v. 7). All this the Ephesians must keep in mind when they look at any one of the gifts Christ has bestowed on the church. Paul now mentions the main ones and shows how they all operate for the oneness of the Una Sancta and make it grow as one body until it reaches its ultimate goal. This is the connection with both v. 4–6 and v. 1–3.
And he, he gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as shepherds (pastors) and teachers, etc.
These are some of “the gifts he gave” (v. 7). Αὐτός is demonstrative and emphatic and resumes the αὐτός of v. 10 and all that has been said about the great Giver: He‚ it is he who gave. Ἔδωκεν is not ἔθετο; “he gave” denotes grace in the Giver, “he set or placed” denotes authority and rule. The objects are τοὺςμέν, τοὺςδέ, “some—some,” and each is followed by a predicative accusative, which is indicated by the punctuation in the A. V. and by the insertion of “to be” in the R. V. The point is not that some men received the apostleship, others prophecy, etc., but that these men themselves constitute the gift of Christ to the whole Una Sancta‚ yea, “to every single one of us” (v. 7). We now see why in v. 7 Paul uses “the grace” and not “the charisma” (or “charismata”): these men may be termed the grace bestowed on the church by Christ but scarcely the charisma.
Paul’s word is at times misunderstood, and complaint is made that he does not mention other gifts; but this supposes that the functions here indicated were gifts only to the functionaries whereas these functionaries are gifts to every single one of us. Whatever other gifts you and I have are secondary to this most essential group of gifts.
All these men are named according to their office and their work for the church. Not one of them is what he is just by or for himself. By “apostles” we understand the Twelve plus Paul, Matthias being the substitute for Judas. These were called immediately by Christ in person to serve in the specific way already indicated in 2:20. They constitute Christ’s gift to every single one of us to this day. We continue steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine (Acts 2:42) as the foundation of the church and of our faith. While “apostle” is at times used in a wider sense so as to include Barnabas and other assistants of Paul, in a grouping like the present one the wider sense would only produce an indefinite term.
But who are the “prophets”? When we discussed 2:20 and 3:5 we already expressed our conviction that only the context of each passage is able to supply the correct answer, and that we cannot take “prophets” in the same sense in every passage, whether we think of the great Old Testament prophets, or of prophets like Agabus who received only incidental revelations about future events, or of prophets who had the charisma which all Christians are urged to acquire (1 Cor. 14:1, etc.).
Between the first two types of prophets our choice would be the former because Agabus and those like him never stood out in the early church despite the fact that their revelations were received immediately. Only Agabus and the daughters of Philip are actually named in the New Testament as belonging to this class. Many, however, think that this class is here referred to. The possibility that Ephesus ever heard a prophet of this kind is not recorded. Now the statement that “Christ gave some as prophets” places us into the New Testament at a time after his ascension (v. 10) and thus eliminates the Old Testament prophets. The further statement that “Christ gave to every single one of us” (Ephesians) in v. 7 fits prophets in the third meaning of the word, those who spoke the revelations received by the apostles and thus benefited “every single one” who heard them.
The view that fixed offices are here listed, and that these prophets held no such office, is not unanswerable. Prophets like Agabus held no fixed office, they were called prophets only because they now and then received some minor revelation. Thus theirs, too, was not an “office” in the ecclesiastical sense of the word but only a certain standing in the church. Prophets in the wide sense of the word supplied evangelists and pastors and teachers. Thus they are here listed before these others. The functions indicated by the names are surely not exclusive, save the first, the specific work of the apostles.
An evangelist would transmit the gospel revelation he had received from the apostles, so would pastors and teachers. Even an apostle would teach, and why not also some of these prophets? Church organization had not yet progressed much beyond the calling of regular elders (pastors).
“Evangelists” spread the gospel in new places. We have the very early example of Philip who first worked in Samaria (Acts 8:6–14) and who also worked along the coast up to Caesarea (Acts 8:40). These men resemble our missionaries. We may also think of Epaphras who founded the congregation at Colosse. They, too, were given “to every single one of us,” for they did for the ordinary members what these could seldom do, planted the gospel in other localities. It was their gift and their ability that prompted them and not a fixed appointment unless we think of the regular assistants of Paul. The apostles certainly approved such work although the workers supported themselves.
The third τοὺςδέ makes one class of “shepherds and teachers,” i. e., pastors of local congregations who were commonly called “elders” (the Ephesian elders, Acts 20:17) and termed ἐπίσκοποι, “overseers” (our “bishops”), by Paul himself in Acts 20:28 when he tells them “to shepherd the church of God.” In John 21:15, etc., Jesus uses both “pasture” and “shepherd” my sheep. The latter is wider and includes the former, but the former is important enough to be mentioned separately. It is the feeding by means of teaching, hence “teachers” is the second term added by Paul. In 1 Tim. 5:17 note the elders “presiding well—especially laboring in word and teaching.” So much of the Good Shepherd’s work was teaching that one of his titles is “Teacher”; his command to the church in Matt. 28:20 is: “Teaching them to observe,” etc.
When he uses these predicate nouns Paul’s object evidently is to indicate what these men are as a gift to every one of us, i. e., what good we have from them. As “apostles,” etc., they are our great benefactions from the exalted Christ. He had to be thus exalted before he could bestow this gift in accord with the measure of the gift to him himself, i. e., the glorification and exaltation of his human nature.
The challenging question is at times thrown out: “Where did Christ establish the Christian ministry?” Here we have one answer: “He‚ he gave some as apostles, etc.” The Holy Ghost sent by Christ made the Ephesian elders overseers of the church of God. The establishment of the apostleship in Matt. 10:5, etc., is the institution of the ministry. In and on this office all else that we call offices rests. But our view becomes warped when the thought in our minds is that of institutionalism. Christ’s instituting, as we often term it, is not institutionalism whether hierarchical or otherwise. Christ gave, he gave men to the church, men who are named according to their blessed work.
He still so gives. Call it his institution, but only as Paul describes it, the δωρεά and δόματα, “gift and gifts” (“things given”) of Christ.
Ephesians 4:12
12 Christ gave these various workers in view of the complete outfitting of the saints for ministration work for upbuilding of the body of Christ, etc. This expresses the purpose of the gift that consisted of the workers named. All are servants of the Word by which “the body of Christ,” the Una Sancta‚ is to be built up; yet not these workers alone are to do this work, but all the saints are to be equipped and engaged in it like a growing body.
Paul’s meaning is obscured by the punctuation of our versions and by that of editors of the Greek text. This happens when the text is regarded as consisting of three coordinate phrases, or when the two εἰς are coordinated, or the last εἰς is coordinated with πρός. We are pointed to inversions: Paul places the Christian ministry second, which he should have placed first; he is said to change his prepositions “without any obvious difference in sense.” Three coordinate phrases assume that the second refers to the Christian ministry, but this would be in the wrong place. The coordinating of the first and the third leaves the second hanging in the air with nothing being said about it. The coordinating of the last two in the way in which this is often done has the ministry alone build the church, which is a serious fault also in the other two coordinations.
The second phrase depends on the first, the third on the second, the whole is a unit. Paul cannot say that the leaders alone build up the church after having so emphatically said that “to each single one of us” Christ’s grace has been given. Πρός = “with a view to” and includes the whole of v. 12 as the purpose. καταρτισμός = “complete outfitting,” it is like κατάρτισις in 2 Cor. 13:9; “mending” and “repair” in R., W. P. is inadequate. The Germans say zur Fertigstellung der Heiligen. “For the perfecting of the saints” in our versions may be wrongly understood by perfectionists who point to it in order to substantiate their views of perfect sanctification. The idea of perfectness lies only in the preposition κατά in the noun. The saints are to be perfectly, completely fitted out by all those in the church who are able to transmit the Word.
These saints include also all the workers in the Word from apostles down to teachers. They are to preach also to each other and to themselves as well as to prospective converts and to the other church members and thereby to fit themselves and all others out more and more.
The thought is still incomplete. For what purpose are these saints to get this outfitting? Paul adds: “for ministration work.” All the saints are to be engaged in a work of ministration. Note the absence of articles. This is not the Christian ministry as some have thought. It is a task of ministering to each other, for “ministry” signifies a service rendered to benefit others. All the saints have this blessed work to do and are to get their complete outfit for it from the apostles, etc., given to the church, i. e., from the Word.
But the thought is still incomplete. What is this work of ministering to achieve? The answer is given in the final phrase. This work is “for upbuilding the body of Christ” (of the “one body,” 3:16; 4:4), i.e., of the church itself. Construe: “ministry for upbuilding.” The thought is this: to every one of us as the saints who form the Una Sancta Christ gave some as apostles, some as prophets, etc., for the purpose of providing the necessary equipment for all to engage in the blessed task of ministering to each other so as to upbuild his body, the church itself. Οἰκοδομή is spiritual edification which consists of everything that develops our spiritual life. Paul is offering a wealth of the equipment that is useful for this work in this very epistle.
“Upbuilding” and “body” are not a mixing of figures, one referring to the construction of a building, the other to the growth of a living body. To this day we speak of body building; the development of a body from childhood to manhood is very properly likened to the building of a house or a temple. So in the following we have “no more children”—“unto a full-grown man”—“grow up”—“the body fitly framed together.” This rich imagery is carried through. Some think that “upbuilding” refers to the numerical increase of the church and even have this consist of bringing in the elect who were at first not believing but were finally brought to faith because for some unknown reason they were elected in eternity. Paul himself tells us what “upbuilding” he had in mind; numbers are not in his mind nor any un-Biblical conception of the “elect.”
It is worth while to note the exactness and the precision with which every word of this verse is placed. The composition is flawless; the reconstruction of editors and of commentators is, therefore, the more regrettable.
Ephesians 4:13
13 Even the three phrases used in v. 12 have not fully expressed Paul’s thought. Outfitting—for a task—for building Christ’s body still leave unanswered the question of completion, as to when this ἔργον and this οἰκοδομή in which we are engaged will have achieved their results. To build the body of Christ indicates only the work being done on that body. When may we now say that it is built? What work must be done? When is the goal reached? Paul would be the last person not to answer this question. He does it with μέχρι which is used in the papyri with or without οὗ, with or without ἄν.
The clause modifies the phrase introduced by πρός (all of v. 12): until we, the whole number, arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at a man full-grown, at an age measure of (i.e., marked by) the fulness of Christ; etc.
Fully equipped by the teachers of the Word for our task of building up the Una Sancta‚ we are to work on until we all attain full Christian manhood, which means full maturity. Paul significantly adds the apposition οἱπάντες, which definitely means “the whole number” of us. In their work of ministration (v. 12) the saints are to neglect none of their number, for all are to arrive at the goal of spiritual maturity through our mutual ministration, actually arrive (aorist subjunctive). In a manner this task never ends because new generations of children and new converts ever require our ministration; from another viewpoint it does end, namely as one and the other does arrive at the maturity indicated. The view that this arrival occurs at the hour of death or at the end of the world at the time of the Parousia overlooks what follows. The maturity here referred to is full-grown manhood in faith and in knowledge in contrast with immature and inexperienced childhood.
Paul was such a man. The idea that such manhood is not reached before death, that the saints are always only children in this life, is contradicted by Paul’s own words.
The three εἰς phrases are construed with the verb “arrive at,” the second phrase being appositional to the first, the third appositional to the second: “arrive at the oneness, at a full-grown man, at an age measure,” etc. The goal is thus stated in a complete way. “At the oneness,” etc., reverts to the oneness mentioned in v. 3, which is based on the oneness detailed in v. 4–6. We are to strive diligently for this subjective oneness (v. 3) on the one objective basis (v. 4–6).
The unity of Paul’s thought is striking. The oneness we are to attain by mutual ministration is that “of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” In the Greek the last genitive is objective and modifies both “the faith” and “the knowledge.” The Greek says regularly, “faith of Christ,” he being the object of faith, whereas we say, “faith in Christ.” So “the knowledge,” too, has this object. The idea that the oneness referred to is that between our faith and our knowledge is unsatisfactory. Paul is not discussing the relation of these two to each other. By placing the genitives side by side Paul does not mean that our knowledge is to harmonize with our faith, that, although we have faith, our knowledge is at first imperfect and must be raised to the level of our faith.
