PART II
PART IITHE WALK OF THE CHRISTIAN EPHESIANS 1-111 has given us a revelation of our wealth in Christ. Wealth is never to be hoarded, but rather kept in circulation, that it may minister to the needs of all. The wealth of the Christian should be manifest in his walk. This revelation of divine truth becomes fruitful only as it is transmuted into life. Revelation must eventuate into realization; illumination into application.
One of the brightest converts of a Gospel Mission had become a backslider. In an interview with him, he thought he would gladden my heart by telling me that he believed everything in the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. The only reply that seemed applicable was, “If you believe it, then why do you not live it?” When a friend was speaking to the prisoners in Sing Sing prison, one prisoner said to her very boastfully, “I would have you know that I did not come in here as these other fellows did. I came in here a Christian.” My friend quietly replied, “I am very sorry that being a Christian did not keep you out of here.” The more we know the truth and believe it, the greater is our responsibility to live it. Head knowledge must become heart experience. Consistency in his daily walk should be the vital concern of the Christian.
Ephesians I-Ill tells us how God sees us in Christ in the heavenlies; IV-VI, how men should see Christ in us on earth. They unfold with crystal clearness the sevenfold walk of the Christian which is the divine standard for every Christian’s life.
4: 1. “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.”
Paul’s Approach
“Therefore” does not indicate the commencement of something altogether new, but rather the consequence of what has preceded. Here it does not present a change of thought, but a call to prove the
of our wealth through the rightness of our walk. “To turn from the doctrinal to the practical is not a break or a breach. There is no divorcement between Christian doctrine and Christian doing.” The condition of the Christian must harmonize with his position. Being in Christ he should grow up into Christ.Paul’s Appeal
“I beseech you”—Oh! the intensity of desire and the deep sense of responsibility which the aged apostle writes into that word “beseech!” He has already given them a marvellous revelation of their heavenly calling. Now with equal clarity he would show their responsibility for a corresponding conduct. It would well repay you to make a study of such words and phrases as “therefore,” “wherefore,” “for,” “that,” “as,” “so,” “let,” “be ye,” “be not ye,” “see then,” in Ephesians to see how Paul’s appeals are always made on the ground of one’s condition corresponding with one’s position. “Ye are”—’ ‘theref ore be ye”—is invariably the basis of Paul’s appeal.“That ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.” Before making this appeal Paul has shown them what is their high calling. How could they be expected to walk worthily without knowing what their calling was? Yet this is the mistake which many Christians make. They know that they are not living as they ought, and they try to mend their ways and improve their manner of living without having knowledge of the divine standard and its requirements. They try to “be” (4:32; 5: 1), before they “know what” (1:18). There is tremendous danger in some present-day movements that ignore or even discard doctrine and place emphasis primarily, or even solely, upon experience. Such experiences are as untrustworthy and unacceptable to the Lord as the premises upon which they are built.
“Therefore—walk.” To walk indicates motion. There are many words that indicate motion, such as leap, run, float, drift, creep, but you cannot substitute one of them for the word walk. To walk implies purpose, starting for a goal; progress, steadily advancing step by step; perseverance, keeping on until the goal is reached. Walking stands for steady, sustained motion, and involves the action of the mind in the decision to start; of the heart in the desire to continue, and of the will in the determination to arrive.
Then what does to “walk” mean in relation to the Christian’s life? The whole course of his daily living; his habitual conduct before men; his life lived out in the open.
“Therefore—walk worthy.” The characteristics of a worthy walk are given in 4:1-6:9, which we shall study in detail. But here let us
consider briefly the Godward and the manward aspects of such a walk. God has already determined both its starting point and its goal, and the road over which the walk is to be made. His starting point is 1:4, His goal is 5:27, and His path of travel is 5:18. God
has determined that we shall “walk even as he walked” (I John 2:6). God’s goal for every Christian is complete conformity to the image of His Son, and He would have every step in our walk bring us that much nearer to the goal.Such a walk requires on the manward side fullest co-operation with God. It demands a set purpose, a steady progress, and a strong perseverance. The Christian must resolutely purpose to “put off the old man,” and to “put on the new man”; he must not be content without a step-by-step growth “up into him in all things”; and be must keep steadily on his course without faltering or fainting in spite of all opposition by not “giving place to the devil,” or “grieving the Spirit,” but rather by being filled with the Spirit and empowered by Him.
But how exceedingly difficult is such a walk! The old habits of life are so binding; the worldly currents about us are so strong; the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil are so subtle; the fear of being considered peculiar is so gripping; the opportunity of fellowship with spiritually-minded Christians is so limited. To maintain a steady, sustained consistency in daily conduct is not an easy task. It is far easier to float downstream with the tide of nominal Christianity; to drift in the listlessness and Lukewarmness of a worldly church; to creep along as a spiritual babe, fed on the milk of elementary doctrines of salvation; easier even to mount up with eagle’s wing and soar to spiritual heights of sudden inspiration on some spiritual Mount of Transfiguration only to relapse into a backslidden condition when facing the stern realities of Christian living in an unsympathetic atmosphere; very much easier, even, to run, rising to some particular task such as teaching a Bible class, or leading a meeting, or preaching a sermon, than to practice consistently in the home, office, or social circle the truth preached. A daily, consistent Christ like walk; no stagnancy, slump or sloth—how hard!
So the aged apostle devotes the very heart of this epistle to telling us what a worthy walk is. Eight times he uses the word “walk.” What shall we do with this divine standard set for the Christian’s walk? We may reject it as impossible and impracticable, or we may receive it as possible and livable and rejoice in it, as daily our faithful
Father enables us “to walk even as he walked” by the power of the divine Spirit. Let us now consider the sevenfold walk of the Christian.Back to the Table of Content If someone asked what is the first essential of the Christian’s walk, it would seem most fitting to say it was holiness. Did God not choose us in Christ that we should be holy? Then is not holiness the fundamental essential in the Body of Christ? The divine order in Ephesians is otherwise, and God’s order can never be reversed.
4:2-16 shows that the first characteristic of a worthy walk is unity. What is the primary necessity for wholeness and health in a human body? It is the harmonious functioning of all the organs of the body; the perfect co-ordination in action of every part with every other part. A displacement of even an insignificant organ or the maladjustment of any parts of the body can cause disease and disability. A missionary in China began to have convulsions. She had the best of medical attention. She was told she had an incurable disease and advised to go home. On the way back to her station she consulted an osteopath. Two little bones were found to be out of adjustment, which caused pressure on the nerves. Quickly they were brought into unity through adjustment, and the incurable disease was cured.
So in the Church, the mystical Body of Christ, spiritual health is dependent upon the harmonious functioning of all the members and upon their perfect co-ordination in action. But what awful maladjustments we see in Christ’s Body to-day! What sinful failure in co-ordination between its members! What shameful divisions over secondary matters which dishonour the Lord in the sight of the world! How desperately we need to come back to the divine standard set in Ephesians, and how humbly we need to acknowledge our failure and sin in not living according to it!
The Divine Standard
The unity to which God is calling His Church is distinctly defined and definitely declared. It is not a union of denominations or a federation of the churches of Christendom. Neither is it the unity of the Body. God nowhere asks us to make or to maintain the unity of the Body, for that is God’s task. Through baptism with the Spirit the believer is united to Christ, the Head, and to every other member of the Body in an indissoluble bond, which unity is maintained by the indwelling Spirit. So with the making and keeping of the unity of the Body we have nothing to do.
But with the outworking of God’s eternal purpose for the completion of the Body; for its edification and sanctification; and for its manifestation of Christ in glory and power to the world, we have
much to do, which requires the harmonious, effectual working of every member. Hence God’s call to keep the unity which He now
defines.The Unity of the Spirit
4:3. “Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”“Endeavouring to keep.” God is not asking us to make unity, but to keep a unity that already exists. Just what unity we are to keep we are also told:
“The unity of the Spirit”—created and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the Church, the Body of Christ, is a spiritual organism in which there is oneness of mind, heart and will; a spiritual fellowship of those who share the same life, purpose and power.This Spirit-made unity every Christian should set himself to keep with purposeful, determined, watchful endeavour. He should do his utmost to keep a zealous, jealous custody over this Spirit-fashioned oneness with which the Church began on the day of Pentecost. Such unity is not an intangible, uncertain thing but, on the contrary, is dependent upon definitely-stated principles. The basis is in truth, and the bond is in love. Unity is rooted in God’s truth, and it fructifies through God’s love.
The Basis of Unity
Having charged us with the sacred responsibility of keeping the unity of the Spirit, the Lord now tells how to do it.
The Sevenfold Unity to be Kept
4:4-6. “There is one body, and one Spirit, . . . one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism; One God and Father of all who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”The Lord Jesus prayed for visible oneness in the Church before the world. Ephesians 4:4-6 interprets for us the meaning of His prayer. Our Lord never asked for a man-made union of organized churches into a grand federation, but He prayed for a Spirit-made, Christ centred, God-controlled unity in the living organism, the Body of Christ.
One Spirit—One Lord—One God
It was to be oneness of fellowship through oneness of faith; an inward unity expressing itself in outward harmony.
One Body
Note that it does not say “one Church.” Were that so then each of the three great divisions into which Christendom is divided would claim that distinction. It is even conceivable that some denomination or sect, of which there are hundreds, would make this unique claim. Neither does it say there is one federation of all organized churches forming, as it were, a “Christianized world trust.”“There is one body,” which Ephesians teaches is eternal in calling, heavenly in conception, divine in creation, and supernatural in constitution. The living members of this Body have been called out of every kindred, tongue, people and nation. They differ in nationality, color, language, education, training, ability, temperament, and outlook. Through the human blood running in their veins they have inherited dislikes, prejudices and animosities that separate them as far as the east is from the west. But through the blood of the Saviour and the baptism of the Spirit they are united to Christ as living members of His Body.
5:30. “For we are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones.”
Being organically united with Christ, the Head, each member is then made one with every other member of the Body. The oneness is so complete that we are literally a part of the life of each other. United to the Head there is one mind, one heart, one spirit.
One Spirit
On the day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit descended to form the Body of Christ. The hundred and twenty individual persons in the upper room were fitly joined together into one Body through the Spirit’s baptism. This same Spirit took up His abode in the Church and in each Christian, and by His indwelling and inworking He maintains a visible, vital unity in the Body of Christ. “Every impulse of the Spirit is toward unity. He cannot suicidally lead against Himself.”One Hope
The hope of the saint is to be with and to be like his Lord. While he praises God for the progressive sanctification which goes on day by day on earth, every truly earnest Christian longs for that day when the partial will give way to the perfect and redemption will be consummated in glorification. The one hope that in these days unifies the Lord’s own as perhaps no other is the blessed hope of His soon return to take them unto Himself.One Lord
Note that “one Lord” is the centre of this sevenfold unity. It must be so. Everything centres in and around the Lord Jesus Christ. The eternal purpose of the Father and the mighty power of the Spirit are directed toward making the Lord a living reality within the Church and the Christian.Note also that the central figure of Ephesians is not “the Jesus of history,” but the Lord Jesus Christ. In the opening verses of the epistle we are shown how we are redeemed through His blood, but having crossed the threshold of salvation we are quickly led right into the throne room where the whole stage of the epistle is set. We are brought into the presence of the risen, ascended, exalted Lord upon whom throughout Ephesians our eyes are fixed and held.
It is “one Lord” and a solitary One who is in a class and on a plane all by Himself, as far above all other men and even angels as the heavens are above the earth. He is “Lord of lords, the Lord God Almighty.” Note also that this “One Lord” is Head of the Church, which automatically excludes any other temporal head of the visible Body of Christ. To no man has the Lord ever delegated the headship over the Church. His headship, on the contrary, is mediated directly by the Holy Spirit whom the ascended Lord appointed.
One Faith
The apostle Paul writes both of “the faith” and of “faith” (Gal. 1:23; 3:26). “The faith” is the divine standard of truth as revealed in the New Testament which embodies the Christian doctrine once for all delivered unto the saints (Jude 3) as essential to salvation, and which is the very foundation of unity in the Body of Christ. The faith is, no doubt, what Paul means here. “Faith” is the way of access unto God through an act of believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the heart of “the faith.” The faith gives us a Person in whom to believe. Faith accepts the gift and receives the Person.One Baptism
Accepting the whole standard of divine truth in “the faith” which centres in the “one Lord,” one is united to Christ and to all other Christians through the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit, which Scripture designates as the baptism with the Spirit. Of all the manifold ministries of the divine Spirit for the believer, this baptism, which joins him to the Lord and opens the fountain of His fullness to him, is the most fundamental and essential. Surely then the “one baptism” is that with the Holy Spirit. It is an inward process wrought by God alone. But this inward union should be manifested by an outward symbol, for this community life in the Body of Christ should be acknowledged publicly. Hence the baptism by the Spirit is followed by water baptism.One God and Father
“One body—one God.” The apostle begins with the visible circumference, the Body, scattered throughout the world, and ends with the invisible centre, God, the generating source of everything.“One God”—who is absolute Sovereign, working after the good pleasure and counsel of His own will (1:5, 11) to carry out His eternal purpose in Christ for the Church.
“One Father”—of us whom He has “chosen” and “predestinated unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ” to be His habitation on earth.
“above all”— Sovereign Purpose. One God and Father “through all”— Pervasive Power. “in you all”— Indwelling Presence. Such, then, is the sevenfold basis for unity in the Spirit which is God’s standard for the Church.
The Professing Church—An Organization
But as we look at Christendom to-day, what measure of unity do we find? How far has the divine standard been followed? We see the professing Church divided into three major parts, Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Greek Orthodox. In Protestantism we find two clearly-defined sections, called Liberals and Conservatives, between whom there is a cleavage that is inevitable, caused by a totally different interpretation of each of these divinely appointed unities. Both sections are becoming more audible and aggressive in their opposition to each other, so that the gulf between them is not only fixed but is growing wider every day.For such a division in the present-day Church there is a Scriptural parallel in the relationship of Jesus Christ to the outstanding religionists of His day, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. From both of these groups He had to depart because they had first departed
from Him and from the clearly revealed truth of the Old Testament Scripture concerning Him.The germ of such division was also in the early Church. The apostle Paul saw it and openly rebuked it. He also went straight to the cause and showed it to be twofold: a departure from the headship of Christ to accept the leadership of men and a departure from the truth of the Word to accept the traditions of men. In his farewell message to the elders of the church at Ephesus he warned against this very thing:
Acts 20:29-30. “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.”Col. 2:8. “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
The True Church—An Organism
The Holy Spirit was appointed to dwell within the Church as the sole and sovereign executor of the Father’s eternal purpose in Christ for and through the Church. The early Church recognized and submitted to His sovereign control. So in the book of the Acts we read “The Holy Ghost said,” and “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us.” What He said was accepted and accomplished. The affairs of the Church were managed in counsel and co-operation with Him. Hence the unity in the faith and fellowship, in the prayers and program of that first century Church.Acts 2:42. “And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellows/zip, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.”
Acts 4:32. “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul.”Signifying their union with Christ, the Head of the Body, they were designated by the name “believers”; and indicating their union with each other as fellow-members of the Body, they were called “brethren”—not capital B. And when some carnal Christians of the Corinthian church attempted to start rival sects and become Paulites, Apollosites, Cephasites, or even to misuse the blessed name of Christ for such selfish ends, they were severely rebuked by Paul.
I Cor. 1:11-13. “It bath been declared unto me that there are contentions among you. Now this I say, that everyone of you saith,
am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ.
Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were ye baptized into the name of Paul?”The results of such unity in the Spirit were very marvellous. “The Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.” “And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and of women.” “Then the churches were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.”
As we look at the true Church, the Body of Christ, in this twentieth century, what do we see? The Church is split up into many churches, each called by its own name, separating it from all the others. Between these churches there is often even jealousy and rivalry. Such appalling division in the professing church is a sad enough spectacle to present to a godless world. But to behold such division in the true Church is nothing short of shameful. May we not go further, and ask if it is not the greatest sin of the members of the Body against the Head?
The tendency within the Church to-day is to divide over doctrines and to form little spiritual aristocracies composed of “the elect,” who claim not only special revelation of truth, but often a special realization of that truth in experience beyond others. From such exclusive groups there are constant departures to form other select circles. I heard of one such group that had become so advanced that admission to its gatherings was only by ticket.
This shameful division is often caused by over-emphasis upon some phase of truth which is lifted quite out of its setting in Scripture and is made the central doctrine upon which a new sect is formed. The “One Lord” is displaced as the centre of the Spirit made unity, and this particular doctrine takes His place.
Division is also caused by dogmatic insistence upon the interpretation of the truth regarding some divinely-appointed rite or ordinance of the Church. One missionary was refused the privilege of taking the Lord’s Supper with the saints of one denomination in the United States because she had not been immersed. While in a European country a deeply spiritual pastor who, because he had been re-baptized by immersion from real conviction, was denied the privilege of fellowship in prayer with members of the denomination to which he belonged. Can one conceive of cubicles in heaven set apart for those belonging to each of these groups, so that they will be spared the pain of fellowship and worship together around the “One Lord”?
