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If you want to understand what the Bible says, you must learn to read the Bible in context. Every passage of Scripture sits inside at least five contexts: the historical-cultural context, the literary context, the grammatical context, the theological context, and the Christological context. When we ignore these, we can make the Bible say almost anything. When we pay attention to them, the Bible comes alive.

When I was a student at Dallas Theological Seminary, Dr. Howard Hendricks told our class an old story called “Agassiz and the Fish.” A young student came to the great naturalist Louis Agassiz, who handed him a dead fish and told him to look at it. Every time the student thought he had seen everything, Agassiz sent him back to look again, and for days he kept finding things he had never noticed. Dr. Hendricks then said, “I am going to give you your fish,” and wrote “Acts 1:8” on the whiteboard. Our assignment was to write down 25 observations on that one verse. When we brought them to class, he told us to go back and find 25 more. Even with 50, he said, we had barely scratched the surface.

The point was that the first and most important step in Bible study is observation. And nearly every observation we make about a text can be summed up in one word: context.

Why You Must Read the Bible in Context

There is an old joke that the five rules of Bible study are context, context, context, context, and context. It is a joke, but it is also true.

Nobody likes being quoted out of context. Even a newspaper headline can be misunderstood without context. If you read “Farmer Bill Dies in House,” is that a story about a farmer named Bill who passed away at home, or about a farm bill that failed to pass in Congress? You cannot know until you read the story.

The Bible is no different. Throughout history, the Bible has been used to defend some of the most outlandish ideas, doctrines, and behaviors, usually by pulling verses out of their context. As the saying goes, “A text without a context is a proof text for a pretext.” If we only quote verses, we are likely cherry-picking Scripture to prove our pet doctrines, rather than learning what God wants to say. I have written before about this sort of shotgun hermeneutics. So let us look at each of the five contexts.

1. The Historical-Cultural Context

The historical-cultural context asks who wrote the text, to whom, when, where, and why. It seeks to understand the worldview, values, beliefs, and customs of the author and the original audience. What were their occupations, religion, family structures, politics, and art? Of the five contexts, this one is the most difficult and the most important. There is so much to learn, and one overlooked cultural fact can change the meaning of a text.

When I spent six weeks in India, our team was trained to never touch any person or any food with our left hand, because the left hand is used for hygiene after using the restroom and is considered unclean. Imagine if a custom like that lay behind a biblical passage and we modern Western readers knew nothing about it. We would completely miss the point.

Take Jeremiah 10:1-5. I have heard sermons that use this passage to condemn Christmas trees, since it mentions cutting down a tree, decorating it with silver and gold, and fastening it with nails. But Christmas trees were not even invented until thousands of years later. Jeremiah is mocking the practice of carving a tree into an idol, covering it with precious metal, nailing it down so it does not fall over, and then praying to it. It is a warning about idolatry, not about Christmas trees. I explain this further in Are Christmas Trees Idols?

Studying the historical-cultural context is like building a time machine. It lets us go back and sit with the original audience, so that we can hear the words the way the author intended them to be heard.

2. The Literary Context

The literary context asks what kind of writing we are reading and where the passage fits within the book. The Bible contains many genres: historical narrative, law, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, gospel, epistle, and apocalyptic literature. And here the basic rule of all Bible study applies: read the Bible as you would read any other book. Nobody reads a history book the same way they read a book of poetry. We should not read the Psalms the same way we read Romans, or Revelation the same way we read Acts.

What Kind of Writing Is Genesis 1?

Genre matters a great deal in Genesis 1. People argue about whether Genesis 1 is scientifically accurate, but it is not a science textbook. It is a theological polemic against the religious beliefs of Egypt, Babylon, and Canaan. After Israel left Egypt, they wanted to know what their God was like and how He compared to the gods of the nations around them. Genesis 1 answers that question. When we read it as the kind of literature it is, the debate with science largely goes away, and the message of the chapter comes into focus.

The literary context also includes the flow of the book. Remember Acts 1:8? It gives us the outline for the entire book of Acts. The gospel goes out to Jerusalem (Acts 1–7), to Judea and Samaria (Acts 8–12), and to the end of the earth (Acts 13–28).

3. The Grammatical Context

The grammatical context looks at the words, sentences, and paragraphs of the text. You do not need to know Greek or Hebrew to do this well. A good literal translation, such as the NKJV, NASB, or NRSV, lets you see most of the grammar in English. Ask what words are used, what they mean, and how they fit together into sentences, paragraphs, and books.

For example, Matthew 28:19-20 seems to contain four commands: go, make disciples, baptize, and teach. But in the grammar of the sentence, “make disciples” is the main verb. Going, baptizing, and teaching describe how disciples are made.

Even punctuation matters, though the original manuscripts had none. Some translations of Ephesians 4:12 put a comma after “saints,” so that church leaders are given three jobs: equip the saints, do the work of ministry, and build up the body. Without that comma, the leaders equip the saints, and the saints do the work of ministry. The surrounding context, especially Ephesians 4:16, where every part of the body does its share, shows that the second reading is correct.

Word Studies in Context

When I teach on this, I often write the word “trunk” on a whiteboard and ask people to draw it. I get tree trunks, elephant trunks, car trunks, storage trunks, and swimming trunks. Words have a range of meanings, and context tells us which one the author intends. If I say, “Big Mac drove his big Mac to McDonald’s to eat a Big Mac,” you know exactly what each “Big Mac” means.

The same is true in Scripture. Many Christians assume that the word “saved” always means “going to heaven when you die.” But when the disciples cried out in the storm, “Lord, save us!” (Matt 8:25), they did not want to go to heaven. They wanted to keep from drowning. When we let context define our words, passages like Romans 10:9-10 begin to make sense. I explain that text in Do I need to confess Jesus to be saved?

4. The Theological Context

The theological context recognizes that Scripture does not contradict Scripture. When we find two passages that seem to disagree, the problem is not with the Bible, but with our understanding of one or both texts. So we compare Scripture with Scripture, and let the clearer passages help explain the more difficult ones.

For example, Exodus 20:5 says that God visits “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations.” But Ezekiel 18:20 says, “The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son.” Is Ezekiel correcting Moses? No. Ezekiel is talking about guilt, while Exodus is talking about the consequences of sin. God does not hold children guilty for their parents’ sins, but the destructive consequences of sin often spill over onto the next generation. Both texts are true.

5. The Christological Context

The final context is the most important of all. The Christological context is the truth that Jesus is the lens through which we read all of Scripture. Jesus said that the Scriptures testify of Him (John 5:39). He is the One who reveals the Father (John 1:18; 14:9), the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), and the exact representation of His nature (Heb 1:3). The Bible is the Word of God in black and white; Jesus is the Word of God in flesh and blood.

This means that Jesus is the trump card of Bible study. No matter which text we study, we ask: Does this look like Jesus? If not, how can we understand it in light of Jesus? If your interpretation of Scripture does not look like Jesus, you have not properly interpreted Scripture. This matters most when we read the violent passages of the Old Testament, which I discuss in Jesus as the Hermeneutical Trump Card in Scripture and in my book The Atonement of God.

Keep Looking at the Fish

Reading the Bible in context takes time, but anyone can learn to ask these questions. Like the student with Professor Agassiz, never stop observing the context of any passage you study, and never think you have discovered all there is to learn. The more we look, the more we see. If you want a simple step-by-step method to go with these five contexts, see How I Study the Bible (in 10 Steps).

Learn How to Study the Bible

If you want to go deeper, I cover all five contexts, along with my full method for studying Scripture, in my book, How Do I Study the Bible? It includes my complete list of observations on Acts 1:8, more examples from each context, and practical steps you can use in your own study. Get How Do I Study the Bible? on Amazon and start reading Scripture with fresh eyes.

And if you want to study the Bible with others who are asking the same questions, join the RedeemingGod.com Discipleship group. Members get access to the online discipleship community, free eBooks, audio lessons, and my online Bible and theology courses, including How to Study the Bible.

When Was Jesus Born? What the Bible Says About the Date of Christmas

By JD Myers

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Every December, someone asks me, “When was Jesus born?” Most Christians already suspect that it was not on December 25. The Bible never gives us a date. Scholars cannot even agree on the year. But Luke and John left us a few clues about the time of year, and when we put those clues together with the feasts of Israel, the picture that emerges is far richer than a date on the calendar.

I should say up front that I hold this loosely. Years ago I preached a whole sermon on the date of Jesus’ birth, and I later laughed at myself for thinking it would make us better Christians. Knowing the date will not make you more like Jesus. But I still find the clues fascinating, because they show how carefully God wove the birth of His Son into the story of His people. So let us look at what the Bible says about when Jesus was born.

Was Jesus Born on December 25?

Almost certainly not. The first clue is in Luke 2:8: “Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.”

People who are familiar with shepherds in that part of the world know that shepherds do not keep their flocks out in the fields at night in the dead of winter. Sheep are out in the fields from roughly May to October. In winter, they are led down to the lowlands to shelter in caves. Even here in the United States, people rarely let sheep out of the barn in winter, because young sheep can freeze to death. The ranchers I have talked to agree that the shepherds of Luke 2 were most likely not out in the fields in December.

This does not mean the Bible is wrong. It means our dating is wrong. Jesus was born at some other time of year. (If you are wondering how December 25 became the traditional date, and whether that makes Christmas a pagan holiday, I answer that question in Is Christmas Pagan?)

What Zacharias Tells Us About When Jesus Was Born

We can narrow down the time of year further by looking at the father of John the Baptist. Luke tells us that Zacharias was a priest “of the division of Abijah” (Luke 1:5). The priests of Israel were divided into twenty-four divisions, and each division took its turn serving in the temple in Jerusalem. The division of Abijah was the eighth (1 Chr 24:10), and history tells us that it served in the month of June.

So Zacharias was in Jerusalem in June when he was chosen by lot to burn incense before the Lord. It was then that an angel appeared to him and announced that his wife Elizabeth would have a son, and that they should name him John (Luke 1:8-17). When his time of service was complete, Zacharias went home, and Elizabeth conceived in her old age (Luke 1:23-24).

If Elizabeth conceived in late June, then John was born about nine months later, in late March. And Luke tells us that Gabriel visited Mary in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy (Luke 1:26, 36). Mary’s pregnancy was six months behind Elizabeth’s. So if John was born in late March, then Jesus was born six months later, in late September.

Jesus and the Feasts of Israel

The Jewish feasts did not only look back to what God had done for His people in the past. They also looked forward to what God had promised to do in the future. Many Bible teachers point out that the spring feasts were fulfilled at the first coming of Jesus. He was crucified at Passover, when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered. He rose from the dead as “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:20). And the Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2). The fall feasts of Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles are often seen as awaiting their full fulfillment when Jesus returns.

But some parts of these feasts were also foreshadowed at the birth of Jesus. Two of them stand out.

John and Passover

Passover usually falls in late March or early April on our calendars, which is right when John the Baptist would have been born. At Passover, Jewish families still set an empty place at the table, called the Seat of Elijah, because Malachi 4:5 promised that Elijah would come before the Messiah. Jesus said that Elijah did come, in the person of John (Matt 17:10-13). We do not know which day John was born, but it is interesting to think that he may have been born at Passover, as the Elijah who prepared the way for the Lord.

Jesus and the Feast of Tabernacles

Six months after Passover comes the Feast of Tabernacles, usually in late September or early October. And listen to how John describes the birth of Jesus: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The Greek word for “dwelt” is skēnoō, which means “to pitch a tent” or “to tabernacle.” Just as God dwelt in the tabernacle in the wilderness, in Jesus He came to tabernacle among His people again, this time in human flesh. If Jesus was born in late September, then His birth may well have taken place during the very feast that celebrates God dwelling with His people.

Why Was There No Room in the Inn?

This also helps explain one of the most familiar lines in the Christmas story. Mary “laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7). The Greek word translated “inn” is kataluma. It usually refers not to a hotel, but to the guest room of a house, where traveling relatives would stay.

But kataluma can also refer to a temporary tent or booth. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, God says that He had been moving about in a kataluma, a temporary dwelling, rather than living in a house (2 Sam 7:6; 1 Chr 17:5). If Jesus was born during the Feast of Tabernacles, it makes sense that there was no room. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had come to Jerusalem and the surrounding towns to live in temporary booths for the feast, and Bethlehem is only a few miles away. Every guest room and every booth would have been packed with people.

So where was Jesus born? The text does not say, except that there was a manger, a feeding trough for animals. It could have been a nearby cave used to shelter animals, or the lower level of a house, where many families kept their animals at night. I explore this more in Was Jesus Born in a Barn?

God With Us

During the Feast of Tabernacles, Jewish fathers would sit with their children in their booths and tell them the story of the wilderness. They would remind them that even when Israel wandered for forty years, God did not abandon them. “God took care of us,” they would say. “God was with us.” And they would tell their children that even though they now lived under Roman rule, God would one day come to set them free and dwell with His people forever.

And while those fathers were telling stories of hope to their wide-eyed children, there in Bethlehem, the city of David, Jesus was born, the One whose name is Immanuel, “God with us” (Matt 1:23).

So What About December 25?

