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DIVISION II. § 1. CHAPTER IV. 17-24

Christianity a new life

New life in Christ

The characteristic words of St. Paul's gospel – grace, forgiveness, mercy, liberty, justification by faith not by works – may naturally, when taken by themselves and isolated from their context, lead to a false thought of God as morally 'easy going,' and to a corrupt laxity of conduct. Such a result has shown itself within the area of modern history in the antinomianism of some Protestant bodies. But long before the Reformation St. Paul's words were 'wrested by the ignorant and unstedfast to their own destruction[¹⁵⁶].' It was probably a misunderstanding of St. Paul's doctrine of justification by faith which called forth the protest of St. James' epistle. And indeed the traces of this tendency to pervert the gospel are apparent enough in St. Paul's own epistles. Divine grace, it was even argued, can better show its largeness if we afford it an opportunity by the abundance of our sin. 'Let us continue in sin that grace may abound.' To this monstrous suggestion St. Paul replies, in his epistle to the Romans[¹⁵⁷], that it rests on a complete misconception. Christian faith is an introduction into Christ. Believing we are baptized into Him. This means that we are to live as He lived towards the world of sin and towards God. It means that we surrender ourselves in a spirit of glad obedience to be moulded after His pattern. If our believing does not lead to this new living, beyond all question it is a spurious thing, and none of the Christian privileges attach to it. With a similar purpose St. Paul writes here to the Asiatics – newly-made Christians, who lived in the midst of an appallingly corrupt society, and whose inherited traditions of conduct were altogether lacking in self-restraint – to warn them against possible abuses of their Christian privileges and Christian liberty.

To be a Christian is to be committed to a new life different utterly from the old life.

What was the old life? In writing to the Romans St. Paul describes the life of the contemporary heathen world as having its origin in a refusal of the will to acknowledge God. 'They glorified Him not as God.' 'They refused to have God in their knowledge.' Hence a darkening of the understanding. 'They became vain in their reasonings; their senseless hearts were darkened; professing themselves to be wise they became fools.' This explains the origin and possibility of so foolish a worship as that of men and beasts. Further, with the obscuring of the intelligence there was a perversion and emancipation of the passions, resulting in all forms of lawlessness and unnatural vice. A similar description of the 'old life' St. Paul gives here. The root of evil here also appears to be in the 'heart' (or will) – 'the hardening of the heart'; hence arises 'vanity of the mind,' an aimlessness or loss of all true and fixed point of view, a 'darkening of the understanding,' an inherent 'ignorance'; and accompanying this loss of real intelligence has been a loss of what is the true goal of human life, fellowship in 'the life of God.' Instead of that a life of uncleanness has prevailed, made into a regular business[¹⁵⁸], and pursued with 'greediness,' i.e. an entire disregard for others' rights – such a life as is only possible where all true human feeling and good taste has been quenched. Men have become 'past feeling.'

As regards the relation of this black picture to the actual facts, enough has perhaps been said above. At least St. Paul's picture is given as a direct challenge to the experience of those to whom he writes; and it is not blacker, at any rate, than the picture given by a philosophic contemporary at Ephesus, who calls himself Heracleitus. And on the black background of this 'former manner of life,' this 'old man' or old manhood – a life ruled by lusts which are not only morally evil but deceive and mock those who yield to them, leading, in fact, to nothing but corruption and death, a 'waxing corrupt after the lusts of deceit' – St. Paul sketches in the new life in Christ. To become a believer is to submit one's intelligence to learn a new lesson, to study Christ; it is to yield one's self to a 'form of teaching[¹⁵⁹]' in order to have one's life refashioned in marked contrast to old and abandoned ways of life; it is to imbibe a new principle in the heart of one's rational being, 'to be renewed in the spirit of one's mind'; it is to put on deliberately, as a man puts on clothing, a new manhood, Christ's manhood, which is 'according to God[¹⁶⁰],' that is, is based on His own life, and is His 'new creation' in righteousness and holiness. And this righteousness and holiness can never deceive us by false promises, because they are rooted in 'truth' or reality.

