Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;
2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.
3 But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;
4 Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.
5 For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.
7 Be not ye therefore partakers with them.
8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:
9 (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)
10 Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.
11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.
13 But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.
14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
17 Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
18 And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit;
19 Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;
20 Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ;
21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.
22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.
24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;
26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,
27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church:
30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.
33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.
Ephesians 5
There is an Antichrist spirit today which is against all that is good and holy. The Antichrist spirit and its conglomerates use words like "we are woke" yet they are dull and darkened and dead. The Antichrist spirit altogether uses words like "we're all in this together" and "we've been doing it like this a long while," but they are separated unto their selves seeking after singularity, rather than participating in the marriage supper of the Lamb. The Antichrist spirit is like a frog, coming out of the mouth of the false prophet, the mouth of the dragon, and the mouth of the beast, and everywhere in society the tune of perversion and corruption is being played. The Antichrist spirit calls good evil and evil good. The Antichrist spirit is temporarily assigned to wait for its eternal assignment in Hell.
1 Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;
2 And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.
Ephesians 5.1-2
This fifth chapter of Ephesians is the second-to-last segment of this letter from Paul to the church and people in Ephesus. These verse and chapter delineations were of course not present when Paul wrote this letter to his brothers and sisters in Christ, but they're added for us today to be able to reference the parts of the Bible easily in conversation and study and in prayer. It is good to realize that the 5th chapter of Ephesians is almost the conclusion of a very deep letter which is life-giving to all those who hunger and thirst after righteousness and life.
The letter opens up in chapter 1 verses 1-2:
1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 1.1-2
This letter is specifically written to the saints in Ephesus and in general to all those who are faithful in Christ Jesus, and Paul begins by bestowing a blessed blessing of grace and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul's love for God's people was as a loving brother or as a loving father and as a loving friend to these people, some of whom were only first learning about the Messiah Who had walked upon this Earth for about 33.5 years. God chose a man Paul, who was formerly known as Saul, to become one of the most prolific writers of the New Testament Good News. When he was known as Saul, he was actually a persecutor of Christians, and when he would have been calling them "Christian" back then, it is like when an ignorant person uses a racist term for someone of the other race, to call people "Christians" back then, but soon the Christians adopted it, like, "Yea, we are living to be like little Jesus Christs!" And now it is our identity, which is to say, our identity is hidden in Christ, waiting to be revealed at eternity's dawning, and this is because we believe in Him as the Son of God, as the One, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the only Way to our Father, the Messiah born of a virgin, the Lamb Who Who Was Slain From The Foundation Of The World, the Alpha and the Omega, the I AM, the payment and ransom for our sins Who gave His life upon a cross and went to a spiritual prison and preached to disobedient souls and also visited in Paradise while His body laid dead in a tomb for 3 days, the resurrected Jehovah Tsidkenu Jireh, our true Friend and Brother and Him Who is the Holy Spirit.
3 But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;
4 Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.
5 For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
Ephesians 5.3-5
God's love for us is expressed in telling us the right way and the wrong way to find contentment and joy and fulfillment in this life and into the next. God tells us what we need to hear because He knows we need to hear it. God is intimately acquainted with us. God knows us inside and out. God provides for us our clothing, our food, our strength and energy, and our environments in which to grow. God gives us the mental intellect we have to sort out and reason and be aware of things and when they change. God has created us as creators in His image. We all have God's "fingerprints" all over our design, because God is our Author and the Finisher of our faith and our very being in existence. God knows what is good for us and what is not, and He gives His children the words of life that they live by. Everyone else ignores them.
Some people view God as a "religion," but God is not a religion. Religion is powerless to get us closer to God or to get us to Heaven, but after we see our need for God and we receive His forgiveness for our sins by believing in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, then the Holy Spirit takes up residence inside of us and changes our heart (instantly and over time) so that our heart's desires grow to want to be more like Christ, and this is only possible by the putting off of sin and the fleshly indulgences that are all around us in this world, and those that we keep privately hidden in our rooms and in our hearts. There is no room for sin in the life of a mature Christian believer because we know what the Word of God says, and we know the severity of His love.
