Counterfeit Love: Impure Acts (1)

In the last four installments, we’ve been studying true love, which is to be “followers” (mimics) of God (Eph. 5:1-2). In dramatic contrast, we turn now to counterfeit love, which is impurity of life (vs. 3-4).

As always, whatever God creates Satan perverts. Inversely, whatever Satan propagates is something that God originally created. Whatever is good has been created by God, and, in the final analysis, any evil is simply a perversion of something good. All that is true of love; Satan has perverted it. As a counterfeiter of money tries to make his copy look like the real thing, so Satan tries to make his version of love look real. But on close examination, one finds Satan’s version of love to be worthless, just like counterfeit money. Instead of a love that is self-emptying and self-sacrificial, Satan has produced a counterfeit that is self-centered, and most of all, self-indulgence.

There are several characteristics of counterfeit love, but each falls into one of two general categories: impure acts or impure speech. Paul first lists those and then closes with the consequences of such sin and some counsel to Believers.

Verse 3 declares the first characteristic of counterfeit love: impure acts—But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints. Saints are not those who supposedly lived a pure life, died, and received “sainthood,” a concept that is actually rooted in pagan religion (that is, the worship of idols). Rather, as we detailed way back in 1:1, every child of God is a “saint” (hagios), which at first in Classical Greek meant “to stand in awe of or be devoted to the gods,” but was lifted to a new level of meaning in the New Testament: “to set apart or be separate,” that is, “one who is set apart, one who lives holy.”

Paul, therefore, uses three terms to describe impurity of life, and challenges Believers that such things should not be present in their lives, as becometh saints. Becometh is the Greek prepō, to be fitting, suitable, proper, or appropriate. So these three things are not fitting in the Believer’s life, not appropriate for his or her living. They should not, in fact, be once named among us. The idea in the Greek (onamazo) is, as one commentator puts it, that we are so detached from these things, we have removed them so far away, “that the very suspicion of [their] existence among [us] should be banished once and for all.” Even the slightest suspicion of their existence in the Believer is gone. These three things are: fornication, uncleanness, and covetousness. We’ll examine these are we continue.