The Loving Walk of Beloved Children (Ephesians 5:1-6)
Introduction
The sticky steam of sensuality penetrates everything in our culture. You can hardly watch a movie, turn on a television show, or even see an advertisement without seeing some couple wrapped in bed sheets. As one author put it, we live in a “pornotopia”—the ubiquitous presence of the erotic, creating a sensual monotony which drives us to a desire for more. And the church is not safe.
In 1988, a survey was done to pastors, attempting to get a picture of how much the sexual sins of the culture had seeped into the church. One question asked to pastors was, “Since you have been in local church ministry, have you ever done anything with someone (not your spouse) that you feel was sexually inappropriate?” 23% yes. 77% no. Another question: “Have you ever had sexual intercourse with someone other than your spouse since you have been in local-church ministry?” 12% yes. 88% no. That’s 1988. Similarly a 2014 survey of Christian men indicated 54% of men view pornography monthly, and the percentage is higher for pastors and especially youth pastors. Women do not fare much better. In a much more recent survey done in the US, over 40% of Christian women admitted to having viewed pornography in the past month, many of those actively seeking it out.
How far we have come from Paul’s words: “But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints” (Ephesians 5:3). Whether it is because we have forgotten or because we were never taught, we have lost sight of the high calling of holiness in God’s plan. Simply put, the church cannot be what she should be—the church cannot do what she should do in the world—if she is infested with sexual immorality.
But the insidious nature of this infestation has a deeper, more troublesome effect: the church cannot walk in sexual immorality and in love at the same time. Given the above statistics, the church is not walking in love. Love and sexual immorality are mutually exclusive. They are life and death, darkness and light, oil and water. Thus, the central point of this passage is this: If the church is to be all that she should be in God’s plan, then the church must walk in love, not sexual immorality.
But before we get into this passage in earnest, we need to momentarily glace backward. Crash course in hermeneutics. Why does “therefore” begin this passage? That word infers something from what went before. “Therefore” indicates a conclusion or a result of what has come before—it says, if this is true, then that is also true. It does not give us a reason for something but a result of something. So, put that into the context of verse 4: You have been called to a high calling, a worthy walk. And that walk, that lifestyle is meant to display in visible, tangible ways the victory of the risen Christ over sin, death, and Satan. And you do that by serving the body in your spiritual gift in order to build up the body into unity and maturity. But in order to do that, we need to put off who we used to be and put on who we now are in Jesus—specifically in ways which are conducive to building up the body of Christ. In summary, we must “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Therefore—as a consequence of doing that, because you should be doing that, you should also be doing this: imitate God by walking in love.
In other words, love only flourishes in an environment of unity and holiness. The three-legged stool of the Church’s peace is mature unity, personal holiness, and Christ-like love. Unity, holiness, and love are the stable pillars of the church. But love is the consequence of, the result of, the fruit of a unified and holy church.
Or you could look at it the other way. What does it mean to walk in love? It means to orient your life in humble gentleness and patient endurance toward service to the church. It means to give your life away in the work of maturing other saints in the church so that the whole body is built up into unity. Love means to be taught in Christ to put off the old self and be renewed in the spirit of the mind and put on the new self. Do this, and you will imitate God by walking in love.
Now we might break this text into two main points: Put on Love, Put off Sexual Immorality. And for each of those two points, he puts down three arguments—three arguments for why we should put on love and three arguments for why we should put off sexual immorality.
I. Put On Love (5:1-2)
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” If we are to be all that we should be as a church, then we must walk in love. Why? 3 Arguments
Argument 1: We must put on love because we are called to imitate God, who is love.
Immediately upon hearing that we should imitate God, we should be drawn to awe: how can we, finite and sinful human beings as we are, imitate the infinite and perfectly holy God? It should humble us to be called to such a high calling. Of course there are some ways in which it is impossible to imitate God. We cannot save others. We cannot know everything, work with limitless energy, or be everywhere at once (though many of us try!).
But there is a way to imitate that God without trying to become him. We cannot create the world, yet we can take what he has made and be creative with it. We cannot work with limitless energy, yet we can work hard in order to have something to share. We cannot save others with a saving love, but we can walk in the pattern of self-sacrificial love.