The oneness is the one that unites us all. It is the oneness belonging to (possessive genitive) the faith and to the knowledge. At this oneness we are to arrive both regarding our faith and regarding our knowledge. At first, especially in the case of all beginners but often also later in the case of many a saint, faith and certainly also knowledge have much about them that is imperfect, immature, faulty. If these imperfections are allowed to remain, this will damage the inner oneness of the saints; those who have the faults are not welded together with the rest as they should be. They may even become detached, drift away, or be drawn away. Faults weaken those who have them, but here the weakness referred to is lack of strong oneness with the other saints.
Paul places “the faith” first, “the knowledge” second, and for the latter uses ἐπίγνωσις, which is more than γνῶσις. Not mere intellectual knowledge is referred to, such as gnosis might express, but true heart knowledge. True knowledge is a part of faith when the latter begins (“how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard?” Rom. 10:14); but much real knowledge is the outcome of faith, it is even impossible without faith. When faith reads the Scriptures it finds treasure after treasure of knowledge which unbelief never finds; when faith is exercised by confession and life it discovers by its own experience more and more knowledge of the saving truth which unbelief cannot know.
Paul has written the article with both nouns and views each separately, yet both have the same object, “the Son of God.” We see his meaning, a fault in the faith will effect the knowledge, a fault in the knowledge the faith. Although they are distinct, they yet interact and are thus articulated by Paul and placed in this order. Faultless faith and faultless knowledge, whether these be of small or of great degree, form the oneness which is the goal of our mutual ministration task. By setting this as the goal Paul by no means excuses the faults of faith and of knowledge which mark so many believers and prevent them from being fully one with the one body of Christ. Note again v. 3. He is also not indifferent to weakness in either our faith or our knowledge. Real oneness = strong adherence.
By not naming the object “Christ” but “the Son of God” Paul makes manifest the divine greatness and glory of him whom he has just described as the Ascender and Descender who fills all things (v. 10). Our oneness centers in him. The claim of some that Paul never called Christ “the Son of God” is here once more met. We see, too, how serious any fault in our faith and in our knowledge is, for every such fault in our oneness involves the Son of God. How diligent should we then be to guard this oneness (v. 3), to minister to each other in such diligence, to remove every rent and rift in oneness, and to overcome all indifference and carelessness. Be sure you yourself are fully in this oneness. Many a one who is only partly in this oneness, perhaps not in it at all, the fanatic especially, is amazingly diligent in undermining “the oneness of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,” and wrecking many a soul.
A second time, by means of an apposition, Paul states at what we are to arrive: “at a man full-grown.” He uses a concrete expression to express what is really an abstract thought: “at full-grown manhood,” or at full spiritual maturity. He uses the right word ἀνήρ, male man, connoting full maturity of strength, and not ἄνθωπος, a human being, which has no such connotation since a newborn babe is also a human being. Τέλειος = having attained the goal. It is here in contrast with “children” and is to be understood in the sense of “mature,” “full-grown.” We have no etymological English equivalent; “perfect” (A. V.) may pass, but it must not be understood in the sense of perfectionism. Full-grown manhood or maturity is the goal for all beginners, also for all others who have lagged behind. There is a strong argument in the figurative term.
The oneness in the first phrase = the full-grown man = also the age measure in the next phrase; hence all are singular. This bars out the idea of individualization in the singular “man” as though it intends to divide οἱπάντες. Since “we all” form the church, it would be incongruous to make “a full-grown man” = the church and to say that “we all (the church) are to arrive at a full-grown man” (the church). This also does not permit making “a full-grown man” = “the body of Christ” (v. 12).
The second appositional phrase completes the statement of the goal at which we are to arrive: “at an age measure (no articles) of the fulness of Christ.” The debate as to whether ἡλικία, a person’s “age,” may also mean “stature” (our versions) need not disturb us since “age” fits the thought quite well. Pointing to “grow up” in v. 15 and “growth” in v. 16 does not establish the meaning “stature,” for “measure of age” intends to define τέλειον just as “the fulness of Christ” defines the preceding term, “the Son of God.” The indefinite “a measure of age” or “age measure” needs something to complete the concept; this is “the fulness of Christ.” Following Luther’s des vollkommenen Alters Christi‚ and Calvin’s plena aetas‚ some regard “age of fulness” as an adjectival genitive = “the full age of Christ,” B.-P. 975, Vollreife des Christus. But this cannot be done because the two unarticulated nouns belong together: “age-measure.” Secondly, what could be meant by “the full age of Christ”? Is it thirty years when he reached manhood? Can you think of anything else?
Some refer to 1:23 where the church is called “the fulness of him who fills all the things in all ways.” But if “the fulness of Christ” = the church, we again have the incongruity that we who constitute the church are to arrive at a certain age of the church. At what age, pray? “Fulness” is also not “perfection” so that we could say, “At the measure of the height of the perfection of Christ.” In 3:19 “the fulness of God” is that which fills him, his love, grace, etc., all of which we are to know; so here “the fulness of Christ” is all that fills him. The genitive characterizes: “an age-measure marked by the fulness of Christ.” We are to arrive at this age-measure, it is the goal for all of us. Some attain it quickly by maturing spiritually by leaps and bounds. Alas, many lag, love to stay in the infant age. They have only a little of the fulness of Christ but could and should have all its wealth.
Paul rightly uses “the fulness.” Yet not in the sense of Christ’s perfections so that the sense would be the arrival of every believer at an age of moral perfection, of perfectly Christlike character. “The fulness” makes clear what lies in “the Son of God,” he who is the Ascender and Descender and therefore has so many “gifts” for men, among them the apostles, etc., who are to equip us with the Word for attaining our goal. Christ’s fulness includes all the divine, saving realities which exist in him. C.-K. 927 has Inhalt seines Wesens and so refers to 1:23, Christ filling all things in every way.
By faith and real knowledge we are to appropriate all the realities that are in Christ, thus achieving the goal of oneness in the Word, of full-grown spiritual maturity. The saving realities are presented by teaching and preaching, hence apostles, etc., down to pastors and teachers are mentioned. Any proper and adequate presentation of any one of these realities is a doctrine which faith and knowledge are to receive fully. We are to have their entire fulness, are to attain an age of such fulness. To know only something about Christ, God’s Son, is not enough, it is not the full oneness with our fellow saints, not full-grown manhood. We must apprehend all that our faith and our knowledge are able to understand.
As for moral perfections, Christian character, Christlikeness in life, these spring like a living plant and tree from true faith and true knowledge and from no other soil. Take away the fulness of the verities in Christ, and all that is able to grow in our lives are works of our own righteousness, imitations. Remember the Pharisees, study the “gospel” of the modernists who turn the Son into a son and abolish the Ascender and Descender.
Ephesians 4:14
14 Paul is not yet through. He first adds the negative result of arrival at the goal, and then in v. 15, etc., the positive result. The negative is striking: so that no longer we are infants, tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching in the gambling of men in craftiness after the expert method of the deception; etc. There is difficulty when ἵνα is regarded as expressing purpose, for no writer would say that we reach manhood and full maturity in order to grow up (v. 15). This would be a strange hysteron proteron, for we grow up in order to arrive at manhood. In order to avoid this inversion v. 14 is made parallel to v. 13 and is regarded as a kind of restatement.
But this view overlooks the fact that v. 13 is a temporal clause: “until we arrive at,” the parallel of which cannot be a purpose clause: “in order that we may be.” Not a few refer the purpose clause back to v. 11: “he gave … in order that we may no longer be infants.” In order to maintain the idea of purpose the statement is at times made that Paul always uses ἵνα with a final sense and never with a subfinal or a non-final meaning. But read R. 997, etc., regarding consecutive ἵνα. When we are doing so, it is well to know that the old reluctance in regard to thinking that this connective can express anything but purpose, which view dates from the time before the Koine was fully known, is still manifest. We see it in B.-D. 391, 5: “hardly to express actual result,” and in the comments on many passages, in which the commentator hesitates to say that ἵνα introduces a result clause.
We have actual result: “until we all actually arrive (aorist) at a full-grown man … so that we are (as a result) no longer infants, etc., … but have actually grown up, etc.” (again aorist), v. 15. Even the view that ἵνα indicates contemplated result weakens the thought. “Infants” is the opposite of “a full-grown man.” It is a plural as Paul so often places the plural beside the singular, but here the word is properly the plural because the thought now concerns the individuals. Infants are helpless against assaults; they must be protected, carried in the arms of others, and in the case of these infants such protecting arms are not always present. There is the same argumentative appeal in “infants” as there was in the previous “full-grown man.” It is pitiful never to get beyond the infantile stage. Yet some Christians seem to be afraid of growing up; or, remaining infants, imagine they are strong men, which is pitiful in another way.
Every one of the modifiers is important. Paul’s mastery in combining so many terms in such a terse manner, each being in its exact place, with supreme effect deserves due recognition. How many secular writers have anything that is equal or comparable? Paul always dominates his figurative terms and does not let them dominate him; he makes them carry his thought, and does not let them sway or swing his thought into a mere accommodation to themselves. “Infants” might dominate us so as to stay with its imagery and to use only what this term affords. Its tertium is helplessness; Paul takes that and does not insert another idea.
“Tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of the teaching in, etc.,” advances to a graphic description of the helplessness already indicated. The idea is not that of physical infants in a boat who are helpless to manage it in waves and wind; physical men, who know nothing about managing boats, are infants amid wind and waves. Such is the helplessness Paul describes, which is due to not being fitted out properly with the Word in faith and in knowledge. The imagery is not that of a violent storm foundering a vessel but of drifting at the whim of waves and wind.
Διδασκλία = “teaching” in the passive sense (C.-K. 294): what men teach, “doctrine.” “Every wind of doctrine” is most expressive. Winds veer and shift, blow now in this, now in that direction. “Waves of doctrine” is not necessary because the winds cause the waves. The true doctrine is ever one, solid like Gibraltar, because the verities it expresses are the changeless fact. But every doctrine of men is mere wind, unstable, transient, causing a drift now hither, now thither.
The waves should not be allegorized. Paul is not saying that all the saints are afloat on the sea (sea of life, sea of this world), the babes among them drifting around helplessly, the men among them steering a safe course to the heavenly haven. Only the babes are described, we are shown only how their helplessness amid the false doctrines of men looks. The literal word “doctrine” interprets the figurative terms just as in John 15: “I (literal) am the Vine (figure); you (literal) are the branches” (figure). Greek abstract nouns may have the article when the concept denotes something definite.
“In the gambling of men in craftiness” belongs together as the absence of the article with the second phrase shows. The whole phrase does not modify “infants” or “infants” plus the participles but the participles alone. From κυβεία we have our word cube. The idea of chance suggested by waves and wind is advanced by the allied figure of throwing dice, a game of chance, one form of “gambling.” But Paul advances still more when he calls it the gambling of men “in craftiness,” πανουργία, the ability to do anything, which is used in an evil sense: resort to dishonest means, “knavery.” The picture is one of helplessness, exposed to chance, crafty chance at that.
“Of men” is in contrast to God although it is without emphasis. “Whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (A. V.) is not translation but paraphrase. Μεθοδεία (found only here and in the late papyri) = kunst-gemaesses Verfahren; and πλάνη is “deceit” or “deception” and is accepted also by M.-M. 516 in the sense of “error” in the New Testament passages where it occurs; hence the R. V.: “after the wiles of error.” Πρός, “toward,” has the force of fostering the tricky expertness or skillfulness which belongs to error when men, like crafty gamblers, take advantage of the unwary in dealing it out to them.
Paul’s effective characterization of error and of errorists is surely drawn from his own experience. He had been in vessels that were drifting helplessly in waves and wind; he had seen soldiers and sailors use loaded dice to fleece some innocent greenhorn. They had their expert system which was all fair and honest to the inexperienced eye but deadly in its cunning and trickiness. Paul thus draws his composite picture and combines the significant terms compactly. Error always operates with a tricky expertness. It uses Bible passages (apparently according to their real meaning) and reasonings (apparently sound) and thus easily fools the “infants” in Christian faith and knowledge, who have not yet grown up to Christian manhood and the age-measure of the fulness of Christ.
