Like flowers out of the mud (Stott)

Paul’s words in Ephesians 5:4 are quite clear. A morally bankrupt culture will use morally bankrupt language. The people of Paul’s day were familiar with the Greek and Roman Bacchanal parties with their infamous orgies. Those orgies had their own vocabulary. Paul was saying, “That is not our language.” John Stott said this about some men and women from this Corinthian-type culture who were converted to Christ: “When believers rose up out of the environment of the ancient world, they rose up like flowers out of the mud.”

Flattery and Foolish Talk,  by John Sartelle
http://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/flattery-and-foolish-talk/