“Let us walk with decency, as in the daytime: not in carousing and drunkenness; not in sexual impurity and promiscuity; not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Do you remember getting left home alone for the first time as a kid? The sense of freedom—at least for a short time—was exhilarating. The only thing that could dampen that joy was a to do list from your parents. The freedom was really a test to determine how trustworthy you were. Eventually they were going to return. When they did, you wanted to be caught doing the right things so you could enjoy even more freedom. Last time, we reflected on Paul’s emphasis on the nearness of Jesus’ return and what that means for how we should be living our lives. In this next part to conclude the chapter, Paul gets more specific on what that looks like. Let’s take a look.

Because Jesus’ return is imminent, Paul says we should “walk with decency, as in the daytime.” My guess is that you immediately have at least an idea of what he is talking about here. People behave differently during the day when their actions are naturally more public than they do at night when they think there is a smaller chance that someone will catch them doing the something they should not be doing. In fact, given Paul’s use of the phrase here, people have pretty much always behaved this way. There’s something about the threat of getting caught that helps to keep us in line. There is a natural accountability that comes from being in the light and around other people.

Of course, we should probably not miss the obvious teaching moment here. If you are doing something that you don’t want everyone to know you are doing, that’s a pretty big tip off that you shouldn’t be doing it. The fact that we have always understood that there are things we shouldn’t do when and where other people might see them (or at least the wrong kind of people) is an indication of the power sin has long held over our hearts and minds. It is also an indication that God’s condemnation of sin and sinners is just. We are not hapless victims, helplessly enslaved by an overpowering force. We are active participants, marching merrily along with sin’s evil directives. We need Christ to save us not just from our sin, but from our very selves.

In any event, Paul’s call for walking with decency leaves open the question of what exactly he means (even though we know what he means without much help). Helpfully, he goes on to immediately give the matter more definition. Rather than giving us a list of positive characteristics (which he arguably gave us at the end of chapter 12), Paul defines decency negatively with a list of behaviors that are decidedly not decent. If we are going to walk in decency, as in the daytime, this means we need to avoid carousing and drunkenness, sexual impurity and promiscuity, quarreling and jealousy.

Carousing is one of those old words that we don’t really understand anymore. It basically means wild partying with an emphasis on getting really drunk in the process. Essentially, it is partying to the point of losing control. When your partying leads to being destructive toward yourself or the people and things around you, you’re not having harmless fun anymore. You have given control of yourself to something other than God. That’s a problem. It’s actually sin. It is decidedly not decent.

The problem here isn’t with the alcohol itself. It is with crossing the line to drunkenness. When the amount of alcohol you have consumed is actively impairing your decision making, leading you to do things you would not normally do and which are dishonoring of God, you have crossed a line. Where that line is varies from person to person. It’s better not to flirt with it in the first place. Enjoy a drink if you would like and are able, but don’t give over control of yourself to something other than God.

The next pair of indecent behaviors Paul lists go together as well. Sexual immorality and promiscuity. There’s an easy to remember rule of thumb here. No sexual activity of any kind is morally permissible with anyone other than your spouse. That is, if you’re not married, keep your clothes on and hands off.

And although our culture often presents this as stodgy Christians trying to take away all our fun, the truth is that this is a positive good we are encouraging people to enjoy. Nothing good comes from being sexually promiscuous. That’s not just a prudish tenet of an outdated moral code that needs to be updated either. That’s a researched conclusion of modern sociology. The litany of problems that comes from being sexually active outside the context of marriage is longer than I’m going to try to reproduce here and well-established by a fair bit of research. Choosing to remain chaste until marriage and then entirely faithful in your marriage will lead to better life outcomes than any other path.

Well, if the first and second pairs of indecent behaviors seem to flow one from the other, the third pair seems to come out of left field. Yes, we shouldn’t be argumentative or jealous, but why are these in this list? Because they do in fact flow naturally from the first two sets. When someone gives into carousing, the likelihood that they are going to drift into sexual immorality is high. And if you don’t believe me, why does every depiction of a drunken party in every movie that has ever shown one also include a scene of two drunken people who are not married hooking up? The world says, “Yep, that happens nearly all of the time,” thus we should fault Paul for connecting the dots. And, once some has gotten sexually entangled with someone to whom they are not married, quarrels and jealousy are typically going to be waiting in the wings for their turn to take the stage.

Simply defining negatively the things we shouldn’t be doing in light of Christ’s imminent return isn’t enough, though. We need something positive to grab hold of to help us live in a way that is ready for Jesus. Thankfully, that’s exactly what Paul gives us next. Instead of doing all these other things that we know we shouldn’t be doing—thus we do them in the dark where we think fewer people will see and take offense or hold us accountable—we need to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

What does that mean? It means we need to cover ourselves in the righteousness of Christ like a coat. We don’t go in that direction in our own. Those deeds of the darkness are what come naturally. We need outside help. Jesus provides that help. Because we don’t do those things of our own volition, we can clothe ourselves in His volition. Instead of doing what we want, we do what He wants.

Okay, but what about when we don’t really mean it? Isn’t that duplicitous? Shouldn’t we just be honest and do the thing we honestly want to do? Well, the thing we honestly want to do will lead us down a path of ruin and destruction whereas the path of Christ will lead us to life and flourishing and joy and peace and a host of other good things. Seems like perhaps a bit of duplicity at least in the beginning is not such a bad thing. Becoming a follower of Christ results in our becoming new creations instantly. We are saved in a moment. But the total transformation of our wills to more and more perfectly reflect the will of Christ doesn’t happen in a moment. It happens over time as the Holy Spirit gradually directs us toward the path of righteousness in more and more ways and places.

In the beginning, then, yes, we put on Christ as a kind of costume. We are not like Him really. We are only playing dress up. But the longer we wear that costume, the more comfortable we get in it. The more we do the righteous deeds of Christ even if those aren’t the things we would personally choose in a given situation, the more we come to find that we enjoy doing those things. We enjoy the fruits of doing those things. We enjoy the way they make us feel. We enjoy the way they make others behave toward us. We find that we start wanting to do them on our own. Eventually, the thing we once wore only as a costume has merely the clothes we wear on our own.

And as we grow into this covering, we find that the effort we once put into gratifying our selfish and sinful desires we are now putting toward the ends of righteousness. That is actually a spiritual discipline unto itself. We all have fleshly desires, to borrow Paul’s common phrase. We all have deeds of darkness we enjoy, things we turn to when the lights are off or we think no one is watching. Even though we know we shouldn’t be doing these things, we often find ourselves thinking about ways we can work them into our schedule in ways and at times no one will notice so we can keep pursuing their satisfaction in secret. My guess is that even as you read those words something came to mind that fits in this category.

Growing in Christlikeness as a follower of Jesus means putting a stop to this habit. Stop carving out time and space for sin in your life. Jesus is coming back soon. Instead of carving out time and space for sin, use all that same creativity to find ways to pursue acts of righteousness. Think through your schedule with an eye toward how you can build in more opportunities for advancing God’s kingdom, for sharing the Gospel, for studying the Scriptures, for focused prayer, for loving your neighbors in Jesus’ name. Live like Jesus is with you all the time—for indeed, in the Spirit, He is—and you will always be ready for His return.