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

There is one phrase in this passage which may need some further comment – 'The life of God.' Into God's own eternal life, as He lives it in Himself, we are given but glimpses. But God is also living in the world as its inherent life, and each form of creation participates in its measure, even if unconsciously, in the life of God. Consciously and intelligently man was intended to participate in it, but he 'alienated' himself from it by sin; and, while he was physically sustained in life by God, morally and mentally he was an exile. But Christ embodies the divine life anew in human form, and by His Spirit imparts it as a new life to men. Once more in Christ men live both 'in God' and 'according to God.'

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

DIVISION II. § 2. CHAPTER IV. 25-32

The new life a corporate life

Corporate duties

The first characteristic of the new life dwelt upon is its corporate character, as a life lived by those who are 'members one of another,' and have therefore a common aim. In a body of people working with a common aim there may be a healthy rivalry and competition in doing good work, a manifold spirit of initiation and inventiveness, and there may be rewards of labour, proportioned not merely to needs but to these personal excellences. But what there cannot be is a competition which runs to the point of mutual destructiveness, or such accumulation of the fruits of skill and labour in a few hands as maims or starves the life of the majority. The common interest prevents this. 'The members must have the same care one of another,' so that 'when one member suffers all the members suffer with it[¹⁶¹].' The life is the life of a body, and the general well-being is therefore the common interest of all the members, for the weakening or decay of one is the weakening and decay of a more or less valuable part of a connected life. This is the general principle on which the Church is based. This is the moral meaning of churchmanship. 'Ye are members one of another.'

Various specific obligations follow from this general principle.

(a) Truthfulness and openness; for falsehood and concealment belong to a life of separated and conflicting interests. The prophetic ideal for the restored Israel is to be realized among Christians. 'Speak ye every man truth with his neighbour: execute the judgement of truth and peace in your gates: and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour: and love no false oath[¹⁶²].'

(b) Self-restraint in temper. We must not injure one another in life and limb, or wound one another in feelings. Therefore we must watch the first beginnings of anger, as the Psalmist[¹⁶³] warns us, lest they lead to sin and give the devil, i.e. the slanderer of his brethren, the inspirer of all mutual recriminations, room and scope to work in.

(c) Labour for the purpose of mutual beneficence. Under the old covenant God had contented Himself with forbidding stealing. Under the new covenant the prohibition of what is wrong passes into the injunction of what is right. Labour of whatever kind, labour directed to produce something good, is required of all. 'If any man will not work, neither let him eat[¹⁶⁴].' The idle man in fact violates the fundamental conditions of the Christian covenant as truly as if he were denying the rudiments of the Christian faith. Now the object of labouring is to acquire 'property,' which is in one sense 'private,' and in another sense is not. The labourer may have, under his own free administration, the fruits of his labour, but he is to administer his property with the motive, not only of supporting himself, but of helping his weaker and more needy brethren.

(d) Profitable speech. Here again the Christian is not to be content with avoiding noxious conversation. His talk is to be, not indeed 'edifying' in the narrowest sense, but such as 'builds up what is lacking' in life, or supplies a need, whether by counselling, or informing, or refreshing, or cheering; so that it may 'give grace[¹⁶⁵],' that is, afford pleasure and, in the widest sense, bring a blessing to the hearers.

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

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

Wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak ye truth each one with his neighbour: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have whereof to give to him that hath need. Let no corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth, but such as is good for edifying as the need may be, that it may give grace to them that hear. And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom ye were sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing, be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you.

Here, then, St. Paul sketches catholicity in practice. The very idea of the Church is that of a fellowship of naturally unlike individuals, harmonized into unity by the new 'truth and grace' of God, which has been made theirs in their regenerate life. It is this endowment of the regenerate life that is to enable them to transcend, and overstep, and defeat natural incompatibilities of temper, and to be one body in Christ. The practical meaning of catholicity is brotherhood. It is love, as St. Augustine says, grown as wide as the world[¹⁶⁶].

