Ephesians 5:3

But . Another of the remarkable contrasts of this Epistle; the fumes of lust are doubly odious in contact with the sweet savor of Christ's offering. Fornication and all impurity, or covetousness. The combination of covetousness with sins of the flesh, occurring several times in the apostle's writings ( 1 Corinthians 5:11 ; Ephesians 5:3 ; Colossians 3:5 ), is rather unexpected. πλεονεξία , covetousness, means the desire of having more, which is peculiarly true of sensual sins; but it is not coupled with them by a καὶ , but disjoined by an ἢ , indicating something of another class. In the mind of the apostle, sensuality was inseparable from greed, unnatural craving for more, dissatisfaction with what was enough; hence the neighborhood of the two vices. Let it not be even named among you, as becometh saints. The practice of such sins was out of the question; but even speaking of them, as matters of ordinary conversation, was unsuitable for saints; the very conversation of Christians must be pure. The exhortation bears on Christians in their social relations; had the apostle been treating of the duty of the individual, he would have urged that such sins should never be admitted even to the thoughts or the imagination.