Looking one last time at Ephesians 4:17-19, the true
Christian no longer conducts
himself (or herself) like the non-Christian. Paul lists several characteristics
that can be summarized by three traits. First, the Old Man is characterized Intellectual Deficiency (v. 17b), and, second,
Spiritual Debility (v. 18). Third,
which we now conclude, is Moral Depravity (v. 19). Who being past feeling have given
themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
The latter part of the
verse describes the practical outworking of moral depravity; one is Lasciviousness.
2. Man work[s] all uncleanness. Work
is ergasia, which speaks not only of the effort of work itself,
but also of a business, occupation, or trade. It appears in Acts 19:25, for
example, where due to Paul’s preaching, the angry silversmith Demetrius was
loosing money because people were no longer buying shrines of Diana, and
therefore “called together with the workmen of like occupation” to do something
about the problem. Putting all this together, we could humbly translate verse 19: “Who having ceased to
feel pain or grief, have given themselves to unrestrained self-indulgence and make a business of filth.”
While
society today has not reached the proportions of the wickedness of the ancient
world, it certainly is running to catch up, is it not? Besides the perversions
of that day, technology has provided us more opportunity. Not only has it aided
prostitution, but it has given pornography a quantum leap. According to Forbes
Magazine (5-25-01), pornographic magazines gross $1 billion annually, the
Internet another billion, Pay-Per-View movies $128 million, and adult videos
add between $500 million and $1.8 billion, yielding a total of $2.6 to $3.9
billion per year. May we add, if that is not enough to appall us, how about the
complicity of local and state governments that gather sales tax on such
perversion? After all, many argue, “It’s just another business,” or, “We can’t
regulate morality.” Indeed, we are past feeling.
3.
Finally, with greediness describes the attitude that brings on all this uncleanness.
Man’s underlying motive is greed, covetousness, lust, and self-gratification.
As I Timothy 6:10 declares, “For the love of money is the root of all evil.”
Take any issue, any practice, and just begin to trace it back. As you peel back
the layers, you will ultimately uncover greed. Colossians 3:5 tells us that
covetousness is actually idolatry, the worship of a false god. How true this is
of man. He worships himself. He is his own god. Again, as Paul outlines in
Romans 1, man has suppressed the truth (Rom. 1:18), disregarded God, (vs. 21,
28), and worships himself (v. 25). As a result, his behavior is vile and
unrestrained (vs. 26-32).
Why has
Paul gone into all this? To remind us, as he declares in verse 17, that this
is not the way the Christian walks. Most of us can recall how we lived
before Christ saved us and that we no longer behave that way. The Christian
walks in purity, far above such vile behavior. He walks as a “new man,” a “new
creature,” (II Cor. 5:17), as we’ll now study in verses 20-24.
May we not
be like the canary that was put in with the sparrows. A little boy mixed these
together thinking the sparrows would learn to sing. But in a few days, the
canary was chirping like the sparrows. Likewise, we must be careful that the
world doesn’t have us chirping right along with it. How easy it is to chirp
like the world, to have the same attitudes and actions, the same values and
virtues. “But [we] have not so learned Christ,” Paul goes on to write (v. 20),
for we have been “renewed in the spirit of [our] mind” (v. 23).
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