of the sins of men. Stop these
fountains, and the streams of evil would shrink to very small trickles.
These twin vices attract the lightning of God's wrath, which 'cometh' on
their perpetrators, not only in some final future judgment, but here and
now. If we were not blind, we should see that thundercloud steadily
drawing nearer, and ready to launch its terrors on impure and greedy
men. They have set it in motion, and they are right in the path of the
avalanche which they have loosened.

The possessors of the risen life are exhorted to put off these things,
not only because of the coming wrath, but because continuance in them is
inconsistent with their present standing and life (v. 7). They do not
now 'live in them,' but in the heavenly places with the risen Lord,
therefore to walk in them is a contradiction. Our conduct should
correspond to our real affinities, and the surface of our lives should
be true to their depths and roots.

The second class of vices are those which mar our intercourse with our
fellows,--the more passionate anger and wrath and the more cold-blooded
and deadly malice, with the many sins of speech.

III. In verse 9 Paul appends the great reason for all the preceding
injunctions; namely, the fact, already enlarged on in verses 1-4, of the
Christian's death and new life by union with Jesus. He need only have
stated the one-half of the fact here, but he never can touch one member
of the antithesis without catching fire, as it were, and so he goes on
to dwell on the new life in Christ, and thus to prepare for the
transition to the exhortation to 'put on' its characteristic
excellences. We note how true to fact, though apparently illogical, his
representation is. He bases the command to put off the old man on the
fact that Christians have put it off. They are to be what they are, to
work out in daily acts what they did in its full ideal completeness when
by faith they died to self and were made alive in and to Christ. A
strong motive for a continuous Christian life is the recollection of the
initial Christian act.

But Paul's fervent spirit blazes up as he thinks of that new nature
which union with Jesus has brought, and he turns aside from his
exhortations to gaze on that great sight. He condenses volumes into a
sentence. That new man is not only new, but is perpetually being renewed
with a renovation penetrating more and more deeply, and extending more
and more widely, in the Christian's nature.