The Apostle stands like a jailer at the prison door, with the fatal roll
in his hand, and reads out the names of the evil doers for whom the
tumbril waits to carry them to the guillotine. It is an ugly list but we
need plain speaking that there may be no mistake as to the identity of
the culprits. He enumerates evils which honeycombed society with
rottenness then, and are rampant now. The series recounts various forms
of evil love, and is so arranged as that it starts with the coarse,
gross act, and goes on to more subtle and inward forms. It goes up the
stream as it were, to the fountain head, passing inward from deed to
desire. First stands "fornication," which covers the whole ground of
immoral sexual relations, then "all uncleanness," which embraces every
manifestation in word or look or deed of the impure spirit, and so is at
once wider and subtler than the gross physical act. Then follow
"passion" and "evil desire"; the sources of the evil deeds. These again
are at once more inward and more general than the preceding. They
include not only the lusts and longings which give rise to the special
sins just denounced, but all forms of hungry appetite and desire after
"the things that are upon the earth." If we are to try to draw a
distinction between the two, probably "passion" is somewhat less wide
than "desire," and the former represents the evil emotion as an
affection which the mind suffers, while the latter represents it as a
longing which it actively puts forth. The "lusts of the flesh" are in
the one aspect kindled by outward temptations which come with terrible
force and carry men captive, acting almost irresistibly on the animal
nature. In the other aspect they are excited by the voluntary action of
the man himself. In the one the evil comes into the heart; in the other
the heart goes out to the evil.
Then follows covetousness. The juxtaposition of that vice with the
grosser forms of sensuality is profoundly significant. It is closely
allied with these. It has the same root, and is but another form of evil
desire going out to the "things which are on the earth." The ordinary
worldly nature flies for solace either to the pleasures of appetite or
to the passion of acquiring. And not only are they closely connected in
root, but covetousness often follows lust in the history of a life just
as it does in this catalogue. When the former evil spirit loses its
hold, the latter often takes its place. How many respectable middle-aged
gentlemen are now mainly devoted to making money, whose youth was foul
with sensual indulgence? When that palled, this came to titillate the
jaded desires with a new form of gratification. Covetousness is
"promoted _vice_, lust superannuated."
A reason for this warning against covetousness is appended, "inasmuch as
(for such is the force of the word rendered 'the which') it is
idolatry." If we say of anything, no matter what, "If I have only enough
of this, I shall be satisfied; it is my real aim, my sufficient good,"
that thing is a god to me, and my real worship is paid to it, whatever
may be my nominal religion. The lowest form of idolatry is the giving of
supreme trust to a material thing, and making that a god. There is no
lower form of fetish-worship than this, which is the real working
religion to-day of thousands of Englishmen who go masquerading as
Christians.
III. The exhortation is enforced by a solemn note of warning: "For which
things' sake the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience."
Some authorities omit the words "upon the children of disobedience,"
which are supposed to have crept in here from the parallel passage,
Eph. v. 6. But even the advocates of the omission allow that the clause
has "preponderating support," and the sentence is painfully incomplete
and abrupt without it. The R. V. has exercised a wise discretion in
retaining it.
In the previous chapter the Apostle included "warning" in his statement
of the various branches into which his Apostolic activity was divided.
His duty seemed to him to embrace the plain stern setting forth of that
terrible reality, the wrath of God. Here we have it urged as a reason
for shaking off these evil habits.
That thought of wrath as an element in the Divine nature has become very
unwelcome to this generation. The great revelation of God in Jesus
Christ has taught the world His love, as it never knew it before, and
knows it now by no other means. So profoundly has that truth that God is
love penetrated the consciousness of the European world, that many
people will not hear of the wrath of God because they think it
inconsistent with His love--and sometimes reject the very gospel to
which they owe their lofty conceptions of the Divine heart, because it
speaks solemn words about His anger and its issues.
But surely these two thoughts of God's love and God's wrath are not
inconsistent, for His wrath is His love, pained, wounded, thrown back
upon itself, rejected and compelled to assume the form of aversion and
to do its "strange work"--that which is not its natural operation--of
punishment. When we ascribe wrath to God, we must take care of lowering
the conception of it to the level of human wrath, which is shaken with
passion and often tinged with malice, whereas in that affection of the
Divine nature which corresponds to anger in us, there is neither passion
nor wish to harm. Nor does it exclude the co-existence of love, as Paul
witnesses in his Epistle to the Ephesians, in one verse declaring that
"we were the children of wrath," and in the next that God "loved us with
a great love even when we were dead in sins."
