Ephesians 5:18-21

Envision with me a group of fifty people who meet up once a week or more and come from all walks of life. White collar/blue collar, woman/man, wealthy/working class, all kinds of cultures, it makes no difference. They drop their façade and talk to each other,  welcoming each other with open arms. They laugh, listen, share their sorrows, talk some more, and even sing sometimes. They don’t watch the clock very well, but when they eventually go home, they look forward to coming back again soon to do it all over again.

Maybe you think I’m speaking about a church, or maybe about a pub or a bar, since there’s a sense in which both these scenarios have common features. Both are a venue for people to gather on a regular basis from all walks of life, and they share thoughts and feelings openly, at least in theory. Still, there’s a major difference between them (though more than one for sure). One relies on the influence of intoxicating drinks and the other depends on the Holy Spirit.

View Ephesians 5:18-21 in its immediate context.

First, Paul is speaking about walking in a wise, skillful way, living with our eyes wide open to God’s truth, making good decisions that use our time well. What he says here is the most immediate way that he mentions for using our time in a way that pleases the Lord.

Second, Paul is alluding to how nonbelievers make choices in moral darkness, wasting time and acting foolishly. He is contrasting that with how we as believers should make choices that are illuminated by Christ and that make good use of our time.

Third, Paul is speaking to believers in a corporate, group sense. He is talking about what we should do when we gather together. He assumes, of course, that we are gathering together as a church, that we are not just a church in theory, but in practice. This is the theme of the entire letter to the Ephesians – the glory of God through the church. Chapter 4 shows how the church is like many different body parts assembled into one healthy, functioning body. Also, Paul speaks to the church with collective plurals; when you see you, think of the Southern word ya’ll for “you all.” Furthermore, he twice uses the reciprocal pronoun ἀλλήλων, which means “one another” or “each other.” So clearly, Paul is describing how we should behave when we gather together as a church.

In summary, then, we see that in Eph 5:18-21, Paul is telling us that gathering together as a church in person, not in theory, is wise, is a good use of time, and is what pleases the Lord – its what he expects us to do. Gathering together as a church is far more important than we realize. It’s not just something we do when it’s convenient. It’s what we do to be wise, to use our time wisely, and to please our Lord.

Let’s also notice that Paul also refers to what unsaved people do together – they drink lots of alcohol. It’s how they socialize. It’s what they do when they hang out together. When they finish the work week, they gather at bars and drink. They drink at parties, reunions, weddings, ballgames, at every chance they get when they gather together. They count on drinking to make their gatherings meaningful and enjoyable.

Believers run to the church not the pubs.

As God’s children, the church, not the bar, is the center of discretionary time. Nonbelievers hang out at the pub; believers hang out at church. Fools hang out with drinking buddies; wise people hang out with the members of their church, for fellowship and worship. In fact, nonbelievers who knew us before we came to Christ will think it’s strange that we don’t go out partying with them anymore (1 Pet 4:2-4).

Paul is also pushing back at the ways drunkenness permeated pagan religious practices. For instance, the worship of the god Dionysus (or Bacchus, the god of wine) was known for its drunkenness. Once intoxicated, worshipers would engage in all sorts of degrading, immoral behavior, dancing and singing in wild revelry. Some even believed that increased drunkenness brought greater spiritual enlightenment, though it actually exposed them to ecstatic delusions and demonic intrusion. Perhaps this is why alcohol is also called spirits.

Even today, alcohol features prominently in gatherings of other religions, from Catholicism to Buddhism. Many of the Ephesian believers had been saved from such a background, so Paul warned that intoxication (or getting drunk) was not the Lord’s will for the church. With this backdrop, we can make two important observations before moving on:

First, the church is our new place of belonging, acceptance, confession, and open conversation. This idea of “I don’t need to go to church, I can be a Christian at home,” is fine as far as it goes, since we enjoy a personal relationship with God, but this idea doesn’t go far enough. We can’t live a healthy, obedient, God-glorifying life without regularly attending, worshipping, fellowshipping, and serving as a church. If we attempt to do so, we’ll be like amputated body parts or  orphaned children.

Second, church gatherings should have a distinctly different feel than a night at the pub. This difference is more profound than a change of venue or location. It has to do with the underlying basis for the gathering in the first place. When nonbelievers gather, they rely on in the influence of impersonal, controlling substances like alcohol, drugs, and so on to relax their minds and get them talking. As believers, we rely on the divine person of the Holy Spirit. We are aware of his presence and submit to his influence.

