Thanksgiving Amid Corruption
Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; and
walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an
offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour. (Ephesians 5:1-2)
It’s all you hear these days: sexual scandals and economic doom.
Several of our leaders – political, religious and otherwise – have
failed us as they’ve taken part in sexual misconduct. And newscasters then tell
us, daily, how miserable the economy is doing due to greed on several levels.
If ever the church needed to be the church, it is now.
In today’s Scripture passage, Ephesians 5:1-7, St. Paul continues his
theme of “living out the Gospel of Christ” as he exhorts you to put off the
old, sinful way of living and to put on the new man, created in Christ. Here he
specifically calls on you to follow the Lord’s example of purity as you flee
the world’s corruption.
That’s a challenging calling, especially considering how vile and
greedy this world really is. You can’t even look at billboards on the highway
anymore for fear of being scandalized!
The answer to the world’s corruption, as Paul brings out, is simple:
thanksgiving to God in Christ. If your heart is filled with thanksgiving to the
Lord for His kindness, you will not have room for impurity and idols.
First, the apostle says you must follow our Savior’s example of love
and purity as you live your everyday life.
As we noted last week, Paul writes in verse 1 that you and I, formerly
the children of wrath, have been adopted into God’s family in His true Son,
Jesus. This adoption is a legal act that entitles you to God’s fatherly love,
provision, forgiveness, chastisement and inheritance. And it is not merely a
legal act; you actually are His “beloved child.” Because of His unfathomable
love, the Father chose you in Christ for salvation from the foundations of the
world, and He brought your salvation into reality so He might call you His dear
child.
Part of being a child, of course, is resembling your father. Just as you
resemble your earthly father, you are to resemble your Father in Heaven – by
forgiving those who hurt you, by speaking the truth, by working, by walking in
holiness.
In verse 2, though, Paul goes a step further: you are to follow the
sacrificial pattern set by your Lord Jesus as you walk in love. Jesus, the
apostle writes, gave himself for us as an offering, a pleasing sacrifice, to
God the Father. The emphasis in Greek falls on Christ’s giving-up of himself,
which accords with Jesus’ own statement: “No one takes my life from me. I lay
it down of myself.” Jesus willingly left the splendor of glory and came to this
cursed earth to die for you and me, who spat upon and mocked him in our sin.
Jesus did this because our Holy Father is both just and the Justifier of the
faithful; His justice and holiness demand that your sin be washed away totally
if you are to be a member of His family and live before Him. In fulfillment of
all of the Levitical sacrifices, which when offered according to the law were a
“sweet-smelling aroma” before God, the spotless Lamb of God offered his very
self on the cross. Jesus did so out of love for you, so that you might be
cleansed of all your sin and empowered to walk as he walked.
As the redeemed of our loving Savior, you are to negotiate your daily
life in Christ-empowered, Christ-like love. Were Christ not alive, and were you
not in him by faith, you couldn’t be patient, kind, generous or truthful with
others. “Apart from me,” Jesus said, “you can do nothing.” Yet he lives in you,
and he is both your Enabler and your Exemplar in walking in love toward those
around you.
You and I also have a new identity in Christ, as Paul refers to us in
verse 3 as “saints.” A “saint” is a “holy one,” and to be holy is to be free of
all sin and totally consecrated to the Lord. Certainly you and I aren’t holy in
and of ourselves. We sin every day through, for example, mean thoughts and
self-worship (not to mention our myriad other violations of His holy law). In
Christ, however, you and I are credited with Jesus’ righteousness, which means
we are holy in him. We are no longer darkness – sinfulness – but light in
Christ. And what is pure and holy and light can have no fellowship with sin and
evil and darkness, because they are mutually exclusive. The sins mentioned in
today’s passage are particularly unsuited for the saints.
Paul writes that you and I also have a new future in Christ. Formerly
“children of disobedience,” who only looked forward to God’s wrath (as we
learned in chapter 2), we now are God’s children – who look forward to
inheriting the Kingdom of Christ and of God (note Paul’s mentioning of Christ’s
divinity, as he equates Jesus with the Father in terms of divine Kingship).
We’re headed to a vastly different place from non-Christians: shouldn’t your
life and mine look different as we move along on our journey?
