Practicing Gospel Living

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well, I would invite you to turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter four. That’s where we’re going to be this evening. And Ephesians chapter four is like a lot of the New Testament in that it contains a good deal of instruction for Christians regarding how the world and the church are to interact. In particular, as relates to us, importantly, how we are to engage with one another and then impact the world around us. It’s in a real sense about living in light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And of course this chapter contains just those sorts of instructions. I’ve entitled the message for this evening, Practicing Gospel Living, but I’m aware that you could take that title and slap it on a sermon on just about any paragraph in the New Testament and it would probably fit.

It’s sort of loose, but I’ve drawn in large measure from the very last verse, which we will get to in time. But even though there is a certain familiarity with talking about gospel living and how we are supposed to live in light of our new identity in Christ, I would encourage us not to let our familiarity breed a sort of apathy. My encouragement for us tonight would begin with two reminders, namely, remember that we need to be reminded more often than we need to be instructed in most cases. Sure, we might enjoy being instructed. We might enjoy hearing new things and having opportunity to kick those around, but we would do really well to simply apply what we already know.

And no doubt, you know much of what Paul is going to give us tonight. But second, remember that this is a letter. I’d invite you to consider this chapter is one of six. It is just one fraction of the whole of Ephesians. When we read the epistles as letters, just as they are, and when we read them imaginatively, trying to put ourselves in the position of the first hearers or readers, as we’re laboring to consider how the first recipients would have read those letters, we can sometimes see things that we’ve missed before, due ironically to our familiarity.

So sometimes our knowing it too well causes us to miss lots of things. Seeing it again with fresh eyes enables us to see those things anew. I was talking to somebody on Friday evening about the book of Romans, and how she one time just sat down and read it beginning to end. And that actually puts her in pretty rarer company. Now it’s a pretty hefty letter. We don’t really write very many letters like that today. But if you do that, you would be able to get the sense as to what Paul intended for his readers to get when he wrote a 16 chapter. It wasn’t, I understand, broken down in chapters and verses then. But that’s what it works out to, 16 chapters worth of epistleary material.

Returning to Ephesians, in chapter one, You may recall that Paul greeted his beloved Ephesians, the congregation that he had poured into for some time in about 57, and he hadn’t seen them in about six years. It’s about 63 when he’s writing this. He praises God for God’s abundant grace toward them.

He longs for them to fully comprehend the full dimensions of God’s love. We see that at the back end in like 15 to 23 of chapter one, and that is a very potent prayer that if God were to answer that prayer, that prayer would profoundly impact how they would live. I mean, you’d like to think that if we understood the dimensions of God’s love toward us, it would impact profoundly how we would lead our lives on a day by day basis. In the next chapter, he considers the work of God at a personal level, I called that microsalvation, when he gives life to the spiritually dead, and he saves them unto good works. In verse 10 we see that.

He follows this with a consideration of, and exaltation in God’s work on the macro level. So taking the helicopter up a few hundred feet. And I call that macro salvation. Micro salvation on the personal level, macro salvation on the national level. And what happened when he joined together into one spiritual body, Jewish and Gentile Christians, with Christ as the cornerstone, keeping it together. In chapter three, he talks about the glorious expression of God’s manifold wisdom in the church and how the mystery that is revealed through Christ’s redemptive work, the Jewish and Gentile Christians are on equal footing spiritually in glory.

And at the back end of that chapter, chapter three, in the form of a prayer, we see that in verses 3.14 to 3.21, Paul transitions to the more application-oriented portion of his letter, as he is pleading with God that they would, and then they’re reading this prayer that he has, so they can probably take that as an exhortation to go ahead and do it, that they would live faithfully in light of their new identity as God’s adopted sons. And then we pick up the letter in chapter four. That’s where we are tonight. And as Paul does in many of his letters, does it in Romans and 1 Thessalonians and Philippians, There is a tidy break between, this one’s a little bit fuzzier because it sort of starts in the form of a prayer, the back end of chapter three, but a break between the doctrinal portion and then the application of that doctrine.

