The new community in the life of believers (chapters 4–6)
Chapter 4
“Those who have been chosen by God to sit with Christ in the heavenly places must remember that the honor of Christ is involved in their daily lives.”
1. Unity in diversity in the body of Christ (4:1-16)
Verse 1: I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called,
As in other epistles, Paul’s transition from the doctrinal to the practical realm is marked by the word “therefore” (cf. Romans 12:1; Colossians 3:5). Because the basic facts of our holy faith are such as have been set forth, Christians ought to live in accordance with them; their character and conduct should match their creed and confession. In this epistle, where Christians are taught the hope of their calling (Ephesians 1:18), Paul insists that their earthly behavior should be worthy of that calling. Those who have been chosen by God to sit with Christ in the heavenly places must remember that the honor of Christ is involved in their daily lives. There are many situations in which we shall find no detailed precept of Scripture to tell us what to do, but here is a principle to guide us in every situation: which course of action will be most worthy of the calling with which God has called us? As in Ephesians 3:1, Paul adds to the weight of his exhortation by reminding his readers that he is “the prisoner in the Lord”– enduring captivity for Christ’s sake.
Verse 2: with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love;
Paul goes on to specify four graces the cultivation of which will produce a life worthy of the Christian calling. These are humility, gentleness, patience and loving forbearance. Lowliness or humility was regarded as more of a vice than a virtue in pagan antiquity, although the Old Testament anticipated the Christian revelation by affirming repeatedly that God chooses the humble to be his companions (cf. Isaiah 57:15; 66:2; Micah 6:8). It was the influence of One who was meek and lowly in heart, operating in his followers, that elevated a term which had formerly been despicable rather than praiseworthy. Meekness or gentleness is far from being an easygoing weakness; it is the property of a mind and spirit kept under due control. Mutual patience and forbearance are not graces which come readily or naturally; but those who have learned to appreciate gratefully God’s patience and forbearance with them will desire to show the same attitude to others. Paul is, in effect, urging his readers to cultivate the graces that were seen in perfection in Christ, and to love one another as he had loved them.
Verse 3: giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
The unity spoken of here is the unity of heart which the Spirit of God fosters in a community of believers. The English word “unity” (and the underlying Greek word henotēs) can have more than one meaning, and we should not interpret “unity” here by relating it to the recurring “one” of verses 4-6. In verses 4-6 it is uniqueness that is intended. The unity of the Spirit here is a different thing from the statement that there is “one Spirit” in verse 4. The fact that there is one Spirit of God is something which cannot be affected by any endeavor or action of men one way or the other. But in the present passage Paul is inculcating the same mutual attitude as when in Philippians 2:2 he exhorts the Philippian Christians to “be of the same mind, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.” If that is so, then “the unity of the Spirit” is best maintained when Christians have this mind in them “which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). Or, to put it otherwise, when the graces commended in verse 2 are cultivated, the unity of the Spirit is preserved. The expression here bears practically the same meaning as “the communion of the Holy Spirit” in 2 Corinthians 13:14. And those in whom the unity of the Spirit is displayed will be joined together “in the bond of peace.” We may compare Colossians 3:14, where love is the perfect “bond” (Gk. syndesmos, as here) which binds the other Christian graces together. God is the author of peace, and the sowing of “discord among brethren” (the opposite of keeping the unity of the Spirit) is an abomination in his sight (cf. Proverbs 6:16,19b).
“Meekness or gentleness is far from being an easygoing weakness; it is the property of a mind and spirit kept under due control.”
Verse 4: There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your calling;
Paul now introduces a sevenfold uniqueness, which is fundamental for Christian faith and life.
First, there is one body. That is, of course, the body of Christ, comprising all his people, which has already been mentioned in Ephesians 1:23 and 2:16. Jewish and Gentile believers alike had been reconciled to God in this one body. To think, for example, of two bodies of Christ, one comprising Jewish believers and the other comprising Gentile believers, would be grotesque. So in Colossians 3:15 Paul reminds the Colossian Christians that they were called to the peace of Christ “in one body”; fellow-members of one body must cooperate harmoniously.
Secondly, there is one Spirit. The Spirit who came down in power on Jewish believers at Pentecost is the same as fell on Gentile believers in the house of Cornelius. The correlation between the one Spirit and the one body is set out in fuller detail in 1 Corinthians 12:13: “For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit.” Just as the body is one, though its members are many, so the Spirit is one, though his gifts and operations are many.
Thirdly, there is one hope. The hope of our calling – the hope which God set before us when he called us by his grace – is the hope of sharing the glory of Christ. As members of his body, we share his resurrection life now; as those who are indwelt and led by his Spirit, we are to be increasingly conformed to his likeness now; but the consummation of what we now enjoy in part awaits the day when we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is (cf. 1 John 3:2). And this one hope is set before all believers, all whom God has called according to his purpose. There is no distinction in this respect between those of Jewish and Gentile birth, neither is there any favored elite within the believing community for whom better things are reserved than for the rank and file.
