We’ve been learning a lot about what it looks like to imitate God. We’re seeing what the old self—which follows after the likeness of the devil—looks like, and what the new self is supposed to look like. That new self was created to be like God!—can you believe it?—in true righteousness and holiness. Changing our lives—the source and fruit of our lives—is not an optional add-on, an upgrade from the basic model. It is the natural state, desire and outcome of the kind of faith that saves to eternity. God loves us so much that He has another list for us, to guide us in our growth. Check yourselves for any of these characteristics, and make plans to remove what needs removing and strengthening what needs development. From Ephesians 5:3-7.
But Among You
3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people.
This is spoken to Christians, to believers in Jesus Christ, members of the body of Christ, members of the church to which this letter is written. We’re not talking about formal membership, but anyone who attends regularly and who claims to be Christian. The unbeliever that visits us, this is not written to them as an instruction, but they can certainly take warning, and come to understand that if they engage in these things, they are in sin and like us need to repent. But this is written to people who regularly meet together as Christians for fellowship and instruction, as a group of people eager to know and help each other grow more in Christlikeness. Remember, we are to be imitators of God, not the devil and not other people, even really nice people who do not know and love God. We must not do things He would not do! We must not do things He condemns.
Not Even a Hint
There should be no one who practices these things, or even dabbles in them. They should be so far from us, so abhorrent to us that we don’t even talk about them. We cannot control what others say about us. There will be those who falsely accuse us or slander us, but we must live such godly lives that even those who slander us know in their hearts there’s no way they could be right.
As people who are unwilling even to mention these things in conversation, that does not mean we cover up a brother or sister who has fallen into one of these sins. It doesn’t mean we don’t confess when we are tempted or ensnared by one of these things. We need to confess our sins to one another (James 5:16). We need to know if one of our number has fallen. So that we can help them repent and return to God’s ways. It does mean we don’t converse about these behaviors as if they’re suitable topics of discussion. We don’t bring them up; we don’t talk about them, especially in any kind of detail. They are taboo! But not as if there is some magical, demonic power in the words. Rather so that we don’t tickle our flesh and incite each other to curiosity and lead a brother or sister to stumble.
Nor does this mean that we cannot talk about the healthy God-designed counterpart to these unholy expressions. It is sexual immorality, impurity and greed that we must not do and should not even speak of. But helping each other do better at intimacy between husband and wife or improve in purity or do better at Christian business practices, these are all legitimate topics of discussion among Christians. We’re supposed to build each other up according to our needs, for the benefit of those who listen (Ephesians 4:29). We’re not supposed to inflame the lusts of our flesh by our conversation or example.
So what are these things?
Sexual Immorality
We get the word “pornography” from the underlying Greek word. It is any form of unsanctioned sexual activity outside God’s design for husband and wife, whether viewing pictures, movies, “live shows,” or engaging in pre-marital sex, sex with anyone who is not your spouse. No sexual intimacy even among engaged couples, no deviant sexual behavior, nothing. The Bible, sadly, has a pretty exhaustive list of all the wicked things godless people do to satisfy their ever-increasing lust. No such thing should be found or even named among believers!
Impurity
This is a mixing of holy and uholy, of righteous and unrighteous. Thayer’s Greek Lexicon says, especially of its usage in this verse, “in a moral sense, the impurity of lustful, luxurious, profligate living” (https://biblehub.com/greek/167.htm). This word alone seems to encompass all three of these prohibitions. But it has a more general sense than merely sexual immorality or greed. It speaks of unbridled living for the flesh in all its cravings, including all its lusts, a pursuit of self-pampering and enjoying the “best of the best,” doing whatever you find to be fun, without concern for cost or waste. It is excessive attention to self and what our flesh delights in. It invariably leads to sin. It is the opposite of contentment in all circumstances and all the limitations God places on our lives.
Greed
This is greed as we normally understand it, a lust for wealth. But it is also understood as covetousness. You see, it’s not merely those people who always want more, who are never satisfied with the amount of money they have. It includes them. It includes the idea of avarice, aggression and a desire for advantage. The underlying Greek word basically means “having more than you need,” beyond what God desires for you, for your good.
