Instead

“Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.” Ephesians 4:32

I grew up riding horses. If you have ever been around horses, especially hot lathery horses that have just come in from a summer’s ride, you know that horses can have a pungent odor. After a trail ride with my friends, my mother would direct me straight to the bathroom, “You smell like a horse,” She would say, “Go take off those stinky clothes and put on something clean before you come to dinner.” Although the smell was unnoticeable to me, I would do as she asked.

Paul is writing this letter to the first-century church in the city of Ephesus. Ephesus was not a very nice city. Though an extremely popular city, Ephesus was also extremely immoral. It was a city of criminals and home to the Temple of Diana, also known as Artemis - the goddess of fertility. It was likely that many of the new believers in Ephesus had spent a lot of time around the pungent odor of sin found in their culture. The immoral conduct which was so commonplace may have seemed unnoticeable to them.

Sometimes we are so engrossed in our culture that we begin to look and act like the world around us, but Paul encourages us to throw off our old sinful nature and to put on our new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy. We are to put off bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, slander, and evil behavior. “Instead,” Paul writes, “be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.”

Now might be a good time to “throw off” the news, television, or social media and “put on” some worship. Immerse yourself in a little prayer and the Word of God. Who knows? We might just smell like the world and not even know it.