Verse 5: one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
Fourthly, as Paul had said in an earlier epistle, “to us there is … one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him” (1 Corinthians 8:6). The acknowledgment of this one Lord was a matter of the most vital consequence to many Christians in the early centuries of our era. Because they had but one Lord, they refused to give the title “Lord” to others who claimed it, notably to the Roman Emperor, when it was claimed in a sense that implied divinity. Of course the Greek kyrios or the Latin dominus could also be used as a courtesy title, like “my lord” or “sir” among us, and there was no objection to using it that way, but there was every objection to using it in a sense which meant that the unique Lordship of Christ was being infringed.
Fifthly, there is one faith. Faith may denote the act and attitude of believing, or it may mean the substance of one’s belief. In both senses it is true that Christians have but one faith. It is true if we think of the one faith as the faith which they place in Christ as their Lord and Savior; it is true if we think of it as “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). There is not one faith for Jews and another for Gentiles, since “God is one, and he shall justify the circumcision by faith, and the uncircumcision through faith” (Romans 3:30) – one and the same faith in either case. A book on Christian doctrine appeared some time ago under the title, No Faith of My Own. The author’s intention in this title was to emphasize that the faith of which the book treated was no private system devised by himself but the common faith of all Christian people. In our present passage faith is probably to be understood subjectively of faith in Christ: there is one faith, since there is but one Lord.
Sixthly, there is one baptism. If this were not expressly stated here, many Christians when asked how many baptisms there are would probably answer: “Two; baptism in water and the baptism of the Spirit.” But it should be noted that when water-baptism and Spirit-baptism are set in opposition in the New Testament, the water-baptism is John’s baptism and not Christian baptism. When our Lord said, “John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 1:5), he did not mean that water-baptism would be superseded by baptism with the Spirit. On the contrary, when the descent of the Spirit on the first Gentile believers reminded Peter of these words of his Lord (Acts 11:16), the first thing he did was to command these converts “to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:48), and it is made quite plain that this was water-baptism.
“Just as the body is one, though its members are many, so the Spirit is one, though his gifts and operations are many.”
Water-baptism remains in force throughout the Christian age, although it has now received a richer significance from the saving work of Christ and the bestowal of the Holy Spirit. The baptism of the Spirit which it was our Lord’s prerogative to impart took place primarily on the day of Pentecost when he poured forth “the promise of the Father” on his disciples and thus constituted them the Spirit-baptized fellowship of the people of God.
Baptism in water continued to be the outward and visible sign by which individuals who believed the gospel, repented of their sins and acknowledged Jesus as Lord, were publicly incorporated into this Spirit-baptized fellowship – “baptized into Christ” (Galatians 3:27). It must be remembered that in New Testament times repentance and faith, regeneration and conversion, baptism in water, reception of the Holy Spirit, incorporation into Christ, admission to church fellowship and first communion were all parts of a single complex of events which took place within a very short time, and not always in a uniform order. Logically they were distinguishable, but in practice they were all bound up with the transition from the old life to the new. Consequently, what was logically true of one specific part of the complex experience might be predicated of the whole experience, or something that was more particularly applicable to one part might be transferred in speech or writing to another part.
These considerations may help evangelical readers of the New Testament who feel uneasy when baptism or water is referred to as the instrument of regeneration, or of entering into membership of Christ’s body. It is, moreover, a natural use of language when a symbol is said to effect that which, in strict fact, it symbolizes. But the New Testament epistles were not addressed to theologians, accustomed to hair-splitting distinctions, but to very ordinary Christians, who would inevitably think of their own baptism in water when they read the word “baptism,” unless the context made it quite clear that another baptism was meant. If the “one baptism” here had meant Spirit-baptism to the exclusion of water-baptism, it would surely have been associated with “one Spirit” and not “one Lord.” But the point here is that Jewish and Gentile believers alike acknowledged one Lord, shared one faith in him, and had undergone one baptism into his name.
Verse 6: one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.
Seventhly, there is one God and Father. Here Paul echoes the language of an Old Testament prophet: “Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?” (Malachi 3:10). But thanks to the Son of God, who came to show us the way to the Father and to show us the Father himself, our appreciation of the fatherhood of God is deeper than it could have been before Christ came.
“The grace which each believer has received for the discharge of his particular function in the community is proportionate to the gift which he has freely received from his glorified Lord.”
Now Gentiles as well as Jews have come through Christ to know this one God as their Father. It was to former pagans, worshipers of many gods, that Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 8:6: “Yet to us there is one God, the Father; of whom are all things, and we unto him.” He is the Creator of all and the goal of all; transcendent over all, pervasive throughout all, immanent in all. The second-century heretic Marcion, and his imitators in following centuries, might try to distinguish between the Old Testament God who created the world and the New Testament God whom Jesus revealed as the Father; but neither Paul nor any other biblical writer knows of such a distinction. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has accepted us for Christ’s sake and listens to our prayers, is “the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 40:28), “one God and Father of all.”
In these three verses (4-6) Paul is very probably quoting and amplifying a primitive confession of faith. The acknowledgement of “one Spirit, … one Lord, … one God and Father …” reminds us how thoroughly apostolic the doctrine of the Trinity is. We may compare the mention of “the same Spirit … the same Lord … the same God” in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6. Let us not be misled by the foolish argument that because the term “Trinity” does not occur in the Scriptures, the doctrine of the Trinity is therefore unscriptural. The classical formulations of the doctrine are later than the apostolic age, but the doctrine which they formulate is thoroughly apostolic. It is round such confessions of faith in the triune Godhead that the historic creeds of the Church have been constructed. Those creeds which come from the East retain the word “one” in a way that suggests dependence on this passage in Ephesians (or the primitive confession which it reproduces); the Palestinian creeds, for example, which formed the basis for the creed of Nicaea (AD 325), were built up around the three clauses: “We believe in one God the Father Almighty … and in one Lord Jesus Christ … and in one Holy Spirit.”
