“Love” is not always LOVE
Ephesians 4 and 5 have definitely moved from the theological to the practical.
Based on the truths of chapters 1-3 about being in Christ, we’re now look at how we’re to live.
It’s given us some really strong messages about how the truth of the gospel should be lived in our lives.
This morning, we’re looking at the importance of guarding one another against immorality.
But, if there’s one message this morning’s verses get across it’s that - Love” is not always LOVE
Kelly and I were walking our dog, Sochi, and saw a sign in someone’s yard that said, “Love is love.”
We know this statement, “Love is love,” is used in our culture to mean that any one’s definition of love is as
legitimate as another person’s form of love.
What if I had said to Kelly, “That is so true. I love you, Kelly, and I love you, Sochi.”
Kelly would’ve been like, “You better not love me the same way you love Sochi!”
She might as well be saying, “You better not believe that any kind of love is just as legitimate as another.”
Sadly, this statement, “Love is love” has been used over the last few years to justify all forms of idolatry.
Typically, it’s of a sexual nature, whether it be homosexuality or polyamory.
But it’s also excused all forms of delusion which amounts to a dissolution of what it means to be human.
For instance, I read an article on how this past Valentines Day, one restaurant held a special event for
people to bring their phones or tablets and have a “romantic dinner” with their chat bots.
I think you’ll see pretty quickly in our verses what I’m talking about.
There’s a stark contrast between God’s love and much of what the world calls love.
So, we pick back up at the beginning of Ephesians 5 this morning.
* 1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and
gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. * 3 But sexual immorality
and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among
saints. 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place,
but instead let there be thanksgiving.
5 For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is
covetous (that is, an idolater), has no 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.
I don’t’ know about you, but I’m glad to know that God’s Word helps us find our way through our confused
culture.
And you’ll see how the readers of this letter definitely needed wisdom for living in their culture too.
First of all, I want to encourage you to -
1. LEARN TO LOVE BY LOOKING TO GOD’S LOVE AS OUR EXAMPLE.
* 1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and
gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
I exposited on verses 1-2 last week in the context of the previous verses, which had to do with relational
challenges.
If you recall, the point I challenged you to “Grow in Christ by Loving Those You’re Tempted to Loathe.”
This morning, I want to focus on these verses in light of the contrast they are to the following verses.
These verses display for us what true love is as revealed to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The late Tim Keller wrote, “Because of the gospel, I know I am more sinful than I ever dared believe, yet
more loved and accepted in Christ than I ever dared hope.”
As I shared last week, we know from 1 John 4:19 “We love because he first loved us.”
Or as Keller also wrote - “The verdict is in before the performance… We are accepted in Christ. Therefore
we perform out of gratitude, not to earn approval.”
“We love because He first loved us.”
This is what we learned from Eph 2 after how desperately lost we were without God’s grace we read -
* Ephesians 2:4-5 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he
loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace
you have been saved—
We certainly can look to Jesus’ love as our standard to shoot for in improving our weak love.
But we can also look to the motivation for His sacrifice and this was the glory of God.
In this same spirit, we’re called to respond to God’s mercies in -
* Romans 12:1 1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your
bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
So, we have the opportunity (actually, we’re called to) learn how to love from God.
This is similar to a story I read.
A world-class violinist once visited an elderly violin maker in his workshop.
Violins hung on the walls, tools were scattered across the benches,
and the smell of varnish and wood filled the room.
The violinist picked up one of the instruments and began to play.
After a few moments he stopped and said politely,
“This violin has potential, but it still needs work. The tone is not quite right.”
The old craftsman nodded quietly, took the violin from him, tuned it slightly, and began to play.
Suddenly the instrument sang—rich, clear, and beautiful.
The room filled with music far better than what the violinist had just produced.
The violinist stood there stunned.
The craftsman smiled and said something like:
“I should know how to get the best out of it. I made it.”
Folks, God knows what true love is and knows what makes it grow and what RUINS it.
We can be confident of this because of what we’re told in -
* 1 John 4:16 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is
love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
The truth is also that we return God’s love by believing the gospel and seeking to obey Him.
This is what Jesus told us in -
* John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
It’s through obedience that we get to experience the deepest aspects of knowing God, as we’re told in.
* John 15:10 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my
Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
Learn to love by looking to God’s love.
There’s a huge contrast of God’s love that’s given next in our passage.
2. LEARN TO LOVE BY REJECTING THE WORLD’S VERSION OF LOVE.
* 3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you,
as is proper among saints. 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking,
which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. 5 For you may be sure of this,
that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater),
has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
From these verses we see we can reject the world’s version of love by
2A. STAYING PURE IN OUR RELATIONSHIPS.
* 3 But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among
you, as is proper among saints.
We’re to have nothing to do with what the world classifies as love.
These commands for separation from our surrounding culture are both broad and specific in nature.
They’re broad in the sense that the term for sexual immorality is πορνεία and covers a broad range of
sexual sin from fornication to homosexuality.
This is referencing any sexual indulgence outside the loving expression in the covenant marriage.
