Ephesians 5:7

"So do not associate or be sharers with them." Ephesians 5:7

Unlike being unloving... the idea here, is simply to just keep it simple around the people we have been saved out from among. To imply that we should cross the street in order to avoid them... turn our noses... be rude, conflicts with other scriptures. For we are to love them, but we have been set "apart" from those whom refuse to turn away from "sin". So keep the salutation simple, bless them, and get on with what the Lord has for you to do, apart from them. Now, I keep pulling the threads of earlier truths through these verses we read now, out of obedience, and in this verse we must be reminded of our dependence on the Holy Spirit to achieve this.

How can you be sure whom not to associate or be sharers with on your own intelligence... that's what got us into so much trouble before we received the Holy Spirit... remember? How do you differentiate between someone whom has been set apart like ourselves and is going through the struggle of "putting off the old man (nature)(unregenerate man)", and someone who just simply is unsaved. You might say in the flesh right here that, "it would seem quite simple", but the Holy Spirit is saying to me right now, "then why are the statistics for divorce in the church higher than those of the world". No, it is not simple to pick out who is and who isn't. One of the problems is the old nature in ourselves, another is our impatience to bond with someone, thus dropping our guard... and relative to our last verse, we start listening to their own theology, thus, "letting them delude and deceive us with empty excuses and groundless arguments for their sins"... remember.

The point is that we must trust the leading of the Holy Spirit in this issue also. The bible says that someone with the Holy Spirit is never comfortable in sin... that we must confess our sins, one to another. So with a fellow Christian, it should not be alarming for a friend to say, "you know, Preston... I have been tempted with such and such lately, and I need you to pray for me". To me, this is very common and we should never be surprised by what those temptations might be. On the other hand, for someone to share a sin they are dealing with and try to convince me that something the bible says is wrong, might be actually right, is cause to start separating my relationship from them. There is no way the Holy Spirit will agree with something like this.

God loves us so much, dear friends, and so no matter what color his or her eyes are, how kind they might seem, what church they go to... when the Holy Spirit says, "run Forest, run", we must cut loose and find a new friend. Trust Christ with this issue today.

Let's pick up with Ephesians verse 5:8 next time.

I love you.