Therefore Submit and Love

Eph. 5:21-33

Good morning! Today we tackle a passage that some people don’t like to hear, that non-Christians sometimes mock, a passage from Ephesians about the prescribed behavior and roles of husbands and wives. I believe that the passage is misunderstood not only by unbelievers, but by many Christians as well. Before we dig into today’s passage, let me give a very brief overview of where we are in context in Ephesians. 

Paul writes Ephesians will being imprisoned in Rome. The first three chapters focus on the gospel, the message that by putting one’s faith in Christ, Gentiles become included with believing Jews in receiving redemption through Christ’s blood and the forgiveness of sins. Paul prays for them and us that the Spirit would help us to know Christ more deeply, more personally, more richly, and he prays that we would know the inheritance we now possess by faith and the power of God that is available to us.  Paul describes us as God’s handiwork, created in Christ to do good works that He has planned for us to do. These works have nothing to do with salvation, with saving us, but we are to do these works as we allow the Spirit to lead us, out of gratitude and submission, to the glory of God. As we live in this way, we, both Jewish and Gentile believers together, are like stones set in a single beautiful building, with Christ as the cornerstone. Paul goes on to share of the joy he has personally experienced – a joy that makes his many severe trials not worth even mentioning in comparison – as he lives out the calling God has placed on him as a minister to the Gentiles. 

And then, after a beautiful prayer for the Ephesians – and for us – that Christ would reign in our hearts through faith, and that we would grasp just how much Christ loves us, we come to Chapter 4, which starts with the word “Therefore.” And the second half of the book, which includes today’s passage, focuses on a more practical, detail-oriented explanation of how we should live as people “in Christ”. 

We are told to be completely humble and gentle, patient, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. We are told that, to assist in this goal, Christ gave the Church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Implicit in this discussion is the imperative that all believers should be joining with other believers in local assemblies, so that these gifts of Christ can benefit all believers. 

We are told to “put off” our old selves, corrupted by deceitful desires, and “put on” our new selves, created to be like God in righteousness and holiness. We are told to put off falsehood and put on truth-telling. We are told to put off anger. We are told to put off stealing but put on honest work. We are told to put of unwholesome talk and put on speech that builds others up. We are told to put off bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, and slander, and put on compassion and forgiveness. 

As God’s dearly loved children, we are told to walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us. We are told to not have even a hint of immorality, impurity, greed, or unwholesome talk. We are told to seek what pleases the Lord, living as the wise, not as the foolish. We are told not to be drunk on wine, but be filled with the Spirit, worshipping Him and being ever thankful. And that brings us to today’s passage.  

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. – Eph. 5:21

This entire section of Ephesians, from this verse to verse 6:9, is like a thesis. And the thesis statement is right here, in verse 5:21. We will find that this thesis has six “body” paragraphs, six applications of the thesis statement, focusing on (1) wives, (2) husbands, (3) children, (4) fathers, (5) slaves, and (6) masters. Today we will look focus on the first two of these six. 

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. – Eph. 5:22-24

I want to start by talking about the Greek word used here for “submit”, hypotasso. This is a compound word, from hypo, which means “by” or “under”, and tasso, which means, in the context here, to “set”. And so hypotasso means to set yourself under. 

Note that the passage does not say that women are inferior to men. Now it is certainly true that women and men are certainly inferior to the Lord. But that is not what the comparison of the Lord is there for. It says to wives, set yourselves under your husbands in a manner like how you set yourselves under the Lord. 

Although I have to jump ahead in Ephesians to do this, let me make a comparison with verse 6:1 which tells children to “obey” their parents. This is a different Greek word, hypakouo. This is also a compound word, based again on hypo, meaning, as before, “by” or “under”, but this time also on akouo, which means to “hear”, to “attend to”, to “understand.” 

These words are very different. The idea behind the command to children is that they are far less understanding, far less wise, far less skilled or equipped, than their parents, and so they should set themselves under them to learn, to understand, to hear and heed what the parents are instructing. But the command to wives has no preconceptions – at all – that the wife is in any way less spiritually mature than her husband. This is not about capability. 

One passage that illustrates these ideas very well is from Luke 2, the account when Jesus was twelve years old and slipped away from His parents to stay at Jerusalem in the temple courts, sitting among the top teachers of the Law and discussing it with them. It says that all who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers. The account continues in verse 48:

When His parents saw Him, they were astonished. His mother said to Him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” “Why were you searching for Me?” He asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in My Father’s house?” But they did not understand what He was saying to them. Then He went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. – Luke 2:48-51

It is this last verse I want to highlight. Do you think the word translated as “obedient” here is hypotasso, which, again, means to “submit under”, or hypakouo, which means to learn from, and to obey like a child obeys his parents. The answer is hypotasso. Even though Mary and Joseph are responsible for Jesus and biologically speaking a generation older for Him, the word hypokouo would be entirely inappropriate, because as this very passage shows, Jesus is teaching the spiritual leaders of Jerusalem. Jesus, God’s Son and God Himself, chose to place Himself under the authority of His parents, because it was the will of God His Father. 

And thus, the word hypotasso was the only fitting word to use in this passage.

I have another very interesting example, the account of the centurion in Luke 7. This man was one of the “God-lovers,” non-Jews who worshiped the Jewish God at a distance. He had a servant who fell ill and sent some elders of the Jews to ask Jesus to come to heal his servant. Jesus agreed, but while still on his way, some friends of the centurion, who had come on his behalf, told Jesus not to trouble Himself to come to him, but instead to heal his servant at a distance. By way of explanation, the Centurion said this:

For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” – Luke 7:8

There are actually two occasions in which versions of these words are used: “I myself am a man under authority” and “with soldiers under me.” So this is a double question: Is the first occurrence hypotasso (to submit under like an equal) or hypokouo (to be under like a child)? 

What about the second occurrence? The answer is that the first occurrence is hypotasso, because this is a very capable Roman officer who serves under equally capable officers, and the second instance is hypokouo, because the soldiers under him are more like mere grunts, not officers, with a small fraction of the training that he has had. And notice how he compares himself to Jesus: Jesus to him is obviously hypotasso, submitting like an equal to whoever is over Him – and whether he knew that Jesus was God or not, this is an astonishing insight at this early point in Jesus’ ministry. And the powers of Jesus’ healing, whether through angels or some other mechanism, are like hypokouo compared to Jesus. Again, an astonishing insight into the true nature of Jesus, who as the book of Hebrews says, is far above the angels.  

