Ephesians 5:15-21
I was tasked to preach on Sunday on the above passage. It is not exactly the reason why the past few weeks the devotions I wrote for Time Alone with God have been on Ephesians 4 and 5 but since we have been looking at Ephesians 4 and 5, I thought I’d share the text of my sermon.
Good morning. We have come to the end of our short series on Ephesians 4 and 5, under the overarching theme of “Pursuing Life”. Today we will be looking at Ephesians 5:15-21. Actually the text given to me is up to v20 but I am including v21 because I think that it belongs to this paragraph rather than the next. The topic given is “Be filled with the Spirit” but after my preparation I decided to use the topic “The Song of the Servant”.
“I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.”
In chapter 4:1, Paul begins by urging us to live a life worthy of the calling we have received.
“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
In that first section, which we did not cover, he tells us that Christ has given us what we need to equip us to live this life and the result will be that the body will reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of Jesus and ultimately we will be the presence of Christ in our locality.
In the subsequent passages which we covered over the past 3 weeks he gave us an idea of what that life should be like.
Paul paints a clear picture of two minds, two persons, two lifestyles, two domains.
He tells us that this “life worthy of the calling you have received” will involve a new way of looking at and evaluating our life choices and in doing so we should leave behind the old and embrace the new. The old was built with a darkened mind but now we know the truth of Christ. We should leave the darkness behind and let the light of Christ shine.
As we move on to today’s passage I want us to note that this process of maturing into the fullness of Christ involves the pastors and teachers whom Christ sends into our midst as well as the apostles, prophets and evangelists who not only taught the church back in the day, but also gave us the New Testament. Maturing therefore involves a lot of teaching and learning and not something that comes automatically when we receive the Holy Spirit.
Let us go straight to the text.
Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. (Ephesians 5:15-17)
Paul calls us to be very careful, meaning to pay close attention. It is a warning, in the sense that if we don’t pay close attention we will likely get it wrong and getting it wrong is costly.
He tells us to be wise in how we choose to live our days. When you read about wisdom in the bible it is usually about choosing the path we will take. The fool lingers on the path that leads to destruction while the wise choose the path that leads to life. It is not about learning to choose between good and better, but about life and death.
Paul calls us to be wise and make the most of every opportunity because the days are evil. The word translated opportunity is kairos which is really about time. He tells us that the days are evil in the sense that the flow of time pushes you towards evil. As Christians we are free from sin and so we have the opportunity to redirect our life towards God’s will; so make the most of the opportunity!
Finally he tells us not to be foolish (and may I add my own turn of phrase here, “don’t be too clever”) but understand what the Lord’s will is. Don’t try to figure out life yourself. Don’t sweat the small details; know where God is and pitch your tent there.
For example, Paul tells us:
“For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.” (Ephesians 5:5-7)
Look at the big picture, he says. Are these things welcomed in the Kingdom? You should go after the things that will be valuable where you are going. Don’t be swayed by empty arguments.
The question I ask, if I may be frank with you, is whether we care. When you listen to Paul telling you, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil” do you say, “Wah, I better pay attention and really check myself.”
How many of us pay careful attention to what the bible teaches about how we should live? How many of us consider that the choices we make should reflect our understanding of God’s will? How many of us even remember the Word we were taught as we gather in worship each Sunday? Yet how can we be careful, how can we be wise and how can we understand the Lord’s will when we pay scant attention to what God says in his Word?
Elder Peter tells me that these days many Christians don’t even bother to come to church or come for Sunday worship only when they are free.
While I think that much of the fault lies in our own innate desire to make as little effort as possible, I do suspect that a couple of key emphases in our modern Gospel contribute to this:
1) Salvation is by faith and not by works. We will be very wrong to ever think that we should do anything towards our salvation. All that is required is faith in Jesus Christ. True, but that does not mean that we are uninvolved.
Faith in Jesus means acknowledging that we are guilty sinners bound for hell and damnation. Faith means we reject sin and accept the solution that Jesus offers. This will enable us to access God’s presence and gain the power over sin. Faith in Jesus means that we now will actively work with Jesus to disarm sin in our lives, with the Holy Spirit as guide and resource. Faith in Jesus means that we believe that failure will be forgiven so we will never carry the burden of sin. Faith in Jesus means that we promise to follow him as our new master from now on.
These days we barely try to help people understand what it means to have faith in Jesus. We are so hung on the truth that salvation is free that we give people the impression that they have no commitment. Most times these days faith comes down to an intellectual acknowledgement that he is who he says he is. Are we doing these people any favours by only emphasising the benefits of our faith without helping them understand what they are committing themselves to?
2) The second emphasis in our modern Gospel that encourages Christians to ignore God’s will in the choices we make in our life is the notion that we can never lose our salvation. Certainly the bible assures us of the security of our position in Christ but “once saved, always saved” implies that our subsequent choices have no consequences and God either accepts this or he will somehow make us unable to make bad choices when we get to heaven. “Once saved, always saved” is built on calvinist theology and you need to buy into the full system to support it.
