What a glorious fact that since we are God's beloved children, we can be imitators of God! As the children of God, we have His life and nature. We imitate Him not by our natural life but by His divine life. It is by our Father's divine life that we, His children, can be perfect, as He is (Matt. 5:48).
As grace and reality (truth) are the basic elements in Eph. 4:17-32, so love and light (vv. 8-9, 13) are the basic elements in the apostle's exhortation in Eph. 5:1-33. Grace is the expression of love, and love is the source of grace. Truth is the revelation of light, and light is the origin of truth. God is love and God is light (1 John 4:8; 1:5). When God is expressed and revealed in the Lord Jesus, His love becomes grace and His light becomes truth. After we have, in the Lord, received God as grace and realized Him as truth, we come to Him and enjoy His love and light. Love and light are deeper than grace and truth. Hence, the apostle first took grace and truth as the basic elements for his exhortation, and then love and light. This implies that he wanted our daily walk to grow deeper, to progress from the outward elements to the inward.
Love is the inner substance of God, whereas light is the expressed element of God. The inward love of God is sensible, and the outward light of God is visible. Our walk in love should be constituted of both the loving substance and the shining element of God. These should be the inner source of our walk. They are deeper than grace and truth.
In Eph. 4:32 the apostle presented God as the pattern of our daily walk. Here he set forth Christ as the example of our living. In 4:32 God in Christ is our pattern, since in that section God's grace and reality (truth) expressed in the life of Jesus are taken as the basic elements. But here Christ Himself is our example, since in this section love expressed by Christ to us (vv. 2, 25) and light shined by Christ upon us (v. 14) are taken as the basic elements.
Some ancient authorities read, you.
An offering is for fellowship with God, whereas a sacrifice is for redemption from sin. Christ gave Himself up for us as both an offering, that we might have fellowship with God, and a sacrifice, that He might redeem us from sin.
In loving us, Christ gave Himself up for us. This was for us, but it was a sweet-smelling savor to God. In following His example, our walk in love should be not only something for others but also a sweet-smelling savor to God.
Nothing is more damaging to mankind than fornication. It is especially damaging to God's purpose and intention in creating man and to the believers' church life in the Body of Christ. This is based on 1 Cor. 5.
Persons who are separated unto God and saturated with God and who live a life according to God's holy nature.
To give thanks to God is to speak God as truth, whereas to talk foolishly or to jest filthily is to speak Satan as falsehood.
The Greek word denotes subjective knowledge.
The Greek word denotes objective knowledge.
The kingdom of Christ is the millennium (Rev. 20:4, 6; Matt. 16:28) and also the kingdom of God (Matt. 13:41, 43, and notes). The believers have been regenerated into the kingdom of God (John 3:5), and they are in the church life, living in the kingdom of God today (Rom. 14:17). Not all believers, only the overcoming ones, will participate in the millennium. In the coming age the unclean, defeated ones will have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God, the millennium. See note Matt. 5:203b and note Heb. 12:281a.
We were once not only dark but darkness itself. Now we are not only the children of light but light itself (Matt. 5:14). As light is God, so darkness is Satan. We were darkness because we were one with Satan. Now we are light because we are one with God in the Lord.
Verse 2 tells us to walk in love, and this verse tells us to walk as children of light.
As God is light, so we, the children of God, are the children of light.
cf.Gal. 5:22
Goodness is the nature of the fruit of the light; righteousness is the way or the procedure by which the fruit of the light is produced; and truth is the reality, the real expression (God Himself), of the fruit of the light. The fruit of the light must be good in nature, righteous in procedure, and real in expression, that God may be expressed as the reality of our daily walk.
The fruit of the light in goodness, righteousness, and truth is related to the Triune God. Goodness denotes God the Father, for the only one who is good is God (Matt. 19:17). Righteousness denotes God the Son, for Christ came to accomplish God's purpose according to God's righteous procedure (Rom. 5:17-18, 21). Truth denotes God the Spirit, for He is the Spirit of reality (John 14:17). Truth also denotes the expression of the fruit in the light.
The unfruitful works of darkness are vanity, whereas the fruit of the light is truth, reality (v. 9).
Or, expose, uncover.
Or, exposed, uncovered.
When we reprove or expose anyone who is sleeping and dead in darkness, Christ will shine on him. Our reproving or exposing in light is Christ's shining.