Why has the world lost this sense of the moral meaning of catholic churchmanship? Why has 'ecclesiastical' come to mean something quite different to 'brotherly'? Or it is a more profitable question to ask, How shall we make it mean the same thing again? There are many who would give up the very effort after recovering the church principle, the obligation of the 'one body.' But this, as has been said, is to abandon the ultimate catholic principle of Christianity. For the very purpose of the one church for all the men of faith in Jesus, is that the necessity for belonging to one body – a necessity grounded on divine appointment – shall force together into a unity men of all sorts and different kinds; and the forces of the new life which they share in common are to overcome their natural repugnance and antipathies, and to make the forbearance and love and mutual helpfulness which corporate life requires, if not easy, at least possible for them.

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

But it is folly to assert the theological truth of churchmanship, and neglect its moral meaning. Quite recently the bishops of the Lambeth Conference have striven to impress anew the ethics of churchmanship upon the conscience of the faithful[¹⁶⁷]. The principle of brotherhood must act as a constant counterpoise to the instinct of competition. The principle of labour shows that the idle and selfish are 'out of place' in a Christian community. The principle of justice forces us to recognize that the true interest of each member of the body politic must be consulted. The principle of public responsibility reminds us that each one is his brother's keeper. Once more the Church has been aroused to its prophetic task of 'binding' and 'loosing' the consciences of men in regard specially to those matters which concern the corporate life and the relations of classes to one another. And we pray God that the work of our bishops may not be in vain. What we want is not more Christians, but, much rather, better Christians – that is to say, Christians who have more perception of what the moral effort required for membership in the catholic brotherhood really is.

No doubt the needed social reformation is of vast difficulty. For instance, one who contemplates our commercial relations in the world may indeed be tempted to despair of the possibility of recovering the practical application to 'business' of the law of truthfulness; and many a one who is practically engaged in commerce, in higher or lower station, finds that to act upon the law may involve something like martyrdom. But the very meaning of divine faith is that we do, in spite of all discouragements, hold that to be practicable which is the will of God; and it is nothing new in the history of Christianity if at a crisis we need 'the blood of martyrs' – or something morally equivalent to their blood – for 'a seed,' the seed of a fresh growth of Christian corporate life. No fresh start worth making is possible without personal sacrifices; and to recover anything resembling St. Paul's ethical standard for Christian society we need indeed a fresh start. But the few Tractarians of sixty years ago by industry, patience and prayer effected a kind of revolution in the Church as a whole; and reformers of Christian social relations may with the same weapons – and with no other – do the like.

DIVISION II. § 3. CHAPTER V. 1-14

The Christian life an imitation of God and

a life in the light

The imitation of God

St. Paul has just suggested the thought of imitating God by ready forgiveness. And in fact here – in the imitation of God – is one of the greatest of the new ideas and motives which Christianity supplies. God has manifested Himself in Christ under human conditions. He has translated the unimaginable Godhead into terms of our own well-known human nature. For Christ is very man, yet He is the Son of God, truly God, and His character is God's character. For the Christian henceforth in a quite new sense God is imitable: He can become a pattern for actual human life. As children partly consciously and partly unconsciously imitate their parents, so we Christians as 'beloved children' are to 'become imitators of God.'

And it is quite plain what the character of God as manifested in Christ is. It is love; and to imitate God is therefore to 'walk in love,' that is, to conduct one's life with love as its conscious motive and atmosphere. Moreover, the love of Christ is a love which shows itself in self-sacrifice. 'He offered himself as an offering and sacrifice to God on our behalf; and God, who had of old made it plain by His prophets that He could find no satisfaction in animal victims, accepted 'as a sweet savour' this free-will offering of self-sacrificing love. In the self-sacrifice of Christ, therefore, we have the clear disclosure both of what God is and of what God will accept from man.

But this ideal of life as lying in love and in the deliberate self-sacrifice of one for another is the plain negation of some maxims for life generally accepted in heathen society. It is the plain negation of sensual self-indulgence at the expense of others, or at the expense of our spiritual nature, of 'fornication and uncleanness of all kinds,' of filthy conduct, of the sort of jesting or wit which ignores all moral restraints. It is the plain negation again of selfish greed or the unlimited desire to get – 'covetousness.' These things are out of the question for a body of saints, that is, men dedicated to a holy God.