The problem is that when we think that we have satisfied the minimum standards to secure our ticket to heaven and be officially recognised as Christian—and these minimum standards are basically that we should acknowledge that Christ is God and we now worship him—there is little incentive to do more. As someone says, I don’t want to be a Christian fanatic, just a normal ordinary Christian will do.
When Paul tells us to “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil” he is implying that there are matters that we need to take care of and there are consequences when we don’t. Old mind, new mind, old self, new self, old lifestyle, new lifestyle, darkness, light. Where will you pitch your tent and build your life? Be very careful, then, how you live.
Let us move on.
“Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Ephesians 5:18-20
The important thing here is to understand what Paul means by “be filled with the Spirit”. It is, of course, not about becoming a Christian. The Holy Spirit is given to all who choose to follow Jesus. Paul tells us in Romans 8:
You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you. (Romans 8)
The passive phrasing, “be filled”, tells us that we cannot fill ourselves. Rather, it is to let the Spirit fill us. When the Holy Spirit is given to all of us, it is given to fill us. However, along the way problems may develop. You remember Jesus telling the Church at Ephesus that they have abandoned their first love? They had let other matters crowd out their love for God. Jesus tells them that if they don’t correct this he will remove their lampstand. I don’t know what it means exactly but it cannot be a good thing. Similarly the Holy Spirit may be crowded out of our Christian life.
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4)
In Ephesians 4, Paul tells us “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God” by continuing to harbour bitterness and malice in our hearts but instead be kind, compassionate and forgiving.
In 1 Thessalonians 5 he writes,
“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.” (1 Thessalonians 5)
You can interpret the text to mean “don’t quench the Spirit by rejecting all prophecies; instead test them and take what is good and reject what is evil.” Or you can interpret him to be saying “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit.” I lean towards the latter.
Hebrews 10 tells us:
“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?” (Hebrews 10)
When we treat sin lightly and in fact deliberately keep on sinning, then we insult the Spirit of grace.
So, while all Christians have the Holy Spirit, we can grieve him, quench him and insult him by the way we live our lives. It would seem that when this happens the Spirit is hindered and we do not experience his full influence and power in our lives.
From the context, the reverse to grieving him is to get rid of bitterness and malice and embrace kindness, compassion and a forgiving spirit. The reverse to quenching him is to rejoice always, pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances. The reverse to insulting the Spirit of grace is to stop deliberately keeping on sinning but maintain our commitment to purge sin from our lives. A simple conclusion then is that to be filled with the Spirit we should do the reverse of grieving him, quenching him and insulting him, that is,
- to get rid of bitterness and malice and embrace kindness, compassion and a forgiving spirit,
- to rejoice always, pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances, and
- to stop deliberately keeping on sinning but maintain our commitment to purge sin from our lives.
When we think about it, it would seem that Paul’s call for us to be filled with the Holy Spirit is to create an environment in our life where the Holy Spirit has an unhindered impact and influence on us. We cannot fill ourselves with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit fills us. But we can hinder him thus affect his influence on us. Paul calls on us to remove these obstructions and do what we need to do to keep our spirit in close touch with the Holy Spirit and thus allow the Holy Spirit to freely impact and influence us.
Getting back to the text before us, we see that Paul encourages us to be filled with the Spirit. He contrasts us being filled with the Holy Spirit to us filling ourselves with spirits (pun intended).
“Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18)
The contrast is significant, I think.
I have always found that when I drink substantially I talk a lot more. I lose my inhibitions. Predators would often ply their victims with liquor so that they are more open to do what they normally wouldn’t. On the other hand, people often drink to forget their griefs, hurts and pains. Their senses are dulled.
Don’t spend your days in such a way that more and more your human drives and your emotions control you until your life is something to be ashamed of. Don’t spend your days trying to run away from the hurts and pains that life has dealt you with until your life is empty of love and joy and you lose touch with the Christ who saved that life.
To my mind, the point of contrast between spirits and Spirit is that to be filled with the Spirit is to gain control, not to push our griefs, hurts and pains away but to know joy and peace in the midst of such experiences; it is to have our senses sharpened, especially our sense of God, his will and his ways.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, patience, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. When our lives are filled with the Holy Spirit, these attributes will also flow out of us. Paul describes this consequent outflow as
“ … speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 5:19-20)
I don’t think that when we mature as Christians we will be singing to one another like in a bollywood movie. Rather, each of our lives, shaped and moulded by the truth of Christ, is a song, a hymn, a psalm as we impact and inspire each other to follow Christ. This, after all, is what songs are; they express the emotional impact of truth in our lives. These spiritual songs of life reverberate within the community in joy, worship and thanksgiving.
What is the point of this? Why does Paul move from telling us to take great care in ensuring that our life conforms to the will of God to telling us not to get drunk but to be filled with the Holy Spirit? It is that one opens the door to the other and the other to the one. In calling us to choose to live our lives consolidating the new self, Paul tells us that we should:
- Live and breathe the truth of Christ: Put off falsehood and speak truthfully
- Give ourselves the space to express our human drives and emotions but keep them under control: In anger don’t sin and make sure that you leave anger behind by the end of the day
- Live life to give, not take: Work, don’t steal so that you can share with those in need
- Build rather than destroy, lift up rather than put down: Speak to build and benefit rather than talk nonsense
- Embrace the love of God and share it: Leave your hurts and bitterness behind and embrace compassion and kindness
In doing so we create the space for the Spirit to fill us. And when the Spirit fills us we will have the resources to sustain the new self, maturing into the likeness of Christ. And as we sustain our new lifestyle, the Spirit continues to fill us. This is an upward spiral of growth and maturity in Christ. Take a look at the list again. Is this the general trajectory of your Christian life?
