Homily 18 — Ephesians 5, verses 5 to 14

“For this you know for certain, that no sexually immoral person, no impure person, no greedy man, who is an idolater, has any 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.” [a]

In the time of our forefathers too, it seems, there were some who “weakened the hands of the people” (Jeremiah 38, verse 4), and who put into practice what Ezekiel speaks of — or rather, who did the works of the false prophets, who “profaned God among his people for handfuls of barley” (Ezekiel 13, verse 19). And some, I think, do the same even today. For example, when we say that the man who calls his brother a fool will go away into the fire of hell, others say: “What? Is the man who calls his brother a fool to go away into the fire of hell? Impossible!” And again, when we say that “the greedy man is an idolater,” here too they whittle it down and say the expression is an exaggeration. In this way they make light of all the commandments and explain them away.

It was with these people in view, then, that blessed Paul, when he wrote to the Ephesians, spoke as he did: “For this you know, that no sexually immoral person, no impure person, no greedy man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God”; and he adds, “Let no one deceive you with empty words.” Now “empty words” are words that please for a while but are never borne out in fact, because the whole thing is a deception.

“Because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” [d]

Because of “sexual immorality,” he means, because of “greed,” because of “impurity” — or else both because of these things and because of the “deception,” since there are deceivers. “Sons of disobedience”: this is his name for those who are utterly disobedient, those who disobey God.

Verses 7 and 8: “So do not be partners with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.”

Notice how wisely he urges them on: first from the thought of Christ — that you should love one another and do no one harm — and then, on the other side, from the thought of punishment and the fire of hell. “For you were once darkness,” he says, “but now you are light in the Lord.” He says the same in the letter to the Romans: “What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed?” (Romans 6, verse 21). So he reminds them of their former wickedness. That is to say: think of what you once were and what you have now become, and do not run back to your former wickedness, or “insult the grace” of God (Hebrews 10, verse 29).

“You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord!” [e]

It is not by your own virtue, he says, but by the grace of God that this has come to you. That is to say: you too were once deserving of the same punishments, but now you are so no longer. “Walk,” then, “as children of light.” What he means by “children of light” he adds afterward.

Verses 9 and 10: “For the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, testing and approving what is pleasing to the Lord.”

“In all goodness,” he says: this is set against the angry and the bitter. “And righteousness”: this against the greedy. “And truth”: this against false pleasure. Not those former things I was mentioning, he says, but their opposites. “In all”: that is, the fruit of the Spirit ought to be shown in everything. “Testing and approving what is pleasing to the Lord”: so those other things are the marks of a childish and immature mind.

Verses 11, 12 and 13: “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead even reprove them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things they do in secret. But all things, when they are reproved, are brought into the open by the light.”

He had said, “You are light.” Now light reproves by exposing the things that take place in the darkness. So if you, he says, are virtuous and stand out plainly, the wicked will not be able to stay hidden. Just as when a lamp is set out everything is brought to light and the thief cannot get in, so if your light shines, the wicked will be discovered and caught. So it is our duty to expose them. [g]

How, then, does our Lord say, “Do not judge, so that you will not be judged” (Matthew 7, verses 1 and 3)? Paul did not say “judge”; he said “reprove,” that is, correct. And the words “Do not judge, so that you will not be judged” the Lord spoke about very small faults. In fact he added, “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the beam in your own eye?”

But what Paul is saying is something like this. A wound, as long as it is buried and hidden from the outside and spreads beneath the surface, gets no attention. So too sin, as long as it is hidden, as though in darkness, is committed boldly and at complete ease. But as soon as “it is brought into the open,” it becomes “light” — not the sin itself, of course (how could that be?), but the sinner. For when he has been brought out into the light, when he has been warned, when he has repented, when he has obtained pardon, have you not cleared away all his darkness? Have you not healed his wound? Have you not called his unfruitfulness into fruit? Either this is his meaning, or else what I said above: that your life, “brought into the open, is light.” For no one hides a life that is beyond reproach; the things that are hidden are hidden because darkness covers them.

