Walk Wisely, Be Filled

Grace and peace to you who are reading, whoever you are and wherever this finds you.

I have been walking with you through this letter for some time now, and again and again I return to that one word — walk. It is how I keep asking you to think of the Christian life: not a single leap, but a road you travel, step after ordinary step. And now I bend down and ask you to look at your own feet.

"Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil" (Ephesians 5:15-16).

When I wrote look carefully, I meant it as a man means it who has walked over rough ground in the dark. You do not stride heedlessly through a life like this one. You watch where you set your foot. The word I chose is the word for precision, for accuracy — walk exactly, walk with care. Not anxiously, mind you, not with the trembling of a soul who thinks God is waiting to catch him out. But wisely. As one who knows that his steps matter, because they do.

And I gave you a reason: the days are evil. I will not pretend to you that they are otherwise. I write these very words with a chain on my wrist, in a house I am not free to leave. The age is dark; the world we walk through is not a friend to the soul. So I say to you what I would say to my own children in the faith — do not waste this. "Making the best use of the time" — the picture is of a man in the marketplace buying up something precious before it is gone, redeeming the hour out of the hands of an evil age. Your days are numbered and few, and they will not come again. The unwise man drifts. The wise man buys back the time and lays it at the feet of God.

"Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is" (Ephesians 5:17). Here is a mercy folded into a command. You are not left to grope after God's will as though it were hidden from you and he delighted to keep it so. It can be understood. He has made himself known — in his Son, in his written Word, in the gospel I have been laboring to set before you all this letter long. So do not be foolish, running your life on guesswork and appetite and the mood of the moment. Set your mind to know what pleases him, and then do it. That is wisdom: not cleverness, but a life bent toward the will of God.

Then I turn to something plainer, something you can see any evening in any street. "And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18). Understand why I set these two side by side. The drunkard is reaching for something — a fullness, a release, a forgetting, a joy he cannot find sober. And what he gets is ruin; he empties himself in the very act of trying to fill himself. I do not merely forbid the one thing; I hold out to you the true thing your heart was reaching for all along. You were made to be filled — but filled by the Spirit of God, who does not leave you emptied and ashamed in the morning, but who overflows into a life you were not able to live before.

And see what that fullness looks like, for I did not leave it as a feeling in the dark. It comes out. It sings. "Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Ephesians 5:19-21).

Do you see the shape of it? The Spirit-filled life is not first a solitary rapture but a shared song. Addressing one another — you speak the truth of God to each other in your singing, you carry each other along, the strong voice and the trembling voice together. And beneath the song there is a heart: making melody to the Lord with your heart. There are those who sing loudly and feel nothing; the fullness I mean reaches down into the heart and turns it toward the Lord himself.

And out of that fullness comes thanks — giving thanks always and for everything. I know how large that word everything is. I write it from prison, and I do not write it lightly. I do not tell you to feel glad about every grief; I have wept over enough of my own. But I tell you that the Spirit teaches a heart to give thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ — that is, through him, in whom even our losses are held, and worked, and never wasted. A grumbling Christian and a Spirit-filled Christian are two different things, and the difference shows at the table, in the sickroom, in the hour when the news is bad.

And then this — submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. The fullness of the Spirit does not puff you up over your brother; it bows you down toward him. Where a man is drunk, he grows loud and demands his own way. Where a man is full of the Spirit, he yields, he considers others, he counts them more significant than himself — and not out of weakness, but out of reverence for Christ, who himself came not to be served but to serve. This is the hinge; everything I go on to say after it, about wives and husbands, children and parents, servants and masters, hangs on this one line. It all begins with hearts that have learned to bow.

So here is my word to you today, whoever you are as you read. If you are weary and reaching for the wrong wells to fill your emptiness, hear me: you were made to be filled, and there is a fullness that does not shame you. If you are drifting through your days, buy them back — this hour, this one, before the light goes. And if your walk has grown careless, look down at your feet, and then look up to the Lord who bought them for himself.

You cannot fill yourself. That was never the command. Come to Christ, who was poured out to the dregs on a cross that you might be filled with his own Spirit, and let him do it — and then sing, and give thanks, and bow to one another, and walk carefully home.

Grace and peace be with you.