We see this in 1 Peter 1:15-16: “But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all our conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” It is impossible to be holy in the same way that God is holy, but we can pattern our lives after his holiness in a way that is appropriate to being a creature. Similarly, 1 Peter 2:18 says that slaves are to follow in the pattern of Christ. Of course, by this Peter doesn’t mean that we must atone for the sins of others by a sacrificial death. Rather, he means that those in situations like these slaves must be willing to endure unjust suffering for the sake of the gospel.
Everywhere it says we are to imitate God. Imitating God lies so close to the heart of Christianity that 1 Thess 1:6 uses it as another way of talking about getting saved: “You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit.” Rom 15:2-3 says, “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up, for Christ did not please himself.” 2 Cor 5:14, Paul describes his own life as being “controlled by the love of Christ.” In other words, Christ died for his own, and so Paul should be willing to do the same. Philippians 2 famously calls us to put on the mind of unity, for such is ours in Christ, who himself laid down a pattern of self-humiliation for the good of others. Perhaps most poignantly, from Jesus’ own lips, John 13:15, “For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”
Perhaps it is best seen in a passage like 1 John 4:7-12. Turn, read. Focus: v11
Why must we walk in love? What motivations do we have?
Argument 2: We must put on love because we are God’s beloved children.
In other words, we imitate God because we are his beloved children. Children imitate their parents. And they don’t really choose to! It’s just what they do. They talk how we talk. They walk how we walk. They read what we read. They watch what we watch. If I treat others with kindness, so will my kids. If I yell at the dog, they yell at the dog. If I pick up the house, they pick up the house. Children imitate their parents. (Parenting aside: if you’re pulling your hair out trying to understand why your kid keeps disobeying you, look at your own life first.)
Not only that, but children imitate their parents especially when they know that their parents love them. Parental love creates the environment conducive to imitation. Kids always want to be like their parents, but kids especially want to be like their parents when they know that their parents have their best interests in mind.
Thus observe: we are God’s beloved children. We have all the motivation we need to imitate him. He is our Father, and we must bear a family resemblance to him. We live in the environment of perfect love as the children of God. Remember 1:5? He predestined us for what? Adoption! 2:19, we are “members of the household of God.” And all this was because of his love. It was in love that he predestined us to sonship (1:4-5). He saved us “because of the great love with which he loved us” (2:4). All that he does he does that we might “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (3:19). We live in the perfect environment of God’s love—how can we not imitate him like beloved children?
If our father treats us with such great love, how can we not treat each other with the same love? So, we have “a love toward all the saints” (1:15). We “bear with one another in love” (4:2). We “speak the truth in love” (4:15). As Paul said in another place, “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor 16:14).
How do we know what that looks like? Is love free for us to define?
Argument 3: We must put on love because Christ has set an example of love for us.
It is not as though God has given us a vague and ill-defined pattern to follow. He gives us Jesus. As a side note, notice Paul’s view of Jesus here: v1 “imitate God… v2 and walk in love, as Christ loved us.” He is putting God and Christ side by side here. Therefore, to imitate Christ is to imitate God.
How has Christ loved us? He gave himself up for us. True love is defined by giving up yourself. True love is other oriented. It may involved emotion and feeling, it may be expressed in an act of the will, but at the heart of love lies a question of valuation. Love says, “Your good is more valuable than my life.” If that attitude is what is in our hearts, then of course we will willingly give ourselves up for them, and of course we will be moved when we do them good.
Love gives. How different is the world’s definition of love! So often what the world means when it says, “I love you,” is “You make me feel good.” That’s not love. That’s selfishness—using others for your own emotional well-being. Or, perhaps equally as common, is the idea that loving someone means only speaking affirming words to them. To say “I love you” is to give someone “unconditional positive regard”: no matter what you do, no matter how you act, not matter anything, I regard you positively and affirm whatever you do. This is our world’s definition of love. But again, that is not love at all, but selfishness wearing the mask of love.
Biblical love is the valuation of your benefit, even if it comes at my expense. If you’re having trouble grasping that, look at the example of Christ. All that Jesus does he does for his bride! He left heaven for her. He lived perfectly for her. He died in her place willingly. He rose again for her. He is now interceding for her. Look down at 5:25: “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without any spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” Christ’s love doesn’t simply affirm the church in everything she does! Rather, Christ’s love transforms the church so that Christ might be able to affirm everything that she does!
