Homily 12 — Ephesians 4, verse 17

“This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord: that you no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding.” [a]

It is the teacher’s duty to build up and restore the souls of his disciples, not only by counseling and instructing them, but also by alarming them and handing them over to God. For when words spoken by men, coming from fellow servants, are not enough to set the soul on fire, it then becomes necessary to hand the case over to God. And this is what Paul does too. He has been speaking about humility, and about unity, and about our duty not to rise up against one another; now hear what he says: “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk.”

He does not say, “that from now on you are not to walk as you are walking now,” for that way of putting it would have struck too hard. He plainly points to the same thing, only he takes his example from others. He does this very same thing in writing to the Thessalonians, where he says, “Not in the passion of craving, like the Gentiles who do not know God” (First Thessalonians 4, verse 5). What he means is this: You differ from them in doctrine, but that is wholly God’s work. What I require on your part is a life and a course of conduct that is according to God. This is your own. And I call the Lord to witness what I have said: that I have not held back, but have told you how you ought to walk.

“In the vanity,” he says, “of their mind.” [d]

What is vanity of mind? It is being busy about vain things. And what are those vain things, if not everything in the present life? Of these the Preacher says, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1, verse 2). But someone will say: “If they are vain, and vanity, why were they made? If they are God’s works, how are they vain?” And great is the dispute about these things. But listen, beloved. It is not the works of God that he calls vain. Far from it! Heaven is not vain, the earth is not vain — far from it! — nor the sun, nor the moon and stars, nor our own body. No, all these are “very good” (Genesis 1, verse 31). Then what is vain? Let us hear the Preacher himself and what he says: “I planted myself vineyards; I got myself men singers and women singers; I made myself pools of water; I had great possessions of herds and flocks; I gathered myself also silver and gold; and I saw that these are vanity” (Ecclesiastes 2, verses 4 to 8). And again: “Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity” (Ecclesiastes 12, verse 8). Hear also what the prophet says: “He heaps up riches, and does not know who will gather them” (Psalm 39, verse 6).

This is “vanity of vanities”: your splendid buildings, your vast and overflowing riches, the herds of slaves that bustle through the marketplace, your pomp and empty glory, your high thoughts and your ostentation. All these are vain. They did not come from the hand of God; they are of our own making. But why, then, are they vain? Because they have no useful end. Riches are vain when they are spent on luxury; but they stop being vain when they are “dispersed and given to the needy” (Psalm 112, verse 9). But when you have spent them on luxury, let us look at where they end: grossness of body, bloating, panting, a stuffed belly, a heavy head, soft flesh, fever, weakness. A man who draws water into a leaking jar labors in vain; and in the same way the one who lives in luxury and self-indulgence is drawing into a leaking jar.

Again, that is called “vain” which is expected to hold something but does not hold it — what people call empty, as when they speak of “empty hopes.” And in general that is called “vain” which is bare and without purpose, which is of no use. Let us see, then, whether all human things are not of this kind. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (First Corinthians 15, verse 32). What then, tell me, is the end of it? Decay. Let us put on clothes and fine garments. And what comes of it? Nothing.

Such are the lives of the Greeks. They practiced philosophy, but in vain. They made a show of a hard life — but of hardship and nothing more, not looking to any useful end, but to empty glory and to honor from the crowd. But what is the honor of the crowd? It is nothing. For if the very people who give the honor perish, much more does the honor. Whoever gives honor to another ought first to give it to himself; for if he has not won honor for himself, how can he ever give it to someone else? Yet as it is, we seek honors even from vile and contemptible people, who are themselves without honor and objects of reproach. What kind of honor, then, is this? Do you see how all things are “vanity of vanities”? That is why he says, “in the vanity of their mind.”

And besides, is not their religion of this sort — wood and stone? God has made the sun to shine as a lamp to light us. Who will worship his own lamp? The sun gives us light; but where it cannot, a lamp can do it. Then why not worship your lamp? Someone will say: “No — I worship fire.” Oh, how ridiculous! So great is the absurdity — and yet look at another absurdity again. Why put out the object of your worship? Why destroy, why annihilate your God? Why not let your house be filled with it? If fire is God, let it feed on your body. Do not put your God under the bottom of your kettle or your cauldron. Bring it into your inner rooms; bring it in among your silk hangings. But not only do you not bring it in; if by some accident it has got in, you drive it out of every corner. You call everyone together, and as though some wild beast had come in, you weep and wail, and you call the presence of your God an overwhelming disaster.

