=En kainotêti zôês peripatêsômen.=--ROM. vi. 4.
"This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness."--EPH. iv. 17-19.
Christ has called into existence and formed around Him already a new world. Those who are members of His body, are brought into another order of being from that to which they had formerly belonged. They have therefore to walk in quite another way--"no longer as the Gentiles." St Paul does not say "as the other Gentiles" (A.V.); for his readers, though Gentiles by birth (ii. 11), are now of the household of faith and the city of God. They hold the franchise of the "commonwealth of Israel." As at a later time the apostle John in his Gospel, though a born Jew, yet from the standpoint of the new Israel writes of "the Jews" as a distant and alien people, so St Paul distinguishes his readers from "the Gentiles" who were their natural kindred.
When he "testifies," with a pointed emphasis, "that _you_ no longer walk as do indeed the Gentiles," and when in verse 20 he exclaims, "But _you_ did not thus learn the Christ," it appears that there were those bearing Christ's name and professing to have learnt of Him who did thus walk. This, indeed, he expressly asserts in writing to the Philippians (ch. iii. 18, 19): "Many walk, of whom I told you oftentimes, and now tell you even weeping,--the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose god is their belly, and their glory in their shame, who mind earthly things." We cannot but associate this warning with the apprehension expressed in verse 14 above. The reckless and unscrupulous teachers against whose seductions the apostle guards the infant Churches of Asia Minor, tampered with the morals as well as with the faith of their disciples, and were drawing them back insidiously to their former habits of life.[112]
The connexion between the foregoing part of this chapter and that on which we now enter, lies in the relation of the new life of the Christian believer to the new community which he has entered. The old world of Gentile society had formed the "old man" as he then existed, the product of centuries of debasing idolatry. But in Christ that world is abolished, and a "new man" is born. The world in which the Asian Christians once lived as "Gentiles in the flesh," is dead to them.[113] They are partakers of the regenerate humanity constituted in Jesus Christ. From this idea the apostle deduces the ethical doctrine of the following paragraphs. His ideal "new man" is no mere ego, devoted to his personal perfection; he is part and parcel of the redeemed society of men; his virtues are those of a member of the Christian order and commonwealth.
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The representation given of Gentile life in the three verses before us is highly condensed and pungent. It is from the same hand as the lurid picture of Romans i. 18-32. While this delineation is comparatively brief and cursory, it carries the analysis in some respects deeper than does that memorable passage. We may distinguish the main features of the description, as they bring into view in turn the _mental_, _spiritual_, and _moral_ characteristics of the existing Paganism. Man's intellect was confounded; religion was dead; profligacy was flagrant and shameless.
I. "The Gentiles walk," the apostle says, "in _vanity of their mind_"--with reason frustrate and impotent; "being _darkened in their understanding_"--with no clear or settled principles, no sound theory of life. Similarly, he wrote in Romans i. 21: "They were frustrated in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened." But here he seems to trace the futility further back, beneath the "reasonings" to the "reason" (_nous_) itself. The Gentile mind was deranged at its foundation. Reason seemed to have suffered a paralysis. Man has forfeited his claim to be a rational creature, when he worships objects so degraded as the heathen gods, when he practises vices so detestable and ruinous.