We cannot say that Paul has any special error in mind such as the beginnings of Gnosticism; he speaks in general terms. Paul’s expressions contain no shadow of excuse for error or for errorists; he tears off their mask. Those who deviate from the truth cannot do so with moral integrity. Error perverts its adherents in subtile moral ways. This is often denied but never by Paul who knew the effects of error fully. He who is not honest with the true doctrines of the Word simply cannot be honest with the way in which he handles that truth, he mishandles it when he filches it from others.
Ephesians 4:15
15 Δέ turns to the positive side. Ἵνα still governs and now states a further result: “until we all actually arrive (aorist) at a full-grown man … so that we are (as a result) no longer infants … but‚ (as a result) speaking truth in love, get grown up with respect to him in regard to everything, who is the Head, Christ; he from whom all the body, as being framed together and knit together by means of the supply of every joint‚ (i. e.,) according to the working in (its) measure of each single part, produces the growth of the body for upbuilding of its own self in love.
Paul inserts “speaking truth in love” as the brief opposite of “the gambling of men in craftiness after the expert method of the deception” or error they hold. As in Gal. 4:16, the participle = “speaking truth.” “Speaking truthfully” is practically the same, for lies cannot be spoken truthfully. “In love” is added because the knavery of error lacks both truth (truthfulness) and love, and because speaking the truth properly goes together with the love of intelligence and purpose (see 1:4). Those who actually arrive at the goal indicated by the three phrases in v. 13 always use only the divine truth of the apostles, etc., (v. 11), i. e., the Word, in their work of ministering (v. 12); and even as theirs is a ministry for the spiritual benefit of others, a true διακονία, they combine this truth with their love, which understands what others need and purposes only to meet that need.
We have seen how error and deceit go together, how falseness to the Word always goes together with moral falseness in the heart. The opposite is also true. Faithfulness to the truth and the Word goes together with purity and nobleness of motive, with true love, in fact, creates this high motive. Paul knows that some preach Christ because of envy, strife, and contention, with wrong motives, and speaks of this in Phil. 1:15–18. This is abnormal and a giving way to the flesh. It is the nature of truth ever to cleanse the heart, especially when this is handling the truth. “Speaking the truth” includes all teaching, all confession; the formula of the confessions is: “We believe, teach, and confess.” Paul’s “we” includes himself as an apostle, all his own preaching and teaching, admonition, rebuke, comfort. The love with which he did this never yielded an iota of the truth, it would not have been love if it had done so.
The view is untenable that if we construe “speaking the truth in love,” this would be a love toward those who cunningly defend error, with whom Paul wants us to have nothing to do. No matter with whom we deal we are to speak the truth in love. Since this participle belongs to what follows, it is plain that Paul is here thinking of our contact with our brethren and not of polemics with errorists. To construe “in love get to grow up” sounds as though Paul has in mind a growth only in love. The emphasis the phrase would thus receive would be strange and misleading. Moreover, the main verb has its adverbial modifier, τὰπάντα, “in regard to everything,” which takes in more than love.
Because “for upbuilding of its own self in love” in v. 16 is to be construed as one phrase is not proof that “in love get grown up” is likewise one phrase. The very rhythm of the expressions used shows where each phrase belongs.
The present subjunctive ὦμεν is durative; the aorist subjunctive αὐξήσωμεν is punctiliar, namely ingressive: “get grown up” (intransitive). The idea of growing up continues the figure of “infants” and of “a man full-grown.” We cannot agree with translations and interpretations like the ones found in our versions: grow up “into him who is the Head, Christ.” To be told that growing up into the head is not an incongruous idea does not remove the incongruity. Do we, by growing into the head, become part of that Head, Christ? Some translate “unto the Head” as though he is the aim or goal, which is equally unthinkable. “Unto” also does not mean, “up to Christ’s stature” (R., W. P.), nor “into” the “center of our life in him.” Paul clearly distinguishes “the Head, Christ,” and “all the body” and never confuses them.
He even adds the adverbial accusative τὰπάντα, “regarding everything,” which is definite at that: “all the things that pertain to our relation to this Head.” This makes it plain that εἰςαὐτόν means, “in relation to him.” This signifies neither “in communion with him” nor “in likeness to him.” We “get grown up” in every respect as our relation to him requires of us, and that relation is at once stated, he is the Head, and we the body of this Head. The relation indicated is that the body of any head should correspond to its head. The body cannot remain an “infant” indefinitely. Its growth cannot remain stunted, not even in one or the other respect. Especially this body with its relation to this Head who is Christ. We must all actually arrive at the proper oneness of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at a man full-grown, at an age measure such as belongs to the fulness of Christ (v. 13). The emphasis is on the adverbial “in every respect.”
How natural, proper, even necessary such growth is the relative clause points out: “who is the Head, Christ.” The term “Head” puts Christ into connection with the entire body as a unit, which includes “all of us.” (v. 13). The body must correspond to the Head with which it is in vital relation. Paul writes “with respect to him” and places the antecedent of the pronoun, “Christ,” at the end of the relative clause and thus makes it strongly emphatic as it ought to be.
Ephesians 4:16
16 The full relation of this divine Head, Christ, to the body and to all its members is brought out in a second relative clause. This clause is emphatic and has the force of an independent statement: “he‚ from whom the whole body,” etc. See other relative clauses of this kind in Rom. 2:29; 3:8; 3:30; etc. The importance of the statement added in this fashion is apparent from the wealth of the modifications which make the thought so weighty.
Here we have another instance in which Paul makes his figurative expressions subservient to the reality he is presenting and does not let the figure dominate the reality. Ordinary bodies and heads grow in their relation to each other. This is not true of the Head, Christ; it is true only of the Una Sancta‚ his body in its relation to Christ. Paul brings that thought out with full clarity; he confines the figurative terms to the body, he remains their master. It is something worth learning from Paul.
We do not translate, “from which.” Since “Christ” precedes, the only correct rendering is “from whom.” Christ is the source (ἐκ) of the spiritual growth here described. Yes, Christ is the Head of this body; the emphatic insertion of his name indicates that as the Head he is vastly more than any other bodily head would be. He is himself the life, all the life of his body is drawn from him alone. We have nothing in nature that is comparable to this. The heavenly relations ever dwarf those of mere earth and nature. Our Head does not grow, only we, his body, grow, and our entire growth comes from him.
In this last clause Paul reaches back and combines all the main points he has developed from v. 1 onward. Once more we see the mastery of his mind. Here there is again the great oneness, the body framed and knit together, this body being in connection with its Head. Here there is now still more clearly the place of “each single one of us” (v. 7) and “the all” (οἱπάντες, v. 13) of us framed and knit together in oneness under Christ, the one Head and Lord (v. 5). Here there is again every one of us with the grace (v. 7) and the gifts (v. 8) given to him, making his contribution of supply in the ministry work for upbuilding the whole. Here there is again the oneness we are to keep (v. 3) with all its growth that is due to Christ. The description of the unifying process is thus adequately completed.
“All the body” includes every one of its members, not one being omitted, compare οἱπάντες in v. 13 and “we” in the preceding verbs. The word contains the thought of spiritual life; hence the predicate speaks about making growth. Yet this body draws all its life from Christ.
We regard the two present participles as descriptive: “as being framed together and knit together by means of the supply of every joint.” Both are passive. In regard to the first note 2:21. Body building and growth are not mixed figures as we have shown in v. 12. The first participle contains our word “harmony” and is amplified by the second, “knit together,” which is used with reference to men who are making a treaty or a contract. We may perhaps say that “framed together” is the more figurative and “knit together” more in line with the reality. We prefer to regard both as passive and not as middle; the agent involved is omitted because it is not stressed, yet this agent would be Christ.
But the means used are named: “by means of the supply of every joint.” Our versions offer the meaning by means of a paraphrase. The fact that ἁφή = “joint” (not “contact, sensation, feeling,” or something else) is plain from the close parallel found in Col. 2:19: “through the joints and bands.” A note in Galen (Kuehn’s edition, XIX, 87) shows that Hippocrates, the father of medicine, used this word in that sense; see Ewald. We, therefore, do not accept the rendering of the R. V. margin which suggests that the Greek means, “Through every joint of the supply,” as though the first genitive is the object of the preposition and not the second.
Paul is not speaking of the first formation of the church but of its subsequent growth, not in numbers, but in faith, knowledge, and life. The means for holding the body together as a living unit are like those that are found in any physical body: the Handreichung‚ supply, furnished by “every joint,” i. e., by every bone, muscle, and ligament supplying its vital forces. Whether ἐπιχορηγία (not used in the classics) is passive: “supply,” or abstract and active: “supplying,” makes little difference either here or in Phil. 1:19. Every supplying would surely produce a supply. The simplex of the word was used to denote the defraying of the great cost of the solemn public choruses by some wealthy patron. The connotation is generous abundance freely supplied.
The phrase introducecd by κατά does not modify “supply,” nor does it modify the verb ποιεῖται. The latter would lend the phrase a disorganizing emphasis, and even then the verb and not the object should follow immediately. In regard to the former, “the supply” needs no description, least of all one that is so disproportionate as the one contained in this phrase would be. The phrase introduced by κατά is appositional to the phrase introduced by διά and is thus explicative: framed and knit together “by means of every joint’s supply,” namely, “according to the working in its measure of each single part.” In this manner the means operate. “Every joint” and “each single part” are practically the same, yet “joint” stresses the living juncture with other joints, “part” only the general relation to the body as a whole. But note how “each single part” resumes “each single one of us” in v. 7.
Ἐνμέτρῳ, like εἰςμέτρον in v. 13, needs no article since a genitive follows which indicates what measure is referred to. The English is, “in its measure,” not, “in due measure” (R. V.). The “working” or energy of each individual part of the body has already been described in v. 11 as “ministry work.” As parts of a living spiritual body each one is alive, and in its measure each part, according to the gifts bestowed upon it, especially according to the faith and the knowledge (v. 13), works to aid others in a true diakonia.
Thus with each single part energetically contributing its measure of supply, all the body “produces the growth of the body for upbuilding of its own self in love.” The source of all the spiritual growth is Christ alone. “Increase” (our versions) is inexact, for αὔξησιν repeats αὐξήσωμεν, “get grown.” The object is placed forward for the sake of emphasis. It is blessed “growth” which all the body makes. Drawing from Christ, this whole body is able to make its own growth. The spiritual life in the church develops as life.
Instead of twice using the reflexive pronoun: “all the body makes the growth of itself for upbuilding of itself‚” Paul uses the noun in place of the first “itself” and thereby also removes any ambiguity as to the antecedent: “all the body makes growth (not merely of each single part but) of the body.” The verb is properly the reflexive middle: the body makes this growth for itself.
A final modifier rounds out the whole thought: this growth is being made “for (the) upbuilding of its own self in love,” v. 12, so that the great object, “upbuilding the body of Christ” in all its parts or members, is attained; v. 13, so that “we all arrive at the oneness of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God” with none being neglected or left behind. This making growth is ever in progress, hence we have the present tense. Some who are in the church have reached full manhood in faith and in knowledge, have actually become full-grown (τέλειος in v. 13); they are no longer “infants” (v. 14). As such they will contribute the more “abundant and generous supply” in all their “energetic working.” But there are ever new beginners, all the children and the youth, all the new converts; all these necessarily start as “infants,” all these need abundant “supply” to become full-grown as soon as possible. Paul’s is a perfect picture of the church as a living, unit body. Compare the picture Jesus draws in John 15:1, etc. He brings in also the dead branches that are cut away from the Vine; Paul omits them from his imagery.
“For upbuilding of its own self in love” names the sphere in which this upbuilding occurs. The interaction of the members of the church is entirely “in connection with love,” the love of intelligence filled with corresponding purpose. The love here referred to is not Christ’s love for us or our love for him but, as in v. 15, our love for each other. Paul twice writes, “in love.” Furnishing abundant and generous spiritual supply to each other is the supreme work of love. The motive of God and of Christ in all that they do for us is the motive that prompts us to do all that we do toward spiritually upbuilding the church. Note that the object of the upbuilding is the body itself and not love.
Love is the motivating sphere. Pam is not saying that, we are to build up love in the body but that we are to build up the body and to do this with loving hearts.
