Our Christian Walk
Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, Ephesians 5:15
Ephesians 5:1–21 – Learning to Live Under the Reign of Christ
Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: Life in the Spirit – August 18, 2024 (am)
Introduction
Our sermon text this morning has me reflecting on the activity of walking. Three times in our passage for today, we hear an exhortation on how we, as Christians, are supposed to walk.
When was the last time you went for a good walk?
For me and my family, it was last weekend when we went down to Chicago for the air and water show. Our walk began at the Millenium Park Garage, because that is where the website said we should park – promising discounted rates and a shuttle to the best location to view the show - but when we came out of the darkness of our subterranean parking spot and into the light of a beautiful Chicago day – it became clear that I had little hope of finding the shuttle amid the craziness of the city traffic and so began our walk.
It was actually a very beautiful walk, as we traversed the lake shore, went over the Chicago River, past Navy Pier, and eventually made it up to Oak Street Beach where we watched the show.
Now, walking through the city, especially on a day when the crowds are out in full force, you get to share your walk with many, many people. And it doesn’t take long to see that the city is filled with people from many different walks of life.
For example, we bought ice cream from a gentleman pushing an ice cream cart who spoke no English, and I got to use a little of my High School Spanish to complete the transaction and it made pause and wonder where this man was from and how our paths come to cross on this day.
We also saw a man in full imitation of Joker from DC Comics - dressed in the costume, make up, and especially the demeanor of Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker – and once again, as we gave him a fair amount of personal space, I wondered about his walk of life and what had brought him to those wardrobe decisions on that particular day.
I could go on for a long time hypothesizing about the walks of life of the people we saw that day – from people exercising or sunbathing to spending time with families to drinking and smoking to putting on subpar street performances or glaring at us as we momentarily encroached upon their personal space – but the point of my bringing this up is not to show how judgmental I can be - but rather to raise the question, “If we had run into another Christian that day – and I’m sure we did - how would their walk of life have been different from those around them? Would there be anything about their life and attitude and conduct that would set them apart from the crowd as followers of Christ?
I believe our passage for today answers these questions by giving us three instructions on how Christians are to walk – and to be clear, by walk – Paul means live. These three instructions are a continuation of the big idea laid out for us in 4:1 where Paul urges Christians to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which they have been called.
Beginning with the first two verses of chapter 5 which tell us to . . .
1. Be Imitators of God & Walk in Love (5:1-2)
There is scene in Mel Brooks’s 1974 comedy, Young Frankenstein, where Dr. Frankenstein (who goes by Dr. Frankensteene) first meets Igor (who goes by I-gor) at a train station and as they are leaving the station Igor looks back at Dr. Frankenstein and says to him – “Walk this way” – and then he proceeds to hobble down the steps with his hunched back and a much too small cane and before the Doctor can follow him down the stairs, he turns around and hands him the cane saying once again – “Walk this way” – and so the Doctor hunches his back and using the cane he hobbles down the stairs behind him.
Of course, the joke is that when we are told we are told to “walk this way” we assume we’re being told to follow someone – not to imitate them – but when it comes to our Christian walk, Paul wants us to see that if we are to follow God then we must also imitate him.
So our passage begins with the exhortation to be imitators of God and to walk in love. If the command to imitate God sounds odd to your ears – it may be because this is the only time in Scripture when we are explicitly told to imitate God the Father, and we may be more familiar with the concept of imitating Christ. But this idea may not be as foreign as it seems at first if we recall that we are called in Leviticus 19:2 to be holy as God is holy or if we remember Luke 6:36 where Jesus tells us to “Be merciful, even as your Father in heaven is merciful.” And if we look at the verse just before our passage, we are reminded that we have just been told to “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (4:32)
So we see that, as Children of God, the call to imitate God is a call to show the same tenderhearted forgiveness and mercy that we’ve received from Him in Christ. And if we finish this short paragraph, we see that this life of kind and tenderhearted forgiveness is known by another name – and that is love. And in a day and age when we come across slogans such as “love is love” – we can be thankful that Scripture actually defines what love is – and we see it is defined by Christ’s giving of himself for us as an acceptable offering to God.
