ULDAH MINISTRY

No,68　　June. 2001

【COVETEOUSNESS】

　 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because those are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person-such a man is an idolater-has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them.
For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: "Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."
Be very careful, then, how you live-not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 5:3 ~ 20 Lines added

In this section of his Epistle to Ephesians, Paul's teaching moves from Christians' moral living and attitude within the church fellowship to warnings of the danger of complying with the evil in the world. However, his tone of warnings-'Let no-one deceive you with empty words', 'Do not be partners with them (idolaters such as the immoral, impure or greedy)'- seems to suggest that there were already many in church who were tempted to be disobedient to the Lord and who were apparently improper to be called God's holy people. In his other epistles, Paul seems to refer to such improper Christians in several ways. They might be able to be identified at best, with 'the weak', 'the one whose conscience is weak', or 'the one whose faith is weak' and worse, with 'the one who is not led by the Spirit but by desires of sinful nature' and at worst, 'the agitators', 'the one who is throwing God's people into confusion' or 'the one who is trying to pervert the gospel of Christ'. What the author of the Epistle to Hebrews referred to as 'anyone that needed milk but not solid food because of his slowness to learn', or 'anyone that was still infant, not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness', or as the worst case, 'the fallen away from the grace of God', might be identified with the same kind of problematic believers as Paul referred to. In other words, they were perpetually immature Christians who prevented themselves from growing their characters in Christ because of their carnal desires and weak will. They were believers who were much more driven by the secular world and secular ideas than first seeking His kingdom and persevering so as to firmly abide in Christ to the end.
The contemporary church has the same problem as the first-century church suffered. The reality is that the secular world has infiltrated the church to such an extent that there is not so much difference between the two now in their moral and ethical standards. However, on the contrary, oughtn't the church to be set apart so as to be 'the salt on the earth' and 'the light of the world', to be maintaining her distinctiveness? If, as Paul warns, these covetous people who insatiably put their desires first in place of God and thus, were committing idolatry, were to be excluded from the kingdom of God, the issue of perpetually immature Christians will have to be dealt with seriously. Paul's teaching here appears to be addressing these very problems.
In the first-century Greco-Roman society, immoral practices were the accepted norm of the world. To be counted as 'children of light' meant for those who were once darkness, to get out of their past fellowship with evil. However, it did not necessarily mean living in seclusion from the society but to live an entirely changed, separate life with a renewed life-style so as to please the Lord, while remaining faithful to the authority of the world. Paul on one occasion clarified, without leaving any room for speculation, the meaning of a separate life from the idolater, putting it, 'I have written to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people-not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.'(1Cor. 5:9~11 Line added) To live a sanctified life with a determined heart so as not to fall into temptation by evil, while remaining faithful in the world and thus, be a good witness of the Lord was also Jesus' teaching. In His last message to His disciples before His death, Jesus, addressing the Father, prayed for His disciples' perfect protection and sanctification in the pervasive world, 'Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name … . While I was with them, I protected them and kept hem safe by that name you gave me. … My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. … For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.'(John 17:11~19 Lines added)
Christian's role as followers of Jesus is to expose, 'the fruitless deeds of darkness'. However, how can they do this? It is unlikely to mean 'to appeal to revolutionary ways', or 'to attempt to weed out evil out of righteousness'. As Paul explains, it can only be achieved by hating even to mention such shameful, outrageous things, to say nothing of keeping themselves from defilement. To put it another way, because of the nature of the light, where the light shines, the hidden in darkness will be exposed. Since Christians should themselves be the light in the Lord, where there are Christians, everything concealed will become visible. This will take place simply as a natural process of divine power working through born-again Christians and furthermore, their effect will be obvious upon those exposed, so that they will begin to see things in a new light and their lives will change and eventually, they will become light themselves. One of the 'psalms, hymns and spiritual songs,' which used to be favourably sang among early Christians, was a piece of baptism poem: 'Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.' This song praises Christ's life-giving light granted to those who were once sinners (dead in darkness and remained blinded from the truth) but who accepted Him as their Lord through repentance and baptism. Paul, here reminds the sleeping Christians, i.e., the immature Christians, who have lost their distinctiveness and who have fallen into indulging lives for the gratification of their appetite, of their sin of idolatry-fornication, uncleanness and covetousness- and warns them of the threat of losing their inheritance in the kingdom of God. If they would like to hold on to their inheritance promised by Christ, qualified lives should be set up now in the midst of a society which is intrinsically hostile to Christ and His followers.
