St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians Part 11

(or will)--'the hardening of the heart'; hence arises 'vanity of the mind,' an aimlessness or loss of all true and fixed point of view, a 'darkening of the understanding,' an inherent 'ignorance'; and accompanying this loss of real intelligence has been a loss of what is the true goal of human life, fellows.h.i.+p in 'the life of G.o.d.' Instead of that a life of uncleanness has prevailed, made into a regular business[3], and pursued with 'greediness,' i.e. an entire disregard {181} for others' rights--such a life as is only possible where all true human feeling and good taste has been quenched. Men have become 'past feeling.'

As regards the relation of this black picture to the actual facts, enough has perhaps been said above. At least St. Paul's picture is given as a direct challenge to the experience of those to whom he writes; and it is not blacker, at any rate, than the picture given by a philosophic contemporary at Ephesus, who calls himself Heracleitus.

And on the black background of this 'former manner of life,' this 'old man' or old manhood--a life ruled by l.u.s.ts which are not only morally evil but deceive and mock those who yield to them, leading, in fact, to nothing but corruption and death, a 'waxing corrupt after the l.u.s.ts of deceit'--St. Paul sketches in the new life in Christ. To become a believer is to submit one's intelligence to learn a new lesson, to study Christ; it is to yield one's self to a 'form of teaching[4]' in order to have one's life refas.h.i.+oned in marked contrast to old and abandoned ways of life; it is to imbibe a new principle in the heart of one's rational being, 'to be renewed in the spirit of one's mind'; it is to put on deliberately, as a man puts on clothing, {182} a new manhood, Christ's manhood, which is 'according to G.o.d[5],' that is, is based on His own life, and is His 'new creation' in righteousness and holiness. And this righteousness and holiness can never deceive us by false promises, because they are rooted in 'truth' or reality.

This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of G.o.d because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye did not so learn Christ; if so be that ye heard him, and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus: that ye put away, as concerning your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth corrupt after the l.u.s.ts of deceit; and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, which after G.o.d hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.

There is one phrase in this pa.s.sage which may need some further comment--'The life of G.o.d.' Into G.o.d's own eternal life, as He lives it in Himself, we are given but glimpses. But G.o.d is also living in the world as its inherent life, and each form of creation partic.i.p.ates in its measure, even if unconsciously, in the life {183} of G.o.d.

Consciously and intelligently man was intended to partic.i.p.ate in it, but he 'alienated' himself from it by sin; and, while he was physically sustained in life by G.o.d, morally and mentally he was an exile. But Christ embodies the divine life anew in human form, and by His Spirit imparts it as a new life to men. Once more in Christ men live both 'in G.o.d' and 'according to G.o.d.'

This thought of our relation to the life of G.o.d is, in part, expressed in the Latin original of the Collect for the ninth Sunday after Trinity, in which we pray 'that we who cannot exist without Thee, may be enabled to live according to Thee.'

[1] 2 Pet. iii. 16.

[2] Rom. vi. 1 ff.

[3] 'To work all uncleanness.' Marg. 'to make a trade of.'

[4] Rom. vi. 17.

[5] Eph. iv. 24, R. V. Marg. 'the new man which is after G.o.d, created,'

&c.

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DIVISION II. -- 2. CHAPTER IV. 25-32.

_The new life a corporate life._

[Sidenote: _Corporate duties_]

The first characteristic of the new life dwelt upon is its corporate character, as a life lived by those who are 'members one of another,'

and have therefore a common aim. In a body of people working with a common aim there may be a healthy rivalry and compet.i.tion in doing good work, a manifold spirit of initiation and inventiveness, and there may be rewards of labour, proportioned not merely to needs but to these personal excellences. But what there cannot be is a compet.i.tion which runs to the point of mutual destructiveness, or such acc.u.mulation of the fruits of skill and labour in a few hands as maims or starves the life of the majority. The common interest prevents this. 'The members must have the same care one of another,' so that 'when one member suffers all the members suffer with it[1].' The life is the life {185} of a body, and the general well-being is therefore the common interest of all the members, for the weakening or decay of one is the weakening and decay of a more or less valuable part of a connected life. This is the general principle on which the Church is based. This is the moral meaning of churchmans.h.i.+p. 'Ye are members one of another.'

Various specific obligations follow from this general principle.

(a) _Truthfulness and openness_; for falsehood and concealment belong to a life of separated and conflicting interests. The prophetic ideal for the restored Israel is to be realized among Christians. 'Speak ye every man truth with his neighbour: execute the judgement of truth and peace in your gates: and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour: and love no false oath[2].'

(b) _Self-restraint in temper_. We must not injure one another in life and limb, or wound one another in feelings. Therefore we must watch the first beginnings of anger, as the Psalmist[3] warns us, lest they lead to sin and give {186} the devil, i.e. the slanderer of his brethren, the inspirer of all mutual recriminations, room and scope to work in.

(c) _Labour for the purpose of mutual beneficence_. Under the old covenant G.o.d had contented Himself with forbidding stealing. Under the new covenant the prohibition of what is wrong pa.s.ses into the injunction of what is right. Labour of whatever kind, labour directed to produce something good, is required of all. 'If any man will not work, neither let him eat[4].' The idle man in fact violates the fundamental conditions of the Christian covenant as truly as if he were denying the rudiments of the Christian faith. Now the object of labouring is to acquire 'property,' which is in one sense 'private,'

and in another sense is not. The labourer may have, under his own free administration, the fruits of his labour, but he is to administer his property with the motive, not only of supporting himself, but of helping his weaker and more needy brethren.

