Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Ephesians 4:28

"Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have whereof to give to him that hath need." — Ephesians 4:28 (ASV)

In this warning against breaking the commandment against theft, Paul is thinking of some convert who had been in the habit of stealing before he became a Christian. Stealing covers every kind of misappropriation. For the new self in Christ all this must stop. Christians should not be afraid to exert themselves to the point of exhaustion in manual labor (1 Corinthians 4:12; 1 Thessalonians 4:11). Hands that used to pilfer the property of others must now be hardened like Paul’s in honest toil (Acts 20:34–35). As a result believers should be in a position to help those worse off than they are. “To share” (GK 3556) means to distribute personally rather than through some agent or official.