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If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God.
Verse 1. Here begins the second or the moral part of this epistle.—If you be risen, and so forth The remaining part of this epistle has no great difficulties, but excellent instructions, as that to the Ephesians. Witham.
Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth.
For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ, our life, is revealed, then you will also be revealed with him in glory.
Put to death therefore your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, depraved passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
Verse 5. Your members, … fornication, uncleanness, and so forth He considers man’s body as made up of sins and sinful inclinations. Witham.—It is not to bring back Judaism we practise abstinences and fasts, nor with the same motive as the Jews, but to accomplish the precepts of mortifying the irregular desires of the flesh among which gluttony must find a place. In a mortified body sensuality is more easily subdued. A.
For these things’ sake the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience.
Verse 6. The children of unbelief are either those who perished in Noe’s flood, for Saint Peter in his epistle give them this title, or they are the inhabitants of Chanaan, whom Josue exterminated; for these also are called children of unbelief, in the epistle to the Hebrews, and their crimes were the same as those mentioned here. Calmet.
You also once walked in those, when you lived in them,
but now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and shameful speaking out of your mouth.
Verse 8. Blasphemy. [1] It may here signify either the sin of blasphemy against God, or speaking ill of our neighbour by detraction, calumnies, affronts, and so forth See Saint John Chrysostom Witham.—Now that you live in God, with Jesus Christ, quit not only the above shameful crimes, but also these sins, which, although they excite less horror, will separate you no less from the Author of all sanctity.
Don’t lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his doings,
and have put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his Creator,
Verse 10. According to the image of him who created him. We are created to the image of God, inasmuch as our souls are spiritual and immortal, but here we are put in mind to imitate God by sanctity and justice, as God is holy and the fountain of justice. Witham.—The image or resemblance of our Creator was effaced by sin, but is retraced by Jesus Christ, who forms in us this new man. V.
where there can’t be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondservant, or free person; but Christ is all, and in all.
Verse 11. Where, or in which state, when we put on the new man by sanctity and grace, God makes no distinction betwixt Jew and Gentile, and so forth Witham.—In the Church of Christ God makes no exception of persons; all are called to the marriage feast, whether Jews (formerly the most favoured people of God) or Greeks, (who were reckoned the most polite, or learned) or Barbarians, or Scythians: (who are esteemed the most cruel and ferocious of men) still these are called; Christ died for all. Calmet.—In Saint Paul’s epistles, by the Greeks are usually designated the Gentiles. V.