Life in the light

The tone and language which befits such a dedicated life is the tone and language of thanksgiving. But clearly Asiatic Christians were only too ready to forget the essential incompatibility of their new profession with the old sinful habits around them. So St. Paul emphasizes 'This ye know for certain that fornication or unclean living on the one hand, or the turning of gain into a god on the other, surely excludes a man from the kingdom of Christ and God[¹⁶⁸].' And he reiterates 'let no man deceive you with empty words.' Such vices, being in plain contradiction to the divine will, make men subjects of the divine wrath, and for you this should be startlingly plain. You have been brought out of the realm of darkness of which once you formed a part, into the realm of light, of which you now form a part, the realm whose light is Christ. There is no fellowship between the light and the darkness[¹⁶⁹]. To live in the light means to bring forth fruit of goodness and righteousness and truth, the fruit of a character like Christ's. For you have in Christ a definite standard by which you can test what is well pleasing to the Lord. It is your business, therefore, to keep yourselves altogether separate from the works of darkness which bear no fruit. Not only so, but it is your business to 'reprove' or convict the dark world of sin; not, of course, by making the works of darkness the subjects of your curiosity and conversation – that indeed must not be – but simply by the contrast which your own lives present. In the light of your lives the secret shame of the heathen life will be unmasked. And in being unmasked even the works of darkness will themselves become part of the light. To make such ways of living attractive they must be cloaked up in a deceitful glamour. Once stripped bare and shown in their true character they teach their true lesson. Thus, the one duty of a man is to awake from the old sleep of death; to separate himself from the morally dead world and stand clear in the light of Christ. And that is what the early Christian hymn, which St. Paul cites, was continually impressing upon the Christian conscience. We may attempt to reproduce it in something like its original rhythm thus: —

 
'Be awakened, thou that sleepest;
Rise alive from out the dead world;
Christ, the Light, shall shine upon thee.'
 

Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odour of a sweet smell. But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as becometh saints; nor filthiness, nor foolish talking, or jesting, which are not befitting: but rather giving of thanks. For this ye know of a surety, that no fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, which is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no man deceive you with empty words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience. Be not ye therefore partakers with them; for ye were once darkness, but are now light in the Lord: walk as children of light (for the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth), proving what is well-pleasing unto the Lord; and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather even reprove them; for the things which are done by them in secret it is a shame even to speak of. But all things when they are reproved are made manifest by the light: for everything that is made manifest is light. Wherefore he saith, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee.

Three points may be noticed in this characteristic exhortation: —

1. The strife of light and darkness. The victory of the rising sun and its surrender at evening to the darkness; the obscuring of the light through eclipse or mist and its recovery – these universal appearances present themselves naturally to human consciences everywhere as being experiences analogous to the moral strife within between good and evil. Light is thus the universal symbol of good, and darkness of evil. The symbolism passes out of early native myths into the spiritual phraseology of many religions; but especially into those of the Persians and the Jews. 'In thy light shall we see light' is the cry of the devout heart towards God. And the whole of Christian language is possessed by the symbolism. Christ is 'the light of the world': His disciples are 'the children of light,' they are to be clothed in 'the armour of light,' bathed in 'the light of the glorious Gospel': they are the children of the God who 'dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto': who 'is light and in whom is no darkness at all.'

St. Paul, like St. John, specially loves the metaphor of light. And it is somewhat startling to notice how different is his conception of enlightenment from that common in modern times, or indeed, from that held in the schools of philosophy of his own day or by the Gnostics just after him. This latter class of men, who can be taken as typical of many others at very different epochs, meant by 'the enlightened' a select few who had a special capacity for intellectual abstraction and contemplation, and who by such qualities of the intellect were believed to attain to a knowledge of God which was beyond the reach of the ordinary men of faith. But St. Paul, following his Master, is quite certain that the root of true enlightenment lies in the will and heart. The love of the light is first of all simply the pure desire for goodness; and anything that is not this first of all is a counterfeit and a sham. And the true enlightenment is thus not the privilege of a few, but is open to all who will come to Christ. 'Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God's good pleasure, through the foolishness of the preaching, to save them that believe.' 'If any man thinketh that he is wise among you in this world, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God[¹⁷⁰].' This language sounds violent; but I doubt if many thinking men could now be found to doubt that the way opened by the 'foolishness of the gospel preaching' was a way of light for the world compared to which the way of the contemporary philosophers was darkness and delusion. The arrogant wisdom of the contemporary 'Heracleitus' would have provided no real light at all for the Ephesians whom he denounced. A fresh start was wanted for man, and the fresh start was primarily in the life of the conscience and heart. On the other hand neither St. Paul, nor any of the New Testament writers, can be accused of the sort of obscurantism to which the later Church has often fallen a victim. One cannot even conceive St. Paul denouncing free inquiry, or cloaking up from free investigation the title-deeds of Christianity. His love of the light – even with all the dangers that the light has – like his love of freedom, is frank and real.