The New Testament Commentary tells us “The apostle knew the dangers to which his readers were exposed
in the life of their society, and so spoke frankly about them.”
Certainly, if the Greek gods were described as constantly stealing lovers from one another,
we can safely say that the Greek culture of the Ephesians had accepted it as a part of everyday life.
What’s also covered is an even broader category of “all impurity” which could be translated as “any sort
of filth.”
Grouped with covetousness may seem a little odd.
And this is where I think these commands become more specific.
I think it makes sense when you think about it.
The term covetousness means “ruthless greed,” meaning wanting what doesn’t belong to you.
Think of how a pirate might look at a passing ship with ruthless greed.
The context is speaking specifically of having a sinful heart which is desiring someone sexually.
It’s pretty easy to think of how sexual lust toward another person’s spouse or just God’s daughter or son is
the desire for a person who isn’t your spouse.
These sins aren’t to be named among us in the body of Christ.
And there’s the sense here of how what is done among the unsaved world shouldn’t be discussed among
us in a way that might awaken similar passions.
This would include the type of joking that this passage references.
Certainly, this is not saying that we shouldn’t talk about these sins in the context of confession, repentance,
and accountability.
But it involves being cautious of the type of detail we go into with these things.
If I were to give some extensive list of sexual sins that would cause someone to be curious of them, you’d
be right to come to me and ask, “Aren’t your words breaking this very command?”
There’s also the sense that there should be no question about whether there is impropriety among us.
We are intentionally seeking to deepen our relationships with each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.
But with this should be with caution over giving even the slightest appearance of funny business.
[Illus - JR and Youth Leader]
My brother-in-law’s very vibrant and fruitful church was rocked by it’s youth pastor destroying his family and
that of one of his youth leader’s because of their affair.
Sadly, there were hints.
Some questioned them about whether questioners would start getting wise to them, but they just lied.
?- How many of God’s fruitful works have been blown apart by adultery?
This verse is telling us that there shouldn’t even be a question about whether something is going on.
Reject the World’s Version of Love by
2B. BEING GUARDED IN OUR SPEECH.
* 4 Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but
instead let there be thanksgiving.
Verse 4 targets how we talk with one another and it definitely follows the same nature as verse 3.
The gambit of loose words is covered here from general shameful talk to nonsense to course humor.
And following the nature of the context, it’s possible that this is in reference to how we refer to one another.
One Christian man should never be saying to his brother,
“What’d you think of the dress Velma wore on Sunday?”
For the early church, they needed to have well established that they were to be a community different
from the world.
This isn’t to say that there can’t be joking and ribbing among Christians.
But if you can’t picture Jesus telling the joke, it’s best to forget it.
But along the same lines as not living as the immoral world does, we shouldn’t joke about it either.
As we’ll read next week from -
* Ephesians 5:12 For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.
What we should be doing. with our words is offering thanksgiving for what we have which is the opposite
of coveting what we don’t have.
Reject the World’s Version of Love by
2C. SEEING OUR SALVATION DEFINE OUR LIFESTYLE.
* 5 For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is
covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.
It’s true that those who claim Christ as their Savior shouldn’t have sin going unchecked in their lives.
If they do, they need to check their hearts to see if the Holy Spirit is active.
RC Sproul has this to say about a church goer who is outside of God’s kingdom,
“He is talking about a style of life that is characteristic. That is, if the basic characteristic of your life is
sexual immorality, impurity or covetousness, then as long as you remain in that state, you remain out of
the kingdom of God. One may make a profession of faith in Christ and then continue in a [immoral]
lifestyle. This would reveal quicker than anything else that the profession of faith is false and the person
is not in the kingdom of God.”
Still, I don’t know if this is as much a warning to those who might be practicing these sins within the church.
Or this may be saying, “The unbelieving world, whose behavior you’re not supposed to discuss are the
furthest from being a part of God’s kingdom.”
The warning of verse 5 seems to be putting the behavior of the surrounding culture into perspective.
Understand that the Roman culture justified gross immorality.
And this is the culture that the region of Ephesus was steeped in and that these Christians came from.
While adultery was considered a punishable offence, it was defined very differently than in the scriptures.
For Romans, adultery was defined as seducing the wife of someone in your own class or higher.
Even then, the offense was thought to be against the woman’s husband with no regard for her shame.
In Roman culture, a Roman man was thought to have the right to seduce or sexually abuse any man
woman or child as long as they were of a lower status.
So, verse 5 seems to be pointing to the behavior of those outside the church and saying,
“These people aren’t a part of God’s kingdom.”
Paul goes as far as to describe these worldly people as having a religious fervor to their sin.
Their sexually covetous person pursues their desires for what is not theirs rightfully as a form of idolatry.
This is true because whatever they uses to meet those desires was their idol.
But those who claimed Christ and came out of the immoral culture surrounding the Ephesian believers
were expected to leave behind the practices of their immoral culture.
Thinking about learning to love by rejecting the world’s version of love got me think about something else.
I love watching survival shows like one called Alone.
They drop people into the most inhospitable environments and let them live off the land.
They’ve had seasons in which people are living above the arctic circle where it’s gets very cold.
