CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Ephesians 5:15. 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.
Ephesians 5:16. 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.
Ephesians 5:18. Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess.—The word for “excess” is found again in Titus 1:6 as “riot,” and in 1 Peter 4:4. In all three texts the warning against intoxication is near the word. In Luke 15:13 we have the adverbial form—“riotously.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Ephesians 5:15-18
Christian Wisdom—
I. Cautiously regulates the outward life.—“See that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise” (Ephesians 5:15). The Christian needs not only spiritual fervour and enthusiasm, but also prudence—sanctified common sense. It is possible to do a right thing in a wrong way, or in such a way as to cause more mischief than benefit. There is a severity of virtue that repels, and rouses resentment; and there is a parade of Christian liberty that shocks the sensitive. The truth lies between two extremes, and Christian wisdom is seen in maintaining the truth and avoiding extremes. “I wisdom dwell with prudence.” Mr. Edward Everett Hale is generally credited as the author of the following motto for Christian workers:
“Look up, and not down;
Look out, and not in;
Look forward, and not back;
Lend a hand.”
Success in soul-winning is only given to skill, earnestness, sympathy, perseverance, tact. Men are saved, not in masses, but by careful study and well-directed effort. It is said that such is the eccentric flight of the snipe when they rise from the earth that it completely puzzles the sportsman, and some who are capital shots at other birds are utterly baffled here. Eccentricity seems to be their special quality, and this can only be mastered by incessant practice with the gun. But the eccentricity of souls is beyond this, and he had need be a very spiritual Nimrod—a mighty hunter before the Lord—who would capture them for Christ. “He that winneth souls is wise.”
II. Teaches how to make the best use of present opportunity.—
1. Observing the value of time amid the prevalence of evil. “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16). Time is a section cut out of the great circle of eternity, and defines for us the limits in which the work of life must be done. It is a precious gift bestowed by the beneficent hand of God—a gift involving grave responsibility; and we must render a strict account of the use we make of every swing of the pendulum. It is doled out to us in minute fragments. One single year is made up of 31,536,000 seconds. Every tick of the clock records the ever-lessening opportunities of life. Time is in perpetual motion. Like a strong, ever-flowing river, it is bearing away everything into the boundless ocean of eternity. We never know the value of time till we know the value of the fragments into which it is broken up. To make the most of a single hour we must make the most of every minute of which it is composed. The most dangerous moments of a man’s life are those when time hangs heavily on his hands. He who has nothing to do but kill time is in danger of being killed himself. It is a miracle of divine goodness if he is preserved from serious folly, or something worse; and such miracles rarely occur. The man who has learnt the value of time can learn any lesson this world may have to teach him. Time is the opportunity for the exercise of Christian wisdom, and should be the more sedulously used “when the days are evil”—when evil is in power. Oh for wisdom to number our days, to grasp the meaning of present opportunity! Here come the moments that can never be had again; some few may yet be filled with imperishable good. Let us apply our hearts—all our powers—unto wisdom.
2. Having the good sense to recognise the divine will.—“Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:17). We must read and interpret the signs of the times in the light of God’s purpose. A close and deep study of the divine mind will reveal to us the significance of the passing opportunity, and aid us in making the wisest use of it. Our biggest schemes are doomed to failure if they are not in accordance with the will of God. The noblest tasks are reserved for those who have the keenest spiritual insight and are most in harmony with the divine purpose.
III. Avoids the folly and waste of intemperance.—“Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess” (Ephesians 5:18). The Asian Christians were a social, lighthearted people, fond of convivial feasts. Wine was their danger; and even in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper they ran into excess, and degraded the holy ordinance. There were doubtless converted drunkards among them; and the warning of the text was specially needed. Intemperance is not only a folly and a waste; it is a degradation and a sin. It is the excessive indulgence of a craving that at bottom may be in itself good, if wisely regulated—a craving for an intenser life. “One finds traces,” says Monod, “of the primitive greatness of our nature even in its most deplorable errors. Just as impurity proceeds at the bottom from an abuse of the craving for love, so drunkenness betrays a certain demand for ardour and enthusiasm which in itself is natural and even noble. Man loves to feel himself alive; he would fain live twice his life at once; and he would rather draw excitement from horrible things than have no excitement at all.” When the physicians told Theotimus that except he abstained from drunkenness and licentiousness he would lose his eyes, his heart was so wedded to his sins that he answered, “Then farewell, sweet light.”
