+I. That forgiveness of sin is unnecessary.+--Every sin is punished
on the spot. This natural punishment is felt as long as the sin is
indulged, and it ceases as soon as the sin is abandoned. This error
may be exposed by a reference to the philosophy of human nature, to
experience, and to Scripture.
+II. That forgiveness of sin is impossible.+--The consequences of
every sin stretch out into infinity, and they cannot be annihilated
without a supernatural interposition; but it would derogate from the
supremacy of law to allow that a miracle is possible. The possibility
of miracle is contrary neither to intuition nor to experience. A
supernatural Being is the Author of a supernatural system: creation,
incarnation, the Bible, spiritual influence.
+III. That forgiveness of sin might be dispensed without an
atonement.+--"If a man suffer insult or injury from his fellow-man,
he ought to forgive him freely; why should not God?" Because He is
God, and not man. He is the moral Governor of the universe, and must
consult for the majesty of His law and the interests of His
responsible creatures. Forgiveness without atonement would not
satisfy the conscience of the awakened sinner.
+IV. That forgiveness of sin will not be bestowed till the day of
judgment.+--Pardon through Christ is immediate. It is enjoyed as soon
as we believe.
+V. That forgiveness of sin as freely offered in the Gospel is
inimical to morality.+--"Pay a workman before he begins his work, and
he will be indolent; pay him when he has finished his work, and he
will be diligent." Not if he were an honest man, and no one is
forgiven who is not sanctified. A sense of unpardoned guilt is the
greatest hindrance to obedience. A sense of redeeming love the most
powerful incentive.--_G. Brooks._
_Christian Forgiveness._
I. +The reality of forgiveness, or the grace of a forgiving spirit in
us, lies not so much in our ability to let go or to be persuaded to
let go the remembrance of our injuries, as in what we are able to
do,+ what volunteer sacrifices to make, what painstaking to undergo,
that we may get our adversary softened to want or gently accept our
forgiveness.
II. In all that you distinguish of a nobler and Diviner life, in
Christ's bearing of His enemies and their sins, He is simply showing
+what belongs in righteousness to every moral nature from the
uncreated Lord down to the humblest created intelligence.+
Forgiveness, this same Christly forgiveness, belongs to all--to you,
to me, to every lowest mortal that bears God's image.
III. +Christ wants you to be with Him in His own forgiveness.+ He
wants such a feeling struggling in your bosom that you cannot bear to
have an adversary, cannot rest from your prayers and sacrifices and
the lifelong suit of your concern, till you have gained him away from
his wrong and brought him into peace. This in fact _is_ salvation: to
be with Christ in all the travail of His forgiveness. As Christ was
simply fulfilling the right in His blessed ways of forgiveness, so we
may conceive that He is simply fulfilling the eternal love. For what
is right coincides with love, and love with what is right.
IV. When a true Christian goes after his adversary in such a temper
as he ought--tender, assiduous, proving himself in his love by the
most faithful sacrifices--+he is not like to stay by his enmity
long.+ As the heat of a warm day will make even a wilful man take off
his overcoat, so the silent melting of forgiveness at the heart will
compel it, even before it is aware, to let the grudges go. A really
good man may have enemies all his life long, even as Christ had, and
the real blame may be chargeable not against him, but against them.
V. +Have then Christian brethren under Christ's own Gospel nothing
better left than to take themselves out of sight of each other just
to get rid of forgiveness,+ going to carry the rankling with them,
live in the bitterness, die in the grudges of their untamable
passion? What is our Gospel but a reconciling power even for sin
itself, and what is it good for, if it cannot reconcile? No, there is
a better way. Christ laid it on them by His own dear passion when He
gave Himself for them, by His bloody sweat, His pierced hands, and
open side, to go about the matter of forgiving one another even as He
went about forgiving them.--_Bushnell._
* * * * * * * *
+CHAPTER V.+
_CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES._
Ver. 1. +Followers of God.+--R.V. _imitators._ St. Paul gathers up
all duties into one expression, "imitation of God," and urges them on
his readers by a reminder of their high birth laying them under
obligation, and rendering their copying easier.
Ver. 2. +Walk in love.+--"Love must fulfil all righteousness; it must
suffer law to mark out its path of obedience, or it remans an
effusive, ineffectual sentiment, helpless to bless and save."
Ver. 3. +Let it not be once named.+--After the things themselves are
dead let their names never be heard.
Ver. 4. +Nor jesting.+--"Chastened insolence," as Aristotle's
description of it has been happily rendered. "Graceless grace" [of
style], as Chrysostom called it. It is the oozing out of the
essential badness of a man for whom polish and a versatile nature
have done all they can.
Vers. 5, 6. +Because of these things cometh the wrath of God,
etc.+--Look down beneath the pleasing manners to the nature. If such
terms as are used in ver. 5 describe the man, he is simply one of
Disobedience's children, and all his versatility will not avert the
descending wrath of God.
Ver. 7. +Be not ye therefore partakers with them.+--Do not wish to
share the frivolity and impiety of their life, as you would shun the
wrath that inevitably awaits it. How could they so partake and
continue to be what ch. iii. 6 calls them?