To live by being filled in spirit (vv. 15-21) is the fifth aspect of a walk that is worthy of God's calling. The first four aspects of such a worthy walk are keeping the oneness, growing up into the Head, learning Christ, and living in love and light. The issue of having these four aspects of a worthy walk is that we are spontaneously filled in our spirit. Out of this inward filling will come submission, love, obedience, care, and all the other virtues of a proper Christian life, church life, family life, and community life. What a life we have when we demonstrate the five aspects of a walk that is worthy of God's calling!
I.e., seizing every favorable opportunity. This is to be wise in our walk (v. 15).
In this evil age (Gal. 1:4) every day is an evil day full of pernicious things that cause our time to be used ineffectively, to be reduced, and to be taken away. Therefore, we must walk wisely that we may redeem the time, seizing every available opportunity.
To understand the will of the Lord is the best way to redeem our time (v. 16). Most of our time is wasted because we do not know the will of the Lord.
To be drunk with wine is to be filled in the body, whereas to be filled in the spirit (our regenerated spirit, not God's Spirit) is to be filled with Christ (Eph. 1:23) unto the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19). To be drunk with wine in our physical body causes us to become dissolute, but to be filled in our spirit with Christ, with the fullness of God, causes us to overflow with Christ in speaking, singing, psalming, and giving thanks to God (vv. 19-20) and also causes us to subject ourselves to one another (v. 21).
Verses Eph. 5:19-21 modify be filled in spirit in v. 18. Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs are not only for singing and psalming but also for speaking to one another. Such speaking, singing, psalming, giving of thanks to God (v. 20), and subjecting of ourselves to one another (v. 21) are not only the outflow of being filled in spirit but also the way to be filled in spirit.
Psalms are long poems, hymns are shorter poems, and spiritual songs are poems that are shorter still. All are needed in order for us to be filled with the Lord and to overflow with Him in our Christian life.
We should give thanks to God the Father not only in good times but at all times, and not only for good things but for all things. Even in bad times we should give thanks to God our Father for the bad things.
The reality of the name of the Lord is His person. To be in the Lord's name is to be in His person, in Himself. This implies that we should be one with the Lord in giving thanks to God.
Being subject to one another also is a way to be filled in spirit with the Lord (v. 18) and is the overflow of being filled. This is to live in the way of being filled in spirit with all the riches of Christ unto the fullness of God.
Our subjection should be to one another — the younger ones to the older ones, and also the older ones to the younger ones (1 Pet. 5:5).
According to the context of the succeeding verses, to be in the fear of Christ is to fear offending Him as the Head. This is related to His headship (v. 23) and involves our being subject to one another. See note Eph. 5:332b.
The relationship between wives and husbands is connected to the matter of being filled in spirit. Only by being filled in our spirit can we have a proper married life, a figure of the relationship between Christ and the church.
This is one kind of subjection implied in v. 21. In his exhortation concerning married life, the apostle dealt first with wives, since wives, like Eve in Gen. 3, deviate from the right way more easily than husbands. 1 Pet. 3:7 says that the wife is the weaker vessel. In his exhortations concerning wives and husbands, children and parents, and slaves and masters, Paul took care of first the weaker side and then the stronger side.
This is God's ordination according to His economy (Gen. 2:24; Matt. 19:5).
Lit., into one flesh.
To nourish is to feed us with the living word of the Lord. To cherish is to nurture us with tender love and foster us with tender care, outwardly softening us through tender warmth that we may have soothing, comfortable rest inwardly. This is the way Christ cares for the church, His Body.
To be holy is to be saturated with Christ and transformed by Christ, and to be without blemish is to be spotless and without wrinkle, having nothing of the natural life of our old man.
The spot here signifies something of the natural life, and wrinkles are related to oldness. Only the water of life can metabolically wash away such defects by the transformation of life.
Glory is God expressed. Hence, to be glorious is to be God-expressing. Eventually, the church presented to Christ will be a God-expressing church.
In this section of exhortation the apostle presented another aspect of the church, that of the bride. This aspect reveals that the church comes out of Christ, as Eve came out of Adam (Gen. 2:21-22), that it has the same life and nature as Christ, and that it becomes one with Him as His counterpart, as Eve became one flesh with Adam (Gen. 2:24). The church as the new man is a matter of grace and reality, whereas the church as the bride of Christ is a matter of love and light. The apostle's exhortation in ch. 4 is focused on the new man, which has grace and reality as its basic elements, whereas his exhortation in this chapter is focused on the bride of Christ, which has love and light as its basic substances. In grace and reality we should walk as the new man, and in love and light we should live as the bride of Christ.
