Day 24

Be careful of allowing the culture around us to normalise sin and deceive us about its sting.

‘Among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.’ (EPHESIANS 5:3)

We live in a sex-saturated culture, but in many ways this isn’t new. Paul wrote from a context where sexual immorality had been normalised as fully as in our own day. Paul wrote to the Ephesians knowing Ephesus was a city built on the worship of the goddess Diana, the goddess of fertility. This cult was riddled with fertility rights disguised as religious duty, involving temple prostitutes and numerous sexual deviations that satisfied the base lusts of people.

There are those that try to persuade us that the sexual ethics of the New Testament are no longer relevant for Christians today – in fact, they are unreasonable and unnecessary for we can control reproduction much better than they could in ancient days, and we are to celebrate our sexuality. There were those in the church in Ephesus deceiving people in this very area, says Paul, who brought themselves under the wrath of God.

It is not that God is anti-sex, or does not appreciate physical pleasure – after all He created it – but its fulfillment is found in a right context, apart from which it brings only trouble and pain. The evidence of that is all around us.

Lift up any unclean thoughts to God today. Bring them to the light of Christ.