So with all this in mind, let us return to our Ephesians passage. Let me read the section addressed to wives once again:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. – Eph. 5:22-24

So we know that hypotasso is the term here, for how wives are to submit to their husbands. But what about how they submit to the Lord? Certainly that should be hypokouo, shouldn’t it? It should be, but one of the implied, amazing messages of the first 3 chapters of Ephesians is that it isn’t. Yes, it is ridiculous, even blasphemous, to think of ourselves as equals in any way with Christ in terms of capability, in character, or anything else. But Christ treats us not as we deserve. He treats us as friends, as family, as co-laborers in the gospel. What an amazing privilege! What a delight to submit to Him in this way! And wives are to submit to their husbands in the same wonderful way. And hypotasso is also the word used in verse 24. 

And so what does this kind of submission look like? Submission that believes the best of her husband. Submission that is borne out of love of her husband. Submission that sees herself as a co-laborer with her husband to live totally for Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, with humility and peace-seeking and a desire to build her husband up. Hypotasso, not hypokouo.

And before I move on to husbands, let me point out some similar instructions elsewhere in the Bible.

Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. – Col. 3:18

What do you think? Hypotasso or hypokouo? Hypotasso.

And one more, from I Peter:

Wives, in the same way submit yourselves to your own husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. – I Peter 3:1-2

What do you think? Hypotasso or hypokouo? Hypotasso. This passage I feel provides an additional insight into the question, what if my husband isn’t acting like someone I want to hypotasso to right now? This gets to the very heart of hypotasso. In this case the situation is certainly not ideal, and I Peter gives the even more extreme situation of a husband who is not even a Christian. I Peter makes it clear that hypotasso of the wife is not conditional on the behavior of the husband. 

Now there are exceptions – certainly if a wife is in danger, or her children are in danger, she should get help and, in many cases, leave the husband, at a minimum for a temporary basis, and very possibly permanently. Every situation is different, so absolute statements cannot be made here. In a situation like this, we would encourage a woman to tell someone in the church, someone she is most comfortable going to. That might be a pastor, and we would do anything to help a woman in such a situation, but we would also understand if perhaps the person would be more comfortable telling another woman.    

OK – wives are off the hook. It’s time to address the husbands. Continuing with the passage:  

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to Himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. – Eph. 5:25-28a

Now with regards to the Greek words, there is less to say here. The word for love is agape, which is the highest form of love, love that, just as the start of this passage says, is eminently self-sacrificial. Christ gave up His very life for those He loved, so that they would have forgiveness and eternal life. But the picture here in Ephesians goes even further than that, much further. I think of the picture of preparing a bride for marriage – I picture a top-of-the-line spa session: a scented bath, doing her nails, hands and feet, making her hair absolutely perfect, professional level putting on of make up, and then the dress – an unbelievably beautiful dress, ironed over and over at the last hour so that it has not even a hint of a wrinkle, a beautiful just-picked bouquet of flowers, a beautiful veil… ladies, you can tell me if I’m leaving anything out.  

This is really the picture Jesus promotes in this passage. What does it mean? How are husbands to love their wives like that?

It means, first, to pay close attention to their needs and desires. It means, as much as it is up to you, to help them to be happy and satisfied. There is also the idea of holiness and being without blame. This means that you have a spiritual responsibility for your wife. Is she getting fed in the Word? How are you helping her to do this? It could be having devotions with her. It could be making it so that she can attend a women’s Bible study. But this too is only one aspect of what this entails.

It can mean defending your wife against family members or others who don’t treat her right. It can mean helping your wife with household chores if she is tired. It can mean, if you have children, giving her breaks, and it can mean taking care of discipline of the children when needed and making sure that her children always treat her with respect. These are just a tiny number of examples of what this can mean.

I think the big picture here is that life is challenging, and husbands have a responsibility before the Lord to help her to be continually growing in love, growing in all the character qualities that Christ would have for us, doing whatever it takes to protect her, to encourage her, to restore her, to help her rest, to gently challenge her, in short to make her like that picture of the beautiful bride I described a few minutes ago. Getting a future wife ready on wedding day takes hours. Getting your wife “ready” in this sense for eternity takes a lifetime. 

I want to say that it is Christ that grows us. But our role of husbands is important as helpers in this process. We can be ever attentive to remove the roadblocks that keep her from growing in Him, or we can unfortunately be part of the problem. 

And we don’t get to ask, “have I done enough yet?” Our comparison is the Lord Himself. He gave His life for the body. And we are to love our wives as we love our own bodies. If you are taking care of your body, working out or watching your diet, or anything else, great! But have the same mindset about your wife. 

I want to point out one more thing before going on here. Remember that the wife is to submit (hypotasso) to her husband, as I Peter says, even if the husband isn’t doing his job laying down his life in agape love for his wife. But I want you (the husbands) to see how broken this is. In a marriage, Ephesians makes it clear that a husband has a spiritual responsibility for his wife, but as with all things, this is impossible without the help of the Lord – this is not something we do in our own effort alone. We do it bathed in prayer for the power of the Spirit to help us. But when we don’t do this, you are letting your wife down. She is depending on you to lead her as she submits. She will continue to submit even as you mislead, as you don’t do your God-given responsibility. And this is tragic. Not only are you sinning before the Lord; you are tragically also impacting your wife. Let it not be so. 

Let’s consider the parallel passages as we did with the wives:

Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. – Col. 3:19

Yes, it is still agape, the self-sacrificial laying down of one’s life for your wife. And the opposite of harsh is gentle. We are to be gentle, caring, and tender towards our wives, building them up. Again, I think the picture of all of the preparations of a bride for her wedding is helpful here. 

And from I Peter 3:

Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. – I Peter 3:7

First note that the “in the same way” at the beginning of this verse means, if you go back to the previous chapter, like how Christ has treated you – He has given up His life for you. And so once again we see the charge to husbands to lay down their lives for their wives.

The word translated “partner” here in Greek has a much more specific meaning. It means vessel, a word often used metaphorically to represent the physical body. The word translated “treat them with respect” means honor. And so you are to honor them as you would honor, for example, a wise elder, even though he has become frail. You are to honor them despite their relative physical weakness compared to you. And this is a generalization – there are certainly women who are stronger than their husbands. But the point is to honor your wife even if she is weaker than you. 

And men, this passage also comes with a warning – so that nothing will hinder your prayers. Can treating your wife poorly block your prayers? Yes. I think it is like the parable of the unmerciful servant, or the servant who received mercy but refused to show mercy to those who were in a similar situation to what he had been in. I think this is similar, because, men, God treats you with honor even though you are the weaker partner compared to Him. He treats you kindly, graciously, gently. And so if you turn around and treat your wife in an opposite way, God becomes opposed to you. This is a very serious thing.  