So information, application, and that makes good sense. I’m a philosophy guy. I like knowing the reasons why we do what we do and establishing that groundwork first, theologically and otherwise, makes good sense before he would tell them, so here’s my urging for you, what you are supposed to do in light of these things. What we read here in our chapter four tonight, and in the two chapters that follow, are obligations and duties and even joys that accompany our status as redeemed sinners and adopted sons, and I’m calling that practicing gospel living. I think Sean mentioned even in the message this morning that our salvation comes with some strings attached.

Those are glorious strings. But we’ll learn later on a little bit about what it is reasonable to expect somebody who’s aware of the fallen state of his neighbor better than his neighbor is. What sort of obligations he has to his neighbor. As we examine the gospel living here in chapter four then, I see the chapter divided into two major sections. actually is divided right along verse lines. There’s 32 verses, the first 16, comprise the evidence of gospel living, and the second, the practice of gospel living. Evidence and practice. So we’ll go ahead and get right to it. What I have first for us is the evidence of gospel living, that’s our first heading under which we’ll hang our thoughts, and we find that in verses one through 16.

And I’ll go ahead and lay it out here at the start. That I do think with a fresh reading of Ephesians, which I’ve had the good fortune of spending a fair amount of time in, I think we could distill this evidence piece into one word. And then I was a little bit disappointed to see that that’s the heading that the ESV uses. They have unity in the body of Christ in my edition.

And pretty simply, Paul teaches here that a healthy and a faithful church will be marked by unity. This is a must, and the more unified the church is, the healthier it is. And this is spiritually speaking, it’s not possible on an ongoing basis for a church to maintain a faux humility. All right, sorry, a faux unity. An imaginary or a facade of unity over time. It cannot sustain, a church cannot sustain this any more than cancerous cells will be benign forever. will remain benign if left unchecked.

Over time, it will have its effect. And likewise, there are churches that are unified the wrong direction, but that’s not what we’re talking about here because actually over time it won’t be sustainable. A healthy human body operates like a single unit. The legs are not in competition with the arms for either function or for esteem. The feet are not competing with the eyes for attention or for glory. It’s one body rather than a collection of members.

And a healthy church body does the same thing. And this is what it looks like when the church is operated by the spirit’s work. And when the spirit is at work in a body of believers, And when they’re being faithful to use the gift, Christ’s gift to the church, we’ll see these in just a moment. When they’re faithful to make good use of Christ’s gift to the church, it’s marked by unity. So I’d like for that to be the sort of program running in the back of your mind, and I’ll read verses one through 16. So let’s do that now, we’ll read verses one through 16, chapter four. I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.

Eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is overall and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. Verse nine, in saying he ascended, what does it mean? But that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth. He who descended is the one who ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning rather than craftiness and deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

We’ll read the back half of the chapter in just a few moments. And now I’d like to just kind of drill down a little bit and look at what this passage says in chunks. Again, to be sure, there are lots of hallmarks of a healthy church. There are lots of qualifiers, lots of attributes that do identify a healthy church, but I do think that what Paul is getting at here is unity, not the exclusion of other things. In verses one through three, we have unity identified. He says, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Here Paul points back to preceding chapters and the Ephesian Christians’ new status in Christ and calls them to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. He lists some attitudes that ought to characterize them, but he also urges them to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Now, what’s unmistakable there is, in order for them to maintain it, it must already exist. So it is not the responsibility of faithful Christians to create or manufacture unity. We don’t have to worry about that. Rather, we have to preserve what is already in place. And so although we don’t have a role to play when it comes to generating the unity, we do have a role to play when it comes to preserving it, evidently, as we have been charged.

The spirit who indwells us is unified. He is unified with himself. He cannot be divided against himself. And so again, it’s not our doing to make it happen, but it is part of our role to help ensure it’s preserved among his people. We have unity rationalized in verses four through six. We had it identified in the first portion and here it’s rationalized.

He says, there’s one body and one spirit, just as you work, so he’s basically making the logical case for how this unity works and how we know that it ought to exist among the Christians. Just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. So again, this is a rational argument that he lays out, making the case as to why we can expect unity in a healthy body of believers. Conversely, when we see a church that is marked by disunity, well, that’s a problem for a variety of reasons. A church comprises Christians, that is what a church is, who are all indwelt by the same spirit, and the Holy Spirit cannot be at odds with himself where he cannot be divided against himself.

