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

Yesterday, I wrote about the importance of praying, and of my need to pray for those who read what I write here.  In today’s passage, Paul begins by telling us to live a life worthy of the calling we have received.  That calling is to serve God and to preach His good news to all we encounter.  Paul tells us to make the most of every opportunity which we have.  In many ways the rest of the passage (or most of it anyways) is about how we need to behave in order to be sure that we are making the most of our opportunities.  If we want to be prepared to take advantage of the opportunities which arise unexpectedly we need to do everything in our power to remain unified in the Spirit with our fellow believers.  That requires us to be humble, gentle, patient, and to bear with each other’s failings in love.  Related to that Paul tells us something which comes up again and again in the New Testament.  We must give control over what we say to the Holy Spirit.  We need to strive to not grieve the Holy Spirit, to not make His job harder, by what we say and do.  Paul tells us to not allow any unwholesome talk come out of our mouths.  He clarifies what he means by “unwholesome” when he tells us that we should only say those things which are helpful for building others up.  I want to note that Paul specifically tells us that what is helpful for building others up varies depending upon the individual.  Some need us to take a gentle and kind approach, others need us to be brutally honest about their faults.  However, before we act on the latter we need to examine ourselves to make sure that we are not speaking out of bitterness or rage.  In fact, we need to always make sure that we are not slandering others, or trying to start a fight.  Paul goes on to show us that there is a link between obscenity, foolish talk, and coarse jokes and sexual immorality, various types of impurity, and greed.  Instead of allowing that kind of language to infect our minds we should speak words of thanksgiving and praise to God.  We should be kind and compassionate, forgiving of those who cause us harm, and our language should reflect these attitudes. 

I want to end this by saying that I have written as much as I have today because I feel like I am failing to express a point about this, but it feels like I am just repeating myself.  So, I am stopping here.

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

I have created a Patreon page for those who would like to support me in writing these blog posts every day: https://patreon.com/AttilaSoldus