If Jesus was born in late September, then He was conceived about nine months earlier. The median length of a human pregnancy is about 278 days. Count back 278 days from late September, and you land in late December. So while December 25 is probably not the day Jesus was born, it may be close to the day He was conceived in Mary by the Holy Spirit.

That date also falls near Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. Hanukkah is not one of the feasts commanded in the Old Testament. It remembers the cleansing and rededication of the temple after the Maccabean revolt, when, according to tradition, one day’s worth of oil burned in the temple menorah for eight days. Yet the Gospel of John mentions Jesus going to Jerusalem for “the Feast of Dedication,” which is another name for Hanukkah (John 10:22). And John begins his Gospel by calling Jesus the light that “shines in the darkness” (John 1:5) and “the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world” (John 1:9). Jesus also called Himself “the light of the world” (John 8:12; 9:5).

Could it be that God sent His Son into the womb of Mary during the Festival of Lights, to bring light into a dark world? I cannot prove it. But I love the idea that Jesus took even a holiday that God never commanded and pointed it to Himself. I write more about this in Did Jesus Fulfill Hanukkah? and in an earlier post on the date of the birth of Jesus.

Does It Matter When Jesus Was Born?

Not in the way we might think. Your faith does not depend on knowing the day, and you are free to celebrate it on December 25 with all the lights, trees, gifts, and carols you want. But the question of when Jesus was born reminds us that His birth was not random. God wove it into the story of His people, so that the feasts which looked back to God dwelling with Israel in the wilderness also looked forward to the day when God would dwell with us in the flesh.

That is the message of Christmas. God did not stay far away. He came near, pitched His tent among us, and became one of us. If you want to think about what that means for how we live, you might enjoy 4 Subversive Truths from the Birth of Jesus.

Learn More About the Date of Jesus’ Birth

If you want to go deeper, I walk through all of these clues in my short book, Christmas Redemption: Why Christians Should Celebrate a Pagan Holiday. It also covers Saturnalia, Christmas trees, and even Santa Claus, and shows how Jesus redeems all of it. Get Christmas Redemption on Amazon and enjoy celebrating the birth of Jesus this year.

And if you want to keep studying questions like this with other people who are tired of religion and hungry for the grace of God, join the RedeemingGod.com Discipleship group. Members get access to the online discipleship community, free eBooks, audio lessons, and my online Bible and theology courses.

Why Are My Prayers Not Answered?

By JD Myers

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Why are my prayers not answered? If you have ever asked this question, you are not alone. It may be the most painful question in the Christian life. We pray for a sick child, a lost job, an empty womb, or a broken marriage, and nothing seems to change. We know these requests are good. We know God cares about them. And yet the heavens seem silent. So we start to wonder what is wrong. Is it us? Is it God? Did we pray the wrong way, or not pray hard enough?

I want to be honest from the beginning. I do not know all the reasons why some prayers go unanswered, and neither does anyone else. So be careful of any pastor or teacher who says they have it all figured out. But there are several things Scripture does teach us about how God works through prayer. When we understand these truths, many of our unanswered prayers begin to make more sense. And even when they do not, we can learn to trust God’s presence with us in the waiting.

Some Answers to Unanswered Prayer Do More Harm Than Good

Before we look at what Scripture teaches, we need to set aside some of the answers Christians often give. When someone is hurting, it is never helpful to tell them they need more faith. It is not helpful to tell them their trial is preparing them for even bigger trials. And it is not helpful to repeat the old saying that every prayer gets answered, because God always answers with “yes,” “no,” or “wait.” There is some truth in that last idea, since we sometimes ask for things that would hurt us or others. But it is not much comfort to a grieving parent.

Think of the woman who prays for years to have a baby, or the parents who beg God to heal their child of cancer. Think of the lonely person who longs for a spouse, or the father who needs work to feed his family. Are any of these requests outside the will of God? Of course not. These are good prayers, and God wants good things for His children. So when they go unanswered, we need better answers than clichés. We need answers that show us what God is really like.

Are My Prayers Not Answered Because I Lack Faith?

A woman praying quietly, wondering why her prayers are not answered

Many people assume that their prayers are not answered because they lack faith. Some Christians even teach this openly. They point to verses where Jesus connects faith with healing or answered prayer (Mark 11:24; Jas 5:15). But telling grieving parents that their child would have lived if they had more faith is one of the most harmful things anyone can say about prayer. It misunderstands both faith and God.

Faith is not a quantity that we have more or less of, like gas in a tank. Faith is being persuaded that something is true. You either believe something or you do not. And Jesus taught that the smallest amount of faith is enough. He said, “if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move” (Matt 17:20). Every person I have known who has agonized in prayer over a desperate situation had more than enough faith. God is not watching a faith meter, waiting for us to reach some magic number before He will act. That is not the God revealed in Jesus.

Why Are My Prayers Not Answered When I Pray for Good Things?

If a lack of faith is not the reason, then what is? Part of the answer is found in something God values very highly, which is freedom. God created us for a relationship of love. But love cannot be forced. For love to be real, the one who is loved must be free to say no. And so God has given humans genuine freedom, and He does not take it back when we use it badly.

This means that God does not control everything that happens in the world. That idea surprises some Christians, but it is what love requires. Since we are free, we can sin, and we can hurt each other. Many things that happen in this world are contrary to the will of God. Sometimes God would have to override someone else’s freedom to give us what we ask. Sometimes many other factors stand in the way of His answer. So it may not be that God is saying no to your prayer. He may be saying yes, while other things are standing in the way of that yes.

Praying According to God’s Will

There is another side to this. Scripture tells us that “if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14). As we grow closer to God in prayer, He shapes our desires so that we want what He wants (Ps 37:4). Praying in Jesus’ name means the same thing (John 14:13-14). It is not a magic phrase we add at the end of our prayers. It means praying the way an ambassador speaks for a king, asking for what Jesus Himself would ask. I explain this more in How to Pray According to God’s Will and What does it mean to pray in Jesus’ name?

When we are not sure what God wants, we can still pray. We can tell God what is on our hearts, and then follow the example of Jesus, who prayed, “not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). That is not a lack of faith. It is trust.

God Often Answers Prayer Through People

Friends helping carry boxes on moving day, picturing God answering prayer through people

One of the main ways God answers prayer is through His people. The church is called the body of Christ for a reason. We are His hands and feet in the world. There are many things God wants to do that He has chosen to do in partnership with us. How will a struggling friend pay rent unless someone helps? How will a hungry family be fed unless someone brings food? James makes this point when he rebukes believers who tell a needy brother or sister, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but give them nothing they need (Jas 2:16).

When I was a pastor, the elders once asked our Wednesday night prayer meeting to pray for a retired pastor who was moving to town. They asked that he would arrive safely and get settled in without trouble. The next Wednesday, I told everyone that God had answered our prayer, and that a group from the church had come to help the man unpack. Everyone was thrilled, and asked who it was. I told them it was us, and we left to go carry boxes. Not everyone was happy that I cancelled the prayer meeting, but I think most of them understood the point. Sometimes God answers our prayers by sending us. I have written more about this in How can I see more answers to prayer?

Why Answers Often Take Time

Since God so often works through people, many answers to prayer take time. This is especially true when the answer requires new discoveries in medicine, or changes in families, communities, and nations. People do not always cooperate with God, and so the answers He wants to give are delayed. C. S. Lewis made a similar point when he described prayer and work as two ways God lets us share in His work in the world. I explore that idea in How to get God to work in response to your prayers. God is at work, but His work in the world often moves at the speed of human willingness.

What About Prayers for Healing?

Prayers for healing are some of the hardest. God still heals today. But most healing happens through doctors, nurses, and medicine, which God also uses. Even the anointing with oil in James 5 likely refers to a common medical practice of that day, as I explain in Should Christians anoint with oil for healing? And when healing does not come, it does not mean God is punishing you or waiting for more faith. Remember that even the Apostle Paul asked God three times to remove his thorn in the flesh, and it was not removed (2 Cor 12:8-9).

You can also bring your anger and disappointment to God. Many of the Psalms are honest prayers from people who felt forgotten. The psalmist asks, “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?” (Ps 13:1). God is not offended by honest questions. He would rather hear your pain than your silence.

God Stays with You When Prayers Go Unanswered

Quote graphic: Sometimes God answers our prayers by sending us. J. D. Myers

So why are my prayers not answered? Sometimes we do not know. But we can know this. Unanswered prayer is never a sign that God does not care. When a woman prays for a child, God is with her in her grief. When parents pray for a dying child, God grieves with them over a world so broken that children suffer. When a father cries out for work, God is with him, guiding him toward what he needs. God is not a magician who waves a wand to fix every problem. He is a Father and a Friend who walks with us through the pain.

So when your prayers seem to go unanswered, do not turn away from God. Turn toward Him. He has not left you, and He will not abandon you to face this world alone. He is still listening, still working, and still with you. And He may be inviting you to join Him in answering the very prayers you have been praying for others.

Learning to Pray Like You Talk to a Friend

What is Prayer? book cover by J. D. Myers

Prayer is not a vending machine, and God is not a cosmic genie. Prayer is a conversation with a God who loves you, who wants to hear from you, and who wants to work with you to bring His kingdom into the world. When we learn to pray this way, unanswered prayer does not drive us away from God. It draws us deeper into His heart.

To go deeper, my book What is Prayer? How to Pray to God the Way You Talk to a Friend will help you talk with God more honestly and more often. It looks at how Jesus prayed, how to receive answers to prayer, and what to do when prayers go unanswered. Get What is Prayer? on Amazon and start talking with God like the Friend He is.

How Do I Know I Have Eternal Life?

By JD Myers

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How do I know I have eternal life? Many Christians have quietly asked this question for years. They believe in Jesus, they go to church, and they try to follow God. But deep down, they are not sure. They wonder if they believed the right way, or if they believed enough. They wonder if they have done enough good works to prove that their faith is real. And so they live with a nagging fear that when they stand before God, He might tell them they never really belonged to Him at all.

If that describes you, I have good news. God does not want you to live with that fear. Scripture teaches that you can know, not just hope, that you have eternal life. This assurance does not come from looking at how strong your faith feels, or at how well you are living. It comes from looking at the promise of Jesus, and at what it means to believe it. In this post, I want to show you what Scripture says about assurance, and why you can rest in the certainty that eternal life is yours.

You Can Know You Have Eternal Life

Some people think it is arrogant to say you know you have eternal life. They believe the humble thing is to say, “I hope so.” But the Apostle John wrote one of his letters so that believers would know. He says that “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life” (1 John 5:11-12). Then he adds, “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13).

Notice that John does not say “that you may hope” or “that you may think.” He says “that you may know.” God wants His children to be certain of their place in His family. And it is not arrogant to believe what God has said. If God promises something, the humble response is to take Him at His word. The arrogant response is to doubt Him, or to think that our own efforts must be added to His promise before it can be trusted. I write more about this in Is Certain Assurance of Salvation Possible?

What Does It Mean to Believe?

A person reading an open Bible, asking how do I know I have eternal life

Much of the confusion about assurance comes from confusion about faith. Many people think of faith as a feeling, or a leap in the dark, or a commitment to obey. But in Scripture, faith is being persuaded that something is true. Even the Greek word for faith, pistis, shows this idea: in a legal setting, it was the evidence presented to a court of law. So faith is a certainty based on the evidence provided. When you are convinced that something is true, you believe it. Faith is not measured in amounts. You either believe something or you do not.

This gives us a simple way to know whether we believe something. Try replacing the word “believe” with the word “know.” Do you believe that water is wet? Of course you do, because you know it is true. In the same way, you know you have believed in Jesus for eternal life if you know that His promise is true. You do not need to search your heart for some special feeling. You only need to ask whether you are convinced that Jesus keeps His promise of eternal life.

Doubt Is Not the Enemy of Faith

Some people worry that their questions and doubts mean they do not have real faith. But while faith is the opposite of doubt, doubt is often a pre-condition to faith. We rarely investigate something unless we first question it. And as we look into our questions, we either come to believe something more firmly, or we discover that we were wrong. So if you have doubts, do not run from them. Bring them to God and to His Word. Many believers find that their faith grows deeper and stronger after a season of honest questions.

How Do I Know I Have Eternal Life? Look at the Promise

At the heart of the gospel is a promise. Jesus offers eternal life as a free gift to all who believe in Him. Jesus said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life” (John 6:47). He also said, “he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life” (John 5:24). And John 3:16, which so many of us learned as children, says that “whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

Notice that Jesus does not say that whoever believes might have eternal life, or will have it if they prove their faith over time. He says the one who believes has it now. So the question is not whether your faith is strong enough. The question is whether Jesus is trustworthy. Scripture says that “God is not a man, that He should lie” (Num 23:19). If you know that Jesus’ promise is true, then you have believed it. And if you have believed it, you have eternal life, because He said so.

Why the Object of Faith Matters

This does not mean that we are saved by faith in faith. Everyone believes something. Even an atheist believes there is no God. It is not the act of believing that gives eternal life, but the One we believe in. Imagine your neighbor told you that he would give you eternal life if you believed in him. You would not believe him, and you would be right. But Jesus is not your neighbor. He died and rose from the dead, and He has the authority to make this promise. This is why the gospel is simple to understand, but not always easy to believe.