If we come down to our own time, there is no doubt a great deal of contemporary 'enlightenment' that St. Paul would have pronounced spurious. He would never surely have disparaged intellectual inquiry or free scientific research: but he would have continually emphasized that no one was really enlightened whose will and heart was not right with God. To have a scientific knowledge of facts is by comparison superficial; and worse than superficial is the sharpness and worldly cleverness which continually boasts of being 'wide awake' and 'up to date.' It is possible to be awake and enlightened in the speculative and practical intelligence: to be awake and enlightened in the region of the senses: and yet to be asleep and in the dark in the region of the will and conscience towards God. And there lies the true heart of manhood. It is possible even to be enlightened about evil and in the dark as regards goodness. But St. Paul hates curiosity about the ways and methods of sin. 'I would,' he says, 'have you wise unto that which is good, and simple unto that which is evil[¹⁷¹].' Take heed that the light that is in thee be not darkness. This curiosity about sin is a delusion which has sometimes a strange hold on some who would serve God. But they must recognize that the only Christian method of 'convicting the world of sin' is by 'convicting it of righteousness.' Innocence has a power which sometimes is strangely underrated.

We may pause for a moment longer to dwell on the beauty of St. Paul's ideal of Christianity as a life in the light. It has everything to gain and nothing to lose by disclosure. It has no need to cloak itself. It can be frank with itself and the world. And, on the other hand, sin is a great fraud and delusion as well as a great disobedience. It dwells in a region of lies and excuses and concealments; it hides from itself and from the world its true character and true issues. For, in fact, it is not only in itself foul and rebellious, but it is in its issues fruitless. It leads to nothing: it produces nothing: it tends only to decay or corruption of mind and body, while goodness is only another term for life and fruitfulness. Life, and the production of life, is the good, and it belongs to the light; on the contrary, what hinders or destroys life goes against God and belongs to the darkness. This is a judgement which mis-called disciples of Malthus in our day would do well to remember. It is not from too much life that the world is suffering, but from corrupt and perverted life. What we want to secure is not a limit to the population, but the bringing up of children in health and simple living, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

2. St. Paul, in some passages of his epistles, uses very strongly 'universalist' phrases. He has spoken to the Ephesians of bringing all things in heaven and earth again into a divine unity in Christ. And to the Corinthians he spoke of a time when God should be 'all things in all.' It is, therefore, all the more noticeable that when he comes to speak of the destiny of evil men he does not offer them any hope if they persist in their evil, but warns them that moral evil utterly and wholly excludes from the kingdom of God: and he appears to be not at all anxious to reconcile this warning as to the eternal consequences of wilful evil with what he has said in other connexions as to the final inclusion of all things in a great unity. His example would teach us to aim at being true to the whole truth rather than at attaining a premature completeness or consistency of knowledge about a world in regard to which we only 'know in part.' 'Yea, the more part of God's works are hid[¹⁷²].'

3. We cannot fail to notice how constantly St. Paul associates lawless lust with lawless grasping at money or the goods of other men – greediness or avarice. This has led some to suppose that the Greek word for greediness is really intended to mean lust in its grasping character. But this is a mistake. The words are associated partly, no doubt, because lust so often involves an 'overreaching and wronging our brothers[¹⁷³]' of their just rights; but much more because the lawless grasping after gain and the lawless grasping after pleasure are the two great perversions of the human soul. Pleasure and mammon are the two typical idols.