Ephesians 5:12

even to speak See above on "not once named", Ephesians 5:12. Perhaps the suggestion here is that the "reproof" of Ephesians 5:11 was to come more through a holy life, and less through condemnatory words. Not that such should never be used; but that they are weak reproofs compared with those issuing from a life of unmistakable holiness brought into contact with the unholy.

The verse was terribly in point at the time, as every reader of ancient literature knows. Is it much less in point to-day, in the midst of our nominal Christendom? Neither, then, is Ephesians 5:11.