We must walk with the same mindset. Christ loved us. We should love one another in the same way. Christ gave himself up for us. Should we not also be willing to give up our time, energy, resources, money, prayer, sleep, weekends, lives for each other? I have always noticed that my kids tell me that they love me most often when I am most in the habit of giving up my free time to spend it with them. What might happen if we were to freely give up our own desires to love one another?
Transition: Thus, we imitate God as his beloved children, following in the path of Christ our elder brother. But, it is not as though we are simply adding love to our previous walk. We must match our walk in love with a corresponding aversion to all false forms of love. We must…
II. Put Off Sexual Immorality (5:3-6)
Vv3-6. Read. If we are to be all that we should be as a church, we must not only walk in love, but we must not tolerate sexual immorality in our midst. Now, I am reading this primarily as referring to sexual sin, and I believe that is warranted for many reasons that we will not get into. So, while terms like “impurity” and “covetousness” do refer to more than just sexual sin, the context seems to narrow them down to that specific focus.
Why does Paul choose this sin here? I think it is because the selfishness of sexual immorality so perfectly contrasts the selfless love of Christ. The fundamental contrast is between the other-oriented love modeled by Christ in giving himself up for us and the self-oriented pseudo-love of sexual immorality. True love says “I want your good at my expense.” Sexual immorality says, “I want my good at your expense.” So we are to put it off. Why? 3 arguments.
Argument 1: Sexual immorality must not be tolerated because it is improper and out of place (vv3-4).
Notice how Paul says in verse 3 that it is “proper among saints,” and in verse 4 he says that these sins are “out of place.” In other words, it is not suitable, not fitting, not becoming, not proper for the church to be mired in sexual immorality.
Why? Notice the connections. It says that sexual immorality and all impurity and covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. We should not participate in those things because we are holy. Remember, saints are not paintings of uber-holy dead people. Every Christian is a saint, which is simply the same as saying that every Christian is set apart, every Christian is holy.
To be holy is to be set apart from something. For thanksgiving, there were cookies in the fridge, and they were holy, set apart for the special use of thanksgiving dinner. And so we are holy, set apart for the special use of God. Set apart from what? From sin—we are set apart from our former lives of sinful conduct. From the world—we are set apart from the world and marked as different, now for God’s use to display his saving power.
For those that are holy, it is proper for us to be set apart for love, not for sexual immorality. It is proper for sexual immorality to not even be named among us—for us to be so far removed from it that there would be no occasion for a truthful charge to that effect.
But it isn’t just the physical act of immorality that is improper. It is also the joking about it. Filthiness—behavior intentionally flouting social norms and moral standards. Foolish talk—literally “moron-speech,” saying things that make no sense. Crude joking— coarse jesting and a risque wit, a “garbage can mind,” what we often mean when we say “get your mind out of the gutter.” This kind of speech is improper.
Why? Because we have already learned that we must “speak the truth in love,” and that we must “speak the truth with our neighbor” and put off all falsehood. You can tell when someone says something that’s out of place. We all know that awkward moment when someone makes an off-color joke and the room gets quiet a bit—that kind of reaction is not necessarily bad.
But why is it improper and out of place? Not only because we are saints and called to use our tongues for us glory, but also because we are headed to a heavenly inheritance.
Argument 2: Sexual immorality must not be tolerated because it is incompatible with our future inheritance (v5).
Now, we need to immediately clarify that he is not talking about a person who used to be this before they were saved. Nor are they talking about the Christian who slips into these sins one time. Nor are they talking about the Christian caught up in these sins who desperately and violently fights to put these sins to death. Paul is talking about those people who habitually practice these things—who give themselves over to these things and have no desire for repentance. Such people, Paul says, have no inheritance in the kingdom of God. That is to say, sexually immoral, impure, or covetous, if they do not repent of their sinful practices will go to hell.
That is not a comfortable warning to hear, and yet sometimes standing in fear of the severity of God cures our souls of sin. So I must sound the warning which Paul gives: If you are looking at pornography, or fornicating, or are caught up in an adulterous relationship, or are comfortably entertain lustful thoughts, or give yourselves over to the perverted desires of homosexuality, and if you do not repent of those things, you will go to hell. You will not inherit the kingdom of God.