IV. Seeks to be under the complete control of the divine Spirit.—“But be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). The excitement of drunkenness must be supplanted by a holier and more elevating stimulus: the cup that intoxicates exchanged for the new wine of the Spirit. The general adoption of this principle will be the grandest triumph of temperance. The cure of drunkenness will not be accomplished simply by the removal of temptation, unless a relish for higher things is created and springs of holier pleasure are opened in the hearts of men. A lower impulse is conquered and expelled by the introduction of a higher. Anachonis, the philosopher, being asked by what means a man might best guard against the vice of drunkenness, answered, “By bearing constantly in his view the loathsome, indecent behaviour of such as are intoxicated.” Upon this principle was founded the custom of the Lacedæmonians of exposing their drunken slaves to their children, who by that means conceived an early aversion to a vice which makes men appear so monstrous and irrational. There is no excess in drinking copious draughts of the Spirit. Christian wisdom opens the soul to the ever-flowing tide of His influence, and strives to be animated and filled with His all-controlling power.
Lessons.—
1. Wisdom is the best use of knowledge.
2. Christianity opens the purest sources of knowledge.
3. “Get wisdom, and with all thy getting get understanding.”
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Ephesians 5:15-17. Walking circumspectly.
I. The duty recommended.—
1. Walk circumspectly that you may keep within the line of your duty. Your course often lies in a medium between two extremes. If from this course you deviate, you step into the territory of vice. Be circumspect that you may not mistake your duty. Be watchful that you may retain a sense of virtue and rectitude. Be attentive that you may conform to the Spirit of God’s commands.
2. Walk circumspectly that you may escape the snares in your way.—Often look forward to descry your dangers. Attend to your particular situation and condition in life. Often review your past life, and reflect on former temptations. Be circumspect that you may detect your enemies when they approach you in disguise. Never neglect your duty under pretence of shunning a temptation.
3. Walk circumspectly that you may wisely comport with the aspects of Providence.
4. Be circumspect that you may do every duty in its time and place.—Attend on the daily worship of God in your families and closets. Be kind and beneficent to the poor. Neglect not the care of your body. Attend on the instituted ordinances of the gospel.
5. Walk circumspectly that your good may not be evil spoken of.
II. The argument by which the apostle urges the duty.—“The days are evil.” The argument was not peculiar to those early times, but is pertinent to all times.
1. The days are evil because the Christian finds in himself much disorder and corruption.
2. The days are evil as he is exposed to various afflictions.
3. There are many adversaries.
4. Iniquity abounds.—Lathrop.
Ephesians 5:15. The Wise Conduct of Life.—
1. The more light and knowledge a man receives from God he ought to take the more diligent heed that in all things he practises according to his light.
2. Those only are most fit to reprove sin in others who walk most circumspectly and live so as they cannot be justly blamed themselves. Even the righteous walking of such is a forcible reproof of sin in others, though they speak nothing.
3. As those are only truly wise in God’s account who labour to walk most exactly by the rule of God’s word, so where this sanctified wisdom is it will render itself evident by making the person endowed with it walk circumspectly.
4. The less circumspect and exact men be in walking by the rule of God’s word the greater fools they are in God’s esteem.—Fergusson.
Ephesians 5:16. Redeeming the Time.—To redeem time is to regain what is lost and to save what is left.
I. Enter on your work speedily.—Do you ask what is your work? It is time you knew. Consult God’s word; that will tell you.
II. Attend to your work with diligence.—A sense of past slothfulness must excite you to severer industry. Be not only fervent but steady in your work.
III. Guard against the things which rob you of your time.—An indolent habit is inconsistent with laudable actions. A versatile humour is active, but wants patience. An excessive fondness for company and amusement is the cause of much waste of time.
IV. Do every work in its season.—Youth is the most promising season. The time of health is more favourable than a time of sickness. There are seasons friendly to particular duties. In doing works of charity observe opportunities.
V. Wisely divide your time among your various duties.—Lathrop.
The Redemption of Time.
I. The subject of the exhortation.—
1. Time sometimes signifies the whole duration assigned to the present world.
2. The period of human life.—The time we occupy in the present state is that which God allots for our personal probation and trial. All God’s dispensations in respect to us refer to this period and have their limits fixed by it.