When we drink too much alcohol, it controls our minds.

Technically speaking, Paul is not banning all consumption of alcohol here. If he were, then he would be contradicting himself what he would later tell Timothy, who was a pastor of this very church. In 1 Tim 5:23, he told him to “drink a little wine” to help improve some stomach ailments and other chronic health issues that he suffered from. So, the issue here is not whether or not alcohol is inherently wrong. The issue is drinking too much.

Scientific studies show how alcohol passes into our brain cells. If we drink too much, this dynamic eventually leads to slurred speech, poor decisions, delayed reflexes, decreased brain activity, mindless talk, reduced memory, blurry vision, confusion, dehydration, and more (see here). Not to mention, the morning afterwards becomes much more difficult.

With the word debauchery (dissipation), Paul describes behavior that’s wasteful and wicked. He refers to the reckless, immoral behavior of people who are drunk. It also describes how drunk people waste time and money. They stay out later than they planned, spend far more money than they intended, do things that are worse than they realized at the moment in their drunken state.

This wasteful, wicked living is a normal part of how nonbelievers socialize, and even how they worship in some religions. Yet Paul is clear that when we gather as believers for fellowship and worship, drunkenness and it’s bad effects should have no part in what we do. We should remain in full control of our minds, walking in the light with our eyes wide open and our hearts in full submission to the Lord.

We should be filled with the Spirit, not drunk with wine.

Contrary to some false and popular teachings, being “filled with the Spirit” is not an ecstatic experience like a “spiritual high,” or something like that. It does not consist of rolling on the floor, babbling in a strange language, crying like a baby, or having a cold shiver go through your spine. These kinds of experience have more in common with being drunk than being filled with the Spirit.

To understand what it means to be filled with the Spirit, we must remind ourselves that the Spirit is a divine person, the third person of the Godhead. He is God, not just a force from God. So, unlike nonbelievers who submit to a lifeless, controlling substance like alcohol, we submit to a perfect, personal being who is God himself.

We have already learned some things about the Holy Spirit in this letter. He seals us permanently and personally until the day we enter God’s eternal kingdom (Eph 1:13). Also, we may grieve him (Eph 4:30). The Holy Spirit has divine and personal feelings, so when we say or do things contrary to God’s holy, righteous nature, the Holy Spirit experiences sorrow, grief, and distress – he winces, you might say.

To “be filled with the Spirit” is to acknowledge the Spirit as a divine person and yield to his influence in our lives. To “be filled” is a passive idea, something we allow to happen to us, not something we do to ourselves. The Spirit does it as we yield ourselves to him.

This is also a continual experience. “Be filled” is a word (present tense, linear) that indicates an ongoing activity, not a one-time event. So this is not something we hope happens to us at church one time. It’s not a special experience we hope will happen, as when lighting strikes a barn or an ecstatic feeling overtakes our body. We should experience it (or allow it to happen) every time we gather for worship and fellowship. It should happen every Sunday (or Wednesday, etc.) we gather as a church. It should be our experience all the time as a church, not sometimes.

As a church, we are God’s temple.

To understand this concept, we should consider how Paul described the church earlier in this letter, “In whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Eph 2:22). In a letter to the church at Corinth, Paul taught that our individual bodies are “the temple of God” in whom the Spirit of God dwells (1 Cor 3:16–17; 2 Cor 6:16), but here he speaks of the gathered church in Ephesus collectively as the temple of God.

By referring to the church this way, Paul reminded the Ephesians that they didn’t need a grand, imposing edifice like the Temple of Diana to be a viable place of worship. They themselves, whenever they assembled, were God’s temple thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit. This also calls to mind how Old Testament (OT) prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel described the Shekinah glory of God filling the heavenly Temple, which is a parallel concept to the Spirit of God (Isa 6:1; Ezek 43:5; 44:4).[1]

With this backdrop of the Spirit of God filling the heavenly temple with God’s presence, we can envision what it means for the Holy Spirit to fill our church gatherings today. It’s not a physical, visible manifestation we seek. It’s a corporate recognition – each member individually, yet all together – that God’s Spirit is present with us, and that we should submit ourselves to his guidance, being aware of his presence and sensitive to his will.

Spirit filling coincides with Scripture filling.