Disunity is caused also by one-sidedness of viewpoint due to some particular experience or the manner of entering into it and the insistence upon putting every other Christian into the same mould.
Once in China an invitation was withheld to have meetings in a certain mission with whose missionaries there was perfect agreement as to the truths of the sevenfold unities of 4:4-6. We differed only on one point—the method of entering into the life of sanctification provided for us in Christ.Division is due also to the attitude which makes one hopelessly intolerant of another who differs with him on any point of either major or minor importance; even on points of doctrine about which equally spiritual and scholarly teachers do not see alike, as for instance the meaning of the baptism with the Holy Spirit, or some phases of Advent truth.
Those who are guilty of thus breaking the unity of the Spirit invariably justify themselves by claiming to be “contenders for the faith,” when they may be contending only for their own private interpretation, or for some tradition of their denomination, or even for their own opinion.
All such need to be saturated with the truth of Ephesians. They need to pray that divinely-inspired prayer that they “may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.” They need also to be reminded of the divinely-given process for the growth of the Church into the full stature of the perfect man, “Till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” Not, till a few select ones, like a little church within the Church, reach that goal; not, till we come through our segregations into little groups magnifying some specially deep truths within the Word of truth; not, till we came through the same knowledge of all doctrines to exactly the same experience in life of those glorious truths. Oh no; Ephesians does not teach that. But, “till we all,” every single born-again child of God, “come in the unity of the faith,” already declared to us in 4:4-6, and “in the knowledge of the Son of God,” who is in Himself the middle unity, not only of doctrine, but of life. We are fellow-members of one Body, and each member needs every other member if we are all to reach spiritual maturity in Christ, and every saint has something to contribute to the edifying and the increase of the Body (4:12, 16).
What is the solution of this problem of disunity within the Church? Many in Christendom are greatly disturbed over it, and see on the part of some leaders in Protestantism hectic attempts solve the problem by ecclesiastical federation of existing churches, by a union of separate units based on uniformity of order and organization. The approach to union is made by the alley-way of the social, ethical and ecclesiastical,—the mere externalities of religion. There are plans on now for such a world amalgamation of churches. Dr. I. E. Holt, of The Federal Council of Churches in the United States, has said, “The Protestant churches must first unite. Then a Catholic Protestant church could meet the Greek Catholic church and the Roman Catholic church, and work out a plan for a World Christian Church. That ought to come some day; and we have conferences and groups at work on plans which are influential.”
This is as far from the catholicity for which Christ prayed, and which the Holy Spirit through Paul preached, as the sun is from the earth. Such a “World Christian Church” is not the “One Body” centering in the “One Lord” through the unifying presence and power of the “One Spirit.” The unity for which Christ prayed and of which Paul wrote is “the unity of the Spirit” based on “the unity of the faith.” It was oneness of life through oneness of faith. The approach to such unity is by the highway of the spiritual, divine, and heavenly—the true inwardness of Christianity. It is not the outworking of man-made “plans,” but of the divine purpose.
What is our part, then, in keeping the unity of the Spirit on this divinely-appointed basis? It is first of all to obey the Scriptural command, “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves” (II Cor. 13:5). If you are in the faith, then unite with every other saint who also is in the faith, of whatever section of the Church or of whatever denomination, in the unity of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit, who unites the Head with the Body and the members of the Body with each other, will then be able to maintain that unity in the bond of peace.
The Bond of Unity
Three times in this section on unity is love shown to be the bond:
4:2. “With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.”
4:15. “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.”
4:16. “Maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.”We have considered the divisions within the Church over the basis of unity through doctrinal differences due often to sincere though misguided zeal. But Paul recognizes divisions due to a far more needless and sinful reason,—the breaking of. the bond of unity
through lack of love. Let us face the facts frankly and seek the cause of the disgraceful discords between true believers.From years of observation and study through personal contacts many lands, one is led to believe these discords are largely due national and personal prejudices arid to dislikes due to temperamental differences which are not overcome by divine love. For several years my work has taken me into several countries in Europe. Much has been heard about the “mentality” that characterizes each nation, and it has been intimated that one could not understand this people or that because of inability to understand their mentality. That there is a great difference in the national characteristics of peoples which leads to different ways of viewing things and to different standards of life one would grant immediately. But this does not mean that one mentality is wrong and another right, or even that in all points one is better than another. It simply means there is a difference, and for a purpose. God who created each race and each individual intended it to be so. That this strange, forbidding thing needs to raise walls as high as the heavens between fellow members of the Body of Christ, one who has lived long in Ephesians refuses to grant. One wonders if a more clarifying word for this troublesome thing is not racial prejudice and national pride. A medical missionary, devoted to her work in China, said that after several years in the land she still found it difficult to sit by a Chinese at a table or in a train. While travelling on a boat with a deeply spiritual Chinese Christian, she implored me to sit next to her at meals so that an equally consecrated Indian Christian would not occupy that seat, “for,” she said, “I could not eat anything if I had to sit beside an Indian.”
What a bomb our Lord threw at the heart of such sinful racial and national prejudice in those who through rebirth share equally the life and privileges of the heavenly citizenship in Christ!
Col 3 11 “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ Is all, and in all.”
God grant that it may blow every shred of prejudice and pride
of race out of everyone of us who are fellow-members of the one Body. Perhaps some of us will not know how deeply rooted we are i prejudice until we seek deliverance from it.Another secret of discord lies in personal temperamental differences
. Through observation and through confidences given in personal interviews with numberless Christian workers, one is convinced that the very greatest strain in Christian work, both at home and on the mission field, is due to these maladjustments in temperaments with their resultant friction and tension.Under one roof, living and working together seven days in the week, are people of radically different temperaments, tastes, and training. One is quick and nervous; the other slow and calm. The former can do a half-day’s work while the other is getting dressed in the morning. One is socially-minded and enjoys a bit of company sometimes; the other is solitary-m inded and feels no need of anything outside of herself and her work. One is generous and openhanded; while the other is thrifty, sometimes perhaps tight. A fellow-missionary who was housekeeper for our little company once handed me my monthly bill for - dollars - cents, and 7/l8ths of a cent. Never having been good at figures, I let her keep the change. One is spontaneous and outgoing, readily sharing her heart experiences; the other reticent and unapproachable, never revealing what she really thinks or feels. One gives herself to prayer and is accused of laziness; the other becomes a slave to work and is suspected of ungodliness. One is a replica of the mystical Mary, and the other of the practical Martha.
God intended these temperamental differences that we might be complements one of another. Had God meant us all to be alike, He would have put us into the same mould. Had He done so what a drab, monotonous world this would have been! The question we need to ask is, “Can there be unity in such diversity? How can members of His Body really be made members one of another?” The Lord answers our question.
Unity in Diversity through tire Graces of the Spirit
Unity is not something intangible and indefinite. It is a spiritual fabric woven out of designated materials which are interwoven into spiritual relationships. Those materials are the graces of the Spirit, all of which are included in the spiritual blessings bequeathed to us in Christ. Therefore all these graces may be possessed by all saints alike. Paul mentions several which are essential in keeping the unity of the Spirit.4:2. “With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love.”
“Lowliness.” Someone has defined lowliness as a “holy humbleness,” which would mean negatively a lack of self-assertiveness and any tendency to pride and boastfulness. Positively may we not say that it is such a Scriptural estimate of one’s self as Paul had? He was writing this highest and deepest truth, a revelation given by God to him and to no other, yet he said, “Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given.” Paul never forgot what his past life in sin had been, and delighted to say, “I am what I am by the grace of God.” In Christ by grace he was chief of apostles, but always in himself by nature he was “the chief of sinners.” His holy humbleness came from remembering always the depths to which he had gone and the heights to which he had come, and that it was all due to the grace of God. So there was no room for high mindedness or boastfulness even in Paul. Much less will there be in any one of us.
In the epistle to the Philippians Paul shows us that the source and secret of unity is first in having the mind of our Lord, and then in having a right mind regarding ourselves in relationship to others.
Christ mindedness—willingness to empty -- humble Himself Phil. 2:5-8.
Lowly mindedness— willingness to esteem others better than ourselves. Phil. 2:3.
Like-mindedness -- One-mindedness having the same love. Phil. 2:2.
“Meekness”—our estimate of ourselves in relationship to God; a fitting complement to lowliness. Again we have our perfect example in the meek and lowly Jesus, who in relationship to His Father was “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” There was in Him a whole-hearted acceptance of His Father’s will in all circumstances. Even “when he was reviled, he reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not.” He was called by the most humiliating names: “Thou art a Samaritan,” and was even charged with “casting out devils through Beelzebub, the chief of devils”; yet He patiently endured all such reviling. This is true meekness, which is the very opposite of revenge, resentment and retaliation. It is a spirit that never takes offence even under the severest provocation.
“Longsuffering”—without irritation or annoyance, but with patience and endurance, meeting every harassing trial that comes in fellowship with others. Longsuffering is an unweariable spirit that is so strengthened by Christ that it outlasts the blasts of pain and provocation. Nevertheless, it does not mean long-facedness, for in Scripture it is almost invariably accompanied with joy.
“Forbearing one another”—which Dr. H. A. Ironside translates
-. putting up with all that is disagreeable in other people.” To forbear does not mean that we are blind to the sins and shortcomings of others, nor to the difficulties which they produce. But it does mean that we have the love and patience of Christ in our attitude toward them. When one feels impatience, which tempts to criticism, it is a check upon one to put his own life alongside that of the spotless Son of man and thus see his own immeasurable shortcomings. How quickly it silences condemnation of others as we think of the patience the Lord has shown toward us. It is also a very wholesome antidote to uncharitableness to remember that, if we find it difficult to live with certain people who have disagreeable traits, they probably find it just as difficult to live with us.In order that the whole Body of Christ may be edified an made to increase through the united faith and work of all members in the unity of the Spirit, Paul makes this great appeal: Be lowly-minded, be meek, be longsuffering, and forbear in love. Is there one of us who has measured up to this fourfold divine standard? Must each of us not confess that we have often failed in each of these divine characteristics? Are we prepared to-day to take an advance step in this matter of unity in our relationship to others?
“In love.” We hesitate to answer that question. All of us believe in theory in such practical unity. We admit Christ prayed for it, and that the Bible teaches it. But—? We think of some person with whom it has been utterly impossible thus far to live or work without discord; and we ask, “Is it possible?” Yes, but only in one way - "in love,” and that the love of Christ which supersedes all human points of friction. It demands the loving Christ living out His love-life in us.
The unity that is rooted in truth ripens in love. The root is God’s eternal, unchangeable truth which fructifies into life through a Spirit-produced humility and a Spirit-provided love.
Diversity in Unity through the Gifts of Christ
4:7. “But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.”
“But”—is always an arresting word. Here it denotes an abrupt change in thought; in fact, introduces for consideration the exactly opposite truth of diversity in unity. Spiritual graces, which are included in the spiritual blessings of 1:3, are bequeathed equally to all God’s children, but, when it comes to spiritual gifts, we find a divinely-determined diversity in the divinely-purposed unity in the Body of Christ.
The Individual Endowment of All Members
The Head of the Body is righteous and fair. Each person chosen in Him was also created in Christ Jesus unto good works, so for his particular share in the extension and edifying of the Body he has been given a suitable and a sufficient gift.
“Unto every one of us is given.” As God has before ordained just what task each Christian is to have (2:10), He has set every member in the Body in just the place He wishes him to occupy (I Cor. 12:18), and has then bestowed upon him whatever gift is needed to accomplish his work effectually. There are no omissions and no exemptions. Every Christian has some gift, though it may differ both in kind and in degree from that of another, which is to be used for the mutual benefit and blessing of all saints.
4:16. “From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, making increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.”
No matter how insignificant, weak or obscure a member of the Body may feel himself to be, yet he has a part to perform that is very essential to the spiritual health and functioning of the Body as a whole.
“The gift of Christ.” Christ, the Head of the Body, in His infinite wisdom and impartial love bestows the gift upon every member for the glory of God and for the increase and the building up of the whole Body.
Then should not each of us know what his gift is? Should he not value it as a precious gift from the Lord Himself? Should he not be satisfied with his gift because chosen expressly for him as the one by which he can best glorify the Lord and fulfil His purpose? Should he not use it unstintedly for the benefit of the whole Body?
The Special Endowment of Some Members
In the bestowal of gifts, the supreme objective is the carrying out of the sovereign, eternal purpose of God in Christ Jesus. This is dearly shown in the verses we now study,—in the force of these three prepositions: “till”; “unto”; and “for.”4: 12 (R.V.). “For the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ:
4:13. “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”
4:14, 15. “That we henceforth be no more children, . . . But . . may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.”
“Till” suggests the working out of the predestined purpose.
“Unto” points toward the finished product.
“For” indicates the present process.God is not working in a haphazard fashion. He is steadily progressing along planned lines with the ultimate goal ever in view. God has purposed that the Body shall be the fulness of Christ. To that end there must be steady growth out of spiritual infancy unto spiritual maturity. “No more children,” but constant growth “up into Christ in all things.” The goal is “the perfect man”; humanity in Christ perfected according to the standard of the Perfect Man, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thus the standard for the Church is set, and it is the business of every Christian to ascertain what it is; to accept it; and to adjust his whole life to the achievement of it. How prone we are to say that God’s standard is impossible and impracticable in such a world as this! How we try to persuade God to lower His standard to the level of our experience! But we cannot so deflect God. He resolutely insists upon our decision to accept His standard and to determine to bring our experience up to the level of His standard. God works steadily on to bring the Church “unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”
For the accomplishment of His purpose God has made ample provision through the bestowal of special gifts upon some members of the Body in order that they may be used to prepare every member for his particular task.
4:11. “And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors, and teachers.”
The foundation of the Church must be securely laid in the Lord Jesus Christ and made known in an authoritative body of teaching. This divinely attested truth must be thoroughly taught to the Church. So Christ gave to the Church in its infancy some to be apostles and prophets. Upon this foundation, laid once for all, a building was to be constructed for a habitation of God made up of living stones, to be added one by one. A mystical Body was to be created for Christ, the Head, out of sinners saved by grace and quickened by His Spirit. This required evangelists who would go far and wide to proclaim the gospel and extend the boundaries of the Church through winning souls one by one and “adding to the Church such as should be saved.” But the sheep must be shepherded, so there was the need of pastors; the members of the Body must be built up in their knowledge of Christ through the Word, so there was need of teachers. As the evangelist labours to extend the Church, so the pastor and the teacher work to edify it.
“For the perfecting of the saints.” The special gifts are bestowed with a definite, divine design. No gift is bestowed for the sake of the man himself. It is given to one for the sake of the whole. Neither does it place the monopoly of service in the hands of a gifted few. The evangelist, pastor and teacher are not commissioned by the Lord to do all the work of the Church, but rather to so feed, teach and train the saints individually that each of them be brought to spiritual maturity and thoroughly equipped to fill his place and do his work in building up the whole Body. Every Christian has been made a king and a priest unto God (Rev. 1:6). As the whole Body is bound together in faith and in life, so is it also united in service.
But what discord we see in the Church to-day caused by these very gifts! What unholy ambition! What sinful pride! What corroding jealousy! What spiteful envy. What ill-concealed resentment! What deep-rooted bitterness! What hateful backbiting! What colossal conceit! What domineering leadership! What arrogant presumption! And because of such sins, factions and divisions within the church. Just this week I heard of a tragic breach of fellowship within one church caused largely by the jealousy of a pastor over the fruitful work of one of his parishioners who taught a large Bible class. It is comparatively easy for one Christian to weep with another Christian in sorrow, but how pitifully few are able to rejoice with those that rejoice in success!
In Ephesians God has shown us what is our responsibility in this matter of keeping this God-ordained and God-designed unity of the Spirit in the Body of Christ. We should have a fixed determination that we shall not allow anything for which we are to blame to separate us even a hairs-breadth from any other member of the Body. We should study diligently how to keep this unity; and make it our personal business to advocate and advance it whenever possible. We should determine to stand together on the basis of truth and in the bond of love as an act of allegiance and devotion to Him who is our one Lord, and thus glorify Him by walking in unity.
Back to the Table of Content The second characteristic of a walk worthy of our high calling in Christ is a walk in holiness as revealed in 4:17-30. Paul’s call to such a walk is based on divine authority.
4:17. “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk.”
“This I say.” In 4:1 Paul was persuasive in his appeal. He wrote beseechingly. Here he is pressing home truth with firmness, even with a tone of insistency. “And testify in the Lord.” Way translates this, “I solemnly adjure you as in God’s presence.” One feels here the tremendous burden upon Paul’s heart to impress deeply upon those to whom he writes the imperative necessity of a revolutionary change in their whole manner of living. So his language must be in accord with the truth he would frankly and faithfully give. Also Paul would have them know that he is not stating his personal conviction regarding the standard for their Christian life, but that it is the living Lord speaking through him.