So when we are at odds with other believers, it is necessarily because at least one of us is not walking according to the spirit. And more often than not is because both of us are not. So both parties are not. Now that is not to say that about secondary matters, spirit-filled people cannot disagree, but they will remain in fellowship when that happens. They will remain unified that the church may continue to be marked by unity. So, just because the foot and the eye don’t agree with what’s on the horizon, it might be that the eye has a bit better vantage, unless the person is standing on his head, which is how a foot can see anyway, I’m not sure, but our feet have senses about these things.

They can still be cooperating together as a part of the body. In verses 7 to 14 we see unity affected, as in brought about, affected with an E. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, when He ascended on high, He led a host of captives, and He gave gifts to men. And saying He ascended, what does it mean but that He had also descended into the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.

And He gave, these are the gifts from Christ to the church, the apostles, the prophets, evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every window of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. As we’ll We’ll learn next time when we get to talk about chapter 5. Jesus Christ is personally invested in ensuring that He is able to present to Himself a pure and spotless bride.

And we can infer as well that He wants for His bride to be healthy and mature and unified. So we’ve already established that church comprises Christians. wants to present the bride to himself pure and spotless, he must necessarily be invested in the Christians comprising the church. In order to effect this maturity and unity, Christ has given to the church. And so this is a grace gift from the Son to the church to help effect her purity. He is given to the church, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, or the shepherds, and teachers. And their job is then to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ.

Now, the Spirit has gifted individuals as well. He’s not talking about that here. He’s talking about instruments that God is using to bring about the unity and the maturity of the church. We’ve talked about it plenty of times before, but there is a misconception that it is the work of pastors and shepherds to do the work of ministry. It’s their job. That is true insofar as they are part of the church, but their duty is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. So it’s not precisely true that it’s all their job. It is their job, but it’s also everybody’s job. It is the job of those church leaders to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

And you know what? In our discussion of unity, it makes pretty good sense. There’s little doubt that a body of believers that is equipped to function as a healthy body requires unity more than a church where the leaders are doing all the work. So I want to say that again. If the church body is to function the way it is supposed to function, that requires that it should be unified more than a church where the leaders are doing all of the work. So it’s not hard to imagine that if you were to take two churches and look at them and see one that is unified and one that is not, the odds are very high that the one where there is unity is the one where the saints are doing the work of the ministry rather than it being left to just the church leaders.

It’s part of why unity is Paul’s stated end in verse 13. He says, until we all attain to the unity of the faith. He says that right there, that that is the aim. And that’s when we can stop. When we look like Jesus, we’re finally done. And good luck. We got work to do. Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, To mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. When our dimensions reflect those of Jesus, then we have met our objective. In verses 15 and 16 we have unity perfected. Rather, speaking the truth, says Paul, in love we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together makes every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

And when we become like what or like whom we behold or worship and our aim is to become like Christ, when our body is mature and unified we will be like Christ. Unless we think that it’s our labors alone, Paul reiterates that Christ is the agent here makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Any healthy human body is self-healing to a degree. When your son or daughter scrapes his knee riding a bike, you can do nothing to it, and it’ll probably get better all by itself. Band-Aid might move it along a little faster because it contains all the healing properties. But for the most part, the body is self-regenerating to a degree.

If you were not like lizards, though, So if you drop off a leg, I mean, it hits its limits, sure. The same, and so when the body is nourished, exercised and rested, we can say in a manner of speaking that it actually builds itself up, like it magically happens. We of course attribute these things to Christ who holds every Adam together, right? But in a sense, in a practical sense, a body builds itself up, and the kids, we feed them, they just get bigger. The unified church is the same. And so Christians are called to maturity in Christ’s likeness, and this will be evidenced then in the practice of unity. So this is what it looks like when a church is healthy and functioning the way that it’s supposed to.