Why Good Works Cannot Give You Assurance

A person walking toward the sunrise, picturing assurance of eternal life

Many Christians have been taught that good works are the proof of genuine faith. If you have believed, they say, your life will show it, and if it does not, you probably were never saved. This sounds reasonable, but it robs people of assurance. How many good works are enough? How long must you keep them up? And what about the person whose life is quietly changing in ways no one else can see? God does promise to work in the lives of His children. But Scripture never tells us to measure our standing with God by measuring our works.

In fact, Jesus warned about people who would point to their works on the day of judgment. They will say, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” And He will answer, “I never knew you” (Matt 7:22-23). These people were not trusting in Jesus’ promise. They were trusting in their own works. If we look to our works for assurance, we are doing the very thing Jesus warned against.

What Paul Learned About Himself

The Apostle Paul is a helpful example. In one letter he described himself as “the least of the apostles” (1 Cor 15:9). In a later letter he wrote that he was “less than the least of all the saints” (Eph 3:8). And in one of his last letters, he said that among sinners he was the worst (1 Tim 1:15). As Paul grew closer to God, he became more aware of his sin, not less. If he had based his assurance on his works, he would have become less sure of his salvation every year. But because he trusted the promise of God, he could praise God more and more. Good works are important, but they belong to our growth as followers of Jesus, not to our assurance. I explain this in Are good works necessary for eternal life?

What About “Examine Yourselves”?

Quote graphic: If God promises something, the humble response is to take Him at His word. J. D. Myers

Some people point to 2 Corinthians 13:5, where Paul writes, “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith.” They believe Paul is telling Christians to check whether they are truly saved. But Paul is not talking about faith in general here. He is talking about “the faith,” which refers to the Christian way of believing and living. Throughout this letter, Paul treats the Corinthians as believers. He is not asking them to doubt their salvation. He is asking them to see whether their beliefs and behavior match who they already are in Christ.

This is an important difference. Paul wants the Corinthians to act like who they are. He does not want them to question whether they have that identity at all. We, too, should examine our lives, not to find out if we are saved, but to see where we can grow in following Jesus. That kind of examination is healthy. It comes from security, not fear.

Can I Lose the Eternal Life I Have Received?

Finally, once you know you have eternal life, you can also know that you will never lose it. Jesus said of His sheep, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand” (John 10:28). Eternal life would not be eternal if it could be lost. Paul adds that nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:39). I explain why I believe in eternal security, though not every version of “once saved, always saved,” in this post on eternal security.

This is the freedom God wants for you. When you know you have eternal life, you no longer serve God out of fear that He will reject you. You serve Him out of love and gratitude, because He has already accepted you. That is when real spiritual growth begins.

Learn More About Faith and Assurance

What is Faith? book cover by J. D. Myers

So how do I know I have eternal life? You know it by knowing that Jesus’ promise is true. Look away from your feelings, your doubts, and your works, and look to Jesus. He has promised eternal life to all who trust Him, and He cannot lie. If you are persuaded that His promise is true, then you have believed, and the life He promised is yours today and forever.

If you want to understand faith more clearly, my book What is Faith? How to Know that You Believe explains what faith is, how it works, and what Scripture really means when it talks about believing. It also corrects common misunderstandings about faith and walks through many of the most debated faith texts in the Bible. Get What is Faith? on Amazon and discover the joy of knowing that you have eternal life.

Theories of the Atonement Compared: Four Views of the Cross

By JD Myers

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When Christians talk about the cross, we usually agree on the facts. Jesus died, He was buried, and He rose again on the third day. But when we start to ask why Jesus had to die, and what His death actually accomplished, the agreement quickly falls apart. That is where the theories of the atonement come in. Over the centuries, Christians have offered several ways of explaining how the death of Jesus brings us back to God. Some focus on a legal payment and some on the example of love. Others focus on a ransom, or on a victory over the powers of evil.

This matters more than it might seem. The way we understand the cross shapes the way we see God. If the cross shows a God who needed blood before He could forgive, we will think of God one way. If the cross shows a God who gave Himself to rescue us from sin, death, and the devil, we will think of Him in a very different way. So in this post I want to compare four of the main theories of the atonement and look at what each one gets right. Then I will explain why I believe one of them best reveals the God we see in Jesus Christ.

Why Theories of the Atonement Matter

Before we look at the theories, it helps to remember that the fact of the atonement is more important than any explanation of it. C. S. Lewis made a similar point in Mere Christianity. Christians are not saved by holding the right theory. We are saved by the One who died and rose again. Every theory is a human attempt to put words to something that is bigger than our words. So we should hold our theories with some humility, and we should be willing to learn from each of them.

But that does not mean all theories are equally helpful. Each theory of the atonement carries a picture of God inside it. And the picture we hold of God affects how we pray, how we read the Bible, and how we treat other people. If we believe God was angry and had to be appeased, we will tend to approach Him with fear. If we believe God was never against us, but came in Jesus to rescue us, we will approach Him with trust. So the question is not merely academic. It is about the character of God.

It also helps to think about the word itself. Many people say that “atonement” means “at-one-ment,” the idea that the cross makes God and humanity one again. There is truth in this. But I believe the cross does not so much repair a broken relationship from God’s side as reveal that God never left our side at all. As Paul puts it, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them” (2 Cor 5:19). The movement is from God toward us, not from us toward God.

Penal Substitution: The Most Popular Theory of the Atonement

A judge's gavel in an empty courtroom, picturing the penal substitution theory of the atonement

The view that most evangelical Christians hold today is penal substitutionary atonement. It goes by several other names as well, such as the satisfaction view and the vicarious view. Scholars draw fine distinctions between them. The basic idea is that God is holy and just, and so He must punish sin. Since we have all sinned, we all deserve death. But in His love, God sent Jesus to take the punishment we deserved. Jesus died in our place, the wrath of God was poured out on Him, and now God can forgive us because the penalty has been paid.

This theory has real strengths. It takes sin seriously. It also takes seriously the many texts which say that Jesus died for us and in our place. Isaiah writes that “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities” (Isa 53:5). Paul writes that God “made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us” (2 Cor 5:21). Any theory of the atonement that ignores the idea of substitution will not do justice to Scripture. Its roots are usually traced to Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century. The Protestant Reformers later gave it the penal shape most people know today.

But penal substitution also raises troubling questions. If God must be paid before He can forgive, then He is not actually forgiving anything. Forgiveness and payment are opposites. When a debt is paid, nothing is left to forgive. The theory also has God paying Himself, since Jesus is God. And it suggests that the Father needed violence and blood before He could love sinners. That sounds more like the angry gods of the ancient world than the Father whom Jesus revealed. Many people have walked away from Christianity because they could not worship a God who needed to kill His Son before He could forgive. I explain more of my concerns in Good God, Bad God.

The Moral Influence Theory

A second view is the moral influence theory, sometimes called the exemplary love view. It is often associated with the medieval theologian Peter Abelard. In this view, the cross does not change God’s mind about us. Instead, it changes our mind about God. When we see Jesus willingly lay down His life, we are moved to repent, to love God, and to love others in the same way. Jesus Himself said, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13). John adds, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us” (1 John 4:10).

There is something beautiful about this view. Jesus did give us an example to follow, and He told His disciples that people would know them by their love for one another (John 13:34-35). Any good theory of the atonement should include the example of Jesus. But on its own, the moral influence theory does not go far enough. It assumes that what humans need most is a good example, when Scripture says we are enslaved to sin and cannot free ourselves. An example cannot set a prisoner free. And if Jesus is mainly an example, then He becomes one more great teacher among many.

There is also a practical problem. If our hope depends on following the example of Jesus well enough, then none of us has much hope at all. So while I believe we should include the insight of this theory, I do not believe we should adopt it as our explanation of the cross.

The Ransom Theory

A third view is the ransom theory. It builds on the words of Jesus, who said that He came “to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Paul also says that Jesus “gave Himself a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:6). Humanity was held captive, and Jesus paid the price to set us free. Some early church writers went further and asked who received the payment. Since humanity was held captive by sin and the devil, some of them answered that the ransom was paid to Satan.

This view correctly sees that we needed to be rescued from captivity. But it runs into problems as soon as we ask who was paid. If the ransom was paid to God, then the ransom theory simply turns into penal substitution. If the ransom was paid to the devil, then God owed something to Satan, which gives the devil far too much power. I believe the better answer is that a ransom in Scripture does not always require someone to receive a payment. When the prophet speaks of “the ransomed of the Lord” returning to Zion (Isa 35:10), the point is the deliverance, not a transaction with a captor.

Christus Victor and the Non-Violent View of the Atonement

An empty tomb at sunrise, picturing the Christus Victor view of the atonement

This brings us to the view I hold, which is a non-violent form of the Christus Victor view. Christus Victor is Latin for “Christ the Victor.” In this view, the cross is not where God poured out His wrath on Jesus. It is where Jesus defeated the powers that held humanity captive. The Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulén argued in his book Christus Victor that some form of this victory view was the main way the church spoke about the cross for many centuries. Whether or not that is entirely right, the theme of victory is everywhere in the New Testament. Jesus took on flesh “that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14).

The non-violent part matters too. In this view, God did not kill Jesus. People did. Jesus was handed over by religious leaders and executed by the Roman state. The violence of the cross was our violence, not God’s. And yet, while people did their worst to Him, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34). So the cross does not show us an angry God who needs to be satisfied. It shows us a loving God who takes our violence upon Himself and answers it with forgiveness. I have written more about why God appears violent in Scripture even though He is not.

How Jesus Defeats Sin, Death, and the Devil

First, the cross defeats sin by exposing the lies that sin tells us about God. Sin tells us that God is angry with us, that He is disgusted by us, and that we must pay Him back before He will accept us. At the cross, God reveals that none of these is true. Second, the cross defeats death. Throughout history, people have tried to deal with their guilt by blaming and killing others. Jesus became the final victim of that pattern. His blood “speaks better things than that of Abel” (Heb 12:24). Abel’s blood cried out for vengeance, but the blood of Jesus cries out for forgiveness.

Third, the cross defeats the devil. The word “devil” means accuser, and the devil has always accused us before God and before one another. But at the cross, Jesus wiped out the record that stood against us. Paul writes that “having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it” (Col 2:15). The accuser has nothing left to say. And notice that this view keeps the strength of substitution. Jesus really did die for us and in our place. But He did not die to absorb the wrath of God. He died to rescue us from sin, death, and the devil.

Comparing the Theories of the Atonement

Quote graphic: The cross is not a payoff. It is a rescue. J. D. Myers

So how do the theories of the atonement compare? Penal substitution rightly sees that Jesus died in our place, but it pictures a God who must be paid before He can forgive. The moral influence theory rightly sees the cross as an example of love, but it does not free us from slavery to sin. The ransom theory rightly sees that we were held captive, but it gets tangled up in the question of who was paid. The non-violent Christus Victor view keeps what is best in each of these. It includes substitution, example, and ransom, but it places them inside the bigger story of God rescuing His people.

I think of it like a prison break more than a payment. In penal substitution, Jesus pays the fine so the judge can let us go. In Christus Victor, Jesus breaks into the prison where we have been held captive, throws open the doors, and leads us out. This fits what Jesus said about His own mission, that He came “to proclaim liberty to the captives” (Luke 4:18). The cross is not a payoff. It is a rescue. For more on how this changes everything else we believe, see 10 ways the non-violent God changes your theology.

This also changes how we think about substitution. Jesus does take our place. I have argued that we should think of Him as the substitute God. He took the place of the false and violent gods we had made in our own image. When we look at the cross, we do not see God venting His anger. We see what God has always been like. And this is good news, because it means we never needed to be afraid of Him.

Going Deeper into the Atonement of God

The Atonement of God book cover by J. D. Myers

If you have always believed penal substitution, some of this may feel unsettling. That is all right. Many people have felt the same way when they first began to question what they had been taught about the cross. But I encourage you to keep reading Scripture with Jesus at the center. If Jesus shows us exactly what God is like, then the cross is not a picture of divine wrath. It reveals a God who would rather die than stop loving us. Greg Boyd and I have also discussed some of these questions in this exchange about the blood of Jesus.

I cover all of this in more detail in my book, The Atonement of God: Building Your Theology on a Crucivision of God. The first part of the book looks closely at each of the theories of the atonement. The rest of the book shows how a non-violent view of the cross changes the way we understand God, Scripture, sin, forgiveness, justice, and violence. If this post raised more questions than it answered, the book is a good place to go next. Get The Atonement of God on Amazon and discover the God who looks like Jesus.

Is Hell Eternal? What Scripture Says About Forever

By JD Myers

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Is hell eternal? For many Christians, the answer seems obvious. They were taught that people who do not believe in Jesus will be tormented in fire forever, with no hope of escape and no end to the pain. Others have heard that hell is real but temporary, or that God will eventually destroy the wicked so that they no longer exist. And still others wonder if hell will one day be emptied altogether. These are not small questions. What we believe about the eternal destiny of people says a great deal about what we believe about God.

In this post, I want to look at what Scripture says about whether hell is eternal. I will briefly describe the main answers Christians give, and then explain the view I hold. My short answer is this: the people who reject God will exist forever, because God raises everyone from the dead. But they will not be tortured forever by God. And even in that eternal existence, they will never be beyond the reach of His love. I believe this view takes the warnings of Scripture seriously while also taking seriously what Jesus reveals about the character of God.

