Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Colossians 3:5 - 3:5
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Col_3:5.[142] Οὖν ] draws the inference from Col_3:3-4, in order now to lead to that which must be done with a view to the carrying out of the μὴ τὰ ἐπὶ τ . γῆς . The inference itself is: “Since, according to Col_3:3-4, ye are dead, but have your life hidden with Christ in God and are destined to be glorified with Christ, it would be in contradiction of all this, according to which ye belong no longer to the earth but to the heavenly state of life, to permit your earthly members still to live; no, ye are to put them to death, to make them die” (Rom_4:19; Heb_11:12; Plut. Mor. p. 954 D)!
νεκρώσατε ] prefixed with emphasis as the point of the inference; the term is selected in significant reference to ἀπεθάνετε and ἡ ζωὴ ὑμῶν , Col_3:3-4.
τὰ μέλη ὑμῶν ] means nothing else, and is not to be explained otherwise than: your members (hand, foot, eye, etc.). That these were not to be put to death in the physical sense, but in an ethical respect (comp. Col_2:11)—seeing, namely, that they, as the seat and organs of sinful lusts (Rom_7:23), which they still are even in the case of the regenerate (Gal_5:17; Gal_5:24), are to lose their vigour of life and activity through the Christian moral will governed by the Holy Spirit, and in so far to experience ethical deadening (comp. Rom_7:5; Rom_7:23; Rom_8:13, and the analogous representation by Jesus as to plucking out the eye, etc., Mat_5:29 f., Mat_18:8 f.; comp. also Mat_19:12)—was self-evident to the reader, as it was, moreover, placed beyond doubt by the following appositions πορνείαν κ . τ . λ . Hence there was neither ground nor warrant in the context to assume already here (see Col_3:9) the conception of the old man, whose desires are regarded as members (Beza, Flacius, Calvin, Estius, Cornelius a Lapide, Calovius, and others, including Böhmer, Olshausen, and Bleek), although the required putting to death presupposes that the old man is still partially alive. Nor is sin itself, according to its totality, to be thought of as body and its individual parts as members (Hilary, Grotius, Bengel, Bähr, and others; comp. also Julius Müller, v. d. Sünde, I. p. 461, ed. 5, and Flatt),—a conception which does not obtain even in Col_2:11 and Rom_6:6, and which is inadmissible here on account of ὑμῶν . The view of Steiger, finally, is erroneous (comp. Baumgarten-Crusius), that the entire human existence is conceived as σῶμα . We may add that the νέκρωσις of the members, etc., is not inconsistent with the death ( ἀπεθάνετε , Col_3:3) already accomplished through conversion to Christ, but is required by the latter as the necessary, ever new act of the corresponding morality, with which faith lives and works.[143] And in view of the ideal character of this obligation the command νεκρώσατε κ . τ . λ .—this requirement, which is ever repeating itself, of the ethical mortificatio—is never superfluous.
τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ] which are upon the earth, corresponds to the τὰ ἐπὶ τ . γ . in Col_3:2; in contrast, not to the glorified human nature of Christ (Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, I. p. 560), but to the life hidden with Christ in God. In this antithetical addition is involved an element which justifies the requirement νεκρώσατε τ . μ . ὑμ ., not expressing the activity of the μέλη for what is sinful (de Wette, comp. Flatt and others, in connection with which Grotius would even supply τὰ φρονοῦντα from Col_3:2), which the simple words do not affirm, but: that the μέλη , as existing upon earth, have nothing in common with the life which exists in heaven, that their life is of another kind and must not be spared to the prejudice of that heavenly ζωή ! Comp. also Hofmann’s present view. The context does not even yield a contrast of heavenly members (Huther), i.e. of a life of activity for what is heavenly pervading the members, or of the members of the new man (Julius Müller), since the ζωή is not to be understood in the sense of the spiritual, ethical life.
πορνείαν κ . τ . λ .] Since Paul would not have the members slain as such absolutely and unreservedly, but only as regards their ethical side, namely, the sinful nature which dwells and works in them (Rom_7:23), he now subjoins detailed instances of this sinful nature, and that with a bold but not readily misunderstood directness of expression appositionally, so that they appear as the forms of immorality cleaving to the members, with respect to which the very members are to be put to death. In these forms of immorality, which constitute no such heterogeneous apposition to τὰ μέλη ὑμ . as Holtzmann thinks, the life of the μέλη , which is to be put to death, is represented by its parts. Paul might have said: λέγω δὲ πορνείαν ; but by annexing it directly, he gave to his expression the form of a distributive apposition (see Kühner, II. 1, p. 247), more terse and more compact after the σχῆμα καθʼ ὅλον καὶ μέρος . It is neither a sudden leap of thought nor a metonymy.
