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Put away
March 22
Put Away
airō
The literal idea behind the Greek airō (G142) is “to raise or
lift up,” and it’s usually used in this way. When the Lord
Jesus forgave and healed the paralytic in Mat_9:1-8, for
example, His command to the man was, “Arise, take up (airō)
thy bed, and go unto thine house” (Mat_9:6).
Used in the figurative sense, however, as it is in
Eph_4:31-“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and
clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you” it
means “to pick up and carry away, to make a clean
sweep.”
As John the Baptist declared of the Lord Jesus, “The next day
John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of
God, which taketh away (airō) the sin of the world”
(Joh_1:29).
We see it again in Joh_2:16 as our Lord makes a “clean sweep”
of the merchandizers in the temple, saying, “Take these things
hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.”
Paul, therefore, uses it here to paint the graphic picture that
we should “sweep away” the hindrances to Christian living
listed in the surrounding context.
Pastor and expositor Martyn Lloyd-Jones offers this solemn
challenge:
The Apostle is exhorting the Ephesians to put away all this
evil. He does not say that because they have become Christians
it has automatically dropped off. . . . And again we notice
that he does not merely tell them to pray that these sins may
be taken out of their lives.
Pray by all means, but do not forget that Paul tells the
Ephesians to put them off, to put them far from them, and we
must do the same. It is not pleasant. It is not at all pleasant
even to preach on these things; it is very unpleasant for us to
face them . . . but, says the Apostle, we must do it, and if we
find any vestige or trace of these things within us, we must
take hold of it and hurl it away from us, trample upon it, and
bolt the door upon it, and never allow it to come back.
Scriptures for Study: What wonderful encouragement our Lord
gives in Mat_11:28-30 (“take” is airō). In 1Jn_3:5, what did
Jesus “sweep away”?
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