The Pulpit Commentary on Ephesians 5:5

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

For this ye know well; an appeal to their own consciences, made confidently, as beyond all doubt. That no fornicator, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom.

Covetousness, the twin-brother sin of uncleanness, is denounced as idolatry. It is worshipping the creature more than the Creator, depending on vast stores of earthly substance in place of the favor and blessing of God.

It must receive the doom of the idolater; instead of inheriting the kingdom, he must die the death. The doom in this verse is not future, but present—not shall have, but hath, inheritance, etc. (comp.

Ephesians 1:11, Ephesians 1:18). The lust of greed overreaches itself; it loses all that is truly worth having; it may have this and that—lands, houses, and goods—but it has not one scrap in the kingdom.

Of Christ and God. The two are united in the closest way, as equals, implying the divinity of Christ and his oneness with the Father in the administration of the kingdom.

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