Verse 14: “That is why it says, ‘Wake up, you who sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’” [i]

By the “sleeper” and the “dead” he means the man who is in sin. For he gives off a foul smell like the dead, and he does nothing, like someone asleep; and like a sleeper he sees nothing, but dreams and forms fancies and illusions. Some, in fact, read, “And you will touch Christ,” but others, “And Christ will shine on you,” and it is rather the latter. Leave sin behind, and you will be able to see Christ. “For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light” (John 3, verse 20). So the one who does not do it comes to the light.

Now he is not saying this about unbelievers only. Many of the faithful, no less than unbelievers, hold fast to wickedness — some, in fact, far more. So to these too we must cry out, “Wake up, you who sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” To these it is fitting to say this as well: “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22, verse 32). If, then, he is not the God of the dead, let us live.

Now there are some who say that the words “the greedy man is an idolater” are an exaggeration. But the statement is not an exaggeration; it is true. How, and in what way? Because the greedy man falls away from God, just as the idolater does. And so that you will not think this is a bare assertion, there is a declaration of Christ that says, “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6, verse 24). If, then, it is not possible to serve God and mammon, those who serve mammon have thrown themselves out of the service of God; and those who have denied his rule and serve lifeless gold are plainly idolaters. [j]

But someone will say: “I never made an idol, or set up an altar, or sacrificed sheep, or poured out offerings of wine. No — I came into the church, and lifted up my hands to the only Son of God; I share in the mysteries; I take part in the prayers, and in everything else that is a Christian’s duty. How, then, am I a worshiper of idols?” Yes — and this is the most astonishing thing of all: that when you have had experience of God’s love for humankind, and have “tasted” and “seen that the Lord is gracious” (Psalm 34, verse 8), you should abandon the one who is gracious and take to yourself a cruel tyrant, and should pretend to be serving God while in reality you have put yourself under the hard and galling yoke of greed. You have not yet told me of any duty of your own that you have done, only of your Master’s gifts.

For tell me, I beg you: how do we judge a soldier? Is it when he stands on duty guarding the king, and is fed by him, and is called the king’s own? Or is it when he is looking after his own affairs and interests? When a man pretends to be with the king and to be attending to his interests while he is advancing the enemy’s cause, we declare that to be worse than if he broke away from the king’s service and went over to the enemy.

So you are insulting God just as an idolater does — not with your own mouth alone, but with the tens of thousands of mouths of those you have wronged. Yet you will say: “He is not an idolater.” But surely, whenever they say, “Oh, that Christian, that greedy fellow!” then he is not only committing an outrage himself by his own act; he often forces the people he has wronged to use such words as well. And if they do not use them, the credit belongs to their own reverence.

Do we not see that this is how things are? What else is an idolater? Does not he too worship passions — often not mastering his passions? I mean, for example, when we say that the pagan idolater worships idols, he will say: “No, it is Venus,” or “It is Mars.” And if we ask, Who is this Venus? the more modest among them will say, “It is pleasure.” Or, What is this Mars? “It is anger.” In the same way you worship mammon. If we ask, Who is this mammon? — it is greed, and this is what you are worshiping. [l]

You will say: “I do not worship it.” Why not? Because you do not bow down? No — as things are, you are far more a worshiper in your deeds and practices, for that is the higher kind of worship. To understand this, look at the case of God. Who worship him more truly: those who merely stand up at the prayers, or those who do his will? Clearly the latter. It is the same with the worshipers of mammon: those who do his will are truly his worshipers. Yet those who worship the passions are often free from the passions; you can often see a worshiper of Mars keeping his anger in check. But that is not true of you. You make yourself a slave to your passion.

Yes, but you slay no sheep? No — you slay men, rational souls, some by famine, others by blasphemies. Nothing could be more frenzied than a sacrifice like this. Who ever saw souls sacrificed? How accursed is the altar of greed! When you pass by the altar of an idol here, you will see it reeking with the blood of bulls and goats. But when you pass by the altar of greed, you will see it giving off the dreadful smell of human blood. Stand before it here in this world, and you will see no wings of birds burning, no fumes, no smoke rising, but the bodies of men perishing. For some throw themselves off cliffs, others tie the noose, others drive the dagger through their own throats. Have you seen these cruel and inhuman sacrifices? Would you see some more dreadful still? Then I will show you no longer the bodies of men, but the souls of men slaughtered in the other world. [n]