(d) _Profitable speech_. Here again the Christian is not to be content with avoiding noxious conversation. His talk is to be, not indeed 'edifying' in the narrowest sense, but such as {187} 'builds up what is lacking' in life, or supplies a need, whether by counselling, or informing, or refres.h.i.+ng, or cheering; so that it may 'give grace[5],'

that is, afford pleasure and, in the widest sense, bring a blessing to the hearers.

In all their conduct Christians are to have two masterful thoughts.

(1) They are to think of the divine purpose of the Holy Ghost who has entered into the Church to 'seal' or mark it as an elect body destined for full redemption from all evil, in body and soul, at the climax of G.o.d's dealings, the last day. The Holy Ghost, with all His personal love, will be grieved if we thwart His rich purpose for the whole body by anything which is contrary to brotherhood in the thoughts of our hearts, or the words of our lips, or our outward conduct.

(2) They are to remember the divine pattern of life. G.o.d has shown His own heart to us in the free forgiveness which He has given us in Christ. Being in constant receipt of that forgiveness, we must not prove ourselves hard and unforgiving towards one another.

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Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye truth each one with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: 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. 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. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of G.o.d, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as G.o.d also in Christ forgave you.

Here, then, St. Paul sketches catholicity in practice. The very idea of the Church is that of a fellows.h.i.+p of naturally unlike individuals, harmonized into unity by the new 'truth and grace' of G.o.d, which has been made theirs in their regenerate life. It is this endowment of the regenerate life that is to enable them to transcend, and overstep, and defeat natural incompatibilities of temper, and to be one body in Christ. The practical meaning of catholicity is brotherhood. It is love, as St. Augustine says, grown as wide as the world[6].

Why has the world lost this sense of the {189} moral meaning of catholic churchmans.h.i.+p? Why has 'ecclesiastical' come to mean something quite different to 'brotherly'? Or it is a more profitable question to ask, How shall we make it mean the same thing again? There are many who would give up the very effort after recovering the church principle, the obligation of the 'one body.' But this, as has been said, is to abandon the ultimate catholic principle of Christianity.

For the very purpose of the one church for all the men of faith in Jesus, is that the necessity for belonging to one body--a necessity grounded on divine appointment--shall force together into a unity men of all sorts and different kinds; and the forces of the new life which they share in common are to overcome their natural repugnance and antipathies, and to make the forbearance and love and mutual helpfulness which corporate life requires, if not easy, at least possible for them.

This is the principle which must not be abandoned. We must a.s.sert the theological principle of the Church because it is that and that alone which can impress on men practically the obligation and possibility of a catholic brotherhood.

But it is folly to a.s.sert the theological truth of {190} churchmans.h.i.+p, and neglect its moral meaning. Quite recently the bishops of the Lambeth Conference have striven to impress anew the ethics of churchmans.h.i.+p upon the conscience of the faithful[7]. The principle of brotherhood must act as a constant counterpoise to the instinct of compet.i.tion. The principle of labour shows that the idle and selfish are 'out of place' in a Christian community. The principle of justice forces us to recognize that the true interest of each member of the body politic must be consulted. The principle of public responsibility reminds us that each one is his brother's keeper. Once more the Church has been aroused to its prophetic task of 'binding' and 'loosing' the consciences of men in regard specially to those matters which concern the corporate life and the relations of cla.s.ses to one another. And we pray G.o.d that the work of our bishops may not be in vain. What we want is not more Christians, but, much rather, better Christians--that is to say, Christians who have more perception of what the moral effort required for members.h.i.+p in the catholic brotherhood really is.

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No doubt the needed social reformation is of vast difficulty. For instance, one who contemplates our commercial relations in the world may indeed be tempted to despair of the possibility of recovering the practical application to 'business' of the law of truthfulness; and many a one who is practically engaged in commerce, in higher or lower station, finds that to act upon the law may involve something like martyrdom. But the very meaning of divine faith is that we do, in spite of all discouragements, hold that to be practicable which is the will of G.o.d; and it is nothing new in the history of Christianity if at a crisis we need 'the blood of martyrs'--or something morally equivalent to their blood--for 'a seed,' the seed of a fresh growth of Christian corporate life. No fresh start worth making is possible without personal sacrifices; and to recover anything resembling St.

Paul's ethical standard for Christian society we need indeed a fresh start. But the few Tractarians of sixty years ago by industry, patience and prayer effected a kind of revolution in the Church as a whole; and reformers of Christian social relations may with the same weapons--and with no other--do the like.

[1] 1 Cor. xii. 25, 26.

[2] Zech. viii. 16, 17.

[3] Ps. iv. 4, according to the LXX. But the English version 'Stand in awe and sin not' is probably correct.

[4] 2 Thess. iii. 10.

[5] Cf. Col. iv. 6: 'Let your speech be always with grace' or 'graciousness'; Luke iv. 22: 'gracious words'; Ps. xlv. 2: 'Grace is poured into thy lips'; Eccles. x. 12: 'The words of a wise man's mouth are gracious'; Ecclus. xxi. 16: 'Grace shall be found in the lips of the wise.'

[6] See app. note F, p. 271, _The Ethics of Catholicism_.

[7] See _Report of Lambeth Conference_, 1897. S.P.C.K., pp. 136 ff.; and app. note G, p. 274.

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DIVISION II. -- 3. CHAPTER V. 1-14.