In intention, everything that must be put off here has already been decisively put off. The power of grace has also been received, so that this putting off may remain firm. Yet occasions for putting it off in deed have not thereby been removed. Likewise, when such an occasion arises, it will demand full attention and the corresponding exertion of strength.
Blessed Theophylact writes: “How is this? He has just said, ‘when ye lived,’ showing that they no longer live so. Then suddenly he says again, ‘put off all.’ How can they put off what they no longer have? To this one may answer that the words ‘when ye lived’ help us understand what is now said. For by them he suggests that formerly, before baptism, sin reigned in you. It possessed your whole life, tyrannized over you, and freedom from the passions was impossible for you. But now, when sin has been slain in you through baptism, it has become easy for you to put off the passions like a garment. You cannot offer as a pretext that you live under the tyranny of sin and the passions, for you have died to them.”
Why, when arming us against lust, did he say, “mortify,” while in preparing us for battle with irritability he says, “put off”? The force of the commandment is one and the same in both places. It is to make our nature wholly pure from the passions, so that no trace of them remains within and they stand outside it, like a severed member or a cast-off garment.
Yet the struggle with them is not the same. It is harder to struggle with lust, for it seems to have roots in our nature. Irritability is easier to manage, for it is altogether foreign to our nature, in whose depth lies brother-loving sociability. In struggling with the former, it is as though one does violence to oneself, torments oneself, and puts oneself to death. In struggling with the latter, one only rejects what is alien. One need only awaken the consciousness and feeling of common brotherhood, and it falls away.
“And ye.” Like all Christians, so also you. A Christian is not a Christian if he does not keep himself undefiled by the passions. Having entered the company of Christians, you also must keep yourselves far from the passions. Formerly, moving among pagans, you lived according to the passions alone. This is self-evident.
Yet did Saint Paul perhaps wish to suggest something particular by saying, “and ye”? Does this not suggest that in conversion, when the new man was being formed and holy decisions of the will were taking shape, grace chiefly acted, while the will followed it? It followed without compulsion and willingly, yet was sensibly drawn.
After conversion, when the new man with his new principles of life has been wholly formed, life begins to flow in such a way that the will rather goes first. Grace, though inseparably present and not without part even in the first beginnings of the will’s movements, follows it, helping and strengthening. At least one cannot deny that in this sense it is possible to say, “and ye.” Not everything is grace. Labor, exert your own strength also, that you may put off everything passionate.
“That all” seems to point to the passions of lust already rejected. Yet immediately afterward, in explanation of what “that all” means, the passions of irritability are listed. How is this? Perhaps the holy Apostle’s thought is this: put off all, both what has already been spoken of and what will be added next. Put off everything by which you lived and were led when you were in paganism, according to the custom of all pagans.
The Greek τα παντα, “all,” gives the thought of a definite object to be put off, namely the passions in general, both lust and irritability. Since the former have already been indicated, it remained only to point out the latter.
“Anger, wrath, malice” indicate the stages in the growth of irritability. Anger is the first movement of irritation: displeasure, indignation, grief, and the beginning of resentment. All this remains within the bounds of seeming prudence and is hidden, though not always successfully.
Wrath is an outburst of anger not kept within bounds, but revealed in word and deed. Yet both anger and wrath pass quickly. Sometimes, however, grief sinks deep into the heart. Remaining there, it devises snares and every means of revenge. It plots to do evil and becomes malicious.
Oecumenius distinguishes anger and wrath in this way: “Anger is an outburst, or a painful inflammation, of the irascible passion. Wrath, arising from deep grief, is an unrestrained impulse to repay offenders at once, when the soul thirsts for revenge. One must know that people sin many times by both these movements. Either they rush unrestrained at those who have offended them, or they patiently await an occasion for revenge and contrive snares for it. The latter is malice. We who have been taught humility of mind must avoid all this.”
Blessed Theophylact distinguishes malice thus: “By malice the Apostle means remembrance of wrongs, when someone keeps malice within himself against another, as though to take revenge.”
“Blasphemy” and “filthy speech” reveal irritation of heart in words. Blasphemy, βλασφημια, with respect to God is blasphemy against God. With respect to people it is evil-speaking, every reproachful word, abuse, and verbal shaming. It may disclose what happened with embellishment and crooked interpretation, or it may invent what never happened from apparent circumstances. Here the latter is meant. “The Apostle is speaking of abusive words” (Blessed Theophylact).
Filthy speech means shameful words, abuse with indecent language, from which a man beside himself does not refrain. “Put away from your mouth” blasphemy and filthy speech. Both “defile the mouth, which was created to glorify God” (Oecumenius). Your mouths “have been sanctified by partaking of the Body of the Lord. Therefore it is extremely unfitting for you to defile with evil-speaking and foul speech these mouths that receive Christ the Lord.”
THEOSIS