BH Bulletin - Wednesday 30 June 2021

Thought for the Day by Rich Arnold
​(Youth and Families Minister Holy Cross Church)

Ephesians 5:3-14 
 
It’s not that bad, surely? 
It’s Ok just to look, isn’t it?  
A bit of flirting is pretty harmless, right? 
One man and one woman in marriage- that’s a bit outdated, isn’t it? 
Surely if God is a God of love, then any loving relationship can’t be wrong? 
If I’m happy and not hurting anyone, that must be a good thing, yes?  
 
These are the kinds of things our culture will say to us to ‘deceive us with empty words’ (v6).  
 
Having started to describe what putting on our new self in Christ looks like, Paul now focusses on sexual immorality.  Whereas he has written a line or two on various sins, he now spends a whole paragraph on the need for Christians to be sexually pure. It’s clearly really serious – it has no place in the family of God (v3b + 4b); persisting unrepentantly in it means you’re excluded from the kingdom because you’re worshiping your desires rather than God (v5b); and it brings God’s wrath (v6b).  We must, therefore, not join in with this (v7) and having nothing to do with it (v11).   
 
We are all too familiar with how our sexualised culture has moved so very far away from the sexual ethic revealed in the bible.  Sex is a god for many and any restraint we show in pursuing our desires has become ridiculous and even offensive.  Many in their ignorance are pushing all sorts of sexual agendas, whilst belittling the traditional Christian view.  But this isn’t anything new.  It was the same in Ephesus.  Back then, God’s people were in danger of listening to the voices of the sexualised culture around them.  We are too. 
 
Yet, what an opportunity we have to be different!  And that’s Paul’s point.   Wonderfully, we have been changed from darkness to children of light (v8).  This change isn’t something we have done- only Christ can bring us into the light, or as Paul also puts it, raise us from the dead (v14).  The darkness is the stuff of our old self, particularly in regards to sexual sin.  Once we were much like everyone else in how we think about and treat sex.  The light is God’s new way for us- the way of goodness, righteousness and truth which pleases him (v9+10).  So now we are light, we are to live as light, but not as some effort on our own but because God has transformed us.  Wonderfully, as do that we will shine out into a dark world, exposing the sin of our culture (v13-14).   
 
As those around you are flirting in the office or telling dirty jokes or watching pornography or being smutty or living promiscuously or committing adultery, you get to shine into that darkness as you think, speak and act differently.  Just as light makes something visible, the gospel of Christ shining out in your life will contrast to the darkness around you and expose it for what it is.  In a world which plays so loosely with sex, refusing to compromise in this area and sticking instead to the biblical sexual ethic will mean people take notice, and some will not just see the light but come into it themselves.   
 
We don’t retreat from the darkness, but we do live differently to it.  Pray that as you do that, Christ’s light will shine on you and out into the world. 

---

---

Mission Partner News

Katie Bennett 

2021-06-19_katie_bennett_update.pdf
File Size:	777 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

---

---

Situations Vacant

Schools Worker/Family Worker
with St Peter's Blatchington Mill and Off the Fence
https://www.christianjobs.co.uk/jobs/fence/2505​

---