EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS
GRACIOUS WARNING.
CHAPTER XIV.
"But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints ; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient : but rather giving of thanks."- EPH. V. 3, 4.

WE have to notice in this passage
I. The evils against which we are warned ; and
II. The considerations by which the warning is enforced.
I. Let us note the evils against which we are here warned, and the necessity of the warning.

With strong indignation and abhorrence, the apostle returns to his necessary warning of the Church against the loose notions and practices of the world; which in his day, at Ephesus, were loose and impure indeed. He has been appealing to the highest, the divine ideal of pure and holy love, as manifested in the Father's forgiveness and the Son's sacrifice. He has been urging home these instances as the measure of our aspiration and the model for our imitation, in the line of personal sanctification. And now he abruptly turns round to face some of the lowest forms of vice; and to face them as what even saints need to be warned against; on the ground of their being unbecoming (v. 3), and not convenient (v. 4), or unsuitable.

The transition is a strange and striking one; from an exhortation and appeal to the highest spirituality of aim, to a vehement protest against what is inclusive and indicative of the lowest carnal indulgences. In part, the explanation may be found in the situation of such a church as that early Church of Ephesus; formed out of one of the most fashionable and abandoned, but yet one of the most accomplished and refined, communities of what was then the civilised eastern world; composed of people accustomed to see in their Greek philosophers the highest speculative flights of ideal perfection, or perfectibility, in conjunction with the lowest depths of practical immorality. So far this explanation may be accepted.

But there is a deeper and wider lesson to be learned here. So long as the church is in contact with the world, her members never can rise above the necessity of strict prohibitory rule and law. Let them aim and aspire ever so high in the line of positive spiritual attainment; to be followers of God as dear children, in respect of his holy and righteous, as well as gracious, way of forgiving them - and to walk in Christ-like, self-sacrificing, and God-glorifying love; still they may not claim any exemption from that necessity. Nor will they make the claim, if they really desire to realise the high ideal of conformity to the Father and the Son, and if, in connection with that desire, they have at all learned to know themselves.

The attempt has been made; the experiment has been tried. Men professing the most elevated piety, and not always with conscious insincerity or hypocrisy, have fallen, as it were, over the height of an exaggerated and overstrained godly profession; and even, as it might seem, a godly practice of no ordinary measure of attainment, into the worst sort of worldly conformity indicated in this apostolic warning. Nay, it must never be forgotten, that the very love in which we are to walk, the all-forgiving love of God and the self-sacrificing love of Christ, has in it an element or source of danger for emotional and susceptible tempers. However holy and heavenly, however pure and unselfish, it may be in itself, it is but too apt to ally itself, or allow itself to be allied, to some kind or measure of earthly passion or desire; and often when its own warmth is highest, is its tendency that way the strongest.

Alas, that it should be so! It is about the saddest of all proofs of the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of the heart, that the best and most blessed of the religious affections, love or charity, should have in it, at least as it exists and grows in the human heart, or should be capable of having in it this root of bitterness, which, springing up, may trouble it, this worm in the bud that may eat away all its bright beauty. But so it is. Not only past history, but present observation, and your own consciousness and experience, may attest it to be so.