Cleavage Between The Old and The New
“Therefore.” We cannot escape this word in Ephesians. Like a sign-post on the road it arrests and compels attention. It is the verbal causeway between the heavenly calling of Chapters one to three and the earthly conduct of Chapters four to six. The word has a special significance here. These Ephesian saints had passed out of the old position in sin, and were now in Christ. “Therefore” this new position demanded a clean-cut cleavage from all that pertaining to the old. The new position in Christ was the pivot of Paul’s argument for a new walk. Consistently a new practice results from a new position. So with invincible logic Paul proceeds to call them to an altogether different walk from that of the unsaved Gentiles among whom they still lived.“Henceforth.” There is also a clean-cut time element in Ephesians. In the spiritual history of those Christians there was a “sometimes” and a “now” (2:13). There was a moment of time when they crossed the boundary line from death into life. In that moment of rebirth something so tremendously revolutionary had taken place that the sinner had been made into a saint. “Henceforth” life could never be as it was before. Christ’s presence is the most potent argument for a walk in newness of life.
Contrast Between The Old and The New
“Ye—walk not—as other Gentiles walk.” How did these other Gentiles walk? In an appallingly vivid pen picture Paul tells us.4:17.19. “In the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.”
This is a full-length portrait of those “other Gentiles,” sunk in the lowest depths of the mire and filth of sin. It is a revelation of the life to which every unsaved person is eligible and with nothing within himself to prevent him from going to the uttermost length. Not every saint in the Ephesian church had been such an advanced and abandoned pagan as here described, but every one of them had walked as sinners in just such a company.
In 2:1-3 we were told that all sinners walk according to the world, the flesh, and the devil. In 4:17-19 we see some of these sinners so walking, and the sight is terrifying and heartbreaking. It is a picture of:
Spiritual death ”being alienated from the life of God.” Mental darkness ”having the understanding darkened.” Moral degeneracy ”who being past feeling have given themselves over.” Physical depravity ”Unto lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness.” The ignorance that was in them through wilful blindness of heart had produced an impotence which finally generated insensibility toward everything spiritual, ethical and moral. With deliberation and premeditation they had abandoned themselves to utter sensuality without any protest from conscience, reason or heart. They had sunk so low that they wantonly made it their business to sin in its vilest forms.
Let us turn from this depressingly dark picture and see the marvellous contrast wrought in some Gentiles by God’s grace and power
4:20, 21. “But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus.”
“But ye.” These Ephesian Christians had had the great advantage of Paul’s presence with them for more than two years. In his farewell message to the elders of that church he had said, “I have kept nothing back that was profitable unto you, but have taught you publicly and from house to house.” We may be very sure that Paul’s teaching went beyond the elementary truths of salvation and included the deep, essential truth of sanctification through oneness of life with Christ. The mature, spiritual life of the church at Ephesus was, no doubt, the product of such painstaking, systematic indoctrination of full salvation in Christ. Oh, that every pastor, Bible teacher and missionary did the same thing to-day! The need for such indoctrination in the twentieth century Church is as great as it was in the first century Church.
“Learned Christ; heard him; taught by him.” The central theme of Paul’s teaching is perfectly clear. It had been such as to bring them Christ Himself in all the loveliness of His righteous, holy life. They had learned that to be a Christian is to have Christ in them living out His life again on earth in His mystical Body as He had lived it as Jesus in His earthly body.
“Walk not.” There is a walk that befits each sphere. When in either one of the two positions full conformity to its life is the natural expectation. The walk in Christ should be as holy and heavenly as the walk in sin was defiling and degrading. So when one leaves the old sphere to enter the new, it involves the decision to renounce the old life in its entirety, and to abandon one's self whole-heartedly to the life of the new. This is the logic of Paul’s appeal.
“In times past ye walked” (2:2); “Henceforth walk not” (4:17), To be in Christ and not grow up into Christ makes the Christian life an anachronism, a monstrosity, a lie. The revelation of Christ in truth must result in the realization of Christ in life. Paul writes, Ye have heard and accepted “the truth as it is in Jesus”; now you must live, act and speak according to this new standard. There can be no compromising alliances, no stultifying reserves, no divided interests.
“Ye were” “Ye are” “Be ye.”
Here is Paul’s forceful challenge to become what you are. It leads very naturally into his next practical exhortation:Call to Put Off The Old and to Put On The New
4:22. “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.”
4:24. “And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.”This twofold clear, crisp exhortation marks the meeting-point between God’s part and ours in our sanctification. It is the cross roads between God’s sovereign work through grace and man’s cooperative action through faith. It is an exhortation to practical holiness in every phase of one’s daily life.
Paul takes us immediately to the very source of life in each sphere and shows us two things. The character of life is due to its source and the character determines the conduct. Life in the old sphere is tracked to its source, “the old man,” and the conduct is corrupt because the character is such. Life in the new sphere is traced to its source, “the new man,” and the conduct is righteous and holy because the character is so. The fountain determines the flow. Let us then consider these two fountain-heads and our responsibility in relation to them.
“The old man”—primarily the old, corrupt, sinful nature inherited from Adam; the inborn tendency to evil. But here it includes the whole manner of life in the old sphere. This term is used only three times in Scripture,—in Romans 6:6; Colossians 3:9; and Ephesians 4:22. There are three equivalents. It is all that a man is by nature, so is called “the natural man” (I Cor. 2:14). It is the “I” which is thrown into such sharp contrast with “Christ” in Galatians 2:20. It is “the flesh” of 2:3 which dominates the sinner, compelling him to fulfil its lust and desires.
“Concerning the former conversation,” or better, “former manner of life,” as in the R. V., which is a life in sin lived according to the debased standard of the trinity of evil. Their former manner of life was the unregenerate, unclean, unholy life of the sinner under the domination of “the old man.”
“Which is corrupt.”—”The old man” is utterly defiled and defiling in character, and waxes more and more degenerate in conduct even unto the point of depravity, as in the case of “the other Gentiles.” “The old man” can do nothing but sin, for all his desires (4:22), as well as his deeds (Col. 3:9), are sinful. He is unchangeable and incurable because he doesn’t want to be changed. He is also irretrievably incorrigible, for his attitude to God is one of habitual disobedience (2:2), hardened into fixed enmity (Rom. 8:7). “The old man,” therefore, is the whole old creation in Adam. It is the sinner with only a sinful nature which contaminates everything from the centre to the circumference of his life.
“Put off the old man.” God always takes the initiative in salvation. Before He asks or expects man to act, He has acted. The work of Christ in salvation is a completely finished work. So in regard to “the old man” God has already done His part, which is plainly recorded in Scripture as an accomplished historical fact.
Rom. 6:6 (A.R.V.). “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin.”
By the sovereign act of God that “old man” was crucified with Christ. In God’s reckoning he died on the Cross as truly as Christ died. In that death God put an end to the old creation in Adam that He might replace it by the new creation in Christ. He put “the old man” out of employment, as it were, by depriving him of his dominion over the believer in Christ. In God’s reckoning the crucifixion of “the old man” was a final, once-for-all act. From that moment God sees him only on the Cross. In God’s purpose all the old, filthy, sin-infected garments in which “the old man” was clad went into the discard also as utterly unbefitting the life of the new sphere into which the believer was translated. Can you conceive of Mr. Bosshardt, when delivered out of 560 days of captivity by bandits in China, refusing to lay aside the filthy, vermin infested garments he had been compelled to wear? Would not his deepest desire be to be rid of everything that in the slightest degree pertained to that experience, now past through God’s grace and goodness?What God has made true for us positionally, He longs to make real in us experimentally. This requires our intelligent, wholehearted co-operation in willing consent and in active choice as the imperative “that ye put off” clearly shows. There is a part for us to play if the crucifixion as historical fact is made an experimental reality. Therefore we should know what our responsibility is, and then fulfil it. May we consider three practical ways in which we may “put off the old man”?
Reckon the Crucifixion of the Old Man to be a Fact
Such reckoning means simply believing what God says in Romans 6:6, and knowing it as a fact in one’s own personal salvation. This demands a definite act of faith, which results in a fixed attitude toward “the old man.” We will see him where God sees him—on the Cross crucified with Christ. Faith will operate continuously to keep him where grace placed him. This involves us very deeply, for it means that our hearty consent has been given to God’s condemnation of and judgment upon that old “I” as altogether unworthy to live and as wholly stripped of any further claim upon us. The first step in a walk of practical holiness is this reckoning upon the crucifixion of “the old man.”Recognition of the Manifestation of the Self Life
While God makes it perfectly clear that identification with Christ in His death and resurrection takes us in toto out of the old position in sin and in the flesh, He nowhere says that sin is taken out of us in our earthly life. All the verses of Romans 6 teach us God’s perfect provision for deliverance from sin’s power, but not one verse teaches us that we are here and now delivered from sin’s presence. Even in the new sphere in Christ the old, sinful nature remains in us. Were this not so there would be no point whatever in Paul’s exhortation to “put off the old man” and to walk worthily of our calling. If the old nature were eradicated, and we possessed only the new nature we could do naught but walk righteously and holily,. for that is the only way “the new man” can walk.As a sinner each of us was the possessor of but one nature, a sinful one, which poisoned the spiritual blood-stream, and thus caused vitiating toxins to be carried into our spiritual, moral, and ethical tissues. Through rebirth we became the possessor of a divine nature which purifies the spiritual blood-stream, and causes vitalizing life to flow into our spirit, soul and body. So within every saint are two natures; one that always yields to the instigations of the devil, the enticements of the world, and the claims of the flesh; the other that chooses to live under the Lordship of Christ, according to the divine calling for the Church, and under the control of the Spirit. Paul’s whole argument in “put off the old man” and “put on the new man” is based on the presence of these two natures within the Christian and the necessity of a choice being made as to which is to have the mastery of the life.
“To put off the old man” experimentally will mean, then, the recognition of his presence and the possibility of his further manifestation. It will demand a daily self-examination (II Cor. 11:28) to discover wherein we have given place to the devil or have walked In the ways of the world in our pleasures, pursuits and plans; or have been dominated by the flesh in our attitudes and acts, our desires and deeds, our conversation and conduct. Such wholesome self examination may degenerate into morbid self-introspection that will be paralyzing and futile unless it ends in honest self-judgment (II Cor. 11:31) and confession (I John 1:7), as Scriptually prescribed. If one has walked in the old grooves and put on the old garments, then it must be frankly acknowledged and confessed. The definite sins must be named before the Lord and His forgiveness so freely given must be taken and praise be given for the cleansing of the precious blood.
Renunciation of the Old Creation in its Entirety
“Henceforth walk not.” These words have an authoritative tone of finality about them. “Put off” demands unconditional renunciation. The Christian has begun a walk on a new road in a new sphere leading to a new goal. Then he must be prepared at the very beginning with deliberate determination to make a full and final aban
I 10donment of the old life in its entirety. But a walk is taken step by step. So as one goes along the new road and recognizes soft spots in character, backslidings in conduct, danger points in companionships, discrepancies in ethics, departures in morals, and compromises in standard, there must be an immediate putting off of that old remnant of the abandoned life. Paul makes this quite clear in Chapters four and five, as he mentions definite sins still to be found in the lives of these Ephesian Christians.God has decreed that in the new creation old things have passed away (II Cor. 5: 17), and here in Ephesians He places squarely upon us our responsibility for obedience to this decree. He calls upon us to make a complete renunciation, once-for-all, of all that pertains to our former manner of living, and to follow this decisive act with a definite attitude toward the master of the old life that will ensure instant refusal of his claims as soon as recognized.
“To put off the old man” is but the negative side of a holy walk, the casting off of the filthy sin-spoiled garments. The saint must be clothed upon with spotlessly white robes.
“The new man”—the new creation in Christ; the saint possessing a new spiritual divine nature, from which a pure river of life flows into every part of his being; the human personality with Christ at its centre, crowned as its Lord, and indwelt as its Life; the “I in you” of John 15:4; the “Christ in you” of Colossians 1:27.
“Which after God hath been created.” If created, then something not already existent. It is not a spark of divine life just waiting to be fanned into a flame. No man is born the possessor of this divine nature. “The new man” is not the product of physical but of spiritual birth. Again, what is created is not evolved. “The new man” is not the product of self-culture, but is an outright creation of God.
“In righteousness and true holiness.” As the old nature still in us can do nothing but sin, so the new nature cannot sin. As the old nature was irretrievably unrighteous and unholy, so the new is inherently righteous and holy. The Christian is patterned after Christ in the perfection of His character in its twofold expression of righteousness in relation to man and in holiness in relation to God. Christ has been made unto us righteousness and sanctification (I Cor. 1:30). We are, therefore, righteous in the righteousness of Christ and holy in the holiness of Christ. Paul’s appeal, then, is for us to become what we are: to put on the garments with which we have already been clothed.
“Put on the new man.” By the sovereign act of God “the new man” was created. By God’s grace the believing sinner was quickened and raised together with Christ. In the co-resurrection God created “the new man” and opened the way for him to walk in newness of life.
Rom 6 4, 5 “Therefore were all buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.”
From the moment of co-resurrection with Christ, God sees the Christian only in Christ and Christ in him. In God’s purpose all the holy, heavenly robes in which the Lord Jesus is clothed have been bestowed upon the saint as the only ones befitting his new life in the new sphere.
But again we must do our part in putting on “the new man.” May we consider three suggestions of how we may do this:
Claim Your Position in Christ
In 2:4-6 God is stating a fact of salvation which is true of every saint, whether he ever knows the fact or not. It is true that every believer was united with Christ in His death and resurrection the moment he believed, and is in Christ who is seated in the heavenlies at the Father’s right hand. This new position in Christ is the very foundation of our sanctification and of a walk in newness of life. This every Christian should know; otherwise he will always be floundering in defeat and discouragement without knowing the God appointed way of victory and peace.This new position is ours. We are in Christ in the heavenlies, far above all principality, power, might and dominion. To take our position in Christ daily by a definite act of faith, and to see ourselves “far above all” before we are subjected to Satan’s attacks is to begin the day in victory. Is this not the practical meaning of taking the shield of faith? (6:16). It is spiritual preparedness for a holy walk as well as for warfare
In speaking once on this glorious truth in a home for deaconesses in Germany the suggestion was made that upon waking in the morning each one there should claim her position in Christ by a definite act of faith, and start the day from that vantage-point of victory. The next morning one of the older deaconesses whose work was a daily routine of monotonous and sometimes provocative tasks testified to the radical change wrought in her day by having it tram formed into one of continuous victory with its resultant radiant joyousness and peace. If you have never done so, try it to-morrow, and see if it will not work to turn defeat into victory for you.
Covet Your Possessions in Christ
Every Christian is the potential possessor of every spiritual blessing by virtue of being in Christ. But how spiritually poverty-stricken the average Christian seems. How few of us give any adequate impression to the worldlings among whom we live of our incalculable wealth in Christ! Why is it so?Perhaps our desire for spiritual treasures is at a low ebb. To claim effectually we must covet eagerly. There are even among reborn Christians those who would quickly reach out for a bit of earth’s filthy lucre, who would not raise a finger to get the golden coins of heavenly riches. To some, two hours at a movie seems no longer than ten minutes, while ten minutes of Bible study drags on like an hour. To others a weekly prayer-meeting would be intolerable, but a weekly dance which debilitates spirit, soul and body and destroys one’s effectual witness for Christ would be keenly enjoyed.
To “put on the new man” will mean an eager seeking after spiritual riches and setting the affections primarily and pre-eminently upon heavenly things, rather than earthly. For co-resurrection with Christ lifts one into a sphere where only Christ and the things of Christ can ever satisfy or suffice.
Col. 3:1, 2. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”
Count upon the Power of the Spirit
To claim our position in Christ and to covet our possessions in Him cannot be done by dependence upon anything in ourselves. God in His infinite wisdom and love made provision for just such impotency, and gave us the blessed Spirit of power to indwell us. He is resident within us to make Christ a living reality by conforming us to His image in every separate element of His glorious perfection of character. The Spirit will enable us to walk as He walked, in righteousness, humility, faith, obedience, lowliness, meekness, forbearance, love, patience, courage, praise and holiness. Our part is to count upon the Spirit’s presence in power to keep self on the Cross and Christ on the throne of our human personality.A Walk in Holiness
One step over the boundary line between the kingdom of Satan and the kingdom of God brings us into a new sphere and begins a walk in newness of life. This walk involves a radical change in character, what we are; in conduct, what we do; in conversation, what we say.Holiness in Character
1:4. “He bath chosen us in him . . . that we should be holy.”
4:24. “Put on the new man . . . created in true holiness.”
