Homily 16 — Ephesians 4, verses 31 and 32

“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and shouting and slander be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also forgave you.” [a]

If we are to reach the kingdom of heaven, it is not enough to give up wickedness; there must also be a generous practice of what is good. To be rescued from hell, it is true, we must keep away from wickedness; but to reach the kingdom we must hold fast to virtue. Do you not know that this is how it is even in the courts of the pagans, when people’s deeds are examined and the whole city is assembled? In fact, there was an ancient custom among the pagans of crowning with a golden crown, not the man who had done his country no harm — that in itself would be no more than enough to spare him punishment — but the man who had rendered great public services. That was how a man was raised to this honor.

But the thing I most needed to say had, I do not know how, very nearly slipped past me. So I will make a small correction to what I have said, and take back the first part of what I laid out.

I was saying that turning away from evil is enough to keep us from falling into hell. But while I was speaking, a certain terrifying sentence crept into my mind, one that does not only bring punishment on those who dare to do evil, but also punishes those who let slip any chance of doing good. What sentence is this? When the day came, he says — that dreadful day — and the appointed time had arrived, the Judge sat on the judgment seat and set the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left. And to the sheep he said, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food” (Matthew 25, verse 34). [b]

So far, so good. It was right that for such compassion they should receive this reward. But that those who did not share their own possessions with the needy should be punished, not only by losing the good things but also by being sent into the fire of hell — what just reason, I ask, can there be in that? This too is entirely reasonable, no less than the other. From it we are taught that those who have done good will enjoy the good things in heaven, while those who have no evil to be charged with, but have failed to do good, will be dragged off into the fire of hell along with those who have done evil.

Unless, indeed, one should say this: that the very failure to do good is a part of wickedness, since it comes from laziness, and laziness is a part of vice — or rather, not a part, but a source and a deadly root of it. For idleness is the teacher of every vice. So let us not foolishly ask questions like this: what place will the man have who has done neither any evil nor any good? For the very failure to do good is in itself doing evil.

Tell me: if you had a servant who neither stole, nor insulted you, nor talked back, who stayed clear of drunkenness and every other kind of vice, and yet sat forever idle, doing not one of the duties a servant owes his master — would you not punish him? Would you not put him on the rack?

Tell me. And yet, you say, he has done no evil. No — but this in itself is doing evil. But let us, if you like, apply this to other cases in life.

Take a farmer. He does no damage to our property, he lays no plots against us, he is not a thief. He only ties his hands behind his back and sits at home, neither sowing, nor cutting a single furrow, nor yoking oxen, nor tending a vine, nor doing any of the other work that farming requires. Now, I ask you, should we not punish such a man? And yet he has wronged no one; we have no charge to bring against him. No — but by this very thing he has done wrong. He does wrong in not contributing his own share to the common stock of good.

And again, tell me: what if every craftsman and every worker merely did no harm — say, to someone of a different trade, or even to someone of his own — but was simply idle? Would not our whole life, at that rate, come to a complete end and perish?

Do you want me to carry the argument further still, to the body as well? Let the hand neither strike the head, nor cut out the tongue, nor pluck out the eye, nor do any harm of that sort, but only stay idle and not give the rest of the body the service it owes. Would it not be better to cut it off than to carry it around idle and a burden to the whole body? And what if the mouth, without devouring the hand or biting the chest, still failed in all its proper work? Would it not be far better to have it stopped up?

If, then, with servants and with workers and with the whole body, not only doing evil but also failing to do good is a great wrong, much more will this be so in the body of Christ.

That is why the blessed Paul too, in leading us away from sin, leads us on to virtue. For tell me, what is the use of cutting out all the thorns, if the good seed is not sown? Our work, left unfinished, will come around again and end in the same harm. And so Paul, in his deep and loving concern for us, does not let his warnings stop at rooting out and destroying bad dispositions; he urges us at once to show that good ones have been planted. Having said, “Let all bitterness and wrath and shouting and slander be put away from you, with all malice,” he adds, “And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other.” [d]

All these are habits and dispositions. Giving up the one is not enough to settle us in the habitual practice of the other. There must be a fresh push, and an effort no smaller than the one we made in getting rid of the bad dispositions, if we are to gain the good ones. So it is with the body: if a black man loses that coloring, he does not at once become white.

Or rather, let us not argue from the things of nature, but take our example from the things that depend on our own choice. The man who is not our enemy is not necessarily our friend. There is a middle state, neither enmity nor friendship, and that is perhaps where most people stand toward us. The man who is not crying is not necessarily laughing either; there is a state between the two. And so it is here, I say. The man who is not “bitter” is not necessarily “kind,” and the man who is not “wrathful” is not necessarily “tenderhearted.” It takes a separate effort to gain this excellence. [f]

And now see how the blessed Paul, following the rules of the best farming, thoroughly cleans and works the land the Farmer entrusted to him. He has taken away the bad seeds; now he urges us to keep the good plants. “Be kind,” he says. For if, once the thorns are pulled up, the field lies idle, it will bear useless weeds again. So we must get to its empty, unsown ground first, by setting good seeds and plants in it. He takes away “anger” and puts in “kindness”; he takes away “bitterness” and puts in “tenderheartedness”; he roots out “malice” and “slander” and plants “forgiveness” in their place.