It’ll be characterized by a number of things, but what we see here is that it’ll be characterized by a righteous unity, a like-mindedness. And as the spirit is indwelling those believers, and as they are walking according to the spirit, they’re going to be thinking the same, and going to be acting the same, and preferring others ahead of themselves and the rest. So then what does that look like on the ground? And Paul does help here with the back end of the chapter in the second portion, what I’ve called the practice of gospel living. And we have for our benefit and instruction, some instruction about how we are to live in the church and in the world.

So having examined now what characterizes a healthy and an obedient church, Paul drills down to the micro level and begins to pepper his readers with these practical commands and that happens in the last few verses, regarding what this looks like day by day in their interaction with the world and their interaction with one another. He’s particularly focused on this Christian to Christian interaction, but it is in the midst of a pretty decadent culture. This attitude then undergirds the rest of the book and it begins right here. As we examine this passage, it’s worth considering why Paul is giving the sorts of exhortations he is.

It makes sense that he’s doing so because he needs to. He’s not just giving these things. They’re not all just reminders of things that the Ephesian Christians already know. But in the same way as we need to be reminded as a church, maybe ourselves, like stop thinking like the world. Stop being amused when the world makes a mockery of what is good and righteous. Now of course we know that and we need to be reminded. It doesn’t necessarily mean that that is rampant in our church for us to issue that reminder, but you do have to wonder what sorts of ugly sins had reared their heads in the Ephesian congregation for Paul to feel like he needed to say some of these things.

So I’m not ready to say that the Ephesian Christians were dominated by theft until Paul told them to knock it off. But I do think it’s probably pretty normal that the Ephesian Gentile culture was marked by many of these vices. And we’ll talk some about that. But like I said, it may sound simplistic, but why would Paul offer a command to the not to steal if none of them were stealing. Maybe, maybe not. But the sort of sin they exhort them to put off were common, just like they are now. And one of the reasons related to that, why I’ve enjoyed my time in Ephesians over the years, has been because as modern Americans, we can relate to the same sorts of immorality and idolatry that plague deficits.

You could say the same thing for Romans. I’m sorry, not Romans. Well, yeah, not Romans. Well, I suppose yes, Romans, but I was thinking more of Corinthians, and 1 Corinthians and Corinth. We don’t have a fancy Roman temple to a Roman goddess that’s bringing touristy revenue to our community, like Artemis of the Ephesians. Though we do have two casinos and a Cabela’s, but like the Ephesians, ours is a culture that confuses evil and good, and that is deeply offended. They simply cannot abide Christians’ intolerance of wickedness. What’s more, like the Ephesian Christians, as I mentioned moments ago, we have to fight against the corrupting influence of the world and its practices rearing their ugly heads in our walls.

It’s not hard to find, I’m sorry, it’s not hard to imagine the moral dilemmas that, so I mean, you think about these tensions applied. It’s not hard to imagine the moral dilemmas that, for instance, a faithful shop owner in the Ephesian congregation, whose main source of revenue was pilgrims who came to town to worship Artemis.

Would I rather put food on my table or would I rather they stop their idolatry, right? So there’s some brass tacks sort of application of these things that they would have to face. It’s not hard to imagine these first generation believers, these first generation believers, many of them, and probably most of them. being given the gospel, the Holy Spirit, and a new moral compass that pointed the opposite direction of their old one.

It comes as a little surprise that Paul did find himself discipling these young Christians with words like stop stealing and work hard so that you have something to give to others. So now perhaps with that running in the background, read with me verses 17 through 32, imagining yourself again to be one of the first recipients of this letter in its original context.

Might be easier if you’re wearing sandals, who knows. All right, now this I say in testifying in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that you have heard about Him and were taught in Him as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds.

And to put on the new self created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. Verse 25, therefore having put away false so that each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor for we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such is as good for a building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” So again, I’d like to drill down here examining this passage in chunks as well. It is one of the beautiful things and also one of the challenges of trying to take a chapter at a time is you fly pretty high. So I won’t be drilling down so low that we’re actually going to be breaking down every single mandate in this passage. We will look at a number of them though.