Paul has presented his admonition to unity (v. 1–3) and has supported this by pointing to the unit basis (v. 4–6) and by describing the unifying work (v. 7–16). He now proceeds with further admonitions, all of which rest on the fundamental one so fully elaborated thus far.
Four Admonitions for All the Members of the Una Sancta.
Ephesians 4:17
17 This group of four admonitions is plainly general and extends from 4:17 to 5:21. A further group which deals with specific classes of members follows in 5:22–6:9. Then comes the concluding admonition in 6:10, etc.
It is worth noting that in the first group of four admonitions each is connected with the preceding one (v. 17; v. 25; 5:1; 5:15). In marked contrast to this connected chain note the second group of four in which each is placed beside the other without connectives (5:22; 5:25; 6:1; 6:5). In 6:4 only “and” joins the fathers to the children and in 6:9 the masters to the slaves. Those four of the first group are properly connected, for the one admonition entails the other, and they also apply to all the members of the Una Sancta. Not so the next four, each of which is intended for only a limited class: wives—husbands—children and fathers—slaves and masters. The progression in this group is the natural one of the status of the classes named.
It is certainly worth noting these points of structure. The last admonition is plainly marked as such by “finally” in 6:10. This would give us ten admonitions: one + four + four + one. Ten is the number of greater rhetorical completeness, four the number of minor completeness, both are frequently used by Paul. One might make the first group consist of five admonitions by dividing 5:1–14 at v. 7, where another connective appears, but this would make 5:1–6 entirely negative. It would also make the total number of admonitions eleven with the first group consisting of five, which is quite unusual in Paul’s style.
The Admonition to Put off the Old and to Put on the New Man
In v. 1 the statement: “Accordingly I admonish you, I, the prisoner in the Lord,” places emphasis on the one admonishing. Now the verb is doubled and thus receives the emphasis. So also “this” is placed first and emphasizes the admonition plus the admonishing and no longer the admonisher. This, therefore, I declare and testify in the Lord appears only here, and nothing similar to it is found in connection with the other admonitions. We thus conclude that this preamble is intended to introduce all the admonitions that follow. At the same time this preamble separates these admonitions from the first one (v. 1–16), and properly so since the first one regarding spiritual unity in faith and in knowledge, i. e., in the Word, dominates all the rest.
We thus also consider it ill-advised to make οὖν connect only with v. 16, or to refer it back only to v. 1. All that is stated in v. 1–16 is a unit, and the connection is according.
“This I declare and testify in the Lord” is important. Indeed, putting off the old and putting on the new man includes all that Paul has to offer in the way of admonitions. “I declare” makes “this” stand out in an objective way, and “I testify” stands out as personal testimony from Paul himself. “In the Lord” connects Paul’s declaration and testimony with “the Lord” to whom all the Ephesians and Paul himself belong. see v. 1 for the same phrase. “In the Lord” touches the motive which prompts Paul to declare and testify and appeal to the motive which ought to make his readers comply by spiritual obedience.
This, that you no longer walk as also the Gentiles walk in (the) vanity of their mind, as having been darkened in their understanding, as having been alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the petrifaction of their heart; etc.
The infinitive is appositional and epexegetical and is really indirect discourse and not a substitution for an indicative but for an imperative: “Do not walk any longer.” This verb is commonly used to denote our entire conduct as this is governed by our hearts. “No longer” implies that at one time the Ephesians did so walk as they are now no longer to walk. But the present tense also implies that they had already made the change and are now to continue thus. Paul describes this wrong walk concretely by a reference to the Gentiles in the midst of whom the Ephesians lived, whose wicked mode of life they constantly beheld. This was the kind of a life they had once led, a life that should now be forever impossible for them.
“You = all the Ephesians. The fact that some of them were former Jews we have seen in 2:11 where Paul addresses the Gentile believers separately, and the following discussion shows how the Gentile believers are on an equality with their Jewish fellow believers. This present reference to the Gentiles does not imply that all of Paul’s readers were former Gentiles, that this epistle was not intended for Ephesus where some of the members were former Jews but was an encyclical that was addressed to other Asian churches that were composed entirely of Gentile believers. For one thing, it would be strange, indeed, and impossible of proof that even such other, recently formed churches were wholly Gentile. “As also the Gentiles walk” presents these pagans as the glaring example which all the Ephesians should avoid.
These Gentiles were the extreme and thus included all that was less. The Scriptures constantly use extremes in this way. In Matt. 5:21, etc., and 27, etc., Jesus shows that murder and adultery include all that is accounted less by men. So it is here. Their religion might keep the Jews from certain actions of the pagans; even pagans did not always go to the extreme of paganism. But all spiritual vanity, ignorance, hardness of heart, with the resultant conduct, are alike. Thus the extreme of paganism includes it all.
“As also the Gentiles walk in (the) vanity of their mind” includes the entire wrong walk. This is the summary of the negative side; all that follows is elaboration. The summary is stated in the phrase “in (the) vanity of their mind”; all that follows expounds this “vanity,” which does not need an article because it is made definite by the genitive. Derived from μάταιος, the noun means that which does not lead to the goal. The companion noun which is derived from κενός = that which is without real content, hollow. The two are often confused. C.-K. 723 and others have ματαιότης mean Gehaltlosigkeit‚ but the Greek word for that idea is κενότης (which is not found in the New Testament).
Paul does not say that the Gentiles are addlepated, that their mind has nothing in it; it is only too full. He says that all that their mind contains leads them to nothing. It puts them on a course that ends far from the goal. Their mind directs them on a wild-goose chase. Κενός would put nothing at the start, in the mind itself; μάταιος puts nothing at the end of the whole career that is directed by the mind.
Νοῦς is the proper word, “mind” as that which produces thought yet not only in the sense of intellect; for “vanity” implies a goal and an aim for the mind. The directing will is included; the thoughts aim to bring the person to the right goal. In this case the goal is vacuity, emptiness, delusion. See Delitzsch, Biblische Psychologie‚ 178, etc. What a picture! Men with thinking, willing minds, rational creatures, walking and walking on and on throughout life, following the dictates of a mind that leads them at every step and at the end to nothing, to monumental, tragic failure!
Ephesians 4:18
18 The two masculine participles are construed ad sensum with the neuter “Gentiles.” The ὄντες modifies both and makes both periphrastic perfects, the tense indicates a past act with its present and enduring result, the periphrastic form stresses the continuing condition: once darkened and alienated, these Gentiles go on in this terrible condition. The agent of these passives is left unnamed, it is Satan. Regarding the second periphrastic participle compare Col. 1:21. Paul mentions the alienated condition in 3:12, but now “from the life of God” takes us farther. It is well to remember that the Scriptures speak of “the darkness” as being a definite evil power or monster, and that the word includes what this power produces. This conception is reflected in the verbs σκοτίζω and σκοτόω, “to darken.”
“In the understanding” is the dative of relation: “as regards,” etc. Διάνοια, “understanding,” is not the same as νοῦς, “mind.” The plural = “reasonings,” 2:3. The singular = the activity and the product of the mind. The Gentiles live not only as men who have utter darkness all around them but as men whose entire understanding and thought are darkness. They have not merely been plunged into darkness so that, if they could get out of it, they could see; the darkness has filled them themselves in their very understanding where there should be light. One should get the full force of the fact Paul is stating.
The best commentary is Rom. 1:19, etc., to which add John 9:40, 41. Even the light of nature, which is so bright all around these men, they do not see. They consider themselves wise and are become fools. The Pharisees claimed to be οἱβλέποντες, those who see, and because of their inner blindness, combined with arrogance, saw nothing. Many a present-day “scientist” claims to know but knows nothing as he ought to know it. The same is true with regard to the light of Bible facts. It shines and shines, but the darkened “understanding” of the skeptic and the modernist shuts out the light. How could minds like this arrive at the right destination?
The second participle is added without a connective and states the result of the first. The condition of having been darkened involves the condition of having been alienated from the life of God, the life that belongs to him (possessive genitive). The word ζωή (vita qua vivimus), the vital principle itself, is never used in the sense of βίος (vita quam vivimus), the course of our physical life. The genitive is often made one of origin, but it is like “the grace, the mercy, the love of God,” so that Jesus can say: “I am the Life.” In secular Greek ζωή refers to physical life, consider “zoology” as compared with “biography.” The New Testament has elevated the word very considerably. It thus carries a soteriological meaning. We see it most clearly in Gal. 2:20: no longer does Paul live, but Christ lives in him.
This = that the life of God is in him; and this is “life eternal.” It is begotten in us, bestowed by the quickening mentioned in 2:5. Alienation from this life is death in transgressions and sins (2:1), ἀπώλεια, destruction or perdition. The “vanity” of v. 17 consists in this that the life of God is never reached.
The first διά modifies both participles, and the second διά expounds the first. To make the two phrases parallel and to let them modify only the second participle, is unwarranted; nor can the first phrase be construed with the first participle, the second phrase with the second. The underlying reason or cause for having been darkened and alienated is “the ignorance, the one that is in them,” and the reason or cause for this ignorance is “the petrifaction of their heart.” This looks like reversing things, that Paul should say, “Darkening and alienation cause the ignorance, and the ignorance causes the hardening.” But Paul is right, the facts support him, and he is ever true to the facts.
Note that he does not write, “Because of their ignorance” (a mere αὐτῶν), but, “Because of the ignorance, the one that is in them.” It is not an acquired ignorance that is due to absence of light and information; it is an original ignorance that is in them from the start, the ignorance of inborn sin. Rom. 1:19, etc., states that men had the full light of nature and knew God and then in their wise folly changed his glory into human and beastly forms. This is the inborn ignorance Paul means, and it is this that caused the terrible darkening and alienation that progressed ever farther downward, to ever lower forms of paganism. Jesus says the same in John 3:19: men loved darkness more than light, took darkness in preference to light. The idea of religious evolution is not true to the facts. The fact is not that men eagerly took the light they had and by it rose to more and more light until they came to monotheism, yea, to Christianity.
The fact is the reverse just as Paul says: they hated the light they had. Thus their ignorance caused the darkness and alienation in which they now are.
But this ignorance is the proximate cause, under it lies the ultimate one: “the petrifaction of their heart,” of the personal center of their being, the seat of intellect, emotions, and especially also will. Ὁπῶρος = tufa, a mass turned to stone. This term is used with reference to marble and to softer stone, to stalactites, stalagmites, etc. See πώρωσις in Rom. 11:25; on the verb compare Rom. 11:7. An inner petrifaction of the very heart itself was the cause of this inborn ignorance which caused the darkening in spite of all the light in nature and all the light inherited from Adam and from Noah, and with this darkening went the alienation. The very heart was stone-hard, unresponsive to moral and spiritual impression.
This is what is wrong with the natural man; yes, he is blind and ignorant, but worse, his heart is stone (compare Ezek. 11:19). M.-M. 561 refer to the idea of Armitage Robinson that “obtuseness or intellectual blindness is the meaning of the context.” But Paul has more than this in mind. The ancients translated pōrōsis with “blindness” as if πήρωσις were the word used in the text, and Luther followed them, our A. V. followed him. R., W. P.‚ notes the medical use of this word in Hippocrates to denote callous hardening. But this does not make the word itself medical any more than does our “hardening” of the arteries.
Paul heaps up the terms in his compact way: darkening—alienation—ignorance—petrifaction; but each is in its proper place. This is the condition of the Gentiles. This passage is a locus classicus for the state of the natural man and is used by the church against all Pelagianism, semi-Pelagianism, synergism, and moralism. God’s miracle of grace is described in Ezek. 11:19.
Ephesians 4:19
19 The relative clause is parallel to the two perfect participles used in v. 18. It adds pagan action to pagan condition. Both v. 18 and 19 thus show how the Gentiles walk “in vanity” and get nowhere throughout their lives. Like the participles used in v. 18, the relative οἵτινες has both causal and qualitative force: they such as, having lost compunction, gave themselves over to excess for practicing all uncleanness with greediness. Darkened and alienated, this is how the Gentiles walk in the vanity. Such they are, and because they are such, vanity is their entire sphere of life.
