St Paul applies here the words of Zechariah viii. 16, in which the prophet promises to restored Israel better days on the condition that they should "speak truth each with his neighbour, and judge truth and the judgement of peace in their gates. And let none of you," he continues, "imagine evil in his heart against his neighbour; and love no false oath. For all these things do I hate, saith the Lord." Such is the law of the New Covenant life. No doubt, St Paul is thinking of the intercourse of Christians with each other when he quotes this command and adds the reason, "For we are _members one of another_." But the word _neighbour_, as Jesus showed, has in the Christian vocabulary no limited import; it includes the Samaritan, the heathen man and publican. When the apostle bids his converts "Follow what is good towards one another, and towards all" (1 Thess. v. 15), he certainly presumes the neighbourly obligation of truthfulness to be no less comprehensive.
Believers in Christ represent a communion which in principle embraces all men. The human race is one family in Christ. For any man to lie to his fellow is, virtually, to lie to himself. It is as if the eye should conspire to cheat the hand, or the one hand play false to the other. Truth is the right which each man claims instinctively from his neighbour; it is the tacit compact that binds together all intelligences. Without neighbourly and brotherly love perfect truthfulness is scarcely possible. "Self-respect will never destroy self-seeking, which will always find in self-interest a side accessible to the temptations of falsehood" (Harless).
2. Like the first precept, the second is borrowed from the Old Testament and shaped to the uses of the New. "_Be ye angry_, and sin not": so the words of Psalm iv. 4 stand in the Greek version and in the margin of our Revised Bible, where we commonly read, "Stand in awe, and sin not. Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still." The apostle's further injunction, that anger should be stayed before nightfall, accords with the Psalmist's words; the calming effect of the night's quiet the apostle anticipates in the approach of evening. As the day's heat cools and its strain is relaxed, the fires of anger should die down. With the Jews, it will be remembered, the new day began at evening. Plutarch, the excellent heathen moralist contemporary with St Paul, gives this as an ancient rule of the Pythagoreans: "If at any time they happened to be provoked by anger to abusive language, before the sun set they would take each other's hands and embracing make up their quarrel." If Paul had heard of this admirable prescription, he would be delighted to recognize and quote it as one of those many facts of Gentile life which "show the work of the law written in their hearts" (Rom. ii. 15). The passion which outlives the day, on which the angry man sleeps and that wakes with him in the morning, takes root in his breast; it becomes a settled rancour, prompting ill thoughts and deeds.
There is no surer way of tempting the devil to tempt us than to brood over our wrongs. Every cherished grudge is a "place given" to the tempter, a new entrenchment for the Evil One in his war against the soul, from which he may shoot his "fire-tipped darts" (vi. 16). Let us dismiss with each day the day's vexations, commending as evening falls our cares and griefs to the Divine compassion and seeking, as for ourselves, so for those who may have done us wrong forgiveness and a better mind. We shall rise with the coming light armed with new patience and charity, to bring into the world's turmoil a calm and generous wisdom that will earn for us the blessing of the peacemakers, who shall be called sons of God.