Paul is in essence and really quite simply exhorting his readers to lead separate lives, to be set apart from their unbelieving neighbors and more importantly be different from who they once were and what they once were. And it doesn’t really require crazy scrutiny. It’s a pretty simple straightforward passage. Put this off, put this on. Don’t walk like you used to walk. Those habits, decisions, patterns, belong to your old man. You need to take that off and put on the new self.

He calls them to stop behaving like what they once were when they were apart from Christ, and instead to live like the new creatures they are in Christ. And evidently this needs to be said. Just because we embrace the gospel and submit ourselves to Christ does not mean that all the practical details just take care of themselves. So just because we already know this, just because it’s already familiar, doesn’t mean it doesn’t bear repeating or that we’ve got it mastered. The Christian life requires routine spiritual maintenance in the form of repentance. The Christian life requires routine spiritual maintenance in the form of repentance.

When you blow up at your kids, when you just completely blow your top and you lose your you’re cool. Or you lose your temper in traffic and you’re very painfully reminded who you once were. You’re living consistently with who you were apart from Christ. And Paul would have you to repent, repent of that. Don’t wait until it’s fully grown. Repent now. When you indulge fleshly lusts that characterize your former manner of life, as we see in verse 22, you need to repent of that. Repent of it. Repentance isn’t just for the big It’s for all sins and anything that characterizes an unbelieving heart. When you see characteristics of an unbelieving heart manifesting themselves in your life, those things are inconsistent with who you are in Christ and they require are repentance.

Men are naturally foolish. And men who try to live according to their own wisdom are what we call fools. It is futility when men act as though their own wisdom is a formula for blessing and because our only natural reason is broken. We are, as natural men, darkened in our understanding. What’s more, Paul says, we are alienated from the life of God. You’ll recall that Paul uses some pretty graphic language when he describes our spiritual condition in chapter two. That is, outside of Christ, we are spiritually dead. He says we were previously dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked. Without Christ, we are estranged from God.

We are alienated from his life. And this is a very potent foolishness. We are separated from God due to a hard heart induced ignorance. There’s maybe a chicken and egg dilemma there, but when you’re spiritually dead, it’s pretty clear. There is more than, this is more than simply being unaware. This is being unaware and liking it and not wanting to know. It is suppressing the truth, it is remaining in the dark intentionally, and the fruit is not only separation from God, but an immoral and a greedy testimony to boot. So apart from Christ, men are bad, and they like it like that. They’re not these poor and innocent victims of the capricious will of some greater power than ourselves.

Men are volitional haters of God and spiritually dead. And we remain that way unless and until God rescues us and gives us new hearts. So Paul, with at least more than a hint of sarcasm, says, well first, but you did not learn Christ this way, if in fact you did learn him. He was there and he taught them, so he knows it. We did not learn Christ in this way. We have been given the gospel and the glorious strings attached requirements that come with it.

People talk like Spiderman’s Uncle Ben, say with great power comes great responsibility. And he’s onto something there. If I know there’s a bad guy in the house and I do nothing while he goes after my kids, I bear a degree of responsibility for that and I should. Especially if they are sleepily unaware.

Likewise, as those who are spiritually alive and have been spiritually dead and were walking around amid spiritual zombies, we have an awareness of the spiritual condition of our neighbors from having lived it and having been rescued from it. And that is a bleak condition.

And those in this condition are without hope if they’re left to themselves. So God, having given us a new identity is actually really fantastic news. And we ought to walk in light of that. We ought to wear that new man with a grateful joy and even an enthusiasm. God has designed that enlightened believers, enlightened believers would in turn bring light to the world as we walk according to our new identity in Christ. A believer who has been enlightened by God is duty bound. Is duty bound to bring that light to others? And this requires that we put off our old self and put on the new self. That’s in verses 22 and 24.

The presence of a collection of these believers then. So we see it at the individual level, what we are commanded as individuals. But if we have a group like that, a group of believers who are themselves, more than some of their parts, are walking by faith and according to the spirit in the midst of a decadent culture, like say for instance, the Ephesian church in Ephesus, or Trinity Evangel Church in Marysville, it’s exciting to think about the potency of their testimony. It’s exciting to think about what, well, if they did that in the world, they could turn the world upside down. It’s happened before.

