“But sexual immorality, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not even be mentioned among you, as becomes saints;”
— WEB
Cited in 2 topics on this site.
Translations sourced from the public-domain WEB, KJV, and ASV. See all sources.
“But sexual immorality, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not even be mentioned among you, as becomes saints;”
— WEB
“But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;”
— KJV
“But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as becometh saints;”
— ASV
These verses contain a caution against all manner of uncleanness, with proper remedies and arguments proposed: some further cautions are added, and other duties recommended. Filthy lusts must be suppressed, in order to the supporting of holy love. Walk in love, and shun fornication and all uncleanness. Fornication is folly committed between unmarried persons. All uncleanness includes all other sorts of filthy lusts, which were too common among the Gentiles. Or covetousness, which being thus connected, and mentioned as a thing which should not be once named, some understand it, in the chaste style of the scripture, of unnatural lust; while others take it in the more common sense, for an immoderate desire of gain or an insatiable love of riches, which is spiritual adultery; for by this the soul, which was espoused to God, goes astray from him, and embraces the bosom of a stranger, and therefore carnal worldlings are called adulterers: You adulterers and adulteresses, know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Now these sins must be dreaded and detested in the highest degree: Let it not be once named among you, never in a way of approbation nor without abhorrence, as becometh saints, holy persons, who are separated from the world, and dedicated unto God. The apostle not only cautions against the gross acts of sin, but against what some may be apt to make light of, and think to be excusable.
— Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary (public domain)
once named--Greek, "Let it not be even named" (Eph 5:4, Eph 5:12). "Uncleanness" and "covetousness" are taken up again from Eph 4:19. The two are so closely allied that the Greek for "covetousness" (pleonexia) is used sometimes in Scripture, and often in the Greek Fathers, for sins of impurity. The common principle is the longing to fill one's desire with material objects of sense, outside of God. The expression, "not be even named," applies better to impurity, than to "covetousness."
— Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary (public domain)
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