“THE HEATHEN AND THE CHRISTIAN PRACTICE”

Hugo McCord

Two Bible scholars saw a fourfold contrast between “the heathen and Christian practice” in Ephesians 5:18-19: “And be not drunken with wine, wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit; speaking one to another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord”:

(1) Christians were not to be full of “spirits” (wine) but of the Holy Spirit;

(2) Christians were not to sing “the drinking songs of heathen feasts” but “psalms and hymns”;

(3) The music of Christians was not “of the lyre (harp) but the melody of the heart”;

(4) The songs of Christians were not “to the praise of Bacchus or Venus, but of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Conybeare and Howson, LIFE AND EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL, II, 408).

(1) The first contrast was between two kinds of spirits. One kind Webster calls the “spirit of wine,” a spirit that leads to drunkenness (methe) and riot (asotia). The other kind of spirit is the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Godhead (Colossians 2:9; Hebrews 9:14). He also is called “the Spirit of Christ (Romans 8:9; Philippians 1:19), a divine being who leads Christians to heaven (Romans 8:14; Ephesians 1:13-14; 4:30).

John the Baptist was a teetotaler, drinking “neither wine nor strong drink,” and he was “filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15). Although John performed no miracles (John 10:41), his preaching was infallible as a “man sent from God” (John 1:6). His head was cut off because he would not change his preaching to King Herod about his adulterous marriage (Matthew 14:6-12).

The apostles of Christ were baptized in the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5; 2:1-4), and “many wonders and signs were done by the apostles” to confirm their preaching (Acts 2:43; Mark 16:20). The apostles could lay their hands on people and confer miraculous gifts from the Spirit (Acts 8:18; 19:6), but when Paul commanded the Ephesians to “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18) he was not talking about miraculous gifts.

There was a non-miraculous impartation and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, not by the laying on of an apostle’s hands, but by a direct gift from God “to those who obey him” (Acts 5:32). This non-miraculous, unfelt, reception of the Holy Spirit was not given to those baptized by John (John 7:39), and was not given to anyone before Jesus was “glorified” back in heaven (John 7:39; 17:5) as “both Lord and Christ” on Pentecost Day, May 28, A.D. 30 (Acts 2:1, 36). About “three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41) that day believed Peter’s preaching that Jesus was “both Lord and Christ,” but they did not think that believing alone was enough, and so they asked, “what should we do?” (Acts 2:37). They thought that they should do something, and Peter did too, telling them to “repent, and let each one of you be baptized for the remission of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

The “gift of the Holy Spirit” was not a gift from the Spirit, but a reception of the Spirit himself, as Peter later made clear: “the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him” (Acts 5:32). All sinners, “baptized into Christ,” become at that moment “children of God” (Galatians 3:26-27), and as a certification that they are in God’s spiritual family he sends “the Spirit of his Son” into their “hearts,” allowing them to pray, “Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6).

The very presence of the silent, unfelt, non-miraculous, heavenly guest “in” (1 Corinthians 6:19) every Christian “bears witness with” the Christian’s spirit that he is a child “of God” (Romans 8:16). Furthermore, “the Holy Spirit, who is in” every Christian, “whom” he has “from God” (1 Corinthians 6:19) not only bears witness that he is a child of God, but also the Spirit “is the earnest of” a Christian’s “inheritance,” even “heaven” (Ephesians 1:14; 1 Peter 1:4).

A Christian’s most valuable possession is not money, nor even physical life, but the presence in him of the silent, unfelt, non-miraculous heavenly guest as an unwritten certificate of (1) being God’s child and (2) a guarantee, if he behaves himself, of heaven (Ephesians 1:14; 1 Peter 1:4).

The Greek passive voice that I used in previous editions of my NT translation of Ephesians 5:18 is wrong: “be filled with the Spirit.” Those words could be interpreted to mean that Paul was giving a new commandment to the Ephesians. On the contrary, they were filled with the Spirit as they arose from the water of their baptism (cf. Acts 2:38; 5:32; Galatians 3:26; 4:6). Consequently, the Greek middle voice is a better translation of Ephesians 5:18: “keep yourselves filled with the Spirit.”