Why People Ask Whether Hell Is Eternal

Most people who ask whether hell is eternal are not trying to escape the teaching of the Bible. They are trying to reconcile two things that seem impossible to hold together. On the one hand, they believe that God is love, as John says (1 John 4:8). On the other hand, they have been taught that this same God will torture billions of people for all eternity because they did not believe the right things during a few short decades on earth. Something about this does not fit, and many sincere Christians feel the tension deeply.

I believe this tension is a good thing. It is a sign that the Spirit is working in our hearts, teaching us to see God as Jesus revealed Him. If it would be monstrous for a person to torture someone for even a short time, it would be far more monstrous for God to torture someone forever. Since God is love, there is no cruelty in Him. So when a teaching about hell makes God look worse than the worst human tyrant, we have good reason to go back to Scripture and ask whether we have read it correctly.

Three Answers to the Question “Is Hell Eternal?”

Three paths splitting in the mist, picturing three answers to whether hell is eternal

Christians have generally given three answers to this question. The first is the traditional view, often called eternal conscious torment. It teaches that hell is a place of everlasting punishment, where the unredeemed suffer forever. The second is annihilationism, also called conditional immortality. In this view, the wicked are punished for a time and then destroyed, so that they cease to exist. Hell is eternal in its result, but not in its experience. The third is universalism, which teaches that hell, if it exists at all, is temporary and corrective, and that God will eventually bring every person into His kingdom.

Each of these views has thoughtful defenders, and each tries to honor certain texts of Scripture. I describe all three in more detail, along with a fourth view, in Three Views on Hell. But here is the short version of why I do not hold any of them. I do not hold the traditional view, because God does not torture people. I am not an annihilationist, because God is not a destroyer of the people He made. And I am not a universalist, because love cannot be forced. If God loves us, He will not override our freedom to reject Him.

What Does “Dead” Mean in the Bible?

Much of the debate about whether hell is eternal comes down to the meaning of death. Annihilationists often assume that if the wicked “die,” they must cease to exist. But in Scripture, the word “dead” does not mean “non-existent.” A dead body still exists. You can see it and touch it. Instead, “dead” means lifeless, or no longer able to do what it was made to do. Paul writes to the Ephesians that God made them alive when they “were dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1). They were not non-existent. They were living in a way that God never intended.

This helps us understand the warnings of Scripture. When God told Adam that he would die in the day he ate from the tree (Gen 2:17), Adam did not drop dead. Instead, his life became filled with toil, pain, and frustration. In a sense, physical death was later given as a kind of mercy, so that humans would not have to live forever in that condition. And physical death is not the end. Jesus said that “all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth” (John 5:28). Some will rise to life and some to condemnation (John 5:29), but everyone will be raised.

The Second Death and Everlasting Death

A dark lake at dusk with a red glow, picturing the second death and the lake of fire

So what happens to those who are raised but still want nothing to do with God? Revelation calls this “the second death” (Rev 21:8). I do not believe the second death is annihilation. Being born again is not a second physical birth. In the same way, dying a second time is not a second end to our existence. The second death describes a life that continues to move away from what God intended. It is a life of everlasting death, just as the life Jesus gives is everlasting life. I explain this in more detail in What is the second death?

What might such a life be like? Scripture does not give us many details, and so anything we say here is speculation. But it seems likely that it would be much like life on this earth, with its broken relationships, failed plans, and empty pursuits, except that it goes on without end and no one dies. C. S. Lewis imagined something similar in The Great Divorce, where the residents of hell keep moving farther and farther from one another. He also suggested that hell’s doors are locked by those inside them. They remain there because they prefer their own way to God’s way.

What About “Everlasting Punishment”?

Of course, someone will point to the words of Jesus in Matthew 25. There He says that some “will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt 25:46). Doesn’t this settle the question? It is an important text, and we must take it seriously. But we must also read it carefully. The Greek word translated “punishment” is kolasis, which carries the idea of pruning or cutting short. It is a word with correction in the background, and it is not a word for endless torture.

The context also matters. In the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, Jesus is judging the nations by how they cared for the poor and needy. The background is the message of the prophets, especially Ezekiel, who warned that nations which neglect the poor will be destroyed and left desolate. I believe Jesus is warning about this kind of destruction rather than describing a torture chamber after death. I walk through the whole passage in Is the everlasting fire of Matthew 25:41 a warning about hell? and you may find it helpful even if you end up disagreeing with me.

Is Hell Eternal Because God Keeps People There?

Quote graphic: If hell is eternal, it is not because God stops loving people. It is because God keeps loving them. J. D. Myers

Here is where the question “is hell eternal?” often goes wrong. We imagine God as a jailer who locks people in and refuses to let them out. But the life of everlasting death is not something God inflicts on people. It is the natural result of their own choice to live without Him. God does not separate Himself from them. He is everywhere, and so He is present with them even there. They may feel separated from Him, but the separation is in their experience, not in reality. As Paul writes, nothing in all creation “shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:39).

This means that if hell is eternal, it is not because God stops loving people. It is because God keeps loving them. Love gives freedom to the one who is loved. The greatest expression of love is to lay down your life for someone, and God did that in Jesus. But when people still choose to go their own way, love lets them go. God does not abandon them. He continues to walk with them into their darkness. But He will not force them to love Him, because forced love is not love at all.

Is There Hope After Death?

Many Christians believe that once a person dies, their destiny is sealed forever. They often point to Hebrews 9:27, which says that “it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.” I used to read the verse that way too. But this text only tells us that people die once and are not reincarnated. It does not say that the judgment is a single moment after which nothing can ever change. I hold this view loosely, and I cannot prove it from Scripture. But I see no reason to believe that God stops loving people, or stops inviting them home, at the moment of death.

Hell Begins Now, and So Does Eternal Life

One more thing needs to be said. Most of the passages people use to teach about hell are not primarily about the afterlife at all. They are about the destruction and death that come upon people in this life when they live outside the will of God. James can even say that the tongue “is set on fire by hell” (Jas 3:6). Hell is not only a future place. It is a kingdom of death that is already at work in the world, and it ruins lives here and now. I have written about this in my posts on Gehenna and the lake of fire.

But eternal life also begins now, and that is good news. Jesus said that “he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life” (John 5:24). We do not have to wait until we die to escape the kingdom of death. And when Jesus announced His mission in Nazareth, He read from Isaiah 61 but stopped before the words about “the day of vengeance” (Luke 4:18-19; Isa 61:1-2). He came to proclaim liberty, not to threaten torment.

Learning More About Hell

So is hell eternal? I believe that those who reject God will exist forever, because everyone will be raised from the dead. And the kingdom of death they choose may continue forever, if they continue to choose it. But hell is not eternal torture, God is not the torturer, and no one is ever beyond the love of God. This is not a softer gospel. It is a gospel that looks like Jesus, and it calls us to bring the life of the kingdom of heaven into a world that is already experiencing too much hell.

If you want to go deeper, I cover all of this and much more in my book, What is Hell? The Truth About Hell and How to Avoid It. It surveys the main views of hell, looks at every key word and passage in Scripture, and explains how to avoid hell in this life and the next. If you have ever been afraid of hell, or afraid of the God who supposedly sends people there, this book will help you see God as Jesus revealed Him. Get What is Hell? on Amazon and discover the truth about hell.

Are the Spiritual Gifts for Today?

By JD Myers

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Are spiritual gifts for today? Most Christians agree that God still gives gifts like teaching, serving, giving, and encouragement. The debate is over the more dramatic gifts, such as tongues, prophecy, healing, and miracles. Some Christians believe these gifts ended with the apostles in the first century. Others believe they are still active, and some even teach that every Christian should speak in tongues. There are strong opinions on every side. It can be hard to know what to think, and the arguments often generate more heat than light.

In this post, I want to look at the main reasons some Christians believe certain gifts have ceased. Then I will explain why I am not convinced by them. My conclusion is that God still gives all of the spiritual gifts. Some of them may simply look different now than they did in the Book of Acts. I also want to show why this question matters for the health of the church. If we say that some of the gifts are no longer given, we may be telling some members of the body of Christ that the church does not need them.

What Cessationists Believe About the Spiritual Gifts

The view that some gifts have ceased is called cessationism. The view that all gifts continue is often called continuationism. Cessationists usually draw a line between two kinds of gifts. On one side are the ordinary gifts, like teaching, service, administration, and mercy. On the other side are the so-called sign gifts, like tongues, prophecy, miracles, and healing. Cessationists believe the sign gifts were needed to launch the church and confirm the message of the apostles. But once the church was established and the New Testament was written, those gifts were no longer necessary. So God stopped giving them.

This view is held by many sincere Bible teachers, and it is not hard to see why it appeals to people. Most of us have seen the gifts abused. We have watched television preachers put on a show, claim healings that never happened, and use the language of the Spirit to raise money. When people see these things, they want to protect the church from error. And one easy way to do that is to say that these gifts are no longer given at all. But as we will see, I do not believe Scripture supports this conclusion.

Three Arguments That Some Gifts Have Ceased

Open hands raised in worship, picturing the question are spiritual gifts for today

The first argument is about frequency. People notice how often tongues, healings, and miracles show up in the Book of Acts, and how rarely they seem to happen today. So they conclude that something must have changed. But this argument depends entirely on who you ask. Some Christian groups say miracles are more common now than in the first century. Whether we agree with them or not, this shows that frequency is not a reliable way to decide what God is or is not doing.

The second argument comes from the words of Jesus, who said, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign” (Matt 12:39). Since large crowds today often chase after signs and wonders, some apply this warning to anyone who seeks the sign gifts. The warning may well apply to some people. But the fact that people can chase after signs in the wrong way does not mean the gifts have ended. It only means they can be misused, which was just as true in the first century as it is today.

The third argument is the most important, and it comes from 1 Corinthians 13. We will look at it in the next section.

Are the Spiritual Gifts for Today According to 1 Corinthians 13?

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes that “whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away” (1 Cor 13:8). He then explains when: “when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away” (1 Cor 13:10). Many cessationists believe “that which is perfect” refers to the completion of the New Testament, or to the full establishment of the church. Once that happened, they say, the partial gifts of prophecy and tongues were no longer needed.

But there are several problems with this reading. First, Paul lists knowledge right alongside prophecy and tongues. Hardly anyone who believes prophecy and tongues have ceased also believes that knowledge has ceased. If all three are mentioned together, why would two of them end while the third continues? Second, if “the perfect” refers to the birth of the church, then it had already come by the time Paul wrote this letter. And if it refers to the spread of the church over the whole earth, then it still has not come. In that case, the gifts should still be in use today.

What Is “That Which Is Perfect”?

I believe Paul is most likely looking ahead to the new heavens and new earth, when God makes all things new (Rev 21:1-5). Paul goes on to say, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face” (1 Cor 13:12). That sounds much more like the day we stand before Jesus than the day the last book of the New Testament was written. In that perfect future, we will not need the gifts the way we need them now. But until then, while we live in this broken world and in these imperfect bodies, all of the spiritual gifts remain in use.

The Problem with Dividing the Gifts into Categories

A small church group serving in different ways, picturing spiritual gifts in the body of Christ

Part of the problem is the way we sort the gifts. When we divide them into ordinary gifts and sign gifts, we make it easy to set one group aside. But Scripture never sorts the gifts this way. Paul mixes them together in his lists (Rom 12:6-8; 1 Cor 12:8-10, 28; Eph 4:11). When I studied the gifts, I found that every attempt to divide them neatly breaks down somewhere. In one sense, every gift is a sign, because every gift points people to the God who gives it. And if there is no clear line between the gifts, there is no clear reason to say some have ended.

It also helps to recognize that the gifts are broader than we often think. The gift of healing, for example, is not only about miraculous cures. God also uses doctors, nurses, and counselors to bring health to the sick. Many people with this gift work in medicine and psychology. I believe the oil in James 5 points the same way, as I explain in Should Christians anoint with oil for healing? In the same way, the office of Apostle is no longer filled as it was in the first century. But God still sends out missionaries who have the gift of apostleship. I write more about this in Church Leaders Who Help Church Growth.

What About Speaking in Tongues Today?

No gift raises more questions than tongues. I believe that whenever tongues appear in Scripture, they are real human languages, not a heavenly prayer language. At Pentecost, people heard the apostles speaking in their own native languages (Acts 2:6-8). Paul also insists that tongues in a church gathering must be interpreted, which assumes they can be translated. He writes that “tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers” (1 Cor 14:22). And if no one can interpret, the person should “keep silent in church” (1 Cor 14:28).

So are tongues for today? I believe they might be, but probably not in the way they are practiced in many church services. The clearest purpose of tongues in Acts was to help carry the gospel across language barriers. So if God gives this gift today, I would expect to see it used where the gospel is being shared with people who speak another language. I have also written about speaking in tongues during prayer meetings, and why love and understanding must guide how any gift is used.

Why It Matters That All the Spiritual Gifts Are for Today

Quote graphic: The cure for misuse is right use. J. D. Myers

So why does this matter? Because the church is a body, and every part of the body is needed. Paul writes that “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Cor 12:21). God gives gifts so that the members of the body would care for one another (1 Cor 12:25-26). When we declare that some gifts have ceased, we risk telling some of our brothers and sisters that the body does not need them. That does not protect the church. It weakens it.