Fornication, uncleanness, covetousness, filthiness, foolish talking, jesting/joking, all of these things are normal today and sold in advertisements and from behind pulpits. The Bible says to not let these be named once among us who believe, but rather we ought to be giving thanks. This is when religion happens, when we realize that we cannot "earn" our way to Heaven, and when we realize we are hopeless and powerless to stop sinning in our own power, and when we surrender to Christ and out of gratitude for His great gift for us, we find every way we can to show Him how grateful we are for the gift of salvation which He purchased upon the cross with His blood. Sadly, most people will not see the value in this. It seems like the Word of God says only about a third of the people whom He created will come to believe in Him and be saved. The Bible says that it is God's will that all might be saved, and it is imperative for those of us who believe in Him and in His Word that we are telling others what His Word actually says, and rightly giving people the grace and truth of God.
If you're having sex outside of marriage, you are fornicating. If you are trying to satisfy yourself with pornography, you are fornicating. Jesus says that if you even look at someone with lust, then it is the same as having committed the sin of lust with them. If you are a queer and you are trying to call what you're doing the same thing as "marriage" or the same thing as "love," you are tricked and lying to yourself, and you are fornicating. This is sin.
Uncleanness is being dirty. Most people live in a mentality where they lie and expect to be lied to on a regular, daily basis. This in and of itself is being dirty, but living a life of lies is not a single sin, but it is a life of sin.
Covetousness is what all the systems of the world use today to sell everything. Salvation is sold in many different flavors and super powers and the ability to be called a hero. Life changing attitudes and lovely identities are freely peddled for $15.99 at the theatre, and humans are glad to run around like dumb terminals running whatever routines they are handed down from the corrupted leaders who run the theatres and governments and most of the systems of this world. Those who are content in Christ need nothing from this world to remain content.
Filthiness and foolish talking and jesting or joking are all mentioned in the same breath together as opposed to giving thanks, and on the other side of that contrast is also contrasted between those who are giving thanks and those who are called whoremongers, unclean persons, and idolaters. The person giving thanks is giving thanks because they have inherited eternal life by faith and hope in love. The sinful people are all together sinful and ignorant that they are even in peril, because they have found ways to deafen their ears, darken their eyes, and to dullen their consciousnesses against anything brilliant or original or true. They are not thankful for anything eternal, but only what they can see and indulge in today.
The warning is that those who are thankful in belief in Jesus Christ are going to have eternal life with Him, but it says those who remain in their sins will not have any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. This is significant. There is nothing else significant like this, and all of everything else that was ever significant in all of history only has what is knows as significance because God Himself invented the significance of Jesus Christ.
6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.
7 Be not ye therefore partakers with them.
Ephesians 5.6-7
The Word is plain to understand for anybody old enough to read it. Children of disobedience do not read the Word or care to hear it, yet it is our unction to take it to them anyway, because there are some who will repent when they see their need for Christ, and they will take the steps of faith required to leave everything they have to follow Him.
8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:
9 (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)
10 Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord.
Ephesians 5.8-10
We were sometimes darkness. Every one of us, myself this "some guy on the internet" writing these words to you. We were all children of darkness, having given our identities over to Satan to become a child of Satan. All of us deserve death and eternal punishment because we have all sinned against God greatly. There is basically nobody alive who is old enough to offend who has not yet offended the very Holy God of Truth which keeps us all alive, and the consequences of sin are death. Eternal death. Eternally dying sounds miserable because it is. It is awareness of torment, and awareness of torment which grows with each "moment" that passes as eternity's echoes remind the condemned that they did not have to end up in Hell, but that they chose eternal separation from the love and warmth of Christ, by exchanging their eternal habitation for temporary pleasures which were perverted and fleeting.
11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.