That is what the words “forgiving one another” mean: be ready, he means, to forgive one another. And this forgiveness is greater than the kind shown in matters of money. The man who forgives a borrower his debt does, it is true, a noble and admirable thing; but the kindness reaches only the body — though he does pay himself back in full with a benefit that is spiritual and concerns the soul. The man who forgives wrongs, on the other hand, benefits his own soul and the soul of the one who is forgiven alike. By acting this way he makes not only himself but the other man too more loving.

For we do not touch the souls of those who have wronged us so deeply by taking revenge as by pardoning them, and so shaming them and leaving them embarrassed. By the other course we will do no good either to ourselves or to them. We will harm both, by seeking to retaliate ourselves, as the rulers of the Jews did, and by stirring up the anger in them. [g]

But if we answer injustice with gentleness, we will disarm all his anger. We will set up in his own heart a court that gives its verdict in our favor and condemns him more severely than we could. He will convict himself and pass sentence on himself. And he will look for every excuse to repay, in fuller measure, the patience shown to him. He knows that if he repays it only in equal measure, he is at a disadvantage, because he did not make the beginning but took the example from us. So he will try to exceed the measure, and by the size of his repayment to outshine the disadvantage of having come second in making amends. And the disadvantage that falls to the other man from the timing, if he was the first to suffer, he will make up by an excess of kindness.

People who are right-minded are not affected as much by evil as by good treatment at the hands of those they have wronged. For a man who is treated well not to return it is a shameful sin, and a matter of reproach and scorn; while a man who is treated badly and does not go about taking revenge wins the praise and applause and good word of everyone. That is why they are touched more deeply by this conduct than by any other.

So if you want to take revenge, take revenge this way. Return good for evil, so that you make him your debtor as well and win a glorious victory. Have you suffered evil? Do good. That is how to get even with your enemy. For if you set about taking revenge, everyone will blame you and him alike. But if you bear it, it will be otherwise: you they will applaud and admire, and him they will reproach. [h]

And what greater punishment can there be for an enemy than to see his enemy admired and applauded by everyone? What is more bitter for an enemy than to see himself reproached by everyone to his enemy’s face? If you take revenge on him, you will perhaps be condemned yourself, and you will be the only avenger. But if you forgive him, everyone will take revenge for you. And this will be far harder on him than any evil he could suffer — that his enemy has so many to avenge him.

If you open your mouth, they will keep quiet. But if you keep quiet, you strike him, not with one tongue only but with the ten thousand tongues of others, and you are all the more avenged. And if you reproach him, many will turn around and cast blame on you, for they will say your words come from anger. But when others who have suffered no wrong from him heap reproaches on him, then the revenge is completely above suspicion. When people who have suffered no harm feel for you and share your pain because of your great forbearance, as though they had been wronged themselves, that is a revenge beyond all suspicion.

You will say: “But what then, if no one takes revenge?” It cannot be that people are such stones as to see wisdom like this and not admire it. And even if they do not take revenge on him at the time, still they will do it afterward, when the mood takes them, and they will keep on mocking him and abusing him. And if no one else admires you, the man himself will surely admire you, though he may not admit it. For our sense of what is right stays fair and unbiased, even when we have come to the very depths of wickedness.

Why, do you suppose, did our Lord Christ say, “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well” (Matthew 5, verse 39)? Is it not because the more patient a man is, the greater the benefit he brings both to himself and to the other? That is why he commands us to “turn the other also”: to satisfy the craving of the man in a rage. For who is such a monster as not to be put to shame at once? Even dogs, they say, feel it. If they bark and go for a man, and he throws himself on his back and does nothing, he puts an end to all their fury. If dogs respect the man who is ready to suffer harm from them, much more will the human race, since they have more reason.

But it is right not to pass over something that came to my mind a little earlier and was brought forward as evidence. What was it? We were speaking of the Jews and of their chief rulers, and how they were blamed for seeking to retaliate. And yet the law allowed them this: “eye for eye, and tooth for tooth” (Leviticus 24, verse 20). [i]

True — but not so that people would pluck out each other’s eyes. It was so that they would hold back from attacking others for fear of suffering the same in return, and so would neither do any evil to others nor suffer any evil from them. That is why it was said, “eye for eye”: to tie the hands of the attacker, not to set yours loose against him; not only to keep the harm away from your own eyes, but also to keep his eyes safe and sound.

But now to what I was asking: if retaliation was allowed, why were those who practiced it put on trial? What can this mean? Here he is speaking of vindictiveness. In the heat of the moment he allows the one who has suffered to act, as I was saying, in order to hold back the attacker; but to nurse a grudge he no longer permits. For then the act is no longer one of passion, or of boiling rage, but of deliberate malice. God forgives those who are carried away, perhaps by a sense of outrage, and rush out to strike back. That is why he says, “eye for eye,” and yet again, “the ways of the vengeful lead to death.”

Now, if even where it was allowed to put out eye for eye such a great punishment is kept for the vengeful, how much more for those who are told even to offer themselves to be mistreated? So let us not be vengeful. Let us put out our anger, so that we may be counted worthy of the love for humankind that comes from God — for “with the measure you use,” says Christ, “it will be measured to you, and with the judgment you judge, you will be judged” (Matthew 7, verse 2) — and so that we may escape the snares of this present life, and on the day that is coming may receive pardon from him, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom be glory, power and honor to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, now and forever and ever. Amen.