NOTES for Eph 4:17-32

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.

Do we say the truth one of another? No, we understand that lying is not good, we reject lie - in theory. But practically we lie all the time. May be, we don’t speak scurrility lies, but to call as well what we say truth, the tongue tied.

Why is it so? Probably, we are just afraid. We are afraid of the reality, whom we really are, we are afraid if we don’t lie, everybody will see us, as naked, will receive a certain knowledge of us, and knowledge is strength, power. Lying is our self-defence. We use it, as clothes: to hide the vulnerable, indecent places, to embellish ourselves. "It is pretty not to lie - not to tell history".

We are also afraid of hearing the truth on ourselves. "We all prefer an elevating falsehood to dozens of unpleasant truths". It is better a man makes a mistake on our account, but speaks well of us.

Having become used to judge everything in ourselves, we are still afraid of telling to others the truth about them. We call it "lying to save", we say: "there are truths that are better not to say ".

So what results from all this? Lie and fear, fear and lie. And all this separates, and separates us one from another. The apostle Paul speaks to us so that we reject all these false motives: there can’t be false relations between the organs of the same body, a member can’t hand to another something unreal - all the body will ruin. It is difficult to say the truth? But maybe we shall nevertheless try?

As a rule, the beginning of this verse draws our attention. How can one be angry – and not sin, if the Lord Himself likened anger to the violation of the sixth command of Moses "Thou shall not kill"? And in the same chapter of the epistle to Ephesians, Paul named anger among the defects, which must be put away from us. But is the Holy Scripture not speaking so often about the anger of God, and Jesus also is not foreign to anger! (See Mk 3:5).

The possible resolution of the problem can be James 1:20, where the human anger is set against God's truth. Thus there are two various angers: sinful human anger and the righteous Divine anger. Sin is the object of the righteous anger, the object of the sinful anger - the sinner. So, we can understand the first half of the verse like this: either you sin with anger, either be angry not of a sinful anger (which is not on the sinner, but on sin).

But the second half of the verse summarizes in both cases - "let not the sun go down upon your wrath". You should not come to standstill "in anger, it is necessary to bring it {anger} before God’s Face so that He annihilates it as our sin or accepts it in His righteous anger, and fills us with His mercy.

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.

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.

In the Letter to the Ephesians, from which we read a passage today, the apostle Paul formulates a view of human life that is very important for us: life as purposeful movement, a path directed toward God. He says that God builds up all the diversity of the Church's life so that we may all “grow to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” The apostle says that we are called to grow “into Him.” And one can move along the path of growth only through true love. This view makes every human life meaningful, which is important in itself. Even more consoling, however, is that following such a path frees us from dependence on the measures by which we assess earthly success: wealth, power, authority, and strength. According to the apostle, the one who acts in love puts on the dignity of Christ. Together with the call to growth, the apostle thus also proposes a new scale of values, a true gradation of good and evil whose starting point is God Himself.