But Paul doesn’t just tell his readers to embrace their new identity. He also instructs them practically with regard to a new sort of characterizing behavior. So he doesn’t just tell them, okay, so you need to do this impossible task. He kind of gives them some. Now, when it comes to what’s the next thing you’re supposed to do, here’s what it looks like. And we see that with a new behavior. We had a new identity in the first portion of this passage. A new behavior, and this starts in verse 25. Let’s look at that together. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building, excuse me, building up as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you. When Spirit-filled Christians embrace our new identity in Christ and we begin to live according to who we are in Christ, a number of really impossible things happen. And there’s a litany of mandates here. And we can infer seven outcomes, I think, based on Paul’s commands. So these are some things that happen when we do what Paul is talking about. and I’m not extrapolating too much here from the text, I don’t think, we see in verse 25. First, in Christ the liar becomes a speaker of truth.

The liar becomes a speaker of truth. Liars typically lie to their own benefit and to the injury of others, but primarily to benefit themselves. This is inconsistent for a Christian to do. The Christian recognizes that he is part of a body, and when he injures others, he injures himself. Conversely, when he speaks the truth to others, it is a means by God’s design that he can be blessed. So if he speaks the truth to the other members of his body, he receives blessing. Second, In Christ, the angry becomes useful.

And that’s verses 26 and 27. The angry guy doesn’t receive fantastic Yelp reviews and proverbs. Man given anger is not fit for much good. But the new man who is nevertheless passionate for righteousness can be of great use in God’s hands. So perhaps the redeemed angry guy.

People with temper problems are rarely cured once, at once overnight by salvation. In many cases it takes years of the Spirit’s presence in our lives to enjoy longer seasons of victory over this sin of anger. But with that said, I really do think that this passage has been the focus of a lot of unnecessary debate. Because I think we can really overthink it and in the end it’s pretty simple as I would see it.

Lots of people debate about whether or not Paul is saying, be angry, don’t actually be angry. Well, a plain reading of this text in light of Christ’s example suggests to me at least the following three things. First, anger is not itself objectively evil or we don’t have a savior.

Unless you wanna try to make the case that it wasn’t anger that characterized Jesus when the Bible says he was angry. So there is evidently such a thing as a righteous anger. Second, most of us have probably never experienced it. I have been angry even on God’s behalf at wicked things and there’s no doubt that there was plenty of sinful, I guess, longings for the destruction of somebody else in the midst of that. So anger is not self-objectively evil and I probably haven’t experienced it and you probably haven’t either, but maybe you have.

But third, the key I think is actually right there in verse 27, and that is don’t give the devil an opportunity. And we can quibble about whether or not you shouldn’t let the sun go down in your anger, and what that means in your conversation with the neighbor across the street, or your husband or wife. And I think that the answer to that is pretty simply to not give the devil an opportunity, because all of us know exactly what it’s like to go to bed nursing anger or bitterness that we ought to not have in the first place. And this is how that’s how the Gentiles deal with conflict. Just go to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning.

And then we’ve all done that before. So I’ve gone to bed sinfully angry before and woken up and not been mad anymore and the issue is not dealt with. Which actually just gift wrapped an opportunity for it to rear or its ugly head once again. Ours should be a habit of dealing with conflict as best we can before going to bed, but regardless, all of us know when we’re letting the devil win a victory in our war against sin and anger. And when you go to bed just brushing it aside, then we’ve given the devil an opportunity. So if you’re operating by the principle of don’t give the devil an opportunity, It’s going to drive, well of course you’re not gonna let the sun go down in your anger, or whatever that looks like.

The point is, we don’t actually just lob the devil softballs to take and swing right back at us. So how is that to apply to the Ephesian Christians? Well, they needed to keep short accounts, and so do we. If they’re going to be unified, if they’re going to be in the spirit and in fellowship, and the tighter your fellowship, the greater the likelihood you’re going to offend your neighbor. You’re going to sin against one another. You’re gonna get to practice forgiveness. You’re going to get to let love cover it if you can, because actually it’s not a big deal, and I can let love cover that, versus actually I can’t, and I do need to go after that, and we need to do it now.