5:27. “That he might present to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”In the eternity of the past the Father chose a Bride for His Son; a Church composed of those who would be united with Christ in absolute oneness of life through the eternity to come, and He Himself set the standard for their Christian character: “that we should be holy.”
Despite all the difficulties of a walk in a thoroughly defiled and defiling world, God never lowers this standard. However, He is not unreasonable in demanding of us something which we are utterly incapable of doing by ourselves. He has made ample provision for what He requires in giving to us His Holy Spirit and His Holy Word. The Spirit uses the Word in separating us from all that is unholy and in setting us apart unto all that is holy. The way of holiness is clearly taught. A daily study of the Word under the tutelage of the Spirit, accompanied by implicit obedience to it, ensures continuous growth into holiness of life.
Christ, also, gives us fellowship with other Christians. How often the Christ-life, shining transparently and winsomely through some saint of God, has created within us a hunger and thirst for more Christlikeness for ourselves! How tenderly the Lord has responded to our heart’s cry for holiness of character by sending someone who had himself thirsted and been filled to help us into the same blessed experience.
The Lord does not discourage us by demanding perfection of character all at once. But our walk should mean a step-by-step growth into Christlikeness; to keep our hearts set on perfection He keeps our eyes fixed on that day—perhaps not far distant—when He will return and the Church will be presented to Him spotless and holy, even as He is.
Holiness in Conduct
4:25. “Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth
with his neighbour.”4:26. “Be ye angry and sin not; let not the sun go down upon your wrath.”
4:28. “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.”“Wherefore.” Here is another arresting word which brings us into close grips with spiritual reality. As “therefore” introduced the whole question of the new walk befitting the new sphere, so “Wherefore” indicates concrete steps to be taken immediately. Paul leaves no impression of merely speaking pious platitudes, or giving nebulous exhortations. Here is a sharp jerk of the reins to bring conduct into swift correspondence with character. Be what you are, Paul shouts from the housetop of Ephesians, so that every Christian on down through the centuries may hear. In this word “wherefore” he is insisting that holy character must be transmuted into holy conduct; that it is impossible to have the new man’s desires and the old man’s deeds; that it is altogether inconsistent to talk of living in the heavenlies while walking in the old haunts of the world. “Wherefore” opens the gate from principle into practice; from the abstract into the concrete; from the general into the particular.
Paul cannot enumerate all the wicked deeds of the old man. Here he takes but a few samples of conspicuous sins. Certainly they are those common to men of all centuries and climes. They are strictly up-to-date, even in the highly cultured society of the twentieth century.
“Putting away lying—speak truth.” Lying and truth are placed here as exact opposites, for such they are. Lying, therefore, includes anything and everything that has any degree of falseness in it. Within its range comes deception, hypocrisy, misrepresentation, artificiality, shams, half truths, and unreality. We have limited lying to speech, but we can lie by our deeds, and by our false pretensions and professions.
A primary necessity in human relations is truth, as confidence and trust rest upon truth as their foundation. Is there anything in your life you feel compelled to cover up? Anything that will not stand the full light of day? Anything that has not its source in Him that is truth?
From babyhood those Ephesian Christians had breathed the corrupt atmosphere of heathenism. Lying had been ingrained into them. The habits and practices of the old life still had a strong hold upon them. But they had left forever the sphere of the devil. He was a liar and no truth abode in him (John 8:44). Lying was natural to life in the old sphere over which he reigned. But they bad been translated into the kingdom where truth prevails and where there is no place whatever for untruth in any form. Therefore Paul calls for decisive action. Lying has been put off as one of the filthy garments of the old man. “Wherefore speak every man truth.”
“Be ye angry and sin not.” What a common sin is anger! smouldering resentment, inward irritation, hidden malice, bad temper that suddenly flames up into violent outburst and evident exasperation. All of which is very patently sin. But the wording of this command would seem to indicate that sometimes anger is not sin. We must, then, turn to our perfect Example, and ask if our Lord was ever angry. Though sinless and perfect in His human life, He was angry on more than one occasion. Once He entered the synagogue with the soul purpose of helpful service. The Pharisees entered also, but with a sinful purpose,—”to watch him whether he would heal on the Sabbath day that they might accuse him.” A man with a withered hand was there, and Christ healed him. The Lord challenged them to come out from under the cover of their professed sanctity, which was only professional hypocrisy, and face the issue honestly by answering His question, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath days or to do evil? But they held their peace.” And we read, “He looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts.” Toward their sin of resisting His gracious work of healing while professing to love and serve God, and toward their contemptible falseness and hypocrisy in the matter, He had naught but anger; but towards them in their utter spiritual blindness and hardness of heart, He had only grief. He was angry, but He did not sin in His anger.
Is there a red-blooded Christian anywhere in the world who would not be stirred to anger to read of millions of innocent civilians bombed to death, or of other millions left homeless and penniless, or of the rape of thousands of women and girls? Would he have the right to call himself a Christian were he not angry? But coupled with that anger at such awful sin, is there grief that leads to real prayer for the nation or individuals committing the sin?
We sin in anger when its root is self, when our anger is directed not so much against the sin as the sinner, and because of some personal hurt rather than for the sake of Christ’s glory and the honour of His name. To be angry and sin not, we must “be angry at nothing but sin.”
“Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” If we have felt the presence of anger in our hearts, let there be a strict self-examination and a severe searching of motives before the day is over, to determine whether it has been sinful or not. Let there be honest and quick dealing with every trace of anger. A walk in holiness forbids any smouldering fires of unjudged temper or the inward burning of unrighteous indignation. If the anger is sinful, let it be confessed to God; and, if it has found utterance before others, let the confession be made to them before you retire to sleep.
“Let him that stole steal no more.” Lying, anger and stealing are very common sins in all lands, and are often condoned. Hence the convert to Christianity is often slow to see that they are part of the old life which must be completely abandoned. Evidently some of the Ephesian Christians not only had stolen, but were still stealers, and Paul is insisting that this filthy rag of the old life must be cast off.
Perhaps some twentieth century Christians in so-called Christian lands would dismiss this command as one which bore no relationship to them. Having never been guilty of theft, embezzlement, or such crimes, this command does not concern them. Perhaps we need to get a new angle on the word “stealing.”
All would agree that obtaining something unjustly by fraud or force was stealing; also to take the possession of another without right or permission. Legally, to do these things is to steal. But would not God’s standard of absolute righteousness in all dealings with others go further and place profiteering, all forms of gambling, misuse of funds, living on credit, refusal to pay debts, in the same category? A walk in strictest righteousness and holiness would also preclude other forms of dishonesty which a Spirit-renewed conscience would shrink from doing. I served once on a committee that prepared for summer conferences for Christian leaders whose travelling expenses were paid. A request came for a pastor with lung trouble to be allowed to go as a delegate. At the place where the Conference was held was also a hospital for tubercular patients, and those responsible for sending him thought this a splendid way of having his travel expense to the hospital met. At another Conference there was a bookroom. One Christian asked to be allowed to take several books to his room to decide which to buy. The books were kept many days; all apparently were read, but none bought.
Scripture shows us an even more refined form of stealing of which every one of us may be guilty to some degree. Stealing is withholding from God that which should be given Him because we wish to hoard it, or to spend it on ourselves.
Mal. 3:8. “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.”
In a recent revival in China, a Chinese brought to the church $600, of which he said he had robbed God in past tithes. Have any of us robbed God?
“But rather let him labour . . . that he may have to give.” Every man should work toward an end—that he may have. But the getting is to be inspired by a righteous, holy aim,—that he may give. Implicit obedience to this simple injunction by every child of God would provide ample funds for every God-appointed work.
Accepting Christ as our Saviour and Lord involves the acceptance of the moral and ethical standard that governed His life on earth. The Holy Spirit, who indwells us, knows our every deflection from that standard, however great or small, and would apply the knife continually to every phase of unrighteousness in our daily conduct.
Holiness in Conversation
Our conversation is very self-revealing. What one says and the manner in which he says it gives an X-ray of the heart, “for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” It might almost be said of some Christians that they speak out of the emptiness and dearth of the heart. So the Head of the Body sets a standard for conversation that is as high as that already mentioned for character and conduct. It calls for a sanctified tongue.4:29. “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good for the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.”
“No corrupt communication”—putrid, foul, unfit for use. Surely such speech should never fall from the lips of a Christian. Corrupt speech can be traced to but one source: the unclean flow from an unclean fountain. (4:19, 22) It is “the old man” speaking. Paul tells us the forms such speech may take:
5:4. “Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient (befitting) but rather giving of thanks.”
Utterly unbefitting the conversation of a saint are unclean stories and coarse jokes; idle, inane talk with no meaning or profit to anyone; the smart, witty remark or the facetious pleasantry, often regarding things sacred to call forth a laugh at the expense of self respect and decency. Whatever in the slightest degree is morally tainted or destructive to faith is utterly out of place in the Christian's conversation. Someone whom God had led into a more consistently holy walk wrote me, “I think you will find me changed; my people, even my servants, say it. I seem to myself as if I have lost my joking ways, as if I have grown a bit more grave because I have seen the sin of making a joke about everything, even spiritual things. I’ve learnt to be more careful in my whole manner of living.”
The context would show us two other forms of speech which are also prohibited,—that which is covetous and that which is critical. Do you know people who are always saying, “Oh, I wish I had—!”? A lust for money, possessions, or, as used in 5:3, even sensual greed. Discontent and murmuring flow freely in speech where there is a fleshly craving for more of earthly things.
Again, if we listen to our own or others’ speech, how much of it one has to admit is uncharitable, unkind and unnecessary. Are any of us guilty of being gossipers, whisperers, slanderers, or backbiters? Then the Lord is speaking to us out of Ephesians. He has exhorted us to speak only that which is true; now He enjoins us to speak only what is pure and kind. And He holds us responsible for our speech.
“Let no . . . but that.” These two phrases in 4:29 show us that God means for us to both control conversation so that it may not be along wrong lines, and to conduct it along those that are ennobling and edifying. When we talk it is to be for a purpose, -- “to minister grace unto the hearers.” This does not imply that conversation must always be on spiritual themes, certainly not just “pious” talk, nor necessarily that a complete ban is put upon good humour and wholesome wit. But it does mean that it will be conversation that “becometh saints”; more than that, it will be such as befits the presence of the Holy Spirit who indwells us.
God has given us a tongue which is to be used, not as “an instrument of unrighteousness unto sin,” but as “an instrument of righteousness unto God” (Rom. 6: 13). There are many whom we meet, even casually, who need and want instruction, encouragement, comfort, warning. There are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, but do not know how to be filled. Conversation is a mighty power to be used for such upbuilding of the Body of Christ and for the salvation of souls. Every “hearer” of ours needs some further measure of grace. Does our conversation minister constructively to his need? A friend of mine consecrates her conversations to Christ, and constantly has the most unusual and wonderful opportunities on buses, trains, and in stores, offices and restaurants, for entering into conversations that she conducts so as to lead on to Christ . This is the privilege of every child of God.
The standard God has set for a walk in holiness is very high, but not unreasonable, because He has given to us the Holy Spirit to indwell and infill us for the very purpose of inworking into the Spiritual fibre of our being the holiness of the Holy One.
Back to the Table of Content The third characteristic of a worthy walk is revealed in 4:315:2 as a walk in love. Paul constantly writes from the standpoint of two spheres, the old and the new, and shows there is a walk that befits each sphere. In the passage before us we see hate in its various shades of expression sharply contrasted with love in its different manifestations.
Sources of Hate and Love
Let us turn for a moment to the first epistle of John, where hate and love are tracked to their source in the spheres of darkness and death, and light and life; and where it is so clearly shown that the one who walks in hate belongs to the old sphere; while the one who walks in love lives in the new.I John 2:9, 11. “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness, even until now . . . He that hat eth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness.”
I John 2:10. “He that loveth his brother abideth in the light.”
I John 3:14. “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.”Love for the brethren is one proof that we have passed out of the old sphere into the new where love is the native atmosphere. If we are in the new sphere, we inhale and exhale love.
Satan presides over the old sphere and is the fountain-head of hate. He hates Christ and all who are Christ’s, and instills this same hate into those who follow him. Cain, filled with Satanic hatred, murdered his own brother Abel. Christ presides over the new sphere, and is the fountainhead of love. He loves all His Father’s children, His brethren, and imparts His love to them.
Expressions of Hate
4.31. “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking. be put away from you, with all malice.”Here we see Satan’s brood hatched out in the nest of hate into concrete sins of temper and tongue. Let us note several things. First, unlove is the setting for all six sins mentioned here. Not one of them could abide in a love-filled, love-constrained heart. Secondly, there is a gradation in the expression of unlove from an inner attitude to an outward act. That root of “bitterness,” canker in the innermost spirit, or secret resentment over some hurt or wrong, allowed to home itself in the heart, will one day flame into white heat in an outburst of passionate fury. That grievance nursed in the spirit, that indignation which became a settled attitude of mind, that hot feeling of injury which smoulders in the heart will one day reach the tongue and find expression in heated discussion, “clamour,” and intemperate “evil speaking.” A devil-touched, hate-tipped tongue will go to any length of railing, slander, insult, and abuse in giving vent to “anger.” Lastly, there is an inevitable progression in unlove if left unchecked. How simple the words sound, “with all malice!” What is malice? Secret ill-will, just thinking evil. What does it become if allowed to remain? Spite that cannot rest until it works evil. Malice is the henchman of hate; a poisonous weed whose growth into “bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil speaking,” is absolutely assured, unless uprooted.
Unlove rooted in malice came into the heart of one Christian worker toward another, and was allowed to do its devilish work. It sent lies flowing like a putrid stream into one country after another to hinder God’s message and thwart God’s work. So let us face squarely what it means if we permit any one of these devil-begotten sins to remain in our heart. Let us search ourselves through a Spirit-conducted examination to discover any of this hateful brood, and be prepared to obey God’s command so plainly written here.
“Let all . . . be put away from you.” This word “let” places responsibility squarely on us for decision that results in action. It challenges our will to take sides against Satan in favour of Christ, and calls to definite action in regard to concrete sins and tells us exactly what to do. “Be put away from you.” Let these sins be not merely confessed, but let them be carried out and cast off as something utterly incongruous in the life in Christ. Do it and be done with it, is the full force of the verb “put away.” “All”—and may this house-cleaning be very thoroughly done. Let no particle of unlove lurk in the corners. This three-lettered word “all” is the biggest word in the verse, for it commands a total abstinence of hate. There is to be no root of bitterness, no symptom of wrath, no trace of anger, no echo of clamour, no slime of evil speaking, no dregs of malice. Both the inner attitude and the outward act are to disappear entirely. “The Holy Spirit gives quarter to no evil feeling whatsoever.”
But Paul never stops with mere renunciation. Sin is not merely the presence of hate; it is equally the absence of love. Christian conduct is not based on negatives. Emptying the heart of hate is only preparatory to having it filled with love. Unless a hate-emptied heart is immediately filled with God’s love, “seven devils” may return to occupy it, and the latter state be worse than the first.
If someone asked you if you hated some fellow-Christian with whom you were evidently out of fellowship, you would hesitate, perhaps, to say, “Yes.” That would seem going too far. But, if you were asked if you loved that person, could you honestly say you did? Did you note the wording of I John 3:14? It does not say “he that bateth,” but “he that loveth not his brother abideth in death.” There is a distinct place for hate as well as for anger in the Christian’s heart. But we must be sure it is directed toward the right object. “God willeth that we endlessly hate the sin and endlessly love the soul, as God loveth it.” So Paul now turns to the positive exhortation.
Manifestations of Love
4:32. “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”“Be ye,”—”become with a perpetual becoming,” like Christ until His love in all its manifold manifestations becomes your love for one another. To avoid not being hate-full, be ye love-full. To keep free from the sins of 4:31, cultivate the virtues of 4:32. Bitterness and kindness; malice and tender-heartedness; anger and forgiveness are not good bed-fellows. Where one is the other cannot be.
“Kind,”—what a homespun, simple word it is! Yet how comprehensive and beautiful! To be kind is far, far more than merely doing kindly deeds. It means that the very essence of our spiritual nature is kindness itself. The intrinsic meaning of the word will be understood only as we ponder deeply His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus (2:7). The full measure of the word will be comprehended only as we realize in experience “the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man” (Tit. 3:4). How kind the Lord Jesus is ! loving the unlovely and the unlovable with a love that took Him to Calvary’s Cross! It was also a kindness that in His earthly life ‘ade Him unfailingly courteous, considerate, appreciative, and thoughtful of others.
Is it not in some of these less spectacular expressions of kindness that most of us fail lamentably? Are not many Christian workers guilty in this respect? We may give ourselves unstintedly in leading meetings and in teaching His Word to win lost souls, yet fail utterly in even common courtesy to fellow-Christians with whom we labour, or in legitimately expected appreciation and considerateness toward those who serve us anywhere.