Yes, for a soul can be slain with the slaughter that belongs to the soul. As there is a death of the body, so there is also a death of the soul. “The soul that sins,” says the prophet, “it will die” (Ezekiel 18, verse 4). But the death of the soul is not like the death of the body; it is far more dreadful. This bodily death separates the soul and the body from each other; it frees the one from many anxieties and toils, and sends the other on to a known dwelling. Then, when the body has in time decayed and crumbled away, it is gathered together again, imperishable, and receives back its own soul. That is what bodily death is like. But the death of the soul is awful and terrifying. For this death, when the separation takes place, does not let the soul go free, as it does with the body, but binds it again to a body that cannot perish and hands it over to the unquenchable fire. This, then, is the death of the soul.

And just as there is a death of the soul, so there is also a slaughter of the soul. What is the slaughter of the body? It is being turned into a corpse, being stripped of the life-giving power that comes from the soul. What is the slaughter of the soul? It is being made a corpse too. And how is the soul made a corpse? Just as the body becomes a corpse when the soul leaves it stripped of its own life-giving power, so the soul becomes a corpse when the Holy Spirit leaves it stripped of his spiritual power.

Such, for the most part, are the slaughters made at the altar of greed. They are not satisfied; they do not stop at human blood. No, the altar of greed is not glutted unless it sacrifices the soul itself as well — unless it receives the souls of both, the one who sacrifices and the one sacrificed. For the one who sacrifices must first be sacrificed himself, and then he sacrifices; and the dead man sacrifices the one who is still living. For when he utters blasphemies, when he curses, when he is provoked, are not these so many incurable wounds of the soul?

You have seen that the expression is no exaggeration. Would you like to hear yet another argument, to teach you how greed is idolatry, and more dreadful than idolatry? Idolaters worship the creatures of God (“for they worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator,” it says; Romans 1, verse 25), but you are worshiping a creature of your own. For God did not make greed; your own insatiable appetite invented it. And look at the madness and folly of it. Those who worship idols also honor the idols they worship, and if anyone speaks of them with disrespect or mockery, they stand up in their defense. But you, as if in a kind of drunken stupor, are worshiping something that is so far from being free of blame that it is actually full of ungodliness. So you outdo even them in wickedness. You can never plead as an excuse that it is no evil. If even they are utterly without excuse, you are far more so — you who are forever finding fault with greed and reviling those who give themselves to it, and who yet serve and obey it yourself.

Let us look, if you like, at where idolatry began. A certain wise man (Wisdom 14, verse 16) tells us that a rich man, stricken with grief at the untimely death of his son and finding no comfort for his sorrow, comforted his grief this way. He made a lifeless image of the dead boy, and by gazing at it constantly he seemed through the image still to have the one who had died. Meanwhile certain flatterers, “whose god was their belly” (Philippians 3, verse 19), paid reverence to the image to do him honor, and carried the custom on into idolatry. So idolatry began from weakness of soul, from a senseless custom, from excess. [o]

But greed is not like this. It does come from weakness of soul, but from a worse weakness. It is not that someone has lost a son, or is looking for comfort in sorrow, or is being drawn on by flatterers. How, then, does it arise? I will tell you. Cain, in greed, cheated God. What ought to have been given to God he kept for himself, and what he should have kept for himself he offered to God. So the evil began with God himself. For if we belong to God, much more do the firstfruits of our possessions. Again, men’s violent passion for women arose from greed: “They saw the daughters of men” (Genesis 6, verse 2), and they rushed headlong into lust. And from there it went on to money. For the wish to have more of this world’s goods than one’s neighbor comes from no other source than “love growing cold.” The wish to have more than one’s share comes from no other source than recklessness, hatred of others, and arrogance toward them.

Look at the earth: how wide it is! How far beyond what we can use is the expanse of the sky and the heavens! It was to put an end to your greed that God stretched the bounds of creation so wide. And are you still grasping, even so? Do you hear that greed is idolatry and not shudder even at that? Do you want to inherit the earth? Then you have no inheritance in heaven. Are you eager to leave an inheritance to others, only to rob yourself of it? Tell me, if someone offered you the power to possess all things, would you refuse? It is in your power now, if you want it.