Verse 7: But unto each one of us was the grace given according to the measure of the gift of Christ.
Alongside the sevenfold uniqueness of the preceding verses Paul now introduces the variety of the gifts bestowed on the Church. As he had already written in 1 Corinthians 12:4, “there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.” Whereas the gifts are spoken of in 1 Corinthians 12 as gifts of the Spirit, they are spoken of here as gifts of the exalted Christ. There is, of course, no essential contradiction in this: the Holy Spirit himself is given by the exalted Christ to his Church (Acts 2:33), and so the gifts of the Spirit may also be thought of as gifts of the exalted Christ. The grace which each believer has received for the discharge of his particular function in the community is proportionate to the gift which he has freely received from his glorified Lord.
“He who already embodies the fullness of the Godhead (Colossians 2:9) is the one who now fills the universe.”
Verse 8: Wherefore he saith,
When he ascended on high,
he led captivity captive,
And gave gifts unto men.
In this bestowal of gifts by the ascended Christ, Paul finds the fulfillment of an Old Testament passage (Psalm 68:18) which (significantly enough) was associated in the synagogue calendar with Pentecost. He introduces his quotation with a phrase which may mean either “Wherefore he (ie God) saith” or “Wherefore it (ie Scripture) saith.” In practice it makes no difference; such expressions as “God says,” “Scripture says” and “it says” are used indiscriminately in the New Testament where the Old Testament is being quoted.
As Paul quotes the passage, there is one noteworthy divergence from the Hebrew and Septuagint texts. Where they read “Thou hast received gifts among men,” he quotes the form “He … gave gifts unto men.” This reading is also attested in Jewish antiquity; it found its way into the Syriac version of the Old Testament (the Peshitta) and into the Targum or Aramaic paraphrase of the Psalter. The original picture is of a victorious king ascending the mountain of the Lord in triumphal procession, attended by a long train of captives, receiving tribute from his new subjects (according to the one reading) and bestowing largesse upon the crowds which line his processional route (according to the other reading). For Paul’s present purpose the reading which speaks of the conqueror as giving gifts is more appropriate than that which speaks of him as receiving them; but if this secondary reading had not been available to him the first would not have been unsuitable; the ascended Christ may well be pictured as receiving from His Father the gifts which he proceeds to bestow among men.
Very reasonably, however, Paul selects from the two alternative readings the one which best fits his immediate context. And after quoting the text, he gives an exposition of the salient words. He does not relate the clause “he led captivity captive” to his present argument; if he had done so, we may infer which line he would have followed from Colossians 2:15, where Christ turns his cross into a triumphal chariot, before which he drives the vanquished principalities and powers whose attack upon him has been so signally frustrated. There is little basis for the traditional view that the reference is to the harrowing of hell – that the captivity which he led captive consists here of the souls of men whom his victory liberated from the thraldom of death.
Verse 9: (Now this, he ascended, what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth?
A number of texts insert “first” after “descended” (thus making explicit what is in any case implicit). Some texts also omit “parts” (Gk. mere) after “lower” (Gk. katotera), and this omission may well be original; but so far as the English version is concerned a word like “parts” or “places” is required to complete the sense. The fact, says Paul, that the psalmist speaks of Christ as having “ascended on high” implies that, before doing so, he must have descended; and descend he did – into the lower regions of the earth. But what exactly are these lower regions? Three alternative interpretations may be mentioned:
“The healthy growth of the believing community is the aim in view in all the ministries which the Lord has entrusted to his people.”
First, the reference may be to Hades (the Old Testament Sheol), the abode of the dead; in Scripture this is regularly a region to which one goes down from the earth’s surface. So, in Acts 2:25-35, the fact that Christ (in fulfillment of Psalm 16:10) was not left in Hades is the correlative of his being exalted to God’s right hand (in fulfillment of Psalm 110:1).
Secondly, the reference may be to the sepulcher in which his body was laid. Thirdly, the phrase “of the earth” may be construed as a genitive of definition, in which case the lower regions are themselves the earth, to which he came down from heaven and from which he was raised to his present place of glory. A comparison with Romans 10:6 f., where ascending into heaven is contrasted with descending “into the abyss (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead),” suggests that the first of these three alternatives is the true interpretation here.
We may also compare Philippians 2:8 f., where it is from the lowest depths of death that Christ is “highly exalted” by the Father. So, Paul seems to say here, Christ descended from heaven not merely to earth but to Hades, and from Hades he has ascended again “far above all the heavens.”
Verse 10: He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)
Christ’s exaltation to the place of highest supremacy has been emphasized by Paul in Ephesians 1:20,23. In our present passage the purpose of his exaltation is said to be “that he might fill all things” – that is to say, that he might pervade the whole universe with his presence, from the lowest depths to the highest heights. This, as we have seen, corresponds with a possible (though not perhaps the most probable) meaning of the clause “that filleth all in all” in Ephesians 1:23. At any rate, he who already embodies the fullness of the Godhead (Colossians 2:9) is the one who now fills the universe. That is why his people can now enjoy his immediate presence simultaneously, wherever they may be, whereas in the days of his flesh he could only be in one place at one time.