13 But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light.
Ephesians 5.11-13
God commands us to reprove the unfruitful works of darkness and have no fellowship with them. We are told it is a shame to even speak of those things which they do in secret. Back when these letters were written, most people did not live as openly lasciviously as is frequently seen in the streets and on the screens and in libraries and in churches and homes and schools nowadays. They did their sins in private back then, but nowadays America has taught the world that openly sinning is the only surefire way to make sure you'll be allowed to keep sinning, and anyone who sings and dances their song and dance is promoted and flattered until they fail.
Alas, the Word tells us that all things which are reproved are made manifest by the light, for whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Earlier in the chapter, it tells us that we were sometimes darkness, but now a transformation is revealed in that those who believe and are now reproving darkness have actually become light. That is the transformation that is only possible because of Jesus Christ. We go from being darkness to being light. Jesus Christ Himself told us that we are the light of the world, and the salt.
14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Ephesians 5.14-16
God is the One Who wakes us up by telling us to arise from the dead, and in Christ we have the light which lights our life and the lives of others. The "then" in v15 is in direct reference to this status of being woken by God: See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. God is telling us to walk as wise people, and to not walk as the foolish do, and He is telling us to redeem the time, which means to use the time and resources which He has given to us for the furtherance of His Kingdom, which is in the hearts of men and women and children.
The days were evil back then, but we are much further from the Garden of Eden now, and much more like the wicked people the Bible describes will exist at the end of time when the generation is like those who were alive in the days of Noah. Violent and thinking always about violence. Perverted. Mocking. Yet in the midst of their turmoil, they went on marrying and giving in marriage, as though life was normal for them, right up until the door on the Ark closed and the first raindrops began to fall. Up until then, people had not seen it rain, much less a worldwide flood. The world we are in today is going to be experiencing massive flooding of "Biblical proportions" as we draw nearer and nearer the end, but God gave us the rainbow as a token of His promise that He will never flood the entire Earth again.
Nowadays, God is watching and seeing which humans are destroying the Earth, and the Bible tells us that God is going to judge those who destroyed the Earth. Then, when the time is full, God is going to end it all. Then, there will be a new Heaven and a new Earth, where there is no more sin, no more crying, no more sadness, and Satan will no longer have domain or roam and destroy because he will be locked away.
17 Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
Ephesians 5.17
We are instructed to be wise, and we are instructed to be not unwise. We are instructed to be understanding of what the will of the Lord is. God has given us His will in His Word, and we can read about it in places like 1 Thessalonians 5:
16 Rejoice evermore.
17 Pray without ceasing.
18 In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
19 Quench not the Spirit.
20 Despise not prophesyings.
21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
22 Abstain from all appearance of evil.
23 And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1 Thessalonians 5.16-23
Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
Pause and take time to think about that. God's will for us is that we would be grateful. A loving Father created us in this world, and His will for us is that we would be grateful. Believing this leads me to look for the treasures He has placed all around me, and when I turn my attention to Him, I can see His glory in every situation in every day, and there is not a wasted moment or a wasted pain or a wasted joy. If God wants us to be grateful, then He has loved us in such a way for us to be that, and when we are in thanksgiving, we are in His will. A posture of gratitude is what a human being looks like when they are in love with God and when they are loving people with God's love.
To know the will of the Lord, we must study, we must pray, we must read the Word, we must have fellowship with other believers on a regular basis, and we must go in His name and do all that we do in His power. Then we can know the will of the Lord because we will be in it. If you are not living a life that is beyond your paltry means, then I challenge you to challenge yourself and ask yourself if you are living a life of faith, because a life of faith very often is a life that is lived after a person dies to their self and comes awake and alive in Christ, and they are enabled to do much more than they could do before in their own power, because everything they are doing is done in accordance to His good will.
The rest of the chapter of Ephesians 5 is good for nourishment in the body of Christ, but this first half is what the Holy Spirit put on my heart to share here now.