A parallel passage appears in a sister letter written by Paul and delivered to the neighboring city of Colosse. He said, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,” which is a reference to the Scriptures (Col 3:16). And we know the Scriptures are given to us through by the Holy Spirit (2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:21). So, when we gather as believers, we don’t rely on alcohol to create the experience we seek. We rely upon the Spirit himself, acknowledging his presence among us and focusing intently on the truths of His Word.

Can we see how this is a wise thing to do? Can we see how it is an excellent way to “redeem the time” in this wicked world? Can we see how it is the Lord’s will and will help us understand his will more clearly? What’s more, can we see how this is a far better thing to do than gathering in the bars on the weekend to drink our sorrows away?

So, being “filled with the Spirit” is an invisible thing, with no flashes of light or puffs of smoke to observe. That being the case, how can we know (or see) that it’s happening, that we are truly being “filled with the Spirit” and experiencing this filling together?

Paul gives three results of being filled with the Spirit.

Here are three things that happen: we sing, we say thank you, and we submit. Notice how different these results are from what teachers in the so-called Charismatic movement promote (tongues, healings, laughter, revelations, and so on).

We sing songs to each other and to the Lord.

What is this singing like? The word speaking shows that we sing with our lips in a verbalized way. This means our singing will be audible, we can hear each other doing it. It also means that we sing words – that our songs have lyrics. I know this sounds rather obvious but let me suggest that our music as a church should be predominantly vocal, not instrumental. Our singing should focus on words that exalt and explain God’s truth rather than sounds that achieve a certain mood. We know that instruments are important in worship because many of the psalms give clear instructions to use instruments. But instrumental worship alone (without lyrics of any kind) have limited value. When we worship together as a church – focus on the words by singing the words.

To one another shows that this singing is what we do together, not when we’re alone at home. This is a public, not a private, command. It also isn’t something for talented vocalists and musicians alone. It’s something we’re all supposed to do. Since this is the “will of the Lord” for each one of us and all of us together, then let me urge us to do it. If all we can do during corporate worship is listen to other people sing or mumble a few words here and there, then we’re not submitting to the Lord and yielding to the Spirit.

The words singing and making melody refer specifically to religious songs with a God-focused, worship-focused quality. This means that these songs are not the kind of music that’s focused on artistic, cultural, or individualistic expression, nor are they focused on entertainment. There’s a place for entertaining music, but not in worship. These are the kind of songs we can envision being sung before God’s heavenly throne. Such songs are mentioned in Revelation to describe how angelic creatures praise God in heavenly places (Rev 5:9-10; 14:3) and even how Moses (in the OT) praised God (Rev 15:3-4).

“They sang a new song, saying: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for you were slain, and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth.’” (Rev 5:9-10)

“They sang as it were a new song before the throne, before the four living creatures, and the elders; and no one could learn that song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who were redeemed from the earth.” (Rev 14:3)

“They sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying: ‘Great and marvelous are your works, Lord God Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the saints! Who shall not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. For all nations shall come and worship before you, for your judgments have been manifested.’” (Rev 15:3-4)

The words psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs refer to music that’s appropriate for church worship. This doesn’t mean all other music is automatically bad, though to be sure, some music is out of place for Christians at all times, esp. music that speaks of immoral, foolish, demonic, and violent behavior.

Psalms refers to OT songs written by David, Moses, Asaph, and more, especially from the book of Psalms. Hymns refers to songs written by Christians to help us recite, remember, and meditate on important doctrinal truths. Spiritual songs refer to music that’s spiritual in nature, reflecting an awareness of God, an understanding of Scripture, and an appreciation for what God is doing in our lives, whether through trials or triumphs, giving testimony to God for his greatness and his goodness.

Making melody in your heart refers to the genuineness of our songs. Just because we sing together as a church doesn’t mean we’re being filled with the Spirit. After all, it’s possible to mouth the words and go through the motions! Yet, God doesn’t want ritual singing, he wants genuine praise. “Spirit filled” congregational singing happens when we sing from the overflow of our hearts, when what we’re singing on the outside really matters to us on the inside. Spirit-filled singing tunes in to the words of our songs with laser-like focus, treasures their meaning, and responds in heartfelt worship.