God would not be a holy God if it were all the same to Him whether a man
were good or bad. As a matter of fact, the modern revulsion against the
representation of the wrath of God is usually accompanied with weakened
conceptions of His holiness, and of His moral government of the world.
Instead of exalting, it degrades His love to free it from the admixture
of wrath, which is like alloy with gold, giving firmness to what were
else too soft for use. Such a God is not love, but impotent good nature.
If there be no wrath, there is no love; if there were no love, there
would be no wrath. It is more blessed and hopeful for sinful men to
believe in a God who is angry with the wicked, whom yet He loves, every
day, and who cannot look upon sin, than in one who does not love
righteousness enough to hate iniquity, and from whose too indulgent hand
the rod has dropped, to the spoiling of His children. "With the froward
Thou wilt show Thyself froward." The mists of our sins intercept the
gracious beams and turn the blessed sun into a ball of fire.
The wrath "_cometh_." That majestic present tense may express either the
continuous present incidence of the wrath as exemplified in the moral
government of the world, in which, notwithstanding anomalies, such sins
as have been enumerated drag after themselves their own punishment and
are "avenged in kind," or it may be the present tense expressive of
prophetic certainty, which is so sure of what shall come, that it speaks
of it as already on its road. It is eminently true of those sins of lust
and passion, that the men who do them reap as they have sown. How many
young men come up into our great cities, innocent and strong, with a
mother's kiss upon their lips, and a father's blessing hovering over
their heads! They fall among bad companions in college or warehouse, and
after a little while they disappear. Broken in health, tainted in body
and soul, they crawl home to break their mothers' hearts--and to die.
"His bones are full of the sins of his youth, which shall lie down with
him in the dust." Whether in such extreme forms or no, that wrath comes
even now, in plain and bitter consequences on men, and still more on
women who sin in such ways.
And the present retribution may well be taken as the herald and prophet
of a still more solemn manifestation of the Divine displeasure, which is
already as it were on the road, has set out from the throne of God, and
will certainly arrive here one day. These consequences of sin already
realised serve to show the set and drift of things, and to suggest what
will happen when retribution and the harvest of our present life of
sowing come. The first fiery drops that fell on Lot's path as he fled
from Sodom were not more surely precursors of an overwhelming rain, nor
bade him flee for his life more urgently, than the present punishment of
sin proclaims its sorer future punishment, and exhorts us all to come
out of the storm into the refuge, even Jesus, who is ever even now
"delivering us from the wrath which is" ever even now "coming" on the
sons of disobedience.
IV. A further motive enforcing the main precept of self-slaying is the
remembrance of a sinful past, which remembrance is at once penitent and
grateful. "In the which ye also walked aforetime, when ye lived in
them."
What is the difference between "walking" and "living" in these things?
The two phrases seem synonymous, and might often be used indifferently;
but here there is evidently a well marked diversity of meaning. The
former is an expression frequent in the Pauline Epistles as well as in
John's; as for instance, "to walk in love" or "in truth." That in which
men walk is conceived of as an atmosphere encompassing them; or, without
a metaphor, to walk in anything is to have the active life or conduct
guided or occupied by it. These Colossian Christians, then, had in the
past trodden that evil path, or their active life had been spent in that
poisonous atmosphere--which is equivalent to saying that they had
committed these sins. At what time? "When you lived in them." That does
not mean merely "when your natural life was passed among them." That
would be a trivial thing to say, and it would imply that their outward
life now was not so passed, which would not be true. In that sense they
still lived in the poisonous atmosphere. In such an age of unnameable
moral corruption no man could live out of the foul stench which filled
his nostrils whenever he walked abroad or opened his window. But the
Apostle has just said that they were now "living in Christ," and their
lives "hid with Him in God." So this phrase describes the condition
which is the opposite of their present, and may be paraphrased, "When
the roots of your life, tastes, affections, thoughts, desires were
immersed, as in some feculent bog, in these and kindred evils." And the
meaning of the whole is substantially--Your active life was occupied and
guided by these sins in that past time when your inward being was knit
to and nourished by them. Or to put it plainly, conduct followed and was
shaped by inclinations and desires.
