Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Ephesians 4:30

καὶ μὴ λυπεῖτε τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον τοῦ Θεοῦ : and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God. This is not a general exhortation, but one bearing, as the καί indicates, particularly on the preceding injunction. The utterance of evil or worthless words is repugnant to the holiness of the Spirit, and is to be refrained from as calculated to grieve Him. The injunction is made the more solemn by the designation of the Spirit as “the Holy Spirit” and the Spirit “of God”. The Spirit is here regarded as capable of feeling, and so as personal. In Isaiah 63:10 we have a similar idea, following the statement that Jehovah was afflicted in all His people's affliction. These terms, no doubt, are anthropopathic, as all terms which we can use of God are anthropomorphic or anthropopathic. But they have reality behind them, and that as regards God's nature and not merely His acts. Otherwise we should have an unknown God and One who might be essentially different from what we are under the mental necessity of thinking Him to be. What love is in us points truly, though tremulously, to what love is in God. But in us love, in proportion as it is true and sovereign, has both its wrath-side and its grief-side; and so must it be with God, however difficult for us to think it out. ἐν ᾧ ἐσφραγίσθητε : in whom ye were sealed. ἐν ᾧ, not “by whom” (Tynd., Cranm., Gen., Bish.), or “whereby” (AV), but “ in whom,” the Holy Spirit being the environment of the seal, the sphere or element in which it takes effect. On the sealing see on Ephesians 1:13 above. εἰς ἡμέραν ἀπολυτρώσεως : unto the day of redemption. εἰς is most simply taken as = with a view to. ἀπολύτρωσις, as in Ephesians 1:14; Luke 21:28; Romans 8:23, is the redemption of the future, and here specifically that redemption in its completeness and finality. The gen. is the gen. of temporal relation, = the day on which redemption will take effect, or manifest itself; cf. ἡμέρα ὀργῆς (Romans 2:2); κρίσις μεγάλης ἡμέρας (Jude 1:6). The consideration, therefore, that it is in the Spirit they have their security and their assurance of reaching the day when their redemption shall be made perfect, is an additional reason for avoiding everything out of harmony with His holy being and action.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Ephesians 4:30

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