Today, I am reading and commenting on Ephesians 4-6.

In yesterday’s passage Paul wrote that we were saved through no effort of our own, that we cannot claim credit for our salvation.  The fact that we have been saved does not indicate that we are superior to others.  He also wrote that God saved us in order that we might do good works.  In today’s passage Paul writes that we should strive to be worthy of the salvation which we freely received.  We were not saved because we were worthy of it, but, now that we are saved, we should strive to be worthy of it.  Paul then gives a list of behaviors which we must exercise if we desire to be worthy.  These behaviors are not the goal, they are the beginning of striving to be worthy.  We should be humble, patient, and gentle.  As part of that Paul writes that we should bear with one another in love.  I find it interesting that Paul phrases it that way.  By doing so Paul suggests that we WILL annoy our fellow believers, and that we will be annoyed by them, but we should bear with that annoyance.  And why should we bear with that annoyance?  Because we have been called to be one body worshiping and serving one God, through the activity of one Spirit.  We have been called to unity.  God’s Spirit has given us each different gifts and callings so that we might together build up His Body into unity working together to do His works.  Further, Paul writes us that we will know that we have reached maturity in God only when that unity is displayed.  Paul writes that we can move towards unity by speaking truth in love.  I really like that phrase because it sums up how we should deal with all people.  We should always be truthful, but we should only speak that which love directs us to say.

Paul continues by telling us that we must no longer live as the Gentiles, the pagans, live.  Their failure to accept knowledge of God, and of His gift of salvation, has caused them to lose sensitivity to each other.   As a result they have given themselves over to sensuality, indulging impurity and being filled with greed.  The argument is often made by those who do not know the Lord that they express their love of their fellow man through their sensuality, but Paul tells us that their indulging in sensuality the way in which they do actually demonstrates their lack of awareness of the needs of their fellow man and is a form of selfishness counter to love.  That sensuality is actually an expression of deceitful desires, rather than an expression of love.  Finally, I want to note how Paul connects the sins of sexual immorality with greed.  He shows us that the various sexual sins are one expression of greed, and that greed is idolatry, the worship of something(money, material goods, pleasure, etc.) other than God.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.