Verse 11: And he gave some to be apostles; and some, prophets; and some evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
In 1 Corinthians 12:4 ff. the gifts of the Spirit are endowments bestowed by him upon individual Christians, which they are expected to exercise in the Church. Here the gifts of the ascended Christ are the individual Christians who are thus endowed, bestowed by him upon the Church. The substance of this verse is parallelled in 1 Corinthians 12:28 (“And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers …”), although there the apostles, prophets and teachers are not expressly called “gifts”; they are rather thought of as men who have received the respective gifts of apostleship, prophecy, teaching and so forth. An honorable status indeed is conferred on those who exercise their special ministries in the Church when they are presented to the Church as gifts imparted to her by her exalted Lord.
“With maturity comes a stability born of spiritual experience.”
The first two gifts are “apostles” and “prophets,” both these terms to be understood in the sense which they bear in Ephesians 2:20 and 3:5. In our note on Ephesians 2:20 it was suggested that the “foundation of the apostles and prophets” there is a reference to the apostles and prophets of the first Christian generation, who formed the Lord’s foundation-gifts to his Church. Paul used the term “apostles” in two main senses:
(i) of those who were immediately commissioned by Christ to preach the gospel;
(ii) of others who, though not immediately commissioned by Christ as Paul and the Jerusalem apostles were, preached the gospel in close association with those who were apostles in the stricter sense (so in 1 Thessalonians 2:6 he links Timothy and Silvanus with himself as “apostles of Christ”).
The prophets of the apostolic age were men who from time to time spoke in the churches under the direct prompting of the Spirit of God (cf. Acts 11:27 ff.; 13:1 ff.; 21:4,9; 1 Corinthians 14:1 ff.). Toward the end of the apostolic age it became increasingly necessary to test the claims of these people, to see whether they spoke by the inspiration of the Spirit of God or of a very different kind of spirit (1 John 4:1 ff.; Revelation 2:20). In the churches of the first generation the apostles and prophets discharged a unique role, which in some essential features has been taken over by the canonical writings of the New Testament.
The second pair of gifts, evangelists and pastor-teachers (or teaching pastors), are required in each generation. The Church can never dispense with men who preach the gospel and bring men and women to the knowledge of the truth, nor yet with men who can teach and guide in the way of truth those who have been evangelized and converted. The two terms “pastors (shepherds) and teachers” denote one and the same class of men. They are the men who “tend the flock of God” and care for its wellbeing, showing other Christians by precept and example alike the path of Christian faith and life (1 Peter 5:2; Acts 20:28). They are the same people as are elsewhere called elders and bishops, one of whose qualifications is being “apt to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2).
Verse 12: for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ:
The gifts mentioned are not the only ones bestowed by Christ upon the Church; but these are of the first importance. And their purpose is “to equip the saints for work of service, for building up of the body of Christ.” This rendering of the verse is supported by the fact that there is a change of preposition in the verse, indicated by a corresponding change in RV, from “for” (eis) to “unto” (pros). That is to say, the gifts enumerated in verse 11 do not monopolize the Church’s ministry; their function rather is so to help and direct the Church that all the members may perform their several ministries for the good of the whole. “In the theocracy of grace there is in fact no laity” (E.K. Simpson). The word katartismos, rendered “perfecting,” denotes adjustment or equipment; the verb katartizo, from which it is derived, has a wide and interesting range of meaning in the New Testament. As Paul uses the biological verb “growth” in Ephesians 2:21 in a context where the building figure is being used of the Church, so here he uses the term “building up” in a context where the figure of the body is being used. The healthy growth of the believing community is the aim in view in all the ministries which the Lord has entrusted to his people.
Verse 13: till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
This “unity of the faith” is not so much the fact that there is “one faith” (emphasized in verse 5) as the unity among believers which is produced by their common sharing of “the knowledge of the Son of God.” Each individual Christian ought to grow up into spiritual maturity, but spiritual maturity in the individual Christian is not enough: there must be spiritual maturity in the corporate personality of the church. And one indispensable prerequisite for such corporate maturity is spiritual unity. Paul has already spoken of “the unity of the Spirit” in verse 3, and it is no different unity that he has in mind here, although he describes it in terms which draw attention to some of its outstanding features. The “unity of the faith” to which he desires his readers to attain, along with himself, depends not simply on the initial act of faith by which one enters into the family of God, but on that ever-increasing appreciation of all that is involved in Christian faith for living and thinking. And this appreciation is best reached in fellowship with one another.
“Those who blindly follow the ways of error come to spiritual disaster; those who accept the truth become men of truth themselves.”
