Ephesians 4:24

24. After God So Colossians 3:10. “Renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.”

Created As Ellicott well notes, in the past tense, as if the image in which we are to be being renewed was itself created at first, though our renewal be a progressive work, to be completed at “the manifestation of the sons of God,” Romans 8:19, when we are to be completely “conformed to the image of his Son” at the final “regeneration,” Matthew 20:28, when we are “children,” or rather, sons, “of the resurrection.” Luke 20:36. And here we learn wherein, in some respects, is the image of God in which Adam was first created, and in which our renewal ultimates.

Righteousness… holiness Rectitude in our dealings with men, holiness in our relations with God; yet the latter giving a higher tone to the former than it could of itself possess. Virtue is hardly virtue until verified by piety. See note on Matthew 5:7. Ellicott well notes “a faint contrast” between righteousness here and greediness, Ephesians 4:19, (gain-greed, as we have translated it.) as well as between holiness and uncleanness, or baseness, as we have rendered it. If the entire “contrast” which we exhibit, as intended by Paul in these two paragraphs, is realized, the contrast Dr. Ellicott notices ceases to be faint. Our renderings, which exclude the reference to sexuality alone, are thereby confirmed.

True This adjective is in the Greek a genitive noun of truth, and commentators now agree should so be rendered: righteousness and holiness of truth. Truth, then, is here contrasted with the deceit of Ephesians 4:22, where see our note. And this contrast again confirms our rendering in that verse.