00:00:01:30 – 00:00:26:53
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us. I appreciate you closing out the week with us. We are in Ephesians chapter five. We are starting with verse three, going through a few verses today. If you’ve been with us, you know that we were off a couple of days and it and that may help. This is a a little bit of, there’s a little bit of a whiplash transition here.

00:00:26:58 – 00:00:53:44
Clint Loveall
We entered chapter five with these two wonderful verses. Be imitators of God and live love in Christ and sacrifice and be an offering. But now Paul chooses to focus on, if you want to say do’s and don’ts, he’s been talking do’s and now he’s going to talk don’ts. And, there’s some reason why he gets where he gets and we can talk about that.

00:00:53:49 – 00:01:18:22
Clint Loveall
Also, there’s a couple of things in the language that are probably helpful to know, but let me read a few verses and then we’ll come back and we’ll start getting into this. But fornication and impurity of any kind or greed must not even be mentioned among you, as is proper among the saints. Entirely out of place is obscene, silly and vulgar talk.

00:01:18:27 – 00:01:50:55
Clint Loveall
But instead let there be Thanksgiving. Be sure of this. No fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy, that is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. So maybe let’s just break off there for a minute. Michael. So, I think as a as a background, it maybe is helpful to know if you’re not familiar with Paul.

00:01:51:00 – 00:02:23:51
Clint Loveall
I think it is helpful to see that Paul draws a very hard line between the church or the faith and the world, and Paul understands that the world is a place that is not helpful to faith. The world is fallen. The world is sinful. The world is where non redeemed people, do non redeemable things and Paul is convinced that the church is to be the opposite of that.

00:02:23:56 – 00:02:48:23
Clint Loveall
And then and hence Christians are to come out of the world into the faith and be changed, not not just theologically changed, but practically changed. And so if you if you look at the chapter here in the first two verses of chapter five, and probably we could argue even up into chapter four, you have what it looks like to imitate God.

00:02:48:25 – 00:03:24:13
Clint Loveall
He actually uses that language, imitate God. Now, as a flip side, Paul is giving what it looks like to imitate the world. And what he’s saying is that that has no place in the church. So, so where does he go? Michael. He goes to the extremes. He goes to the things that the Ephesians would clearly resonate with as sinful, not only because of general teaching, but specifically because they live in a place that that kind of wallows in that stuff that celebrates it.

00:03:24:14 – 00:03:50:55
Clint Loveall
There’s a temple there. There are prostitutes at that temple. Ephesus is well known as a place of licentiousness and seduction and all of these things are part of their culture. And so he goes to that extreme place to say, this is what doesn’t belong here. This is what you have to this is a line that you have to draw to keep the world out of the church.

00:03:51:00 – 00:04:35:25
Michael Gewecke
It may be difficult transition if you’re just reading, looking for an encouraging text to get you through today. But I do think that this fits very deeply inside the more consistent narrative that we’ve seen in this book. Because make know the fact that there’s been these high theological moments in which the community of the church is affirmed, and the importance of that community is seen in the way that it treats one another, because this is a reflection of Christ, and because ultimately, that community, with all of its walls of hostility, they have been torn down.

00:04:35:25 – 00:05:00:45
Michael Gewecke
And all of the ways that it’s being brought together by the gift of Jesus Christ, who is the first who demonstrates the way that the church is to follow. When you look at that, and then you will understand that that kingdom represents a new way in the world. It shouldn’t be surprising that Paul has in mind where it diverts from the way of the world.

00:05:00:50 – 00:05:30:02
Michael Gewecke
And I do think that this slots into an interesting place in a lot of our minds, because sometimes the side of the faith that forbids things is more interesting to us than the side of faith that permits things or invites us into new ways. And so texts like this fornication, impurity of any kind, which I think should make us more uncomfortable than it does, because look at the very next word, or greed must not even be mentioned among you.

00:05:30:07 – 00:06:02:01
Michael Gewecke
A lot of times Christians have focused in on the things that seem to us to be far outside the pale. We would get stuck on fornication, impurity. We might like to just gloss right over greed. But here it’s very clear that these things that break down God’s best path for the community, the thing that takes the right relationship between brothers and sisters in Christ, those things need to be identified.