The current interpretation finds two sins mentioned here which are joined: sexual excess and greed for money. We are told that they are special marks of paganism and are thus named here. This thought has also been suggested, that sexual excesses require money so that covetousness is here added by Paul. It is rather strange that sexual vices should be mentioned here when in 5:3, etc., Paul centers an entire admonition on these vices. The same is true with regard to covetousness since v. 28 follows. Why speak of only two kinds of sin here, where the entire walk of the Gentiles is described? Two types of sin are not introduced here as notable examples of all kinds. Paul says οἵτινες which pictures the entire Gentile world in all its depravity.
The perfect participle is exactly like the two used in v. 18 and describes the condition that no longer feels pain, here twinges of conscience: “past feeling” (our versions) or “past compunction.” In this degraded moral condition the Gentiles “gave themselves over to excess for working all uncleanness with greediness.” They literally abandoned themselves to this excess (παρέδωκαν, aorist, R. 1214; B.-D. 95, 1). Ἀσέλγεια = Zuegellosigkeit, Ausgelassenheit‚ “excess.” Compare Rom. 1:24, 26, 28, and see how in his judgment God “gave them over” to their vices. In passages where this word is used as one item in a list, it gets to mean sexual excess (Mark 7:22; Rom. 13:13; 2 Cor. 12:21; Gal. 5:19); not so where, as here, in 2 Pet. 2:2, 7, 18; Jude 4, it is used as a modifier or in its general sense; then it retains its unmodified meaning “excess,” plural “excesses.” The R. V. tries to carry the modified meaning throughout by translating “lasciviousness.”
Nor should “all uncleanness” be restricted to sexual sins and ἐργασία regarded as meaning Gewerbe‚ regular trade (R. V., margin). Only prostitution can be made a regular business and not all sexual uncleanness. The word means: Beschaeftigung mit allen moeglichen suendlichen Dingen (B.-P. 478). “Uncleanness” is to be understood in its broadest sense: the Gentiles were such as gave themselves over in excess (without restraint or moderation) “for practicing all manner of moral taint” (Unlauterkeit, Lasterhaftigkeit) or vice, and did that “with greediness.” No restraint held them back, nor could their greediness get enough of tainted doings. The last phrase does not add the one vice of covetousness to another vice, namely sexual excess.
Paul is describing the whole pagan life and not only two of its vicious features. The whole of it was “practice of uncleanness,” was this in all its forms. “Uncleanness” marked their religion and their worship, their pleasures and diversions, their business and their social relations, their politics, their public shows, and what not. “Uncleanness” is the main word. “Practice of all uncleanness” points to all the doings of paganism; and the modifying terms, “having no compunction—excess—in greediness,” emphasize the extreme length to which the working out of all uncleanness was carried.
Such was paganism; it is such to this day, an outrageous vile mess. Read the four Gospels and the Acts and see that much similar uncleanness was found among the Jews. In Rom. 1:18–32 Paul combines the ungodliness and the unrighteousness of Jews as well as of Gentiles (see the writer on this portion of Romans).
Ephesians 4:20
20 Paul declares and testifies (v. 17) that his readers were done with this kind of life. Emphatically he writes: But you, you have not thus learned Christ! We prefer the perfect whereas the Greek merely states the past fact with an aorist. The Ephesians did learn Christ, and not “thus,” so as to allow anything of such practice of uncleanness to continue. “Not thus” repudiates all of it. The negation is a litotes; “not thus” = in a manner that is utterly opposite. To learn Christ means far more than to learn about him, to get acquainted with him, or even to learn to know his doctrine.
To learn Christ is the counterpart of to preach Christ (1 Cor. 1:23; 2 Cor. 1:19) and means to believe that preaching, to embrace Christ in all that makes him Christ. We decline to divide this little sentence: “But you not thus! You did learn Christ,” etc. We also decline to make it a question: “But you, did you not learn Christ thus?”
Ephesians 4:21
21 Paul appends a parenthetical conditional clause: if, indeed, you have heard him and were taught in connection with him even as there is truth in Jesus, etc. This condition of reality does not intend to raise a doubt; it does, however, intend to remind Paul’s readers of the unquestionable fact that they heard and were taught so that if any one of them did not learn‚ the fault does not lie with their teachers or with what these taught. The verbs and also their tenses correspond: one learns by hearing and being taught. Even the change of voice is expressive: “you heard”—because “you were taught.” What one hears the Greek puts into the accusative: “him,” Christ, who is the object also of “you learned,” but now “him” is put forward for the sake of emphasis: “if, indeed, him you heard.” This is also done in the phrase: “in connection with him you were taught.” “In him” merely repeats the object of the teaching with the passive verb. There is no deep mystical idea in this phrase. We rather note the emphasis: “In him” you were instructed, in him as your branch of religious and spiritual knowledge. Paul himself had done this instructing for over two years, and it had been continued by the elders mentioned in Acts 20:17.
Καθώς is correlative to οὐχοὕτως: “not so did you learn Christ (as has been stated)—if, indeed, him you did hear and in him were instructed as there is truth in Jesus.” The last clause makes plain what the two emphatic pronouns “him” (Christ) convey. Jesus himself says: “I am the Truth,” John 14:6. So Paul says: “There is, indeed, truth in Jesus.” He now uses the personal name “Jesus” because the Ephesians are not to think only of “Christ” or the Messiah in a general way but of “Jesus” who lived, labored, died, and rose again here on earth, of this Jesus as the Christ. Ἔστιν should be accented, for it is here not the copula but the verb to denote existence. Paul might have said, “The truth exists in Jesus,” and made the subject specific; by omitting the article and writing “truth” Paul says that whatever is truth (i. e., spiritual reality) in any sense exists in Jesus, in him whom they learned if, indeed, they heard him when they were instructed in him.
This clause has had various interpretations: “if him you heard … as it is a fact” that you did. Some then draw “in Jesus” to the following: “that in Jesus you put away,” etc., Westcott and Hort, Greek margin. “Truth” is at times translated “holiness”: “even as there is a pattern of holiness in Jesus.” The whole clause is also drawn to v. 22: “even as it is true teaching in Jesus that you should put off,” etc. Or “as he (Christ) is truth in Jesus,” or: “as he (Christ) is in Jesus in truth,” as though there were two kinds of instruction, one dealing with the Christ idea apart from the person of Jesus, the other connecting the Christ idea with this person Jesus. Each of these varying efforts has only a few adherents.
The point of “truth,” which means reality and verity, is so pertinent in this connection because the darkened and alienated Gentiles had never even heard it and were thus in ignorance and in hardness of heart walking in the vanity of their mind and giving themselves up to all uncleanness. All this delusion was swept away for the Ephesians who had learned Christ—if, indeed, they had actually heard him and been actually instructed in him even as real truth exists only in this person Jesus.
Ephesians 4:22
22 Paul continues: that you put away from yourselves once for all, as concerning your former mode of life, the old man which is in process of corruption in accord with the lusts of the deceit, and that you continue to be renewed in regard to the spirit of your mind; and that you put on once for all the new man which, in accord with God, is created in the truth’s righteousness and holiness.
The three infinitives depend on “ye were taught” and state what the Ephesians were taught in connection with Christ. Because the minor clause intervenes, it was necessary to add ὑμᾶς; if the infinitives had followed immediately after “you were taught,” this pronoun would have been omitted, for the subject of an infinitive is normally that of the main verb. It is written only when, as here, there is a reason, or when the subject of the infinitive differs from that of the main verb. R. 1089, 1038.
The remark of B.-D. 406, 2, that the construction is wenig durchsichtig is unjustified and is probably due to the attempts of commentators to make the infinitives appositional to “truth.” That construction would require at least “the truth,” the infinitives then stating its contents. Paul keeps to the main line of his thought, conversion away from the whole Gentile life and walk, and is not defining the general idea of “truth” or reality in Jesus. In fact, these infinitives are not such a definition; they denote actions and thus, as far as “truth” is concerned, only the products of “truth.”
It is not necessary to regard these infinitives as indirect discourse for original imperatives. Although the whole paragraph implies admonition, Paul nowhere uses “I admonish,” as he did in v. 1. We should not think that he is calling on the Ephesians to do what these infinitives state. They had learned Christ, they had heard and had been taught (three historical aorists), and Paul now states what they had been taught. “Did learn Christ,” like the “if” clause, puts beyond question the fact that the Ephesians had followed this teaching. Paul recalls its contents to their minds. The “if” clause implies only this much, that if any member had not truly accepted the teaching—which Paul can scarcely believe—that person certainly should do so now.
The first and the third infinitive are aorists: to put off the old man and to put on the new are punctiliar actions, done once, done once for all; the second infinitive is present and durative: the renewing is continuous and progressive. These tenses express neither past nor present time, they express Aktionsart‚ aorists are punctiliar, momentary (here not constative); the present is durative, continuous. To overlook the force of these tenses of the infinitives is to understand Paul’s thought but partially.
In v. 22 we have the negative side, in v. 24 the positive, but there is no interval of time: the old man is put off when the new is put on; either is impossible without the other. “That you put off or away from yourselves (middle) once for all the old man” refers to a definite and permanent break. Paul’s aorist views it as being nothing less. The fact that one may fall from grace and be re-converted is passed by. It is quite true that the old man still clings to us after the decisive break and thus must be put away again and again. That is why Paul adds the iterative present infinitive: “but that you continue to be renewed,” etc. Paul’s view is: one definite, decisive break and then a continuous renewal. We should read the first two infinitives together: 1) that you put away and (δέ, on the other hand) be renewed—2) that you put on.
The κατά phrase, “as concerning your former mode of life,” resumes what has been said about this “conversation” (A. V.) in v. 18, 19 and thus weaves the thought together. In their former mode of life they were ruled by what Paul calls “the old man,” the old, sinful ego derived from Adam by our natural birth plus the entire old, sinful habitus‚ i. e., thoughts, motives, emotions, volitions, in their evil moral quality. Not merely this or that is wrong with us so that mending will correct the faults (Pelagianism), the entire nature is wrong. Putting off this old man is not a painless operation, it is violent, painful; Rom. 6:6 calls it a crucifixion.
It is self-evident that no person can himself put off the old man. We put him off by the efficacious power of grace (2:5). Nor does this power only help us; we contribute not one iota. We‚ indeed, put him off just as we repent, we believe, etc.; but in the very nature of the case we do these things when grace works this putting off, repentance, faith in us with its divine power. The old man is put off, crucified; he is not converted—he cannot be; he is not renewed—he cannot be; he is replaced by the new man by a creative act of God (v. 24; 2:5, 10).
“Former” and “old” look back; the present participle, “which is in process of corruption in accord with the lusts of deceit,” looks at the entire condition of the old man. One may regard the participle as a middle or as a passive: “corrupting himself” or “being corrupted” by an unnamed agent; the former seems preferable. The tense is graphic. It presents the old man as working steadily at his own ruin and destruction. The word does not refer to a progress of moral decline, for the old man is wholly depraved and corrupt from the start. The reference is to v. 19 as also “according to the lusts of the deceit” indicates.
In harmony with (κατά) the lusts in which the old man indulges he plunges himself down progressively into everlasting ruin or destruction. To be sure, we and the old man are to be differentiated, for after having rid ourselves of him we remain. Paul does not need to say that by corrupting himself the old man also corrupts (ruins or destroys) us. When a virulent disease runs its course, it wrecks itself, of course, by wrecking the patient.
Ἐπιθυμίαι, originally a vox media for “desires,” receives its connotation from the context and in the New Testament is steadily used in the evil sense of “lusts.” The A. V. regards the genitive as adjectival: “deceitful lusts”; it is subjective: “the lusts which the deceit uses” to bring on the ruin. Distinguish ἀπάτη from the πλάνη of v. 14. This is “the deceit” (specific) that is native to the old man, the lying, deceptive power that rules him. All lusts have this deceit back of them. Deceit offers the cup that tastes sweet but has death in it.
The lusts are many, but the deceit is always the same. Men who have been darkened (v. 18) give themselves over to lusts with greediness (v. 19) and even want the deceit. The only salvation is to get rid of the old man with his deceit, lusts, and ruination.
Ephesians 4:23
23 With the slightly adversative δέ Paul adds to the decisive putting off of the old man the constant renewing begun in the putting off. This continuation always follows the definite break. The tense is marked, it is a present between two aorists.