One guy was so cold, as he was sitting next to the fire, he just couldn’t warm up.
Eventually, he did something crazy.
He took a log out of the fire, unzipped his parka, and just shoved the burning log into his coat.
Amazingly, it worked great, so he just started scooping up more burning logs and packing them into his
parka as well.
?- Now, do you think he really did that?
?- If he did, do you think he could actually do something as crazy as this and not be burned terribly?
* Proverbs 6:27, 29 27 Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned?.. 29 So is he
who sleeps with another man’s wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished.
If you are living in an immoral lifestyle or find yourself drawn to immortality, for your own sake, repent.
What I mean by “repent” is to turn from seeing this as something that you want to keep in your life to
something that you MUST rid yourself of.
Confess your sin to God and to a brother or sister so you can walk in the light and live more abundantly.
We as shepherds would be happy to walk alongside of you to help you to change in God’s strength.
So, thinking again about what Jesus tells us in -
* John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
There are those who get around this statement by simply changing God’s commandments.
They might say, “The culture has evolved and the Bible must evolve with it.”
Or they refer to Jesus’ charity and acceptance and claim that these are the only way He wants us to obey.
We’ll get into more specifics of these approaches. For now, let me challenge you to -
3. LEARN TO LOVE BY REPELLING EXCUSES FOR SINFUL LIVING.
* 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God
comes upon the sons of disobedience.
The words that might deceive/mislead the follower of Christ are described as empty, which means void of
moral or spiritual value.
These empty words are specifically without basis, meaning they definitely aren’t coming from the
authoritative Word of God.
The deception that’s specifically targeted here is the lie that professing Christians can lead completely
unrepentant lives without conviction or consequence.
This was true of the Gnostic teaching that was circulating at the time of the writing of this letter.
The truth is that, if a person professes to be a Christian can lead a sinful lifestyle without conviction, they
must be missing the Holy Spirit.
And this would mean that they are not truly a Christian despite whatever they might profess.
RC Sproul writes, “So if anyone comes and tells you that as a Christian you don’t have to be concerned
about keeping commandments or obeying the law of God, you are listening to someone who is
speaking empty words, words that could deceive you.”
The consequence that they should be concerned about is the wrath of God.
Much of what we’ve been told here, Paul also warned the church in Colossae -
* Colossians 3:5-6 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity,
passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is
coming.
We’ve seen that the person that intentionally lives in a lifestyle of sin is not currently a part of God’s
kingdom,
Even if a teacher tells them they are a part of God’s kingdom, they will still be exposed to the same wrath
of judgement as those outside of the church.
It’s been said that "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes"
We see evidence in our world that people are ready to jump on quasi-biblical ideas that justify their sin.
These can be as blatant as statements by the recently-popular Texan politician, James Tellerico.
He’s used his liberal seminary degree to sound Christian as he makes statements like:
“God is neither male nor female and therefore non-binary.”
He justifies his radically pro-abortion stance by extrapolating that God asked Mary’s permission to carry His
Son.
He calls Jesus a radical feminist and sources his information from an extrabiblical book that’s never been
considered a part of the Holy Bible
He’s cheered on late night TV when he shares his opinion that a person need not believe in Jesus in order to
go to heaven.
The responsibility of a shepherd of God’s flock is laid out in -
* Titus 1:9-10a 9 He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give
instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. 10 For there are many who are
insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers,
Right out of the gate, the early church struggled for the faith against one heresy after another.
Arianism taught that Jesus is not fully God.
Gnosticism taught that Jesus is not truly human.
Pelagianism told people that humans can save themselves.
Many of these are still taught today, including Antinomianism, which teaches that grace means it doesn’t
matter if Christians sin.
Each one began with misusing Scripture rather than rejecting it outright.
And be aware that they gained a following because what they said sounded good, as we warned in -
* 2 Timothy 4:3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having
itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,
In the last century, our culture saw one man after another that twisted God’s Word to his own liking
Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple began by quoting Scripture but eventually replaced Christ with himself as
the authority.
There was David Koresh of the Branch Davidians
His selective use of Scripture was used to justify his sexual control over followers.
David Berg, who founded the Children of God misused biblical narratives to justify personal indulgence and
abuse.
Almost every heresy in church history began the same way— not with someone rejecting the Bible.
Instead they took a small piece of the scriptures and ignored the rest.
That’s why we’re warned ‘Let no one deceive you with empty words.’”
In closing, let me say a few things.
Like me, you may have been involved in sexual immorality in the past but are walking in repentance.
If so, you have every right to celebrate God’s grace as His beloved child.
Don’t let the enemy use this message to beat you up over your past.
?- Are you making excuses for sinful living?
Don’t surrender to those lies and cut yourself off from the abundant life that God created you to live.
Instead, surrender yourself to God and allow His love to teach what love is truly supposed to be like.
Lastly, don’t let the brazen rebellion of our culture affect your attitude about sin.
Don’t be involved in any sexual activity outside of the covenant to marriage.
It only leads to destruction, slavery, and heartache.
In a gospel relationship with God through Christ, you can truly
“be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us”