00:06:02:06 – 00:06:29:07
Michael Gewecke
Those things need to be rooted out, or we risk those having the power to destroy the community. And it’s interesting that we see here this listing and Presbyterians, Clint, are not often going to talk about saints, right. We’re not often going to talk about that in the context of what we have in our present time, often, Catholic understanding of those who have been selected and gone through a process.

00:06:29:22 – 00:06:54:09
Michael Gewecke
But here the idea isn’t that that comes later in history. What’s in mind here are the holy ones, the people who are living the faith and demonstrating the values of the faith, the people who embody the best of the kingdom of God. Well, those people have these things, it out from their lives. It is proper to live as an imitator of God.

00:06:54:09 – 00:07:22:46
Michael Gewecke
It is not proper to live in these other ways. And I think it’s easy to get fixated on, well, do I do the bad thing? And where’s the line for the bad thing? And you come to a text like this and we might be tempted to do that. I think it’s far more applicable to us today if we understand the original intention, which was to encourage the church to be like the saints and not to be the kind of people who are always looking for the lines that we should not cross.

00:07:22:51 – 00:07:43:04
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think there’s a couple of word things. And then to kind of circle back to that idea, Michael. So the first is at least in our translation, the word fornication, I think a lot of translations will translate that sexual impurity. And the word there is one of those Greek words that people know, but they don’t know that they know.

00:07:43:04 – 00:08:15:54
Clint Loveall
It’s the the Greek word is Pernilla. It’s the root of our word, pornography. And yes, it includes fornication, which is, you know, sex outside of marriage. But it’s bigger than that. It’s it’s really a catch all for everything. That’s kind of, the word we probably use is dirty about sex. The sex that is not relational and not productive and not for family and not for closeness, but is just gratifying the flesh.

00:08:15:54 – 00:08:42:09
Clint Loveall
And as such, Paul can say, you know, porno is is that’s of the world and it and it should not be in the church and then impurity and greed and the other phrase here, verse four entirely out of place. That word is actually in Greek, it means something like to fit. And when Greek wants to make a word negative, it puts an A in front of it.

00:08:42:09 – 00:09:14:35
Clint Loveall
We do that in a few English words, but this literally says something like and does not fit in. In other words. And the translation, you could see how they got there out of place. It it doesn’t belong. It. It’s of a different substance. It it’s outside of the church. And so you have Paul here making this wonderful, strenuous argument that there are things in the world that shouldn’t be found in the church greed, impurity, immorality.

00:09:14:40 – 00:09:37:15
Clint Loveall
Those things are worldly things, and they’re not surprising to Paul. Paul knows the world is the world. Paul knows the world is broken. Paul knows. Not only does the world do those things, it celebrates those things. But Paul says they do not belong in the church. And, he’s going to come to say some other things, Michael, maybe we talk about it more on Monday.

00:09:37:15 – 00:10:02:35
Clint Loveall
But to your point, I don’t think that Paul is doing what we would think of as theology here. Not that it’s not theological, but I think this is Paul, the practical preacher. Paul is not he. He’s not raising questions about salvation by works and wants saved, always saved. He’s going to say some things that sound like that could be in the mix.

00:10:02:40 – 00:10:35:33
Clint Loveall
But what he’s really saying is when you come to Jesus Christ, your life should reflect that. And worldly things should not be a part of the body of Christ, and we should make every effort to keep them out in ourselves and if necessary, maybe even in the community. And I think that helps understand why Paul goes to this edge and why he’s not talking about gossip and some of the other things that he’ll also condemn.

00:10:35:38 – 00:10:51:11
Clint Loveall
But for him, these are some of the clearest examples of ways in which the world is broken, that the church hopefully should not be. And, you know, unfortunately, Michael Church gets that wrong a lot.

00:10:51:16 – 00:11:24:11
Michael Gewecke
I’ve got to confess that I think the comment I’m about to make may strike some people as being a little unsatisfying, if I’m going to be honest with you, but I want to look at verse five together just briefly. We come back to the first list. Right? So no person with perennial and the impure person, person that is greedy person that is living in this way of life, be certain that there is not an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

00:11:24:16 – 00:11:51:30
Michael Gewecke
The unsatisfying thing, I think, is that we would love to know. Well one. When has one crossed the line that you’re nodding the kingdom anymore? And in truth, a lot of time has been spent trying to draw out maps of the human soul. And if you do this thing, you’ve crossed that line. If you’ve done this thing, there’s a native kind of human curiosity which goes all the way back to the garden.

