Are You DUI or WUI?

Here is a question that sounds modern but opens a very ancient text: are you DUI or WUI?

In Missouri the official term is DWI, driving while intoxicated. Either way, the picture is the same. A person under the influence is someone whose movement is governed from the outside. Judgment is altered. Reactions are altered. Direction is altered. Relationships are put at risk. Against that, Paul sets a holy contrast in Ephesians 5: "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit." So the real question is not whether you are under an influence. Everyone is. The question is which influence is directing your walk.

The whole letter has been leading here

Ephesians 5:18 does not drop out of the sky. The first three chapters are majestic and cosmic: God's eternal choice, our redemption in Christ, the sealing of the Spirit, dead sinners made alive, Jew and Gentile made one new humanity. Then chapter 4 turns to the language of walk: walk worthy, walk in love, walk as children of light. Like the "whereas" clauses of a proclamation, Paul is building to a single point. Because God has done all of this, therefore walk this way. Verse 18 is the hinge.

The Christian life is a walk

Paul keeps returning to one word: walk. The Greek is peripateo, to conduct your whole life in a steady pattern. (The ancient Peripatetic philosophers got their name from teaching while walking. Their instruction was living, moving, embodied.) Enoch walked with God. Noah walked with God. Micah tells us to walk humbly with our God. So when Paul says, "See that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise," he means carefully, attentively, on purpose. Not drifting. Not sleepwalking through our discipleship.

Be filled, and keep being filled

At the center of the passage are two influences and two directions. One life is intoxicated downward. The other is filled upward. The wording matters. The command is ongoing: be being filled, keep on being filled. And it describes a sphere, an atmosphere we live inside. Paul is not telling us to grab a quick dose of the Spirit. He is telling us to live under the Spirit's influence the way we live inside the air we breathe.

A bride changes her clothes

A bride does not walk into her wedding in stained work clothes. She changes, because she is stepping into a new covenant. Paul has already said the same about us: put off the old self, put on the new. So "be not drunk, but be filled" carries a quiet logic. The old controlling influences simply do not fit the new life. You cannot keep the old intoxications and wear the wedding garment at the same time.

Character and power, together

Some people hear "filled with the Spirit" and think only of power. Others think only of character. Scripture gives us both. The Spirit forms character in us, the fruit of Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness. And the Spirit works power through us, the boldness and witness of Acts 1:8. A life genuinely walking under his influence grows in both directions at once: more tender and more bold, more holy and more useful. Not fruit without power. Not power without fruit.

What it looks like: overflow

Right after the command to be filled, Paul lists what the Spirit-filled life pours out: speaking to one another in psalms and hymns, singing, making melody in the heart, giving thanks always, and submitting to one another in the fear of Christ. This is not manufactured religion. It is overflow. Think of what love does to a person. When the heart is captured, speech changes, music changes, gratitude changes. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" in the middle of a courtship her father forbade. Love seeks words. Love sings. How much more when the Spirit fills a heart with the love of Christ?

Even submission flows from it

Paul's final phrase, "submitting to one another in the fear of Christ," is not a stray afterthought. It is the doorway into the home, into marriage, parenting, work, and service. The Spirit-filled life is not only for church meetings. And why would we yield to one another at all? Because the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, the One who washed feet and was obedient even to death. When that Spirit governs us, we stop clinging to status. We serve. We bend low.

So, are you DUI or WUI?

What is shaping your walk this week? What is governing your reactions, your speech, your relationships, the atmosphere of your home? Pride? Fear? Resentment? The spirit of the age? Or the Spirit of God? If you are walking under his influence, it will not stay a private feeling. It will start to show, in worship and gratitude, in music in the heart, in humility and loving action. So walk carefully. Walk wisely. Keep being filled. And submit to one another in the fear of Christ. The Christian life is not something to attend. It is something to walk.