Christians do not have anything to do about being filled with the Spirit at their baptism. God is the “doer,” and they are passive. But Christians have all to do with keeping themselves filled with the Spirit, for the Spirit will leave them if they misbehave. Accordingly, Christians are told not to “grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom” they are “sealed until the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30).

It was in 62 A.D. that Paul from Rome wrote to the Ephesians not to grieve the Holy Spirit and to keep themselves filled with the Spirit. Sadly, by 96 A.D. the Ephesian Christians had so misbehaved spiritually that the Holy Spirit was on the verge of leaving them (Revelation 2:5). Jesus threatened to disown the congregation at Ephesus as one of his “seven golden lampstands” unless they repented and returned to their “first love” (Revelation 2:4).

All of the above discussion has to do with the first of a fourfold contrast in Ephesians 5:18 between two kinds of spirits.

(2) The second contrast was between two kinds of songs. Spiritual songs (as many Old Testament psalms, as 1, 4, 8, 15, 23, 100, etc.) in the assembly are part of Christians’ “speaking to yourselves” (Ephesians 5:19) to “encourage one another, and build each other up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). Spiritual songs are “a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips, confessing his name” (Hebrews 13:15).

But non-spiritual songs by authors “estranged from God, because of their ignorance and hardness of heart” (Ephesians 4:18), on the radio and TV, show they “have lost all feeling” and “have given themselves over to sensuality, to practice every immorality with greediness” (Ephesians 4:19). “They who are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh, but they who are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit” (Romans 8:5).

On the other hand, spiritual songs exhort fellow Christians to “Give thanks to the Lord! Call upon his name! Make known his deeds among the people! Sing to him, yes, sing praises to him! Meditate on all his marvelous works! Glory in his holy name!” (Psalm 105:1-3).

(3) The third contrast was between two kinds of music: one “of the lyre (harp) and one “the melody of the heart.” Paul commanded the Christians to do two things: sing (aido) and play (psallo). On what was the playing to be done? Paul did not command that the playing be done on a “harp” (as David did, Psalm 33:3; 71:22), but on the “heart” (Ephesians 5:19). If the playing of Christians was to be done on a “harp,” the playing was literal and external with each Christian having his own harp (as David). But the specified instrument was something figurative and internal, the heart, and each Christian has his own instrument.

The translations “singing [aido] and making melody [psallo] in your heart” (KJV) and “singing and making melody with your heart” (ASV) are good and beautiful, but the touching action of psallo (from psao, to touch, to pull, to pluck) is more precisely set forth by “plucking the strings of your heart.”

For that reason, the 4th edition of my translation of Ephesians 5:18-19 will say: “Be not drunk with wine, which is dissipation, but keep yourselves filled with the Spirit. Speak to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and pluck the strings of your heart to the Lord.”

(4) The fourth contrast is singing “to the praise of Bacchus or Venus” or “of the Lord Jesus Christ.” In Greek and Roman mythology Bacchus was “the god of wine and revelry” (Webster). Bacchus “is said to have taught the cultivation of the grape, and the preparation of wine and other intoxicating liquors” (Webster). Venus in Greek and Roman mythology was “the goddess of love,” and so was “given to sexual gratification” and “violent sexual desire” (Webster).

Indeed, there is a major contrast between singing the praises of Bacchus and Venus and singing the praises of “the Lord Jesus Christ.” Who is Jesus? My mind falters! The only example of his category, the only one of his nature, yachid, monogenes, sui generis, begotten (Luke 1:35) and unbegotten (Micah 5:2), unparalleled, matchless, irreplaceable, unexampled, incomparable, peerless, inimitable, unequaled, non-duplicable, singular, unique, “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6), and now exalted “to the highest” (Philippians 2:9-11).