The life and work of St. Paul

644 THE UFE AND WORK OP ST. PAUL.
members of one another. 1 Let not just anger degenerate into chronic ex-
asperation, neither give room to the devil. Let honest work, earning sufficient
oven for charity, replace thievishness. For corruption of speech 2 let there be
such as is " good for edification of the need 8 that it may give grace to the
hearers," since unwholesome impurity is a chronic grief to that Holy Spirit
who has sealed you as His own to the day of redemption. Then, returning to
his main subject of unity, he says .
" Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing be put away
from you with all malice, and become kind to one another, compassionate, freely
forgiving one another, as God also in Christ* freely forgave you. Become, then,
imitators of God as children beloved, and walk in love, even as Christ loved us aud
gave Himself for us an offering and sacrifice to God for a savour of sweet smell." 9
Then, proceeding to other practical duties, he forbids every form of im-
purity or obscenity, in word or deed, with the worldly polish 6 which was oftea
nearly akin to it, since they are unsuitable to the Christian character, and they
who are addicted to such things have no inheritance in the kingdom of God,
and whatever men may say, such things are the 7
abiding source of God's wrath.
Let thanksgiving take the place of indecency of speech. For though they
were darkness, they are now light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.
8 For the fruit of light is in all goodness, and righteousness, and truth. Light
is the 9
prevalent conception here, as love was in the last chapter. Let them
not participate in the unfruitful infamies of secret darkness, "but rather
even convict them, for all things on being convicted are illumined by the light,
for all that is being illumined is light." 1* And this is the spirit of what is
perhaps a Christian hymn :
1 The necessity of the following moral exhortations will excite no astonishment in the
minds of those who have studied the Epistle to the Corinthians, or who have sufficient
of the human heart to be aware that the evil habits of a heathen lifetime
knowledge
were not likely to be cured in all converts by a moment of awakeument, or by an
acceptance of Christian truths, which in many cases may have been mainly intellectual.
2
iv. 29, o-ojrobj, "rotten" (Matt. vii. 17), the opposite of vyii^, "sound," in 2 Tim.
L 13, &c., and seasoned with salt," CoL iv. 6.
3 Not "for the use of edification," as in B.V., but for such edification as the occasion
requires.
* iv. 32, Iv Xf>t