The Greek word Paul reaches for here is aschēmonei — from the verb aschēmoneō, which means to act in a way that lacks proper form, to behave indecently, to do what does not fit the occasion or the person. The root word schēma means form, figure, the outward shape a thing properly has. The a- in front of it negates the word. Aschēmoneō is to act without the proper shape — to behave in a way that does not fit what you are or where you are or who you are with.
It is not a word about feelings. It is a word about conduct. Earlier in Paul’s list he has named the inward attributes — patience, freedom from envy, freedom from arrogance. Now he turns the camera outward. Love does not act unbecomingly. Love does not say the crude thing, does not make the cutting joke, does not behave in the way that brings shame on the believer who does it and on the family of God he is a part of. Whatever else love is, love has a shape — and that shape is not the shape the surrounding culture would invent for it.
What was happening in Corinth
If patience was missing because the wealthy could not wait for the Lord’s Supper, and kindness was missing because the strong wounded the weak, and humility was missing because everyone in Corinth had become puffed up about something — unbecoming behavior was missing because the Corinthian church had stopped recognizing what it even meant to act like a Christian in public. They were doing things, and tolerating things being done, that even the pagans of Corinth would have found shameful.
Paul’s first illustration comes in chapter 5. A man in the congregation was sleeping with his father’s wife — his stepmother:
It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife.
1 Corinthians 5:1 (NASB)
Read that carefully. The pagans of Corinth — who were not famous for their restraint in any direction — would not have done this. The conduct was unbecoming even by the cultural standards of a Roman port city. And the Corinthian church not only had this sin in its midst; the believers were puffed up about it. They were proud of how tolerant they had become. Whatever the line of decency was, they had crossed it and put a flag on the wrong side.
In chapter 6 Paul names the next public failure. The Corinthians were dragging one another into pagan courts — believers suing believers in front of unbelievers, the unwashed laundry of the church laid out for the entertainment of the world.
Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints?
1 Corinthians 6:1 (NASB)
This is aschēmoneō in a different costume. The Corinthians were embarrassing themselves and the name of Christ in front of the very people they were supposed to be bearing witness to. The world was watching the church handle its own life, and what it saw was Christians behaving worse than the pagans they sat next to in the courtroom.
In chapter 11 the disorder reached the Lord’s Supper itself. The wealthier believers were eating their fill and getting drunk on the wine before the poorer believers arrived. What was meant to be the most reverent moment in the life of the congregation had become an occasion for division and shameful conduct.
Therefore when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper, for in your eating each one takes his own supper first; and one is hungry and another is drunk. What! Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing?
1 Corinthians 11:20–22 (NASB)
Shame those who have nothing. That is Paul’s verdict. The Corinthian gathering had become a shame-producing event for the very brothers it was supposed to gather and serve. The Lord’s Supper itself had become unbecoming.
And by the time Paul gets to chapter 14, the same disorder had infected the worship service. Everyone was talking at once. The gift-holders were using their gifts to draw attention to themselves rather than to build up the congregation. Outsiders walking in would conclude the believers were mad (14:23). Paul’s correction is a long laying-down of order — two or three speakers at most, one at a time, let the others discern. He closes the chapter with a single sentence that is the positive form of 13:4’s love does not act unbecomingly:
But all things must be done properly and in an orderly manner.
1 Corinthians 14:40 (NASB)
Properly and in an orderly manner. That is aschēmoneō’s opposite stated plainly. The Corinthians had a worship service in which the conduct of the believers exercising their gifts had crossed the line into shamefulness, and Paul had to write rules for what should not have needed rules. The gift-platform misuse was the visible end of the inflation we looked at in the last chapter. The puffed-up believer with the showy gift was acting out his arrogance in a public assembly, and the assembly was paying the cost.
Now you can hear what Paul is saying in 13:5. Love does not act unbecomingly. You have permitted sin in your midst and called your permission generous. You have hauled one another into pagan courts and called it your legal right. You have made the Lord’s Supper a private feast for the wealthy. You have made worship a competition of gifts. None of this fits what a church is. The love I am writing about would not allow any of it.
The God whose every act fits His being
God’s nature is the deepest opposite of aschēmoneō. Whatever God does, He does fittingly — fitting to His holiness, fitting to His justice, fitting to His mercy, fitting to His purposes. There is no ungainly moment in the life of God. No discordant act. No conduct out of step with His being. The very word holy — qadosh in the Hebrew, hagios in the Greek — carries the idea of set apart, distinct, fitting only to Him. God is wholly becoming because God is wholly God.
When the Son took on flesh and came into this world, the religious leaders accused Him of behavior they considered unbecoming. He ate with tax collectors and sinners. He let a sinful woman wash His feet with her tears in a Pharisee’s house. He touched lepers. He healed on the Sabbath. He drove the money-changers out of the temple with a whip. He spoke with a Samaritan woman at a well in the middle of the day. By the standards of the religious leaders of His own people, He was doing things a holy teacher should not be doing.
