Light And Darkness

To be morally pure, we must fight for purity by guarding our thought life and restricting the kinds of media we expose ourselves to. I recommend Covenant Eyes for internet accountability, which I use with my four sons-in-law to hold each of us accountable. Speaking of purity, I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a 90-year-old man many years ago. He was lamenting his struggle with lust and wondered why he was still having to deal with it. This shows it is a life-long battle.

If you’re dating right now, 1 Timothy 5:1-2 gives some parameters to put into practice. Make sure you’re treating “younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.”

Three sins of speech are also spelled out in verse 4: “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.” Paul mentions three ways our tongues can trip us up.

• Filthiness. This refers to obscene talk or shameful conduct, often considered to be crude or dirty language. It comes from the same root word as “disgraced.”

• Foolish talk. We get our word “moron” from this Greek word and speaks of empty or vain language. It’s the idea of talking without saying anything. Proverbs 17:28: “Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.” Or, as Mark Twain said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” In the Bible, the fool is not someone who is mentally deficient but rather someone who is morally deficient.

• Crude joking. A crude joke is often witty, but vulgar. Hosts of award shows and late-night comedians traffic in this kind of language by twisting almost everything into innuendo or outright obscenity.

These kinds of sins “are out of place,” meaning, they are “unseemly.” I was talking to some friends from another state this week. The wife told me how she responded when she heard a fellow believer use a vulgar curse word. This is what she said to her friend, “If you’re going to talk like that, I can’t continue our conversation.”

It’s always dangerous to joke about sin. Surprisingly, becoming a thankful person is a way to stop sinning sexually and with our speech. Notice how verse 4 ends: “…but instead let there be thanksgiving.” Actually, that makes sense, because when we think we’re entitled to something, or believe life is all about us, we can end up doing what we want sexually and saying whatever we want to say.

One pastor writes, “To be thankful, you must be in submission to God’s sovereignty over detail of your life. If you’re grumbling or complaining, you’re really saying that you know what’s best for you better than God does…Satan tempted Eve by getting her to doubt God’s goodness in withholding forbidden fruit from her.”

Thankfulness is the appropriate response to the good gifts of God and all He has given us by His grace. One commentator writes, “If sin depreciates, love appreciates all that is holy, righteous, and good.”