A Life Of Obedience
A LIFE OF OBEDIENCE
EPHESIANS 5:3-14
Let’s admit that our culture glorifies sexual immorality, impurity and covetousness. Paul says these are to have no place in a believer’s life.
Paul has said that sins that promote discord, such as bitterness, harshness and an unwillingness to forgive, grieve the Holy Spirit. He now says the Holy Spirit can also be grieved by sins that corrupt and degrade human character.
Reckless abandonment to immorality was common in Greek society. While it was impossible to shield his readers from the grosser side of life, the apostle urges them not to dignify such baseness by making it a topic for conversation. Impurity, lust and flippant speech have the effect of dulling one’s sensitivity to the leading of the Spirit, whose nature is holiness. The appropriate attitude of the Christian is one of thanksgiving, which sees and acknowledges the beauty in human love and the rightful enjoyment of sex as the gift of God (see 5:22-33). Paul solemnly warns that those who are guilty of sexual vice are no better than those who serve idols rather than God. The immoral and amoral person is not only excluded from the realm where God is sovereign, but is consigned to wrath (5:3-6).
To reinforce the absolute difference between the community of faith and the pagan environment in which they live, Paul uses the image of light and darkness. Those who have fellowship with God are committed to the moral life, which is defined in Galatians 5:22-23 as “the fruit of the Spirit.” Here in Ephesians Paul contrasts the fruitfulness of life in fellowship with God (called “light”) with the barrenness of the immoral life (called “darkness”). And just as light drives out darkness, a life of unquestionable purity and integrity, by its very existence, exposes the shallowness and ugliness of the life of sexual immorality, impurity and covetousness, which must be carefully hidden from view (5:7-13).
This section is brought to a close with an excerpt from an early Christian hymn (5:14) which refers to the Christian’s experience of death and resurrection and Christ’s shining on the believer, shattering the darkness of the pagan past.