Ver. 19. +Who being past feeling.+--Having lost the "ache" which should always attend a violation of law. An ancient commentator uses the now familiar word "anæsthetes" to explain the phrase. +Having given themselves over.+--"Given" represents a word which often connotes an act of treason--and "themselves" is emphatic--"the most tremendous sacrifice ever laid on the altar of sin" (_Beet_). +To lasciviousness.+--"St. Paul stamps upon it the burning word ἀσέλγεια like a brand on the harlot's brow" (_Findlay_). +To work all uncleanness with greediness.+--R.V. margin, "to make a trade of all uncleanness with covetousness." Their "sins not accidental, but a trade"; and a trade at which they work with a "desire of having more." Ver. 20. +No not so.+--As differently as possible. The same mode of speech which led St. Paul to say to the Galatians, "Shall I praise you? . . . I praise you not."--_i.e._ "I blame you highly." Ver. 21. +If so be that ye have heard Him.+--The emphasis is on "Him"--"assuming, that is, that it is He, and no other." Ver. 22. +That ye put off concerning the former conversation.+--It is no "philosophy of clothes" inculcated here. It is a deliverance from "the body of death," like stripping oneself of his very integument. +Conversation.+--R.V. "manner of life." +Which is corrupt.+--R.V. much more strikingly--"waxeth corrupt." St. Paul's figure elsewhere is appropriate--"like a gangrene eating into the flesh." Vers. 23, 24. The stripping off being complete, and the innermost core of the man being renewed, the investiture may begin. The "habit" laid aside is never to be resumed, and the new robes, "ever white," are not to be soiled. +Righteousness and true holiness.+--R.V. "Righteousness and holiness of truth." See the "dealing truly" of ver. 15, R.V. margin. Ver. 25. +Putting away lying.+--Findlay holds to it that "_the lie, the falsehood,_ is objective and concrete; not _lying,_ or _falsehood_ as a subjective act, habit, or quality." +Members one of another.+--Let there be "no schism in the body." Ver. 26. +Let not the sun go down on your wrath.+--The word for "wrath" is not the usual one. It almost seems as if the compound form had reference to the matter "alongside which" wrath was evoked. If "curfew" could ring out the fires of wrath at sundown, we might welcome the knell. Meyer quotes the Pythagorean custom of making up a quarrel by the parties "shaking hands" before sunset. Ver. 28. +Let him that stole steal no more.+--Though we have not here the word for "brigand," we may think that the thieving had not always been without violence. +That he may have to give.+--Not the profits of wickedness, but "the good" results of his own labour, and may give it to the needy "with cheerfulness" (Rom. xii. 8), with a "hilarity" beyond that of "those who divide the spoil" (Isa. ix. 3).