I have a God, and I do all I can to enshrine him in my breast. I count it my true happiness, not when he visits my house, but when I can draw him even into my heart. You too, then — draw the fire into your heart! This is folly and vanity. Fire is good for use, not for worship; good for serving and waiting on me, to be my slave, not my master. It was made for me, not I for it.

If you are a worshiper of fire, why do you recline on your couch yourself and order your cook to stand before your God? Take up the art of cooking yourself; become a baker if you like, or a coppersmith. Nothing could be more honorable than these trades, since these are the ones your God visits. Why count that trade a disgrace, where your God is all in all? Why hand it over to your slaves, and not be eager for it yourself?

Fire is good, since it is the work of a good Creator; but it is not God. It is the work of God; it was not called God. Do you not see how ungovernable its nature is — how, when it lays hold of a building, it stops nowhere? If it seizes on anything that joins on to it, it destroys it all; and unless the hands of workmen or others put down its fury, it knows neither friend nor foe, but treats all alike. Is this, then, your God, and are you not ashamed? He is quite right to say, “in the vanity of their mind.”

But they say: “The sun is God.” Tell me, how, and why? Is it because it pours out so much light? Yet do you not see it overcome by clouds, bound by the necessity of nature, eclipsed, and hidden by the moon? The cloud is weaker than the sun, and yet it often gets the better of it. And this in fact is the work of God’s wisdom. God must be all-sufficient; but the sun needs many things, and this is not like a God. It requires air to shine in — thin air at that, since air, when it is very dense, does not let the rays pass through. It requires water as well, and some other restraining power, to keep it from burning everything up. For if the springs and lakes and rivers and seas did not produce some moisture by giving off their vapor, nothing would stop the whole world from going up in flames.

“Do you see, then, that it is a God?” What folly, what madness! A God, you say, because it has the power to do harm? No — for this very reason it is no God: where it does harm, it needs nothing, but where it does good, it requires many other things besides. Now to do harm is foreign to God’s nature; to do good is what belongs to him. Where the reverse is the case, then, how can it be God? Do you not see that poisons do harm and need nothing, but when they are to do good, they need many things? It is for your sake, then, that the sun is what it is, both good and powerless: good, so that you may acknowledge its Lord; powerless, so that you may not say that it is Lord.

But they say: “It nourishes the plants and the seeds.” What then? At that rate, is not the very dung a God? For it nourishes too. And at that rate why not the scythe as well, and the farmer’s hands? Prove to me that the sun alone does the work of nourishing, without needing the help of earth, or water, or tilling. Let the seeds be sown, and let it shed its rays and produce the ears of grain! But if this work is not its alone, but the rains’ as well, why is water not a God too? But I am not speaking of that yet. Why is the earth not a God too, and why not the dung, and the hoe? Tell me, are we to worship them all? Oh, what nonsense!

In fact an ear of grain could sooner be produced without the sun than without earth and water; and so with plants and everything else. If there were no earth, none of these things could ever appear. And if someone, as children and women do, were to put some earth into a pot, fill up the pot with a good deal of dung, and set it under the roof, plants will come up from it, even if they are weak ones. So the contribution of the earth and of the dung is greater, and we ought to worship these rather than the sun. The sun requires the sky, it requires the air, it requires these waters to keep it from doing harm — to be bridles that curb the fierceness of its power and hold it back from letting its rays loose over the world like some wild horse.

And now tell me, where is it at night? Where has your God gone off to? For this is not like a God, to be bounded and confined to a place. That in fact belongs to bodies only. But they say: “There is some sort of power residing in it, and it has motion.” Is this power, then, I ask you, itself God? Then why is it not sufficient in itself, and why does it not restrain the fire? For I come back again to the same argument. But what is that power? Does it produce light itself, or does it give light by means of the sun, having none of these qualities of its own? If so, then the sun is greater than it. How long must we go on unwinding this maze?

Again, what is water? Is it not a God too, they say? This again is a truly absurd thing to argue about. They say: “Is that not a God, when we use it for so many purposes?” And so again, in the same way, with the earth. Truly “they walk in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding.”