It is a violation of the 10th Commandment. Modern advertising is all about provoking covetousness in us. We may not visit our neighbor and say, “Wow, I want their ….” It also includes seeing an ad for something we have lived just fine without, and suddenly needing it. This greed is basically what drove David to take Bathsheba. Not a pursuit of money, but having such a desire to something that wasn’t already his that he took it, in this case, another man’s wife. God points out to him,
“I gave your master's house to you, and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.” (2 Samuel 12:8-10, NIV)
God gave him more than he needed, but David wasn’t content with all his wealth and blessing, so he took another man’s wife. Neither is greed just an excessive desire for more money or things. It is also the drive to hold in an iron grip things we already have, an unwillingness to let go, as if our life depended on the multitude of our possessions (Luke 12:15).
Paul says, “These are improper for God’s holy people.” Again, they’re normal for unbelievers. This isn’t instruction for them. This is instruction for us. God’s holy people are supposed to appreciate and enjoy sexual intimacy as God designed it, limited to a man and his own wife. God’s holy people should live lives of purity and godliness and simplicity, unstained by the lusts of the world. God’s holy people should be content with what God has apportioned to us and what God brings to us through reasonable and responsible labor, with an eager and glad heart to share with those in need, especially with members of this body. And we should be known far and wide by our purity and godliness, not by any form of immorality, impurity or greed!
Obscenity
4 Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.
The word “obscenity” here means filthiness, shamefulness, indecency and baseness. In the immediate context, “obscenity, foolish talk, coarse joking,” it implies what comes out of our mouths, but in truth there should be nothing obscene or filthy about anything we do, as surely as there should be nothing shameful or indecent about anything we say. It is not limited to curse words, but certainly includes them. It is anything indecent or obscene, which is why we should be unable to speak about any form of immorality or impurity or even greed, or anything else “the disobedient do in secret” (Ephesians 5:12, NIV). Such things should literally be distasteful to our mouths!
Foolish Talk
We get the word “moron” from the Greek translated “foolish” here. “Foolish talk” is literally, “moronic speaking toward a goal.” A fool, in Scripture, is one who is morally bankrupt, who is bent on doing evil. They are not mistaken or ill-informed. They are malicious in their intent. So is such “silly talk.” It seems harmless, but there is almost always a hidden agenda. Perhaps the speaker isn’t even conscious of it at the time! But they have this desire to do something they know is wrong, and if they can bring it up in conversation in a silly, seemingly-harmless way, they can test the waters, see what others are actually thinking and perhaps gradually move sentiment toward normalizing the deed. So again, anything immoral, impure, or of greed should not even be mentioned by believers. Anyone who does so, even in a “harmless” manner is probably under temptation or trying to tempt those around them.
Coarse Joking
“Coarse joking” could also be translated “crude joking,” “vulgar jesting” or “ribaldry,” if you know what that word means. This speaks of vulgar, crude or lewd humor or jokes. Again, this would mostly be jokes and humorous stories that suggest or outright discuss immoral, indecent or inappropriate behavior or activities.
Out of Place
Consider how often in the last few weeks we’ve talked about our mouths and what comes from them. We already know not to use our mouths to express anger or any unhelpful word. As people who are called to be holy and godly and righteous, off-color jokes should be far from us as well, along with meaningless talk and anything indecent or obscene. These should all be so far from us that they never occur to us to speak. We should be shocked and embarrassed any time we hear such things, especially from the mouths of Christians. Our “freedom in Christ” does not give us license to connect with unbelievers by swearing like they do or telling indecent jokes or using clever innuendo.
What did James say? “Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring” (James 3:11, NIV)? You are not more relatable as a Christian because you use “light” profanities or silly talk talk or almost-but-not-quite naughty jokes! Rather you are revealing the state of your heart, that you are more related to the world than to Christ! You’re defaming yourself, and if those who hear you know you claim to be a Christian, you are defaming Christ. This is not who Jesus is, and so neither should we be!
As I’ve said before, consider what you’re feeding your heart and mind by your viewing, listening and reading and other entertainment choices.
“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned." (Matthew 12:33-37, NIV)
You and I are responsible for what comes out of our mouths, and we are liable to judgment before God for how we use our words. “Make the tree good,” Jesus says, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him.” We are the ones who store away in our hearts either good things or evil. We make our heart good or evil based on what we feed our eyes and ears. We can make our hearts good by filling it with good things—God’s things! And that directly affects what comes out of our mouths. If you and I want victory over our mouth, we have to change what we store in our heart! “Garbage in, garbage out.”