His words, “till we all attain,” remind us of his language in Ephesians 3:18, where he prays that his readers “may be strong to apprehend with all the saints” the many-dimensioned fullness of Christ. The higher reaches of the Christian life cannot be attained in isolation from one’s fellow-believers. The “knowledge of the Son of God” which is a further feature of this unity is not so much a mental comprehension of the doctrine of Christ as an increasing personal acquaintance with him in corporate as well as individual experience. A community of believers which manifests this “unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God” is a mature church, in which the doctrine of the body of Christ is not merely honored in word but exhibited in deed as a living reality. What is stated as the goal for the Church Universal can be sought and attained here and now in particular local churches. The Greek word helikia, translated “stature” here, may be used not only of height (as in Luke 19:3, where Zacchaeus is “little of stature”) but also of age (as in John 9:21, where “he is of age” is literally “he has helikia”). The Church is already the fullness of Christ by the call of God (Ephesians 1:23); now she is to attain that fullness in the spiritual growth and life of her members. When the goal is ultimately reached, and the body of Christ has grown up sufficiently to match the head himself, then will be seen that full-grown Man which is Christ together with his members. That spectacle will not fully appear until the day when they are glorified together with him; but the expectation of that day will act as a powerful incentive to spiritual development in the present time.
Verse 14: that we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error;
With maturity comes a stability born of spiritual experience. Some Christians attain it quite early; others never attain it, but to the end of their days run eagerly after the latest religious fashion, the “wind of doctrine” that happens to be blowing most strongly at the time. They fall an easy prey to the specious sophistries of religious propagandists, for they have never learned to recognize the standard by which all religious teaching must be judged, or else they recognize it only in theory, but have never learned to make use of it. Therefore they are taken in “by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles” (RSV). The word translated “sleight” (Gk. kybeia) is borrowed from dice-games; “craftiness” (panourgia) denotes the rascality that sticks at nothing to gain its ends; the phrase “wiles of error” (methodia ted planes) indicates deceptive stratagems of various kinds. One particular “wind of doctrine” which Paul probably had in mind was the incipient Gnosticism against which he had recently warned the Colossian church: “Take heed lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil of you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8). And the number of such attractive perversions of the gospel has not grown less in the interval that separates apostolic days from ours.
“The estrangement of mankind from God involves a state of spiritual death, for God, who is himself life, is the only source of life for all his creatures.”
Verse 15: but speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into him, which is the head, even Christ;
The verb aletheuo in this context probably means not only speaking truth but living and acting it as well – “dealing truly,” as RV margin puts it. Such true dealing is the very antithesis of the roguery described by the apostle in the preceding verse, Those who blindly follow the ways of error come to spiritual disaster; those who accept the truth become men of truth themselves. And gospel truth is never unaccompanied by love. We hear of some people who are “all truth and no love,” but in fact people without love cannot be “all truth,” any more than people without a concern for truth can be “all love” in any serious sense of the term. “Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17), and something of the same balance between these qualities should characterize his followers too. The epistle which affirms that “God is love” also affirms that “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 4:8,16; 1:5); and from this it draws the corollary that the children of God should “abide in love” and “walk in light” (1 John 4:16; 1:7).
It is, however, possible to punctuate the sentence so as to take “in love” along with the words that follow. The importance of combining love with truth would not be diminished by so doing, but added emphasis would be laid on love as the means by which the people of Christ attain maturity, and there is much to be said for construing the passage thus, especially in the light of verse 16.
On the remarkable injunction to “grow up into the head,” Mgr. R.A. Knox pointed out that a baby’s head is very large in relation to his body, and that his body, as it develops, is really growing up more and more into a due proportion with the head. Whether this sort of analogy was in Paul’s mind or not, it serves as a pleasing illustration of his teaching here. It is by growing up to match the head that the body of Christ – the believing community – attains “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”
Verse 16: from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every join supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.
Each part of the body will function as it ought while it is under the control of the head; if it escapes from this control and tries to act independently, the result is very distressing. So it is under the control of Christ that the members of his Church function harmoniously together, sharing his life and attaining maturity under his fostering care, supplied with nourishment and fitted together by means of the “joints and ligaments” (cf. Colossians 2:19). The phrase “fitly framed” is a rendering of the Greek verb synarmologeo, which we have already noted in Ephesians 2:21 (its only other New Testament occurrence), where it is used of the harmonious construction of the Church as “a holy temple in the Lord.”
“Christ himself is the Christians’ Teacher, even if the teaching is given through the lips of his followers; to receive the teaching is in the truest sense to hear him.”
The phrase “knit together” represents Gk. symbibazo (“to put together”), which has this same sense in Colossians 2:2,19. The word rendered “joints” (Gk. haphe) probably denotes the ligaments by which the various parts of the body are connected. So Paul’s desire is that his readers, “living in accordance with the truth, may grow up in love altogether into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, adjusted and fitted together by every ligament with which it is supplied, according to the harmonious functioning of each separate part, acquires the power to grow up as a perfect organism, so that it is built up in love.” The biological and architectural figures remain associated in his mind, as is plain from his speaking in one breath of “growing up” and “being built up.”