But he is using these words now about life and conduct. The Greeks live in sexual immorality and adultery. Naturally! People who picture such gods for themselves will naturally do all these things; and if they can only escape people’s eyes, there is no one to restrain them. For what good will the argument of a resurrection do, if it seems to them a mere fable? Yes, and the argument of the torments of hell? That too is only a fable to them. And notice the satanic thinking. When they are told of gods who commit sexual immorality, they deny that these are fables; they believe them. Yet whenever anyone speaks to them of punishment, they say: “These are poets, men who turn everything into fable, so that people’s happiness may be overturned on every side.”

But the philosophers, it is said, discovered something truly grand, and far better than this. How so? Those who brought in fate, and tell us that nothing happens by providence, that there is no one who cares for anything, but that everything is made of atoms? Or those others who say that God is a body? Or who, tell me, are they? Are they the ones who would turn the souls of men into the souls of dogs, and would persuade mankind that someone was once a dog, and a lion, and a fish? How long will you keep on and never stop talking nonsense, “being darkened in the understanding”? [g]

For they say and do everything as though they really were in the dark, both in what concerns doctrine and in what concerns life and conduct. A man in the dark sees none of the things in front of him. Often, when he sees a rope, he will take it for a live snake; or if he is caught by a hedge, he will think a man or an evil spirit has hold of him, and great is the alarm and great the panic. Such are the things they fear. “There they were in great fear,” it says, “where there was no fear” (Psalm 53, verse 5). But the things they ought to fear, those they do not fear.

Children in their nurses’ arms thrust their hands carelessly into the fire, and boldly into the candle flame too, and yet are frightened of a man dressed in sackcloth. Just so these Greeks, as though they really were always children — as one of their own has said, “the Greeks are always children” — fear things that are no sins at all: uncleanness of the body, the pollution of a funeral, a bed, the keeping of days, and the like. But the things that really are sins — unnatural lust, adultery, sexual immorality — these they take no account of at all. No, you may see a man washing himself from the pollution of a dead body, but from dead works never; and … by the crowing of a single rooster. So “darkened are they in their understanding.”

Their soul is filled with every kind of terror. For instance, one will say: “So-and-so was the first person I met as I was going out of the house.” Of course, ten thousand evils are bound to follow! At another time: “That wretch of a servant held out my left shoe first when he gave me my shoes.” Terrible mishaps and disasters! “I myself set off with my left foot first as I came out.” And this too is a sign of misfortune. These are the evils that happen around the house. “Then, as I go out, my right eye twitches from underneath. That is a sure sign of tears.”

The women, too: when the reeds strike against the uprights of the loom and ring, or when they themselves are scratched by the shuttle, they turn this into a sign as well. And again, when they strike the web with the shuttle rather hard, and the reeds at the top knock against the uprights from the force of the blow and ring, they make this a sign too — and ten thousand other things that deserve nothing but laughter. And so, if a donkey brays, or a rooster crows, or a man sneezes, or whatever else may happen, they are like men bound with ten thousand chains — or, as I was saying, like men shut up in the dark. They suspect everything, and they are more slavish than all the slaves in the world.

But let it not be so with us. Let us scorn all these things, as people living in the light, whose citizenship is in heaven and who have nothing in common with the earth. Let us count only one thing terrible: sin, and offending God. And if that is absent, let us scorn all the rest, and the one who brought them in, the devil. For these things let us give thanks to God. [l]

Let us be diligent, not only that we ourselves may never be caught in this slavery, but also, if any of those dear to us have been caught, to break his bonds apart. Let us free him from this most bitter and contemptible captivity; let us make him free and unshackled for his race toward heaven; let us lift up his drooping wings, and teach him to be wise, for the sake of both life and doctrine.

Let us give thanks to God for all things. Let us beg him not to declare us unworthy of the gifts offered to us, and let us ourselves also try to contribute our own part, so that we may teach not only by speaking but by acting too. For in this way we will be able to attain his countless blessings. May God grant that we may all be counted worthy of them, in Christ Jesus our Lord, with whom, to the Father and the Holy Spirit together, be glory, might, and honor, now and from now on, and forever and ever. Amen.