This retrospect enforces the main exhortation. It is meant to awaken
penitence, and the thought that time enough has been wasted and incense
enough offered on these foul altars. It is also meant to kindle
thankfulness for the strong, loving hand which has drawn them from that
pit of filth, and by both emotions to stimulate the resolute casting
aside of that evil in which they once, like others, wallowed. Their joy
on the one hand and their contrition on the other should lead them to
discern the inconsistency of professing to be Christians and yet keeping
terms with these old sins. They could not have the roots of half their
lives above and of the other half down here. The gulf between the
present and past of a regenerate man is too wide and deep to be bridged
by flimsy compromises. "A man who is perverse in his two ways," that is,
in double ways, "shall fall in one of them," as the Book of Proverbs has
it. The attempt to combine incompatibles is sure to fail. It is
impossible to walk firmly if one foot be down in the gutter and the
other up on the curb-stone. We have to settle which level we shall
choose, and then to plant both feet there.
V. We have, as conclusion, a still wider exhortation to an entire
stripping off of the sins of the old state.
The whole force of the contrast and contrariety between the Colossian
Christians' past and present lies in that emphatic "now." They as well
as other heathen had been walking, because they had been living, in
these muddy ways. But now that their life was hid with Christ in God;
now that they had been made partakers of His death and resurrection, and
of all the new loves and affinities which therein became theirs; now
they must take heed that they bring not that dead and foul past into
this bright and pure present, nor prolong winter and its frosts into the
summer of the soul.
"Ye also." There is another "ye also" in the previous verse--"ye also
walked," that is, you in company with other Gentiles followed a certain
course of life. Here, by contrast, the expression means "you, in common
with other Christians." A motive enforcing the subsequent exhortation is
in it hinted rather than fully spoken. The Christians at Colossae had
belonged to a community which they have now left in order to join
another. Let them behave as their company behaves. Let them keep step
with their new comrades. Let them strip themselves, as their new
associates do, of the uniform which they wore in that other regiment.
The metaphor of putting clothing on or off is very frequent in this
Epistle. The precept here is substantially equivalent to the previous
command to "slay," with the difference that the conception of vices as
the garments of the soul is somewhat less vehement than that which
regards them as members of the very self. "All these" are to be put off.
That phrase points back to the things previously spoken of. It includes
the whole of the unnamed members of the class, of which a few have been
already named, and a handful more are about to be plucked like poison
flowers, and suggests that there are many more as baleful growing by the
side of this devil's bouquet which is next presented.
As to this second catalogue of vices, they may be summarised as, on the
whole, being various forms of wicked hatred, in contrast with the former
list, which consisted of various forms of wicked love. They have less to
do with bodily appetites. But perhaps it is not without profound meaning
that the fierce rush of unhallowed passion over the soul is put first,
and the contrary flow of chill malignity comes second; for in the
spiritual world, as in the physical, a storm blowing from one quarter is
usually followed by violent gales from the opposite. Lust ever passes
into cruelty, and dwells "hard by hate." A licentious epoch or man is
generally a cruel epoch or man. Nero made torches of the Christians.
Malice is evil desire iced.
This second list goes in the opposite direction to the former. That
began with actions and went up the stream to desire; this begins with
the sources, which are emotions, and comes down stream to their
manifestations in action.
First we have anger. There is a just and righteous anger, which is part
of the new man, and essential to his completeness, even as it is part of
the image after which he is created. But here of course the anger which
is to be put off is the inverted reflection of the earthly and
passionate lust after the flesh; it is, then, of an earthly, passionate
and selfish kind. "Wrath" differs from "anger" in so far as it may be
called anger boiling over. If anger rises keep the lid on, do not let it
get the length of wrath, nor effervesce into the brief madness of
passion. But on the other hand, do not think that you have done enough
when you have suppressed the wrath which is the expression of your
anger, nor be content with saying, "Well, at all events I did not show
it," but take the cure a step further back, and strip off anger as well
as wrath, the emotion as well as the manifestation.