A man, deeply taught in the Word and greatly gifted in Bible exposition, was unbelievably rude and discourteous, and so lacking in all the kindly graces of the Spirit in relation to fellow-workers that one derived most benefit from his public ministry if he did not see his private manners. Spending some weeks in a Christian home, one could not be unconscious of continuous strain between husband and wife, both truly devoted to each other. The more evident cause was the wife’s temper and jealousy, but close observation could not but convince one of almost cruel silence on the part of the husband in speaking the kindly word of appreciation and doing the thoughtful little thing that would have revealed the heart’s real love. A Bible teacher naturally hard in disposition told me that he “was afraid to be kind, for it seemed so effeminate.” But here the simple word stands, “Be ye kind.” Oh, that in this world, which inevitably inflicts so many hard blows on most folks, we who are in Christ might be more kind one to another! How it would smooth many a rough road and sweeten many a bitter cup!
“Be ye . . . tenderhearted.” How strange it is that it is much easier to be harsh, uncharitable and intolerant than to be sympathetic, loving and understanding! Could we be aught but tender-hearted if we ever kept Christ on Calvary in our vision? Would our heart not be kept full of compassion toward others who have shortcomings and sins if we remembered what we were and always would have been but for the love of God manifested toward us in Christ?
“Forgiving one another.” Is it possible for unforgiveness to abide in the heart where kindness and tenderheartedness are dominant? The Christlike attitude results in the Christlike act. Is there any member of the Body of Christ whom you have not forgiven? If so, how can you hold out against the appeal God makes here?
“Even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” God has freely and fully forgiven you a life-time full of sins. He has forgiven you wrongs against Himself of infinitely greater import and degree than any wrong anyone ever did you. Can any forgiveness you are called upon to grant another compare with that which He has granted you?—a forgiveness so perfect that He forgets what He forgives. “Even as.” Let God’s measure of forgiveness to us determine our forgiveness of others.
A Walk in Love
5:1 (R.V.). “Be ye, therefore, imitators of God, as beloved children.”
5:2. “And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour.”God is the Standard of the Love-life of His Children
God is love. Every thought, word and act of God is the expression of the love which is the very essence of His character. We are His beloved children, born into His family and made members of His household through love, and have become partakers of His divine nature which is love. Therefore His standard becomes ours.“Be ye . . . imitators of God.” This is an astounding demand, but a very reasonable one. As father—so child. As He is and does, so are we to be and do, for the Father rightly sets the standard for His family and His household. To love as God loves is one of the greatest proofs that we are His.
I John 4:16. “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”
God Himself loves in and through the child He infills. What limit, then, need be put upon the love-life of any child of God, however cold, unfeeling and loveless his life may be in the natural?
Christ is the Example of the Love-life to Members of His Body
The Son lived up to the standard set by the Father in His love for us. In the same manner the Father loved Him, He loved us.John 15:9. “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.” Then He became the example of the love-life for us.
John 15:12. “This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.”“As—so.” Let us not wince under these words, but rather worship Him who thinks we have the capacity to love like that. As Christ hath loved us, so we are to love every fellow-member of the Body. Dare we so measure our love for the brethren?
“Walk in love”—Do not talk, but walk. “Let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth” (I John 3:18). Some Christian workers in China strongly advocated the social gospel for the amelioration of social wrongs, and in meetings discussed the wickedness of modern industry that keeps men at work seven days in the week at a pitifully low wage. But, when they themselves were engaged in building operations, they employed Sunday labour rather than give the workmen that day off with pay. To talk is cheap: to walk is costly. For it means that the whole course of one’s life and every phase of his conduct, public and private, is to be in love. Love in action is to undergird every relationship of one’s life, in the home, in business, in society, and in the church.
“As Christ also hath loved us.” His love was self-effacing. He does not love us because we love Him. Oh no! He loved us when and because we did not love Him. While we were yet sinners, Christ loved us because of our desperate condition and utter helplessness in sin.
How far short we fall of following His example! We have our circle of friends, chosen largely because of what they can mean to us. Our choice is governed by our likes and dislikes, by prejudice or favouritism, all of which is condemned by Christ’s way of loving us. How often we do not even care to have fellowship with those outside our social circle, our church affiliation, or especially with those of less educational or cultural advantages. In other words, we are not self-effacing in our love, but self-satisfying.
“And hath given himself for us.” His love was self-sacrificing. The cost of our salvation was a Saviour, which He voluntarily became. The price of our redemption was the blood of the Cross, which He willingly paid. But how many Christians seem self-seeking rather than self-sacrificing. There are thousands who go to church on Sunday, who toss a coin into the offering, who fulfil perfunctorily some service for the church, but how pitifully few Christians have anything of the sacrificial in their love for Christ, for fellow-Christians, and for lost sinners! After commanding His disciples to love one another as He had loved them, He made this statement:
John 15:13. “Greater love bath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
Do our hearts condemn us as we read these words? Have we ever really laid down our lives for Him, or for His own? Are we willing to-day to acknowledge the lack of the sacrificial in our love?
“Himself—for us.” “Himself”—lovely, sinless, perfect. “For us”—unlovely, sinful, polluted. Ourself - for Him. Are you willing to-day to make it truly reciprocal? As Christ has loved me, so will I love Him and others for His sake, at any cost, however great?
Back to the Table of Content
A walk in light is the fourth characteristic of a worthy walk as unfolded in 5:3-14. No part of Ephesians reveals more strikingly the differentiation between the two kingdoms. Satan’s kingdom is the manifestation of midnight darkness; God’s kingdom that of mid-day light. Let us now see how vividly Paul expresses the clearcut cleavage between citizenship in these two kingdoms:5:8. “For ye were once darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord.”
Children of Darkness
“Ye were once darkness.” Way translates this, “Darkness incarnate you once were.” Weymouth puts it, “There was a time when you were nothing but darkness.” Paul is saying that those Ephesian Christians did not merely do works of darkness, but that they were darkness itself; that they were not only in the sphere of darkness, but they were so identified with it and so impregnated by it as to have actually become darkness. They were subjects in the kingdom of darkness, ruled by the prince of darkness, children of the father of darkness, and destined to spend eternity in the pit of darkness.Works of Darkness
The result of such spiritual darkness was appalling moral destitution. The backward shadow of 5:8-3 is one of unrelieved moral degradation. The conduct and conversation of those who were once darkness was morally rotten. Such moral corruption was evidently common and countenanced by all circles without scruple or shame.5:3-4. “But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting.”
They were guilty not only of the performance of every form of uncleanness and impurity, but also of making these indecencies and immoralities the theme of conversation, gloating in the laughter which their coarse jests produced. Tongues and ears were steeped in vileness as well as mind and heart. No wonder Paul called it all “the unfruitful works of darkness.”
Destiny of Darkness-Dwellers
5:5. “For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.”God has stated the destiny of those who prefer to remain in the kingdom of darkness and to practice the works of darkness, and further comment seems unnecessary. God’s attitude towards sin remains inflexible. God and sin can never fellowship together. His love and grace ever go out toward the sinner; but He has only hatred and wrath toward sin. So every unrepentant sinner will “go to his own,” even as did Judas.
Perhaps some one says, “What has this to do with us to-day? It all belongs to the paganism of olden days.” But is that true? If one but scratches the surface of the veneer of our boasted twentieth century civilization he will discover all of these sins that so vitiated human society in that first century. Wherever there is a departure from God there is a consequent deterioration in ethics and morals, and the breakdown in the latter is always gauged by the depth and degree of that in the former. The further one goes from God the nearer he comes to Satan. The old Adamic nature remains unchanged on down through the centuries, and left to itself will wallow in the deepest mire of sin. If one needs proof of this he needs only to read the pages of modern literature, where the very sins mentioned in 5:3-5 are pictured with appalling frankness; and oftentimes the writer is advocating a personal liberty which is nothing less than free license to lust. Our Lord predicted that in the days preceding His coming human society would have sunk to the very lowest level such as prevailed in the days of Noah, which brought upon mankind the judgment of the Flood. Surely we are in those days, and it behooves every child of God to recognize this and to know from God’s Word how to safeguard himself from the moral taint of the awful sins that vitiate the very air he breathes. Only so has he any ground of assurance that he will not be caught in this awful whirlpool of uncleanness and impurity.
Children of Light
5:8. “But now are ye light in the Lord; walk as children of light.”“Ye were sometimes”—a period of time now forever gone, a past that is wholly obliterated with no repetition permissible or possible. “But now”—a new cycle begun indicating a present that is in vivid contrast to the past and that marks the boundary line between the spheres of darkness and of light.
“Ye are light.” You are so identified with light, yea, the Light so indwells you, that you have become light itself. You have been translated into the kingdom of light, made a child of Him who is light, and become a partaker of the life that is light. “In the Lord” —In Him we become what He is.
“Walk as children of light.” Character determines conduct; therefore live, speak, act as the sons of light. “Order your lives as men native-born to the light.” It is inconceivable that the walk of children of darkness and children of light should be the same in any particular. Everything in the walk of the Christian should be differentiated from that of the sinner. There is a walk that becometh sinners, but such a walk is unbefitting saints, even to its minutest details. Our conduct and our conversation betray us, for they reveal the kingdom in which we are citizens. The vile things sinners do are not only unthinkable for saints, but even to mention such things is polluting. To talk of them even in whispers or in secret is put under the ban.
5:3. “Let it not even be named among you, as becometh saints.”
5:4 (R.V.). “Which are not befitting.”“Ye are light”—therefore become what you are and walk before men as such. Be consistent with what you are. “Nothing is purer than light.” Ye are light, therefore be as pure as you are.
Fruit of the Light
5:9 (R.V.). “For the fruit of the light is in all goodness, and righteousness and truth.”The works of darkness are all degrading and destructive. Light generates light which is fruitful and edifying. What, then, are the distinguishing characteristics of those who are light in the Lord? Paul mentions three.
“All goodness”—beneficence in action in all things and toward all persons. There should be no action in the Christian’s life that could possibly react harmfully upon another. We constantly hear one who indulges in some questionable form of amusement say, “But I can do that and it won’t harm me.” Is one’s personal harm the
only thing to be considered? Goodness forbids the Christian from doing anything that would be detrimental to another. He will guard his influence over others with studious care, and will gladly give up even a lawful thing if there is in it the slightest possibility of leading another away from Christ and into sin. Goodness is a most practical virtue, and exercises itself even in the realm of eating and drinking and in all of the commonplaces of daily conduct. It puts an absolute ban upon every form of selfishness, and compels the Christian not to seek his own but the other’s good.Rom. 14:15, 16 (R.V.). “For if because of meat thy brother is grieved, thou walkest no longer in love. Destroy not with thy meat him for whom Christ died.”
Rom. 14:21. “It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended yr is made weak.”
I Cor. 8:13. “Wherefore, if meat maketh my brother to offend, I will eat no meat while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.”The divine law of love and the divine principle of goodness will not permit the Christian to seek his own pleasure and profit to the detriment or downfall of another.
“All righteousness”—a moral rectitude that is irreproachable. The applied principle of righteousness wipes off the slate every form of impurity and dishonesty, and demands an abstinence from even every appearance of evil (I Thes. 5:22). Its exercise gives the Christian a conscience void of offence toward God and toward men (Acts 24:16). The Christian’s life is measured by a fixed and absolute standard of perfect righteousness—that of the incarnate Word as revealed in the written Word. Every recognized thing that deviates from that standard must go. How tragic has been the moral breakdown of even some Christian workers because they thought their position with its prestige gave them liberty to do things which they would have denounced severely in others! But a righteous God will condone no unrighteousness done under the cloak of Christian ministry.
“All truth”—severest sincerity in the most inward and hidden part of the life that countenances in one’s life no pretence or sham; that allows no twilight zones; no lurking compromises; no secret alliances with evil. But, on the contrary, a life that so craves reality that it does not shrink from the most searching scrutiny of His eyes that are as a flame of fire, and welcomes every revelation of aught that displeases Him.
To walk as children of light in these days is most difficult. The difficulty is largely due to the lowered and varying standards of the Church in all lands. Satan has entered churches, and often occupies both pulpit and pew. He has dragged the world and the flesh in after him; even the missionary body has not escaped his defiling touch. May we face frankly some of the works of darkness prevalent in nominal Christianity to-day?
In a large, prominent city church there are smoking and dancing rooms for the young people, where their worldly amusements may be carried on in a “Christian atmosphere.” In another magnificent church edifice a missionary meeting was held. Before the missionary spoke, the president of the society announced that at the close
the meeting an opportunity would be given to sign up for the bridge parties by which they were to raise their money for their missionary offering!! Exaggerated and exceptional cases, one may say. Oh it is to be hoped so, but the exception only reveals the ; trend toward the worldly in the Church and among Christians, both in the conduct of Church affairs and in personal life. With such a tragic mixture of darkness and light right in the Church itself, how can one walk as a child of light? In this very passage God tells us through His warning, prohibitions and exhortations. Two things will be especially necessary to those who long to shine as lights in this world (Phil. 2: 15): discernment and decisiveness.Discernment
One of Satan’s greatest assets is an inconsistent Christian; one whose conduct before men belies his calling in Christ. So he will do everything possible to keep every saint sinning. His wiles are many and Paul exhorts the Ephesian Christians to be spiritually alert to these Satanic deceptions.
5:6. “Let no man deceive you with vain words.”“Let.” Subtle as the deception may be, it is not necessary to be misled or seduced, as God has given ample light on Satan’s ways in the Word. “No man.” To accomplish his purpose Satan uses men, both unregenerate sinners and carnal Christians, who have themselves yielded to some of these temptations. “Deceive you by vain (empty) words.” What are some of the empty words through which Satan seeks to deceive? First, he lies regarding the very nature of sin itself. The primary tenet of his gospel is that man is ever evolving into something higher and better. But sin is too evident in mankind for him to get past altogether with this fundamental lie. So he cleverly tells another to offset it. This one he often speaks through college professors, authors and even liberal ministers. Sin is not so bad, after all, if we look upon it as “a fall upward,” or “an incident of our finite nature due to the misfortune of a bad environment.”
Secondly, he deceives in regard to God’s attitude toward sin. He declares that the thought of the wrath of God is unbelievable, and that a monstrous wrong is done to the God of love to think He can punish sin by shutting any man away from His presence. So he urges men to have no fear of the next world, but to give themselves up fully to the enjoyment of everything in this one. His words are most attractive to the carnal Christian who has never “crucified the flesh” (Gal. 5:24), or been “crucified unto the world” (Gal. 6:44), and who has shown no willingness to co-operate with the Holy Spirit in putting off the old man and in putting on the new man. He wants to believe that he can be conformed to Christ and to the world at the same time. He prefers to think that he can walk after the flesh and after the Spirit at the same time.
So he gladly listens as Satan’s emissary tells him that we in this enlightened twentieth century have outgrown altogether the puritanical standards of the past; that even godly parents who are holding to the relics of an outmoded morality are too old-fashioned for the youth of to-day; that we live in a new day of individual freedom, when everyone has the right to be a law unto himself; that even the established conventions of society regarding home life, marriage, and the upbringing of children should not be binding on us in these times. He urges not to stand aloof in self-righteousness from those who follow these modern ways, and not to make one’s self unpopular by being peculiar. He reasons plausibly to come along with the crowd, deceiving the Christian by arguing that he himself will not be harmed and that by thus mixing with the worldling he may be used to make him better. Thus by his specious lies the arch-deceiver misleads many children of light in their walk.
God has clearly refuted Satan’s lie regarding the nature of sin and His attitude toward sin in Ephesians. Twice He has told us that sin calls down upon the children of disobedience the wrath of God, and in 5:5 He says that those who remain in sin have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Then how may we know what is of Satan and what is of God? By a God-given discernment in testing every “vain word,” tracing it to its source, and then rejecting it as unacceptable to our Lord.
5:10. “Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.”
Is this thing acceptable to Christ? This is the invariable criterion; here is stated the acid test. Not, is there any harm in this thing? Not, does everyone do it? Not even, does the Church countenance it? But, is it acceptable to the Lord as conduct that becometh saints?The Christian who has entered into any real spiritual apprehension of what it means to be “accepted in the beloved” will have one consuming passion—that his walk step by step will be wholly “acceptable to the Lord.” His loving, joyous eagerness to please his Lord will be the fitting complement to the Lord’s loving, joyous eagerness to make him acceptable to His Father. He will always approach Christ saying, “What more may I give to Thee, and how may I please Thee most?”
Decisiveness
To know what is unacceptable to God demands decisiveness in action. It requires a clean-cut refusal to have any partnership either with the workers or the works of darkness.5:7. “Be not ye therefore partakers with them.”