It is a fearful thing to stand under the curses of the law! And yet the gospel is freely offered to you, even as the law pronounces your eternal condemnation. Jesus loved us—yes, loved even the sexually immoral—and gave himself up for us and offered himself as the satisfaction for sin under the law. He died and was raised three days later and now sits at the right hand of God. He in good faith promises that if you repent of your sin and trust him only and wholly that you will be washed, cleansed, and made holy.
And for those who do know him in this way, yet are caught up in these things, it is a powerful argument for freedom from them. It’s not who you are! It’s not where you’re headed! Why would you continue to participate in activity that characterizes the world, that is not fitting, and that will not be part of your eternal inheritance?
Argument 3: Sexual immorality must not be tolerated even if many attempt to justify it and deceive us.
It is very easy to justify our sins. “It’s not that bad.” “God is love, so he won’t judge me.” As the Corinthians said, “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.” It’s just physical. It doesn’t really matter. I can continue to sin that grace may abound! God will just forgive me! And so the excuses abound.
Paul calls these “empty words” designed to deceive. These are the same arguments that he spoke of back in 4:14, where he exhorted us not to be children but to be mature, and to grow up so that we might not be carried about by every “wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” Often the devil’s schemes sound very Christian, and if we are not discerning, we will be swept away into them, and into sexual immorality.
One way to highlight how the world does this (among many), is that those who would deceive us often seek to rename or rebrand sin as something else that is more sanguine, more acceptable, more swallowable. For example, consider the rating of TV shows now: “Mature.” Whatever maturity it’s talking about, it isn’t spiritual maturity. Or a “Gentleman’s Club”: patrons are not gentlemen. If we don’t call it what it is—socially acceptable pornography—then we don’t feel as guilty about it. In fact, often the first step to change is naming the sin you are committing, because if you can name it, you can find what the Bible says about it.
Or the world can often redefine sin. We sometimes begin to think that sin is what makes me feel bad—but the opposite is often the case. Or, as in the case of psychology, sin is redefined as the unhealthy environment in which we were raised, or some sort of wiring in the brain which forces us to act in a sinful way, ultimately exempting us from responsibility. Or it is redefined as the animalistic instincts we have bred into us by evolution that we should give into simply because its in our nature.
Or the world can convince us to manage sin rather than to kill it. We can go so far, but no farther. We manage anxiety, rather than putting it to death. We manage addiction, rather than reforming our loves. We manage gambling, rather than putting it off. We manage pornography, rather than consigning it to the trash heap of eternity where it belongs. Brothers and sisters, don’t manage sin. Kill it.
Deception, deception, deception. Don’t be deceived. Don’t listen to the hissing lies of the world dominated by the deceiver. Because of these things wrath comes upon the sons of disobedience. Wrath is coming. God will set the world to rights, and you don’t want to be on the wrong end of that equation. And yet again is the offer to flee from that wrath and into the saving love of Jesus.
Conclusion
So, we must put on love. We should do so because we imitate God, we are his beloved children, and because Christ has set an example of love to us. And we must put off sexual immorality. We should do that because it is improper for us, because it is incompatable with our future inheritance, and because we cannot be deceived by the world that would lie to us and drag us into that judgment.
Ultimately, we are headed to a world of love. Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, Heaven is a world of love. Describes that world to which we are going, the inheritance we have in the kingdom of Christ and God:
“The saints shall know that God loves them, and they shall never doubt the great- ness of his love, and they shall have no doubt of the love of all their fellow inhabitants in heaven. And they shall not be jealous of the constancy of each other’s love. They shall have no suspicion that the love which others have felt toward them is abated, or in any degree withdrawn from themselves for the sake of some rival, or by reason of anything in themselves which they suspect is disagreeable to others, or through any inconstancy in their own hearts or the hearts of others. Nor will they be in the least afraid that the love of any will ever be abated toward them. There shall be no such thing as inconstancy and unfaithfulness in heaven, to molest and disturb the friend- ship of that blessed society. The saints shall have no fear that the love of God will ever abate towards them, or that Christ will not continue always to love them with una- bated tenderness and affection. And they shall have no jealousy one of another, but shall know that by divine grace the mutual love that exists between them shall never decay nor change.”
Walk in love.