Last week we began looking at the Christian life as a walk in love, based on Ephesians 5:1–6. Part of our motivation for a life characterized by love is the awareness that we are both begotten and beloved by God. We looked last week at the description of how Christ loves us as our pattern for walking in love. This week we continue with this theme by paying close attention to conduct that is unbecoming to love and conversation that is out of place with love. Thus our passage not only gives us the positive picture of how to walk in love but also the negative picture of life with Christlike love missing.
Conduct unbecoming
Conduct unbecoming to walking in love includes immorality, impurity and greed. Such conduct should not even be named among saints. Impurity and immorality probe into a person’s inner life of thoughts and fantasies as well as the outer life of words and deeds. Greed speaks of pleasures pursued at the expense of others, a grasping for more and more regardless of who gets deprived or devalued in the process.
We might say that a sub-category of the theology of Christian living is a theology of the tongue. The capability of meaningful communication of thought through verbal exchanges is a gift that belongs exclusively to creatures made in God’s image and likeness.
As has been observed, dogs bark, cows moo, horses neigh, pigs grunt and geese honk, but only humans can speak meaningful words. Even so, we can take this good gift from God and turn it into a means of thoughtless and unloving pollution that taints the minds and inflames the passions of others. A basic premise about love is that it does no evil to another (Rom. 13:10).
People, not speech
Christians often lament the extent to which filthy speech pollutes the airwaves. However, the airwaves are not the victims; people are. Coarse, suggestive and profane speech taints the imaginations of people who hear it. Polluted minds tend to produce unloving actions. Conversation that is out of place with love can work evil to others.
A common example is the thoughtless use of obscenities. The reference in our passage to obscene speech is literally to filthy or vulgar talk, something that seems to have been mainstreamed in public life as well as private conversations. Love does not spew filth into the lives of others. Rather love for others desires to ennoble and uplift them.
Coarse talk
Also listed in this passage is what is called foolish or silly speech along with coarse talk. Such use of the tongue often takes the form of joking or jesting that employs clever innuendoes or double meanings, so that words contain sexual or immoral overtones.
The seriousness of immoral living and unclean language is signaled in the declaration that we can be sure of this: “That everyone who is sexually immoral or impure … has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God” (5:5).
In addition covetousness is named in the same breath as immorality and impurity and is identified as a form of idolatry. Covetousness is not motivated by love but by greed and self-interest. Lest the seriousness of filthy speech goes unrecognized, the passage adds that it amounts to disobedience to God and His standards. Such disobedience incurs His wrath (5:6).
Give thanks instead
In place of using speech that degrades and defiles others, the better use of language is the giving of thanks (5:4). Rather than hurting others love finds expression in gratitude both to God and to others.
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