Now let’s come back to the Ephesians passage. It says “He who loves his wife loves himself.” What does this mean? Well, we immediately get the following explanation:

After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.  – Eph. 5:28b-33

Now in this modern day and age, unfortunately, many people in one sense do hate their bodies. That is, when they look in a mirror, they find faults with their weight or some other aspect of their appearance. But hating how you look in a mirror is not really what is being talked about here. The Greek word is strong, used elsewhere in the New Testament to describe hating a mortal enemy, or as behavior people do as unbelievers. If you really hated yourself like that, you wouldn’t eat, you wouldn’t do anything to take care of yourself. The truth is we all love ourselves even if we don’t like all aspects of ourselves, perhaps with the exception of the severely depressed. If we are sick, we want to get better, and we go to the doctor or the emergency room if it serious enough. If we are hungry, we want to be filled, and so on. 

And as we see Genesis quoted here, we know that husband and wife in the eyes of God are treated as a unit. The passage talks about Christ and the church as a profound mystery – and we will come back to that in a moment – but I find it a big enough mystery just talking about husband and wife. 

What is the point here? That we need to see our marriages as God sees them. Husband and wife are one flesh. And so, a husband who does not love his wife and take care of her like he takes care of his own body is the definition of foolishness. When we don’t follow God’s command to agape our wives, we are hurting our wives, and that means we are hurting ourselves. It’s like a bunch of the old sci-fi shows where a person and an alien creature become somehow linked, and when you shoot at the alien you also hurt the human. That is how it is for husbands and their wives. (I’m not saying that wives are alien creatures, although they can think quite differently from us at times.) 

Now Paul throws a tantalizing thought at us but doesn’t develop it. We, the church, the ekklesia, the called-out ones, are the bride of Christ. And so the deeper ministry is that Christ and the church are also in some way one flesh. And I think this is a good thing for us to reflect on as we prepare are hearts for communion. Can we really grasp what this means? No – Paul calls it a great mystery. But there are other verses that speak of it.

Shortly before the crucifixion, Jesus prayed with His disciples the following prayer:

I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as We are one—I in them and You in Me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me. – John 17:20-23

Jesus gave His life once for all, on the cross, as payment for all sin. Jesus gave us the practice of the bread and the cup to help us to remember not only that He died for us but that He continues to love us, to agape us, to prepare us just like the perfect bride I described earlier. 

I encourage you to spend some time now drawing near to Him in prayer, thanking Him for who He is and what He has done, and for the beautiful picture He has given husbands and wives to live out, a small picture of the great mystery of the oneness and unity we will have with Christ Himself. 

Father, I pray for the husbands and wives here that you would help us to rededicate ourselves to the roles you have set out for us. Help the wives to hypotasso submit to their husbands, and help the husbands to agape love their wives. And help those who are single to find contentment in their singlehood, whether it is for a season or for the rest of their lives here on earth. And help us all to remember that this life is fleeting. It is short. And in heaven there will not be marriage as there is on earth, so even marriage and family itself are only shadows of something greater to come, the great mystery as Paul describes it – the culmination of marriage between Christ and the church, of which we are a part. Help us to know you more, to love you more, and to serve you more as we lay down our lives and submit to one another in You.

Therefore Be Pure

Eph. 5:1-20

Let us start with reading the entire passage for today.

Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. – Eph. 5:1-2

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a man is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them. – Eph. 5:3-7

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” – Eph. 5:8-14 

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is. Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. – Eph. 5:15-20

The Bible is filled with commands to obey.  Here are the commands we went over in chapter 4 last week:

1. “Live a life worthy of the calling you received…”

2. “Be completely humble…” 

3. “And gentle…”

4. “Be patient…”

5. “Bearing with one another in love…”

6. “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”

7. “You must no longer live as the Gentiles do…”

8. “Put off your old self…”

9. “Be made new in the attitudes of your minds…”

10. “Put on the new self…”

11. “Put off falsehood…”

12. “Speak truthfully…”

13. “In your anger do not sin…”

14. “Steal no longer…”

15. “Must work…”

16. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths…”

17. “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit…”

18. “Get rid of all bitterness…”

19. “Get rid of all…rage…”

20. “Get rid of all…anger…”

21. “Get rid of all…brawling…”

22. “Get rid of all…slander…”

23. “Get rid of all…every form of malice…”

24. “Be kind…”

25. “Be…compassionate…”

26. “Forgiving each other…”

In chapter 5 we read:

1. “There must not be even a hint of sexual immorality…”

2. “There must not be even a hint of…any kind of impurity…”

3. “There must not be even a hint of…greed…”

4. “Nor should there be obscenity…”

5. “Nor should there be…foolish talk…”

6. “Nor should there be…coarse joking…”

7. “But rather thanksgiving…”

8. “Let no one deceive you with empty words…”

9. “Do not be partners with them.”

This is a long list of things to do and not to do.  A lot of people think that this is what Christianity is…”Do this. Don’t do that.”  If that was truly the case, then we would be the same as many of the other religions of the world.  It would also be very disheartening.  We would wake up thinking that all we were yesterday was a failure and all that we will be today is a failure.  I left some commands out of this list.  They’re in chapter 5.  Do you know what I left out?  The main target is missing.  The power is missing.  

My kids have done things in the past that they weren’t interested in.  They were doing things that they didn’t have any experience with or any skills to do and, yet, there they were trying to do it.  Sarah was two years old when we left Wilmington.  I would sit a the desk and type on my computer.  At the age of 1.5 years, she really hadn’t typed that many pages for school yet.  Her experiences and skills were a little on the lacking side.  She would climb into my lap and begin typing away.  It wasn’t very elegant.  She used her fingers but sometimes she used the palm of her hands.  What she wrote wasn’t comprehendible.  She had only been walking for about eight months and, yet, she was typing up her first essays on the subject of “lt34bhrt7zv42zzzzaa30.”  

She didn’t understand what the box was that I was pecking on.  She didn’t know much about church finances, sermons, or evangelism plans, but that didn’t stop her.  She wanted to do what I was doing.  She wanted to be like me.  Paul said, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children…”  

No Christian has it all figured out.  No Christian knows everything in the Bible or understands all prophecy.  Every Christian sins, and oftentimes we do it willingly.  I’ve sinned by doing some of the things in the list we went over earlier.  I fail as a father, as a husband and as a church leader.  A righteous life flows from being imitators of God.  Being like him is the target.  Max is on the archery team at school.  What would happen if he misunderstood what the target was?  He could be aiming for the lights or the doors or the walls.  He will experience more sense of accomplishment if he aims at the target.  Otherwise, he has an extremely small chance of hitting the bullseye.  If we’re aiming just for the commands, then we’ll be all over the place.  We’ll probably face great discouragement in our Christian walk.  

The power is missing as well.  Imagine you work for an employer that is offering a greater job.  You only need to complete one task.  The factory you work for needs an extremely important part.  Their main machine is inoperable without it.  He tells you to go pick up the part.  You’ll be the hero of the year.  Everyone will be so grateful, except the employees who don’t want to come to work.  Your boss gives you the keys to the company vehicle.  He tells you where the car is.  He also gives directions about traveling to the place where the part is.  He gives detailed instructions on where to go once you get there and who to talk to.  You have the part name and the part number written on a piece of paper, on your phone and inked on your arm.  You’re not going to fail at this mission.  

