Communications Are Corrupted In Our Culture

A coarseness, a looseness is creeping into conversation.  People use terms in public, that no one would have dreamt of using forty years ago [from 1982!].  Have you not noticed it coming into articles and journals, not only newspapers?  Is it not happening in general?  This curious tendency to be daring — indeed it has become so customary that it is no longer daring or shocking.  And it is becoming appallingly common.  Even journals of repute one cannot but notice the curious, sad decline that is so evidently taking place.  And often the godless world turns into a joke, and regards as amusing, that which is really tragic.  Why should a married man’s unfaithfulness to his wife be regarded as funny?  Why should there be constant jokes about this sort of thing?  Nothing causes greater unhappiness to men, women and children than just this very thing, and yet it is regarded as a theme for joking.  Acts of infidelity become the subjects of laughter and merriment!  Corrupt communication, corrupt conversation, is a mark of the unregenerate.  Have nothing to do with it, says the Apostle.  It is corrupt in itself and it corrupts others.  And this was the thing that was uppermost in the Apostle’s mind here, as it is in all these separate injunctions.  He wants believers to consider the influence of their words upon others, so he says, “Do not let any corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth; a bystander may hear it and it may do harm to him.  . . . 

Therefore, he says, for the sake of others, let none of this come out of your mouth.  To put it quite simply and plainly, what he is really saying is, “Stop doing that sort of thing!”  But notice particularly a further word he uses: “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth.”  In other words, if it even enters your mind, if it is beginning to form on your lips and your tongue, stop!  If it has even arrived in you mouth, do not let it come out!  Crucify it, kill it, murder it, stop it!  If you yourself are guilty of evil thoughts, if the devil suggests them to you — you cannot stop him, he will hurl his fiery darts at you, he will insinuate them into your very minds, subtle innuendos — even so, says the Apostle, what I am telling you is this, “Never let corrupt words proceed out of your mouth, let them die upon your lips, for the sake of others.” Such is his negative injunction before he urges the positive.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Darkness and Light: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17,” pg. 257-258