So we see that Christian love is defined not by a sense of entitlement to do whatever we want or a sense of permissiveness to let other people do whatever they think will make them happy – as is implied in the slogan “love is love” – instead, Christian love is defined by Christ, and his willingness to give up his rights, even his right to life, in order that he might save another person by reconciling them to God. And we are called to imitate this love by giving ourselves up also for the good of those around us. As 1 John 3:16 says, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”
These verses ought to help us see that, as Christians, the wonderful message of the gospel – that God so loved us that he sent his only Son to die for us – this isn’t just the message that begins our Christian walk, it also defines what our Christian walk will look like.
Too often, Christians receive the gospel and then, after becoming a Christian, they put it on the shelf until they have the opportunity to tell someone else about it. That is not what our Christian walk should look like. Instead, having believed the gospel, we are called to then live into it by imitating the God who orchestrated it and showing the same love to others that won us out of our rebellion against God.
All of that is to say, the Christian walk is a walk one of imitation. Have you ever seen someone who does celebrity imitations? What separates the just decent imitations to the ones that are really good? The one’s that are really good have studied their subjects extra carefully – they know their mannerisms, voice inflections, ticks, and favorite topics such that they can impersonate them in uncanny ways. So also, if we’re to imitate God then we must know him – and the more intimately we know him, the more closely we will be able to imitate his love and his mercy and his kindness and his forgiveness . . . but that isn’t the only thing that defines how we are to walk as Christians – for our walk is also to be defined by our new identity in Christ.
2. Vanquish Sexual Immorality & Walk as Children of the Light (5:3-14)
One of my favorite books to read to my children as they grew up was the book Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli. In the book, there is a bully by the name of “Mars Bar Thompson” – so named for the Mars Bar he was always munching on. And in the book Mars Bar was known for one thing other than his trademark candy bar – and that was that he was “bad”.
As Mars Bar himself says to Maniac Magee one day – “Maybe nobody told you - I'm badder than ever. I'm getting badder every day. I'm almost afraid to wake up in the morning . . . 'cause-a how bad I mighta got overnight." (105, Spinelli)
And this identity that Mars Bar so willingly owns makes its way into everything he does – even how he walks. Such that it was rumored that “. . . when Mars Bar stepped off a curb and combined [his] glare with his super-slow dip-stride slumpshuffle . . . well . . . he could back up traffic all the way to Bridgeport while he took ten minutes to cross the street.” (33, Spinelli)
In verse 8 of Eph. 5, we see the second instruction for how Christians are to walk – we are to “Walk as children of light” and the statement from which this instruction flows is in the sentence prior where we are told “for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.”
What Paul wants the Ephesian church to see here, is that when they came to Christ there was a miraculous change to their identity and this change in identity necessitates and change in lifestyle.
Remember how, back in Ephesians 2, this identity transformation was first described. It was described as being transferred from spiritually deadness – walking in trespasses and sins, following the course of this world, and following the prince of the power of the air – to spiritual life in Christ. This miraculous transformation is now revisited only it is described in terms of darkness and light. Those who are now in Christ were once darkness, but now they are light! And here Paul exhorts them to live into this new identity and to “Walk as children of the light”.
The backdrop for this imperative to walk as children of the light is the darkness of sexual immorality. So jumping back to verse 3, we hear Paul admonishing the Ephesians to vanquish all sexual immorality, impurity, or covetousness from their lives. To these he adds in the next verse filthiness, foolish talk, and crude joking. In each of these cases – Paul has in mind the overarching sin of sexual immorality – which is the sin of engaging in sexual activity outside God’s ordained boundaries of marriage between a man and a woman.
And by saying that sexual immorality must not even be named among Christians – not even joked about – what he is commending to us is an absolute intolerance for anything that even hints of such immorality – whether it is in our conversations with our friends or our own thought life.
One thing that ought to stand out to us about this exhortation, especially when we live in a world where sexual immorality is everywhere, is that Paul’s line for when to disengage from sexual immorality is long before we ever get close to the realm of engaging with someone of the opposite sex. Instead, we are to be completely intolerant of it in our speech and in our thoughts so that when we are tempted in the realm of our actions, we will – Lord willing – not even tolerate the idea of it.