Putting off the old man is negative, being constantly renewed is positive. Paul might have continued the negative, for the Christian life and walk is a constant war against the attempted usurpations of the old man with his lusts and deceit who tries to get back his former control. Paul prefers the positive, for we keep this usurpation in check by a steady and a progressive spiritual renewal. The infinitive is not middle as Luther has regarded it: erneuert euch‚ but passive: “ever being renewed.” The middle is always transitive and has an object; none is named here. The agent in the passive is God or the Spirit. While the renewal may be predicated of us since, after the putting away of the old man, we have new spiritual powers and cooperate with God in using them, here the passive attributes this blessed work to God.
Ἀνανεοῦσθαι = ἀνακαινοῦσθαι, which we translate in the same way since we lack two words for “new.” The Greek distinguishes νέος, “new” in the sense of not having existed before, from καινός, “new” as different from something old. In the infinitive the former newness is referred to, yet it is followed in v. 24 by the other, in “the new man,” καινός. The prefix ἀνά is our “renewed.” In Col. 3:10 “the new man” is called νέος, and the word for the renewing act is derived from καινός, which again states the newness in both ways but reverses them in the adjective and the activity.
We regard the dative as a dative of respect: “in regard to the spirit of your mind.” Some regard this as a reference to the Holy Spirit, the dative being used as the agent with the passive; others regard it as an instrumental dative. But this construction does not agree with the appended genitive. Nowhere else is the Spirit called “the Spirit of our mind.” The passive infinitive itself implies the divine agency in the renewing process. This process is, however, an inward one. Our versions make the dative locative: “in the spirit,” etc., which is also good. Not only our outward conduct is wholly new; this newness starts from our very spirit.
Our immaterial part, which is ordinarily called “the soul” in English, is in the Scriptures viewed in its relation to the body as animating and giving it life; it is then called ψυχή, Lebenshauch‚ life. But when this immaterial part is viewed as receiving impressions from God and his Πνεῦμα it is termed πνεῦμα, “spirit.” That is the case here. It is well, however, to remember that in English “soul” is used much like “spirit.” We see this when we note that the Greek forms the adjective ψυχικός, “carnal,” from ψυχή, which is the direct opposite of πνευματικός, “spiritual.” We are unable to form such an adjective from “soul.”
Paul does not write merely, “As regards your spirit”; he puts it in a richer way, “As regards the spirit of your mind,” which recalls “the vanity of their mind” in v. 17. On “mind” see v. 17. Yet this is not to be reduced to “the animus of your mind” as we speak of the spirit a person manifests in some act. This is the limiting genitive. Paul means our “spirit” or soul insofar as the thinking, directing “mind” is concerned, the mind that governs our actions and determines our aim and goal. “Vanity of their mind,” as we have seen, is the mind reaching out for an empty goal, engaging in actions that end at no proper goal. Our spirit, freed from the domination of the old man, will use our mind for nothing that supports the old man, will with all our thinking and willing seek only what is new, full of blessedness and salvation.
It has been well observed that, as far as the Holy Spirit is concerned, the analogy of Scripture does not use even the possessive “our Spirit” as it does “our Lord” and “our God”; much less then “the Spirit of our mind” or anything similar. This ought to exclude all the hazy interpretations of a union of God’s Spirit with our spirit as far as this expression of Paul’s is concerned. Our own spirit in its activity of mind, in its moral and spiritual thought and decisions, is to continue in a new course. A perennial rejuvenation is to bring forth newness of life so that we walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4), serve in newness of spirit (Rom. 7:6), as a new creature (Gal. 6:15).
Ephesians 4:24
24 “And that you put on once for all the new man” is the positive aorist which completes the negative, “that you put away from yourselves the old man,” and is thus properly added with καί. Both are instantaneous acts (aorists in this sense). Both are really one: to do the one is to do the other. The joining of negative and positive is done for the sake of clearness and completeness of statement. If it be asked why, after having already added the constant renewal to the riddance of the old man, Paul now brings in the first putting on of the new man, we may answer that this would in a way be unnecessary if all he said were only that we put on the new man. But he says much more.
As he characterized the old man, so he characterizes the new man, and the latter is so important as to become necessary. We must not only be reminded of what the new man is, we must also remember how he comes into existence (“created”) so as constantly to be renewed.
This aorist, like the first one in v. 22, does not then state the culmination of the renewing process. The new man is not put on at the end of this process. The new man is not the glorified man. Nor does the aorist indicate successive individual instances: “now and again, in each individual instance, obeying the good, saving thoughts and impulses of the new man,” which, to say the least, would require an iterative present tense. Such a tense would then be in place also in v. 22. The new man is put on as the old is put off, by one decisive act. Nor could iterations be understood without this decisive act. The iteration is already provided for in the durative infinitive used in v. 23.
“The new man” is the opposite of “the old man,” hence we have καινός in the sense already explained. At one time our nature, as it centered in the ego, was “old,” like Adam since the fall, “flesh”; by grace this old man is replaced in us by the new man, in the very center of our being or ego. Not this or that part of us has become new but our inward being which was once old. This is more than a new habitus‚ it is the life principle itself which produces the habitus.
The attributive, “the one created in accord with God,” is like an apposition and thus a climax (R. 776). Both the noun and the attribute have an emphasis. The passive “created” implies God as the Creator of the new man, and κτίζω is used in its proper meaning, “to call into existence.” The new man had to be “created” (compare 2:5, 10; 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15). The monergism of grace cannot be more adequately stated so as to rule out even the faintest synergism. Yet “created” does not signify “by omnipotence” as it does in the domain of nature. Spiritual creation is due to the δύναμις of grace, “the power” of the gospel (Rom. 1:16), which works its wonders in the ordo salutis. Grace is Calvinized when it is confused with omnipotence, and there is not a twofold omnipotence, one that may, and one that may not be resisted.
“According to God” signifies likeness. God is the model, the new man a copy, and the latter accords with the former. The point of likeness is expressed by the phrase: “in the truth’s righteousness and holiness,” these two being combined as in Luke 1:75. The genitive makes the two nouns definite. Paul has already mentioned “truth” in v. 11; its opposite is “deceit” in v. 22, “error” in v. 14. “The truth” is the entire saving reality conveyed by the gospel. Why limit it to “moral truth”? Why philosophize: “being as it ought to be,” confusing the concept “being” with the concept “the truth,” i. e., the saving realities that exist in Christ Jesus (v. 22), with our own regenerated existence?
Righteousness and holiness are God’s attributes (“in accord with God”); the new man has what corresponds to these attributes, has it, however, only as being derived from God, created by him. These attributes are closely allied. Righteousness is God’s unchanging love of right, and holiness his unchanging aversion to sin. Both attributes are ever active and never quiescent. The natural man shuts his eyes to both and makes a god for his own use who is an indulgent grandfather; for a righteous and holy God is a terror to impenitent sinners. We may note that by declaring us righteous for Christ’s sake God exercises his righteousness (Rom. 3:26) as much as when he damns the impenitent unbeliever.
The new man resembles God in righteousness and in holiness. Both qualities are his because God declares him to be righteous in the judgment of justification, and because the new man then lives in righteousness and holiness. The latter never takes place without the former. Righteousness and holiness are the chief perfections of Adam in his original state, in the imago Dei. The restoration of the divine image in us most certainly includes our justification for Christ’s sake, the product of which is a righteous and holy life. The creation of the new man in us does not at once stop all our sinning (note v. 23), but it does place the new man in control of our life and our conduct; our imputed righteousness and holiness produce acquired righteousness and holiness, and this product increases until the last and perfect purgation takes place in the hour of death.
Δικαιοσύνη occurs often in the New Testament, but ὁσιότης only twice. The adjective ὅσιος = chasid (Hebrew) = sanctus as opposed to pollutus. We are interested especially in the synonym ἅγιος, sacer, qodesch‚ “set apart,” holy in this sense. See the excellent discussion of the four synonyms by Trench. The current New Testament word is “saints,” ἅγιοι (1:1), not ὅσιοι, the latter adjective is, in fact, rarely employed. The mystery cults certainly had nothing to do with that; for those who practiced these cults did not use the latter word to describe themselves.
It is the connotation and the flavor of the words themselves that decide their use in any context. If the word used here were ἁγιωσύνη, which is in form, too, a mate to δικαιοσύνη, we should have “holiness” = the state set apart for God, separated unto him; ἁγιότης (resembling ὁσιότης) would be the abstract quality of such consecratedness and separateness. Ὁσιότης, the word used by Paul, is “holiness” as opposed to all pollution, as being in accord with the everlasting sanctities, and as accepting their obligation. Perhaps the combination of righteousness and holiness is due somewhat to classic writers, but both terms have their distinctive Scriptural meaning and are not used in a pagan sense. It is valuable also to note the remark of Trench that these two Greek words are never interchanged in the Scriptures.
We decline to accept the adjectival genitive of the A. V.: “true holiness,” just as we declined to accept “the deceitful lusts” in v. 22. “Righteousness and holiness” are two sides of the same quality and thus convey one thought which becomes the stronger because it is expressed by two words. Trench is right in discarding pagan distinctions such as that righteousness refers to our relation to men, and holiness to our relation to God: “The Scripture gives no room for such an antithesis as this,” although some commentators accept it. Both refer to God and only thus to men. Nor does righteousness refer to conduct, holiness to the heart; both refer to heart and conduct. Nor is the former generic, the latter specific.
Nor does the second refer more directly to God, for δικαιοσύνη involves the divine δίκη or norm of right. Both equally and jointly belong to “the truth,” the blessed gospel realities.
We add the illuminating note given by Trench. When Joseph was tempted by Potiphar’s wife he remained ὅσιος by reverencing the everlasting sanctities of the marriage bond ordained of God: “How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” ἅγιος in that he separated himself from the temptress since he belonged to God, and ἁγνός in that he kept himself pure and undefiled.
The middle, “put on yourselves,” uses the figure of a garment which covers the body and gives it a new appearance. But this garment is intended for the soul so that the idea of hiding anything under it is excluded. The old coat of the lusts of the deceit is forever cast aside for the new robe of righteousness and holiness which belong to Christ’s saving truth. In this garment we stand before the all-seeing eyes of God as his new creation and also before men as we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works (2:10), to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth.
In this admonition the important point is the old man and the new. Hence no specific sins or virtues are mentioned. Sin is mentioned only as “uncleanness” (v. 19) and “lusts” (v. 22), godliness only as being contained in “righteousness and holiness” (v. 24). This leaves room for further admonition.
The Admonitions not to Wrong our Neighbor
Ephesians 4:25
25 Those who think that Paul adds one admonition loosely to another are mistaken, for this is never Paul’s way of writing. As v. 1–16 is carefully built up, so each new paragraph is added in logical order, and each is likewise carefully constructed. We now come to specific sins and to the virtues that must take their place. Like v. 17–24, this paragraph is strongly negative. In the next paragraph positive and negative features are more nearly balanced, and in the one following the positive predominates. All this, too, is carefully intended.
Διό uses Paul’s previous declaration and testimony (v. 17) regarding the truth they have learned about putting off the old man and putting on the new as the basis for the specific admonitions that now follow. Wherefore, having put away the falsehood, do you ever speak truth, each one with his neighbor, because we are members one of another!
The participle is causal and not modal; moreover, it is an aorist, and hence does not mean, “putting away falsehood” each time we speak to our neighbor and uttering truth instead, but, “since we have once put away the lie or falsehood,” let us not use any of it when we speak to our neighbor. This is the same putting away that was mentioned in v. 22, even the tense is the same. Nor is τὸψεῦδος das Luegen‚ “lying,” or das luegenhafte Wesen‚ a course of conduct; but “the lie,” “the falsehood,” the opposite of “the truth” of the gospel (v. 24), “truth in Jesus” (v. 21). “The lie” = “the deceit” (v. 22) and “the deception or error” (v. 14). The sense is: because in our conversion we have once for all cast away the lie that dominated us.
This is the great lie that rules all who have not put off the old man, the lie by which they are darkened and blinded, alienated, because of the ignorance and hardness of heart, the lie that impels to all uncleanness in life (v. 18, 19). This lie lies about God and about man, about sin and about punishment, about godliness and about morality. Rom. 1:18, etc., describes how it operates; it strangles the truth in unrighteousness, it renders man inexcusable.
