Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

Please take your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians 5, Ephesians 5.

The Moral Imperative to Love

Having told the Ephesians to imitate God, Paul now continues to lay requirements on the Ephesians that, on the surface, would leave them cringing under the weight of their moral demands.

We must understand that these two statements - Imitate God and Walk in love are in the imperative tone meaning that there is no wiggle room here.

Paul is laying a moral requirement on the Ephesian believers with the expectation that they would follow.

There is a principle in ethics that involves the concept of ought.

The encyclopedia Britannica defines this principle this way.

Ought implies can, in ethics, the principle according to which an agent has a moral obligation to perform a certain action only if it is possible for him or her to perform it.

In other words, if a certain action is impossible for an agent to perform, the agent cannot, according to the principle, have a moral obligation to do so.

What Paul is essentially telling the Ephesians here is you ought to walk in love.

He is binding them under an ethical obligation to, a moral obligation to love and in so doing he is bringing them under the weight of law.

We must recognize that even though the statement “walk in love” is very easy to utter but is, in practice, very hard to live out.

It is a legal requirement, it is an imperative that requires your utmost faithfulness and your utmost effort.

It is a burden of the same magnitude of that which the Pharisees would place on the people as they nuanced and crafted the laws to govern every day life.

Why do I say this is a moral and ethical requirement - the very definition of a law?

Paul’s first word in this statement makes it so - walk.

This is not the first time that we’ve seen this verb used in the course of our study of Ephesians - in fact Paul has used it several times as we have progressed through the Epistle and this is the first of three uses of the verb peripateo in chapter 5. Paul first used walk back in chapter 2 as he reminded the Ephesians where they had come from

He reminds them that they walked according to the ways of the world, in their trespasses and sins.

There really is no lower state that we can be in than death - there is nothing worse than that.

Things in your life may be hard, they may be challenging but at the very least you can say that you aren’t dead yet.

This is also a reminder to us that a person doesn’t have to hit rock bottom to recognize their need of Christ.

We will often say, and some of you may have prayed this for a person in your life, that a person just needs to hit rock bottom, they need to come to the worst condition they have ever been in before they can or could come to Christ.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, in saying that we are polluting the Gospel by making it seem that it is only about physical benefits rather than the spiritual condition of an individual.

There is no lower spiritual state that a person can be in than to be dead in their sins and as we will see in a few minutes the Gospel is not about restoring your 401k.

After a brief hiatus Paul returns to the concept of the Ephesians “walk” in chapter 4 telling them to walk worthy of the calling which they received

and then again as a counterpoint in verse 17 he writes

This verse actually began the paragraph of comparisons and contrasts where Paul demonstrates for the Ephesians in vivid detail the difference between walking worthy of the calling they had received and not walking as the Gentiles do.

Then here in chapter 5 in our passage today we are told to walk in love.

Later in verse 8 we will be told to walk as children of the light.

In verse 15 Paul will remind us to be careful how we walk not as unwise people but as wise.

Paul is very concerned with how we walk - or as some translations translate these verses how we live.

So here Paul tells us, lays this moral requirement on us to walk in love.

The world of course would wholeheartedly embrace this requirement - as long as they can make some additions to it.

Some of you are old enough to remember the free love generation - the freedom to love any person you want - of course in those days it was still pretty much accepted that this was free heterosexual love - and there were no consequences or requirements.

Some of the great apologists for this generation The Beatles said it best “All you need is love.

All you need is love.

All you need is love, love.

Love is all you need.”

They could write modern worship songs with a chorus like that.

So the world would accept this with the modifier free added in - you should walk in tolerant love.

The world would also accept this with the modifier tolerant added.

This is the mood and the attitude of our modern generation.

Walk in tolerant love.

Meaning that my lifestyle may not be the same as your lifestyle but out of love for your neighbor you should tolerate my lifestyle - even if that old antiquated book the Bible says that it is aberrant.

And if you don’t tolerate me - well not only are you unloving but I’m going to do the most unloving thing to you and that is either to force you to agree or to cancel you all together.

Not very tolerant or loving but to the world the logic doesn’t have to make sense.

So they would agree that you should walk in tolerant love.

Another modifier the world would say that we should add is the modifier of self.

Walk in self-love.

This isn’t new.

It’s been around for as long as time and it really is a misnomer.

Our problem isn’t that we love ourselves too little but that we love ourselves too much.

But the world would tell you that this isn’t true and that you need to love yourself more in order to truly love other people.

And that this is the greatest love of all - it’s what Whitney Houston told my generation “The greatest love of all is easy to achieve; Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.”

But none of this is Biblical love.

Notice I don’t say Christian love or evangelical love because in many cases the modern church has gotten this wrong as well.

With songs like Reckless love and this new one The One You Love with lyrics like this “I can be real with you; say anything and not be afraid; you made me and you like what you made; you made me and you don’t make mistakes; I can be real with you.

You take me just as I am, you’d choose me all over again, I am the one you love, I am the one you love, I don’t have to prove anything, there’s room at your table for me; i am the one you love, I am the one you love.

Now look - I’m not reciting these lyrics because I want to waste time.

I’m recounting these for you to warn you that if this song comes on your radio you should rip it out of the dashboard and throw it in the street.

Endure just a bit more if you can - I know you’re proud of me; even though I don’t deserve it sometimes; no I’m not a perfect child but I still make my father smile, so I know you’re proud of me.

Where is any of that in Scripture - this is a ridiculous perversion of the love of God and it is not the kind of love that we are called too.

Then what kind of love are we called to Chris?

I’m glad you asked.

Paul says walk in love and I think that what is foremost in his mind as he gives this command are two things.

Look with me at Mark 13:28-33

What love is Paul commanding us to - there it is right there.

Biblical love - the kind of love that fulfills this commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.

If you’re fulfilling that then loving your neighbor as yourself will just come naturally.

But we recognize that this isn’t possible right?

We recognize that in our own power we don’t love God the way that we should.

We are not completely devoted to Him.

And we don’t love others the way that we should.

This isn’t hidden.

Consider this quote “You can’t force yourself to love everyone and you can’t force everyone to love you.”

Or this one “I love everybody.

Some I love to be around.

Some I love to avoid.

And some I would love to punch in the face.”

Just so you know - that last part is not very loving.

But this is the requirement, the moral obligation that Paul is laying on us as he tells us to walk in love.

This is what Jesus did.

This is how He lived and Paul is now going to hold Christ up for us as an example of what it looks like to walk, to live, in love.

The Greatest Example of Love

Walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave Himself for us.

This phraseology is going to repeat itself later in this chapter as Paul talks of the correlation between the marriage of one man and one woman - you have to be very specific in this day and age - and the relationship of Christ and His church.

Christ also loved us - what a statement because we are some of the most unloveable people around.

And I’m not talking about humanity in general.

I’m not talking about the Russian soldiers who may be committing atrocities in Ukraine as we speak.

I’m not talking about the woke crowd or the LGBTQXYZ crowd.

I’m talking about this crowd - the one sitting in this very room.

I’m talking about me - the one standing here in the pulpit.

We are not a loveable group of people - because we are inherently sinners.

And yet - Christ loves us anyway.

We are born at enmity with Him and yet He loves us anyway.

We are born with a deep seated desire to kill Him and yet He loves us anyway.

When the rich young ruler comes and questions Jesus about what he must do to follow Him and He tells him and the rich young ruler says “I have kept all these from my youth.”

What does it say?