Where does it all lead to, this upward spiral?
Paul alludes to this in Ephesians 4:
So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-13)
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Ephesians 4:15-16)
The goal of Christian maturity is a united body that builds itself up in love. It is the body of Christ. When we all grow in maturity we grow to be a whole body, with Christ as the head. There is unity and each member seeks to build each other to be more like Christ. As Paul in 1 Corinthians tells us, all of us have a part, a place, that will complete the body of Christ.
In v21 of chapter 5, Paul calls us to express our spiritual maturity in this way:
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Ephesians 5:21)
This is the shape of the mature Christian, on his knees washing the feet of his brother, following the example of his Lord and Saviour.
To submit to one another is to give space for the other to be who Christ wants them to be and to contribute to the body as Christ wants them to contribute. To dominate is to deny others that space in the body. When you dominate the body you show no reverence for Christ.
Paul shares 3 examples of unequal relationships and outlines how both parties can submit to one another because of Christ. The wife submits and allows the husband to grow as the leader of the family. The husband learns what it means to lead out of love for the wife and family, ensuring her growth and development. The child obeys and allows the father to grow as a father and mentor and the father learns to not abuse his position of power but instead bring his children up in the training and instruction of the Lord. The slave does their best to serve their master and in the process learns what it means to serve Christ while the master takes care of the slave because the slave has an even greater Master, who is also his Master. In God’s eyes, master and slave are equally loved, equally valued. All of them play their role for the sake of the other and for the sake of Christ and thus all have the opportunity to grow and mature in Christ.
When we submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, no one is dominant except Christ.
In the same way members of the church play their role in consideration of the good of the other, giving each other the space to mature and grow in their ministry and service, because the church does not belong to us to dominate but to Christ. All of us then have a place in the body of Christ as he intends.
Churches tend to evaluate themselves in terms of their achievement: the number of people who are members, the programmes that they organise, the number of people who have decided to follow Jesus and join the church, and increasingly these days, demonstrations of power. But once again, look at the big picture and ask what is the will of the Lord? What will Christ be looking for when he visits the church? Numbers? The interesting programmes we have? The beautiful building that we have spent much of our energy to purchase and build?
Paul here tells us that he desires the maturity of the church, everyone working together in unity, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Two pictures that our Lord shared stays on my mind. Someone came to him to offer his achievements. “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?” And the response is damning: “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” The other picture is the separation of sheep and goats on Judgement Day: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” Jesus knows who they are, who walk in his steps.
Don’t be foolish, Paul tells us, but understand what the Lord’s will is.
Will we dominate in order to achieve our vision for the church or will we serve one another and help each other grow and contribute and so bring the vision of Christ for the church into fruition?
There is a song that I wish to share with you because I think it expresses beautifully what it is to submit to each other out of reverence for Christ.
Brother, let me be your servant.
Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I might have the grace
To let you be my servant, too.
We are pilgrims on a journey.
We are brothers on the road.
We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and bear the load.
I will hold the Christ-light for you
In the night time of your fear.
I will hold my hand out to you;
Speak the peace you long to hear.
I will weep when you are weeping.
When you laugh, I’ll laugh with you.
I will share your joy and sorrow
Till we’ve seen this journey through.
When we sing to God in heaven,
We shall find such harmony
Born of all we’ve known together
Of Christ’s love and agony.
Brother, let me be your servant.
Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I might have the grace
To let you be my servant, too.
How do we arrive here? How can the church sing this song? Not literally, of course. I’m sure many of you know how to sing the song. I mean, how can we become such a church?
Paul tells us that we need to grow to maturity, to be more like Christ, the Christ who knelt and washed the feet of his disciples. To do so we need to carefully and wisely choose to live lives that will enjoy the full presence of the Holy Spirit by embracing kindness, compassion and forgiveness, maintaining a close relationship with God so that our Christian walk is filled with joy and thanksgiving, and choosing to let go of sin, and the bitterness and anger and malice that sin builds in us. Many of us have a history, even within the church, and we should let go of our history so that we can live under the headship of Christ and choose to honour his will. May each of us resolutely, and by his grace, choose to do so.
Let us pray.
Father, you have spoken to us and called us to be very careful and to take the opportunity that our Lord has bought for us with his life so that this life that he has saved will be lived for his sake and in accordance with his will. Thank you for giving us the Holy Spirit to enable us to do so. Help us to be careful to work with him and not against him. May we grow into a church whose life and character will be pleasing to you; a song that will honour and glorify you. Help us to let go of what is past and seek the future that you desire for us. We pray in the name of our Saviour and Lord, amen.