5:12. “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”“Be not ye.” In a recent number of the Sunday School Times there was a paragraph on the editorial page as follows:
“Forbidding is as necessary as feeding. There are child psychologists and educators to-day who would tell us that we must never use ‘negatives’ with a child; tell the children what to do, but never tell them, ‘don’t do this or that’; if we feed the child with positive truth, this is all that is necessary. God does not seem to agree with such worldly wisdom, for His Word tells us many things we are not to do, as well as many that we are to do.”
5:3-14 offers ample proof of this last sentence, for in twelve verses God speaks the forbidding word to His children four times.
“Partakers with them.” There is no kinship between light and darkness. They are mutually exclusive and aggressively antagonistic. The children of light should know where the line of division is between the two kingdoms, and should never tarry near the boundary line of the kingdom of darkness. Sin is always sin to God, and is as loathsome to Him when seen in the saint as in the sinner. So the saint cannot afford to play nor to tamper with sin.
“Have no fellowship.” When once a thing has been seen to be one of the works of darkness, that settles fully and finally the question of the Christian’s relationship to it. There must be an abrupt abandonment of all fellowship with it. Write in capitals that two lettered word, “NO.” God is light, and He has no fellowship with darkness, for “In him is no darkness at all.” We should, then, accept our separateness from darkness and all its works as the natural consequence of our relationship with God. And “no” means “no." It prohibits any fellowship, even in moderation, or under the protective shelter of a church roof, with the works of darkness. “No” also forbids not only participation in gross and open sins, but also in all questionable and foolish conduct.Our personal repudiation of the works of darkness does not end our responsibility toward them as those who are light in the Lord. Simply to have no fellowship with them ourselves is negative action; God never stops with a mere negation. God calls every saint to take a positive stand against the works of darkness that they may be exposed and expelled. Reproof of such works is, then, a very solemn part of the believer’s responsibility.
5:11. “But rather reprove them.”
God does not ask us to become moral detectives or spiritual spies, always on the scent of evil in others, nor does He permit us to become self-appointed judges of their actions. But He does mean that the children of light should not close their eyes to the evil about them, nor even their mouths. To be silent may be tantamount to approval. We bear a definite responsibility, that should not be shirked, to lay bare the real character of sin. There is so little of real militancy and so much of softness in the spiritual soldiery of to-day that often the enemy triumphs. We need never feat active aggressiveness against the works of darkness if we follow the directions of our Captain, for there was never One as gentle and tender as He, yet as militant and aggressive against sin. His open rebuke of the hypocritical Pharisees, recorded in Matthew 23, almost makes one hold his breath.It is light shining upon and into darkness that reproves. Light has within itself the power both to reveal and to reprove.
5:13. “But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light; for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.”
The saint is light in the Lord, so his life shining upon and into the darkness about him should expose the foulness of every bit of evil he contacts and be its sharpest reproof. Unsaved ones are often convicted of sin through the light and life of Christ in His own, as is shown by this letter from a dear Christian friend in a neighbouring country:
“Some souls have been saved. One of my older brothers confessed to receive Christ. But his life continues almost the same, and we do not see much signs of life in him. His wife heard the gospel most eagerly and searched the Scriptures for a month, but said she does not want to submit and has rejected it all. The Bible, our testimony and our life have condemned her and she is pricked to the heart. She loves too much the world and its pleasures and would not let go.”
But sometimes God asks of us the very difficult thing—the reproof through the lips. The works of darkness must be openly denounced that they may be defeated and destroyed. Peter had to expose the underground deceit and the black lie in the heart of Ananias and Sapphira by an open rebuke, that the purity and power of that newborn Church might be preserved, The pierced arrow of the spoken word from Stephen’s lips to the stiff-necked, Spirit-resisting Jews was required, as well as the purifying aroma of his Spirit-filled life, to bring conviction of sin, as it apparently did, to Saul of Tarsus. And Paul himself, filled with the Spirit, faced Elymas, the sorcerer, filled with Satan, who was working to keep Sergius Paulus from receiving the Lord Jesus as his Saviour. Paul spoke publicly such scathing words of rebuke and denunciation as to make one tremble (Acts 13:10). But the authoritative, denunciatory word and act of Paul convinced the deputy of the presence in power of the Lord, and he believed.
Perhaps there was never a time in the history of the Church when there was greater need of men like Peter and Stephen and Paul, who themselves filled with the Holy Spirit and walking consistently as children of light, will faithfully expose the works of darkness within the Church and in the world, both by the spoken and the written word. The black cloud of apostasy with its trail of moral and ethical darkness hangs low over the Church, and is in itself a clarion call from God to every Christian to awake from his stupor and arise from out of his spiritual deadness to let the light of the Lord shine upon, in and through him to dissipate the darkness.
5:14. “Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepeth, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.”
In the light of this searching bit of God’s Word will you, dear friend, answer a few questions in the secret presence of your Lord?
Are you permitting any sin that is unbecoming to you as a saint?
Have you been a partaker with evil-doers in their evil works, and thus the light that is in you has become darkness?
Are you willing for the unpopularity that would inevitably come if you faithfully and decisively separated yourself from both the workers and the works of darkness?
Are you ready to obey your Lord’s command to reprove them under the Holy Spirit’s control and guidance?
Back to the Table of Content The fifth characteristic of a walk that glorifies the Lord is a walk in wisdom. While in 5:15-17, the word “circumspectly” is used in immediate connection with the verb “walk,” yet the content of the passage centres largely around the words “unwise” and “wise.” So let us take the larger view to be an exhortation to walk in wisdom.
All through this section of Ephesians which deals with the Christian’s walk Paul has but one appeal, reiterated again and again, “Be what you are.” The ground of his appeal is also invariably the same, that the walk of the saint must be in correspondence with his position in Christ. “Ye were sometimes—but now ye are,” therefore walk “as becometh saints.” The sinner walks “as fools,” but the saint walks “as wise.” Naturally a walk in wisdom follows a walk in light. So 5:15 resumes the appeal of 5:8.
Walk in Wisdom
5: 15. “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise.”“See then”—take heed to your walk; be severely strict with yourself about your whole manner of living; check up on your walk with the deliberate purpose to correct every wrong move. “Stop, look, listen.” If you are standing before the world as “light in the Lord,” be very sure that the light that is in you be not darkness (Matt. 6:23). “The story is told of a lighthouse off the coast of Florida, which became the instrument of death and destruction rather than of preservation and safety. A window in the lamp room had broken, there was no time to repair it, and a piece of iron was substituted. That night, during a furious storm, a vessel beating up the coast was sent astray by the one part dark, with results fatal to the crew.”
How absolutely consistent in every smallest detail the Christian’s life must be! When giving a series of messages on the life of victory in a mission station in China, I was very conscious of the eyes of one missionary upon me in closest scrutiny every moment while in her presence. She did not believe such a life of victory was practicable or possible. When the meetings were over she came to confess that she had watched me like a detective to discover even an expression of the face or tone of the voice, or something in the manner of speaking and acting, however great or small, to prove her point. How true and timely are Bishop Moule’s words just here:
“The appeal is again for a grave remembrance that a walk in the light is no mere promenade, smooth and easy, but a march, resolved and full of purpose, cautious against the enemy, watchful for opportunity for the King, self-controlled in every habit, and possible only in the power of the eternal Spirit.”
“Walk circumspectly.” Literally, it means exactly, accurately. Walk “looking around, watchful on every side.” A walk is made up steps, taken one at a time. One wrong step may prove fatal, and F lead into backsliding and sin, or into terrible sorrow and suffering. What a lifetime of sorrow some Christian women have had because
they disobeyed God’s command to marry “only in the Lord.” What disgrace and shame a Christian man brought upon the name of the Lord and upon himself and family by stealing money from his employers to tide him temporarily over a crisis, expecting, of course, to repay it as times grew better.All about us are the devil’s snares and pitfalls. We walk in danger constantly. Then watch your step and know where the next step will lead you. We need to be scrupulously careful about every detail of our conduct, for nothing is trivial or unimportant. Our manner of speech, fashion in clothes, companions in pleasure, use of time, choice of magazines and books, expenditure of money, are all indicative of the degree of supremacy of light over darkness in our lives. Strictest consistency in common things is obligatory, for we are taught to avoid every appearance of evil. We are to refrain from doing both that which could give rise to scandal and evil-speaking, and that which belies the sanctity of our life in Christ.
“Walk—not as fools, but as wise”
We walk as pilgrims in an unregenerate world. All around us is gross spiritual and moral darkness, the more awful because it exists alongside the dazzling light of the twentieth century wisdom of man. We walk as Christians in the midst of an apostate Church, wherein the world, the flesh and the devil have been allowed great liberty in dictating its plans and in the control of its programs. In no period of Church history was God’s exhortation in 5: 15 more needed than to-day.“Not as fools.” Do not walk as an unthinking person; going with the crowd; taking the easy way of least resistance; doing something because everybody does it, with no thought of the consequences, fearing otherwise to be thought peculiar; voting with the
majority, even if the action is a direct departure from the plain teaching of God’s Word and a violation of one’s own conscience.“But as wise”—as one with eyes, mind and heart open Godward to see and to seize upon the light Christ promises to give (5:14); alert and eager to follow it, whether you travel alone or in the company of other saints. Countless Christians are lax and careless in their walk because they have no definite purpose. They never get anywhere because they never had a goal in mind. The wise Christian has a definite goal and purposes to have every step take him nearer to it. He has taken the one which God has so clearly set for him and for the Church in 1:4 and 5:27, and he walks steadily toward it with unwavering fixity of purpose.
Perhaps one of the greatest difficulties of the earnest Christian to-day is how to “walk as wise.” He faces baffling and perplexing problems relating to his family, his business, his country and his church. How is he to walk before some member of his family who wilfully rejects the Lord, and because of this hates him and will have nothing to do with him? What is he to do if he has become a partner in business with one who professed to be sound in his Christian faith and yet practices dishonesty in business? What is to be his attitude toward war, and how is he to vote in these times when political corruption is rampant everywhere? What is to be his attitude toward those in his church who have filled the house of prayer with the tables of money-changers? How can he take the holy communion from the hands of a man who denies the deity of Christ and does despite to the precious blood of which the wine he offers is the symbol? If He believes God has shown His Church the one and only way to finance it, can he give consent and co-operation to the prevalent scheme of money-raising by suppers and sales and even by gambling? How are Christian parents to keep the confidence of and fellowship with their children, and yet uphold the divine standard of separation from the world and of chastity of life when even so much in the teaching received in school and college cuts directly across home training? What is to be the answer of every truly Christian woman to the wholly unscriptural propaganda for birth control? How is a completely yielded young Christian to have any social life in a town where there is nothing going on but the movie, the dance, or the petting party? These are but a few of the innumerable problems earnest Christians face in present-day life. How are they to be solved? When one seeks counsel from others, he often receives quite contradictory advice from equally trusted friends. Does God give us no light on these problems and no clue to their solution? He surely does, and in I Corinthians 1 and 2 gives us a working basis for a walk in wisdom.
He speaks there of two kinds of wisdom which are exact opposites. There is a wisdom which belongs to the sphere of the world, the flesh and the devil. It is “the wisdom of this world” (I Cor. 1:20; 2:6); “the wisdom of men” (I Cor. 2:5); “the wisdom of the princes of this world” (I Cor. 2:6, 8). God shows us the utter worthlessness of such wisdom, for He says it is foolishness, ungodly, antagonistic to Christ crucified and to His Cross, and that it will come to naught (I Cor. 1:18, 20, 21, 23; 2:6). Sad and tragic is the truth that the control of the present-day Church is largely in the hands of these worldly-wise men, and its program, being planned according to their worldly-wise methods, is as far from the eternal purpose of God which He purposed in Christ, as revealed in Ephesians, as the heavens are from the earth. This is the primary reason for the powerlessness and fruitlessness of the Church in this tremendous world crisis and for the closing down of so many churches and
forms of Christian work.But there is another wisdom which belongs to the heavenly sphere of the triune God. It is “the wisdom of God” (I Cor. 1:21; 2:7); Christ Himself (I Cor. 1:24, 30; hidden and eternal (I Cor. 2:7); revealed and taught by the Spirit (I Cor. 2:10, 13); can be known only by the spiritual man (I Cor. 2:15). This wisdom is of infinite worth. The first century Church was under the control of men “full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom” (Acts 6:3) of this heavenly nature. Knowing the purpose of God, having the mind of Christ, and depending upon the guidance of the Spirit, the Church of Christ was multiplied and edified under their ministry. Inspired and guided by this divine wisdom—a spiritual remnant within the present-day Laodicean Church dares to take a courageous stand for both the truth and the standards of the divine Word regarding the creed and the conduct of the affairs of the Church.
God shows us that this heavenly wisdom is for us in Christ and is made ours by the Spirit.
I Cor. 1:24. “But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
I Cor. 1:30. “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom.”
I Cor. 2:12. “Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know things that are freely given us of God.”So God has made ample provision that every step of the walk of His child may be in wisdom.
Manifestation of the Walk in Wisdom
5: 16. “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
“Redeeming the time”—translated “to buy up an article out of the market in order to make the largest profit out of it”; or as another has put it, “Grasp at each opportunity like merchants who eagerly buy up a scarce commodity.” A casual reading of this verse would leave the impression that it was a strange thought to introduce here, and that it has no vital connection with a walk in wisdom. But study and meditation upon it will convince one that in a brief epistle where only essential things are mentioned, this is one of the most necessary exhortations. For surely a walk in wisdom does not just happen; it is not a thing of chance. It requires study, prayer, meditation, consideration of every problem from every angle, above all an intimate knowledge with practical understanding of the Word of God. So this short phrase is worthy of the place given it, and should be committed to memory, pondered and obeyed by every Christian.“Time.” How do you consider time? Is it such a valuable thing, or such a scarce commodity that you feel the need of guarding every moment, and of giving most careful thought to the use of every hour? Do you eagerly grasp every opportunity to employ it so as to bring the largest profit to God, to others, and to yourself? Or, perchance, are you one of those murderers who kills time, hour upon hour, day after day, with no consciousness of the enormity of such Sin?
“Redeeming”—what an amazing word to use here! Can it be that even time has not been in our own control, but in that of another who has caused us to misuse it, and to neglect countless opportunities to better our own life and to help others? If time is such an extremely precious thing in the sight of God that He exhorts us to redeem it, then the waste of time must be a real sin, to be recognized and confessed. Someone has truly said, “You can utilize almost any kind of waste except waste of time.”
Time is short. Every moment counts. The saint who lives in Christ in the heavenlies will value time as a link with eternity, and will measure the passing hour with an eternal yardstick. “Because the days are evil,”—appallingly, fearsomely evil. Moral corruption in all its hideous forms grows apace, filling the whole world with a black cloud that thren tens the very destruction of humanity. What a challenge to the Christian to seize upon every fitting occasion and to avail himself of every opportunity to let the light that is in him flood the darkness around him!
Maintenance of a Walk in Wisdom
5:17. “Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.”“Wherefore be ye not unwise.” The days may be evil and the difficulties of a wise walk may be very great, but that is no excuse for folly or carelessness or neglect of duty on our part. We need not walk as those without sense or intelligence, for God would never a walk in wisdom without making full provision for it.
“But understanding what the will of the Lord is.” This is the supreme necessity and the fundamental secret of a walk in wisdom. God has made His will known to us, as we have already seen in Part I, and He has not kept us in the dark regarding His eternal purpose and plan. His will has been revealed and unfolded to us in His Word. To walk in the whole will of God requires us to walk in the whole truth of God’s Word. In that Word He has given either principles or precepts to cover every step of our walk in wisdom, and has accompanied them with commands, warnings, exhortations and examples, so that we may know His will with certainty. But there can be no thorough understanding of God’s will without a systematic, prayerful study of God’s Word under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit, whose task it is to open the eyes of our understanding and to enlighten us (1:7).
Dear friend, have you been neglecting the study of the Bible, and in consequence have you deviated from a walk in God’s ways and been deflected from the doing of His will? If so, it needs to be confessed as a very real and serious sin that has opened doors of your life to the devil and given him place (4:27). To “redeem the time” will mean for you some portion of your day set apart deliberately and purposefully for the study of His Word, to understand His will. Then, and only then, will you be enabled to walk in wisdom.
Back to the Table of Content While Paul does not use the word “walk” in 5:18-20, yet he is describing a life habitually filled with praise as a direct result of being filled with the Spirit. So we have seen in these verses the sixth characteristic of a worthy walk to be one in praise.