2. The old life and the new contrasted (4:17-24)
Verse 17: This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk,
Paul harks back to verse 1, where he had besought his readers to “walk worthily of the calling” with which they had been called. He now shows in detail the sort of thing he means. He emphasizes, too, that the following injunctions are not his own; in laying them down he is bearing witness with authority, as the apostle of the Lord, to those who belong to the same Lord. It is the Lord’s will that they should cease to live the old pagan life. The word “other,” inserted before “Gentiles” in later mss. (cf. AV), is no part of the original text; Christians constitute a “third race” on earth, no longer Jews, no longer Gentiles (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:32). The “also” of RV is a little misleading; it renders Gk. kai, which here serves simply to emphasize the adverbial conjunction “as” (“as indeed the Gentiles walk” would bring out the sense better). How, then, do Gentile pagans live?
in the vanity of their mind,
So in Romans 1:21, in his grim portrayal of the pagan world, Paul says that in consequence of their failure to acknowledge God, men “became vain in their reasonings.” Vanity in the New Testament is sometimes closely associated with idolatry, eg in Acts 14:15, where the men of Lystra, on the point of offering idolatrous sacrifices, are urged to “turn from these vain things unto the living God.”
Verse 18: being darkened in their understanding,
Again we are reminded of Romans 1:21, “their senseless heart was darkened.” How could it be otherwise, when men turn their backs upon the true Light?
alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart;
The estrangement of mankind from God involves a state of spiritual death, for God, who is himself life, is the only source of life for all his creatures. Conversely, the life which the believer receives as a gift from God is God’s own life – The Life of God in the Soul of Man, to quote the title of Henry Scougall’s classic work. Paul ascribes this estrangement from God to men’s innate ignorance, but an ignorance which is not excusable, because it stems from the fact that “they refused to have God in their knowledge” (Romans 1:28). This refusal produced a spiritual “hardening” – an insensitivity to the things of God. This word (Gk. porosis) appears three times in all in the New Testament; the other two occurrences refer:
(i) to the synagogue audience who would have preferred the man with the withered hand to suffer his disability a little longer rather have it cured by Jesus on the sabbath day (Mark 3:5), and
(ii) to the temporary spiritual blindness under which Israel suffers until the full number of Gentile believers is made up (Romans 1:25). The heart, as regularly in classical and biblical literature, is viewed as the seat of the will and understanding, not of the emotions.
Verse 19: who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
To be “past feeling” (Gk. apalgeo) is to have lost the sense of pain. Just as the callous skin which grows over a severe burn is not so sensitive as the original skin was, so in the moral life it is possible for people to be, as Paul puts it elsewhere, “branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron” (1 Timothy 4:2), incapable of sensing the difference between right and wrong. (For apegekotes, “having lost the sense of pain,” the Western text reads apelpikotes, “having lost hope,” the perfect participle of apelpizo; but this is less appropriate to the context.) If Paul says here that they “gave themselves up” to unrestrained impurity and covetousness, he asserts with the solemn emphasis of a threefold iteration in Romans 1:24,26,28, that “God gave them up” to just this way of life. This way of life was theirs by choice; they gave themselves up to it. But one of the ways in which the wrath of God works is by giving sinners up to the course of their own choosing, with its terrible consequences. “Greediness” – better “covetousness” (Gk. pleonexia) – denotes not merely the desire to possess more than one has, but more than one ought to have, especially that which belongs by right to someone else. In Ephesians 5:3 it is closely linked with impurity of life, and in 5:5 it is equated with idolatry.
“If the old man is Adam, whose nature we inherit by birth, the new man is Christ, whose nature is imparted to his people by their new, heavenly birth.”
Verse 20: But ye did not so learn Christ;
Christ himself is the embodiment of his teaching, so much so that his teaching cannot be learned adequately without our coming to know him. The apostolic preaching, by which converts were made, was the good news of what Jesus did; the apostolic teaching, by which converts were instructed in the Christian life, was based on the teaching and example of Christ. Basic to the apostolic teaching was a plain statement regarding the old vices which were to be abandoned and the new graces which were to be cultivated; this statement was frequently couched in terms of “putting off” the old and “putting on” the new.
Verse 21: if so be that ye heard him, and were taught in him,
If they had received even the most rudimentary fragments of Christian teaching, if they knew anything at all about Christ, they would be aware that by practice and precept he had commended a way of life vastly different from the pagan way which Paul has just described. Christ himself is the Christians’ Teacher, even if the teaching is given through the lips of his followers; to receive the teaching is in the truest sense to hear him.
even as truth is in Jesus:
The use of the name Jesus by itself is so rare in the Pauline letters that when it occurs we look for some special significance in it, some emphasis on our Lord’s historic incarnation and earthly life. In Jesus, humbling himself in his real manhood, all truth is embodied. It was in his earthly humiliation, not in his heavenly glory, that he said: “I am … the truth” (John 14:6). Therefore to learn him, to be “taught in him,” is to be led into all the truth.
Verse 22: that ye put away, as concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit;
The old man is what they were before they became Christians, the old Adam which is our natural heritage. In Romans 6:6 Paul enlarges on the meaning of baptism, in which Christians are “buried” with Christ and thus “united with him by the likeness of his death,” by affirming that “our old man was crucified with him.” In Colossians 3:9 he reminds his readers that they “have put off the old man with his doings.” But in the present passage Christians, who (in the sense of these quotations from other epistles) have already had their “old man” crucified with Christ and so have already “put him off,” are exhorted to put him off. The Christian ethic in the New Testament presents a remarkable blend of the indicative and the imperative moods; it might be summed up in the words: “Be what you are” – “Be in practice what you are by divine calling!” God had called these people out of the old life into the new, and this transition had been symbolized in their baptism, at the very threshold of their Christian career; but the significance of their baptism must be spelt out in daily living. Let that daily living proclaim as eloquently in one way what their baptism had proclaimed in another way: their decisive farewell to all that they had formerly been. This tension between the indicative and the imperative arises from the fact that while the believer is spiritually united to Christ at God’s right hand and belongs to the age to come, yet temporally, so long as he remains in mortal body, he lives on earth and is involved in this present age.
