LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS
Motivations
Ephesians 5:1-14
INTRODUCTION
Too often we take an unhealthy approach to Bible study. We approach the Bible wanting to learn something new or something deeper. Now that is not all that necessarily bad. In fact, it can be good. I want to come to understand what God has been doing since the creation of the universe and to understand my role in what God is doing. I don’t see why anybody would have a problem with that.
The ultimate goal, though, of Bible study should be a transformed life. Yes, I do want to read about the stories of great saints in the Bible, both the OT and the NT: Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Isaiah, other OT prophets, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Peter, Paul, etc. Much is to be gleaned by studying their lives. In fact, after reading about the stories of all these biblical heroes, I should want to experience the story that God has for MY life. I don’t just want to study life; I want to experience life. Again, though, the ultimate goal of Bible study should be the transformed life. If a person is not being transformed into the image of Christ because of the Bible study he engages in, then I am not sure that this person is doing Bible study legitimately. A transformed life is the goal.
Think for a moment what it means to live a transformed life. Is that a difficult concept to understand? Don’t we all know that when the Bible commands us to live a transformed life, it means that we are to live like Jesus? It means we are to love, be humble, and be holy. Now how difficult is that? I know what it means to love, to put Christ and others first, to live a pure life. What we really need in most instances is not more knowledge but more motivation to do what we know we should do. Besides going into more detail into what it means to be like Christ, Paul also provides us with some major motives on the reasons we should be like Christ.
MOTIVATIONS (5:1, 8, 13-14)
| 1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children . . . 8 for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord ; walk as children of Light . . . 13 But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. 14 For this reason it says, "Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you." |
Children of God (5:1)
One of the wildest truths in the entire Bible is that God has used Christ Jesus in order to raise up more sons and daughters unto Himself. God has such a wonderful relationship with Jesus His Son that He wants others to be included into that same kind of relationship with Him. That includes YOU and ME!
Think about how wild and crazy that is! Us! He could have chosen the mighty and powerful angels to be transformed into His sons and daughters. Instead, He chose us. In The Screwtape Letters, a satire C.S. Lewis wrote which has a senior devil Screwtape advising a junior devil Wormwood how to destroy a Christian, Screwtape marvels that God would choose US, mere humans, to be His sons and daughters. [In The Screwtape Letters because Screwtape is a demon, Satan is "Our Father" and God is "the Enemy":
Humans are amphibians-half spirit and half animal. (The Enemy’s determination to produce such a revolting hybrid was one of the things that determined Our Father to withdraw His support from Him. . . .One must face the fact that all this talk about His love for men and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want [men to be] cattle who can finally become [our] food; He wants [men to be] servants who can finally become [His] sons”
(The Screwtape Letters, chapter 8).
In agreement with this, Peter claims that as Jesus was ministering here on earth beginning the process of transforming us into God’s sons and daughters, the angels were so overwhelmed by what Jesus was doing that they were practically standing on their tip-toes, looking over the walls of heaven to look at what Jesus was doing (1 Pet. 1:12). It was like they were saying, “Wow! Can you believe that? Whoa! Who would have ever thought? This is truly amazing!” That is truly the reaction we should have when we begin to realize that Jesus is making us sons and daughters of God.
All this talk about being God’s sons and daughters is more than just about who we ARE; it should also affect the way we LIVE. Being someone’s son should affect the way a person lives. Jesus is quite clear on this in His debate with the Jewish religious leaders (John 8:37-44). In John 8 the Jewish religious leaders and Jesus are debating who is truly God’s son(s)—Jesus or the Jewish religious leaders. According to Jesus sons are like their dads. Because the Jewish religious leaders are intent on murdering Jesus, they are actually showing the world that they are sons of Satan and not of God. Why? Because Satan by nature is a murderer, something God is not.
