Ephesians 5:3

Πορνεία δὲ κ.τ.λ. After the height to which we have been raised in Ephesians 5:2 this comes as a rude shock. But St Paul is always in close touch with the facts of the situation. His clear vision of the glory of the true Christian life did not blind him to the dangers to which it was exposed by the state of public opinion in his day. These dangers were of two kinds. The first came from the prevailing tone of Greek society in regard to sexual morality, the second from the popular assumption that self-aggrandisement is the only effective motive in human action. St Paul has already traced the moral darkness of the Gentile world to its root in sensual indulgence, Ephesians 5:19. He here warns against the danger of dallying with impurity in ordinary conversation, and he couples with it a similar warning in regard to ‘covetousness.’ The collocation has seemed strange to many commentator’s and an attempt has been made to find another meaning for πλεονέκτης and πλεονεξία. Lightfoot (on Colossians 3:5) and Robinson are no doubt right in contending that the attempt has failed. On the relation between the two contrasted forms of evil see on Ephesians 4:19. What should be noted here is that St Paul would have us guard as carefully against listening to tales that would excite the passion of greed in us, as against tales that inflame the fires of lust. He would exclude from ordinary conversation the assumption or imputation of selfish just as much as of impure motives.

καθὼς πρέπει ἁγίοις. Cf. 2 Corinthians 7:1. The thought is that as God’s people they were bound to keep free from contact with that which might defile, and so fulfil the Levitical regulations for ceremonial purity for worshippers under the Old Covenant. Such regulations applied only, as our Lord’s seeming disregard of them shows, to careless, indifferent contact, not to the touch which brought healing and life. So here St Paul is not breaking his own rule in laying it down. πλεονεξία occurs in the Gospels only in Mark 7:22; Luke 12:15.