Yes, the gifts can be abused, and some people fake them. But the answer to abuse is not to forbid the gifts. Paul did not respond to the chaos in Corinth by shutting down the gifts. Instead, he taught the church to use them in love and in order. He even told them, “do not forbid to speak with tongues” (1 Cor 14:39). The cure for misuse is right use. When we understand what the gifts are and why God gives them, we can use them well. We can build up the church and serve the world, which is what God intended.

Discover Your Spiritual Gifts

What are the Spiritual Gifts? book cover by J. D. Myers

So are spiritual gifts for today? I believe they are, every one of them. The Spirit has not stopped giving gifts to the church. He has not stopped calling each of us to use what we have been given. As Peter writes, “As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (1 Pet 4:10). The question is not whether God is still giving gifts. The real question is whether we have discovered our gifts and are using them to serve others. If you are not sure what your gift is, you can start with my free online spiritual gift test.

If you want to go deeper, my book What Are the Spiritual Gifts? Discover Your Spiritual Gifts and How to Use Them explains each gift in Scripture and how the gifts work together. It also shows how to avoid the common problems that come with them. You will also find a longer look at tongues and a spiritual gifts inventory to help you find where you fit in the body of Christ. Get What Are the Spiritual Gifts? on Amazon and start using the gifts God has given you.

Is Christmas Pagan? Saturnalia, December 25, and What Christians Should Do

By JD Myers

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Every December the old question comes around again: is Christmas pagan? Some Christians are told that the Christmas tree is an idol, that December 25 belongs to a Roman sun god, and that faithful believers should have nothing to do with any of it. Other Christians hear the opposite message, that Christmas is a Christian holiday which the culture has stolen, and so we must put Christ back into Christmas. These two groups sound like they disagree, but they actually share the same assumption. They both assume that if Christmas has pagan roots, then something has gone badly wrong, and Christians must either fix the holiday or abandon it.

I want to suggest a different answer. Yes, Christmas is pagan. It is not that Christmas has recently become pagan, but that many of its customs were pagan long before anyone used them to honor the birth of Jesus. But this is not a reason for Christians to stay away from Christmas. It is one of the best reasons to celebrate it. Christmas is a living picture of what Jesus does with everything He touches. He does not throw it away. He redeems it. And when we see Christmas this way, the lights, the gifts, and the tree all become ways of proclaiming the “good tidings of great joy which will be to all people” (Luke 2:10).

What People Mean When They Say Christmas Is Pagan

When people say Christmas is pagan, they usually mean that much of what we do at Christmas did not come from the Bible. That is true. The Gospels tell us about angels, shepherds, a manger, and wise men from the east, but they say nothing about decorated trees, strings of lights, wreaths on the door, or a man in a red suit who brings presents. These customs came from somewhere, and most of them came from the cultures that surrounded the early church rather than from the church itself.

Across the ancient world, people marked the darkest part of the year. As the days grew shorter and the nights grew longer, many cultures held festivals around the winter solstice. They lit fires and candles to push back the darkness, sang songs, ate rich food, and gave gifts to one another. Greenery that stayed alive through the winter became a sign of life that would return. So when someone says Christmas has pagan roots, they are not making something up. They are describing what the historical record shows, and Christians gain nothing by pretending otherwise.

Saturnalia and the Winter Festivals of Light

Painting of Romans feasting by oil-lamp light under evergreen garlands at a midwinter festival

The best-known of these winter festivals is the Roman Saturnalia. It honored Saturn, the god of agriculture, and it ran for several days in the second half of December. It was the most popular holiday of the Roman year. Courts and schools closed, business stopped, and the whole city gave itself to feasting. Romans visited one another’s homes, sang in the streets, lit candles, and exchanged small gifts. One of the strangest features of the festival was the reversal of roles, in which masters served meals to their slaves and everyone wore the soft felt cap that normally marked a freed slave.

Closely connected to this season was December 25 itself. By the fourth century, and probably earlier, Romans were celebrating that day as the birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The logic is easy to see. After the solstice, the sun begins to climb again and the days begin to lengthen, and so the sun appears to win its battle against the night. Put Saturnalia and the birthday of the sun together, and you have a season full of lights, songs, gifts, feasting, and hope that the darkness will not last forever. Much of what we now think of as Christmas was already part of that season, long before it had anything to do with the birth of Jesus.

How Saturnalia Became Christmas

In the early fourth century, the Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity, and over the following generations the faith went from persecuted minority to favored religion of the empire. This created a practical problem. What should the church do with all the festivals that people loved? The church could have tried to cancel them, but that rarely works with a holiday people have celebrated their whole lives. So instead, Christians gave the old festivals new meaning. The earliest record we have of Christians celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25 comes from a Roman calendar in AD 336.

Over time, the symbols of the winter festival were, in a sense, baptized. Lights that once celebrated the return of the sun came to celebrate the coming of the Son, who said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). Gifts that once marked a season of merriment came to remind us of the gift of God in Jesus. Evergreens that once spoke of life surviving the winter came to speak of eternal life. Historians still debate how deliberate all of this was, and some argue the date came from early Christian calculations rather than from Saturnalia. But either way, the church did not invent its Christmas customs out of nothing. It took what was already there and pointed it toward Jesus.

Was Jesus Born on December 25?

Probably not. The shepherds were living out in the fields with their flocks at night (Luke 2:8), which fits the warmer months better than the middle of winter. When we put that together with the timing of Zacharias’s priestly service (Luke 1:5, 8-9) and Elizabeth’s pregnancy (Luke 1:24-26, 36), I believe the evidence points to the early fall, around the Feast of Tabernacles. It is fitting that John describes the incarnation this way: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The Greek word for “dwelt” is skēnoō, “to pitch a tent” or “to tabernacle.” I have written more about when Jesus was actually born, so I will not repeat it all here.

But if Jesus was born in the fall, then December 25 lands close to the time when He was conceived, near Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. Hanukkah is not one of the feasts God commanded in the Law of Moses, and yet Jesus went to the temple during the Feast of Dedication (John 10:22) and declared Himself to be the Light of the World. I believe this is very significant. If Jesus could fill a non-biblical holiday with His own meaning, then there is no reason He cannot do the same with a pagan one. I explore Jesus and Hanukkah in another post.

The Christmas Tree and Jeremiah 10

A lit Christmas tree with gifts beneath it in a cozy family living room in the evening

The most common argument against Christmas comes from Jeremiah 10. The prophet writes that “one cuts a tree from the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the ax. They decorate it with silver and gold” (Jer 10:3-4). Many sincere Christians read this and conclude that God condemns the Christmas tree. But read one more verse. These objects “cannot speak; they must be carried, because they cannot go by themselves” (Jer 10:5). Jeremiah is not describing a living tree with lights on it. He is describing a craftsman who cuts down a tree, carves an idol from the wood, overlays it with silver and gold, and fastens it so it will not fall over.

The rest of the prophets describe the same process (Isa 40:19-20; 44:9-20; Hab 2:18-19). So the Christmas tree is not an idol unless someone worships it, and very few people bow down before their Christmas tree. Of course, anything can become an idol. The Apostle Paul writes of people “whose god is their belly” (Php 3:19), but we do not stop eating because some people worship food. The problem is not the object, but the heart. I once had a church member threaten to leave over the tree in our sanctuary, and I tell that story in Are Christmas trees idols?

Jesus Redeems People, and He Redeems Holidays Too

Quote by J. D. Myers over a candle and frosted evergreens: "Jesus does not throw it away. He redeems it."

So why should Christians celebrate a holiday with pagan roots? Because redemption is what Jesus does. To redeem something is to buy it back, so that it comes under new ownership. Scripture says that “the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21), and that through Jesus, God is reconciling “all things to Himself … whether things on earth or things in heaven” (Col 1:20). If Jesus is redeeming all things, then He is redeeming culture too, including the stories, songs, and festivals people have created.

This is the same thing Jesus does with us. Paul lists the sins that once marked the believers in Corinth, and then he writes, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). None of us came to Jesus with a clean history. All of us have pagan roots. If Jesus can take a sinner and make him a child of God, then taking a winter festival and turning it into a celebration of His birth is a small thing by comparison. I have argued before that pagan holidays point to Christ, because the longings behind them are only fulfilled in Him.

If We Reject Everything with Pagan Roots

We should also be honest about where the objection leads. Christians gather for worship on Sunday, a day named for the sun. We meet in buildings shaped by older temple architecture, follow a calendar in which many of the months honor Roman gods, and sing some hymns set to tunes that were once sung in taverns. Paul himself, when he preached in Athens, began with an altar to an unknown god and said, “the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23). If we reject everything with pagan roots, we will have to reject almost everything. I have shown elsewhere that the same logic would also keep us from using a calendar.

So Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?

Not all Christians have thought so. The Puritans in Massachusetts went so far as to outlaw Christmas from 1659 to 1681, and some Christians today still refuse to celebrate it. We should not look down on them. Paul says that “one person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom 14:5). If a brother or sister cannot celebrate Christmas with a clear conscience, we can love them and respect their choice without making it the rule for everyone else.

But for most of us, the better way is not to retreat from Christmas, but to celebrate it on purpose. Put up the lights, and let them remind you that Jesus is the Light of the World and that He calls us “the light of the world” too (Matt 5:14). Give gifts, because God gave the greatest gift. Decorate the tree, and remember the tree on which Jesus gave His life. Feast, sing, and visit friends, because the reversal of roles that Saturnalia only played at for a few days is what Jesus actually did when the Lord of all became a servant. The pagan roots of Christmas do not take anything away from this. They only show how far redemption reaches.

Have Yourself a Redeemed Christmas

Cover of Christmas Redemption by Jeremy Myers

So is Christmas pagan? In its roots, yes, and it always will be. But that is not the end of the story, any more than our own pagan roots are the end of ours. Christmas is a pagan holiday that has been bought back by Jesus, and every year it gives us the chance to show our neighbors what a redeemed life looks like. We do not need to be afraid of Christmas, and we do not need to rescue it. We simply need to celebrate it as people who have been redeemed by the One it points to.

If you would like to go deeper, I cover all of this in more detail in my short book, Christmas Redemption: Why Christians Should Celebrate a Pagan Holiday. It looks more closely at the feasts of Israel and the date of Jesus’ birth, at Hanukkah, and at the symbols of Christmas, including the tree, the lights, the gifts, and even Santa Claus. It is a quick read, and it might make a good gift for the friend who keeps sending you articles about Saturnalia. Get Christmas Redemption on Amazon, and have yourself a merry Christmas.

Be Night Lights to the World (Ephesians 5:7-14)

By Jeremy Myers

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A well-known pastor and author from Texas tells a fictional story in one of his books of a bunch of candles that were in a storage closet. One night, there was an electrical storm, and the electricity in the house went out.

So the husband went to the candles to get them to provide light during the darkness, but the candles—which could talk—all had excuses for why they couldn’t leave the closet, or why they couldn’t give off light.

One said that it needed more preparation. He didn’t want to make mistakes when he finally was sent to light a room, and so it was studying to be the best candle it could be. He said he was in a great study on wind resistance, had just listened to a series on wick build-up and conservation and was getting ready to read a best-selling book on flame display called Waxing Eloquently.

The second candle claimed to be busy meditating. He said that he was meditating on the importance of light and that he couldn’t be disturbed because it was so … enlightening.

A third claimed that he wasn’t stable enough and had to get his life together before he tried to light any rooms. He said his main problem was that he had a short temper and people thought he was a hothead.

The fourth candle was a female, and said that while she would like to help, lighting the darkness wasn’t really her gift. She was a singer, and her responsibility was to encourage the other candles so they would go out and light the darkness. To reveal her gift, she immediately launched into a beautiful rendition of “This little light of mine.”

All the other candles began to sing as well, and nothing the owner could do would make them stop.

When the husband asked his wife where she had picked up the candles, she said, “Oh, they’re church candles. Remember the church that closed down across town? I bought them there.”[1]

Candles that won’t shine. Tragic. I wonder if that is how God sometimes views us.

We should be like the advertisements on the radio for a certain hotel chain telling us that they’ll leave a light on for us.

Christians are supposed to be like that. Always allowing our light to shine—to be seen by those in darkness. To provide light for those in the storm. To be a lighthouse for those who need to see the way safely to shore.

But too often we cover our lights, or let them burn out, or simply refuse to be light.

More tragically still, rather than contribute to the light, rather than showing people the way to God, we sometimes join in the deeds of darkness.

We tend to pick and choose when we want our light to shine and when we don’t. We want it to shine at church, but not at work. We want it to shine in the Bible study, but not at the neighborhood picnic. We want it to shine when we sing along to the radio in our car, but not when somebody cuts us off while we are driving.

But imagine for a moment, what would happen in other areas of our lives if we decided that sometimes we wanted the light to shine and other times not. Imagine what would happen on the highways if sometimes people drove at night with their lights on, and other times they didn’t.

Imagine what would happen if the runway manager at an airport decided to turn the runway lights off for a few hours every night when planes were trying to land.