If we are truly God’s sons and daughters, then we are going to want to be around our heavenly Father; we are going to want to be like Him. We see this in everyday life. How many little girls wait at the door for their dads when they drive up after work? How many sons want their dads to play catch with them when they get home from work? How many little boys get a toy lawnmower so that they can follow their dad around while he is actually mowing the yard? How many sons and daughters go to the same colleges their parents graduate from? A WHOLE LOT!!! They don’t have to be encouraged to do these things. They LOVE to do these things because they love their moms and their dads! (It’s only when some parents turn out to be jerks that the children quit wanting to be like their parents; even then, parents may have a strange and strong hold on their children.)
Well, what is true on the physical level between parents and children should be especially true on the spiritual level. As good as my dad was, as much as I loved him, how much more wonderful is my heavenly Father, host much more does my heavenly Father love me—love you. The LEAST we can do is to respect Him by being like Him.
Children of Light (5: 8, 13-14)
One of the most common themes in ancient religions (even in contemporary pop religions) is the conflict between good and evil. You find this conflict in Persian Zoroastrianism, Babylonian religions, Jewish sects such as the one at Qumran, Gnosticism, even Star Wars. In each of these systems, the Light is good and the Darkness is evil.
Christianity places a new twist on this age-old conflict. According to Christianity, the Light is not simply some force for good (as in The Star Wars Trilogy); it is a person. The Light in Christianity is actually a person who goes to war against a demonic realm of darkness. In Christianity, not only is God Light, His Son Jesus Christ is Light (Eph. 4:14).
According to Paul, because we are sons of God, we are children of light. This only makes sense because according to Scripture God is light (Ps. 27:1; 1 John 1:5); as God is light, we as His children are children of light.
What does it mean to be children of light? First of all, in this passage Christ is called “the light”: “But all things become visible when they are exposed by the Light [Jesus], for everything that becomes visible is light. For this reason it says, "Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine on you” (5:13-14).
Before we became Christians, we were spiritually dead in sin. When Jesus came to us for salvation, He came as light to awaken us from the sleep of death. Christ as Light raises men not only from their spiritual slumber but also from death.
More than that, though, this relates to the way we should live. For just a moment, think about the kinds of activities that would be done at night but never in the day time, or at least in the open light. Most burglaries take place at night when the owner of the store has gone home for the day. Rapes are seldom done in the daylight in full view of everybody; rather most occur at night when the perpetrator can get away with it by being unseen in his act.
If we are truly children of the day, then our lives will truly reflect it by doing the deeds that are done in the open light, when nobody would be ashamed to be seen doing those deeds: loving others, being patient towards others, helping others, serving others, being truly joyful in other people’s successes, etc.
ACTIONS PRODUCED BY THESE MOTIVATIONS (5:2-12)
| 2 and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. 3 But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; 4 and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. 5 For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not be partakers with them; 8 for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light 9 (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), 10 trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them; for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. |
Love (5:2)
In light of the fact that I am God's son and should act like Him, in light of the fact that I am a child of Light and should live like I am in the light, how then should I live? How should I as God's son—who should be like God’s Son Jesus—then live? First by loving. Not just any kind of love; Christ’ love. The love of Christ we see displayed on the cross” “and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma” (5:2).
This love, this agape love, is the distinctive love of Christianity. It is not a feeling—although it can produce some of the most powerful and lofty feelings imaginable. It is not an act—although it can produce some of the most celebrated acts in history, the death of Christ being the foremost. Love is a decision, a commitment to be “for” somebody no matter who that person is or what that person has done. It is a decisive commitment that will move mountains to aid that one who is loved. It doesn’t stop to think twice about the cost it has to pay to love its object. It is a decision, a commitment which led the Lord of the universe to be born a babe in the slums in the backwaters of the Roman Empire, even in a cattle trough to a young girl no older than 15 or 16 years old. It is a love which allows those it loves to beat it, spit upon it, ridicule it, strip it, and crucify it. All our pitiful attempts at love in the areas of romance and familial love pale in comparison to the love of Christ shown on Calvary. Until we display that kind of love, all our talk about being like Christ, being sons of God is empty air, clanging cymbals.
