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`NOT HAVING SPOT
WRINKLE'
11
OR
`Not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing' (Eph. 5:27)
We have looked at the way in which the church is sanctified and cleansed `by the washing of water by the word',
and this has in view its `presentation', a theme of wonder in itself, but we propose to defer examination of this goal
of grace until we have examined the remaining descriptions of this process that leads on to the fulfilment of the
original choice and purpose before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). The remaining items are divided into
two, one a negative description, the other its obverse, the positive. By this means we are better able to understand
what the original words `holy and without blemish' mean.
First then the negative `not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing'. The word translated `spot' is spilos and
occurs in one other New Testament passage, namely 2 Peter 2:13 where we read : `Spots they are and blemishes `
while they feast with you'.
It is a well-known fact that the epistle of Jude traverses the same ground as does Peter in this second chapter, and
we find help by observing just where Jude uses a slightly different word. Jude speaks of the same class, saying :
`These are spots in your feasts of charity' (12) but here, the word is spilas instead of spilos.
Now spilas means a rock, and particularly a sunken rock. It has been suggested that the hidden rock was thus
named because of the spotting or defiling of the foam that broke over it. This however may be far fetched, and Jude
may have adopted a similar sounding word to that of Peter in order that by the well-known figure of paronomasia
(of which the `pun' is a poor relative), he might enforce the truth. We will therefore leave Jude 12 out of our
reckoning. We must however include Jude 23, for there we meet spiloo `cause to be spotted' :
` And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment SPOTTED by the flesh'.
When the next verse is read, with its presentation faultless, parallel as it is with Ephesians 5:26,27, the light that
Jude 23 throws upon what is intended in Ephesians 5:27 is realized. James uses this verb when he says :
` The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity; so is the tongue among our members, that it
the whole body,
DEFILETH
and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell' (Jas. 3:6).
James moreover supplies us with the example of the negative aspilos.
` Pure (katharos) religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in
their affliction, and to keep himself UNSPOTTED (aspilos) from the world' (Jas. 1:27).
Jude and James together therefore reveal two great sources of contamination `the flesh' (Jude 23), `the world'
(Jas. 1:27), and of the flesh James picks out one little member, the tongue, that if not governed by grace and love can
defile the whole body. The Church, chosen, redeemed, cleansed, and ready for presentation is `unspotted'. What
mercy, what humbling grace! We have not finished, however, with the testimony of this word aspilos.
Peter whose words we have already quoted of the ungodly and the unclean, had a totally different character to
speak of in 1 Peter 1:19, there he could speak with unreserved joy of the Saviour as `A lamb without blemish and
without spot', and could moreover turn to the believer and exhort him in view of the coming day of God :
` Beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot, and
without blemish' (2 Pet. 3:14),
and much the same line of exhortation is followed by the apostle Paul in his letter to Timothy, when he said :
` That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ'
(1 Tim. 6:14).
Here, it will be observed, is the practical outworking of this gracious cleansing. The Lord sees to it that we shall
be spotless by virtue of His own atoning death, He has assured us that the believer shall be `without blemish' but this
does not prevent the self same Scriptures from exhorting the child of God to seek to be found without spot and
without blemish, for while salvation by grace is not of works, it is unto good works, the root to be justified must
finally produce fruit.