Imagine how hard it would be to get around your house, if some rooms were lit, but others were not.

If we lived these ways, our lives would be full of terrible disasters. But that is how some of us live our Christian lives. That is how some of us treat the light of the truth that we are each responsible for.

We think we can turn it on and off and not suffer the consequences, but we are wrong. Anytime a light is supposed to be shining but is not, disaster results.

Which is what Paul is going to tell us today in Ephesians 5. In this section of Ephesians, Paul is explaining how to imitate God our Father.

Previously, we saw that since God is love, we need to walk in love. Christ is the perfect picture of love, and the world is the perfect perversion of love. We need to love as Christ loves, not as the world loves. That was explained in Ephesians 5:1-6.

In Ephesians 5:7-14, Paul discusses the next characteristic of God we need to imitate. We are to imitate God by walking in the light.

Ephesians 5:7-14. Therefore do not be partakers with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.”

Let’s begin with Ephesians 5:7.

Walk in the Light (Ephesians 5:7-8)

Ephesians 5:7. Therefore do not be partakers with them.

Paul is again pointing us back to what he has just said. In Ephesians 5:1-6, he has talked about fornicators, unclean people, covetous men and those who deceive others with empty words.

We talked about these behaviors in the previous study of Ephesians 5:1-6.

And now, in transition, Paul tells us to not be partakers with them. In other words, do not share with them in their actions. Do not participate with them.

Some misunderstand such a verse to mean that we should not join with the world in anything they do. That we should not have non-Christians as business partners and that we should not hire non-Christians as employees, and that we should not be friends with non-Christians.

That is not true at all. Paul is not even thinking about avoiding all contact or connections with non-Christians. If we avoided all contact with non-Christians, we could never be a light to them. And in this passage, he is inviting us to be lights. He is saying that in regard the sinful ways of the world, don’t join with them; but do hang out with and be friends with non-believers so that you can be a light to them.

Be a friend to those in the world, but don’t befriend their sin.

The word here for partakers is the Greek word summetochoi, and it means to partner with or to be a companion with someone.

One of the reasons we should not partner with the world in its sin, is because as Christians we are already partners with Christ. Throughout Scripture, this word is used to describe Christians as partners with Christ. As Christians, we share in the responsibility and reward that is due Christ.

So if, as partners with Christ, we decide to partner with the world in its sinful behavior, we have betrayed our partnership with Christ.

Here in Ephesians 5:7, Paul calls us to avoid joining the world in its false forms of love, which we saw in Ephesians 5:1-6, and now in Ephesians 5:7-14, he calls us to not partner with the world in its deeds of darkness.

Look at Ephesians 5:8.

Ephesians 5:8. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light

Darkness is the way we once used to walk. Darkness is how to describe our lives before we were Christians. Futile. Empty. Devoid of meaning and significance. The people who live by their flesh alone are people who walk in darkness, in ignorance, without knowledge of the truth about themselves, about God, and about reality. They are enslaved to their passions and illusions.

In Ephesians 2, Paul describes it as a walk that was according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air. We conducted ourselves in the lusts of the flesh and of the mind.

But now you are light in the Lord. What a change has come upon us! What a glorious transformation!

Just as God said into the darkness, “Let there be light” so He has also brought light to the dark lives which we once lead.

And not only has His light shined upon our lives—for it shines upon all those who are still alive—but we have personally been transformed into light as well. The text says, you are light.

We once were darkness, but now we are light. Once we were sinners, now we are saints.

This transformation from darkness to light is critically important for properly and fully living the life we are meant to live. By becoming light, we awaken to the work that God is doing within us so that we shine with His light, as He Himself is light.

Paul does say, after all, that we are light in the Lord. We are light because He is light, and He is in us and we are in Him, shining our light to the world.

Therefore, at the end of Ephesians 5:8, we should walk as children of light. As children of God, we should walk in love as God is love—that is what we saw in Ephesians 5:1-6. Now, also since God is light, we should walk as children of light as we try to imitate God.

One thing I want say about light, which is very interesting, is that light by itself is not light. There is constant light streaming through the entire galaxy, but when you look into the night sky, you see only darkness. Why? Because light itself is invisible. Light only appears as light when it shines upon something that is dark. Light is only seen when it hits a planet, a moon, or other particles of mass the sky so that the light can illuminate what it interacts with. This is how light exposes the darkness.

What this means, therefore, is that if you want to be light, you have to shine it on something dark. It doesn’t do a whole lot of good as a follower of Jesus to be light in your church, or your family, or where everyone else is light also. For your light to truly shine before men, you must be where the darkness is. Only in this way will your light shine before men so that they can see your good works and so glorify God.

Having told us to walk in the light, Paul wants to shed some light on the subject, and so he tells us what light looks like in Ephesians 5:9-10.

The Appearance of Light (Ephesians 5:9-10)

Ephesians 5:9-10. (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord.

If you have the NIV or the NAS translations of the Bible, your text reads, for the fruit of the light, but I said for the fruit of the Spirit. There is a textual variant here in the Greek. Some manuscripts say light while others say Spirit.

I personally think the original word here was Spirit, but it really doesn’t matter. In the end, the idea is the same.

Children of light live in such a way that it reveals goodness, righteousness and truth.

We all know what these words mean and I would even venture to say that we all know whether we are living according to these words or not. So nothing much needs to be said about them except that goodness and righteousness are the exact opposite of fornication, uncleanness and covetousness mentioned in Ephesians 5:3 and truth is the exact opposite of the deception mentioned in Ephesians 5:6.

These words are also further ways to describe the character of God who is light.

Together, the terms describe the fullness of God, the expressions of His light shining through us. Those who exhibit these virtues reveal an inner transformation that has its source in the divine light of God.

So, if we are going to live as children of light, we need to live like the God who is light. Since He lives in goodness, righteousness and truth, so must we.

According to Ephesians 5:10, this is what is acceptable to the Lord.

I want to talk about that phrase finding out in Ephesians 5:10 though. The word is dokimazo, and means “to examine closely. To discover.”

This is a call to seek wisdom and knowledge of God and ourselves. To know God and to know ourselves. To discerning the true will of the true God beyond the dark and deceptive laws and ideas of this world. This involves introspective contemplation and rejection of worldly attachments.

We are to find out what is acceptable to God by using the light He has provided and taking it into the shadows of our own life and the dark places of this world so that we might fight even more light.

Imagine that you love to explore caves in the hopes of discovering gold and jewels. What do you need? That’s right—light!

Imagine that you’re a scientist, and you want to examine something closely in a microscope—what do you need? That’s right—light!

Imagine you love art, and you go to an art gallery to look at the paintings, what is over each painting so that you can look at it better? That’s right—light!

Light is so important for nearly everything we do in life, and in every area, when you are seeking precious truths, you need light to find more truth, more precious stones, more change, more success in becoming who you really are.

A while back I was working in the basement of my house. At one point, because I was doing quite a bit of pounding on a certain wall, I must have broken the filament in the light bulb, because it went out.

Do you think I just went on working in the dark? No! I would have hammered my hand instead of the nail. I stopped what I was doing, and I went and got a new light bulb so I could see.

When Paul tells us here to find out what is acceptable to the Lord, he is telling us to use the light that we have to closely examine and search and discover. And where is it that we closely examine and search and discover God’s will? Yes, the Word of God as illuminated by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Psalm 119:105 says that it is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. And as we study and read and meditate upon the Word of God, the Holy Spirit illuminates our mind and our thoughts to understand and apply that light to our lives.

That is what Paul is telling us to do in Ephesians 5:10. Use the light that is from God, to study the light of the Word of God, and in so doing, we will discover what is acceptable to God, and when we do it, we too will become lights to the world.

Some Christians wonder why the light of Christianity seems to be dimming in this world. There is only one explanation. It is because we have stopped learning about the light of God’s Word and obeying it. Only those who study the light and obey the light will be light.

But let’s move on. If Ephesians 5:9-10 told us how to live as light, Ephesians 5:11-12 tell us how not to live. He tells us what darkness looks like.

The Appearance of Darkness (Ephesians 5:11-12)

Ephesians 5:11-12. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret.

Ephesians 5:11 tells us to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.

The word here for fellowship is similar to the word for partakers in Ephesians 5:8, so Paul is saying something similar here. Don’t partake with them in what they do, and don’t fellowship with them in what they do.

Again, this does not mean that we should not be friends with them or be around them, but rather that we should just not join them in what they do.

Paul describes what they do here as unfruitful works of darkness. This phrase is a complete contrast to the fruit mentioned in Ephesians 5:9. The works of darkness are not good, they are not righteous, and they are anything but truthful.

The fruitless deeds of darkness represent actions rooted in ignorance, materialism, and obedience to the false order of this world.

And then at the end of Ephesians 5:11, Paul tells us to expose them.

Now if this is where the passage stopped, it would be okay for us to get into all the nitty-gritty details of how sinful and depraved and wicked some men and women can be. We could talk for endless hours about the unrighteous acts of immorality which people are mired in. We could talk about the horrors and the inhuman acts some people are capable of performing.

If Ephesians 5:11 was by itself, that is what we would do. After all, how else can we expose these works of darkness other than by talking about them? Other than by informing one another about them?

But look again at Ephesians 5:12.

Ephesians 5:12. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret.

So now we have a problem. We are supposed to expose these things, but we are not supposed to talk about them! It is shameful even to speak of those things which by them in secret.

How are we to expose them without speaking about them? Especially in today’s society when the motto seems to be, “Tell it like it is!”[2]

Does Paul realize what he is asking us to do here? Telling us to expose the darkness, but not talk about it is almost like saying, “Vacuum the room, but don’t use a vacuum cleaner” or “Paint this wall, but you can’t have paint.”

This is a problem, isn’t it?

Well, don’t worry. Paul knew what he was writing. He realized what he was saying. And besides that, he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write this, and the Holy Spirit doesn’t contradict Himself (cf. Rom 16:19).

There is one way, and one way only, to expose the deeds of darkness without having to talk about them. Do you want to know what it is?

The Application of Light (Ephesians 5:13-14)

Ephesians 5:13 But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light.

I don’t know about you, but manifest isn’t a word I use much, so to help me understand this verse, I like to substitute in the word “visible.”

But all things that are exposed are made [visible] by the light…

Do you want to expose some sort of sinful behavior? All you have to do is shine. If the room is dark, talking about the darkness and trying to explain the darkness won’t help anyone see in the darkness. It does no good to talk about the darkness and walk around in the darkness.

To expose the darkness, we don’t live in the darkness. Rather, we simply shine the light on it. When God’s divine light touches the ignorant, it brings light into their life, potentially turning them into light themselves.

Jesus says the obvious in John 12:35, but sometimes we need to be reminded of it. He says that “he who walks around in darkness does not know where he is going.” When was the last time you walked around in a dark room? By this, however, Jesus does not mean we should avoid walking in darkness altogether. What He means is that we should take our light into the darkness so that it is no longer dark!

There is a vast difference between walking in darkness with a light and walking in darkness without a light. God wants us to go to the darkness and bring a light with us.

If it’s a room that you have never seen before in the light, you stumble into things, you walk into walls, you trip over furniture. And that’s the way it is for Christians who try to expose the darkness of this world by living in the darkness.

I think I’ve mentioned him before, but I had a friend in college when I was at Montana State who wanted to reach his friends for Christ, but they went out and got drunk every weekend. So he thought that in order to understand them better and get them to trust him more, he too had to go out and get drunk with them.

It didn’t work … because that was walking in darkness, not revealing the light. You don’t have to become drunk in order to expose drunkenness. You don’t have to watch that certain kind of movies in order to have something to talk about with your co-workers.

These kinds of arguments are like saying that you have to become a homosexual or a prostitute in order to minister to them. Or that you have to become addicted to drugs to work with drug abusers!

No—you do not reveal the darkness by becoming darkness yourself. Darkness if revealed only when the lights come on. If the room is dark, turn the lights on!

How? How do you turn the lights on in this world? Through speaking the truth and living the truth. Paul says here in Ephesians 5:13 that whatever makes manifest or visible is light.

Some people get all caught up in the philosophical question of “What is truth?” They understand that in regard to some morals what is true in one part of the world may not be true in another, or how something is done in one place may be done completely different somewhere else.

And so they begin to think that truth is relative and that there are no absolute truths, which, by the way, is a contradictory statement.

But asking “What is truth?” is like asking “What is light?” Scientists can get all technical about the qualities, characteristics and behavior of light—you know how it behaves like particles and a wave, and how if you approach the speed of light, time slows down and on and on.

But do you notice what Paul says here at the end of Ephesians 5:13? He defines light in a way everybody can understand. He says, “Hey, light is what makes things visible.”

If you are a living light in this world, it will be super obvious to everybody around you because when you are around, they can see things more clearly. And you understand that I don’t mean that they can physically see things more clearly.

I mean that when you are around, it becomes obvious to others what is right and wrong. They start watching the words that come out of their mouths. They start controlling sinful behaviors. In other words, their deeds of darkness are exposed by the light of the truth that shines forth from your life.

You allow the Word of God to light your path. You allow the truth to fill your life. You walk in the light as He is in the light. You let your light so shine before men that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father, who is in heaven.

