CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.
Ver. 1. Followers of God.—R.V. imitators. St. Paul gathers up all duties into one expression, “imitation of God,” and urges them on his readers by a reminder of their high birth laying them under obligation, and rendering their copying easier.
Ver. 2. Walk in love.—“Love must fulfil all righteousness; it must suffer law to mark out its path of obedience, or it remans an effusive, ineffectual sentiment, helpless to bless and save.”
Ver. 3. Let it not be once named.—After the things themselves are dead let their names never be heard.
Ver. 4. Nor jesting.—“Chastened insolence,” as Aristotle’s description of it has been happily rendered. “Graceless grace” [of style], as Chrysostom called it. It is the oozing out of the essential badness of a man for whom polish and a versatile nature have done all they can.
Vers. 5, 6. Because of these things cometh the wrath of God, etc.—Look down beneath the pleasing manners to the nature. If such terms as are used in ver. 5 describe the man, he is simply one of Disobedience’s children, and all his versatility will not avert the descending wrath of God.
Ver. 7. Be not ye therefore partakers with them.—Do not wish to share the frivolity and impiety of their life, as you would shun the wrath that inevitably awaits it. How could they so partake and continue to be what ch. iii. 6 calls them?
Ver. 8. Ye were . . . ye are . . . be.—The lesson must be learnt, and therefore reiteration is necessary.
Ver. 9. For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.—Neither here nor at Gal. v. 22 does St. Paul intend a complete list of the fruits of the Spirit. St. John’s tree of life bore “twelve manner of fruits” (Rev. xxii.2). All Christian morality lies in the good, the right, and the true.
Ver 10. Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.—Each is to be an assayer—rejecting all base alloys. Nothing must be accepted because it looks like an angel of light—“the spirits” must be put to the proof (1 John iv. 1).