“Those who nurse their wrath to keep it warm may not realize that they are giving the devil a golden opportunity to exploit their cherished indignation to gain his own ends.”
As a further incentive to have done with the old man, they are reminded that he is under sentence of death; he is undergoing corruption by virtue of the deceitful desires which belong to his nature. These desires are deceitful, like the desires stirred in our first parents by the tempter, because their gratification leads not to a richer life, as is falsely pretended, but to eternal death.
Verse 23: and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
This is an echo of Romans 12:2, “be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” This inward renewal can only come about by obedience to the apostle’s next injunction:
Verse 24: and put on the new man,
If the old man is Adam, whose nature we inherit by birth, the new man is Christ, whose nature is imparted to his people by their new, heavenly birth. So, in Romans 13:14, when Paul commends the Christian way of life to other readers, he sums his teaching up by saying: “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Again, this is an imperative which has its corresponding indicative: in Colossians 3:10 Christians are people who already “have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him.” In Ephesians the adjective rendered “new” is kainos (as in 2:15) whereas in the Colossians passage it is neos; but here at any rate it is difficult to press the usual distinction between the two words, according to which kainos means “new in respect of character” while neos means “new in respect of time.” Besides, while the verb “renew” in verse 23 here is ananeoo, containing the element neos, in Colossians 3:10 it is anakainoo, containing kainos, so that each of the parallel passages brings the two words for “new” together.
which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.
It is not Christ personally that is “created,” of course; it is the Christlikeness in the believer. Those who have put on the new man become like Christ, for they are God’s new creation in Christ. Two essential qualities of this Christlikeness are named – righteousness and holiness. God himself is righteous and holy; his righteousness and holiness are perfectly manifested in Christ, and those who put on Christ are accordingly characterized by righteousness and holiness – righteousness and holiness, says Paul, which are both “of truth,” of the truth as it is in Jesus. The old man and the new are alike to be recognized by the works appropriate to either.
3. Precepts of the new life (4:25–5:2)
Verse 25: Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye truth each one with his neighbour:
The verb “putting away” is the same as that used in verse 22 above of putting away “the old man”; falsehood is one of his chief characteristics, Those who put off the old man and put on the new must have done with falsehood and practice truth. God is the God of truth; the devil is the father of all lying (John 8:44). Hence the injunction comes to the children of God: “lie not one to another” (Colossians 3:9). The positive command “speak ye truth each one with his neighbour” is a quotation from Zechariah 8:16, where the people of Israel, restored from exile, are charged to behave in such a way as to receive God’s blessing instead of incurring his wrath, as their fathers by disobedience had done.
for we are members one of another.
All deceit is an offense against God, but there is something peculiarly unnatural about deceit in the mutual relationship of those who are fellow-members of the body of Christ, who belong to one another because they belong to him. The members cannot cooperate in harmony for the good of the whole if their dealings with one another are not marked by open-hearted sincerity and confidence.
Verse 26: Be ye angry, and sin not:
This is a verbal reproduction of the opening words of Psalm 4:4 in the Septuagint version; AV and RV render the Massoretic (Hebrew) text by “Stand in awe, and sin not.” The Hebrew verb ragaz may denote a variety of emotional disturbances, including trembling with fear or anger. In RSV the opening words of Psalm 4:4 are rendered “Be angry, but sin not.” What Paul means by this admonition is made plain by his following words. It is not sinful to be angry, but it is all too easy to let anger run to excess through lack of control, and righteous indignation may degenerate into sinful resentment, and can even become the first step on the road that leads to murder. Hence our Lord’s solemn words about being angry with one’s brother in Matthew 5:22. “Be angry without sinning,” says Paul. But how? By exercising a firm control over one’s anger, and limiting its duration.
“Conversation with a view to timely instruction will help to build up a strong Christian character and stimulate growth in grace.”
let not the sun go down upon your wrath:
“Blessed is the man who remembers this,” says Polycarp in his letter to the Philippians, after he has quoted Ephesians 4:26, “and I believe that it is so with you.” It is good to relax at the close of the day; when tension is let go, then the Psalmist’s further admonition can be fulfilled: “Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still” (Psalm 4:4). There can be no such heart-communing with God in the night-watches if the sense of provocation (Gk. parorgismos) has not first been dispelled. Even if it is not practicable before sundown to seek out the person who has occasioned the anger, one can still be reconciled with him at heart by taking the trouble to the Lord and leaving it with him.
Verse 27: neither give place to the devil.
Those who nurse their wrath to keep it warm may not realize that they are giving the devil a golden opportunity to exploit their cherished indignation to gain his own ends. But he must be allowed no room, not the slightest foothold, within the Christian’s life. The term diabolos (“slanderer”), the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew satan (“adversary”), is found in the Pauline writings only in Ephesians and in the Pastoral Epistles (cf. Ephesians 6:11); Paul normally prefers to use satanas, the Hebrew word supplied with a Greek termination.