He was not. What looked unbecoming to the Pharisee was the fitting behavior of a Savior whose mission was the rescue of sinners. The eating with tax collectors fit His mission. The touching of lepers fit His mission. The conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well fit His mission. The cleansing of the temple fit His mission. Christ did many things that violated the cultural decorum of His day, and not one of them violated the decorum of His Father. He acted in perfect schēma — in perfect form, in perfect fittingness — every moment of His earthly life. His every act fit who He was, because His every act was the expression of who He was.
That is the standard the church is being called into. The schēma of the Christian is not the schēma of the surrounding culture. What is fitting for the believer is not what is cool, what is in, what is what everyone is doing, what the room will reward. What is fitting for the believer is what corresponds to who he now is — a child of God in Christ Jesus, set apart for His use, representing His name in a world that is watching.
Paul lays the standard down to the Ephesians as plainly as he ever puts anything:
But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints; and there must be no filthiness and silly talk, or coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.
Ephesians 5:3–4 (NASB)
Which are not fitting. That phrase carries the same idea as the schēma in aschēmoneō. Filthiness, silly talk, coarse jesting — these do not fit a saint. They are not in the shape of the new man. They belong to the form a believer used to wear and has been called out of. To put them back on is to act aschēmoneō — to act without the proper form a saint should have.
From the inflation, the conduct
The last chapter named the inward sin of arrogance — the puffed-up condition that does not need a microphone to do its work. This chapter names what that condition does when it pushes through into behavior.
A puffed-up man is not just inwardly inflated. He acts inflated. He says the rude thing because he has decided, silently, that the person across from him is beneath him. He makes the cutting joke because he has decided, silently, that the brother who will be cut by it does not matter as much as the laugh will. He participates in the snide huddle at the lockers because he has decided, silently, that he belongs to the group with the right to render verdicts on the kid walking down the hall. The arrogance is the engine. The unbecoming behavior is the exhaust.
That is why Paul names them back to back. Love is not arrogant takes down the inward swelling. Love does not act unbecomingly takes down what the inward swelling produces when it gets to the air. A Christian who has worked on the arrogance but has not yet seen the conduct it has been driving will find unbecoming behavior coming out of him for years — in the cutting word he did not mean to say, in the laugh he gave at the wrong joke, in the small disrespect he showed a person he had not realized he was looking down on. The inward and the outward have to be addressed together. Paul addresses them in sequence so the believer cannot leave half the job undone.
What it looks like
Freedom from unbecoming conduct looks like a teenage girl who is part of a tight group of friends at the lockers, and who, when the group leans into a whisper about a classmate walking past, steps out of the huddle and walks on. The leaning-in was unbecoming. The walking on was schēma.
It looks like a high-school boy who is in a locker room where the talk has just turned crude about a girl in the class, and who does not laugh and does not join in, even though the silence will cost him standing in the room. He does not have to give a speech. The silence is enough. The silence is the form.
It looks like a teen who is dating someone he genuinely cares about, and whose conduct in the relationship — physically, emotionally, in what he says about her to others, in what he asks of her in private — is conduct that would be honorable if her father were watching every minute. Because the Father is.
It looks like a teenage girl who is being pursued by a boy who is asking her, over time, to do things her conscience tells her are not right, and who recognizes that the asking itself is the disqualifier. A boy who would press her past her own honor is not a boy who should be in her life. The recognition is schēma. The breaking off is the conduct that fits a daughter of the King.
It looks like a student who has been invited to a party where, every weekend, the conduct of the people there crosses lines a Christian cannot cross — drinking, drug use, sexual atmosphere, things a believer should not even be named in connection with. The student says no, and keeps saying no, and is content to be the one in the friend group who is not at the party. The not going is the form. The not explaining at length is also the form.
It looks like a teen who, before posting something online, asks the question Paul put to the Ephesians — is this fitting? The crude joke that would have gotten a laugh in person does not get posted, because what is in private is now in public, and the form has changed with the audience.
It looks like a young man who has been raised in a Christian home and who speaks to his mother and father, in front of his friends, with the same respect he speaks to them in the kitchen. He does not lower the form to look cool. He does not lower the form ever. The friends will notice. Some of them will respect him for it. The ones who do not are friends he can do without.
It looks like a teenage girl who refuses to repost the gossip she just read about a classmate, refuses to add to the pile, refuses even to “like” the post that started it. The verdict the internet is rendering on that classmate is not her verdict to render. She does not need to be in the pile.
It looks like a Christian young person who, when an adult in the congregation does something that strikes him as foolish or inconsistent, does not roll his eyes, does not make the comment to his friends after worship, does not catalog the failing for later use. He prays for the adult. He keeps walking. The respect he shows is the form. The contempt he refuses is the form.
