Calvins Commentary on Ephesians · John Calvin

009 - Ephesians 417-32

·31 min·1 clip

After Adam's revolt, he lost God's light—and without it there is nothing but fearful darkness.

The speaker begins with the claim that any knowledge of Christ not joined to mortification of the flesh is not true and sincere. He treats repentance as a real new life rather than a merely formal profession. The old man is described as the natural disposition brought with us from birth. That corruption belongs to Adam, while the amendment of the sinful nature belongs to Christ. He insists that the metaphor of putting off garments is meant to describe a decisive renunciation. The words old and new are not, in his judgment, an allusion to the Old and New Testaments. Instead, they point to two natures and two heads of humanity. He recalls the former conversation of the Ephesians to show why the exhortation was needed. Before Christ revealed himself to their minds, the old man reigned without restraint. To lay him aside, a person must renounce the former life that was corrupted. The corruption is traced through its fruits. Those fruits are deceitful lusts, and he warns that this phrase must not be narrowed to gross and visible vice. It includes dispositions often praised rather than censured, such as ambition and cunning. By naming what is respectable as well as what is shameful, he widens the moral searchlight of the passage. He does not allow the listener to hide behind visible restraint. The point is that corruption can survive under a polished surface. From there he moves to the closing moral exhortation of the section. Forgiving one another is treated as a duty rather than a mood. He notes the Greek term and acknowledges a possible rendering of beneficence. He prefers the sense of readiness to forgive because the context demands it. Kindness and tenderheartedness are not complete if they cannot bear injury without resentment. The final measure is the example of God in Christ. Human beings are called to forgive others after receiving a far greater forgiveness themselves.

As heard by us

A stern, exacting reading of Ephesians that makes conversion and forgiveness feel morally unavoidable.

Paul's warning in Ephesians 4 is handled with severity and care. The old life is not presented as something to be polished up, but as something to be put off, while the new life is cast in the language of repentance, self-denial, and the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.

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Why you'd press play

You want a hard read on putting off the old man and putting on the new.

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