To the Lord – this important phrase reminds us that when we sing together as a church, we don’t sing for our personal enjoyment, nor should we sing mindlessly for the sheer experience of doing so. We have a twofold audience, even in congregational singing. We sing to one another, as I’ve already mentioned – that’s our visible, horizontal audience. Yet most importantly, we sing to the Lord – that’s our invisible, vertical audience. For us, congregational singing should be just as though we are responding to the Shekinah glory of God filling the OT Temple or even more, to the awesome presence of God filling the heavenly Temple that’s above. When we sing together, we should sing with an acute awareness that God is there, listening to our songs and receiving our worship.

We say thank you to God.

Paul says that when we’re filled with the Spirit in our gatherings as a church, we will be “giving thanks.” This word speaks of “gratitude for benefits or blessings” from God.

Paul expands the range of our thanksgiving quite broadly when he says always and for all things. So, we don’t just express our gratitude to God during a Thanksgiving service in November, or during special services devoted to that purpose. Instead, we should make thanksgiving a regular part of our church gatherings on a weekly basis.

We should also do this for all things, for the difficult trials as well as the encouraging triumphs, the answers to prayer and the delays in God’s answers. What’s more, we should not only thank God for the “big” things, but the “small” things, too. If God heals you from cancer, you should definitely express your thanks for that fact to the church. Yet what if a $20 bill blew across your path on the sidewalk this week and was just what you needed at the moment? You should thank him for that as well. When someone gives a testimony of something “small” or “mundane,” don’t role your eyes internally. Thank God with them and ask yourself, “What can I thank God for this past week, too?”

Here at Faith Baptist, we endeavor to do this by passing the mic around to those with a testimony to share. When we do this, we encourage you to share testimonies of praise to God for truths from his Word, instances of his provision and protection, answers to prayer, witnessing opportunities, and so on. During some gatherings, this is a special moment. On some occasions, we even have to end the testimony time to move on to the rest of the service! But at other times, this testimony time is less than inspiring. Few or no people speak. When this happens, are we filled with the Spirit? Are we thankful for nothing?

This is often an indication that we’re more aware of ourselves and other things than of the Spirit’s influence and God’s involvement in our lives. Stop using the excuse, “I’m a shy person” or the list of many other similar excuses that come to our minds. People who are drunk say all sorts of things they wouldn’t normally say – just not good things. People who are filled with the Spirit say things they wouldn’t normally say, too. They give thanks to God even though they’re normally quiet and shy and don’t like talking in public. Testimony time at Faith Baptist isn’t just for the handful of people who like doing that. It’s for us all.

There’s two more ways that we “give thanks to God” as well. We do this through (1) public prayers and (2) fellowship conversations. Just as we should allow ourselves to be “filled with the Spirit” to give testimonies of thanksgiving to the church, so we should yield to the Spirit by praying aloud when we have opportunity to do so during church prayer meetings.

We should also take note of whether we express gratitude to God for all kinds of things in the conversations we have with each other. Are our conversations marked by critical comments, pessimism, arrogant statements, self-centered talk, and expressions of fear, anxiety, and stress? Or are they laced with gratitude and thanksgiving?

Sit down at a local bar (or don’t!) and listen to what people are saying. They’re swearing at God, cussing out their ex, disrespecting their boss and complaining about every bad experience under the sun. Yet if you sit down as a bystander before and after worship services, Bible studies, and prayer meetings at Faith Baptist (and during fellowship meals), what do you hear? Are we doing a lot of “giving thanks” to God?

We submit to one another.

When we’re filled with the Spirit as a church (not drunk like a crowd at a bar), one more thing happens as we yield to the influence of the Spirit – we submit to each other.

Submit means “to take a subordinate position” or “defer to the other person” or “treat the other person as more important than myself.” Here’s how that happens in a church gathering. When a church gathers together, yielded to the Holy Spirit:

• Wealthy members treat less-wealthy members as equal brothers and sisters in Christ.
• One ethnic group treats other groups with humility and respect.
• Men and women, parents and children serve and interact together with harmony.

In this kind of church gathering, there is no jockeying for prominence or position. Participants listen when other people speak rather than spilling out whatever’s on our minds. We come expecting to serve one another rather than expecting to be served.

Church gatherings are a laboratory for humility. How we behave towards one another at church is the laboratory we need to discover how to treat one another in our families and places of employment. I see the way another godly husband treats his wife (or wife treats her husband). I see the way that parents and children respond to each other. I see the way that wealthy and poor, white collar and blue collar, etc. treat each other with equality and it teaches and encourages me to do that outside the church the rest of the week.