But this love, in which you are commanded to walk, is the love of a brother, or of a sister. It is such love as will forgive any injury, as the Father for Christ's sake forgives you (chap. iv. 32); and it is such self-denying and self-surrendering love as the Son manifested when he gave himself for us (ver. 2). So to love a brother, or a sister, is the religious duty here enjoined. But now the brother or the sister to be so loved may be on other grounds than that of religious duty personally attractive. And then the duty may become one which it may be difficult and hard, purely and holily, to discharge. It may be difficult and hard, sometimes, in the very proportion of the warmth of the affection felt. May not this consideration, in part at least, explain the connection here indicated, between the exhortation to aim at conformity with the highest instance of divine love and the warning against the lowest form of human licentiousness? For the transition is very abrupt, and very startling; "But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints." It may even seem needlessly coarse and offensive. Alas! it is not so. It is not needless. There is in that divine affection, that best and highest of-all the religious affections, love or charity, an element that but too readily combines and coalesces with what is merely human and earthly. It is what I may call the palpably personal element. The love has for its object a living person, one whom I see, and hear, and personally know. It may be love to him, or to her, originally as I think of the purest, holiest, most heavenly type; like the Father's love in forgiving me for Christ's sake; like Christ's own love in giving himself for me. But I am of a susceptible temperament, let it be supposed; an enthusiastic admirer of all that is amiable in any one with whom I am familiar. And I am ardent in my piety, my love to God and Christ, and in the love to my neighbour, my brother or sister, which that piety prompts and inspires. Now here, in this very frame and feeling - here is the danger. The very spirituality, the religious character, of my affection, may almost unconsciously beguile me. The fact that it may combine and coalesce with a sentiment or passion of another sort, and the facility with which it may do so, escapes my notice. My love becomes a mixed kind or character, made up of human fascination with divine benevolence. Which is to prevail ?

This question that I now put is no ideal supposition. Instances too many of the actual realisation of an unhappy answer to the question stand recorded in the saddest pages of church history. And the admonition is not inapplicable or unseasonable now. Nay, it may be applied in more ways than one. I may be in danger of so indulging and manifesting my Godlike and Christlike love to a dear friend as to let it run, more or less, into the channel of a merely natural or carnal inclination. That, of course, is a danger to be guarded against; perhaps the danger to be first and chiefly guarded against. But what if I feel that I must restrain the outflowing of my spiritual love to any one, lest it should become more or less carnal? Is that for me a right or a safe state? Does it not call for instant and serious thought? Am I right or safe if I cannot regard the aged women as mothers, and the younger women as sisters, and so have all freedom, unabashed and unembarrassed, to walk in love towards them "as Christ also hath loved us"? (ver. 2). The enumeration or list of the things here forbidden I do not particularly examine; my object being rather to bring out the peremptoriness of the prohibition, and the grounds of it. A word or two on that other point may suffice. It is lust that the apostle plainly, and with no mincing of the matter, denounces; lust, and whatever tends in the direction of lust. And the lust, as it would seem, may be of two sorts; lust of beauty and lust of gold. For so, I think, we must interpret the word "covetousness;" although some would have it, both here and in chap. iv. 19, to mean excess of lasciviousness. It may mean that; but only, as I think, indirectly. Strictly speaking, it means greed; the grasping and griping greed of a thorough self-seeker. But that is not inconsistent with lewdness; nor is the warning against it at all irrelevant to a warning against fornication and all uncleanness. Do we not see instances, in ordinary life and among worldly men, of the two tendencies being by no means incompatible? Is it not so common a remark as to have become almost proverbial that a young rake often develops into an old miser? A youth of luxurious and licentious waste ending in an old age of tenacious and suspicious avarice? Nay, they may exist and work together; as indeed they often do. Tor perhaps, at bottom, they might be shown to be really one. It is in both cases alike concupiscence; inordinate desire ; excessive longing for what is good in itself, and if rightly sought, may be turned to good account.

And therein sometimes may lie the snare. Both objects may be looked at and approached from a religious standpoint; from a spiritual point of view; and in order moreover to a religious and spiritual end. To speak plainly, I may have to deal with an amiable brother or sister about spiritual matters, either personal, or pertaining to the public interests of Christ's cause. Or, I may have to decide upon some gainful project or proposal that promises to increase my means of usefulness in that behalf. The two temptations in the two cases are in some sort analogous. In both cases alike I am tempted to slide, through what at first may be a religious and spiritual aim or motive, into one that ultimately proves itself to be worldly and carnal. The lust of beauty and the lust of gold are not therefore so far asunder from one another, or so at variance with one another, as is sometimes thought. Nay, in men professing godliness, the latter may be more apt to swallow up the former, than in men of the world. So at least the outward aspect or appearance may be. For the , difficulty of fully and freely gratifying the one desire may throw the mind all the more in upon the cherishing and the indulging of the other.