3. Time means season or opportunity.—In this sense the apostle uses it here. We are to redeem all the opportunity God bestows on us for getting and doing good, for acquainting ourselves with Him and being at peace.
II. The duty enjoined on us.—“Redeeming the time”—the opportunity.
1. We redeem time by consideration.
2. When we turn everything we have to do, in the common concerns of life, into a religious channel.
3. By living in a devotional spirit.—
(1) This will cast out everything trifling, much more everything sinful, from our leisure hours.
(2) Its preservation and exercise are perfectly compatible with the affairs of life.
4. The principal way by which time is to be redeemed is not merely by making efforts to promote our final blessedness, but by actually securing our present salvation.
III. The motives by which the exhortation is enforced.—“Because the days are evil.”
1. The days are evil in a general sense.—This age, as well as the age of the apostles, is a wicked one.
2. Because they are days of distress.
3. The days are evil individually.—In the sense of affliction to a number of individuals.
4. It is an evil day that we are ever exposed to enemies and temptations.
5. Every day opportunities of improvement are wasted is an evil day.
6. The time will come when, as to many unhappy spirits, the opportunity of salvation will be lost for ever.—R. Watson.
The Redemption of Time.—The more the days are beset by things that grievously invade them, disturb them, waste them, the more careful and zealous should we be to save and improve all that we can. To this end—
I. It is of the highest importance that time should be a reality in our perception and estimate; that we should verify it as an actual something, like a substance to which we can attach a positive value, and see it as wasting or as improved as palpably as the contents of a granary or as the precious metals. The unfortunate case with us is, that time is apprehended but like air, or rather like empty space, so that in wasting it we do not see that we are destroying or misusing a reality. Time is equivalent to what could be done or gained in it.
II. Keep established in the mind, and often present to view, certain important purposes or objects that absolutely must be attained.—For example: that there is some considerable discipline and improvement of the mind, some attainment of divine knowledge, some measure of the practice of religious exercises, and there is the one thing needful in its whole comprehensive magnitude.
III. That time be regarded in an inseparable connection with eternity is the grand principle for redeeming it; to feel solemnly that it is really for eternity, and has all the importance of this sublime and awful relation. It might be a striking and alarming reflection suggested to a man who has wasted his time—now the time has gone backward into the irrevocable past, but the effect of it, from the quality you have given it, is gone forward into eternity, and since you are going thither, how will you meet and feel the effect there?
IV. Nothing short of the redemption of the soul is the true and effectual redemption of time.—And this object gives the supreme rule for the redeeming of time. How melancholy to have made so admirable a use of time for all purposes but the supreme one!—John Foster.
Ephesians 5:17-18. Sensual and Spiritual Excitement.—There is the antithesis between drunkenness and spiritual fulness. The propriety of this opposition lies in the intensity of feeling produced in both cases. There is one intensity of feeling produced by stimulating the senses, another by vivifying the spiritual life within. The one commences with impulses from without, the other is guarded by forces from within. Here, then, is the similarity and here the dissimilarity which constitutes the propriety of the contrast. One is ruin, the other salvation. One degrades, the other exalts.
I. The effects are similar.—On the day of Pentecost, when he first influences of the Spirit descended on the early Church, the effects resembled intoxication. It is this very resemblance which deceives the drunkard; he is led on by his feelings as well as by his imagination. Another point of resemblance is the necessity of intense feeling. We have fulness—it may be produced by outward stimulus or by an inpouring of the Spirit. The proper and natural outlet for this feeling is the life of the Spirit. What is religion but fuller life?
II. The dissimilarity or contrast in St. Paul’s idea.—The one fulness begins from without, the other from within. The one proceeds from the flesh, and then influences the emotions; the other reverses this order. Stimulants like wine inflame the senses, and through them set the imaginations and feelings on fire; and the law of our spiritual being is, that that which begins with the flesh sensualises the spirit; whereas that which commences in the region of the spirit spiritualises the senses, in which it subsequently stirs emotion. That which begins in the heart ennobles the whole animal being; but that which begins in the inferior departments of our being is the most entire degradation and sensualising of the soul. The other point of difference is one of effect. Fulness of the Spirit calms; fulness produced by excitement satiates and exhausts. The crime of sense is avenged by sense which wears with time—the terrific punishment attached to the habitual indulgence of the senses is that the incitements to enjoyment increase in proportion as the power of enjoyment fades. We want the Spirit of the life of Christ, simple, natural, with power to calm and soothe the feelings which it rouses; the fulness of the Spirit which can never intoxicate!—F. W. Robertson.