In the place of sexual immorality – Paul commends to us in verse 4 thanksgiving – which may not seem at first to be an appropriate alternative. We may say that sexual purity is the alternative to sexual immorality – and we’d be right to do so – but the way to get to sexual purity is not just through a change in behavior but through a change in attitude – and that is what Paul is commending to us when he encourages us towards thanksgiving.
We see this when we notice that alongside the prohibition of sexual immorality is a prohibition of covetousness. What does coveting have to do with sexual immorality?
Coveting is the desiring and longing for something that does not belong to you. And in the Old Testament explanation of the command to not covet, what does it say? It says, among other things, you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, as if one clear arena of coveting is the arena of sexual immorality.
Sexual immorality involves coveting because it is the longing for and lusting after something – or more specifically – someone who does not belong to you. Despite the proclamations of love and praise toward another that are often uttered in situations of sexual immorality, there is always a self-centeredness that is at the root of such actions. We say and do whatever is necessary to take and get what we want from someone who is not our own, not our spouse – whether it’s in the form of a picture or a real live person.
So Paul prescribes thankfulness as the antidote to sexual immorality because the only attitude that can counteract something so self-centered as sexual immorality one is a thankful one.
Often times, we are enticed into sexual immorality because we are so focused on what we lack and what we don’t have (a spouse, an understanding spouse, someone to hold, love, a way to satisfy an appetite) that sexual immorality seems like the only route to satisfying the urges and appetites that feel so strong within us. But thankfulness flips the script on that line of thinking and chooses to look not at ourselves but to God and to his many blessings in our lives and the more often we make thankfulness the pattern of our hearts the less we will feel the pull of our self-centered lack of satisfaction.
So to those who are wrestling in this area – consider as one of your battle tactics – to build thanksgiving into the rhythms of your day. Or, when you are being tempted, consider meditating on all the ways the Lord has blessed you and thanking him for them.
To this encouragement towards thanksgiving, Paul then adds two warnings to underline the urgency to vanquish sexual immorality from our Christian walk. The first is in verse 5 and it is a warning to the sexually immoral person to understand that ongoing sexual immorality will jeopardize their inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. The second warning comes in verses 6 &7 and is the warning to separate yourself from anyone who might lead you down the path of sexual immorality, understanding such people are under the wrath of God.
Given the culture we live in, we need to hear these warnings with their full force. We live in a day where we are told that considering sex outside marriage to be immorality is nothing short of laughable. And we’re constantly enticed by the world around us to believe that such thinking is old fashioned and prudish. But if we’re to live into our identity as Christians, as children of the light, we must hear Paul’s clarity as he says, “You may be sure of this!” and we must receive these warnings without first trying to explain them away.
So know that if you have chosen to indulge yourself in sexual immorality your eternal inheritance is in jeopardy. And if you have linked yourself with those who engage in sexual immorality of any kind, you are in danger of coming under the wrath of God along with them. Which is why - brothers and sisters – we must vanquish all sexual immorality from our lives. We must not tolerate it in any of its forms.
So, if you’re in a sexually immoral relationship – bring it to an end, today! If you are friends with those who lead you into sexual immorality, resolve to end those friendships today! If you have apps or websites that fuel your sexual immorality – delete them and download accountability software or throw away your phone altogether, and do it today – don’t let another day go by where you tolerate such inconsistency in your life as being a child of the light and yet continuing to indulge in these works of darkness.
Instead, remember who you are! If you are in Christ, you have been united to Him. As verse 8 says – you were darkness and now you are light. Notice it doesn’t say you lived in darkness and now you live in the light – as if following Jesus just got you a new house in a brighter neighborhood. No, it says you were darkness and now you are light. A miraculous transformation has already taken place.
I know this can be hard to believe when the old self just seems so stubborn and the new self so slow to immerge – but it is vital for you to see that the Christian walk is not one where we are trying to become something new but instead it is one where we have been made new and with that new life comes a new ability to live in obedience to Christ. So believe that, with Christ’s help, you can conquer sin and walk as children of the light! Because that is exactly who you are.
And as you walk in the light – the final thing Paul says in this paragraph – is that we ought not only to avoid the darkness of sexual immorality, but we are also to expose it.
It is often said in sports that the best defense is a good offense. What is meant is that the best way to keep the other team from scoring is to always be on the offensive attack against them. Don’t just sit back and wait for your opponent to bring the fight to you, instead take the fight to them.