It’s as simple as asking yourself, “Would I say this to Jesus?” Remember, the Holy Spirit is in you, if you have trusted in Christ and His Gospel; He is right with you, wherever you go. So unless you have a pretty low view of Jesus, a poor understanding of the holiness of God and of Christ, asking that question first will stop you from from speaking most of the things Paul tells us to cut out of our conversation.
Thanksgiving
Rather, Paul tells us, there should be thanksgiving ready on our tongues, expressions of gratitude for all God has given us and for all He has done for us. Replumbing the pipes to your tongue involves changing what you fill your heart with. If you fill it with God and with all He has written and with all He has done for you, if you change the focus of your thoughts and heart and life to learning of His goodness and acknowledging His grace to you, you will go a long way toward cleansing your speech and being filled to overflowing with gratitude.
One of our big problems, as we touched on last week, is that we focus so much on our disappointments, especially those at the hands of other people. So gratitude isn’t the first thing to flow from our mouths, but rather bitterness and cursing and anger. If we could grasp what we really deserve at the hands of God, the judgment and wrath we have incurred from Him, and realize the greatness of His kindness and mercy toward us, we would be overwhelmed with thankfulness. Go home and reread the first three chapters of Ephesians. Look at what we deserve as opposed to what God is giving us who believe the Gospel. Meditate on that. Memorize all three chapters—one verse at a time. Think on those things and see if you don’t get a change of perspective that shows through your tongue!
We Christians should be a people whose native tongue is gratitude. When we open our mouth, thankfulness should be one of our key themes.
Did you notice what is behind immorality, impurity and greed? It is discontentment with what we’ve been given and what we’re allowed to do. There is a sense of lack, of need not being met. How can such a person be thankful? No, they’re driven by lust, lust for the things that are out of reach, that they must have to be happy, to survive, to thrive. So they are unhappy until they can experience or gain whatever it is they think is being withheld from them. You can’t plaster over immorality, impurity and greed with thankfulness. That actually comes across as more of a really bad wallpapering job. Most would call it hypocrisy. Genuine thankfulness shoves those things out of the heart!
You can’t gain true thankfulness by making yourself speak gratitude, you must believe from the heart—you must know from head to toe—what judgment and condemnation you deserve from God and what God in Christ has done for you.
No Salvation
5 For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
Remember, Paul is speaking to saints in Christ Jesus. He wants them to be absolutely sure that no immoral, impure or greedy person will inherit the Kingdom of Christ and of God. Paul does not mean those who are working to cleanse their lives of all such things but occasionally trip up. Paul is talking about those who think there is no problem with these things, and so does little or nothing to remove them from his or her life. Someone may think they can believe in Jesus Christ and live in immorality, but God won’t have anything to do with them.
This is identity. Are you known as a saint by the power of the Holy Spirit? Or are you known as an immoral person—not by the world’s definition, but by Christ’s. Are you known as an impure person? Are you known as a greedy person? What would God’s word say about you? Remember what Jesus said,
“As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.” (John 12:47-48, NIV)
You’ll notice Paul says that the immoral person, the impure person, the greedy person—they are all idolaters! Their god, even as they fellowship with us here in the church, their god is not the Lord Jesus Christ. It is their deceitful fleshly appetites. By excusing any form of immorality, impurity or covetousness as a so-called Christian, such a person reveals that they do not worship Jesus Christ as Lord, but their own flesh. Paul said the same thing to the Philippians:
For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. (Philippians 3:18-19, NIV)
“Their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.” Their god is sex. Their god is pleasure, food, alcohol, drugs. Their god is their own status or cleverness or power. Their god is material things, money, lands, cars, clothes. Their god is not the Most High God. No idol-worshiper will gain entry into God’s eternal kingdom.
This is absolutely true for the unbeliever. But for the “believer” who does not diligently work to cleanse his or her life from all these things that God condemns and build in all these things God commends, he or she is showing that they worship another god. These are not commands to take lightly. Who do you worship? Who do you belong to? Who is your god? Your choices in life reveal it.