Christian Mirth versus Drunken Mirth.—Carnal men seek the joys of life in revelry, but Christians must seek them in a higher inspiration—that of the Holy Ghost, whose fulness is the source of the blithest and most joyous life.
I. The mirth begotten of wine is the mother of all kinds of profligacy.
II. The mirth begotten of wine destroys men body and soul.
III. The fulness of the Holy Spirit produces a truly blithe and merry life.—In this life, with its many causes of depression, men need exhilaration, and the text points us to the only place where it is to be found without any alloy.—G. A. Bennetts, B.A.
What is your Heart filled with?
I. The heart of man must be full of something.
II. Those who are full of wine cannot be filled with the Spirit.
III. Those who are filled with the Spirit will not be full of wine.
IV. The joy that is kindled by fulness of wine is degrading while it lasts, and will soon expire.
V. The joy that is kindled by the fulness of the Spirit makes us like the angels, and it will never end.—Lay Preacher.
The Vice of Drunkenness.
I. The nature and extent of the sin.—The use of meat and drink is to support and comfort the body. Whatever is more than these is excess. The highest degree of intemperance is such an indulgence as suspends the exercise of the mental and bodily powers. If by the indulgence of your appetite you unfit your body for the service of your mind, or your mind for the service of God, so waste your substance as to defraud your family of a maintenance or your creditors of their dues, become enslaved to a sensual habit and fascinated to dissolute company, stupefy your conscience, extinguish the sentiments of honour and banish the thoughts of futurity, you are chargeable with criminal excess.
II. The guilt and danger which attend the vice.—
1. It is an ungrateful abuse of God’s bounty. 2 It divests the man of his native dignity and sinks him below the brutal herds.
3. Is injurious to the body as well as mind.
4. Consumes men’s substance.
5. Wastes a man’s conscience as well as his substance.
6. Intemperance generates other vices—impure lustings, angry passions, profane language, insolent manners, obstinacy of heart, and contempt of reproof.
7. Has most lamentable effects on families.
8. The Scripture abounds in solemn warnings against this sin.
9. This sin must be renounced, or the end of it will be death.—Lathrop.
Being filled with the Spirit.—
1. It supposes a sufficiency and fulness in the Spirit and His influences every way to fill our souls, to supply all our spiritual wants, and to help our infirmities.
2. It imports an actual participation of His influences and fruits in a large and plentiful measure.
(1) As men come to have every power and faculty of their souls more subject to the Spirit’s authority and under the influence proper to it.
(2) As they grow to experience His operations in all the several kinds of them.
(3) As His agency comes to be more stated and constant in them.
(4) As His grace becomes more mighty and operative in them, so as actually to produce its proper and genuine effects.
(5) As they taste such a sweetness and delight in the measure of participation attained that they reach forward with greater ardour toward perfection.
3. That every one should esteem the fulness of the Spirit a desirable thing.
(1) It puts us into a fit posture of mind for daily communion with God.
(2) Would settle our minds in the truest pleasure and peace.
4. That we should look upon it as an attainable good.
(1) From the Spirit’s own gracious benignity and His declared inclination to fill our souls.
(2) From the purchase and intercession of Christ.
(3) From the nature of the Spirit’s work in consequence of redemption.
(4) From the gospel being described as the ministration of the Spirit.
(5) From the declarations of God concerning the Spirit.
(6) From the instances of His grace already made in others.
(7) From the beginnings of His saving grace in themselves, good men may conclude the greatest heights attain able by them, if they be not wanting to themselves.—John Evans.
On being filled with the Spirit—
I. Implies that the Spirit has been largely given to the Church.
II. That as God has given the Spirit largely so He has been abundantly received.
III. Is to be possessed by His graces in all their variety.
IV. Is to be wholly guided by His influence and subject to His control.
V. Is to be the instrument of fulfilling His mission on earth.
VI. Is to have God as the only portion of the soul.—
1. The Spirit is God on the earth.
2. To be filled with the Spirit is to be fully occupied with God.—Stewart.