So often, in our fight for purity, we can assume merely a defensive posture. We know the battle is coming and we hope we don’t lose it when it does, but inevitably it comes when we’re feeling week and we give in again which leads us to feelings of failure and shame but then we go right back into our posture of defense and hope for a different outcome next time. But if we’re to walk as children of the light, we need to take the fight to the forces that work against us.
How do we do this? We expose sin and call it by it’s vile name whenever we see it. So when we see it in our own hearts and tempting us at the edge of our thoughts – we expose it by confessing to a trusted brother or sister in Christ. When we see it creeping into our homes or our lives through various books or devices or subscriptions – we unabashedly throw those things in the trash and cancel those subscriptions. When we see it at work in the lives of our loved ones and our fellow church members – we refuse to ignore it and we approach them with the love of Christ and having assessed if our perception is correct we confront them in their sin and encourage them to turn and repent of their sin and then we commit to praying for them and fighting alongside them to gain victory in this area of their lives. And when we see it in our communities, we lean into the rights afforded to us according to our citizenship and we lobby and vote in keeping with Christian convictions believing they are the path towards human flourishing for all people while also resting in the truth that this earth is not our home. And by working to expose the darkness around us, we shine the light of Christ into the dark corners of this world, allowing his light to shine on the spiritually dead, believing that by so doing some will awake and Christ’s kingdom will grow.
And one last word on this subject before we move on to our last point, for those of us who are in the middle of this fight against sexual immorality and may be fearing that your eternal inheritance may be in jeopardy – know that if you are continuing to repent of your sin and take steps to expose it and are believing the gospel amid your fight – you need not fear your eternal destiny. Christ’s sacrifice was and is for you, and his grace is sufficient for you.
But if you are caught up in this fight and can’t remember the last time you sought the Lord’s forgiveness or even resisted temptation when it came – this warning is for you – and you are truly in a dangerous place, but you don’t need to stay there. Please, talk to me or another Christian you trust, and begin your journey out of the darkness.
3. Understand the Times & Walk Carefully (5:15-21)
In the final paragraph of our passage we see our third instruction for how Christians are to walk – they are to understand the times and walk carefully.
What do the times we live in have to do with how we walk? Well, let me ask you, how do you walk when the bell is ringing for class to begin or your train is approaching the station and you’re still a hundred yards off? Or, how do you walk when the power goes out and you know the floor is covered in toys and legos? Or how about when a tantrum prone toddler finally falls asleep but they’re in the middle of the family room? Or after you’ve just been stung by a bee on the foot?
The times we live in have a lot to do with how we walk – whether we do so quickly, or carefully, or quietly, or gingerly. And that is also the case when it comes to our Christian walk. The times we live in ought to inform how we go about our days.
So what does Paul mean when he says “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.”
Here Paul is encouraging us to walk in light of the times – and he describes the times with the phrase “the days are evil”. By this, Paul is reminding us that the world we walk through is one where, as Paul says in chapter 6, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” That is to say, we live in a time where Satan, our spiritual adversary, is still active and aimed at our destruction – so Peter can describe him as a lion looking for someone to devour. (1 Pet. 5:8)
That is not to say that we are to go through this life with fear and trepidation, because once you are in Christ you are rescued from Satan’s dominion, but you still exist within his realm and he is still battling against you to lead you astray from Christ and into sin. So Paul calls us to live carefully and make the best use of the time – which means that to imitation and identity we are to add that the Christian walk is one of intentionality.
And Paul lays out for his readers three ways Christians ought to be intentional in the way they live. They are to be wise, to understand the will of the Lord, and be filled with the Spirit. And when we look at the context of Ephesians, what we see is that Paul’s encouragement towards wisdom and living out God’s will and being Spirit filled are just further exhortations to live into what God has done in saving them – or to put it another way – just further exhortations to “walk in a manner worthy of their calling”.
So Paul commends first wisdom, and if we were to look back at Eph. 1:7-10 we’d see that Paul connects wisdom with understanding God’s purpose to unite all things in Christ and then a few verses later, in verse 17 he prays that the reader might have the wisdom to know the power of God to bring us into that purpose through the church. And then later on, the church is said to be the means by which God’s “manifold wisdom” is made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places (3:10).
