Ephesians Chapter 5 verse 5 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 5. - For this ye know well; an appeal to their own consciences, made confidently, as beyond all doubt. That no fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom. Covetousness, the twin-brother sin of uncleanness, is denounced as idolatry. It is worshipping the creature more than the Creator, depending on vast stores of earthly substance in place of the favor and blessing of God. It must receive the doom of the idolater; instead of inheriting the kingdom, he must die the death. The doom in this verse is not future, but present - not shall have, but hath, inheritance, etc. (comp. Ephesians 1:11, 18). The lust of greed overreaches itself; it loses all that is truly worth having; it may have this and that - lands, houses, and goods - but it has not one scrap in the kingdom. Of Christ and God. The two are united in the closest way, as equals, implying the divinity of Christ and his oneness with the Father in the administration of the kingdom.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(5) For this ye know.--The true reading of the original is curiously emphatic. It runs thus: For this ye know, knowing . . . But, as it uses two different words, in the former clause properly "ye know" and the latter "learning to know," the sense seems to be: "For this ye know, learning it afresh so as to know it better." Whatever else is doubtful, this is certain; yet it admits of an ever growing certainty.Covetous man, who is an idolater.--Comp. Colossians 3:5, "Covetousness, which is idolatry." Whatever becomes the chief object of our desire, so as to claim our chief fear and love, is, of course, an idol; for "ye cannot serve God and mammon." Perhaps in this metaphorical idolatry, as in the literal, there are two distinct stages, passing, however, by invisible gradations into each other--first, the resting on some visible blessing of God, as the one thing in which and for which we serve Him, and so by degrees losing Him in His own gifts; next, the absolute forgetfulness of Him, and the setting up, as is inevitable, of some other object of worship to fill the vacant throne.Hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and [of] God.--The phrase "the kingdom of Christ and God," though probably it does not in strict technicality declare the identity of "Christ" and "God," yet implies that the "kingdom of the Christ" is, as a matter of course, "the kingdom of God," for "the Christ" is by prophetic definition "Emmanuel," i.e., "God with us." The unworthy Christian has indeed "an inheritance" in it, to his own awful responsibility; but in the true spiritual sense he is one "who hath not," "from whom shall be taken that which he hath" (Matthew 13:12).