CHAPTER iv. 17--v. 21. Ἐν καινότητι ζωῆς περιπατήσωμεν.--ROM. vi. 4. CHAPTER XIX. _THE WALK OF THE GENTILES._ “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart; who being past feeling gave themselves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.”--EPH. iv. 17-19. Christ has called into existence and formed around Him already a new world. Those who are members of His body, are brought into another order of being from that to which they had formerly belonged. They have therefore to walk in quite another way--“no longer as the Gentiles.” St Paul does not say “as the other Gentiles” (A.V.); for his readers, though Gentiles by birth (ii. 11), are now of the household of faith and the city of God. They hold the franchise of the “commonwealth of Israel.” As at a later time the apostle John in his Gospel, though a born Jew, yet from the standpoint of the new Israel writes of “the Jews” as a distant and alien people, so St Paul distinguishes his readers from “the Gentiles” who were their natural kindred. When he “testifies,” with a pointed emphasis, “that _you_ no longer walk as do indeed the Gentiles,” and when in verse 20 he exclaims, “But _you_ did not thus learn the Christ,” it appears that there were those bearing Christ’s name and professing to have learnt of Him who did thus walk. This, indeed, he expressly asserts in writing to the Philippians (ch. iii. 18, 19): “Many walk, of whom I told you oftentimes, and now tell you even weeping,--the enemies of the cross of Christ; whose god is their belly, and their glory in their shame, who mind earthly things.” We cannot but associate this warning with the apprehension expressed in verse 14 above. The reckless and unscrupulous teachers against whose seductions the apostle guards the infant Churches of Asia Minor, tampered with the morals as well as with the faith of their disciples, and were drawing them back insidiously to their former habits of life.[112]