God's Holy People
October 9, 2022
Ephesians 5:3 - 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.
Paul is giving us some pretty specific descriptions of the lifestyle of darkness. He is not assuming that as Christians we are still living in that darkness, but more that he wants the Holy Spirit to remind us what NOT to go back to. We as Christians, are a people who have been transformed by His grace to live and serve God.
But, we all know that our culture is saturated in immorality, impurity, and greed. Immorality is any intimacy outside of marriage, the boundary that God has set. Impurity includes thoughts and words related to immorality. Greed carries the idea of over-reaching, taking what is not yours, and is actually closely connected to the first two.
It’s not popular to stand against these things, but Scripture is clear that we must separate ourselves from this lifestyle. As God’s holy people, we are not even to talk about such things. God’s design is for intimacy inside the bounds of marriage, a giving relationship and not one of selfishly taking. Sin always perverts what God created as good.
We should be holy in our talk… but won’t that make us sound a bit weird, or old fashioned? This is how the pious Jews must have sounded in the Roman Empire that Paul is writing to, and they were always scoffed at. Are you afraid of that? Afraid of sounding uncool, or not fitting in because that’s a large part of Paul’s point here.
Being holy is NOT fitting in with the world. It’s about fitting in with God, to whom we belong. And that means wearing a special uniform, separate from what is impure. God is calling us to clean living and clean speaking. We need to be different from those around us. We naturally want to fit in with those around us, but we need to fit in with God’s holy calling instead.
There are plenty of other ways that we can and should adapt ourselves to communicate and reach others. How about by being kind, understanding, be a good listener, and by sharing God’s light with others.