Some, however, say that it grieves them to hand their inheritance on to others, and they would rather have spent it all themselves than see others become its masters. I do not acquit you of this weakness either, for this too is the mark of a weak soul. But at least let this much be done: in your will, leave Christ as your heir. It would have been your duty to do so in your lifetime, for that would show a right disposition. Still, at any rate, be a little generous, even if it is only out of necessity. For Christ charged us to give to the poor with this purpose: to make us wise in our lifetime, to lead us to despise money, to teach us to look down on earthly things. It is no contempt of money, as you think, to hand it out to this person and that when you are dying and are no longer its master. Then you are no longer giving from what is your own, but from sheer necessity: the thanks go to death, not to you. This is no act of love; it is your loss. Still, let it be done even so; at least then give up your passion.

Consider how many acts of plunder, how many acts of greed, you have committed. Restore everything fourfold. Plead your case before God this way. But some have come to such a pitch of madness and blindness that even then they do not understand their duty, but go on acting in every case as though they were taking pains to make God’s judgment on themselves heavier still. That is why our blessed apostle writes and says, “Walk as children of light.” Now the greedy man, above all others, lives in darkness and spreads deep darkness over everything around him.

“And have no fellowship,” he adds, “with the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead even reprove them; for it is shameful even to speak of the things they do in secret; but all things, when they are reproved, are brought into the open by the light.” Listen, I beg all of you, as many of you as do not want to be hated for nothing, but to be loved. [r]

Someone says: “Why do I need to make myself hated?” A man commits a robbery, and you do not reprove him, but are afraid of his hatred? Though that, to be sure, would not be being hated for nothing. Do you rightly convict him, and still fear his hatred? Convict your brother. Incur his hostility for the sake of the love you owe to Christ, for the sake of the love you owe your brother. Stop him as he is on his way to the pit of destruction. For to admit someone to our table, to treat him with polite words, with greetings and with dinners — these are no great proofs of friendship. No, the things I have mentioned are the gifts we must give our friends, so that we may rescue their souls from the wrath of God. When we see them lying fallen in the furnace of wickedness, let us raise them up.

But they say: “It is no use; he cannot be corrected.” Still, you do your duty, and then you have cleared yourself before God. Do not hide your talent. This is why you have speech; this is why you have a mouth and a tongue: so that you may correct your neighbor. It is only dumb animals without reason that have no care for their neighbor and take no account of others. But you, who call God “Father” and your neighbor “brother” — when you see him committing countless wicked acts, do you value his goodwill above his welfare? No, do not do this, I beg you. There is no proof of friendship so true as never to overlook the sins of our brothers and sisters.

Did you see them at odds? Reconcile them. Did you see them guilty of greed? Check them. Did you see them wronged? Stand up in their defense. It is not on them, it is on yourself that you are conferring the chief benefit. This is why we are friends: so that we may be of use to one another. A man will listen in a different spirit to a friend than to any chance person. A chance person he will perhaps regard with suspicion, and a teacher too in the same way; but not a friend.

“For it is shameful even to speak of the things they do in secret,” he says, “but all things, when they are reproved, are brought into the open by the light.” What does he mean here? This: some sins in this world are done in secret, and some openly; but in the other world it will not be so. Now there is no one who is not aware of some sin in himself. That is why he says, “But all things, when they are reproved, are brought into the open by the light.” What then? Someone will ask: “Is this, again, said about idolatry?” It is not; the argument is about our life and our sins. “For everything that is brought into the open,” he says, “is light.” So, I beg you, never be slow to reprove, and never be displeased at being reproved. As long as anything is carried on in the dark, it is carried on with greater ease; but when it has many witnesses to what is done, it is brought to light. By all means, then, let us do all we can to drive out the deadness in our brothers and sisters, to scatter the darkness, and to draw to ourselves the “Sun of righteousness.” [s]

For if there are many shining lights, the path of virtue will be easy for them, and those who are in darkness will be more easily found out, as the light is held out and puts the darkness to flight. But if it is the other way around, there is reason to fear that, as the thick mist of darkness and sin overpowers the light and destroys its clearness, those shining lights themselves may be put out. So let us be ready to help one another, so that all of us together may offer up praise and glory to God, who loves humankind, by the grace and love for humankind of his only Son, with whom be glory, strength and honor to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, now and forever and ever. Amen.