Maybe some of you don’t really understand what I am talking about here. Maybe you have never personally seen the light of the truth shine forth from your life to expose the darkness in this world.

If that is true of you, then Ephesians 5:14 is for you.

Ephesians 5:14. Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.”

I’m glad none of you are sleeping through the sermon this morning, or I would have had to personalize this verse for you…Awake! You who sleep!

Paul seems to be quoting Scripture here, but no verse in Scripture says exactly this. There are a few verses which say something similar (Isa 26:19; 60:1), but it is not an exact quotation from anything we know of.

So, it seems most likely that what Paul is quoting from here is an early hymn sung by the first Christians—very likely at their baptism. Or, maybe it was something said to new Christians when they were baptized.

You know, today, we say before they go into the water something along the lines of, “Based on your testimony of faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, I now baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

Some scholars and historians though, seem to think that Paul is quoting here from something that was said to the believer as soon as they come up out of the water.

Baptism by immersion is a picture of death, burial and resurrection to new life in Christ. So when the believer came up out of the water, they would be told, Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.

Now that does not mean that automatically, just because someone is baptized, they will all of a sudden be a light to the world. No, baptism is just the first step in becoming a serious disciple of Jesus Christ.

And when Paul quotes this saying here, it would take every Christian back to the day when they were baptized. They would remember the resolutions they had made. They would remember the decision to change their lives and to live for Christ. They would remember that they had determined to walk the path of discipleship.

But some of them had gone back to sleep. Some of them became relationally dead again. Those who continued to sleep as Christians were carnal in the sense that they did not have a growing fellowship with God.

That’s not the way it should be. Baptism is the first step of an exciting adventure—not an opportunity to press the “snooze” button. Some people seem to get baptized and then say “Well, good. I got that out of the way. Now I’ll go back to living the way I lived before.”

No! Baptism is stepping out and saying “I want to be different. I want to show the world what God can do through me. I want to be used by Christ. I want to be light!”

Baptism is just that first step on the exciting life of being a disciple of Christ.

People are trapped in darkness and they don’t see a way out because there is no light to help them find a way. We are called to go into the darkness and shine our light into it so that we can bring more of life into light, and also wake up the sleepers and the dead who are there, so that they too can be delivered from darkness and start walking in the full light of God’s love and wisdom.

As Paul indicates at the end of verse 14, this is what Jesus first did for us. He came to this earth and was our light, showing us the way out of darkness, so that we too can be light to others. This spiritual awakening allows us to join with God in redeeming this earth and becoming who He truly wants us to be.

So Ephesians 5:7-14 is about how to be disciples of Jesus Christ. It is only when we grow as disciples that we become light in this world.

Ephesians 5:7-14 calls us to reject the shadows of ignorance and embrace the radiant light of divine truth. This world, though it is filled with beauty and wonder, nevertheless lies in darkness. And people who do not understand thing of the soul or of the spirit, live only in materialistic pursuits, which lead them to live in a realm of illusion, deception, and spiritual slumber. As Paul states elsewhere, such people are fleshly, caring only about the concerns and desires of the body.

But we have the light of God’s knowledge, insight, and wisdom within us, the fullness of God that fill us and guides us in every way.

So Paul urges us to choose. Rather than live in the darkness, we are called to walk in the light. To turn away from the empty pursuits of the material world—greed, pride, and fleeting pleasures—and seek the eternal wisdom that illuminates our souls and unites us with God in our spirit.

Paul calls us to wake up! Rise up! To shine like the lights that we are! We must realize the truth of who we are in Christ, as children of God. We must become who we truly are, who God made us to be.

The light of God is already within you. This week, commit to awakening from the slumber of this world. Set aside time each day to reflect on the goodness and glory that is around you. Listen for the inner voice of God that calls you to be who He made you be. Listen for the whisper of divine truth, and reflect on what illusions you might be holding on to which keep you from seeing and being the light that God wants to shine through you.

Maybe it is wealth, or status, or fear, that is holding you back from embracing your divine nature. Name them, expose them to the light, and let them dissolve in the presence of truth.

Awake, O sleeper! The light of God within you longs to shine, not only in your life, but also through your life into the life of others. Step boldly into the light of the knowledge of God, and let your life be a beacon of truth in this world of shadows. Answer the call to awaken, and to let your light shine before others.

Notes on Ephesians 5:7-14

[1] Max Lucado, God Came Near (Portland: Multnomah, 1987), 113-117.

[2] Wiersbe, 46.

[3] Mark Mittelberg, Building a Contagious Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 247-342.

The ONE Key to Living Life: LOVE (Ephesians 5:1-6)

By Jeremy Myers

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Harry Chapin wrote a song called “Cats in the Cradle.” Most of you have probably heard it before, but let me read the lyrics for you.

A child arrived just the other day.
He came to the world in the usual way.
But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay.
He learned to walk while I was away, and he was
talkin’ ‘fore I knew it, and as he grew, he say,
“I’m gonna be like you, dad,
You know I’m gonna be like you.”

And the cat’s in the cradle, and the silver spoon
little boy blue and the man on the moon.
“When you comin’ home, dad?” “I don’t know when.
But we’ll get together then.
You know we’ll have a good time then.”

My son turned ten just the other day. He said,
“Thanks for the ball, dad, come on let’s play.
Can you teach me to throw?” I said “Not today.
I got a lot to do.” He said, “That’s okay.”
And he, he walked away but his smile never dimmed. It said,
“I’m gonna be like him, yeah,
you know I’m gonna be like him.”

And the cat’s in the cradle, and the silver spoon,
little boy blue and the man on the moon.
“When you comin’ home, dad?” “I don’t know when.
But we’ll get together then.
You know we’ll have a good time then.”

Well he came from college just the other day.
So much like a man I just had to say,
“Son I’m proud of you. Can you sit for a while?”
He shook his head, and said with a smile,
“What I’d really like, dad, is to borrow the car keys.
See ya later. Can I have them please?”

And the cat’s in the cradle, and the silver spoon,
little boy blue and the man on the moon.
“When you comin’ home, son?” “I don’t know when.
But we’ll get together then, dad.
You know we’ll have a good time then.”

I’ve long since retired, my son’s moved away.
I called him up just the other day.
I said, “I’d like to see you, if you don’t mind.” He said,
“I’d love to, dad, if I could find the time.
You see my new job’s a hassle and the kids with the flu.
But it’s been sure nice talkin’ to you, dad.
It’s been sure nice talkin’ to you.”
And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me,
he’d grown up just like me.
My boy was just like me.

And the cat’s in the cradle, and the silver spoon,
little boy blue and the man on the moon.
“When you comin’ home, son?” “I don’t know when.
But we’ll get together then, dad.
You know we’ll have a good time then.”

Tragic, isn’t it? This little boy wanted to be like his dad so much. He loved his dad. Respected his dad. Wanted to imitate his dad. But his dad never had time for him.

And finally, when the dad had time for his son, his son had grown up to be just like him, and had no time.

Tragic, but so common in our world.

How thankful we can be then, that as children of God, He always has time for us, and He is always there for us, and He gives us a good model to follow.

As we work our way through the book of Ephesians, we come now to Ephesians 5, where Paul provides some instructions on how to follow in God’s footsteps. How to live like God. How to be like our heavenly father. How to imitate God.

Today we will see how to imitate God in His love.

All you Need is Love (Ephesians 5:1-2a)

We begin in Ephesians 5:1, where Paul says

Ephesians 5:1. Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.

Note first of all that Paul is basing this command to imitate on what he has already said. In using that word Therefore, he points us back to what he has already said.

Remember, Ephesians 1–3 are all about what we as Christians have been given from God. It is about how rich we are. And then, Ephesians 4–6 are about how we are supposed to use those riches.

So these things we are supposed to do in Ephesians 4–6 are not from our own effort or done out of obedience to the law, but they are done by grace, through faith, as we trust and rely on what God has given us in Christ so that we do what God wants us to do.

In Ephesians 4, Paul told us to walk in Unity, and to walk in Purity as a new-made man. As Christians, we should live in such a way that people can see we are different than every other person. We are unique. We are the type of men and women that all men and women want to become. That is the type of people we are to be.

Now, Paul raises the standard quite a bit more, and more than just walking in a way that men should, he tells us to walk in a way that imitates God Himself.

This is not really a new thing we are supposed to do. Rather, it is a return to what we originally were.

Remember in Genesis when God created Adam and Eve, we are told that we were created in the image and likeness of God.

When we sinned, we lost much of that image of God, and now Paul is calling us back to what we originally were intended to be. He calls us here in Ephesians 5:1 to be imitators of God.

The Greek word is mimetai, which is where we get our word mimic. As Christians, we are supposed to mimic God.

If you see God doing something, you are supposed to do it. If you see God acting in some way, you act that way.

It’s just like when little children love their parents, they try to do what their parents do. This is what Paul implies at the end of verse one when he says as dear children. We’ve all seen little girls try to put on their mommy’s dresses, hats, high-heels and make up. We’ve all seen little boys try to help their dad mow the lawn, or work on the car.

When my wife I started to feed our first child solid food, we learned that she loved to mimic us. If we drank out of cup, she watched with mouth hanging open and eyes wide, and if we gave her a cup—even if it was empty—she would put it to her mouth and tip it back.

When we fed her some baby food, if we wanted her to open her mouth wide, it helped to open our mouth wide first, so that she would mimic us.

Children do this, because they love us and they know they are loved. Children are born imitators. Which is what Paul says here in Ephesians 5:1. The word used here for dear is the Greek word for beloved. It is agapeta. We all recognize that as a form of the word agape, which we know as the perfect kind of love.

Note that we are only called to love one another because we are beloved children of God. We can love others because God has first loved us (1 John 4:19).

So Paul is saying in verse one, since God loves you so much, and since you love Him, and since you know He would never lead you astray—I want you to mimic God. I want you to imitate Him.

And the first way, which are going to look at today in Ephesians 5:2-6 is love. Paul says it right there at the first part of Ephesians 5:2.

Ephesians 5:2. And walk in love,

Remember, walk is the main action verb used in Ephesians 4–5. Ephesians 1–3 were all about sitting and learning what our possessions were in Christ. Ephesians 4–5 are about how to walk as a Christian.

And here we are told that the first way to imitate God is by walking in love. And just in case you’re curious, the love is agape love again. It is the kind of perfect, unconditional, all-consuming, never ending love God has for us.

Now this kind of love is a little bit hard to grasp, and even harder to apply to our lives as humans. How can we, as sinful humans, have unconditional love? Is that even possible for us?

If it is possible, if we do want to mimic the love of God, what would it look like?

Well, thankfully, God has provided us with the perfect picture. The greatest divine mimic of all was the person of Jesus Christ.

Now I hesitate a little bit to call Jesus Christ a mimic, because He wasn’t actually mimicking God. He Himself was God.

But Jesus says that He only does what He sees the Father doing (John 4:19). That we can know the Father if we know Jesus (Matt 11:27). That if you have seen Jesus, you have seen the Father (John 14:9).

We are told elsewhere the Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), and that Jesus is the exact representation of God (Heb 1:3).

Jesus, because He was God, was the perfect image of God. If you want to understand what God is like, just look at Jesus. If you want to mimic God, all you have to do is mimic Jesus.

And Paul, in the rest of Ephesians 5:2, tells us that Christ was the perfect picture of the love of God. If you want to mimic the love of God—watch Christ, because He is the perfect example of love.

Love of Christ (Ephesians 5:2b)

Ephesians 5:2b. We should walk in love, just as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.

This verse shows us that the love of Christ was all-encompassing. It was directed toward us and toward God.

Christ’s love toward us is seen from Ephesians 5:2 when it says that he has loved us and given Himself for us.

The greatest act of love anybody can give is an act of self-sacrifice for the life of another. This is why we highly honor courageous war heroes who throw themselves on grenades to protect others.

This is why we so highly honored the firemen of September 11 who went boldly into the twin towers.

John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

Romans 5:7-8 is similar when it says, “For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Philippians 2:5-11 tells the whole story. How Jesus, though He was God, gave up all of His rights, and humbled Himself to the lowest possible form—and submitted Himself to death in the most humiliating and excruciating way.

And He did this all, because He loved us. The best way to see and copy Christ’s love is to read and study the Gospels. Especially the Gospel of John.

Self-sacrificial love is the kind of love Jesus had toward us, and therefore, as we mimic God, the kind of love we should also have for one another.

But we also see in Ephesians 5:2 that Jesus also had loving actions toward God. These actions are that He became an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. The picture which should come to mind when we read this phrase is the picture of the Old Testament sacrificial system.

Over and over again, we are told that this offering or that offering was an aroma, pleasing to the Lord (e.g., Lev 1:9, 13, 17; 2:2, 9; 12; 3:5, 16; 4:31; etc.). The offerings and sacrifices helped the Israelites think that they could approach God. (God didn’t want the sacrifices, but the people did. They thought sacrifices helped them atone for their sins.)

So also, Jesus offered Himself up as a sacrifice to God. Again, this was not for God. God didn’t want or need Jesus to sacrifice Himself. But just as the sacrificial system was for us (not God), so also, the sacrifice of Jesus was for us (not God). And since God loved us humans so much, and since Jesus offered Himself for us, the self-sacrifice of Jesus was a sacrifice of love. Therefore, it was a sweet-smelling aroma to God. Notice that Jesus didn’t burn to death on the cross, so the sweet-smelling aroma was produced by the actions of His love.

