Speaking about relations among Christians, the apostle advises excluding, driving out of them all manifestations of anger and irritation...
Speaking about relations among Christians, the apostle advises excluding, driving out of them all manifestations of anger and irritation, both outward and inward. At first glance this task may seem completely impossible. One can, of course, learn to restrain oneself when it comes to words, although even such restraint usually comes with difficulty.
But what is to be done with the inner world, with emotions that seem completely impossible to control? And will it be good to smile at one's neighbor if the smile is feigned? Clearly not: there is perhaps no worse profanation of authentic relations and real spiritual life than the mask of piety, kindness, and love of neighbor put on for the occasion of a church visit. As we can see, Paul calls his readers not to an outward change but to a real change in their spiritual life. But how is this possible? The apostle connects such changes with the person of the Savior Himself.
He says: forgive one another as God forgave you in Christ. And God's forgiveness of a person is very far both from indulgence and from the desire to punish the sinner for the sin he has committed. God reproaches a person in nothing. He accepts us as we are in order to make us what He wants to see us become. Spiritual life is first of all God's unceasing work with us and our work on ourselves with His direct participation. But if we are Christians, this work also presupposes the direct participation of Jesus Christ, and a participation recognized not only by Him, which is self-evident, but also by us. Of course, He often works also with those who do not even suspect His presence in their life, but such spiritual life still cannot be called Christian in the proper sense of the word.
Meanwhile the Savior bore witness to Himself as the living Torah, and the first two, and perhaps three, generations of Christians saw in Him the only example in all human history of the living Torah. The only one because one can become the living Torah only by being completely freed from sin, and no one had managed this before Christ. The Christian path was understood by Paul and by other Christians of the first generation as the path after Christ, on which the Christian himself becomes the living Torah, becoming like his Teacher, who frees the one following Him from the power of the sin that prevents him from reaching the set goal.
On this path, work with one's own intentions becomes a most important part of spiritual life. Precisely with intentions as such, not with their outward manifestations in the form of sharp words and corresponding emotions. This is the work, with the direct participation of Christ Himself, that the apostle has in mind when he speaks of the need to exclude irritation and anger from the life of Christians with all their manifestations. The task is not easy, but with God's help and in Christ it is fully attainable.
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4:31 Let all bitterness - The height of settled anger, opposite to kindness, ver. Eph 4:32.And wrath - Lasting displeasure toward the ignorant, and them that are out of the way, opposite to tenderheartedness. And anger - The very first risings of disgust at those that injure you, opposite to forgiving one another. And clamour - Or bawling. "I am not angry," says one; "but it is my way to speak so." Then unlearn that way: it is the way to hell. And evil speaking - Be it in ever so mild and soft a tone, or with ever such professions of kindness.Here is a beautiful retrogradation, beginning with the highest, and descending to the lowest, degree of the want of love.
4:32 As God, showing himself kind and tenderhearted in the highest degree, hath forgiven you.