Ver. 8. +Ye were . . . ye are . . . be.+--The lesson must be learnt,
and therefore reiteration is necessary.
Ver. 9. +For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and
righteousness and truth.+--Neither here nor at Gal. v. 22 does St.
Paul intend a complete list of the fruits of the Spirit. St. John's
tree of life bore "_twelve_ manner of fruits" (Rev. xxii. 2). All
Christian morality lies in the good, the right, and the true.
Ver 10. +Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.+--Each is to be an
assayer--rejecting all base alloys. Nothing must be accepted because
it looks like an angel of light--"the spirits" must be put to the
proof (1 John iv. 1).
Ver. 11. +Rather reprove them.+--It may be with a voice as firm as
the Baptist's; it may be by gentle and yet unflinching "showing up"
of certain proceedings (cf. St. John iii. 20). "This chastening
reproof is an _oral_ one," says Meyer.
Ver. 12. +It is a shame even to speak of.+--Though the only sign of
their shame having touched them is that they seek the cover of
secrecy, and our own cheeks burn _as we speak_ of what _they do,_ we
must convict.
Ver. 13. +Made manifest by the light.+--Whatever the light falls upon
is no longer of the darkness, but belongs to the light. Shame is one
of the influences by which the light conquers a soul from darkness.
Ver. 14. +Wherefore He saith.+--What follows is "a free paraphrase
from the Old Testament formed by weaving together Messianic
passages--belonging to such a hymn as might be sung at baptisms in
the Pauline Churches" (_Findlay_). The thought is that of the change
from darkness to light--a change produced by the opening of the eyes
to the light shining in the face of Jesus Christ.
Ver. 15. +See then that ye walk circumspectly.+--R.V. "Look then
carefully how ye walk." The way of life must be one of exactitude;
and that it may be so the steps must not be haphazard, but carefully
taken.
Ver. 16. +Redeeming the time.+--R.V. margin, "buying up the
opportunity." Seizing the crucial moment as eagerly as men bid for a
desirable article at an auction sale. +Because the days are evil.+--A
man in Paul's circumstances and with his consuming earnestness of
spirit may be forgiven if he does not see everything rose-coloured.
Ver. 18. +Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess.+--The word for
"excess" is found again in Tit. i. 6 as "riot," and in 1 Pet. iv. 4.
In all three texts the warning against intoxication is near the word.
In Luke xv. 13 we have the adverbial form--"riotously."
Ver. 19. +Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.+--When the spirit is
elevated so that ordinary prose conversation is inadequate to express
the feelings let it find vent in sacred music. St. James's advice to
the "merry" heart is, "Sing psalms" (James v. 13). The "psalm" is
properly a song with accompaniment of a stringed instrument; "a
'hymn' must always be more or less of a _Magnificat,_ a direct
address of praise and glory to God." "Spiritual songs" were "such as
were composed by spiritual men and moved in the sphere of spiritual
things" (_Trench_). No spiritual excitement, however highly wrought,
can be injurious that flows between the banks of thanksgiving and
mutual submission in the fear of God.
Ver. 20. +Giving thanks always for all things.+--If one who speaks as
a philosopher merely can praise the "sweet uses of adversity" and
discern the "soul of goodness in things evil," how much more should
one believing Rom. viii. 28!
Ver. 21. +Submitting yourselves one to another.+--In another Church
the endeavour to take precedence of each other had produced what a
stranger might have taken for a madhouse (1 Cor. xiv. 23). St. Paul's
word for "submitting" means "ranging yourselves beneath," and finds
its illustration in the Lord's words, "Go and sit down in the lowest
place" (Luke xiv. 10).
Ver. 22. +Submit yourselves.+--Same word as in previous verse;
neither here nor there does it involve any loss of self-respect. The
wife's tribute to her husband's worth is submission--the grace of
childhood to _both parents_ equally is obedience.
Ver. 23. +Christ is the head of the Church.+--Defending her at His
own peril ("If ye seek Me, let these go their way," John xviii. 8);
serving her in utmost forgetfulness of self ("I am amongst you as he
that serveth," Luke xxii. 27); "Giving Himself up for her," (ver. 25).
Ver. 25. +Husbands, love your wives.+--This will prevent the
submission of the wife from ever becoming degrading--as submission to
a tyrant must be.
Ver. 26. +That He might sanctify and cleanse.+--There is no "and"
between "sanctify" and "cleanse" in what St. Paul wrote. "Sanctify
it, having cleansed it" (R.V.). "I sanctify Myself, that they also
may be sanctified" (John xvii. 19).
Ver. 27. +Spot or wrinkle.+--"Spot," a visible blemish, used in the
plural, figuratively, in 2 Pet. ii. 13, of men who disfigure
Christian assemblies. "Wrinkle"--"a wrinkled bride" is an
incongruity, just as the mourning which produces wrinkles is out of
place in the bridechamber (Matt. ix. 15).
