Let No Man Deceive You With Vain Words: A Lenten Meditation on Ephesians 5

Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;

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.

But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness,

let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;

Neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient:

but rather giving of thanks.  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.

Let no man deceive you with vain words:

for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon

the children of disobedience. Be not ye therefore

partakers with them. For ye were sometimes

darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:

(For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;)

Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship

with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.  

For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light:

For whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Wherefore he saith,

Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead,

and Christ shall give thee light.

See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,

Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.

St. Paul strikes a somber chord in the fifth chapter of his letter to the church at Ephesus, but it is one worth listening too, especially in Lent.  He begins the chapter by imploring the Ephesian Christians to respond to the love of Christ poured out for them, by living lives conforming to Christ and His Word.  This sacrificial, selfless, divine love is the beginning of the Christian’s faith and new life in Jesus, and also the pattern into which the Christian is called to be conformed through constant faith and repentance.  This new life which the Christian receives from Jesus, continues to flow from Jesus as He works through His Word and Spirit to sanctify every believer grafted into Him by grace through faith.  This life of faith given freely to the Christian by grace, continues to work itself out in love of God and neighbor, turning from the ways of darkness and back to the ways of Jesus.

Against this backdrop, Paul makes a clear distinction about the world which does not live by grace through faith in Christ alone—a world which does not hear or live by His Word.  It is a world marked by fornication, uncleanness, and covetousness, of filthiness, foolishness, whoremongering, and idolatry.  The world marked by these things is consumed by evil, deaf and blind to all that God speaks and shows forth through His Word and Spirit.  Such evil and corruption has but one end, which is the eternal judgment of hell.  It is a world enslaved willfully to the evil one, delighting in the works of violence and abuse, of corruption and hypocrisy.  Such a world persecutes the saints of God because it hates Him and His Word, refuses the grace He offers through His Son, and clings to its own hapless idolatry even as it decays into ever lower levels of debauchery and ruin.  Death, destruction, and insanity are the currency of this fallen realm, and it will end in the fires of divine judgment on the Last Day.

Keeping these two realities clearly in focus—the Kingdom of Christ and the Kingdom of Darkness—Paul makes a very pointed warning:  don’t be deceived back into the Kingdom of Darkness, lest you become a partaker of its eternal judgment.  There is no halfway between the path which leads to life and the one which leads to death, no middle ground upon which to stand and be a neutral observer.  The path of life is marked by the Light of Christ and His Word, calling all people to repent, believe, and live forever in His grace by faith in Him; the path of death is marked by the darkness of the evil one, calling all people into the brutal slavery of self-idolatry, and eternal separation from the God of love, sacrifice, compassion, and mercy.  As Christ teaches, where a person’s heart is, there is his treasure:  either set by faith upon Christ and His eternal life, or set by unbelief upon the empty promises of the evil one unto death and eternal despair.  This is the judgment spoken of by Jesus when He says that He has come into the world that those who think they see by fallen human reason may be shown how blind they really are, and that those who are blind might be made to see eternal Truth as He opens their eyes by faith in His Word.

Let no one deceive you with vain words about the reality in which you live.  If you give yourself to the ways of darkness, you will die under the same judgment as the evil one.  If you give yourself to Christ, you will live forever in Him, because He has already taken your judgment upon Himself and given to you His forgiveness, life, and salvation as His free gift of grace.  No matter the trappings of the pompous liar who speaks vainly against these realities—the fancy clothes, the prestigious degrees, the positions of honor, the baubles of popularity and wealth—there is no empty speech or self-congratulating book which can change it.  What is real and what is true is inseparable and inescapable, rooted in the very reality and truth of God.

But what is the remedy for the one who finds himself on the path of death and darkness, leading to eternal perdition?  What hope is there for the fornicator, the covetous, the idolater, the whore and the whoremonger, the violent, the abuser, the foolish, the adulterer, the hypocrite, or whatever other sin has overtaken the sons of men?  For the non-Christian, the call is clear from Christ through His Apostles:  repent, believe, and be baptized everyone one of you for the forgiveness of your sins.  For the Christian who has wandered back into the ways of darkness, Christ and His Apostles call you back through the same faith and repentance, offering the Absolution which refreshes the grace given to you in your Baptism.  And to everyone the warning goes forth that there is no safety or comfort in sin, no peace or protection in the ways of darkness which lead to hell.  To all, the call to faith and repentance is brought forth with the passionate urgency of divine love which desires no one to be lost, but that all people might come to a saving knowledge of the Truth. 

And so the Word of Christ calls to you with the greatest of urgency even today, that wherever you find yourself and in whatever troubles you have become ensnared, there is forgiveness, life, and salvation in Him… and in Him alone.  Hear Him as He calls to you.  Repent, believe, and live.  Amen.