Oculi, the Third Sunday in Lent 2023

Ephesians 5:1-9

March 12, 2023

Immanuel Ev.-Lutheran Church, Alexandria, Virginia. Photo: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod/Eric Lunsford

There is a spiritual realm. There are demonic powers. And if our eyes were opened, we would see it at work in our world, with terrifying intensity.

Demons harm people. In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns about the danger of people being freed from the demonic returning to its servitude, because—the image goes—the house was not furnished. There was no change.

Jesus calls on all of us to change. Today God’s Word tells us we change by imitating the good. We imitate, mimic God.

Be therefore mimics of God, as children who are beloved.

Note the order in the epistle. You are children loved by God—God, as Father, bestows His love; in response, you walk in love. Walk is the Bible’s term for how you conduct yourself, how you believe and act. Believing and acting necessarily belong together. “Walk in newness of life,” St. Paul says to the baptized in Rom. 6. Conversely, St. John says, “He who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness” [1Jn. 2.11].

So we don’t miss the point, the admonition for us to walk in love has both the Father’s love beforehand, and is immediately followed by the active, self-giving love of Jesus: “Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” This is OT liturgical language; the temple offerings were described as fragrant or sweet-smelling both because of the food being prepared, and the incense that filled the air. But chiefly it was intended to say that God was pleased with man. The offering of His life on the cross is the once-for-all sacrifice; the Father is pleased with His Son, and in Him, the Father is pleased with mankind, with us.

So now, we’re called to mimic, imitate that love, not by dying on a cross, but by dying to self and living for our neighbors. That’s the exhortation that’s at the heart of God’s Word for us in today’s Epistle.

“But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.” Sexual immorality is πορνεία, which in English has become a narrow term for certain images. The NT world has lots of different terms for types of adultery and various carnal sins, but πορνεία covers the whole group of every unlawful action in the category of the sixth commandment.

When Jesus issues a categorical condemnation of divorce, He is showing that marriage is a fundamentally inviolable union, since, as one scholar puts it, “the marital bond of husband to wife is the experience of an act of God that extends into physical life as well” [Lohmeyer, in EDNT p138]. In other words, God instituted marriage for specific purposes, and when we distort or go outside His created parameters, it harms us. This is revealed when the third term in this set seems to come out of left field: you have immorality, impurity, covetousness. Immorality and impurity, we can see how those go together. Covetousness we’re used to thinking of in this broad overarching category of desire. But its use here, with immorality and impurity, shows the problem with looking outside of marriage. You desire what God has not given you, and so you express dissatisfaction with God Himself.

A few verses later, Paul repeats the set but adds a fourth term: “everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater).” To engage in πορνεία is to make yourself impure; to covet is to say “I desire what God has not given to me,” and so that thing becomes what you serve. It’s your idol. What you long for, what you gaze upon, is what you worship.

We open ourselves up to this by small steps that seem relatively benign. But the Word of God tells us that even those small things are off limits: “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving is the opposite of coveting. Instead of longing for what God has withheld, we are to give thanks for what He has given, and find joy and delight there.

Now we live in a relatively universalistic age. Universalism is the belief that everybody goes to “a better place.” “All have won and all must have prizes.” The teaching of Jesus is not that. The way to life is narrow, and there are few who find it. This should cause us to tremble. God’s Word warns us that practicing immorality will result in judgment: “For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.”

This is a serious matter. We all need to repent. In John 13, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, and when Peter resists, Jesus tells him, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with Me.’ That same term shows up in the next verse of the Epistle: “Therefore do not become partners with them.” Here it’s translated partners. It means to have a share in something, like a percentage of a business, or shares of stock. This is our choice: receive a share with and in Christ, or become partners, go into business with the sons of disobedience. Those are your two options.

Today Paul is telling the Ephesians, ‘Don’t go back. You used to be like that, but that’s not who you are anymore.’ “Do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.” This contrast between darkness and light means there’s been a change of lordship in your life. The things of darkness used to hold sway over you, but now things are different. You have a new Lord. You have been illumined. Now you walk in the light.

The term darkness is not always used this way, but it can be used for the powers of darkness, i.e., the demonic. In the next chapter of Ephesians, Paul uses it in exactly that way, suggesting that this is also the meaning here in the section assigned for the day. Paul writes, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” [6.11f].

This fight against the malign forces cannot be won alone. The Sundays in Lent proclaim to us Jesus as victor over the demons. First, Jesus rejects the devil’s temptations after His forty-day fast. Then last Sunday, Jesus freed the little girl who was harassed and afflicted by the powers of evil. And now today, Jesus casts out demons and admonishes us to furnish our house against their return.

There is no elaborate or mysterious method to this. The devil is turned away by the Name of Jesus, the Word of Jesus, the Image of Jesus, and the Body and Blood of Jesus. You drive evil away from your home, your person, and your family by making the sign of the cross and speaking the Holy Name. Read the Bible aloud, put up a crucifix, receive the blessed Sacrament. These things are our armor against evil, and our joy even in dark times. Do not be partakers with evil. Flee from demonic things. Walk as God called you: a holy person, a saint.

To Jesus, who drives away the enemy, be all glory in the church now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.