As a beloved child of God, a saint with a Heavenly home, you are to
imitate your Father in Heaven and your Savior, who loved you and gave himself
for you. Practically, this means that as you drive down the interstate and see
provocative billboards, or notice your neighbor’s new boat, you ask yourself:
“Would the Lord lust in this situation?” “Would Christ give his very life to
have this boat?”
Christ’s example and character is the standard you must apply to every
decision you encounter.
Second, Paul says you must flee this world’s corruption – in thought,
word and deed.
The sins mentioned specifically in 5:1-7 fall into the categories of
impurity and greed, which is idolatry. If we were to group them in one
category, though, we might say they finally are sins of idolatry. Whether it is
another person’s body or material possessions, all of these sins make false
gods out of earthly things, in defiance of the one, true God.
Paul commands you and me to not allow fornication or impurity, whether
in thought, word or deed, to be named even once among us. We’re to have nothing
to do with such vileness, in deed but also in thought (as Jesus told us) and in
speech. This means you’re to be circumspect about where you look – in town, or
even on your computer.
He also commands us to have no truck with greed, which is actually
idolatry. Jesus, you will remember, taught us to ask our Father for “daily
bread” and to not make “stuff” our god. You and I, even in “economically
depressed” Greene County, won’t hear him, though. Instead of tasting our daily
bread and thanking our Father, or using our daily bread – by which the Father
has met our physical needs – to serve God further, we make our bread our god.
Or perhaps you make that new rifle, car or body style your god, and you won’t
stop until you have it. Greed, however, doesn’t stop. It is never satisfied,
because idols (unlike our Good Shepherd) never satisfy our deepest needs.
We’re not to allow crude, silly or suggestive speech to flow from our
lips, either. Our communications are to reflect the God who communicates to us
in His holy Word, and vile speech does not reflect the character our
thrice-holy Lord.
... A tough task in a world that delights in every form of idolatry.
The answer to impurity and to greed is simple, Paul tells us: we must
be thankful.
Now that might not seem like the logical solution. Isn’t purity the
opposite of filth? But think again: if you are thankful to the Father for His gifts,
especially that of Jesus His Son, your heart will not be inclined to stray from
God’s character. You won’t have space in your heart for that which is odious to
the Lord.
It’s interesting that Paul should mention thanksgiving in this text, in
which he is countering idolatry. If you’ll think back to his discussion in
Romans 1 of those who, in their sin-warped minds, suppress the knowledge of the
one, true God and instead worship false gods, he says their bad theology leads
directly to greed and to sexual immorality. What is more, they are unthankful
to God. So there is, clearly, a direct connection between ingratitude to the
Lord, idolatry – and lust of every sort.
The answer to corruption is thanksgiving. If you’re thankful for God’s
gift of marriage and of purity in Christ, you won’t have the desire to sully
His Name in the mud of sexual sin. If you’re thankful for Christ and for every
good gift with him, you won’t lust after things that rust and decay.
Those who habitually practice fornication, greed and impurity have no
inheritance in glory. Paul isn’t saying true Christians don’t struggle mightily
with these sins; he instead is saying those who are unthankful as they chase
after false gods have no interest in the one, true God – now or in eternity.
Our world undeniably opposes God’s Word on this matter, Sinners deceive
themselves with vain, empty words all the time, conjuring up “explanations” for
sexual impurity and for greed. “Greed is good,” one popular movie of the 1980s
preached. Advertisements promise you that if only you had this car, that
outfit, this body, you’d be happy. And when it comes to matters of sexuality,
sinners are deft at self-deception. I recently read an article in The New
York Times describing the growing practice of people having intimate
relationships with several folks at one time in their lives. Now, this practice
has a name and, the cultural “preachers” tell us, ought to be accepted as
“another form of sexuality.”
In Paul’s day, this practice was known as fornication.
Thank the Lord for His saving grace in Christ, and for Jesus’ purity
and truth. If you really are thankful, you will cast off the unfruitful works
of darkness.
The great Christian writer and pastor AW Tozer once compared the Holy
Spirit to the dove that Noah released from the ark. Tozer noted that the raven,
which feasted on rotten flesh, never returned to the ark; but the dove –
symbolic of the Holy Spirit – found no place to rest, because it had nothing to
do with the corruption surrounding it.
There is rottenness all around you. Even running magazines – running
magazines! – promote license. Daytime television contains material once
reserved for late-night cable TV.
Ask yourself with every decision you face: is this a place in which the
Holy Spirit, who lives in me, would rest?