But, be that as it may, you are here warned emphatically against both kinds of lust, or inordinate desire; against the first, apparently, as coming into nearest and most seductive contact with the love in which you are exhorted to walk ; against the second, as what is the natural sequel of the first, and is even perhaps worse, in some respects, than the first; for it is that which is elsewhere more than once stigmatised as idolatry. It is the breach of the tenth commandment; the great final commandment which stands at the close of the entire series, and stamps upon them all the character of inmost spirituality, and therefore also of utmost universality; "Thou shalt not covet." All desire of what is not your own, be it person or thing, is forbidden in that crowning precept. And therefore covetousness is idolatry. As such, it is here put as the culminating point of the mere creature-love, which is the opposite of the love that is Godlike and Christlike; the forgiving love of the Father, the self-sacrificing love of the Son. The warning against all this is very strong. The thing condemned is not merely not to be done, but not even so much as once to be named among you. It is not to be made matter of talk. It may be made that in more ways than one; in the way of filthiness or obscenity, positive delight in conversation about impurity and greed ; or in the way of foolish talking, reckless, inconsiderate indulgence of that taste and tendency in yourselves, and reckless, inconsiderate toleration of it in others ; or in the way of jesting, and if not making a mock at the sin, treating it lightly, and turning it into a source of ridicule and mirth. Will any of you who are accustomed to mix with the world, in business or in recreation, venture to say that these are not dangers against which you need to be ever on your guard? Will any one of you say that the current tone and temper of the society in which you mix, and the company which you keep, does not expose you, more or less, to hazard? Some of the apostle's words may seem too strong to awaken in you serious alarm. You are as safe from the risk of foul language as you are from the risk of foul conduct. But beware. Let these two of the apostle's words, each summing up a series, be laid to heart, "covetousness;" lust of any sort, be it of beauty or of gold ; and "jesting." Either of these two things - and neither is very remote - is surely a sore evil. And when they meet, in your own heart, or in your converse with your fellows, there is real risk and deadly danger.

II. The considerations by which this warning is enforced are eminently worthy of notice. They are three in number. And they are all of them truly filial, and not servile. They appeal to you as children, guided by your Father with his eye; not as to those who might need, like the horse or the mule, to be kept in with bit and bridle.

1. You are to consider what becometh saints. You are to recognise yourselves as saints; as the Lord's holy ones; consecrated to be his by the sprinkling of the Son's atoning blood and the anointing and indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That is your standing; and it is to your standing that the term "saints" refers. It is a standing which you are to realise as yours; and you are to realise it thoroughly as yours; with a clear and full sense of what it implies, not only ii respect of privilege, but even still more in respect of obligation.

"As becometh saints." Ponder these words; pray over them. In the light of them, pondered and prayed over, consider four ways. Very specially consider your manner of intercourse with one another as brethren in the Lord, and with our fellow men in the world; your ways of thinking and feeling; your ways of speaking and acting. "As becometh saints." It is a searching text. But it is to no ignoble motive that it appeals. It is not worldly or selfish, but spiritual and loving. It is not legal at all; but out and out evangelical. "As becometh saints." Ah me, would that I could rise always to this holy height, that I might question every loose thought that seeks entrance into my mind, and the loose and light talk with which I am but too faniliar, "Is it as becometh saints ?"

