Daily Bread - NOV/10/07
Ephesians 5:3 - But fornication and all impurity or greediness shall not be named once among you as proper holy ones.

There are three acts of iniquity named here: fornication (pornea), impurity (akatharsia) and the drive to have more (pleonexia). Once again, God defines the acts of sin so that we may be careful not to participate with these things that belong to the demonic and cursed realm (2 Peter 2:14). The acts of all impurity may be considered a very broad category of sin. This Greek word was first used in the New Testament by Jesus to compare the spiritual condition of the religious leaders to the decaying remains of a dead person inside of a tomb (Matthew 23:27). This Greek word is derived from 'akathartos', which means 'unclean' in a ceremonial sense and in a moral sense of thought and conduct. There is a corruption and decay that is found in spiritual impurity. It is a disease that will ultimately destroy everything that is good and that pertains to life.

The acts of impurity refer to every immoral act that man can commit. Paul used this word to refer to the acts that God gave men over to defile their bodies through practices of homosexuality and every type of destructive lust (Romans 1:24-27). Paul also uses it as a means to communicate the kinds of deeds that people do who are alienated from the life of God, through the hardness of their hearts (Ephesians 4:18- 19). The good news however is that as the saints of God we have received the divine nature, given to us by the Spirit of God and have "escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (2 Peter 1:4).

Be blessed,

Pastor Mark Spitsbergen