This lie is the natural man’s religion. It appears in multitudinous forms but is here viewed as a unit. Truth is reality, every lie is a fiction, a pretended reality, that asserts that something is so when it is really not so at all, or that something is not so when it really is so. To trust any lie is to head for a great wreck, especially to trust “the lie” which substitutes fictions for the saving realities of God and the gospel; the wreck that ensues is irreparable. The participle is not an imperative; it states a
past fact, it forms the basis for the imperative verb.
Once for all having put away the lie, which means having once for all embraced the saving truth, how can we after that do otherwise than evermore “speak truth,” i. e., what is truth (no article), with our neighbor? This injunction naturally comes first, following, as it does, “the truth” mentioned in v. 24. Those who have the new man, created in accord with God in the (gospel) truth’s righteousness and holiness, cannot in any matter lie to a neighbor, whether this be a fellow believer or not. The imperative is durative: “ever be speaking truth.” The plural “do not speak” is individualized by adding “each one.” This injunction is identical with that stated in Zech. 8:16 and may be intended as a quotation without the use of a formula of quotation.
“Because we are members one of another” does not intend to restrict “neighbor” to a fellow believer. The thought that we may lie to those who are not Christians is itself a lie. The term “members” recalls all that Paul has said about “the body of Christ” in v. 12, 16 and also in v. 4, “one body.” All of us are members of this body. But instead of stating the relation of each one to the body as a whole, Paul states the relation of each one to every other one in this body. By lying to any man we should injure the body by injuring one or the other member, perhaps many in this body. A Christian who lies injures not only the person to whom he lies, whether this be a brother or not, he injures most of all a circle of his fellow members by grieving them, giving them a bad example, destroying their confidence in him, etc.
As a liar he is a pest among them. Here and in the following Paul does not dwell on God and his penalties. He keeps to his great subject, the Una Sancta. As members of this divine body we must build it up (v. 16) and not injure or tear it down, whether by lying or by any other sin.
The ethical question is constantly raised as to whether a lie is ever justified. The casuists offer cases that are so tight as to lead them to conclude that a deliberate lie is frequently entirely right and justifiable. The doctor who knows that a patient must die tells him he will get well because to tell him the truth may hasten his end. But this is making the end justify the means, a principle which would then justify any number of sins. Every pastor meets this problem. So also does the lawyer in court, the soldier in war, the businessman, the laborer, the members of a family, man with man. A man confronts me with a gun. He wants to kill my brother. I know where my brother is hiding. A lie seems the way out. So Peter lied to save his own skin.
Panic, loss of presence of mind, cowardice make a Christian lie. There is always a way out, perhaps there are several. Confront a direct question asked you with a question of your own. This turns the tables on the questioner and often changes the whole situation at once.
Take the patient. The blunt truth may needlessly precipitate his death. Telling him the truth in a wise manner helps him in every way, makes him grateful, enables him to prepare for death, etc. It is the greatest crime to lie and to send a dying man into eternity unprepared.
The full injunction is not merely to speak the truth but to speak the truth in love (v. 15). It is self-deception to think that we can lie in love. Truth spoken without ἀγάπη, the love of Christian intelligence and corresponding purpose, is as bad as a lie spoken with supposed love.
One can at times decline to speak at all. One can at times also take the consequences. Jesus did that when he took an oath that he was the Son of God. The consequences that seem so certain and so terrible often do not follow, are often not so terrible, are often even good. Any profession or business that cannot be practiced without lying or dishonesty the Christian will not enter, no matter what the profit to him might be.
Much more should be said on this subject of Christian ethics. We cannot expand here. Even a worldly man with a conscience who uses his wits with courage need not lie in a tight place, and men will respect him.
Ephesians 4:26
26 Next to harm resulting from lying is harm caused by anger. No commentator restricts the thought to anger only against a fellow member of the church. Be angry and do not sin! Let not the sun go down upon your exasperation, nor give room to the devil! Only the harm we do to ourselves is mentioned; that done to our fellow members apparently needed no mention after the last clause of v. 25.
The ethics which forbids all anger and demands unruffled calmness in every situation is Stoic and not Christian. If all anger is wrong, as some think on the basis of v. 31, Paul should have written, “Be not angry!” and stopped with that. But he writes, “Be angry!” and then adds, “And sin not!” Jesus, our great example, was himself angry (Mark 3:5); and if εἰκῆ should be the genuine reading in Matt. 5:22, he would speak much as Paul does, namely exempt the anger for a just cause. We thus discard any interpretation that prohibits all anger. When God, Christ, the holy things of God are reviled, shall no anger stir in us? When hypocrites come with their masks of holiness, when injustice parades as right, when tyrants trample helpless victims, anger is justified.
These are plain cases. A problem arises only in cases that are not plain, which we need not discuss here.
Yet this still leaves Paul’s καί connecting two imperatives (iterative presents). All would be simple if Paul had written, “Be angry but sin not!” Ps. 4:4, if Paul has this in mind, affords no help, for the LXX wording is exactly like Paul’s. Moreover, the LXX rendering is correct, ragatz = to tremble with wrath (Delitzsch on this psalm; Ed. Koenig, Woerterbuch). Accept καί as it stands, as adding one command to the other. Instead of separating the two, combine them. We are urged to be angry, and in the same breath are urged not to sin in such anger. For, as is rightly observed, the next injunction is directed against overindulgence in even justifiable anger.
We, therefore, do not need the refinements of the grammarians: Buttmann, it is impossible to take the first command as a direct command; Winer (6th ed.), the first imperative is permissive, the second jussive, or the first is equal to a participle; B.-D. 387, 1: “You may be angry as far as I am concerned (if you cannot help it), but do not sin therein!” yet Paul has no “but”; R. 1023, the two imperatives are like a protasis and an apodosis, the first is concessive (949), the second points to an imminent danger (854). Examples such as, “Do this and live,” or: divide et impera‚ do not fit because Paul’s second imperative is negative.
“Let not the sun go down upon your exasperation!” is a separate command, and hence there is no connective. Παροργισμός, found only here in the New Testament and a few times in the LXX and not at all elsewhere (M.-M. 496), appears to be passive: “exasperation” or provocation, and names the cause for justifiable wrath. All unjustifiable anger is wrong eo ipso. But the provocation one suffers in even justifiable wrath must not be entertained too long. Dismiss it before the day is over. This is not what Plutarch says about the Pythagorean custom of giving each other the right hand and embracing each other. Christian forgiveness is mentioned in v. 32 and is another matter.
The sun’s going down (descriptive present, permissive passive) is a popular, concrete expression for “before the day is over.” To be sure, this is limitation, yet why forbid the reference to the Christian’s prayer before he goes to sleep? Since he cannot stop the sun’s going down he will lay the ungodliness that has rightly called forth his wrath before God, he will commit it to God (1 Pet. 2:23). The lengthening shadows will bring Paul’s admonition to his mind. Regarding any unjustifiable anger Paul’s only injunction would be prompt repentance irrespective of nightfall.
Ephesians 4:27
27 The δέ in μηδέ adds, but adds something different. As in the case of δέ in v. 23, the other side is stated. The amount of importance attached to the particle governs the exegesis as to whether “the devil” is referred to or only “the (human) slanderer” (the article then being generic). The statement that a reference to “the devil” would insert a broad, disconnected injunction, makes too much of δέ. The plea that we must translate “slanderer” disregards the fact that when διάβολος is used as a noun in the New Testament it regularly refers to “the devil.” Just as the καί used in the previous clause does not make “and sin not” general and thus a disconnected injunction, so this δέ does not do so. Our versions translate correctly.
The connection between sinning and the devil is rather plain. By manifesting our exasperation too long and not laying it before God in prayer at least by sundown and thus sinning we should not give room to God to exercise his righteous activity but to the devil to use his activity in our sinning. Is he not the one back of the ungodly exasperation which provokes us to righteous wrath? Is he not the one who tempts us to carry our exasperation too far and thus to sin? Despite Luther’s Laesterer we hold to the close connection indicated and abide by our versions. We may regard the present imperative as ingressive: “begin to give room.”
Ephesians 4:28
28 Let the stealer no longer be stealing but rather be laboring, working that which is good with his own hands in order that he may have to share with him who has need.
By far the best discussion of ὁκλέπτων is that found in Moulton, Einleitung 205, etc. The difference between this form and ὁκλέπτης is that the former connects more closely with the verb κλέπτω. The substantivized present participle is timeless, descriptive, characterizing. When the act or action occurs is not indicated. The tense indicates iteration (R. 1116). “Him that stole” in our versions (B.-D. 275, 6, wer bisher stahl) translates interpretatively, according to the present context. Robertson’s (892) “the rogue” is incorrect. “The stealer” might still be stealing as far as this participle indicates, but Paul evidently has in mind a person who stole before his conversion and is in danger of falling back into this grave sin, whom he thus warns. “No longer let him be stealing” no matter what the temptation may be at any time.
Stealing is here intended to include all forms of getting something wrongfully, theft, cheating, overreaching, etc. Having put on the new man, the Christian is honest in every act.
But is such an injunction still necessary for Christians? Many Christians were slaves, and pagan slaves did not regard it as wrong to pilfer from their masters. Speak to foreign missionaries about present-day pagan servants. Nor need we disregard servants of our own country. The vice of getting something for nothing is world-wide and is found among all ranks of men. Graft, bribery, so-called “gifts,” and any number of other forms of dishonesty tempt the Christian again and again.
Why does Paul say nothing about restitution? Because he is in brief strokes sketching how the Christian’s life looks: no stealing or wrongful appropriation of what belongs to others. Paul is not elaborating the ethics of the Seventh Commandment. Paul is also reaching much farther than mere restitution. “But rather” is not a mere opposite (this would be ἀλλά, “on the contrary”) but a wider, freer contrast, something that is far better than the former conduct.
Both the imperative and the participle are durative to express steady labor and work as a rule of life, and “let him labor” denotes exertion that tires one. The thief wants to get things easily, with little effort; the Christian gladly undergoes honest toil. To get rich quickly, to do it by shady schemes and means, is not on the program of the new man. Little is gained by making “that which is good” the object of “let him labor” and leaving the participle without an object. Nor is there a reason for drawing “that which is good” into the purpose clause.
Τὸἀγαθόν is the opposite of τὸκακόν and conveys the idea of moral good quality over against any base quality. “The good” is good in the sense of its quality, which extends also to others; hence it is more than “earthly good,” sein redlich Teil. It is acquired in a good way, by honest labor, without doing harm to anyone, also not to the laborer; it is to be expended in a good way, to a good purpose: “that he may share with him who has need.” The present tense = may continue to have, and the present infinitive = share with at any time when a needy one appears. This is more than restitution, it is conduct for the entire life.
The question of the exact reading the text critics may decide; “with his own hands” seems correct, “hands” continue the idea of labor.
Ephesians 4:29
29 From the Seventh Commandment Paul proceeds to the Eighth Commandment, from damage done to our neighbor by theft to damage done him by speech. Let no worthless statement go forth out of your mouth; on the contrary, if there is some (statement) good for upbuilding where necessary, so that it may give grace to those hearing.
The derivation of σαπρός (from σήπω, “to putrify”) does not imply that the meaning must always be “putrid,” rotten, “corrupt” (our versions). A putrid thing is worthless and is thus thrown away. So in its New Testament use sapros = “worthless” and not “corrupt or rotten.” B.-P. 1191 rightly asks: “Do rotten (faule) fish enter a net? do rotten trees bear fruit at all?” Matt. 7:17. So here the sense is “no worthless statement” (λόγος). As far as “foul” language is concerned, this is fully named in the next paragraph (5:4) which deals with the Sixth Commandment. Here the injunction is broad and covers every statement that ought to be thrown out as being worthless; compare Matt. 12:36.
All empty, shallow, thoughtless talk is referred to. Paul is not speaking of talk that is worse, namely vicious, lying, slanderous, foul, etc. Even every worthless word should be beneath us. The Greek construes the negative with the verb, we negate the subject.
