Eadie, John: A Commentary on the Greek Text of the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians. Eadie, John: A Commentary on the Greek Text of the Epistle of Paul to the Philippians. Eadie, John: A Commentary on the Greek Text of the Epistle of Paul to the Colossians.
I shall confine this introduction to an account of the several epistles treated in the present volume. No one of Paul’s epistles is so dependent for its just effect upon the perception of the relation of its parts to the whole. The key-note of the epistle is struck in two correlated thoughts — the supreme headship of Christ, and the union of believers as one body in and with Him.
Many of the same questions emerge in the social and church-life of modern times. No epistle of the New Testament, therefore, should be more carefully studied by the modern pastor.
THE EPISTLES OF THE IMPRISONMENT
Hence the prayer that the operation of the Spirit may appear in the bestowment of wisdom and revelation (compare 1:8), and of quickened spiritual discernment; so that believers may recognize the divine call, and experience the hope which it engenders, the riches of the inheritance which it assures (compare 1:11), and the efficiency of the divine power which is exhibited and pledged to them in the resurrection and exaltation of Christ (1:15-22). The inclusion of the Gentiles in the divine covenant is a mystery of which Paul has been made the minister. The prayer (3:14-21) includes the points already touched — the universal fatherhood of God; the sonship of Christ; the work of the Spirit in.
In the thought that the purpose of these gifts is the edifying of the body of Christ, the theme — the Church — is again sounded. The Essenes combined the ritualism of the Jew with the asceticism and mysticism of the Gnostic. Their gnosis — the pretended higher, esoteric wisdom — is met with the assertion of the Gospel as the true wisdom, the common.
On the one hand, Christ is supreme in the creation and administration of the world (1:15-17). The Christology of the epistle is that of the earlier epistles, only more fully developed.
PAUL’S MISSIONARY JOURNEYS
V. Authorized Version
EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS
The great, impersonal authority called ‘the Laws’ stands out separately, both as guide and sanction, distinct from religious duty or private sympathy” (Grote). It is to be distinguished from filarguri>a, rendered love of money, 1 Timothy 6:10, and its kindred adjective fila>rgurov, which A.V. The distinction is expressed by covetousness and avarice. Trench remarks: “The fitness of this image is attested by the frequency with which, on the other hand, a state of joy is expressed in the Psalms and elsewhere, as a bringing into a large room,”.
Cremer correctly says that “the article is usually wanting when the stress is laid, not upon the historical impress and outward form of the law, but upon the conception itself;” or, as Bishop Lightfoot, “law considered as a principle, exemplified no doubt chiefly and signally in the Mosaic law, but very much wider than this in its application.”. It may be the wrath, definitely conceived as judicial, or, more probably, as in Matthew 3:7, referring to something recognized — the wrath to come, the well-understood need of. Let him be liable to pay double to the injured party.” Id., 879, “The freeman who conspired with the slave shall be liable to be made a slave.” The rendering brought under judgment regards God as the judge; but He is rather to be regarded as the injured party.
So Thucydides, iv., 122: “The truth concerning the revolt was rather as the Athenians, judged the case to be.” Again, it occurs simply in the sense to judge. The passage has given much trouble to expositors, largely, I think, through their insisting on the sense of forbearance with reference to sins — the toleration or refraining from punishment of sins done aforetime. It cannot be said that God passed over the sins of the world before Christ without penalty, for that is plainly contradicted by Romans 1:18-32; but He did pass them over in the sense that He did not apply, but held back the redeeming agency of God manifest in the flesh until the “fullness of time.” The sacrifices were a homage rendered to God’s righteousness, but they did not touch sin with the power and depth which attached to Christ’s sacrifice.
So Wordsworth: “The Jews are justified out of (ejk) the faith which their father Abraham had, and which they are supposed to have in him The Gentiles must enter that door and pass through it in order to be justified.” Compare Ephesians 2:17. So Plato: “The man of understanding will not suffer himself to be dazzled by the congratulation (makarismou~) of the multitude (“Republic,” ix., 591). The article is omitted with righteous, and supplied with good — the good man, pointing to such a case as a rare and special exception.
Compare Colossians 3:5, where members is expounded by fornication, uncleanness, etc., the physical being a symbol of the moral, of which it is the instrument. Agiasmo>v is used in the New Testament both of a process — the inauguration and maintenance of the life of fellowship with God, and of the resultant state of sanctification. As in the Old Testament, “it embraces in an emphatic manner the nature of man, mental and corporeal, with its internal distinctions.” The spirit as well as the flesh is capable of defilement (2 Corinthians 7:1; compare 1 Corinthians 7:34).
Thus, Horace: “The human race, presumptuous to endure all things, rushes on through forbidden wickedness” (Ode, i., 3, 25). It is “the faculty of moral judgment which perceives and approves what is good, but has not the power of practically controlling the life in.
PAULINE USAGE
The pneu~ma of the apostle is not the life-breath of man as originally. The concurrent testimony of his declaration and of conscience was “the echo of the voice of God’s Holy Spirit”. Omit those things, and read for ejn aujtoi~v by them, ejn aujth|~ by it, i.e., the righteousness which is of the law.
Thucydides (1. 9) says: “Homer, in ‘The handing down of the sceptre,’ said,” etc.; i.e., in the passage describing the transmission of the sceptre in the second book of the Iliad. The feminine article is used with the name instead of the masculine (as in Septuagint in this passage). Meyer says: “The ingrafting of the Gentiles took place at first only partially and in single instances;.
Of the root and fatness (th~v rJi>zhv kai< th~v pio>thtov). Meyer says: “The subject-matter did not require the figure of the ordinary grafting, but the converse — the grafting of the wild scion and its ennoblement thereby. Alford styles this doxology “the sublimest apostrophe existing even in the pages of inspiration itself.”.
NOTE
PAUL’S ARGUMENT IN ROMANS 9, 10 AND 11
The Jew had no doubts as to the absoluteness of the divine sovereignty, since its fancied application flattered his self-complacency and national pride. Again, God is vindicated against the charge of injustice by His declaration of the same principle applied to the matter of withholding mercy in the case of Pharaoh. If he had yielded, he would have been a co-worker with God in the evolution of the Jewish commonwealth.
Paul is not dealing with the objector’s logic, but with the sublime impudence of the objector himself. He is not vindicating God against the charge, nor exposing the falsity of the charge itself. This idea is further carried out by the figure of the potter and the clay.
He “will have all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth;”. This could easily be shown from the case of the Israelites them selves and of Pharaoh. Here He introduces the subject of the inclusion of the Gentiles in the messianic kingdom.
Paul now turns to the facts of human agency, moral freedom, and consequent responsibility, which, up to this point, have been kept in the shadow of the truth of divine sovereignty. 64 Had Israel any reason to be surprised at the universality of the Gospel — its proclamation to the Gentiles. Reasonable, not in the popular sense of the term, as a thing befitting or proper, but rational, as distinguished from merely external or material.
Of service in general, including all forms of christian ministration tending to the good of the christian body (1 Corinthians 12:5; Ephesians 4:13; 2 Timothy 4:11). It is not used of the specific office of a deacon; but the kindred word dia>konov occurs in that sense (Philippians 1:1; 1 Timothy 3:8, 12). Septuagint: And thou shalt find favor and devise excellent things in the sight of the Lord and of men.