ἀκαθαρσ .] in reference to lustful uncleanness; comp. on Rom_1:24; Gal_5:19; 2Co_12:21; Eph_4:19; Eph_5:3. Paul gives, namely, from πορν . to κακήν , four forms of the first Gentile fundamental vice, unchastity, beginning with the special ( πορνείαν ), and becoming more and more general as he proceeds. Hence follows: πάθος , passion (the ἡττᾶσθαι ὑπὸ τῆς ἡδονῆς , Plat. Prot. p. 352 A; Dem. 805. 14; Arist. Eth. ii. 4), heat; Rom_1:26; 1Th_4:5; and Lünemann in loc. Comp. also Plat. Phaed. p. 265 B: τὸ ἐρωτικὸν πάθος , Phaedr. p. 252 C. And finally: ἐπιθυμ . κακήν (Plat. Legg. ix. p. 854 A), evil desire, referring to unchaste longing. Comp. Mat_5:28; Breitenbach, ad Xen. Hier. 6. 2. Unnatural unchastity (Rom_1:26 f.; 1Co_6:9) is included in ἀκαθ ., παθ ., and ἐπιθ . κακ ., but is not expressly denoted (Erasmus, Calovius, Heinrichs, Flatt, Böhmer) by πάθος (comp pathici, Catullus, xvi. 2; παθικεύεσθαι , Nicarch. in Anth. xi. 73), a meaning which neither admits of linguistic proof, nor is, considering the general character of the adjoining terms ( ἀκαθαρσ . ἐπιθ . κακ .), in keeping with the context. ἐπιθ . κακ . is to be distinguished from πάθος as the more general conception; the πάθος is always also ἐπιθυμία and relatively ἐπιθ . κακή , but not the converse, since a ἡγεῖσθαι or κρατεῖν τῆς ἐπιθυμίας may also take place.
κ . τὴν πλεονεξίαν ] After the vice of uncleanness comes now the second chief vice of the Gentiles (comp. on Eph_4:19): covetousness. Hence the connection here by means of καί , which is not even, but (in opposition to Hofmann) the simple and, and the article, which introduces the new category with the description of its disgraceful character,[144] associating this descriptive character as a special stigma with the vice of πλεονεξία . In opposition to the erroneous interpretations: insatiable lust (Estius, Michaelis), or: the gains of prostitution (Storr, Flatt, Bähr), see on Eph. l.c., and Huther. The πλεονεξία is not separated by the article from the appositional definitions of the μέλη , and co-ordinated with τὰ μέλη , so that the latter would only be “the members which minister to unchaste lust” (Huther); for ΤᾺ ΜΈΛΗ ὙΜ . can only denote the members generally, the collective members; and ἘΝ ΤΟῖς ΜΈΛΕΣΙΝ (Rom_7:5; Rom_7:23) understood generically, and not as referring to particular individual members, sin is operating with all its lusts, as, in accordance with this ethical mode of viewing the matter, the collective members form the σῶμα τῆς σαρκός of Col_2:11. Bengel remarks aptly that the article indicates totum genus vitii a genere commemoratarum modo specierum diversum.
ἥτις ἐστὶν εἰδωλολατρ .] quippe quae est, etc., further supports the νεκρώσατε specially in reference to this vice, which, as the idolatry of money and possessions, is κατʼ ἐξοχήν of a heathen nature. It has been well said by Theodoret: ἐπειδὴ τὸ μαμωνᾶ κύριον ὁ σωτὴρ προσηγόρενσε , διδάσκων , ὡς ὁ τῷ πάθει τῆς πλεονεξίας δουλεύων ὡς Θεὸν τὸν πλοῦτον τιμᾶ . In 1Co_5:11, the ΕἸΔΩΛΟΛΑΤΡ . is to be taken differently (in opposition to Holtzmann). Moreover, see on Eph_5:5. Observe, further, that the addition of the ΠΛΕΟΝΕΞΊΑ to unchastity (comp. 1Co_5:11) can afford no ground for supposing that the author of the Ephesians borrowed this combination from 1Th_2:3, and that it was taken into our present Epistle from that to the Ephesians (Holtzmann). Comp. also 1Co_6:9 f.
[142] In the section vv. 5–17, in which Hönig, in relation to Eph_4:1-5; Eph_4:20, finds the stamp of originality, Holtzmann discovers the concentrating labour of the interpolator, whose second (and better) effort is the passage in Colossians.
[143] Chrysostom illustrates the relation by comparing the converted person to a cleansed and brightened statue, which, however, needs to be afterwards cleansed afresh from new accretions of rust and dirt.
[144] Looking to the so closely marked twofold division of the vices adduced, it is inconsistent with the text to take, with Hofmann, the three elements, ἀκαθαρσ ., πάθος , and ἐπιθυμ . κακ ., in such a general sense as to make ἀκαθαρσία mean every “action which mars the creaturely honour (?) of man,” πάθος , the passion which enslaves through excitement of the blood, and ἐπιθυμία κακή , all evil desire, which is, as such, a morbid excitement of the blood. The excitement of the blood, thus sanguinely enough invented without any hint whatever from the text, is then held to convert the second and third elements into cases in which one sins against his own body,—a characteristic point, which Paul has not in view at all in connection with the apposition to τὰ μέλη κ . τ . λ ., as is plain from the appended κ . τ . πλεονεξίαν belonging to the same apposition.