00:11:51:30 – 00:12:14:19
Michael Gewecke
And some people who were really curious about the idea of the knowledge of God, the knowledge of of good and evil. And fundamentally, what I want to submit to you is that this is not offered to the church in Ephesus as a way of providing them a springboard to be thinking about all of the different ways that the world goes wrong.

00:12:14:24 – 00:12:45:25
Michael Gewecke
Rather, it is a reflection of Paul wanting to make abundantly clear that what you say about Christ will and must be reflected in the way that you actually live in the world, that if you are going to be counted among. We literally have this language here, the saints, then you two will have your life actually reflect the conduct and the character of God.

00:12:45:30 – 00:13:24:03
Michael Gewecke
And I would point you to verse one here in chapter five, that the source of this is our imitation of God, that fundamentally we’re being formed into the very image of God and God’s own character by the power of the spirit within us. And if that’s true, then, Clint, there’s just not a universe in which we can be actively practicing greed, in which we can actively be turning our physical desires for the sake of only ourselves, that we could be building up our own selfish desires, and that at the end of that story, we will have somehow magnified the image of Christ in us.

00:13:24:03 – 00:13:45:43
Michael Gewecke
And that, I think, is the force of this text, is to say that our speech and our conduct must match, that if we desire to be with the Saints, then we must be the kind of people whose lives have turned over the years to be reflective of the character of the God who we continue to seek to imitate.

00:13:45:43 – 00:14:00:48
Michael Gewecke
I want to be clear this isn’t about judging how far you’ve gone down the path. It’s about who are you being formed into the image of? Is it the world or is it God? And that is, I think, the thing that is on display here.

00:14:00:48 – 00:14:22:14
Clint Loveall
So when I say I don’t think Paul’s doing theology, I think you and I are on the same page. Michael. What I mean is we could have deep theological arguments about when one puts themself outside of the fold of Christianity, right. And we could we’ve had some of those arguments even involving human sexuality and things like that. Right.

00:14:22:19 – 00:14:58:33
Clint Loveall
But on in that sense, I don’t think Paul is trying to draw here some sort of map that says, oh, yeah, if you take step C, it’s too far. But practically, I think what Paul is saying is it’s clear when a person leaves the fold, when they look to the world for guidance and do the things of the world, instead of look to Christ for guidance and do the things of Christ, forgive, love, be disciplined.

00:14:58:33 – 00:15:22:06
Clint Loveall
All of those things that he’s been talking about and, and and for Paul, it’s just simple, a simple matter. You can’t inherit the kingdom when you refuse to live in it. You you’re if you’re choosing to live by the world’s standards and operate as the world operates, then of course you’re not inheriting the Kingdom because you’re on the wrong side of the line.

00:15:22:06 – 00:16:11:33
Clint Loveall
You’re on the wrong side of the fence. You’re you’re back in the very place that Christ called you out of to begin your life of faith and and this is not some kind of justification, Michael, because, you know, Paul says these were to the Ephesians, but you and I both and everybody listening knows of churches where people have gotten themselves in trouble and greed and sexual immorality would cover 95% of those cases through church history, whether it’s the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages, the modern day megachurch, or the thousands and thousands of Little churches in between, I mean, this remains a choice that people have to struggle with.

00:16:11:38 – 00:16:23:31
Clint Loveall
Do we pursue the way of the world, or are we committed to the way of Christ? And Paul? Paul wants us to know there is a difference. They’re not the same.

00:16:23:36 – 00:16:50:16
Michael Gewecke
We’re also going to see these themes fleshed out more as we go. That’s the downside of the way that we do these studies. We go in small sections. So I want to just tip this off a little bit here. Yeah, that there’s an argument that’s unfolding here that God’s way is an orderly way that God intends for Christians to live in such a way that we know what harmony looks like.