So if there was a congregation of Ephesian Christians doing that, they would look different from the culture. Third, in Christ, the thief becomes generous. These are some pretty radical transformations. Men are in Christ who they were not outside of Christ. When we are living to the benefit of a body of believers, it is ridiculous to steal.

And it makes perfect sense to then work hard so that we may have something to give to others. Even many believers have this mind in themselves. I mean, there’s lots of altruistic, generous unbelievers who just actually just really have generous hearts and enjoy doing that. I think even the world gets that. But how much more ought Christians to be marked by the generosity of Christ? He, of course, is not interested in gain for himself, but rather for others. Fourth, we see that in Christ, the perverse become gracious. And I’m attributing that change to verse 29. Verse 29 reads, Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such is as good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.

The believer ought to have gracious speech that benefits his hearers. That doesn’t mean it’s always going to be pleasing. Benefit and pleasing are not the same thing, just like kindness and niceness are not the same thing. Paul used some pretty salty language from time to time, and he did it for the building up of the church. and he did it for, and Christ used some pretty offensive language. And we cannot say that he was not even, like some of the translations of Paul’s and Christ’s words have been sanitized in English. Some of it is really what we would call hard language. And that has its place sometimes. The point is we need to be speaking to build up, not corrupt or tear down, or like cussing for sake of perversity versus for, the way that Paul uses it in a couple places is actually to get the attention of his readers.

And so the point is our language needs to be with a view to edification and building up rather than tearing down. What I’m not saying is that you’ll never, if you hear a cuss work him out of a person’s mouth, then he’s clearly not saved. Because if we’re gonna use that standard, well then actually Paul doesn’t qualify. Verse number fifth, fifth, in Christ sinners become faithful. And we see that in verse 30. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. When we resist the Spirit and we willfully sin, we grieve him. That ought not to be the case. Sixth, in Christ, the slaves become free men.

And I listed it like that because the things that Paul catalogs here are enslaving attitudes. Look at verse 31. “‘Let all bitterness and wrath and anger “‘and clamor and slander be put away from you “‘along with all malice.‘” So this is, these are feelings of animosity toward other people. And those things, we ought not to be characterized by those things. Because we don’t have to. those sins have been paid for. I mean, let’s say that we can justify that attitude because we actually have been wronged. Well, Christ has paid for that sin as well. So in Christ, we don’t need to be beset by those attitudes. Instead, we can be marked by love.

That attitude does not fit for Christians. And then last, and this is where we get to stop, it’s where Paul stops this chapter, or the translators decided this great place to put the chapter break. In Christ, all the, sorry, we imitate Christ in our interaction. The faithless become faithful and we imitate Christ in our interaction. We see that our interactions in the body should be dominated by gospel living. That just sounds like fluffy Christian language, but this is where he stops is a good place for us to stop too. Be kind to one another, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. In a distilled sentence, what I would call gospel living is right here.

Let’s pray then. Father, we pray that you would bring us this grace, help us to be marked by the unity that comes from maturity and a common spirit in dwelling and empowering us all. We thank you for this passage and for the opportunity to look again with fresh eyes, Help us to be faithful readers of the epistles with imaginative reading so that we can try to wrap our minds around what the authors intended for the original audiences. And yet, the beautiful thing in it is that as these words are inspired by you, and all scripture is profitable, we’re teaching for proof, for correction, and the rest, we pray that we would be trained in righteousness according to what you have said in the reader, servant, Paul, tonight. So thank you and we pray these things now in Christ’s name. Amen.

Let’s pray then. Father, we pray that you would bring us this grace, help us to be marked by the unity that comes from maturity and a common spirit in dwelling and empowering us all. We thank you for this passage and for the opportunity to look again with fresh eyes, Help us to be faithful readers of the epistles with imaginative reading so that we can try to wrap our minds around what the authors intended for the original audiences. And yet, the beautiful thing in it is that as these words are inspired by you, and all scripture is profitable, we’re teaching for proof, for correction, and the rest, we pray that we would be trained in righteousness according to what you have said in the reader, servant, Paul, tonight.