It looks like Christ. The One who, when a woman known in the city as a sinner wept at His feet in a Pharisee’s house and the host silently judged her unfitness to touch a holy man, refused the host’s verdict — turned to him instead, named the love this woman was showing that the host had not, and sent her away in peace (Luke 7:36–50). The One who refused to play the game of public humiliation even though He was the only one in the room with the standing to render it. The One whose every conduct, in every moment of every day, was the perfect schēma of a Son sent by His Father into a world that did not know how to behave.
The world’s unbecoming, and ours
The world is no longer ashamed of much. The cultural baseline of decency has been moving for two generations, and most of what would have shamed a roomful of adults forty years ago no longer shames anyone. The crude joke is on television. The vulgar picture is on the phone of every teenager who has not had a parent set the limits the teenager would not set for himself. The mocking of the weak is the dominant style of public conversation. The dressing down of strangers is sport. The treating of the human body as a commodity is now an industry several billion dollars deep. The Christian growing up in this air can be forgiven for not knowing, anymore, what fitting even means.
It means what Paul says it means. As is proper among saints. The standard is not what the room laughs at. The standard is not what the platform celebrates. The standard is not what the friends are doing. The standard is the form of a saint — a person set apart by God for His use — and that form has not changed because the surrounding air has changed.
The believer is called to be visible in this. Not loud. Not preachy. Visible. The young person whose conduct in school, in the locker room, in the hallway, in the dating relationship, in the online space, is fitting in a way the surrounding teens have stopped seeing, will be a witness without ever having to give a sermon. Some of his classmates will think he is strange. Some will respect him without saying so. A few may eventually ask him why he lives the way he does. That is when the gospel can be spoken, and not before — because the conduct has to do its preaching first.
The Christian who tries to give the witness without the conduct is a man trying to sell wine he does not own. The conduct authenticates the message. Aschēmoneō in the believer’s daily life empties the gospel he says he believes. Schēma — the form of a saint, kept in small things, day after day — gives the gospel a body it can be heard in.
A note for the reader who is not yet in Christ
If you have been reading this chapter and feeling the weight of it, hear one thing.
The conduct that fits a Christian is not the conduct of a person trying harder. It is the conduct of a person who has been made new. The polish on the outside cannot last unless the change on the inside has happened first. The young person who tries to clean up his behavior without coming to Christ will find that the cleanup wears off, because the engine driving the unbecoming behavior is still inside him, and engines do not stay quiet when they have not been replaced.
The gospel is the engine replacement. Christ died for our sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). The man or woman who hears that, believes it, repents of the life they have been living without Him, confesses Him as Lord, is baptized into His death and raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3–4), and remains faithful to Him, has been given a new heart and a new Spirit (Ezekiel 36:26–27). The unbecoming conduct, over time, comes off. The fitting conduct, over time, comes on. The change is not instant and it is not without struggle, but the One who works it has done it in every generation of believers since the church began, and He will do it in you.
Begin where the gospel begins. Hear it. Believe it. Repent. Confess. Be baptized. Then live the new life He has put in you, and you will discover that the schēma of a saint is not a costume you put on but a body you have been given.
Where this leaves us
Patience, kindness, freedom from envy, freedom from bragging, freedom from arrogance, and now freedom from unbecoming conduct have all been laid down, and the believer who has walked through them honestly has had each one asked of him in turn. That is no small list. And we are not even halfway through.
The next attribute looks inward again, at a posture so common in the human heart that most of us do not even notice it. Love does not seek its own. If unbecoming conduct is the visible misuse of the believer’s behavior toward others, seeking-its-own is the silent orientation of the believer’s whole life toward himself — the engine that has been quietly running in the background of every other failure. Paul will name it next. The believer who has been honest so far will not enjoy that chapter, but he will recognize what is being named, and the recognition is the first move of the cure.
That is the work this attribute is calling you into. Watch your conduct this week — what comes out of your mouth in the locker room, what you laugh at in the group chat, what you post, what you tolerate being said about a classmate, what you do on the date, what you say to your parents in front of your friends. Catch the unbecoming. Name it. Refuse it. And keep refusing it, day after day, until the schēma of a saint becomes the shape your life naturally takes. The Lord whose every act fit His being is willing to grow the same fittingness in you.
THINK
Identify one piece of conduct in your week — one thing you do, one thing you laugh at, one thing you post, one thing you say — that you know does not fit a Christian. Not something dramatic. Something small enough that you have stopped noticing it. The crude joke you let go in your group chat. The eye-roll you give a parent in front of friends. The way you talk about a teacher behind her back. The picture you reposted that mocks somebody who did not deserve it. Now sit with this question: if Christ were physically standing beside you the next time the same opportunity comes, would you still do it? He is standing beside you. He has been the whole time. The question is whether the conduct that fits His presence has been the conduct you have been showing. The next opportunity is probably already on its way. What will you do with it?