Paul continues the metaphor of sacrifice when he writes that this love will be a fragrant aroma to God. Few realize that after the animals were slaughtered that their bodies were then placed upon the altar, not simply to be consumed for fire, but actually to be grilled so that the worshipers and priests could eat the sacrifice. For example, the worshipers were supposed to eat the entire Passover Lamb. The meat on the altar to humans smelt like meat being grilled outside during a cookout. Many times when you drive through your neighborhood on your way home from work, you smell a whiff of the meat cooking and wish it was coming from your home. That same smell permeated the Temple area because of all the meat that was being grilled on the Temple altars. As wonderful as the smell of the aroma of the meat being grilled on the altar would have been to the worshipers, how much more wonderful to God is the aroma of the loving sacrifices we make whenever we love the way Christ loved. That is what it means to be sons and daughters of God, to be sons and daughters of Light. (In the next lesson, we shall see the Christian view of love even better described for us.)
Purity in Speech (5:3-5)
The next characteristic of God’s son or daughter should be purity in speech. When we speak about the need for purity in speech, it goes without saying there should be purity in action. Any Christian serious about the Bible should know that both the OT and NT themselves are rife with commands about the need to be sexually pure:
Speech, on the other hand, is a different matter. Many people who would be horrified at the idea of having sex outside marriage nevertheless lace their language with sexual innuendos and perverted jokes. (Men are not the only culprits here. I've heard too many women claim that members of their own sex can be just as foul-mouthed as men.) Moreover, too many of us chuckle whenever we hear dirty jokes, when in fact we should be appalled and attempt to put a stop to crude language.
Purity is a stand Christians need to start taking. Once a handyman was working on something in our house and he liked to sprinkle his speech with some salty language. "Hell" was one such word which frequented his lips. Finally, I had enough of it and told him, "Sir, this home is a teetotaler when it comes to bad language." I didn't care if he liked me or not. This was my home and I wanted it free from such language. On another occasion, he said, "Heck," and turned to my wife and asked in a joking manner if that was an OK word for him to use.
The other day I was showing a video to the students. One scene was coming up which exploited one of the severe sexual curse words. When we got to that scene, I fast-forwarded it. The students shouted out, "Hey! We're not children any more. That kind of stuff doesn't bother us." I turned to them very assuredly and said: "This isn't about you. It's about me. I feel responsible for what I show to others. Therefore, since I don't feel comfortable showing that scene, I am not going to show it." We have simply quit letting others determine what goes on in our environment.
Think this is not serious? When speaking about filthy language, speech laced with sexual innuendos, etc., Paul claims: "For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person . . . has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience" (5:5-6). Paul cannot be any more serious about purity in language than he is here in these 2 verses.
General Characteristics: Righteousness, Love, and Truth, Trying to Learn What is Pleasing to the Lord (5:9-10)
In closing this section, we need to ask ourselves which of the two following attitudes guide our lives:
The second attitude is the only one worthy of the Christian. We claim that God is our heavenly Father, and yet do we treat Him that way? My mom is 80 years old and is riddled with Alzheimers. She used to go once a week to the hairstylist to make sure she always look good in public. She wore nice clothes and made sure her nails were always done. Hygiene was very important to my mom. Now that Alzheimers has had its way, she refuses to let us have her hair cut. That's all I will say. Even though we can't carry on a conversation because her mind jumps wildly all over the place whenever you talk to her, I do know one thing she likes--Hershey's Chocolate Almond bar. Every time I see her now, I take along one of these chocolate bars. When she sees it, she lights up and says: "You know what I like." That is really the only time our conversation makes sense (plus when she says: "You know I love you").
Why do I bring her the chocolate bar? Because I know that will make her happy. Your children, especially when they were little, loved to give you presents because they knew that the presents would make you happy. What really made us happy was their wanting to give us presents. (Getting boxers for Christmas really isn't the biggest thrill in my life; seeing them happy giving me those boxers, on the other hand, is.) Well, if I as a child and if I as an adult love to make my mom and earlier my dad happy, a mom and dad who were not perfect, who blew it at times, how much more should I seek to find out what pleases my heavenly Father, who loves me more than I can imagine. This is the attitude Paul encourages in us: not how much can I get away with, but how much can I do for my heavenly Father. Such an attitude should be true of children of the heavenly Father, of children of the Light.