You get in the car and turn the key over but nothing happens.  It tries to turn over but it surely won’t start.  Then you realize that there’s no gas in the gas tank.  He has sent you on this mission but it has become impossible because there’s no fuel to make the car go anywhere.  You’re super discouraged.  There’s no way you can get this done.  In my scenario, there is no Uber, Lyft, or other businesses like that.  No one will let you borrow their car.  There is no options for boat, train or airplane.  So, besides the option of car-jacking, you’re stuck.

Before I became a Christian I heard of some of the things that I shouldn’t do and should do.  But no one ever sat down me and personally explained how the Holy Spirit empowers a believer to live the Christian life.  The Holy Spirit empowers someone to be an imitator of God.  Because I lacked the power, I didn’t think I could stop doing bad things.  I surely didn’t desire sharing the gospel, reading the Bible, or praying either.  I didn’t realize that the Spirit would give me those desires and help me start dropping some of that old, bad fruit.  

You and I are trying to learn the will of a person, not the formula to a problem.  What word does Paul use to describe a person who goes their whole life not searching the word of God so that they can determine what God desires?  The answer is in verse 17.  He said that person is a fool.  When we come before God one day we can’t say, “Oh, I didn’t know that was what you were wanting!”  One of the things he desires for us is to “be filled with the Spirit.”  The Greek text is written as “continually be being filled by the Spirit.”  It’s not a one-time experience.  When a person receives the Holy Spirit they are immersed or “baptized” into the Spirit.  That’s what Paul talked about in Romans 6.  That’s what the disciples experienced in Acts 2.  But, we can make a decision every day to be filled with the Spirit.  In Colossians 3 Paul said that being filled with the word has the same things associated with it as being filled with the Spirit.  I encourage you to read that today before you go to bed.  In Ephesians 5 it says, “Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.  Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Being filled with the Spirit is opposed to being drunk with wine.  How does a person get drunk?  The alcohol people drank during the day of Paul was mostly on the weaker side compared to the liquor we have now.  Paul didn’t say alcohol or liquor.  He said “wine”.  There was wine that only had a mild amount of alcohol.  But there was something else that was considered “strong drink.”  The milder wine was used to make the water palatable or to help with stomach ailments.  The “strong drink” was beyond wine in the amount of alcohol.  What does a person have to in order to be drunk?  A person would have to drink a lot of wine.  In other words, they wouldn’t get drunk on just one glass.  

To be filled with the Spirit we must be filled with the Words of God.  I don’t think that’s the only thing we need to do in order to be filled with the Spirit.  Christians wonder why they lack power in their lives.  One reason is because they don’t take in enough of God’s word on a regular basis.  You don’t accidentally get drunk.  You decide to take the time to drink and you decide to put the glass to your mouth, over and over and over.  Then, you decide to swallow.  The pathway to imitating God is by continually be being filled by the Spirit.

How is God described in chapter 5?  He’s mainly described as loving.  In verse one it says that we are “dearly loved children” and that we are to “live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.” (Eph. 5:1)  In 2 Corinthians 4:6 we see that God wanted to give us “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”  We can know what God is like by looking to Jesus.  That’s why Paul said to love like Christ and to give yourself like Christ.  Even though it was uncomfortable at times, Jesus did the Father’s will.  Even though it was painful, he went to the cross.  

According to the end or chapter four, what did God do for us because of his love?  He was kind and compassionate to us, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32)  What flowed from his kindness and compassion?  It was forgiveness.  Kindness and compassion flow from love.  Forgiveness flows from kindness and compassion.  So, Paul is being very specific here.  He’s saying that our love towards others should manifest as forgiveness.  This is what he’s specifically telling us to imitate.  

Mankind has conquered many challenges since the beginning of time.  We’ve created and mastered certain technology.  But it doesn’t take being filled with the Spirit to do that.  We’ve mastered the science of growing of food.  But it doesn’t take being filled with the Spirit to accomplish that either.  We’ve traveled to the moon and explored the depths of the ocean.  But it doesn’t take being filled with the Spirit to do this.  Forgiveness, on the other hand, is a different challenge altogether.  You can’t forgive without being filled with the Spirit.  

If we didn’t do all the bad things listed in Ephesians 4 and 5, then we would be pure.  But we don’t attain to this by avoiding a bunch of bad stuff, otherwise we’d all have to become monks.  We focus on being filled with the Spirit.  This, in turn, will help us become imitators of God.  As we align ourselves with being loving like God loved us, then we would inherently pursue purity.  If I love someone then I won’t commit the sin of slander.  If I love God and am thankful for what he has given to me then I won’t be greedy, nor will I commit sexual immorality.  If the Holy Spirit lives in me, then I would be concerned about what I say and what I see because I know that he lives in me.  I don’t want to grieve him.  

Paul said, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity…” (Eph. 5:15-16)  How can we be careful how we live and to make the most of every opportunity?  He says, “understand what the will of the Lord is.” (Eph. 5:17)  

We choose light over darkness, kindness and compassion instead of harshness and indifference, righteousness over unrighteousness and love over hate.  We choose being filled with the Spirit over being filled with obscenity, sexual immorality or anger.  Some of God’s will is straightfoward, understandable and doable.  When we stand before God one day we can’t say, “Oh, I didn’t know you wanted that!”  It’s each of our own responsibility to search out God’s will in his word.  You can’t blame it on your pastor for not teaching it to you.  You can’t put your parents at fault for not sharing it with you.  

Adam and Eve knew what God’s will: 

God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’ – Gen. 1:28  

And one more thing… “You can eat from any of the trees in this garden, but don’t you dare eat from that tree over there.”  These things were the known will of God.  It was clear as can be.  It was understandable and it was doable.  But they chose darkness over light, and unrighteousness over righteousness.  They chose to be filled with something that would only provide temporary satisfaction.

So, the title of this sermon is Therefore Be Pure.  What does “pure” mean?  One way to think of it is: freedom from any contaminants that would make a substance deviate from its intended purpose, appearance, strength, etc.  The Cambridge English Dictionary states that it’s “the state of not being mixed with anything else.”  In other words, if we’re filled with the Spirit, then we won’t be filled with anger, bitterness or alcohol.  

I’ve been finishing up replacing the engine on my truck.  I had the engine covered with several layers of tarp and trash bags.  Somehow water got into the engine during a big rainstorm.  The water, which was the impurity, would have made the engine fail if I didn’t get it out.  The engine wouldn’t be able to operate as the creators intended.  We too wouldn’t be able to operate as our creator intended if we are filled with sin.  If you use something in a way that the creator didn’t intend, then that is called abuse.  

