Put Away Uncleanliness

Paul went on to talk about the new man in Ephesians 5:3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or uncleanness, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. By talking about uncleanness Paul was not talking about taking a bath.  

Paul went into more detail in Romans 1:24, 26-28. Therefore, God gave them over in the sinful desire of their hearts to uncleanliness for the degrading of their bodies with one another. That would be the uncleanliness Paul was talking about. (26-28) Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lust and uncleanliness. Even their woman exchanged natural relationships for unnatural ones. In the same way men also abandoned natural relationships with woman and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.  

It is unnatural for a woman to want another woman and the same for a man to want another man. Paul uses the word uncleanliness in connection with lesbians and homosexuals. He said to put away uncleanliness and let it not be named once among you.

We need to walk in the light of the law of love and not do things that make other people fail. Drunks will argue that Paul said, “to drink a little wine for your stomach’s sake”.  If you lived back in Paul’s day when the water was bad, you might have done that, but that does not give you an excuse to be drunk today. Let’s say you knew someone who was an alcoholic, and they have been clean for several years, they got into church and was in the process of restoring their Christian life. Then after church that person was invited to watch a football game at fellow Christian’s home. Then these people start drinking and ask that person, knowing he was a recovering alcoholic, if he wanted a drink. That new Christian figures well if they as Christians can do it I can to. So, now that person who was an alcoholic has now let the alcoholic devil back into their life, back into drinking and now that person ends up being an alcoholic again. You have caused that person to fail. 

You can say what you want to, but I would not want to stand in front of God, and he says, “You have caused this person to stumble, you did not set the example of leading a Christian life”.  We need to clean up the uncleanliness in our lives. We need to be aware of those around us and not to cause others to fail.