00:16:50:16 – 00:17:22:10
Michael Gewecke
And this does not explicitly reference God’s creation and its intended order. But that’s always built into the theology of the New Testament, because that comes all the way through the Jewish line of understanding of God’s covenant with them. And and of course, Jesus Christ is instituting the new creation. Right? So this idea that we have today is very simply that you’ve got mis ordered sexual desire, you have impurity and you have greed.

00:17:22:15 – 00:18:01:12
Michael Gewecke
Fundamentally, these are all turned inward on self. Ultimately, that violates the ordering of God’s creation because it breaks down community. Later in just a few verses, we’re going to discover that drunkenness is included on that list. Further on, we’re going to talk about relationships and human families. And every single one of these steps is a way that we’re seeing how when our broken, sinful hearts turn us inward and therefore against one another, we both see the breakdown of Christian community, which is the functional outcome.

00:18:01:24 – 00:18:28:04
Michael Gewecke
But we are also missing our calling to be imitators of a triune God. And that is the fundamental problem at play. It is the divisive line between one is a practicing Holy One, a saint, and one is living in the world. It is. Whose family are you living in, and who is the one who is the leader versus the follower?

00:18:28:15 – 00:18:45:09
Michael Gewecke
And in this case, we’re talking about these particular categories. But once again, it’s all about tension and right relationship and understanding how it all fits together. It. This is just one instance of a multi-step argument that is going to unfold here.

00:18:45:14 – 00:19:16:28
Clint Loveall
And before we leave, I just want to circle back to verse four because, we I don’t want to give the impression that the only things that have been warned against are, you know, big, big ticket sin items. Wrong. Right. Because what is Paul say here entirely out of place is obscene, silly and vulgar talk. Some translations use, coarse joking.

00:19:16:33 – 00:20:04:40
Clint Loveall
Right? Or what could, you know, just could be called lotto. I mean, so again, even Paul is aware that even if those things don’t physically make their way into our lives, they can make their way into our lives mentally. Those same things can be in our hearts, and they are equally out of place. Whether we’re telling some joke or saying something that is, you know, off brand for Christians versus the actual things themselves, because what they all have in common is they originate in the fallen world, and therefore they’re out of place in the church.

00:20:04:40 – 00:20:29:51
Clint Loveall
And Paul’s not a prude. Paul’s not. Again, we could have lots of arguments about where those lines are and try to make rules. That’s not how Paul does things. Paul’s just saying, look, make sure the way you speak, make sure the way you act reflect Jesus and not the world that is around us that we know doesn’t yet know the standards of Christ.

00:20:29:56 – 00:20:48:25
Clint Loveall
You are people who are supposed to know the standards of Christ. Act accordingly, think accordingly, speak accordingly. And so, just in case we were thinking, these are big holes in the net we could all slip through. I think they find a way to have a word for all of us.

00:20:48:25 – 00:21:13:01
Michael Gewecke
And in that verse, in particular, I just want to submit, if your question is where’s the line of what is obscene, silly and vulgar talk? I want to encourage you to think the line is when you’re not actively practicing Thanksgiving, because I submit to you if your speech is salted with Thanksgiving, it’s not full of silly, vulgar talk.

00:21:13:01 – 00:21:25:19
Michael Gewecke
Those things are just not going to come out of the same font. And realistically, it’s not about defining the negative, though. That’s what fascinates us. It’s again being called the head by the positive. Yeah.

00:21:25:24 – 00:21:57:16
Clint Loveall
Maybe a better framework is not what can I say or do, but what should I what is helpful, what is beneficial, what is of gratitude and of love? A high, high standard. So it’s interesting that you start a passage. It looks like a relatively low bar for most of us to get over, and it ends up being a very high standard because Paul always uses Jesus as that, as that line.

00:21:57:21 – 00:22:13:30
Michael Gewecke
There’s a lot in a small section, and we’re glad that you’ve made it this far with us in that conversation. Certainly if you found this helpful, give it a like. It helps others find it in their own study, sometimes years down the road, and certainly subscribe so you don’t miss studies like this. We will see you all who join us live next Monday.

00:22:13:39 – 00:22:14:04
Clint Loveall
Thanks!