The passage opens with another of Paul’s vivid contrasts:
5:18. “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.”Counterfeit Pleasure
No pleasure that derives its satisfaction from the gratification of the desires of the flesh, or from the stimulation of the excitements of the world, can ever be beneficial. One such fleshly appetite Paul specifically denounces: “Be not drunk with wine.” Drunkenness robs the drinker of all self-control; stimulates every part of his life with a false excitement; animates his entire nature with a counterfeit pleasure; throws his entire personality out of adjustment; destroys the power of his mind and will to function normally, and leads to moral, mental and physical disorder.As we consider the contrast made, surely Paul’s reference is broader than to drunkenness only, and includes every form of indulgence that stimulates falsely and detrimentally. There is a legitimate place for real re-creating pleasure in every one’s life. But to-day people, old and young, seek “a good time” through the kind of pleasure that produces a momentary thrill, but often leaves one dejected in mind, jaded in body, reproached in conscience, and leaves a tragic trail of sorrow and heartache in its wake. Just this week I listened to an extremely pitiable tale of a highly respectable school teacher from a good home who in a public place drank her first cocktail, not knowing that through that one drink she would be robbed of her personal purity and bring sorrow and disgrace to her family.
Christian Joy
Over against such a travesty of pleasure Paul places this blessed experience: “But be ye filled with the Spirit.”But—one need never live on any plane but the highest. God does not offer the once confirmed drunkard something a bit less harmful or a bit more beneficial, nor does He suggest mere reformation in regard to drunkenness. But He offers him the best in exchange for the worst; the true in place of the false. God does not wish His children to live just on a higher plane, but on the highest plane.
“Be filled with the Spirit .“—The fulness of the triune God, Father, Son and Spirit, is the Christian’s heritage. This is the keynote of Ephesians (3:19; 4:13; 5:18). To make us possessors of this fulness is the work of the Holy Spirit. To do it He must have absolute sway over us through complete control. We must be filled with the Spirit. Fulness imparts to the Christian the power of self control; animates his heart with pure joy; invigorates his whole being with newness of life; brings his spirit, soul and body into right adjustment; enhances the power of mind, heart and will to fulfil the divine purpose, and leads to spiritual, moral, mental and physical wholeness.
Drunkenness with wine and the filling with the Spirit are two contrasted states that produce visible results that are extraordinary. A drunkard is so intoxicated by wine that he is incapacitated for normal life and work, while the man who is filled with the Spirit is thereby made normal and prepared for any kind of fruitful minMtry, When $ man is drunk he has lost self control snd given himself over completely to the influence of wine, while the Spirit-filled man has gained self-control by voluntarily placing himself under the control of the divine Spirit. The drunken man cannot hide his drunkenness, for his walk and his talk disclose his condition. So the fulness of the Spirit cannot be concealed, for the Spirit-filled man attracts attention by his truly separated walk and sanctified talk. Not only will his life be in marked distinction from that of the unregenerate man, but it will also be manifestly different from that of the worldly, carnal Christian. To be drunk implies a craving for wine that will not be satisfied with anything but wine. The drunkard has but one consuming desire—to drink wine; to satisfy which he will sacrifice everything else in life, however precious. To become filled with the Spirit implies thirst on the part of the Christian for the living water, the Holy Spirit, that will not be content with anything less than fulness, and that makes him willingly yield all for the sake of this priceless treasure. The drunkard to remain drunk must keep on craving and drinking wine. So the Christian to remain Spirit-filled must keep on thirsting and drinking the living water.
A Twofold Command
“Be not drunk.” This was a command spoken to every Christian in that Ephesian church, from the deacons and elders on down to the newest, weakest convert just out of paganism. No one was exempt, and disobedience to this command would have been considered gross and glaring sin.“Be ye filled.” This also was a command spoken with equal authority and insistence to every member of the church at Ephesus. By the giving of this twofold command God would seem to be saying that He even expected the one who had been habitually drunk in the old life to be now habitually filled in the new. So He would teach us that being filled with the Spirit is not optional, but obligatory; that it is not the privilege of a favoured few, but the perogative of every saint.
Paul then proceeds to show what is the outworking of a Spirit filled life. Being filled with the Spirit is not an emotional, ecstatic experience which makes one abnormal and fanatical, but it is a sane, joyous experience which makes for a sound mind, a radiant heart, and a poised spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is joy. It is only when filled with the Holy Spirit that one experiences purest pleasure. The whole being of the Spirit-filled Christian is flooded with radiant joy that exhilarates but at the same time Invigorates. The Inflow of joy will find its outlet in praise.
Walk in Praise
Praise involves outward expression as well as inward enjoyment. It will find expression in speech, in song and even in silence.5:19 (R.V.). “Speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord.”
In social fellowship one with another praise to the Lord will flavour even our conversation. Murmuring, complaining, discontent, will find no place, for praise to the Lord deep-rooted in our life will bubble up from our hearts through our lips. How feebly most of us have capitalized our opportunities in ordinary conversation to thus glorify the Lord! How the enjoyment of any social gathering of saints would be enhanced by reading together from the Scripture and by worshipping Him in song!
At a summer Conference for students, one young woman gifted with a beautiful voice refused stubbornly to yield her life to the Lord. She left the Conference at its close in a miserable state. One car on the train was filled with delegates from the Conference, and the joy of some hearts burst forth in spiritual songs. One after another joined until everyone was singing but the one with the most beautiful voice of all. She could not open her mouth to sing until she opened her heart to yield. But the Lord conquered, and she yielded herself to Him. Oh, the joy that then poured forth in song, such as she never before had realized!
“Singing to the Lord.” Does this not rule out every silly, worldly song? Does it not forbid jazz and all forms of music that foster unwholesome revelry? Is not the motive of the Christian’s song to please the Lord and not to entertain himself or others? The new heart will have a new song.
“Making melody in your heart.” Perhaps some of us cannot sing, and, if we did, it could hardly be called melody. But there is a song without words that catches the ear of our listening Lord,—the song of praise silently voiced in the heart of a Spirit-filled Christian. Every Christian should be a singing Christian.
5:20. “Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
“Giving thanks unto God, the Father.”—How many times a day do you say “Thank you, Father”? Such a spirit of thankfulness and such an expression of thanksgiving is one of the surest ways of victory over the devil. In olden days when a great multitude of Moabites and Ammonites came against Jehoshaphat to battle, the king first prayed and then appointed singers unto the Lord who, as they went out before the army, were to say, “Praise the Lord; for his mercy endureth forever.” And “when they began to sing and to praise,” the Lord gave them victory over the enemy.“Always.”—Every real Christian gives thanks sometimes, but who gives thanks “always”? “For all things.” Every true Christian gives thanks for some things, but who could give thanks for all things, including, as it may, sickness, financial loss, sorrow and trouble of various kinds? It seems an impossible standard. But, if we know of even one life in which there is perpetual thanksgiving in the midst of unceasing suffering, then that proves the possibility. Last night I read a page in the August Moody Monthly which told the story and showed the picture of the radiant face of “Lloyd Jensen of Sunshine Corner.” I quote from the story hoping it will interpret to you, as it did to me, the meaning of the word “always.” Dr. Lockyer writes:
“I was shown into a room of indescribable physical anguish, which I have elected to name, ‘Sunshine Corner.’ And I shall never cease to praise God for what that visit meant to my soul. Lloyd Jensen, one of God’s heroes, has discovered the art of turning a bed of pain into one of the brightest spots on earth. Healthy and active for the first twelve years of his life, at the age of thirteen, a mysterious illness overtook him. The trouble was ultimately diagnosed as the worst form of arthritis, which has since developed into Still disease, a fearful malady resulting in the hardenng of the members.
“For over eleven years now, Lloyd has lain in one position on his back. During the last six years, this hero has been perfectly helpless, and cannot move any part of his emaciated frame. All his joints are set. His hands, corrupt and distorted, rest upon a pillow of cotton wool. Exposed, these rock-like, ugly lumps have been fixed upon his chest for almost six years. His legs and feet are gruesome. The mouth cannot open beyond the width of a cracker, and yet it is in this way that his patient mother feeds him with small pieces of food.
“When he first took sick, Lloyd was not a Christian. His young heart was somewhat rebellious at being kept in bed when others of his age could walk and play. The prayers of a godly mother prevailed, however, and through the influence of a radio program, Lloyd became a born-again soul. Two years ago, a very severe heart attack almost sent Lloyd home to heaven. Rallying, he determined to read the Bible through. He felt that shame would be his if he met his Lord without having meditated upon His Word from cover to cover. His Bible rests upon a small music stand and with his head half turned, its only position night and day for years, he reads the open pages, then Mother comes and turns the leaves.
Of his sufferings Lloyd has nothing to say. If visitors take him sympathy, they soon have to pocket It or expend It upon themselves for having grumbled over little troubles and ailments. To all who come Lloyd smilingly testifies of a Saviour’s love.”
Lloyd Jensen lives on “Giving-thanks-always-for-all-things” Avenue. Where do you make your home? If you have been living in the slums of murmuring, complaint and discontent, won’t you move to-day at least into “Praise” Alley? And soon you will be living way uptown on “Joy” Street or “Thanksgiving” Boulevard, in the precious fellowship of the Spirit-filled Christians of the earth.
“Unto God and the Father.”—Unto the One who in infinite wisdom and love has permitted “the all things,” whether of joy or sorrow; of pleasure or pain; of gain or loss; and who has permitted them for the very purpose of enabling us to walk worthy of our high calling of “being holy even as he is holy.” Not one thing can ever come into the life of one who is called of God that does not work out for his good. God has said so, therefore it is true, and He asks us to believe it and give thanks.
Rom. 8:28. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
“In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” As we claim the power and the merit of that blessed Name in offering our petitions, so may we also in offering praise. He who always gave thanks unto His Father for all things will enable us to do it also as we rely upon Him for it.
Back to the Table of Content The social order of to-day is disjointed by frightful maladjustments. Government, business, school and home are all being rocked by revolt; lawlessness runs riot over the earth; anarchy grows apace; and everywhere the utter collapse of civilization is feared. Frantic efforts are being made to produce harmony by social legislation and governmental action, but the result is negligible. Ephesians teaches God’s way of harmony.
Human Relationships—Harmonized in Christ
The Christian’s life can never be isolated. Incorporation into Christ’s Body as a member brings organic relationship with every other member.
5:30. “For we are members of His body.”
4:25. “For we are members one of another.”
Than we should treat fellow-Christians as we would treat ourselves As there is mutual Co-operation of eye with eye, hand with hand, and foot with foot, so should there be mutual co-operation between fellow-members of the mystical Body.A Walk in Harmony
Paul gives a simple but very workable basis for harmony in all the varied relationships between believers.5:21 (R. V.). “Subjecting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ.”
“Subjecting yourselves.” Is it a “hard saying” from which we instinctively turn away? Let us face it courageously as a direct word of the Lord to us personally, and gladly, as one of the first fruits of a Spirit-filled life. Therefore we know that what seems to us bitter is in reality sweet. “Subjecting”—a present participle, indicating a continuous process, an attitude governing every act. “Yourselves”—voluntary self-negation rather than to assert one’s rights; true humility which esteems others better than one’s self, and looks not upon his own things but upon the things of others.
“One to another”—not a one-sided subjection by which some truly lowly-minded, unselfish, retiring Christian becomes the prey of one who is imperialistic, selfish and domineering, but a mutual 5ubjection which demands selflessness and Christlikeness of each alike. One human will does not yield to another human will, but both wills are mutually yielded to the will of God in every matter relating to both persons. Mutual subjection is a voluntary meeting on the common ground of mutual desire to do the will of God in the love of Christ through the guidance of the Spirit.
“In the fear of Christ.” There must necessarily be a strong, motivating reason and incentive for such mutual subjection, which is quite foreign to the flesh. Paul finds it to be a reverential fear of displeasing and dishonouring Christ. Paul now turns from the general to the particular, and applies the principle of mutual submission in the Christian home.
Harmony in the Home
The home is the first divine institution. From it human society is replenished. Human society is the home and the family projected and amplified. It is there that the individual is prepared, disciplined and trained to take his place and fulfil his responsibilities in human affairs. Because the home is the unit around which the social structure is built, its importance cannot be over-estimated.Never were there so many enemies of the home as now which to bring about both its degeneration and disintegration. Forces are at work either to destroy it or otherwise to empty it of its occupants, or to rob it of its character-making qualities. There is very little of the old-time cultural home-life. In fact, much of the time of both parents and children is spent outside the home in the auto, at the cinema, the bridge party, the club, the camp. And frequently when the family do gather together for meals, no conversation is possible because the radio does all the talking. One trembles at the increasing number of curbstone homes, and one shudders at the stark tragedy so many of them shelter. Recently a wife was enjoying herself at a bridge party, while her husband at home committed suicide.
Nothing on earth is more beautiful than a truly Christian home where Christ reigns and brings a heavenly harmony, proving that “the greatest gift of Christianity to the social fabric is the Christian home.”
The Christian Home
5:22-6:9 pictures a Christian home in its threefold, all-inclusive relationships:
Husband Parents Masters Wife Children Servants The members of this earthly household are first members of the heavenly. The picture is of a dual family life, the heavenly and the earthly, with the former the pattern for the latter. The standard for the human is determined by the divine. This is made clear in such phrases as “unto the Lord,” “even as,” “so—as,” “in the Lord,’ “of the Lord,” “as unto Christ.” Christ is both the Lord and the Life of the Christian home.
Thus in the heavenly relationship all are on the same footing. In Christ all members of the Christian family are one. The wife, child and servant are in Christ as truly as the husband, parent and master. In Christ all are equally possessors of the unsearchable riches of Christ. The wife, child and servant are as truly heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ as the husband, parent and master. In Christ their spiritual standing is exactly the same; they are spiritual equals in God’s sight.
But on the human side of the relationship there is a Scriptural distinction in status which is typical of the vast differences existing between members of human society. Position, age, education, gifts, ability, training, all play a part in determining one’s position. To bring about a right adjustment so that harmony reigns In the home is a very necessary thing, and merits the large place given to it in - this epistle.
Let us get clearly in mind that such a standard could only be maintained in a Christian home. Paul is writing by inspiration of a harmony produced by Christ as the creator and centre of the Christian home.
Harmony between Husband and Wife
When God sets a standard that seems especially high and difficult, He usually gives us a divine pattern to be followed. This is just what He has done here.The Divine Prototype
In the first three chapters of Ephesians we saw the Church as the Body of Christ. In Chapter five we see it as His Bride. In one of the most beautiful and profound expositions of the relationship of the heavenly Bridegroom to His Bride, God sets forth the pattern for that of the earthly.Let us consider the relationship of Christ to the Church, His Bride: Christ first wooed and won the Church through His sacrificial love as the Saviour. He gave Himself to the uttermost for it.
5:25. “Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.”
5:23. “Even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the saviour of the body.”As Head He began to make the Church worthy of His companionship. Having been made a very part of Himself, the Bride must now become like Him, that she might enter into all His life, His purposes and plans. A holy Christ must have a holy Bride, separated from all that pertained to the earthly, and sanctified wholly unto the heavenly. It was the Bridegroom’s responsibility to prepare the Bride here and now for presentation unto Himself at that marriage feast in heaven, arrayed in the garments of spotless holiness and glory.
5:26. “That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word.”
5:27. “That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blame.”As Head it is His responsibility also to provide everything needful for the well-being of the Church. As He knows its trials and troubles, its difficulties and dangers, its material and temporal needs, with perfect devotion and faithfulness He provides all needed to nourish and sustain it (5:29).
Only one thing is stated here concerning the relationship of the Church to Christ:
5:24. “The church is subject unto Christ.”
In the divine prototype we may reverently say there is a mutual submission between Christ and the Church. Christ submitted Himself in self-denying, self-sacrificing love, even unto death, for His Bride, whom He cherishes and cares for in the most tender manner. The Church, the Bride, responds with the submission of absolute loyalty in yieldedness and obedience. It is the mutual submission of a pure love for a perfect Lover.
The Human Product
With this high and holy pattern before us, let us now weave the threads of the earthly relationship according to it. The basis for harmony is in the knowledge and recognition of the divinely-appointed relationship between husband and wife, with its resultant responsibility for obedience to God’s commands on the part of both. Paul begins by stating the wife’s part in making and keeping harmony with her husband:5:22. (R.V.). “Wives, be in subjection unto your own husbands as unto the Lord.”
“Be in subjection.” Let no Christian wife shrink from this plain statement, nor from its implications. God is speaking and commanding, and this truth should be as readily and gladly received as any other. Let us divest ourselves of all resentment and rebellion as women, and be open-minded and open-hearted to every line of God’s holy Word. We shall see shortly that there is nothing to fear from any husband who lives up to his responsibility. God gives both a sufficient incentive and a reason for obedience to this command.
“As unto the Lord.” If the submission is made gladly because God asks and expects it, He accepts it as a personal service unto Himself, and our joy will be accordingly. Then the Lord gives the reason for asking for subjection and puts it upon a very high plane:
5:23. “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.”
5:24. “Therefore as the church is subject Unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.”The headship of the husband is by divine appointment. Scripture shows that there is a headship within a headship which is but the shadow of the relationship between Christ and God. The hus2s headship over the wife has its roots in Christ’s headship over
him, while in turn Christ’s headship over the husband is rooted in God’s headship over Him.I Cor. 11:3. “For I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.”
