NOTES for Eph 4:30

Speaking of sin, Paul calls the addressees of his letter not to grieve, as the Greek text says, God's breath ("the Holy Spirit of God"), whose seal they received on the day of their baptism, which the apostle calls the "day of redemption." These words are often understood allegorically, meaning that every sin committed by a Christian grieves God approximately as it would grieve a person striving to conform to certain moral and religious norms. It is then assumed that God too expects such conformity from a person and, not receiving it, becomes upset.

But this is still far too human an image, created by a human measure and a human assessment of what is happening. Of course human sins truly do not rejoice God. But the issue here is not morality as such. God does not expect perfection from fallen man; He knows better than anyone with whom He has to deal. Something else is important. God sent His Son into the world so that He would bring the Kingdom into the world and make it accessible to every seeker. The Kingdom is permeated with God's breath, in which, through Christ, everyone who trusts Him can share.

Such a person who trusts can truly live one life with Christ, the life of His Kingdom. But there can be no place for sin in this life. The breath of the Kingdom not only surrounds the person who shares in its life. It also enters within the person, into the depths of his heart. The Christian's heart becomes the door through which the breath of the Kingdom enters the world, transforming it. The world and the person are transformed by the same breath of God that permeates the Kingdom as well. And sin interferes with this process, slowing it down.

Sin nesting in the heart interferes with God's breath, the breath of the Kingdom, abiding in a person. It also interferes with the sanctification of the world. Figuratively speaking, the ability of a human heart poisoned by sin to let God's breath pass through it decreases just as the ability of a water pipe to let a stream of clean water pass through decreases if the pipe is clogged with debris.

God's breath, oppressed by grief, is a beautiful image describing this reality. Every sin diminishes the measure of the fullness of God's breath abiding in the Christian's heart. And this means it diminishes the measure of that heart's sanctifying effect on the world. Ultimately, it postpones the day of the Kingdom's full and final triumph and Christ's return in glory. And therefore the day of the sinner's own salvation as well.

Calling the Ephesian Christians to a normal, full spiritual life, Paul speaks of their need to be renewed by the "breath" ("spirit") of the mind so that they may become different, new people, capable of living a righteous life in accordance with God's plan for humanity and its purpose. This new life is what the apostle considers Christian life in the proper sense of the word (vv. 20-24). Such an appeal fully corresponds to the ideas about spiritual life generally accepted in Paul's day in the rabbinic environment. Their quintessence is expressed in the well-known command to love God "with all your heart, with all your being ("all your soul"), and with all your strength" (Deut 6:5). A person's spiritual life is determined by the choice of the heart, which in the language of the Bible denotes the center of the human person where choices are made and decisions are taken that determine a person's relationship with God and with people, and where the system of values that determines his whole life is formed. In Greek, already from ancient times, this center came to be called the "mind," and the Greek philosophers connected with the concept of "mind" what the biblical authors writing in Hebrew placed in the concept of the "heart." It was precisely the spiritual influence ("spirit") of this "mind-heart" that renewed a person, and first of all his inner world, what the Bible usually calls the "soul," by which here is meant not the personal principle familiar to us, but the inner life force.

In this sense Paul speaks of the "renewal of the inner man," which is no surprise: a person's spiritual renewal always begins from within, although in the normal case it is never limited to his inner world alone. And the apostle, speaking of the renewal of the "inner man," also believes that it must be followed by a change in the whole life of the one who has turned to God. It is no accident that he contrasts two ways of life: the former one, which many Ephesian Christians evidently lived before their conversion (vv. 17-19), and the new one to which Paul calls them (vv. 25-32). But if before Christ came into the world the matter was the choice or rejection of the path of righteousness, now the matter is the choice or rejection of the Kingdom and salvation. And the apostle once again calls the faithful to remain faithful to the end, having chosen the Kingdom.