Then, what is the condition of a godly life? First, to live as wise would mean to live according to the Father's will in the same sense used in Isaiah 52, in that the LORD satisfactorily approved His suffering servant of acting wisely. Secondly, as the days are getting more evil as we approach the day of the Lord's Second Coming, the more difficult it will be for the Christians to live a sanctified life and the less opportunities there will be to work for the Lord, so it is now that we should make the most of the time, without failing in discerning the signs of the Lord. Thirdly, a self-disciplined life-style must be maintained to resist the danger of over-indulgence in earthly things-addiction to getting drunk on alcohol, to smoking, to gambling, to watching TV and so on. Christians must seriously be alarmed at the stern fact that these addiction will so vulnerably open a gate to the demonic world that they make man's moral and ethical sense numbed and untenable. There are verses in Proverbs that vividly depict the inescapable irrational and threatening state of the victim who has once been trapped into the temptation of alcohol and soon was caught up in the process of addiction :Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaints? Who has needless bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes? Those who linger over wine, who go to sample bowls of mixed wine. Do not gaze at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly. In the end it bites like a snake and poisons like a viper. Your eyes will see strange sights and your mind imagine confusing things. You will be like one sleeping on the high seas, lying on top of the rigging. "They hit me," You will say, "but I'm not hurt! They beat me, but I don't feel it! When will I wake up so I can find another drink?"(Proverbs 23:29~35) Likewise, all addiction leads man to living in a world of illusion and the terrible consequence will be that he or she won't wake up into the reality as if being a perpetual dreamer because behind the scenes, the
evil one, the ruler of this wicked world, Satan is working.
The only antidote against these enemy's strongholds which dominate both man's mind and
body, will be the filling of the Holy Spirit. Two of the hallmarks of the Spirit's filling would be the fruit of the light-'all goodness, righteousness and truth'-and a bubbling sensation of thanksgiving to God the Father for everything, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Spirit-filled Christian life can be illustrated as a life of utter satisfaction and fulfilment, therefore completely unrelated to covetousness. Sin of covetousness does not appear to have been so significantly picked up in connection with Christian's last irresistible sins as it is implied in Scriptures. However, the primary cause of immature Christians' problems seems to be found in here, where their interests tend to be turned. Whenever they work for their own sake and even for the Lord's sake, they do it in competition with other Christians or non-Christians. Their sense of fulfilment and achievement always seems to lie in how it has been weighed in comparison with that of the rivals. Therefore, they come to demand more 'getting' than 'giving', in every phase of life from material things and talents to spiritual gifts, to win the competition until they will be content. In other words, they never learn how to be content with what the Lord has uniquely given to each individual and instead, their covetousness never stops demanding more. They are always grumbling by endless repetition of degenerating logic such as 'If only I were in your place…I can …', 'If only I were given…', 'If only I had money, …job…, status…, intellect…' and so on. This insatiable covetousness was exactly the one that Paul graphically illustrated as characteristics of paganism, in which pagan worshippers expected god or goddess to give more or anything that satisfied their carnal desires-money, sex, power, success and false security based on materials and ideology- at the expense of their devotion, that is, it was none other than seeking their own convenient god, idolatry itself. If so-called Christians are in this condition, it would be no surprise that they never seem to get mature to be a likeness of Christ because they are involved in idolatry. They must get out of this trap with a strong mind-set by putting Christ first, otherwise, they will lose their inheritance in the kingdom of God or at worst, they might lose their salvation as well. The latter may happen even to confessed, baptised Christians in a case of apostasy, which, according to Peter, would be defined as a state of the back-slidden believers, who are worse off at the end than the beginning, because even after knowing the Saviour Jesus Christ and the way of righteousness, they have deliberately turned their backs to the Lord (2Peter 2).
However, another problem remains that covetousness usually lurks in an outwardly good- natured person, especially when it emerges as a Christian's problem. It prefers to take shape such as never aggressive or showy but usually modest and kind, or to put it more precisely, as 'a wolf in sheep's clothing'. "The Rich Young Man" in Matthew 19 is a classical example of a covetous believer, who regarded himself pious, mature, almost perfect and most worthy of 'the Kingdom of God'. Contrary to his expectation was Jesus' implicit conviction of his sins-objection against the first and the second Commandments, i.e., 'sin of idolatry' and the objection to the tenth, i.e., 'sin of covetousness'. Above all, his core problem exposed itself when he shamelessly affirmed that he loved his neighbour as himself in response to Jesus' poignant question. How could he love God and also his neighbour with such a heart of idolatry and of covetousness? He had completely been blinded from seeing even his own state, owing to his carnal desires. Then what will be a lesson from Jesus' implication for us? Before blaming situations, others and God, before demanding…, before grumbling…, before all things to fill ourselves, we should first give thanks to God, our source of life and to make it our habit now, before the day of calamity comes when everything, everyone, even the elect will be shaken and possibly fall, shouldn