Chapters 5, 6.
GRACE toward faultiness, however, is not all. Chapter 5 opens with the more positive call to be imitators of God as children beloved, and to walk in love; as Christ also loved us and gave Himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for an odor of sweet smell. It was perfection in Him—for us, but to God; and it is our express pattern of love. But the danger of unclean sin is as carefully urged as from violence just before; and this in the levity of speech as in lust. Thanksgiving is a great antidote; as is our sense that those who so indulge are incompatible with the kingdom of Christ and God. Grace to believers in no way precludes God’s wrath on the sons of disobedience. We who were once darkness, but now light in the Lord, should be far from such partnership, but walk as children of light, the fruit of which is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. The Spirit comes in, not in verse 9 but later in verse 19 as power, after love and light have been fully treated as the source, principle, and character of the walk for the new creation, proving what is agreeable to the Lord. The Christian is disposed to sleep, and is therefore to awake and rise up from among the dead, and Christ shall shine upon him: an evident allusion to Israel’s portion by-and-by. Hence the need of walking carefully as wise, bung up the fit time, intelligent in the Lord’s will, and filled with the Spirit in songs of praise of a Christian sort, certainly not with the world’s dissolute excitement. Entitled as we are always and in all things to give thanks to Him Who is God and Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, let us not fail in doing thus, submitting ourselves to one another in Christ’s fear (verses 1-21).
This leads to the application of the same principle in our relationships; where the subject one is regularly first exhorted in each pair, wives to husbands, children to parents, and slaves to masters (verse 22—6:9). The wife and husband give occasion to a grand unfolding of Christ’s love for the church or assembly as the model. He “loved the church and gave himself up for it, that he might sanctify it, purifying it by the washing of the water in virtue of the word, that he himself might present to himself the church glorious, not having spot or wrinkle or any of such things; but that it might be holy and blameless.” Christ thus loved the church before He gave Himself up for it; and not content with that infinite self-surrender to sanctify it, He purifies after a divine fashion, as He will consummate His love in the glorious issue. His love sees to it all, and He uses the word now, as He will personally at length present it to Himself according to His own perfectness. So is the husband to love his own wife, and the wife to fear the husband. Children are not only to submit but to “obey” their parents in the Lord. If the law bade them pay honor, how much more the gospel? But fathers are not to irritate their children, but bring them up in the Lord’s discipline and admonition. So were slaves to obey their masters according to flesh, but “as to Christ.” What a privilege, and beyond all other emancipation Masters were to do the same things, in the equity they expected, forbearing threat, and knowing they had a common Master in the heavens.
Then follows (verses 10-20), after the call to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, the whole armor of God we are to put on. It is not the righteousness we become in Christ, but practical as against the enemy. The sword of the Spirit, being God’s word, is our one offensive weapon. That panoply we need that we may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. “For our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against principalities, against authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual [hosts] of wickedness in the heavenlies.” We are contrasted with Israel arrayed against the Canaanites. Wherefore he bids us to take up the whole armor of God that we may be able to withstand in the evil day, as it is now till the Lord take His great power and reign. First, we are to be girt about our loins with truth, the inward movements thus braced before God; then to put on the breastplate of righteousness, the confidence of an irreproachably right course; next, the walk animated by the gospel’s peaceful spirit; besides (or, in) all, we must take the unwavering faith in God which is the shield to quench all the inflamed darts of the wicked one; and receive the helmet of salvation in the assurance of what God wrought for us.
But even God’s word will not avail against the foe unless the Spirit guide us in wielding it. Thus all demands simple and constant dependence on God. Hence “praying at all seasons with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all the saints, and for me,” added the blessed apostle, “that utterance may be given me in the opening of my mouth with boldness to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am ambassador in a chain, that I may be bold in it as I ought to speak.” In what a place of nearness to God stand the faithful, in common interests with Him, and hence with the greatest of apostles as with the weakest of saints, for Christ’s glory! Hence as the apostle shared Christ’s love to them all, so he was assured they in their love would delight to hear all particulars of him; he sent Tychicus therefore to comfort their hearts, as a joint and band in the body. The salutation is in keeping: “Peace to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace with all that love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruptness.” Without the Father and the Lord, what is anything else? Without incorruptness, even the love, or what is called love, were vain.
W.K.