Sometimes television commercials coin iconic idioms. Capital One found a phrase that worked for them: “What’s in your wallet?” Do you have a mouth? No answer needed! Our mouths can be like smokestacks. Hence my title. When your neighbors, co-workers, and family drive their lives near yours what do they see? Is the factory of your life pumping out pollution from one end while putting a Christian face on the other? How well does that work?
Look again at the phrases we studied last week: do not lie; be careful with your anger; isolate Satan’s influence; stop stealing; work honestly; be generous. Those were the beats of Christian thinking that Paul drummed for his readers. Listen to the drum he continues to pound toward God’s way of self-expression.
29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, (Ephesians 4:29a–ESV)
“Let no,” is a charge Paul gives to his readers. Implied here is that Christians can still speak corruption into the world. A person may consider themselves Christian, they may even be so, and yet at the same time spill degrading things into the human environment around them.
“Stop it!” Paul commands. “Get control of your mouth. Of course, you are not yet fully cleansed, clothed, infused with the manner of Christ, but you possess the power to control the ill will that bubbles around inside of you.” When unwholesome thoughts begin to steam up from your heart clamp off your smokestack. Don’t let your mouth spew pollution into the world. Let Christ be the scrubber in those stacks.
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