3-4 Don’t allow love to turn into lust, setting off a downhill slide into sexual promiscuity, filthy practices, or bullying greed. Though some tongues just love the taste of gossip, those who follow Jesus have better uses for language than that. Don’t talk dirty or silly. That kind of talk doesn’t fit our style. Thanksgiving is our dialect.

You can be sure that using people or religion or things just for what you can get out of them—the usual variations on idolatry—will get you nowhere, and certainly nowhere near the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God.

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But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality,(A) or of any kind of impurity, or of greed,(B) because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk(C) or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.(D) For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater(E)—has any inheritance(F) in the kingdom of Christ and of God.[a](G)

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Footnotes

  1. Ephesians 5:5 Or kingdom of the Messiah and God