Verse 28: Let him that stole steal no more:
This is practical enough; the converted thief must be a thief no longer. Slaves, for instance, had regarded petty pilfering as part of their way of life; when they became Christians, however, they had to learn a more excellent way. And there are more subtle breaches of the Eighth Commandment than the picking up of unconsidered trifles. It is no excuse for a Christian to say that “everybody does it”; everybody may indeed do it, but Christians have a higher standard to maintain than the moral level of their social groups.
but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have whereof to give to him that hath need.
If the erstwhile thief is to give up stealing, it follows that he must earn an honest living. But he should do more than that, says Paul; he should work so as to earn more than he needs for the maintenance of himself and his family, and then he will have a surplus to give to someone else – perhaps to someone who is unable, through old age or infirmity, to work for himself. Such giving is at the opposite pole from stealing; conduct like this will be a sure proof of a changed heart. Paul himself gave a fine example in this regard, when he maintained both himself and his companions by the work of his hands, rather than live at the expense of his converts (Acts 20:34 f.; 1 Thessalonians 2:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:7-10).
Verse 29: Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them that hear.
In Colossians 4:6 Paul says that Christian speech should always be “seasoned with salt.” Otherwise it may become insipid, or even worse; it may become both corrupt and corrupting. Foul language had no doubt been habitual with many of his readers before they became Christians; but such language is most unbecoming in a Christian. It must, therefore, be renounced. But the absence of such “colorful” embellishments of talk (as they are sometimes accounted) does not mean that one’s talk will become colorless. Just as the command to steal no more is followed by the positive injunction to be generous, so here the prohibition of harmful talk is accompanied by the inculcation of helpful talk. It is recorded of R.C. Chapman’s home in Barnstaple: “There was great cheerfulness at the table – words of wisdom and grace were constantly heard; but no room was given for conversation to degenerate into frivolous talk. It was also a rule of the house that no one should speak ill of an absent person, and any infringement of this rule called forth a firm though gracious reproof.” Conversation with a view to timely instruction will help to build up a strong Christian character and stimulate growth in grace.
“Mutual kindness, compassion and a readiness to forgive are the qualities which should characterize Christians.”
Verse 30: And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption.
The Holy Spirit of God is here spoken of personally, as capable of being grieved. The implication is that unedifying language grieves the Spirit who dwells in the speaker and the hearer alike, for it tends to break down that common life in the body of Christ which it is the Spirit’s province to maintain. To grieve one’s brother or cause him to stumble (Romans 14:15,21) is an offense against the Christian fellowship and therefore against the Spirit himself. Paul has already reminded his readers (Ephesians 1:13 f.) that when they believed they received the seal of the Spirit, as a pledge of the inheritance which would be theirs on the day when God claimed them finally as his own possession, as a universal demonstration of his glory. That is the “day of redemption” referred to here, the day of “the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:19), the day of Christ’s coming “to be glorified in his saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:10).
Verse 31: Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing, be put away from you, with all malice;
So, lest the Spirit be grieved, let everything be put away which menaces unity of heart and purpose among believers. Annoying pinpricks and flaring outbursts of rage, public quarreling and slanderous whispers – these and all other forms of maliciousness and ill-will must be abandoned. Such catalogues of vices are not infrequent in the New Testament writings; ugly as they are, they help to throw into clearer relief the corresponding graces, such as Paul lists in the following verse.
Verse 32: and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you.
Mutual kindness, compassion, and a readiness to forgive are the qualities which should characterize Christians. Most appropriately so; for they were the qualities which characterized Christ. Moreover, he ascribed these same qualities to God, and made that fact the chief reason why the children of God should exhibit them. By the exercise of love and forgiveness, he told his disciples, “ye shall be sons of the Most High: for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil. Be ye merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:35 f.). And it is the forgiving grace of God that Paul invokes here – more especially, his forgiving grace manifested in Christ – as the crowning incentive towards a spirit of forgiveness in his children. Those who have been forgiven so much, and at so great a cost, must be forgiving in their turn. So too our Lord taught his disciples to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us” – not because our forgiving others can be the ground of God’s free forgiveness of us, but because we can neither seek nor enjoy his forgiveness so long as we cherish an unforgiving spirit to others (Matthew 6:12,14 f.; 18:21-35).
“Those who have been forgiven so much, and at so great a cost, must be forgiving in their turn.”
Here and there in his epistles Paul shows signs that he was acquainted with the Lord’s Prayer. The word which he uses for forgiveness in this verse is not the common verb for remission or letting off (Gk. aphiemi) but one of richer content (Gk. charizomai), the word which AV translates “frankly forgave” in the parable of the two debtors (Luke 7:32); its primary meaning is “to grant as a free gift” and thus it is a suitable word to denote the forgiveness of a debt.
Many ancient authorities, as RV margin points out, have “us” instead of “you” at the end of the verse. Among these must now be reckoned Papyrus 46, which, of course, was not known to the Revisers in 1881. One reason why Greek manuscripts oscillate so much between hemeis (“we”) and hymeis (“you”) is that the pronunciation of these two pronouns was practically identical in the first century AD and onwards. Hence if a scribe was copying by dictation, he might well put the one for the other, especially in a context like this, where either pronoun makes good sense.
