Ver. 17. +United imitators of me become ye, brethren+; taking me, your long-known guide in the Lord, for your moral pattern, and strengthening your mutual cohesion (_summimetai_) by so doing (an appeal prompted not by egotism or self-confidence, but by single-hearted certainty about my message and my purpose); +and mark+, watch, in order to tread in their steps,[1] +those who so walk as you have us+, me and my missionary-brethren, +for a model+; those whose practical conduct in human life and intercourse (_peripatein_), seen among you day by day in its wholesomeness and truth, plainly reproduces what you remember of ours. There is need for this attention, and for this
Ver. 18. discrimination. +For there are many men walking+, pursuing a line of conduct and practice, +whom I often used to tell you of+, in the days of our direct intercourse, +but+ (_de_) +now tell you of actually+ (_kai_) +with cries and tears+ (_klaion_), (so much has the evil grown, in extent and in depth, so awfully apparent are its issues, for this world and the world to come,) +as the enemies+, _the_ personal enemies (_tous echthrous_), as if in a bad pre-eminence, +of the Cross of our+ (_tou_) +Christ+, that Cross of whose virtues they can say much, but whose power upon the soul they utterly ignore; +of+
Ver. 19. +whom the end is perdition+, ruin of the whole being,[2] final and hopeless; +of whom the god is the belly+, (the sensual appetites, the body's degradation, not its function,) while they claim an exalted and special intimacy with the Supreme; +and their+ (_he_) +glory+, their boast to see deeper and to soar higher than others, +is in their shame; men whose mind is for+ (_phronouten_) +the things on earth+, not, as they dream, or as at least they say, for the things of an upper and super-corporeal world. No; their subtle doctrine of spirit and body--what is it when tested in its issues? It is but a philosophy of sin; a gossamer robe over the self-indulgence which has come to be the real interest of the theorist, the real occupation of his will. All is really, with them, of the earth, earthy. Far other is the doctrine we have learned, and have striven to exemplify, at the feet of Christ.
Ver. 20. For our city-home, the seat of our citizenship, and of the conduct which it demands and inspires,[3] +subsists in the heavens+, is always there, an antecedent and abiding fact (_huparchei_), on which we are to act in life; in that heavenly world, where the Lord is, and for which He is training us; the eternal Country of this eternal City and Home; +out of which+ (city)[4] +we are actually+ (_kai_) +waiting for, as our Saviour+, in the full and final sense, the +Lord Jesus Christ, who will+
Ver. 21. +transfigure+--not annihilate, not cast away as essentially evil, but wonderfully change in its conditions, and so in its guise, in its semblance (_schema_)--+the body of our humiliation+, this body, now inseparably connected with the burthens and abasements of our mortality, _humbling_ us continually in the course of its necessities, and of its sufferings, but not therefore, in its essence, other than God's good handiwork; +to be conformed+, with a resemblance based on an essential assimilation (_summorphon_, _morphe_), +to the body of His glory+, as He resumed His blessed Body when He rose, and as He wears it now upon the Throne, and in it manifests Himself to the happy ones in their bliss; +according to+, in ways and measures conditioned only by, +the forth-putting+ (_energeia_) +of His ability actually to subdue to Himself all things that are+ (_ta panta_).
So the great passage, the pregnant chapter, ends. As it began so it closes--with Jesus Christ. With Him His servant can never have done; "Him first, Him midst, Him last, and without end." Jesus Christ is the present joy, and the everlasting hope. His perfected righteousness is the believer's actual deep safety and repose. His unsearchable riches of personal grace and glory are the constant animation and ever-rising standard of the believer's spiritual progress. He is the eternal Antidote to our fears, and also to our sins. He is the infinite Contradiction to the least compromise, under any pretext, with evil; and He is this, among other ways, by being Himself "that blessed Hope"; "the Lord Jesus Christ, which is our Hope" (1 Tim. i. 1); so that the prospect of His Return, and of what He will do for us, and for Himself (_eauto_), when He returns, is to be our mighty motive in the matter of practical, aye of bodily, cleanness and holiness of life.