The “good-for-nothing speech” of chapter iv. 29 comes up once more for condemnation in the foolish speech and jesting of this passage. The former is the idle talk of a stupid, the latter of a clever man. Both, under the conditions of heathen society, were tainted with foulness. Loose speech easily becomes low speech. Wit, unchastened by reverence, finds a tempting field for its exercise in the delicate relations of life, and displays its skill in veiled indecencies and jests that desecrate the purer feelings, while they avoid open grossness.
St Paul’s word for “jesting” is one of the singular terms of this epistle. By etymology it denotes a well-turned style of expression, the versatile speech of one who can touch lightly on many themes and aptly blend the grave and gay. This social gift was prized amongst the polished Greeks. But it was a faculty so commonly abused, that the word describing it fell into bad odour: it came to signify banter and persiflage; and then, still worse, the kind of talk here indicated,—the wit whose zest lies in its flavour of impurity. “The very profligate old man in the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus (iii. I. 42–52), who prides himself, and not without reason, upon his wit, his elegance and refinement [cavillator lepidus, facetus], is exactly the εὐτράπελος. And keeping in mind that εὐτραπελία, being only once expressly and by name forbidden in Scripture, is forbidden to Ephesians, it is not a little notable to find him urging that all this was to be expected from him, being as he was an Ephesian by birth:—
Post Ephesi sum natus; non enim in Apulia, non Animulæ.”[130]
In place of senseless prating and wanton jests—things unbefitting to a rational creature, much more to a saint—the Asian Greeks are to find in thanksgiving employment for their ready tongue. St Paul’s rule is not one of mere prohibition. The versatile tongue that disported itself in unhallowed and frivolous utterance, may be turned into a precious instrument for God’s service. Let the fire of Divine love touch the jester’s lips, and that mouth will show forth His praise which once poured out dishonour to its Maker and shame to His image in man.
7. At the end of the Ephesian catalogue of vices, as at the beginning (iv. 19), uncleanness is joined with covetousness, or greed.
This, too, is “not even to be named amongst you, as becometh saints.” Money! property! these are the words dearest and most familiar in the mouths of a large class of men of the world, the only themes on which they speak with lively interest. But Christian lips are cleansed from the service both of Belial and of Mammon. When his business follows the trader from the shop to the fireside and the social circle, and even into the Church, when it becomes the staple subject of his conversation, it is clear that he has fallen into the low vice of covetousness. He is becoming, instead of a man, a money-making machine, an “idolater” of
“Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell
From heaven.”
The apostle classes the covetous man with the fornicator and the unclean, amongst those who by their worship of the shameful idols of the god of this world exclude themselves from their “inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.”
A serious warning this for all who handle the world’s wealth. They have a perilous war to wage, and an enemy who lurks for them at every step in their path. Will they prove themselves masters of their business, or its slaves? Will they escape the golden leprosy,—the passion for accumulation, the lust of property? None are found more dead to the claims of humanity and kindred, none further from the kingdom of Christ and God, none more “closely wrapped” within their “sensual fleece” than rich men who have prospered by the idolatry of gain. Dives has chosen and won his kingdom. He “receives in his lifetime his good things”; afterwards he must look for “torments.”