Ver. 28. +As their own bodies.+--Not "as _they love_ their own
bodies" merely, but "as _being_ their own." See ver. 31, "one flesh."
Ver. 31. +For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and
shall be joined unto his wife.+--We must regard these words, not as a
continuation of Adam's in Gen. ii. 23, but as the words of the
narrator, who regards what our first father said as a mystical hint
of the origin of marriage.
Ver. 32. +This is a great mystery.+--The meaning of which is known
only to the initiated. Something having a significance beyond what
appears on the surface. +But I speak.+--The "I" is emphatic: "_I_
give _my_ interpretation." _My_ chief interest in this mystery is as
it relates to Christ and to the Church.
Ver. 33. +Nevertheless.+--"I pursue the matter no further"; and
though this mystical turn is given to the words, still in actual life
let the husband love (ver. 25) and the wife show reverence (ver. 22).
Let all the married among you apply the mystery to their own case, so
that the husband may love the wife and the wife fear the husband.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses 1, 2.
_The Life of Love_--
+I. Is an imitating of the Divine life.+--"Be followers of God: . . .
walk in love" (vers. 1, 2). Though God is infinitely beyond us, and
lifted above all heights, we are to aspire towards Him. When we
contemplate His glorious perfections we are more deeply conscious of
our limitations and sins, bend before Him in lowly awe, and seem to
despair of ever being able to approach to anything within ourselves,
that can be like Him. Nevertheless God is the pattern of all
excellence, and we can attain excellence ourselves only by imitating
Him. The ideal character is ever above and beyond the seeker, growing
more beautiful, but seeming as distant as ever. The life of God is
the life of love--love is the essence of His nature and the crowning
glory of all His perfections. The chief way in which He is imitable
by us is in that direction: to love God is to be like Him. Our life,
in all its impulses, outgoings, and accomplishments, must be suffused
and penetrated with love. As the soul opens to the inflow of God's
love and is filled with it, it becomes like God. Loving God is
allowing God to love us. The love of God is the most transcendent
revelation of the Gospel. In Paris, a little girl, seven years old,
was observed to read the New Testament continually. Being asked what
pleasure she found in doing so, she said, "It makes me wise, and
teaches how to love God." She had been reading the history of Martha
and Mary. "What is the one thing needful?" asked her friend. "It is
the love of God," she earnestly replied.
+II. Is befitting the relation in which the believer is Divinely
regarded.+--"Followers of God, as dear children" (ver. 1). God is our
Father, and He loves us. That is enough; but how much is implied in
that, who can tell? To realise the Divine Fatherhood is to become
acquainted with the love of God. When we discover we are dear to Him
our hearts melt, our rebellion is conquered, we seek His forgiveness,
we revel in His favour, we exult in His service. When we discover He
has always loved us we are overwhelmed. A mother, whose daughter had
behaved badly and at length ran away from home, thought of a singular
plan to find the wanderer and bring her back. She had her own
portrait fixed on a large handbill and posted on the walls of the
town where she supposed her daughter was concealed. The portrait,
without name, had these words painted underneath: "I love thee
always." Crowds stopped before the strange handbill, trying to guess
its meaning. Days elapsed, when a young girl at last passed by, and
lifted her eyes to the singular placard. She understood: this was a
message for her. Her mother loved her--pardoned her. Those words
transformed her. Never had she felt her sin and ingratitude so
deeply. She was unworthy of such love. She set out for home, and
crossing the threshold was soon in her mother's arms. "My child!"
cried the mother, as she pressed her repentant daughter to her heart,
"I have never ceased to love thee!"
+III. Is a love of Christ-like sacrifice.+--"As Christ also hath
loved us, and hath given Himself for us" (ver. 2). The offering of
Christ as a sacrifice for the sins of men was acceptable to God, and
came up before Him as a sweet-smelling savour, because it was the
offering and sacrifice of love. The life of love is the life of
obedience; it is eager to serve, and it shrinks not from suffering.
Nothing can be love to God which does not shape itself into
obedience. We remember the anecdote of the Roman commander who
forbade an engagement with the enemy, and the first transgressor
against whose prohibition was his own son. He accepted the challenge
of the leader of the other host, met, slew, spoiled him, and then
with triumphant feeling carried the spoils to his father's tent. But
the Roman father refused to recognise the instinct which prompted
this as deserving of the name of love. Disobedience contradicted it
and deserved death. Weak sentiment--what was it worth? It was the
dictate of ambition and self-will overriding obedience and
discipline; it was not love. A self-sacrificing life is prompted,
sustained, and ennobled by love. The trials which love cheerfully
undergoes in its ministry of love to others and in obedience to the
will of God are often transformed into blessings. There is a legend
that Nimrod took Abraham and cast him into a furnace of fire because
he would not worship idols; but God changed the coals into a bed of
roses. So it will ever be. The obedience that leads to the furnace of
fire will find in the end that it is a bed of roses. The life of
loving sacrifice will issue in eternal blessedness.
+Lessons.+--_The life of love is_--1. _The highest life._ 2. _The
happiest life._ 3. _The life most fruitful in usefulness to others._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._