Grammar!

I've had this idea for a blog post germinating in my mind for a couple weeks, but I haven't gotten around to writing it down til now.  For quite a while, whenever I saw something in the Bible along the lines of " Let __ be done in you" or "May you be __"  I just automatically changed it in my mind to "do __" or "be __" and thinking that I could do it in my own power and strength.  But lately God has been working in my heart to show me that I've been wrong in my interpretation of the Bible. Not only does it contradict the principle of living and working in God's strength, it also goes against the fundamental rules of grammar.  Please bear with me as I act like the grammar nerd that I am for just a few minutes.  The scripture passage where God so clearly showed this error to me, along with the help of a few well-timed words by my pastor, is in Ephesians 4, where Paul is exhorting the Ephesians to live in a manner that benefits the body of Christ.  But it came specifically in verse 31, where it says, "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice."  When I heard that, I automatically changed that in my mind to the imperative: "Put off bitterness, etc." While I was still doing that in my mind, my pastor said something along the lines of: " Notice it's a passive voice verb."  And suddenly it clicked for me.  When it's a passive voice verb, then something other than the subject is doing the action.  And that was so comforting and encouraging for me.  Why, you might ask? because instead of an imperative for me to do the action of putting off the sin by myself, it is an exhortation to let someone else, namely Christ, do the action in us.  It is so much easier to let Christ do the work in us than to try to do it all by ourselves, fail miserably time and again, and be discouraged and maybe even give up trying to combat sin when we can't do it ourselves.  Instead, we can let Christ come into our lives and root out all the bitterness, anger, malice, etc.  We can do as the apostle Paul, "For this I toil, struggling with all His energy that He powerfully works in me." Col. 1:29