Reject All Corrupting Talk

Ephesians 4:29-30 ESV

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

I use the dictionary a lot to help me to understand the meaning of words because I don’t always know what words mean, and sometimes I realize in looking up words that I didn’t have it right or that it was way beyond what I thought. Oh, I knew this word “corrupting” had to do with something that was wrong, that was bad, but I don’t recall that I understood its true meaning before, although I might have and I just forgot, because I am old. 

So what I learned this morning about this word “corrupting” is that it has to do with dishonesty. It has to do with altering and falsifying and manipulating and tampering with and perverting something. It means to cause to become morally depraved. It means to cause errors, to infect, to contaminate. Wow!

“For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 1:4).

Immediately what came to mind is how so many people today are altering and perverting the grace of God and the gospel of Christ and the character of God/Christ in order to tickle itching ears, and in order to appease human flesh, and in order to draw large crowds of people from the world into their “church” gatherings. And they are corrupting the whole meaning of “church” and what our gatherings are to be about, for the same reasons.

And do you know what this word “sensuality” really means? I was surprised when I first read the definition for this word. It means licentiousness, wantonness, outrageous conduct, conduct shocking to public decency, and lewdness. It means violent spite which rejects restraint and indulges in lawless insolence (source: biblehub.com). And lewdness is immorality, obscenity, depravity, dishonesty, wickedness, sin, and full of lust.

And those who do this perverting of God’s grace and who alter and who falsify the truth of the gospel and the character of God/Christ and the character of the church, the body of Christ, do so in order to remove what is offensive to them and to make it something more acceptable and tolerable.

“For they are a rebellious people,

    lying children,

children unwilling to hear

    the instruction of the Lord;

who say to the seers, ‘Do not see,’

    and to the prophets, ‘Do not prophesy to us what is right;

speak to us smooth things,

    prophesy illusions,

leave the way, turn aside from the path,

    let us hear no more about the Holy One of Israel.’” (Isaiah 30:9-11 ESV)

And this is exactly where things are today in abundance here in America. So much of what is called “church” today is not the body of Christ, but they are conglomerates (mixtures, combinations) of people from all walks of life who gather together under the name of “church” and of “Christianity” to be entertained and to listen to watered down and diluted and altered “feel good” messages supposedly coming directly from the Scriptures.

And they are doing this because these “churches” are really businesses of men incorporated under the state being marketed to the people of the world just like any other businesses. And so they are appealing to the felt needs of the people of the world, and they are trying to attract the world to their gatherings, and so they have altered the gospel and the character of God/Christ and the church in order to attract the world and appease flesh.

So what this passage of Scripture in Ephesians 4 is letting us know is that this is not of God, but of the flesh, and that we are not to have corrupting talk come out of our mouths. We are not to be those who speak lies and who alter the truth to make it more palatable to human flesh. For all that grieves the Holy Spirit of God, by whom we should have been sealed for the day of redemption if we are of genuine biblical faith in Jesus Christ.

But we are to be speaking the truth in love to one another (Ephesians 4:11-16) so that we all attain unity of faith in Christ Jesus, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes, and so we all can grow up in every way into Christ who is the head of the true body of Christ to maturity in Christ, as we work together as one.

For Jesus said that if anyone would come after him that he must deny self, take up his cross daily (die daily to sin and to self) and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to our old lives of living in sin and for self, we will lose them for eternity. But if for Jesus’ sake we deny self and we die daily to sin and we follow him in obedience, then we have the hope of eternal life with God. For if we are ashamed of him he will be ashamed of us when he returns.

And he also said that not everyone who says to him, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one DOING the will of God the Father. For many will stand before him in the day of judgment proclaiming what they did in his name, and he is going to say to them, “I never knew you. Depart from me you workers of lawlessness,” because they would not obey the Lord, but they obeyed their flesh, instead.

[Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23; cf. Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14]

So, please read the Scriptures in their context. Please know what all they teach, and please do not rely on small sections of Scriptures taken out of context and altered and falsified and corrupted to build your doctrine of salvation on. And please do not rely on the teachings of humans to be your Bible, for humans are fallible, and we may not get everything right. And so many liars and deceivers abound these days inside “the church.”

My Sheep  

An Original Work / June 24, 2012  

Based off John 10:1-18 NIV

My sheep hear me. They know me.

They listen to my voice and obey.

I call them and lead them.

They know my voice, so they follow me.

They will never follow strangers.

They will run away from them.

The voice of a stranger they know not;

They do not follow him.

So, I tell you the truth that

I am the gate, so you enter in.

Whoever does enter

Will find forgiveness and will be saved.

Nonetheless whoever enters

Not by the gate; other way,

He is the thief and a robber.

Listen not, the sheep to him.

Oh, I am the Good Shepherd,

Who laid his own life down for the sheep.

I know them. They know me.

They will live with me eternally.

The thief only comes to steal and

Kill and to destroy the church.

I have come to give you life that

You may have it to the full… 

They know my voice, so they follow me.

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