On a spiritual level, I think that purity isn’t just the absence of sin.  It’s mainly about the presence of God.  In Revelation 21, John said, 

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp…Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. – Rev. 21:22-23,27  

Where the fulness of God’s presence is sin cannot be.  When we stand before God one day he will give us a glorified body, without sin.  When we see God in his fulness sin will flee.  When light shines the darkness will vanish.  So, what do you think will happen when we are filled with the Spirit?  We will start seeing these troubling sins disappear.  We will become more like God.  As a result, we will start seeing more-and-more righteous fruit in our lives.

 

Therefore Be Like Him

Eph. 4:17-31

Good morning!  We’re in the second half of chapter 4 in Ephesians today.  This week and next week’s passages, Ephesians 4:17-5:20 form a two-part message on how we are to live as followers of Christ, how we are to relate to others.

We live in a broken world.  As the years pass, it feels like the world has less and less unity.  There are more conflicts globally.  More broken homes.  More political strife.  More division about how to view and understand the world.  More violence.  More persecution.

The book of Ephesians is a reminder that this is not where the world is ultimately headed.  Ephesians 1:10 tells us that Christ is returning to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, Himself.  And, we certainly look forward to that!

For those who hear the word of truth about Jesus and believe, Ephesians 1:13 tells us that we are included in Christ now.  Ephesians 3:6 says that through the gospel, believers are sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

And so during this time between Jesus’ ascension and His return, it is the age of the church.  Jesus is head of the church.  His church should exemplify the unity that Christ will bring to all things at His return.  What should that look like?

Our passage last week (Ephesians 4:1-16) gave us two goals for the church.  My study bible called them twin goals.  And in that passage Paul weaves them one into the other almost in a kind of dance.  Unity and maturity.

We are to “make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace,” (v.3) while Christ gives apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, “to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.“ (v.12)

And this building up shall continue, “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature.”  (v.13)  “We will no longer be infants.”  Corporately, together, “we will grow to become in every respect the mature body.”

Today, we’re going to get into the how’s and what’s.  What to do and what not to do, and how to do it.  Most important of all is the Who?  Who makes it all possible?  Christ Jesus from whom, “the whole body … grows and builds itself up in love.”

Let’s pray and get into today’s passage.

Thank You Jesus that You are the One.  The One who builds up the church.  The One who sends us teachers and prophets and pastors and evangelists and apostles.  Thank You that You are with us through Your Holy Spirit.  We worship You.  Teach us what to do and how to live.  We pray in Your Name Jesus, Amen.

So that last phrase I shared before we prayed is the end of verse 16.  “From [Christ] the whole body … grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”  Keep that in mind as we go into verse 17.

So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. – Eph. 4:17-18

Okay.  We’re starting with what not to do.  If we’re going to grow and be built up in love, we’re going to have to stop what?  Living as the Gentiles do.  How is that?  In the futility of their thinking.

Romans 1 gets into this in great detail.  Starting in verse 22, it says that the ungodly people claimed to be wise, but instead they became fools mainly by exchanging the glory of God for idols.  As a result, God gave them over to their sinful desires, specifically sexual impurity that further devolved into unnatural sexual relations.  As they did not retain the knowledge of God, God allowed that way of thinking to run its course.  They were “filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice; gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; inventing ways of doing evil; disobedient of their parents.”  These people who reject God “have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.  Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”

That matches with what we see in verse 18 above.  “They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God.”  Why?  Because of their ignorance.  Why are they ignorant?  They have hardened their hearts.  The easiest way to explain hardening your heart is to stop listening to God.  To reject Him and His truth.

So, Paul is insisting that we don’t do that.  Stay attentive and soft toward God.  Desire to know what He’s like, what He’s doing.

Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.  That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. – Eph. 4:19-21

In large part, we have covered what verse 19 is telling us when we looked at Romans 1.  The only other thought is that this verse reminds me of the phrase used in II Peter 2:12 and Jude 1:10. In both places, it is talking about people who speak evil, defile the flesh, reject the truth.  It compares them to “brute beasts” destined for slaughter.  Yikes!

As we get further into today’s passage, we’re going to see that good and bad or bad and good choices are contrasted against one another.  So, if we apply that kind of thinking to what we see here, we should strive to keep our sensitivity, exercise self-control, be generous, and indulge purity.  I don’t know how to indulge purity.  When I went and looked at the Greek, the word indulge really means to practice or to work at.  That fits better.  We can practice purity.  We can work at purity.

Because we have learned a better way of life.  We have learned from the One who is the way, the truth, and the life.

Rebekah, my daughter, bought me a North Greenville t-shirt when she was in school there.  That was pre-COVID, more than four years ago.  I’ve worn it a good bit, and it’s starting to get a little bit ragged.  I was wearing yesterday, in fact.  It has a picture of the NGU logo.  It has the name of the school.  Then, at the bottom, it has their motto.

Shameless plug.  There are all sorts of educational institutions.  Public, private, Christian.  I’ve also joked that with seven children, we have enough kids to have statistics.  We’ve had kids take different educational paths over the years.  So far, two have had at least some education at two different Christian universities.  And, there’s a lot of good I can say about them for shaping character, framing a Christian worldview, sparking and inspiring vision to do many of the things we’re talking about in this Ephesians passage.  I have been impressed, and I am grateful for these institutions.

Okay, that was a story in a story.  Remember the t-shirt.  The motto.  It’s “Christ makes the difference.”  That is crucial.  He is the one who makes the difference in the way of life that we live.  My study bible also contrasted Paul’s choice to use Christ and Jesus separately in the same sentence.  Theologians have submitted that Paul chose to say Jesus when he wrote the way of life “in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus” because he wants to point us to the life that Jesus lived on earth before His resurrection and ascension.  Jesus did it.  He lived the life that we need to live.  He is our example.

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. – Eph. 4:22-24

Be like Him.  That is today’s title.  That’s the goal for each of us.

Thankfully, some of you may be saying, “Well, I don’t really have that much of a former way of life before I trusted Christ,” because you were children when you put your faith in Him.  As a result, you might wonder about the need to put off your old self.  Do I need to do that?  

There’s a certain recurring nature to this old-self / new-self business.  It’s like that last phrase about being made new in the attitude of your minds.  That kind of hearkens back to Romans 12:2, “Be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”  We need to be renewed in our thinking again and again.

We are still “in the flesh.”  And I can see that my flesh is aging, being corrupted by the consequence of sin and the Fall.  I think we can also realize when we are walking around in our spiritual “old self”.  Being selfish, being a grouch, not believing the best of others.  We need to put off our old self and put on our new self.  It’s like mentally changing clothes.  Take off the old dirty things.  Put on the new clean ones.