Then Paul commends an understanding of the will of God – and God’s will in Ephesians is known as his work to bring spiritually dead people to life (2:1-10) and then to unite them to one another in the church as a dwelling place for Himself (2:19-22) and then to fill them with all the fullness of God (3:19).
And understanding the context behind what it means to live in wisdom and in the will of God then helps us to understand what is meant by the final imperative – to be filled with the Spirit. This is a phrase that can be confusing for us as the term “Spirit filled” tends to conjure up all sorts of ideas in our minds depending on our background and experiences in the church. But what if I told you it would be better to interpret this phrase not as “be filled with the Spirit” but rather “be filled by the Spirit”?
In the first interpretation, it would seem that the Spirit is the content of the filling – which may cause us to wonder why we didn’t get all of the Spirit when we first became Christians. But as we examine the book of Ephesians to answer this question – were met with the fact that in no other instance are we said to need more of the Spirit. In fact, what we see in Ephesians is that we are constantly being told that Christians need to be filled – like in 1:23 where the church is defined as the “fullness of him who fills all in all” or in 3:19 where Paul prays that the church would be “filled with all the fullness of God” or in 4:10 where we’re told that Christ ascended to heaven that he might “fill all things” or in 4:13 which lays out the goal for the church is to come to “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” When we take the context of Ephesians into our reading of 5:18, what we see is that Paul is calling us to live into the ultimate goal of the church, which is to be filled with Christ, and so we understand that the role of the Spirit is not to be the content that fills us but rather the Spirit is the instrument or the means by which we are filled with Christ. So, we’re to be filled with Christ and transformed into His image and we’re to rely on the Holy Spirit within us to accomplish this within us. And when we do this – we will see Christ being formed in us as we sing to one another and sing to God and give thanks for everything and learn to live in the patterns of submission that are explained in the following passage.
Conclusion
So our concluding question for this morning is simply – how are you doing in your Christian walk?
How are you doing in the area of imitation? Do you aim to imitate God in his loving kindness and abundant forgiveness towards us – or are you lacking in the family resemblance there?
How are you doing at living into your identity? Are you living into the reality that you are light by regularly doing battle with the works of darkness? Or have you grown comfortable with or even come to idolize the sexual immorality God saved you out of when he raised you from death to life?
How are you doing at living intentionally? Are you on your guard? Are you making the most of the time by seeking to live into God’s purpose to fill you – to fill us – with all the fullness of Christ? Or are you just coasting through your Christian walk and trusting that one day, someday, you will get serious about it again?
Growing up in Colorado it was not uncommon for my family to go on walks – only out there we called them hikes. We’d drive up to the foothills or all the way into the mountains and stop at a trailhead where we’d begin our walk which almost always lead to a beautiful destination with breathtaking views. But, as you can imagine, with 8 children in tow – it was rare that all of us were on board with the idea of another hike. My parents put up with a lot in those days as we’d whine and complain our way through the grandeur of the Colorado Rockies. But they never stopped taking us on hikes, they just changed the name of the activity and began referring to them as a “forced march.”
And as I look back on those days, I realize that whether we were willingly going on a hike or being prodded along on a forced march – the destination was always equally beautiful.
My friends, as we continue along in our Christian walk – understand there are days when it will feel like a hike through the woods – strenuous, but rewarding, and filled with beauty – but other days it will feel like a forced march – we’ll need to force ourselves with the help of the Holy Spirit and our brothers and sisters in Christ to keep moving, to keep loving, to keep turning away from darkness, to keep praying for the Spirit to fill us with Christ. But one thing we must keep in mind – whether we are willingly walking or forcing ourselves along – the destination we’re headed towards is a beautiful one – it is a redeemed people, made to fully reflect their Savior, bound together into a unified temple for the Lord – so wherever you may be in your Christian walk – keep going.
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Works Cited or Consulted
Bruce, F. F. The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians (NICNT).
O’Brien, Peter T. The Letter to the Ephesians. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand
Rapids, 1999.
Spinelli, Jerry. Maniac Magee. Little, Brown and Company: New York, 1990.
NEXT SUNDAY: As to the Lord, Ephesians 5:22–6:9