Christian people do not sufficiently bring the greatest forces of their
religion and of God's Spirit to bear upon the homely task of curing
small hastinesses of temper, and sometimes seem to think it a sufficient
excuse to say, "I have naturally a hot disposition." But Christianity
was sent to subdue and change natural dispositions. An angry man cannot
have communion with God, any more than the sky can be reflected in the
storm-swept tide; and a man in communion with God cannot be angry with a
passionate and evil anger any more than a dove can croak like a raven or
strike like a hawk. Such anger disturbs our insight into everything;
eyes suffused with it cannot see; and it weakens all good in the soul,
and degrades it before its own conscience.
"Malice" designates another step in the process. The anger boils over in
wrath, and then cools down into malignity--the disposition which means
mischief, and plans or rejoices in evil falling on the hated head. That
malice, as cold, as clear, as colourless as sulphuric acid, and burning
like it, is worse than the boiling rage already spoken of. There are
many degrees of this cold drawn, double distilled rejoicing in evil, and
the beginnings of it in a certain faint satisfaction in the misfortunes
of those whom we dislike is by no means unusual.
An advance is now made in the direction of outward manifestation. It is
significant that while the expressions of wicked love were deeds, those
of wicked hate are words. The "blasphemy" of the Authorised Version is
better taken, with the Revised, as "railing." The word means "speech
that injures," and such speech may be directed either against God, which
is blasphemy in the usual sense of the word, or against man. The hate
blossoms into hurtful speech. The heated metal of anger is forged into
poisoned arrows of the tongue. Then follows "shameful speaking out of
your mouth," which is probably to be understood not so much of
obscenities, which would more properly belong to the former catalogue,
as of foul-mouthed abuse of the hated persons, that copiousness of
vituperation and those volcanic explosions of mud, which are so natural
to the angry Eastern.
Finally, we have a dehortation from lying, especially to those within
the circle of the Church, as if that sin too were the child of hatred
and anger. It comes from a deficiency of love, or a predominance of
selfishness, which is the same thing. A lie ignores my brother's claims
on me, and my union with him. "Ye are members one of another," is the
great obligation to love which is denied and sinned against by hatred in
all its forms and manifestations, and not least by giving my brother the
poisoned bread of lies instead of the heavenly manna of pure truth, so
far as it has been given to me.
On the whole, this catalogue brings out the importance to be attached to
sins of speech, which are ranked here as in parallel lines with the
grossest forms of animal passion. Men's words ought to be fountains of
consolation and sources of illumination, encouragement, revelations of
love and pity. And what are they? What floods of idle words, foul words,
words that wound like knives and sting and bite like serpents, deluge
the world! If all the talk that has its sources in these evils rebuked
here, were to be suddenly made inaudible, what a dead silence would fall
on many brilliant circles, and how many of us would stand making mouths
but saying nothing.
All the practical exhortations of this section concern common homely
duties which everybody knows to be such. It may be asked--does
Christianity then only lay down such plain precepts? What need was there
of all that prelude of mysterious doctrines, if we are only to be landed
at last in such elementary and obvious moralities? No doubt they are
elementary and obvious, but the main matter is--how to get them kept.
And in respect to that, Christianity does two things which nothing else
does. It breaks the entail of evil habits by the great gift of pardon
for the past, and by the greater gift of a new spirit and life principle
within, which is foreign to all evil, being the effluence of the spirit
of life in Christ Jesus.
Therefore the gospel of Jesus Christ makes it possible that men should
slay themselves, and put on the new life, which will expel the old as
the new shoots on some trees push the last year's lingering leaves,
brown and sere, from their places. All moral teachers from the beginning
have agreed, on the whole, in their reading of the commandments which
are printed on conscience in the largest capitals. Everybody who is not
blind can read them. But reading is easy, keeping is hard. How to fulfil
has been wanting. It is given us in the gospel, which is not merely a
republication of old precepts, but the communication of new power. If we
yield ourselves to Christ He will nerve our arms to wield the knife that
will slay our dearest tastes, though beloved as Isaac by Abraham. If a
man knows and feels that Christ has died for him, and that he lives in
and by Christ, then, and not else, will he be able to crucify self. If
he knows and feels that by His pardoning mercy and atoning death, Christ
has taken off his foul raiment and clothed him in clean garments, then,
and not else, will he be able, by daily effort after repression of self
and appropriation of Christ, to put off the old man and to put on the
new, which is daily being renewed into closer resemblance to the image
of Him who created him.