Hence also the positive is not “pure” but “some (statement, λογος) good (i. e., beneficial) for necessary upbuilding” (spiritual edification), Προς = toward, tending in this direction, to accomplish this object. The genitive has puzzled many so that a few texts and early versions and several writers altered it “for edification of the faith.” This would be an objective genitive. The A. V.’s “to the use of edifying” is peculiar, as is also its margin, “to edify profitably”; χρεία, however, means neither “use” nor “profit” but “need.” One may hesitate between the objective genitive: “for building up the need,” which is an awkward thought that is hence modified in the R. V.: “as the need may be”; B.-P. 1410: da, wo es nottut‚ “where necessary”; and the adjectival genitive: “for the needed upbuilding.”
Is this an instance of the imperative ἵνα like the one found in 5:33: “the wife, let her fear (or see that she fears) the husband”? R. 994 lists it as such: “On the contrary, if there is some statement good for needed edification, let it give grace to the hearers.” But the hearer will, without effort, supply the verb from the preceding clause: “if there is some statement good, etc., let it proceed out of your mouth in order that (or so that) it may give grace to the hearers.” The ἵνα clause denotes purpose or purported result.
It is debated whether χάρις is human or divine favor. Some refer to διδόναιχάριν (Sophocles and Plato) for the meaning “to do a kindness”; but Paul himself uses this expression (generally the passive) so often that we need not look elsewhere, note for instance 3:2, 7, 8 (three times in succession). Paul does not say that we are to give grace, nor even that our word is to do so, but “if there is any word good for edification,” it is to give grace, edifying grace, and thus certainly divine grace. Our mouth is merely to be the channel. Yes, our mouth, too, is to serve the Una Sancta. For the negative compare the famous passage, James 3:3–12.
Ephesians 4:30
30 καί connects the new statement with the preceding admonition. Paul is not speaking of grieving the Holy Spirit in general but of doing this by worthless speech. We may, of course, grieve him also in other ways. Paul’s readers will think of that; but this fact does not alter the close connection here indicated. And do not be grieving the Holy Spirit of God, in connection with whom you were sealed for redemption’s day!
“To grieve the Spirit” is a highly anthropopathic expression and is the more effective for that reason. Do we wish to make the Spirit sorrowful, who has done so much for us and our fellow members, who wants to do equally much for other men and to use us in his work? The imperative is the present tense. Grief lasts. Moreover, this tense is iterative and matches “every worthless statement” in v. 29. He who starts with one such word will likely let more go out of his mouth.
The present imperative at times means to stop an action already begun (R. 851, etc.); but here we cannot translate, “Stop grieving!” for this would imply that the Ephesians had already begun such grieving, which Paul in no way implies. He is warning against a sin that has not yet been committed, which is ample in this connection.
By adding the adjective with a separate article this is given special weight: “the Spirit, the Holy One” (see R. 776). The Father and the Son are equally holy. When this adjective is applied to the Spirit, the point is not that he is holy in a special sense but that he is the One whose special work it is to make us holy. He is grieved as the Holy One when his work of making us and others holy is hindered by the speech of those who should be his instruments in this work. Paul brings out the gravity of such a sin when he writes “the Holy Spirit of God.” The entire divine majesty is thrown into the scales in order to deter us from grieving the Holy Spirit with even a single worthless statement.
The motivation thus introduced by the very designation of this divine person is intensified by the relative clause: “in connection with whom you were sealed for redemption’s day.” Although it is only a relative clause in form, it is emphatic: “him‚ in connection with whom,” etc.; yet as a relative it connects more closely than an independent sentence would. This sealing has been explained in 1:13. The agent in the passive is again God. Having occurred in baptism, it is to stand to the last great day. This sealing thus constitutes the central blessing connected with God’s Holy Spirit, the guarantee of our final ransoming. The dative “with the Holy Spirit of the promise” found in 1:13 (which see) is here changed into a personal phrase: “in connection with whom” (as the great Sanctifier) you were sealed.
Some regard this as the instrumental “in” and think that this expounds the preposition. But this “in” phrase is like all the “in” phrases used in 1:1–13 and throughout the epistle: “in Christ Jesus—in him—in whom,” none of which is instrumental, none of which = διά, per‚ “through.” In all these phrases “in” conserves the personality and goes beyond instrumentality. “In union or connection with” the divine person named the divine act was done. The effort to make this “in” mystical is misdirected, especially when the idea of being like a bird “in” air (Deissmann) is added and ideas that are borrowed from pagan mystery cults are introduced.
By baptism every believer has been sealed as God’s own in connection with God’s Spirit. Then and there by baptism the Spirit was given to us as the seal; that is the connection expressed by “in.” How can we then think of grieving this Holy Spirit of God? Will this not force him to leave us? Shall we who once bore him as the seal blot out this seal from our hearts, deny God’s ownership of our souls? Paul stops with the grieving and does not advance to our losing the Spirit. The stronger statements are reserved for later treatment.
Not for a day or for a brief time were we thus sealed but “for redemption’s day.” No articles are needed; the two nouns are almost like a compound. The genitive makes the “day” definite. Only one such day exists; for this reason, too, no articles are necessary. “Unto the day of redemption” in our versions should not be understood as meaning until that day. Εἰς = “for” that day when our final ransoming is to take place. It is the last great day.
On ἀπολύτρωσις see 1:13; also Rom. 8:23; Luke 21:28. This word means more than “deliverance.” The idea of the payment of a ransom is implied. Warfield, Christian Doctrine‚ is right: the idea of ransom is never dropped from this word. He is also right: our word “redemption” has become pale, we should stick to “ransoming” just because it contains “ransom.” At the last great day our ransoming, which was effected through Christ’s blood, reaches its final consummation for body as well as for soul. This word denotes an act. The ransom price was paid on Calvary; it bought our release, the release from sin and death by pardon in baptism and conversion so that we now have this ransoming (1:7); we shall have all that this ransom bought for us in our final glorification at the last day. “Deliverance,” yes, but even that final deliverance as having been bought for us by the blood ransom of Christ.
Ephesians 4:31
31 What follows reads like a summary that concludes the admonition against wronging our neighbor. We have first the negative and then the positive side. Let all bitterness and exasperation and anger and yelling and blasphemy be (definitely) put away from you together with all baseness! On the other hand (δέ), be (ever) benignant toward each other, tenderhearted, forgiving each other even as also God in Christ has forgiven you!
Paul uses five terms, the half of ten, which latter is the number of greatest completeness. He stops, as it were, in the middle much as Jesus does in Matt. 5:22, by not adding threatening, striking, knocking down, wounding, killing. The worst is often mentioned as including the less bad (in Matt. 5:21, 27, murder and adultery); here the reverse is done: if what is less bad is completely put away (aorist imperative passive from αἴρω), the worse and the worst will not occur.
The five terms form a climax. First, “bitterness,” embitterment, is felt in the heart. The next step is “exasperation,” which is still in the heart although hard to be restrained. The third step is “anger” which blazes forth. The fourth, “yelling,” is a violent outburst of words. The fifth is a cursing in words of “blasphemy” against the opponent. Trench is right when he says that, while θυμός and ὀργή are often used in the same sense, the second at times only to strengthen the first (C.-K. 805), instances remain where the two are clearly to be “desynonymized.” One of these instances we have here, where “and” adds term upon term, and each is distinct.
Trench reviews the efforts to define the difference. We accept the idea that the former word = the boiling agitation of the feelings; so we render it “exasperation.” But we decline to make the distinction that this is like a fire of straw that quickly blazes up and as quickly subsides while ὀργή settles down to a habit of mind. The difference does not lie in the duration of these emotions. Both may blaze up and subside, both may also endure, as far as that is concerned. The difference is that the exasperation is still confined inwardly while the anger breaks out. Rising like a tide, the exasperation, if it is not controlled, overflows in anger, and this shows itself in κραυγή or a loud outburst of words, and this, if it is allowed to go farther, becomes blasphemy or cursing; “wrath and anger” in our versions have no tangible distinction.
“Together with all baseness.” Κακία is Schlechtigkeit; “baseness” is our best equivalent. Our versions add a sixth item to the preceding five and thus translate this word “malice” (so also elsewhere). Trench agrees. But κακός does not mean malicious, it means “base,” bad, morally inferior (in moral contexts). So this is not a sixth item but a comprehensive summary. Paul mentions five stages of baseness and instead of going on calls the five “baseness” and throws into the same pot with them (associative σύν) all other types and stages of meanness to our neighbor.
Ephesians 4:32
32 Δέ, “on the other hand,” places the sacred three over against the secular five, and these three, too, rise higher and higher. The present imperative is in contrast with the aorist used in v. 31: “definitely, once for all, put away” the sins—“ever continue to be” beneficent, etc. First, “toward one another benignant,” kind in the sense of helpful; this applies to all contacts and all situations. In contrast with the five no cumulative καί is used, for these three are not climactic, one overflowing to bring on the next; these three simply stand side by side. The second applies to fewer persons, the third to still fewer.
“Tenderhearted” or compassionate applies to those who are suffering any kind of distress. Remember the compassion of Jesus. Paul does not add the action that will follow this feeling; this is understood. Thirdly, “forgiving each other,” just letting the wrong done to us go without a claim for punishment or reparation. Here Paul shows what Christian forgiveness is: it insists on nothing when we are wronged, freely lets the wrong pass, and thus for its part ends it at once.
“Even as also” draws a parallel as to manner. But Paul does not write, “As God forgave (our idiom: has forgiven) you”; he adds and must add the adverbial phrase “in Christ.” The phrase does not modify “God”: “God in Christ.” God cannot dismiss our sins in a summary fashion. That is the rationalistic view: if we can forgive without atonement, God can surely do likewise. Our sins against God are a different thing in regard to him from what our sins toward each other are in regard to us. In the latter case one sinful creature wrongs another sinful creature; the matter occurs among equals on a low level, these equals being alike faulty and sinful. In the former case the sinful creature outrages and challenges his heavenly Creator, God in his holiness and righteousness, who never sins against us Here, there is, indeed, also free forgiveness, but only “in Christ” whose blood atones for our sins.
Let us put this plainly since even pastors misunderstand it. The moment a man wrongs me I must forgive him. Then my soul is free. If I hold the wrong against him I sin against God and against him and jeopardize my forgiveness with God. Whether the man repents, makes amends, asks my pardon or not, makes no difference. I have instantly forgiven him. He must face God with the wrong he has done; but that is his affair and God’s and not mine save that in the case he is a brother I should help him according to Matt. 18:15, etc. But whether this succeeds or not and before this even begins I must forgive him.
The Christian way of settling quarrels is the easiest thing in the world. The pastor is not to bring the two quarreling persons together in order to decide who is wronging, who is wronged—when there is perhaps guilt on both sides, what the degree of guilt is, and how it is to be apportioned Can the pastor act the part of God and see into the hearts? No, let him go to each separately and see to it that each from the heart forgives as God has forgiven him in Christ. Let him make each face God until any grudge in his heart has disappeared. Then, and not until then, let the pastor bring them together in God’s name. Then, after each has in his heart forgiven the other, hands and hearts will go out, lips will confess any wrong which either or both have done, and the quarrel will be ended to stay ended.
As God “in Christ” forgave you refers to the justifying act described in Rom. 3:28, that act by which God remits all sins to the sinner the instant he repents and believes in Christ. This is the personal justification and remission of which the Scriptures constantly speak. Ps. 32:1–5. The Ephesians had been forgiven thus (ὑμῖν). This is not the so-called universal justification which is the reconciliation of the whole world as this was accepted and declared by God for all men even before most of them lived here on earth. On this subject see the interpretation of Rom. 1:17. The fact that God forgave your sins and mine “in connection with Christ” is the compelling motive for our forgiving every man who in any way sins against us. Matthew 18:23, etc.
C.-K Biblisch-theologisches Woerterbuch der Neutestamentlichen Graezitaet von D. Dr. Hermann Cremer, zehnte, etc., Auflage, herausgegeben von D. Dr. Julius Koegel.
R A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, fourth edition.
B.-P Griechisch-Deutsches Woerterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments, etc., von D. Walter Bauer, zweite, etc., Auflage zu Erwin Preuschens Vollstaendigem Griechisch-Deutschem Handwoerterbuch, etc.
B.-D Friedrich Blass’ Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, vierte, voellig neu-gearbeitete Auflage besorgt von Albert Debrunner.
M.-M. The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, Illustrated from the Papyri and other Non-Literary Sources, by James Hope Moulton and George Milligan.