God loved to see Jesus offer Himself in this way, because this is also what God has been doing for humanity since the foundation of the world. God has often offered Himself up as a sacrifice to humans, as we blame Him for our own problems, accuse Him for things we ourselves were guilty of, and in taking the blame, He laid down His honor and glory for our sake. He sacrificed His name and character for our sake, taking on the appearance of a monster and a criminal, just like Jesus did on the cross.

Just as Jesus imitated God, we also can imitate Jesus Christ, and in this way, offer up a sweet-smelling aroma to the Lord.

Paul, having given us the two ways Jesus revealed the love of God, now decides to show us how to be loving toward one another and toward God, but decides to approach it from the negative viewpoint.

He takes some of the common ideas of love and shows how in reality, they are not loving at all. The two primary methods we have of showing love is with our actions and with our words.

But in our sinful society, these two forms have been twisted and perverted, so that often, when people think they are being loving, they really are not. Rather, they are showing false love.

False Love (Ephesians 5:3-4)

Ephesians 5:3-4. But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.

Some people today have tried to soften the Christian mandate to live upright and holy lives. They say that since our culture is getting increasingly lax in their morals, that as Christians, we should lower the standard a bit so as to be more appealing.

But Paul does nothing of the sort here. But we say, “Well, our culture is looser in its morals than Paul’s was, so we need to be given some leeway.” This argument doesn’t hold up either. The city of Ephesus was probably more pagan than ours is today.

It was the location of the temple to the Roman goddess Artemis who was the goddess of sex. And so the city was filled with temple prostitutes and every other sort of wickedness associated with it (see Acts 19). Their society championed immorality and impurity just as much as ours does.

But Paul does not water down the standards here, and so neither should we. In these verses Paul lists three sexual sins which should not be practiced by the Christian who is trying to walk in a loving manner. These sins are contrary to love and are actually unloving. They are false forms of love.

In fact, they are sinful. They are sexual sins.

He goes from describing the ultimate self-sacrificial love of Christ which we should imitate to mentioning the self-indulgent lust.

Despite what the world teaches, love is not equated with sex. Most people believe that “free” sex is harmless, and that nobody gets hurt as long as both partners are consenting adults. But Paul is going to point out that this is not true, and he does that by listing three sins.

The first sin Paul lists in Ephesians 5:4 is fornication. The word he uses is pornea. It literally means prostitute. It is from this word that we get our word pornography—which means writing or pictures about prostitutes.

But when Paul uses the word here, it refers to all kinds of sexual immorality and sexual sin. Fornication is when people sleep around, or commit adultery, or have sexual relations before marriage.

Fornication is also when we allow our thought life to be controlled by sexual temptation. For some men, this involves looking at magazines or watching movies where sexual temptations are encouraged and fed. Even many television shows on the network channels on weekday nights feed this kind of temptation.

And women are not immune to this either. I think a strong case could be made for some—not all, but some—romance novels being female pornography. When men look at pornography, it often results in them comparing their wives with the pictures they see on the page, or on the television screen.

But a similar thing happens to women who read certain romance novels. The men in those books are fantasy, and hoping your husband will be like a man in a romance novel is just as damaging to a marriage relationship as if a man looks at pornography and wishes his wife looked like those women.

Fornication is prevalent in our society today among men and women.

Next, Paul mentions uncleanness. This word means what it says. Unclean. Impure. It is used in Matthew 23:27 for filth and rottenness. It probably refers to all kinds of sexual impurity and perversion. I don’t need to catalogue them for you here.

Third, Paul tells us to refrain from covetousness. This could also be translated as greed. It’s the desire to want more, to want bigger and better things. In context, it probably refers to those who are greedy for more and more of the sins already listed. Covetousness leads to addiction.

Covetousness and greed in this area of our lives will also lead to some of the most horrible perversions that have ever been performed.

But again, I want to refrain from going into detail. Let me explain why.

In Ephesians 5:3, Paul is saying more than just don’t do these things. Look at the next part of the verse. He says, let them not even be named among you. In other words, don’t even talk about them. We’ll see more of this next time when we look at Ephesians 5:12, where Paul says that it is shameful to even discuss what the wicked do in secret.

Now I think this is where many of us go wrong today. We know that actually committing these sins are wrong, but we like to walk on the edge. We like to tell others what “so and so” did. We like to hear about the newest scandal. We like to read about men and women behaving in ways God did not intend. We like to watch shows and movies where these types of things are discussed.

It is a grim commentary on our culture that many books, plays and movies have had great success simply because they dealt with forbidden and ugly things. And we wonder why our culture continues to degenerate.

“Freedom of speech!” we cry. But too much discussion of evil—even if we discuss it in disapproval, is an invitation to bring that sin into our own life.

Rather, our mouths are to be used for more useful things. In fact, he says there at the end of Ephesians 5:3, that as saints, or as Christians, it is not fitting or proper to do or to talk about such things.

So, one of the ways we love is through our actions. And Paul shows us here that the worldly form of loving is actually lust and is therefore sin. If we want to be truly loving in our actions, our model is Jesus Christ.

But there is another way we reveal love, and that is with our words. And again, Paul shows us how to be loving in this way by telling us what not to do. Ephesians 5:4 is about sinful speech.

And again, he lists three sins. Three ways to abuse our tongue. We talked about this extensively back in Ephesians 4:29, but let me go through these three words real quickly.

The first is filthiness. This refers to any kind of shameful, disgraceful or indecent language.

Next, Paul lists foolish talking. This is an interesting word in the Greek. It is a contract word, which means it is made up of two words. The second word is logos, which many of you recognize as the Greek word for word. It is the word used in John 1:1 where Jesus is referred to as The Word.

But the first part of this contract word is moron. Did you know that was a Greek word? It means fool or foolish. So the word here is morologia. Foolish words. Foolish talking. Moronic words.

Talking which has no substance. Talking which has no point. Talking the way fools do—just because they want to talk, not because they really have anything to say.

Finally, coarse jesting. Lewd jokes. Sexual innuendoes. Crude humor. Humor itself is great. Laughter is a wonderful gift from God. Sometimes, Christians think they have to be sour and dour, and always frown on anybody who is having fun.

That’s not true! We should be the most fun loving, joyful people around!

But we must not confuse good humor with coarse joking. It has been said that where sin is regarded as amusing, the practice of it comes easy.[1]

Let’s see if I can step on some more toes here. TIME magazine, dated July 29, 2002 ran an essay by Richard Corliss describing the disgusting script and scenes of the new Austin Powers movie starring Mike Myers.

Now I am not trying to single out Austin Powers. I think there are probably many movies which are not fit for the eyes and ears of Christians, but this movie makes the point because it is currently in the theaters, and because of this article about it in TIME.

I’m not going to read the article, for that would be doing what Paul tells us not to do here. Let me just give you the title. It is called, “This Essay Is Rated PG-13.” And then the sub-title: “But with all the toilet humor it describes, it should really be rated R.”

This non-Christian writer seems to have grasped something which every Christian who goes to see that movie—or similar movies—has not. This sort of crude-humor, and coarse jesting is not fitting for anybody to talk about or listen to—much less Christians.

If a non-Christian realizes this, why don’t we? It is not right that our thoughts and our minds and our mouths should be so occupied with such filthiness, foolish talking and coarse jesting.

Rather, at the end of Ephesians 5:4, our mouths should be used for giving of thanks.

How can our mouths be a pleasing aroma to the Lord? By using them for His glory. By praising Him. By giving thanks. That is how we can use our mouths in a loving manner.

So, Jesus revealed love by making Himself an offering and a sacrifice to God. We too, if we want to be like Jesus, and imitate God in His love, we can offer our mouths and words to God in praise and thanksgiving. We can give to Him a sacrifice of praise (Heb 13:15).

We can give thanks in everything, as is the will of God (1 Thess 5:18). In this way, we too, can live a life of love toward God.

But Jesus also revealed love toward other people. And as we follow Jesus, we too will show love through our actions and through our words.

Now, if we refuse to follow Paul’s instructions here, there are serious consequences which we must be aware of. Paul spends the next few verses talking about the results of false love.

Results of False Love (Ephesians 5:5-6)

Ephesians 5:5-6. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

Ephesians 5:5 lists the first result. The result is disinheritance. In this verse, Paul again mentions fornication, uncleanness and covetousness—which he here equates with idolatry. We’ve already talked about these, so nothing more needs to be said about them.

Of course, he does give us a bit of extra insight here into the sin of covetousness, by saying that the covetous man … is an idolater. And that’s true. The covetous man desires the things of this world more than he desires God. And any time we place worldly possessions or worldly prestige above God, we have become an idolater.

It’s the consequence that is important. Paul says here that those who live in such unloving ways, will not receive any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

Does this mean that those who live this way are not going to heaven? Does it mean that those who live this way are not really Christians—even if they claim to be?

No, it does not mean that at all. Justification, or gaining eternal life, has nothing whatsoever to do with our works or lack of works, but is freely given by the grace of God to all who will simply believe in Jesus Christ for it.

If you have believed in Jesus Christ—you have eternal life. But believing in Christ does not guarantee that you will live like Christ. We all still live in ways that we should not. We all still do things that we should not.

And when we do, Paul tells us here, not that we lose our eternal life, but rather that we lose future reward in heaven and our inheritance in the kingdom. We lose out on opportunities to reign with Christ.

Inheritance in the kingdom is not the same thing as receiving eternal life. The kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven, is about experiencing the rule and reign of God in our life. It is about experiencing the power of God, the direction of God, the joy and satisfaction of living in deep fellowship with God.

Every time we are tempted, we have a choice—to either follow the temptation or to obey God. If we follow the temptation and sin, we lose out on what we could have had if we had obeyed God.

That is what Paul is talking about here when he tells us that those who live this way will not receive any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. A very serious warning to stay on the straight and narrow.

That’s the first negative result. Disinheritance.

Secondly, in Ephesians 5:6-7, if we do not live in a loving way, we will be disciplined.

Paul mentions empty words, which, in my opinion, sums up the filthiness, foolish talking and course jesting which he mentioned in verse 4. He tells us to not let anyone deceive you with empty words. In other words, some people will try to get you to sin by giving you fine sounding arguments and smooth talk.

Invitations to sin are always deceptive, aren’t they? “Oh, just try it this once. Who’s going to know? Oh come on, you don’t really believe it’s a sin, do you? Take the shortcut; why make life harder on yourself? You deserve it.”

And when you heed such empty words, they deceive you and lead you into unloving, sinful behavior.

And such behavior leads to another disastrous result. He says at the end of Ephesians 5:6 that because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

Now back in Ephesians 5:1, we saw that we are children of God. And that is what we are. Nothing can make us stop being children of God.

But as children of God we have two options, just as all children do. We can either live like children of God and obey our Father, or we disobey our father, and live like—as Paul calls them here—sons of disobedience.

If we choose to live as sons of disobedience, rather than children of God, Paul tells us here that the wrath of God will come upon us. The term wrath is not a reference to hell, but is a word for discipline and punishment. Another way to think about the wrath of God is the natural consequences of sin.

The wrath of God is the exact opposite of the kingdom of God. If the kingdom of God means that we experience the rule and reign of God in our life, then the wrath of God means that we experience the rule and reign of sin in our life. Life in the kingdom leads to peace, joy, satisfaction, fulfillment, and contentment. Life under wrath leads to misery, pain, lost potential, lack of meaning, and all the destruction that comes from living in sin.

Sin has consequences. God warns us against sin because He loves us and does not want to see us get hurt. But if we ignore what God says, and we go and sin anyways, then the consequences of that sin often comes upon us. In that experience, we often way, “God is punishing me!” But really, God is not punishing us. It seems that way because God warned us against the sin, and then when we sin, bad things happen to us, but these bad things are not from God but from sin. Sin bears its own punishment with it. And we often confuse this punishment from sin with a punishment from God.

The wrath of God comes upon those who disobey God. We should obey God and imitate Jesus so that we can avoid the devastating and destructive consequences of sin in our lives.

I think everybody can agree that the things Paul talks about here are wrong. That they are sinful. I think we all realize that society is in a downward spiral into sin. And I think we all realize that something needs to be done about it.

But do you know what needs to be done? Nothing but love. Let us—each one of us—practice true and genuine love toward one another and toward God as pictured by Christ and explained here by Paul.

Love is the key to everything. I often think Christian make life to difficult because we make all these lists of do’s and don’ts, including places we can and cannot go and things we can and cannot do.

But ultimately, it’s all about love. Love is the fulfillment of the law. If we love God and love others as we love ourselves, we will naturally do every good thing that the law instructs. And when we live in love, we will experience life in the kingdom of God, under the rule and reign of God, in the reality of divine realm.

This week, rather than trying to complete a list, or fulfill your obligations, or perform certain duties and responsibilities, instead just focus on love. In every situation, at every moment, simply ask yourself, “What does love look like here? What would love lead me to do and say? How would love lead me to act?” When you live this way, then you will be imitating God and will be experiencing His love in your life.

[1] Snodgrass, 276.