On Easter Sunday, I usually wear a white shirt.  Years ago, I had to lead worship and teach on Easter.  I grabbed what I thought was my good white shirt, put it on, and came to church.  At some point in the course of the morning, I realized I didn’t have my good white shirt on.  I had an older shirt.  Not only a bit worn in the color and cuffs, it had a stain on it.  I couldn’t believe it.  Why did I keep that shirt when I already had another good one!  We’re not talking about a t-shirt or even a shirt I would wear to work.  A white button-down dress shirt.  Needless to say, that after I made the best of the situation and used it as a show-and-tell sermon illustration, I went home and threw it away.

I don’t know why God decided to make it this way, that we can’t exactly throw away our old ways of thinking, that we can revert back to them.  How then can we hope to reliably put on our new self?

One of the themes of Ephesians is power.  Specifically, the power of God.  Chapter 1 tells of His “incomparably great power for us who believe.”  It’s the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.  I’m not just saying that.  That’s Ephesians 1:19-20.  In chapter 3, we are reminded again of God’s mighty power, including the fact that “His power is at work within us.”  Finally, (I know it’s jumping ahead) Ephesians 6:10 tells us to “be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.”  So, it really is like changing clothes.  Because God’s power is at work within us to allow us to be successful in living the life that He has called us to.

The next verses are short ones, but I decided to separate them on the slides because they focus on different areas.  Now that we have put on our new selves that were “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. – Eph. 4:25

Paul chose to write neighbor here, but the context tells us that he means the ones who are members of the one body.  We, as believers, should not lie to one another.  Hopefully, that’s not too difficult.  If it does happen, that you lie to a brother or sister, then you should confess, apologize, and tell the truth.

We probably do need to have some care around speaking truthfully.  Some of you don’t need any encouragement, those of you can remember that everyone should be quick to listen and slow to speak.  Others though are not big on confrontation.  You’ll see my fear come up later.  It’s too easy for me to get angry.  So, confrontations can be a high-risk situation for me.  If I don’t want to lose my cool, then it seems logical to avoid speaking truthfully.  That’s not the only reason people have to avoid speaking truth.  Fear is another reason.  All kinds of fear.  Fear of sounding dumb, fear of not saying it right, fear of what the other person might think or do.

This is going to come out wrong, but at a certain point, you just have to put aside the fear of looking dumb because it’s just going to happen.  You’re going to look dumb at some point or other.

I have a tough situation with a project at work.  It’s just not getting done.  The main engineer working on it has been really anxious about it, putting the blame on himself, and offering to go in front of whatever firing line there might be.  I wrote him an email on Friday really telling him the situation on the commitments that have been communicated outwardly which once I got to looking weren’t that bad.

After I wrote that, I then realized that I was the one who had presented this project to the plant manager and other external executives.  I was the one that said that the project would be done in October, and then November, and then December, and then January.  Digging into the project and working with the engineer to make a realistic aggressive timeline on Friday, I’m pretty confident that we are going to finish before March.

I realized then that I am the one who looks like an idiot, at least on this one project.  I was equally surprised to realize that it really didn’t bother me all that much.  Because, when I had said the project was going to be done all those different times, I had been telling the truth.  I was just wrong.  There is something important about telling the truth.  If you don’t tell the truth and say nothing, how will you learn, how will the other person learn, how will wrongs be righted, how will hurts be healed?  If you have something on your heart that needs said, pray about it, seek counsel if you need to, but speak truthfully with one another.  If we don’t, then our body won’t be whole and healthy. 

"In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. – Eph. 4:26-27

See, I told you anger would be on the list.  Anger is not always wrong.  It is a strong emotion though, so it is easy to jump from it into sin.  Whether or not the anger is righteous, we are told not to let it persist beyond the day.  If we hold on to our anger, it really does give the devil a foothold.

If one of the key goals of the church is unity, then one of Satan’s main points of attack is going to be to sow division.  If you are angry with a brother or sister, and you hold on to that anger without addressing it, then you run the risk of giving the devil a foothold.

If you’re angry because someone has sinned against you, then you need to approach them about it.  If you can’t go by yourself, then take another brother or sister.  If you’re angry about a situation you can’t control or where it is not possible to approach the person, or where you are being overly sensitive, take it to the Lord.  At some point, you will have to release your anger.  That doesn’t necessarily mean forgetting what happened, especially if there is a risk of it happening again.  But, do not hold on to the anger.  Proverbs 19:11 tells us a persons wisdom yields patience, “it’s to their glory to overlook an offense.”

Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need.  – Eph. 4:28

I probably need to pick up speed.  This is one of the verses which shows a stop bad – start good contrast.  The thief should not only stop his stealing, but he should also start working so that he can bless others who are in need.  Stop being stingy and start being generous.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. –  Eph. 4:29

When I was a student and a younger believer, we had a two-word paraphrase for this verse.  It’ll stick with you, so I’m a little reluctant in sharing it.  We summed up Ephesians 4:29 as “Edify, stupid.”  It’s a bad joke because we are told here, “do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths.”

If you have a question about what is unwholesome, then contrast it with how we should address one another.  If something isn’t helpful for building others up according to their needs, then it’s probably unwholesome in some way.

That last little phrase has a significant practical application.  If you speak in ways that build someone up, it benefits not only the person you are building up, but it benefits anyone who is listening.

Going back to the speaking truthfully point, if you have something on your heart that blesses or encourages, then by all means share it.  It will bless them, it will bless you, and it will bless anyone else that is listening.

There was a book called the 10-Second Rule published about ten years ago.  The goal of the book was to encourage moment-by-moment obedience to Jesus.  If you felt like the Spirit was prompting you to do or say something, you needed to take action within ten seconds or else it wasn’t obedience.

If the something you’re feeling led to do is good or encouraging, I would say that the ten second rule is okay, but if you are going to confront someone or share something that might not be taken the right way or you’re trying to communicate something to someone who you may have had a hard time being on the same page with, then the ten second rule might not be appropriate.  The tongue is a troublemaker and cannot be tamed, just look at James 3:1-12.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. – Eph. 4:30

Looking to the verse before, unwholesome talk would grieve the Spirit.  Let me tell you something funny.  I don’t think I can always perceive whether or not something I say grieves the Spirit in my heart or my mind.  But, I do get a sensation, a physical one.  I don’t have as much hair as I used to.  If I say some sharp retort that I have no business making, my scalp will flush, like a micro-flush for a second or less.  Either the Spirit has allowed that to develop over time, or since I have less dense hair on my scalp, I can feel it.  Maybe God is showing you somehow when you’re out of bounds.  If you can pick up on it, use that to train yourself.  Or just ask a brother or sister to “elbow” you.

Looking forward, we are going to come back to anger of all kinds.  These too grieves the Spirit.

There’s one other interesting point in this verse which we should not miss.  You can only grieve a person.  This verse speaks to the personhood of the Holy Spirit.  If you were wondering where the bible communicates that the Holy Spirit is a person, this is a good one.  Of course, John 14-16 is probably more thorough.