2 You are to consult conveniency. You are to think not nerely of your relation to God, and your standing in his sight as saints, but of your position in the church and in the world, and the duty which that position entails. To ask whai is worthy of yourselves as saints is noble, if you righly apprehend what it is to be saints. To ask what is convenient, suitable, expedient, in the view of the circumstances in which you are placed, including all your personal and local surroundings, and all your means of influence, is also noble. You are called, as saints, to respect yourselves; to vindicate your character as saints ; to see to it that all you think and say and do is such as becometh saints. But you are called also to take a higher and larger view. You have to face the question of convenience; not, of course, of convenience in the mere selfish view of your own accommodation, but of convenience in the Lord's view ; in the view of the interests which the Lord has at heart, and the end which the Lord seeks. Do you always think of that sort and standard of convenience when you go into worldly company, or even when you mix with Christian friends? Do y»u ask what Christ the Lord would hold to be convenient, at the present time, in the present circumstances, among the people now around you? If you did so, would your converse always be what it is ?

3. You are to give thanks. You have that resource always to fall back upon, in your own hearts and in your converse with others. They who have it not may need other sorts of excitement; other means of occupation or amusement, when they are alone, or when they mingle in the social circle: and they may be too ready to welcome or to suffer, in tlought and in talk, what is impure and carnal, or what is sordid and mean; licentious or covetous conversation; or the foolish jesting that is too nearly akin to that. But you have something better to occupy your hearts and open your lips when you are most in the mood to make merry and be glad; or when you want some source of merriment and gladness to win you out of a mood of another sort, despondency or gloom.

The giving of thanks is a way of recreating yourselves and others that should be always available, and that should surely enable you to dispense with other and more doubtful metbds; for thanksgiving is always and everywhere suitable and seasonable. There may be companies and occasions when and where a saint of God - a meek and lowly child - could not with any propriety, or any prospect of doing good, venture upon Christian rebuke or expostulation, or even upon Christian admonition, or direct and formal Christian testimony. But in all companies and on all occasions he can exhibit and express, significantly and unequivocally, Christian thankfulness. He can make it plain that he is a happy man; and why he is a happy man. He need not preach, or exhort, or pray, or bless. He need not obtrusively thrust in sacred topics. He need scarcely even open his lips ; and if he does, he need not refuse to join in ordinary innocent talk. But his countenance may beam with thankfulness; and his own conscious thankfulness may insensibly shed its radiant influence over all the circle of which he may become the centre. And without effort or parade, there may come to be, one scarcely can tell how, a suspension of idle and frivolous and vain and worldly talk, and a sliding into converse more profitable and more becoming.

Nor is it in society alone, but in the closet and the study as well, that this giving of thanks is important as a safeguard against the invasion of uncleanness and of covetousness - of sensual and worldly lust. For it is not as a negative but as a positive quality that holiness is to be cultivated and preserved. The absence of evil from the heart can be secured only by the presence of good. And the only good in my heart that can keep out evil is giving of thanks. Other good I have not, and cannot have, and would not have if I could. The good that I would I do not; the evil that I would not that I do. In me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. But in my spirit, in my heart and soul, there may be giving of thanks. And there must be that - that always - that more and more, if I am letting Christ into my spirit, my heart and soul; Christ as the free gift of the Father to me the chief of sinners; Christ as loving me and giving himself for me; Christ in all his fulness of grace and truth; Christ as living in me; Christ in me the hope of glory.

Let there be giving of thanks for that always and everywhere in my bosom. Then may I bid away from me, in my secret chamber, all that would defile or debase my inner man. And then also, going forth from my secret chamber, refreshed and gladdened by ever new communications of divine love, and bent on making all my fellow-Christians and fellow-men partakers of my joy, I move among them and mingle with them, not with grim, austere, and gloomy visage, far less with any inclination to seek relief from what might make my face sad in sinful or foolish utterances, but with a free and cheerful simplicity ; simply letting myself out instead of keeping myself in; and so appealing to all with whom I come in contact, to taste and see that God is good. This is what becometh saints; this is what is always and everywhere convenient; such giving of thanks as this.
Go To Chapter Fifteen

Home | Biography | Literature | Letters | Links | Photo-Wallet