Christ's purpose in giving Himself up for the church is to sanctify her, not only separating her to Himself from everything common but also saturating her with His element that she may be His counterpart. He accomplishes this by cleansing her by the washing of the water in the word.
A husband's love for his wife must be like Christ's love for the church; he must be willing to pay a price, even to die for his wife.
The opposite of being subject is to rule; however, the apostle did not exhort husbands to rule over their wives but to love them. In married life, the wife's obligation is to be subject and the husband's is to love. The wife's subjection plus the husband's love constitutes a proper married life and typifies the normal church life, in which the church is subject to Christ and Christ loves the church. Love is the very element, the inner substance, of God (1 John 4:8, 16). The goal of this book is to bring us into God's inner substance that we may enjoy God as love and enjoy His presence in the sweetness of the divine love, and thereby love others as Christ did.
According to the divine ordination, the subjection of wives to their husbands should be absolute, without any choice. This does not mean that they should obey their husbands in everything. Obeying is different from being subject. With obedience, the emphasis is on compliance, whereas with subjection, the emphasis is on subordination. In sinful things, things against God and the Lord, wives should not obey their husbands. However, they should still be in subjection to them. In a similar situation, Daniel's three friends disobeyed the Babylonian king's order to worship the idol, yet still subjected themselves to the king's authority (Dan. 3:13-23).
The thought here is this: although husbands are not the savior of their wives in the way that Christ is the Savior of the church, wives still need to be subject to their husbands as the church is to Christ.
Christ is not only the Head of the church but also the Savior of the Body. His being the Head is a matter of authority, whereas His being the Savior is a matter of love. We must be subject to Him as our Head, and we must love Him as our Savior.
The husband as the head of the wife typifies Christ as the Head of the church.
Most wives appreciate and respect others' husbands; hence, the apostle exhorted wives to be subject to their own husbands as to the Lord, regardless of what kind of husbands they have. In the same principle, when Paul addressed husbands, he exhorted them to love their own wives (vv. 28, 33). If we desire to live according to reality, by grace, and in love and light, we must not compare our wife or husband with others'.
Christ and the church as one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17), typified by a husband and wife as one flesh, are the great mystery.
Lit., his own wife as himself.
Because a wife should respect her husband as the head, the one who typifies Christ as the Head of the church, she should fear her husband in the fear of Christ (v. 21).
2 Cor. 11:2; Col. 1:22; cf. Gen. 2:22
In the past, Christ as the Redeemer gave Himself up for the church (v. 25) for redemption and the impartation of life (John 19:34); in the present, He as the life-giving Spirit is sanctifying the church through separation, saturation, transformation, growth, and building up; and in the future, He as the Bridegroom will present the church to Himself as His counterpart for His satisfaction. Therefore, Christ's loving the church is to separate and sanctify her, and His separating and sanctifying the church are to present her to Himself.
The Greek word denotes an instant word. The indwelling Christ as the life-giving Spirit is always speaking an instant, present, living word to metabolically cleanse away the old and replace it with the new, causing an inward transformation. The cleansing by the washing of the water of life is in the word of Christ. This indicates that in the word of Christ there is the water of life. This is typified by the laver situated between the altar and the tabernacle (Exo. 38:8; 40:7).
According to the divine concept, water here refers to the flowing life of God, which is typified by flowing water (Exo. 17:6; 1 Cor. 10:4; John 7:38-39; Rev. 21:6; 22:1, 17). The washing of the water here is different from the washing of the redeeming blood of Christ. The redeeming blood washes away our sins (1 John 1:7; Rev. 7:14), whereas the water of life washes away the blemishes of the natural life of our old man, such as the "spot or wrinkle or any such things" mentioned in v. 27. In separating and sanctifying the church, the Lord first washes away our sins with His blood (Heb. 13:12) and then washes away our natural blemishes with His life. We are now in such a washing process, that the church may be holy and without blemish (v. 27).
Lit., laver. In Greek the definite article is used before this word, causing it to refer to the laver, the laver that was known to all the Jews. In the Old Testament the priests used the laver to wash away their earthly defilement (Exo. 30:18-21). Now the laver, the washing of the water, washes us from defilement.