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. – Eph. 4:31

Anger is a big deal.  So much so that Paul was led to repeat and expand it here.  Every form of anger.  Internal anger in the form of bitterness.  External anger by raised voice in the form of rage.  External anger by physical force in the form of brawling.  External anger by talking bad about someone in the form of slander.  Internal anger by desiring pain, injury, or distress to someone by every form of malice.  Get rid of all of it.  And instead …

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. – Eph. 4:32

This is a high contrast to the preceding verse about anger.  Be kind.  Be compassionate.  Forgive one another.  Not just a little bit, not just lip service, but forgive as God forgave you in Christ.  Whoa!  That’s a big forgiveness.  Big enough to cover the sin of the whole world.

We’re supposed to end here, but I’m going to sneak over into the first verse of chapter 5.  I think Brian is teaching next week.  Brian, you can use as many of my verses from chapter 4 as you want.

Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children. – Eph. 5:1

I feel like this is such a good conclusion for what has come before, and our message title.  

The world would tell us to stand up for ourselves.  The world tells us that the ends justify the means.  Elijah and I were watching an old Woody Woodpecker cartoon, and the title character was just cruel to another character in the cartoon just because he was scared.  It wasn’t for a moment.  That was the point of the entire cartoon.  Based on the animation, I expect was a cartoon from the 1960’s, but still both Elijah and I were surprised by the unprovoked meanness of a “good guy.”  The world was telling us, it’s okay to be mean as long as you laugh about it.  Imitating the world or sinful desires is not in keeping with the new life in us.

After working through these verses for a while, I came to see the last phrase a bit differently than I had before.  As Jesus told us in Mark 10:15 (and Luke 18:17), we need to have faith like little children to enter the kingdom of God.  Following the lessons from today’s passage, we also need to be like little children.

Little children can be so very cute when they imitate their parents.  In those moments, they are dearly loved for the honor they show.

When we put our faith in Christ, we become children of God.  He can’t love us more or love us less.  When we seek to imitate him by turning away from sin and doing good as Ephesians 4 shows us, then we are acting as dearly loved children.  The ones who show honor by trying to be like their parents.  Let’s be like Him.

Let’s pray.

Father God, thank You that Your Spirit is in us.  Thank You that Your mighty power is at work within us.  Help us each one to live out the words of Ephesians 4.  Glorify Your Name through us we pray in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Therefore Be One

Eph. 4:1-16

Good morning! Today we return to the second half of our series on the book of Ephesians. The title of the series is “Therefore”, and today we will see the reason for this title. Because it has been about a month since we were in the series, I think it will be useful to provide a little background and a brief review of the first three chapters. 

Paul’s initial visit to Ephesus is described in Acts 19, which tells us that Paul first went to the synagogue so as to try to reach the Jews, as was his usual practice. He spoke boldly in the synagogue about Jesus for 3 months. But, although some came to faith, others became opposed to his teaching, and as their opposition grew, Paul left the synagogue and began teaching daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus, where many Jews and Greeks heard his message as he spoke for two years. 

God did great miracles through Paul. Acts 19 says that people were healed by simply touching handkerchiefs that had touched Paul. Many people came to faith in Christ. 

There were seven brothers, sons of an important Jewish priest, who went around trying to invoke the name of Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. Did they themselves have genuine faith in Jesus? No. And one day, a demon in a demon-possessed man called them out on it, saying, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” And then the demon-controlled man thrashed these men thoroughly. This event caused many Jews and Greeks in Ephesus to be filled with fear, and this healthy fear led many to publicly repent of sins they were practicing in secret. A number of people had been practicing sorcery, and they brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly, and in this way, faith in Jesus in Ephesus continued to grow. 

The growth was so significant that people who made idols became quite concerned about the future of their business. One of them in a speech whipped up the others into a frenzy, which spread throughout the city. Paul’s traveling companions were grabbed by the crowd. Paul wanted to speak to the crowd, but the disciples would not let him, because they saw how great the danger was. A city clerk was able to quiet down the crowd and have them disperse, and soon after, Paul left Ephesus.

At a later point in time, after being imprisoned by the Romans, Paul writes and sends his letter that we call Ephesians to the many believers in Ephesus. Chapter 1, after its opening verses that explain who the letter is to and from, begins with an extended passage of praise to God for what He has done through and in Christ. He explains that he and the other early believers were predestined for being given the revelation of the gospel, redemption through Christ’s blood, the forgiveness of sins, and that they were chosen to put their hope in Christ, thereby receiving this redemption and forgiveness. In the same way, he tells his listeners, they too were included in Christ when they heard the gospel message of salvation, and that when they believed, they were marked in Him with a seal, the Holy Spirit, who serves as a kind of deposit guaranteeing the fulfillment, the completion, of our future redemption. By extension, we too, as modern-day readers of Paul’s letter, are also included in Christ when we hear the gospel message and believe. 

Paul goes on to explain how thankful he is for them and prays for them, asking for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that they would know Christ better. He says that he prays that they would know the hope to which God has called them, their incredible inheritance they now possess by faith, and the power of God that is available to them. He says that this power is one and the same power that raised Christ from the dead. 

In Chapter 2, Paul reminds them that, before coming to faith in Christ, they were dead in their sins, slaves to their sinful desires. But, he tells them, even while they were in this dead state, God made them (and us) alive with Christ. His point is that it is by faith we have been saved, not by any works we did in that dead state (which weren’t truly good works anyway). He says that we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ to do good works that God has planned for us to do. In other words, good works don’t save us, but the saved versions of us does do good works, to the glory of God. 

In the second half of Chapter 2, Paul focuses in on the Gentiles and their relationship to the Jews. He reminds them that, prior to hearing and responding in faith to the good news about Jesus Christ, they were separated from the covenants given to the Jews, separated from being in any way a part of the Jews, and because the promises were only given to the Jews, separated from any kind of promise of redemption or salvation. 

But Christ has changed all this. He didn’t only die for the Jews. He died for all people, Jew and Gentile. By fulfilling the Law in Himself, He effectively set the law aside, so that Jews and Gentiles are in the same position in Christ. By doing this, He brought both groups together, not only making peace between us, but making us brothers of one another. God, who at one time was only accessible to the Jews, who lived in some sense in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple, is now accessible to all through and in Christ.  As a result, Paul says, Jews and Gentiles alike are like stones set in a single building, one in which Christ Himself is the cornerstone, a building in which God through His Spirit now lives. 

I find this a beautiful truth, a powerful metaphor. I often wonder what it was like to be in the presence of the Spirit of God in the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle or the Temple. I imagine how thrilling, but also how scary, that must have been. What would it be like to be a fly in the inner room, sitting on a stone? Or, if stones could be alive, what would it be like to be one of those stones? Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is saying that this is exactly what we are – we are stones that make up this inner room with other believers, both Jew and Gentile, and there among us is the awesome Holy Spirit of God.

