Title: 13
Author: JBG
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00-10-29-A.JSH-395 / 

© 2000  Joe Griffin

The Inscrutable Question: Vacation Retrospective: Weddings, Funerals, & Military Balls; Contrast between Dissipation and Pleroo in Eph 5:18
	36)	When intoxication occurs then volition has chosen to move into carnal status quo and begins making bad decisions from the position of weakness.
	37)	This position of weakness may be exacerbated by the fact that the weakness of this particular believer’s sinful nature is a propensity toward overindulgence.  Unchecked by rebound and restoration to a position of strength, this can lead to dissipation.
	38)	Dissipation describes the flouting of time that occurs when one is under the habitual use and addictive control of alcohol.  Here again is its definition from:
Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “dissipation”:
Distraction of the mental faculties from concentration on serious subjects: at first with distraction of attention; but later the frittering away of [one’s] energies or attention upon frivolities and thus gradually passing into the waste of moral or physical powers by undue indulgence in pleasure; an intemperate mode of living.
	39)	When persistent redemption of time replaces persistent flouting of time then resultant spiritual growth from Bible doctrine enables the believer to expand his capacity for life, develop a reciprocal love for God, produce the fruit of the light, and receive escrow blessings in time and eternity.
	40)	The catalyst for persistent redemption of time comes next as a positive mandate, introduced by the adversative conjunction:
¢ll£ / alla / -	“but”
1)	In order to understand any sentence in either the Classical or Koine Greek there are two principles that must be remembered:
1.	Always pay attention to the prepositional phrases and
2.	in order to follow the thought you must analyze the conjunctions.
	NOTE:		Jo Henra and I once had the pleasure of having dinner with Colonel Thieme during a Little Rock Bible Conference.  We were dining at the Ashley Restaurant in the Capitol Hotel.  We had an excellent young waiter who, during our meal, told the Colonel that he was attending seminary.  The Colonel asked if he was taking Greek.  The waiter responded that he was not but would begin the following semester.  Colonel Thieme at that point began to give the young man a lecture on the importance of prepositions and conjunctions and how important they are in the exegesis of biblical passages.  I don’t know whether the young seminarian remembered that advise but I have never forgotten it.
2)	Here we have an adversative conjunction, which sets up a contrast after the negative mandate in the first half of the verse.  We are told what not to do.  Now we are told what to do.  What we are to do comes next with the present passive imperative of the verb:
plhrÒw / pleroo / -	In the active voice, “to fill”; in the passive voice, “to be filled.”
3)	In the New Testament it means “to fulfill a norm or a measure; to keep a promise; to complete or achieve something.”
4)	Other applications include “to fill up a deficiency”; “to fully possess”; to fill with a certain quality”; and “to fully influence.”
5)	In the passive voice in Ephesians 5:18 it means, “to keep on being filled.”

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