Our Lord when on earth did nothing of Himself. He sought only to know and to do His Father’s will. In such subjection there was nothing stultifying or degrading. So the subjection of the wife to the headship of her husband, when placed upon such a lofty plane, can in no wise degrade her.
“As the church is subject unto Christ.” The nature and extent of the headship now is shown to be in everything that pertains to the life of the home and the family. It Is not a slavish obedience to every whim and fancy of unreasonableness and selfishness on the part of the husband, but the loving and joyous subjection of loyalty to love. For the one to whom she is united as “one flesh” she will have only respect and reverence.
5:33. “And the wife see that she reverence her husband.”
In worldly society to-day one of the most degenerating and degrading factors is the growing and excessive mannishness of women as expressed in clothing, in hair-dress, and in such habits as smoking and drinking. It is also manifested by the entrance of women into fields of work which more properly seem to belong to men. Sad to say, this spirit of usurpation of the privileges and responsibilities of the husband, as head of the family, has invaded many a Christian home, where one sees a masterful wife assume the headship of the home, and where husband and children are quite under her dictation. God is teaching us in Ephesians that this is not His plan, and that it cannot make for harmony in the family life.
Let us now turn in thought to the position and responsibilities of the husband. Five things are stated in regard to it:
5:23. “The husband is head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.”
“The husband is head of the wife.” This may sound very distasteful to modern ears. It may seem to give the husband undue and unfair rights in the marriage relationship. However, if we study this passage with an unbiased, open mind, all such objections should be removed. Let us remember two things. The headship of the husband is by divine appointment. Therefore It is not only right and but It is the best and wisest plan for the home. Secondly, let us remember that the heavenly is the pattern for the earthly. “Even as Christ is the head of the church.” The marriage of a Christian man and woman is the holy counterpart of the heavenly wedlock. What Christ is in His love-relationship to the Church, the husband is to be to his wife. It does not allow him to be either a bully or a brute. It does not grant him uncontrolled license to do his will or unrestrained liberty to have his way. The responsibilities of such headship are clearly defined.
Christ loves the Church as a very part of Himself. Paul now uses this heavenly pattern to press home still further the husband’s responsibility to his wife:
5:28. “So ought men to love their own wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.”
“So ought”—a divine compulsion that exempts no husband. The divine standard can never be lowered. The “ought” of the wife’s loyalty is complemented by the “ought” of the husband’s love. “Men to love their wives as their own bodies”—the very highest human standard of which man is capable of reaching, which, when reached, means that the husband loves his wife as he loves himself.
The husband’s headship entails upon him yet one more responsibility: He is to protect and provide for his wife in the same tender and loving way that Christ does for the Church.
5:29. “For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.”
For a man to hate his own flesh would be wholly abnormal and imply serious mental disorder. So there is moral disorder when a husband does not love his wife with a love that makes him selfforgetful in the desire to supply her every need.
5:25. “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.”“Husbands,” put your ear close to this bit of God’s Word, and get the full force of these words. Yours is the submission of love which partakes of both the nature and the manner of Christ’s love for the Church, His Bride. Christ loved with a love that was Utterly selfless and self-sacrificing. He loved, not thinking of what He could get, but of what He could give. And He gave all that He is and has; He gave Himself unto the uttermost, even of death. Christian husband, “love your wife, even as.” Then subjection to you on the wife’s part will be only a joy and a delight. Then she will reverence you for what you truly are.
We admit readily that such harmony between husband and wife is very beautiful as an West and very desirable but a standard to be lived out it seems impossible. To be sure, a price must be paid for it on the part of both. And may it not be that a down-payment needs to be made at the very start of married life? In a little seaside cottage at Peitaiho, China, two missionaries were united in marriage at 9:30 one summer morning. The bride-to-be was up at five o’clock, and had one hour in fellowship with her Lord down by the sea. After breakfast she dressed for her wedding, and then for one hour just before the ceremony she and her lover were togther in communion with the Lord Jesus, who Himself united them in a spiritual union which has been unusually harmonious and happy. Should not every Christian home be started with His blessing and benediction if harmony is to prevail?
Harmony between Parents and Children
The harmony in many a home is broken by the maladjustment between parents and children, due very largely to a twofold failure,—disobedience and lack of discipline.Much is said and written to-day of the revolt of youth. The attitude and the acts of many children show a reckless disregard for parental counsel; a spirit of lawlessness that will suffer no correction or rebuke and brook no interference with their plans; and a restiveness under restraint, all of which threatens the very foundations of family life. One has seen several times recently accounts of suicide or murder by boys or girls simply because their will was crossed on some matter and they could not have their own way.
To-day there is very little respect for authority or deference for the experience of elders. The tendency in the modern home is for an undue freedom and familiarity which counts it a smart thing for a child to call the parent by his given name, and to tell the parents what to do, instead of listening to the advice of the parents. One of the most difficult and dangerous factors in the situation is that schools and colleges are encouraging this revolt of youth, and their teaching seems purposely aimed at making anarchists and Bolshevists of youth. The Satanic lie taught in so many circles, that a
‘a will is never to be crossed, but only guided, and that every I must be left quite alone to work out his own way in life, is fruit in a ruinous waywardness and an unprecedented flood of lawlessness.How necessary it Is, then, for the Christian youth to go first-hand to the Word and read what God says of his responsibility In making the home harmonious.
6:1. "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right”
“Children” are recognized by God as an integral part of the home. They are placed next to parents in importance in human relationships, for they are not only the fruit of marriage, but are also the future home-makers. Therefore, though treated as children now, they should be trained to be the parents of the next generation.“Obey”—no stronger word could be used to show that God’s command to parents is to exercise parental authority, and to children to practice implicit obedience. In two places in Scripture God reveals His estimate of the heinousness of disobedience to parents when he places it in the list of the most degrading sins of the godless, heathen world (Rom. 1:29-31), and of the sins of lawlessness that characterize the perilous times of the last days (II Tim. 3: 1-5). The child that has never learned to obey parents in the home will not find it easy to obey the law of his government or the commands of his God. The obedience God requires is not merely that of action, but also of attitude, which makes a child ready to listen to his parents, willing to heed their advice, and to follow the guidance of more mature minds.
"Your parents.” Though the headship of the family resides in the father, yet the plural form of the noun implies that Christian parents should be agreed and united in the discipline of their children, so that the child knows there is no possibility of appeal from one to the other, or for interference on his behalf. The mutual support and strengthening of parents in discipline is absolutely essential if obedience from the child is expected.
“In the Lord.” The atmosphere of a Christian home, which is surcharged with the mother’s loyalty to and reverence for the father, and the father’s love for and tender care of the mother, will inspire in the child the desire to emulate their example of mutual submission by an obedience that does not spring from compulsion or fear, but from love and respect.
“For this is right.” From the standpoint of both the human and divine, such obedience is right. Obedience is a fundamental law in all God’s universe, so of course it must be in the most intimate of relationships. From every angle it is right; for God’s glory, the home’s harmony, and the child’s good.
Obedience may be given grudgingly and ungraciously because there seems nothing else to do to avoid the penalty of punishment. So another command Is given which calls the child to still higher ground:
6:2. “Honour thy father and thy mother; which is the first commandment with promise."
To honour parents implies genuine deference to their wishes, respect for their judgment, and trust in their love. Willing, heartfelt honour is instinctively given. Such obedience and honour are enjoined first, because they are right, and then because they reap a rich reward of definite blessings.
Paul now turns to parental responsibility toward children, and gives two definite commands, one negative and the other positive:
6:4. “And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath; but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”
“Ye fathers.” While the mother has her own definite responsibility for the discipline and development of the children because of her more constant and more intimate companionship with them in the formative period of their lives, yet here again the father is recognized as the head of the family, and especial responsibility is placed upon him for the parental government and the spiritual growth of the children.
“Provoke not your children to wrath”—do not irritate or exasperate or discourage by unreasonable demands, by unnecessary interference, by irritable nagging, by perpetual faultfinding, by harsh criticism, by unceasing “don’ts,” by a dictatorial manner, by unjust commands. In the exercise of authority there is great need for understanding, love, justice and self-control. The parent should guard against anything either in the method or the manner of discipline that repels the child, destroys confidence, or wounds his spirit. Parents sometimes wound a child’s self-respect by openly and jestingly speaking of faults, or by alluding to personal defects about
which the child is keenly sensitive; or they distance the child from them by unreasonable or selfish demands. As a result the child regards home with fear and abhorrence and desires to get away from it as soon as possible.But the trend of to-day on the part of parents is not toward severity in discipline, but rather of laxity; in many cases even of criminal neglect. A letter recently from one in charge of a Children’s Home had this statement: “Each one of these fifty or more children has a case against his parents. Two or three out of the number are orphans; the others have parents who have handed their responsibility over to the state. Awful!” Parents have turned their children loose upon the public for their education and recreation; they are too often either in an auto or a cinema while the parents follow their own pursuits and pleasures. Even many Christian parents sadly fail in the oversight of the social and recreational life of their children. A mother was heard to say to her small boy in a movie theatre: “You must come home, you have been here seven hours.” And what had he seen? Let me quote from published reports:
“The Committee of Child Welfare of the League of Nations analyzed two hundred and fifty American films and found in them: 97 murders, 51 cases of adultery, 19 seductions, 22 abductions, 45 suicides. Of the characters in these 250 films there were: 176 thieves, 25 prostitutes, .35 drunkards. Also the Censorship Board sometime ago eliminated from 788 pictures 1811 scenes of assault with guns with intent to kill, 175 scenes of assault with knives, 231 scenes of hanging, 757 scenes of attacks on women for immoral purposes, 929 scenes of nudity and semi-nudity, 21 scenes of jail-breaking. And 115,000,000 people attend the movies every week.”
Christian parents, are you allowing your children to attend this school of crime? Worse still, are you setting them an example by going yourself? If so, will you prayerfully consider this matter in the light of God’s clear command to you in Ephesians?
“Bring them up.” To bring up children is a Scriptural way implies a serious and enlightened assumption of responsibility for their spiritual, moral, mental and physical well-being. This requires wise counsel and guidance in regard to the books they read, the pleasures they seek, the friendships they form, the school or college they attend, and all other matters that relate to character-building. Children are God’s gift to parents, and they are also a trust. Will not God one day require Christian parents to give an account of their stewardship of parenthood and of the guardianship of their children? Will you have failed in this most sacred trust?
“In the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The parent needs to be taught and trained of the Lord for the task of teaching and training the child. Many parents, feeling their own in competency, shirk their responsibility and entrust the spiritual nurture of their children to the minister and the Sunday School teacher. But here in Ephesians, God places squarely upon parents the responsibility for the instruction and training of the child in those things which make for a well-rounded, full-orbed Christian character and service. Such bringing up will include discipline, warning, admonition, correction, above all the teaching of God’s Word and fellowship in prayer around the family altar. God tells clearly how it is to be done and to what end:
II Tim. 3:14, 15. “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
A college student once came to me in great perplexity. She was
taking a course in Bible which was absolutely destructive of faith in God and in His Word and the exact contradiction of all she had been taught by her parents in family worship since childhood. Her question was, “Shall I continue taking Bible in college?” I asked, “Which teaching do you believe is true, that of your parents or your professor?” She replied, “My parents lived the most godly lives I have ever seen. I believe the Bible as my parents taught it.” Christian parents, wouldn’t you like to have your child say that about you when he gets away from the old home and faces the terrific temptations of modern life that are sweeping so many young men and women into atheism, immorality and crime?Harmony between Masters and Servants
In the social order of Paul’s day, as in our own, there were conditions utterly wrong and unjust. Slavery was prevalent, and among those Ephesian Christians some were slaves and some were slaveowners. Paul, an ardent advocate of righteousness and justice, did not attempt to remake the social order, nor did he counsel rebellion against it on the part of those who suffered from it. Instead of attempting to make a “Christian” social order in a non-Christian world, he taught Christians how to live in a Christian way in the social order of which they formed a part. What he says here to slaves applies equally to all kinds of employees whose labour is sold to another.6:5. “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh.”
“Servants”—a name of honour in that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself was called Jehovah’s “servant.” “Be obedient.” Obedience is a rightful obligation of those who are in the employ of another. The secret of harmony within the relationship between servant and master depends upon two things on the servant’s part.
The Manner of Service
“With fear and trembling”—with a true eagerness to perform every duty conscientiously and honestly and with a sincere anxiety t he fall in measuring up fully to his task. “In singleness of heart" — with the sincere desire to give undivided loyalty to his master. "Not with eye-service as men-pleasers" — -not working faithfullly merely when the master is on a tour of inspection and for the sake of gaining his favour. “With good-will doing service,” free from resentment and rebellion, and working with the interest of the master at heart and with a real desire to see him prosper.The Motive in Service
“As unto Christ”—for the sake and the glory of the heavenly Master, remembering that in faithfully serving the earthly master, Christ receives it as service done unto Him. “As servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.” Their real servitude is to Christ, and in doing His will in whatever circumstances they are placed, they can rejoice even in the most menial service. Such a motive sanctifies all work and enables one to put his whole soul into it. “As to the Lord, and not to men”—conscious that his earthly service takes on a heavenly character, so he is able to work motivated by the one desire to please his Lord. “Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.” His earthly master may deny him just recompense for his labour, but not so his heavenly Master whose “Well-done, good and faithful servant,” one day he will hear. The rewards withheld on earth will be conferred with certainty in heaven.
Such motives lift service to the highest possible plane and take the sting even out of slavery. It enables the servant to live and work “far above all” in the most difficult and provocative of circumstances, and to do his part to make and keep harmony in the home or place of business.
After a revival in a mission station in China during which many of the Christians had received the fulness of the Holy Spirit, one missionary wrote, “Our hospital is no more like it used to be. There is perfect harmony among all the hospital workers from servants on up. All do faithful work. I never have to reprove any of them. I even never have to tell servants what to do. All know their work, and do it faithfully.” Filled with the Holy Spirit, both the manner and the motive of every servant’s work will be such as to make for harmony.
Paul, then, turns to the Christian master:
6:9. “And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening, knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.”
“Ye masters”—whoever is In a position which gives him the right to command and control the activities of others “Do the same things unto them.” The general principle of mutual subjection in Christian relationships is here again applied. The master should do unto the servant as he wants the servant to do unto him. As the servant has given himself over to serve his master faithfully and to work only for the master’s best interests, so the master in turn should with equal abandon look after the welfare of his servant. The application of this Scriptural principle of mutual subjection of master
and servant, to effect mutual benefit and blessing, would solve the baffling and entangling problems of to day between employer and employee. “Forbearing threatening.” Harsh, violent language intended to intimidate may win a temporary submission to authority, but it will not have won the servant into giving willing and trustworthy service. “Your Master also is in heaven.” You, too, are a servant. Your Master is your servant’s Saviour as well as yours, and in His sight you are no better than he is, though you occupy a higher earthly position. You are His bond-servant, and of you He expects the same manner and motive in service to Him and to others that He has taught your servant to render you. “Neither is there respect of persons with him.” Christ does not judge by earthly, but by heavenly standards. So the external differences of position, possessions, prestige and power between masters and servants in the flesh mean nothing to Christ in His estimate of the two. As He looks upon the quality of the inward, spiritual life, He may regard the servant even more highly than the master.Perhaps the thought dominant in some minds is “Are there any homes of the Ephesians’ type in the world to-day. Mine is not like that, though I wish it were.” One loves to believe there are such homes in different lands where love and loyalty reign and where sweet harmony is the result. But one can be absolutely sure such Scripturally-enjoined harmony is possible when one has seen it and felt its radiant warmth and joyousness. It was my joy once to spend several days in a missionary home in China which sheltered a husband, wife, daughter and son. Love pervaded the home and the hearts of its occupants to an unusual and evident degree. Sweet harmony prevailed. Recently a letter was received from the wife and mother in that family.
The war had devastated the city in which their mission was, and their house had been looted and burned, causing the loss of all their earthly possessions. But their home, built upon the enduring foundation of 5:22-6:9, was indestructible, and the harmony of it lives on in those tour hearts though now unsheltered by brick and mortar, as this quotation from the letter so beautifully proves:
“It is Scriptural to call one’s friends together to rejoice with one, is it not? So rejoice with us, for while seventeen out of our twenty buildings in are in ashes, we have gained more than we lost. And, if to-day I could have the brick and mortar back, being minus the precious lessons and the loving, tender watch care over us through homelessness, I would not want it. Anyway, the home cannot be burnt, it is safe in four hearts for time and eternity. And I am hoping that one day the lad and the lass will establish two homes where they are ‘hopelessly in love with each other,’ as and I are to this good day, with all praise for said blessings at His feet where they do most surely belong; for two quick tempers, but for His tempering grace, would not have had the home we have had and now have. Then, too, we have thanked God that when the children were small, in fact, as long as they needed it, they had the home, and now both have gone on their way with such memories as humble us before the God who is love.”