Paul is warning believers not to trifle with these things, not to ignore these instructions. The one who claims to believe in Jesus but continues in immorality, impurity or greed will not be saved. They will suffer eternal torment with all the rest who worshiped and served any other god—including themselves!
Beware Deceivers
6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient.
What is truly sad? There are those in the Church, claiming expertise, claiming understanding, standing in leadership or influence, who will tell you otherwise. That’s why Paul writes these things to a church, so that they would know the truth!
Such “experts” do not speak from God. Their words have no authority, they’re just made up arguments and proofs and distortions of God’s Word. They simply know what you and I want to hear, and they tells us that. They want to relieve the pressure on us to conform ourselves to godliness. They want to assure us that how we live has no bearing on our salvation—even though Jesus, Peter, James, Paul, John and the writer of Hebrews all blast that idea to smithereens. If you don’t pick and choose which verses to believe, but accept and believe every word of God, then even you will be able to see through the fog of modern carnal Christianity.
I’ll say it again, because people will misunderstand me: Salvation is by faith alone, but saving faith produces a changed heart and brings the power of the Spirit so that the true believer seeks—and succeeds—to follow the Word of God. Anyone who tells you otherwise is confused, deceived or a deceiver.
Jude (1:4, NIV) tells us, “For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.”
That’s what Paul is warning against here. There are false teachers and influencers who teach that God’s grace means license even to live immoral, impure or covetous lives. The idea that the grace of God that forgave all your sins when you believed the Gospel will allow you to live however you choose—whether more in line with God’s word or less—that is a bald-faced lie to anyone who knows the Scriptures! God’s grace saved us from our former evil ways so that we could and would now live in His eternal godly ways.
Perhaps you remember this from our time in Titus:
For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. (Titus 3:11-13, NIV)
Paul couldn’t be any clearer. God’s grace—the grace that brings salvation—“teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.” If anyone tells you otherwise, flee or kick them out of this fellowship!
Drive Them Out
7 Therefore do not be partners with them.
Do not invite them to your fellowship, either out of compassion or because you actually think they have something of value to teach you! Do not give them an opportunity to infect others with their anti-Christian ideas. Understand, the spirit of the antichrist has long been at work in our world (1 John 4:3).
We should not even partner with them, and so give our tacit approval to their evil ideas. Or worse, be won over to their way of thinking. They tell us what our itching ears want to hear (2 Timothy 4:3)! If only someone can argue from God’s word that I can follow the passions of my flesh! This calls up Paul’s instruction to the Corinthians,
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people." "Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you." "I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." (2 Corinthians 6:14-18, NIV)
It’s not just unbelievers we need to guard against! We need to keep a distance from false believers too, whose accidental or intentional purpose is to lead us astray from God’s holy Word!
Do not think you can redeem them, if only you spend enough time with them. Do not think you can help them understand, not if they’re already promoting such ideas. Again, drawing from Titus, such men need to be silenced (Titus 1:11). We can warn them once, twice, but afterward, if they haven’t repented, drive them away (Titus 3:10-11).
Conclusion
Far too many of us have had experience with cancer. When the doctors go in to remove a tumor, they do their best to remove the margins, in hope of eliminating the possibility of its recurrence. If they miss even one cell, that is enough for the mass to regrow.
We are like careless doctors when we only try to remove some obvious sins from our lives. We’re like foolish doctors if we only cut out two centimeters of a three-centimeter mass. “It’ll be fine! It’s so small!”
Paul tells us to not allow even a hint of sexual immorality or impurity or greed or covetousness or obscenity or foolish talk or coarse joking to exist in our midst or in our hearts. To think that a little is okay, no big deal, is to invite disaster. These things lead to death just as surely as untreated cancer. Cancer kills the body; unchecked sin condemns the soul.
Make a list in descending order: Which of these do you struggle with most? Which least? Begin to tackle them one by one, from worst to least. Root them out. Leave no margin.
Instead, fill your heart with the good things God is and has done through the ages and has done specifically for you. Recognize by the existence of any one of these things in your life how right God is to condemn you to eternal punishment, and so how precious is His salvation through the sacrifice and resurrection of His only Son, His precious Son. Let thankfulness flow from a heart filled with the goodness of God, to be the theme of your every conversation.
Let the Spirit have His way in you, to transform you into the likeness of Christ. Imitate the Lord Jesus, not the devil!