There is an exhortation in Ephesians that is a little startling from its very obviousness: “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth” (Eph. 4:2828Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth. (Ephesians 4:28)). We must remember that the early assemblies were formed of persons just brought out of heathenism, with all its abominations, and consisted in part of slaves, an oppressed and degraded class, among whom theft was practiced without scruple or shame. The exhortation too goes beyond open theft, and in principle condemns all taking of unfair advantage, such as even the fuller morality of our own day often but feebly condemns. But the interest of the exhortation lies rather in the motive than in the course of conduct enjoined. If believers had been under the law, a simple appeal to the eighth commandment of the ten commandments would have been enough. But we are not under the law, but under grace. What is the obligation then imposed by this position? Not only to do “the righteousness of the law,” but a great deal more. Did Christ stop with doing the righteousness of the law? On the contrary, He went far beyond it. The law requires that we should love our neighbor as ourselves, but it does not require us to lay down our lives for our neighbor. This, however, was what Christ did, and if the life of Christ is in us, “we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:1616Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. (1 John 3:16)). So extreme a sacrifice may indeed be rarely demanded, but the spirit of it may always be shown. Christ not only did not injure man, but “though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich” (2 Cor. 8:99For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9)). His whole life was one of self-sacrificing love. How beautifully this reappears in Paul, “I will very gladly spend and be spent for you” (2 Cor. 12:1515And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved. (2 Corinthians 12:15)). The Christian should walk in the same path, as he has the same life, not only refraining from stealing, or taking unfair advantage, but working to have the means of ministering “to him that needeth.”
This the Holy Spirit, by one of the simplest exhortations in Scripture — an exhortation which from its commonplace character might seem hardly worthy of a place in such an epistle — brings out one of the most striking differences between law and grace. Law simply prohibits evil; grace delights in doing good. Law is what God demands from man; grace is what God is in Himself. How sad, then, to see believers, who have been brought into liberty and associated with Christ, falling back into the lower class of motives and principles and putting themselves again in bondage under a system to which they are declared to be “dead by the body of Christ.” The whole “righteousness of the law” shone out in the ways of Christ, and it will shine out in the ways of one who is abiding in Christ. But how infinitely beyond law the grace revealed in every action of that perfect life! And this is what will appear, of course in a vastly inferior degree, but still as a real fruit of abiding in Him and walking in the power of the new life in which we are quickened together with Him.
Christian Friend, Vol. 6