About the thing that happened at that Coldplay concert, I have seen countless memes and jokes about it online. I even saw a major grocery store chain create an ad out of it. This text from Ephesians comes to mind:
“But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God” (Eph. 5:3-5).
The logic of this text is that it’s not only sinful to commit sexual immorality, but it’s also wrong to make light of it or joke about it. Why? Because people who engage in sexual immorality without repenting are going to suffer in outer darkness forever.
In other words, if God is committed to applying his holy indignation to a thing for eternity, how can we laugh and find delight in it? Righteousness consists in part in loving what God loves and hating what God hates. How can we rightly delight in something that God hates?
The answer is that we can’t. It will always only be wrong to delight in what God abominates. That is why such “coarse jesting” and “filthiness” and “silly talk” are an offense to God. It reveals a human heart out of alignment with God’s heart.
Imagine what this would be like if you were on the other end of it. Suppose a loved one is murdered (maybe your child or a spouse) and you walk into the wake and all the “mourners” are not mourning. Instead, they are not only laughing but they are also making jokes about the way your loved one was killed. It would be an outrage for them to be joking and making light of the very thing that is the source of your greatest grief.
That is what “coarse jesting” and “filthiness” and “silly talk” are like before God. It is joking about the very thing that is going to send impenitent sinners to hell. It is making light of the very thing that made the death of Jesus necessary. It is delighting in the very thing that is an offense to God’s holiness.
None of us are batting a thousand on righteousness. We’ve all transgressed what Paul is warning against in Eph. 5:4. And that is all the more reason to do better and to beware of the memes and the making light of what was revealed at that concert. What was revealed there is an offense to God and will bring incalculable pain into the lives of both the transgressors and their families.
It’s not funny, and it never will be.