This final result of being “filled with the Spirit” is an important one because it’s the bridge to the rest of this chapter. It’s like the start of a thread that runs through the rest of the chapter, a theme that will reemerge multiple times later on. In upcoming teaching, Paul is going to talk about three types of relationships outside church that should follow this principle closely. Wives should submit to their husbands, children to their parents, servants to their masters.

We’ll speak more about these relationships in later messages. But let’s acknowledge now  what’s obvious in all three situations, that being submissive is hard. It’s hard, even counterintuitive, to yield to the husband, the parent, or the master in our lives. It feels limiting, restrictive, and uncomfortable. The same is true as members of a church.

We’ll acknowledge this struggle as we make our way through the rest of this letter, but for now, let’s make some important observations about submission from Eph 5:21.

Christlike submission grows in the laboratory of the church.

See how Paul orders his teaching? Throughout Eph 1-3, he laid a doctrinal foundation that shows the importance of the church, what it is and why it’s special. In Eph 4-5, he shows us how we are to behave as the church by allowing the doctrinal truths of Eph 1-3 to reshape our thinking and transform our living. This transformation happens as we (1) know the truth of Christ embraced in our hearts, (2) see the truth of Christ modeled in the church, and (3) allow what we know and see of Christ to flow into our personal lives outside the church. So, our relationship with Christ informs and influences our church relationships, and our church relationships impact and influence our other relationships.

In an ideal world, we should be able to gather as a church and witness submissive relationships there. We should see members – including those with leadership roles – exhibiting a submissive spirit towards one another. Then what we experience and observe at church, not just what we hear (in teaching, in song, in conversation, etc.) should show us what submissive relationships look like, how they work, and that they are possible.

Also note that we should submit to “one another.” This doesn’t mean we should go around telling each other what to do, nor does it mean we should come to church expecting to be served. We don’t come to church for other people to submit to us, we come expecting to submit to others. When we gather, we should leave self at the door. When we yield to the Holy Spirit, he produces an attitude of self-denial and true concern for the needs of others.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be like an airport and have a full body, um – full heart, scanner, that detects if we’re coming in with an “others first” or “me first” mentality? If anyone comes in with a “me first” mentality, we could take that away before they come in, like airport security confiscates dangerous objects and liquids at the airport.

We don’t have this option, so we have to assume that we’re all coming to church with an “others first” mentality. This mentality listens to others rather than talks over them. It lets others go first in line at a meal and take the thing you wanted to eat for themselves. It allows yourself to be inconvenienced so that others can have a better situation.

How should this affect the decisions we make as a church? This attitude of submission and self-denial is relevant today. We have to deny ourselves by coming to church at 11 a.m. or 1 p.m., wearing masks or not wearing them (or accepting that others will not), and so on. It’s times like these that test whether we’re truly filled with the Spirit.

We must also practice submission “in the fear of God” (or as other translations say, “the fear of Christ”). The idea here is that we should submit to one another and deny our own selves in respect for what God has shown us and done for us through Christ.

We submit to one another out of respect for Christ’s humiliation.

This is the heart and soul of Christianity, the centerpiece of our faith and our ultimate example. Christ said, “Even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Our Lord – he is the LORD after all – chose to become a servant to us all, so if that’s our God, maker, leader, and Savior’s mentality, then we should fully embrace that mentality for ourselves. Right?

Sadly, and far too often, churches are a platform for ugly displays of arrogance, assertiveness, division, and selfishness. Members argue and assert themselves over the voices and opinions of others and choose to distrust the decisions of those who make them. What’s more, people who make decisions often make them without considering the thoughts and feelings of others.

The key here is to meditate a lot on Christ’s example of humility. He served and suffered for us all, putting our own needs before his own, and most importantly, putting the will of the Father over his own. If Satan can’t divide our church through false doctrine and obvious sin, he’ll attempt to do so through an unsubmissive, uncooperative, me-first mindset – which is contrary to the doctrine of Christ and the nature of the church.

Let’s take these truths to heart but consciously acknowledging the Holy Spirit when we gather for worship as a church. Let’s respond to him by submitting to the truths of His Word in Scripture. Let’s depend on him then to sing from our hearts, say thank you out loud, and submit to one another in humble service. When we gather together as a church – which is vitally important to do – we must acknowledge God’s presence among us submit wholeheartedly to his will. This is the mark of a Spirit-filled church that will equip us to live out Christ’s love in the other relationships of our lives.

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[1] Clinton E. Arnold, Ephesians, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 350.