In Ephesians 3, Paul further develops the truth of God’s marvelous work of bringing Jew and Gentile together in Christ. He talks about how incredible this revelation of God is, and how, although there was nothing in Paul worthy for this honor, God chose Paul to be a central person in preaching this revelation to the Gentiles. He calls this a “grace.” 

I find this also a beautiful truth, one that I don’t often think about. When I think about grace, I think about how it is totally by grace that I have been saved. But it is equally and totally by grace that I get to be used by God in some way to further the kingdom of God.  It is by grace that I get to tell some unbelievers the gospel. It is by grace I have been able to tell my wife and kids more about Jesus. And it is by grace that I am here today, and on other Sundays, encouraging other believers and explaining the Word of God. It is equally by grace that you get to serve Him in various ways. When it comes to sharing the gospel, I think we all get nervous because we don’t feel like we are capable of doing something so important. Well, we aren’t capable! That’s an important part of what “grace” means! It is by God’s grace that we can open our mouths, and reasonably coherent words can come out. And thinking about things in this way makes me want to get out there, because I want to see the power of God’s grace at work.    

Paul goes on to say that, in effect, this grace Paul has experienced to be one who shares the gospel with Gentiles is so wonderful that his many trials, his frequent sufferings, are nothing to be discouraged about. Paul looks at the total package, grace to share and sufferings, and sees the combination is one million percent positive. 

Again, this is a powerful lesson for us. The joy of knowing Jesus, and the privilege of encouraging others, believers and unbelievers alike, in Jesus, is so incredible that the hard things of this life, even the super hard things, simply do not compare. Paul tells us not to be discouraged when looking at Paul’s hard life, and by extension, we should not be discouraged by looking at own lives, no matter how hard they become. 

And then, in the second half of Chapter 3, Paul makes an absolutely beautiful prayer for the Ephesians. He prays that God would strengthen them with power in their inner beings so that Christ would dwell, would live, would reign, in their hearts through faith. And given that their lives in Christ have been rooted and established in love, He prays that they, along with all God’s holy people, which includes us, would grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. He prays that we would know this love, not just know about it, a love that surpasses knowledge, and in so doing that we would be filled with the fullness of God. And then He praises God and says to Him be the glory. Amen!

I feel like we could all go home now. But this letter of Paul has a second half, and we will start to explore this second half today. Now the two halves and joined together, by a single word, and you guessed it, that word is the Greek word for “therefore.”

By way of analogy, at the Jewish funeral I went to for my dad when I was in California a few weeks ago, we were given a little prayer booklet, which I have brought with me and will pass it around so you can look at it. One of the things to notice is that the page numbering is backwards. This is because Hebrew reads right to left rather than left to right, as English reads. But the booklet contains both English and Hebrew, and lots of Jews don’t really know Hebrew, so it is confusing to people to try to find things in such a booklet. The rabbi leading the service knew this. We only used a small number of prayers or passages from the booklet, but the most important prayer is a prayer of mercy for the departed. I love the way he told us how to find this prayer. He said to just go to the middle of the book, to find the staples. Well, this “therefore” in Ephesians is the “staples” in the letter. On one side is the first half, which we just went over. And on the other side is the other half. The second half of the entire book of Ephesians is the answer to the question, “What are the practical applications of what we have learned?”  And so, let us dive in to Chapter 4. 

As a prisoner for the Lord, then [therefore], I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. – Eph. 4:1

This verse is the staple of the booklet. It is what holds the whole booklet together. Without it, you have a bunch of loose thoughts, loose pages. So let’s go deeper into this verse.

First Paul describes himself as a prisoner for the Lord. Is he speaking figuratively? In what sense is he a prisoner for the Lord? Well, to use a well-worn quote, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” People attribute this quote to Sigmund Freud, but like many funny sayings, he didn’t actually say it. But it is directed at him and his work, because he viewed everything as symbolic in some way. Well, sometimes a prisoner is just a prisoner. Paul was a literal prisoner; that is, he was in prison. And viewing himself as a prisoner for the Lord is something he did elsewhere in his writings and when he spoke, and it was true. It was because of his love for and obedience to the Lord that he was in prison. And this fact was relevant to the rest of the message of this verse – it was proof that he himself had lived a life worthy of the calling that he had received. 

I want to say something about the word translated as “urge”. It is parakaleo. It is the same root as that of paraclete, a word for the Holy Spirit. It means to come alongside and call. I think a better word for the translation would be beg, because begging implies this personal involvement, a joining of the person, even to the point of embarrassment for the person doing the begging. Paul is saying, “I beg you – I’ll come down on my knees in front of you and do it – I beg you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.” 

I want to also say something about the word translated as “worthy.” We can react to this because we know that we are not worthy. God is worthy to receive all praise and honor and glory. The Greek word is axios, and I think a better translation for our time might be “appropriate to” or “in keeping with”. We are to live a life in keeping with the calling we have all received, the amazing promises and realities described in Chapters 1-3. 

And so the supremely honorable Paul, gladly suffering the indignity of being a prisoner, gladly even goes further in throwing away his honor status by saying, “I beg you – please – you see that I have lived 100% for God, putting Him above my honor, even my life – I beg you, please, do the same. 

And so we hear this, and our response should be “How?” “How do we do this? What does it even look like?” “And how do we find the power to do it?” The answer to the power question is before the “staple” – God has given us this power, as it says in Eph. 3:20, God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or even imagine, according to His power which is at work within us! And as for the “what do we do” question, that is the main content of everything that comes after the “staple”. So let’s keep going, and see some of the answers to the “what do we do” question.

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. – Eph. 4:2-3

Paul has a long list of answers to the “what do we do” question, but he starts with one of the most important. I think about how different this is from what our culture teaches, if adventure stories and movies are any indication. Now, as often as not, the hero of the story is not even very nice, although he eventually does the thing only he can do. This is not really a new thing – I think of Han Solo and Ironman as examples. But there are countless others. Our society teaches that it is OK to be rude and brash and even mean, as long as you eventually get the job done.

But God teaches, through Paul, that our character is the job to get done. Humility, gentleness, patience, not letting disagreements lead to disunity – these things are the very calling that we have in Christ. These are hard things. Subduing a wild beast is easier than taming our own selves. But in the power of God, we can do even these.  

Paul then goes on to explain that unity is not the same thing as uniformity. In fact, true unity occurs through diversity. God purposely didn’t make us clones of each other, although He certainly could have chosen to do that. If we were clones of each other, it would probably be a lot easier to have unity. But no, He chose to make us all different, with different strengths and weaknesses, and different gifts of grace. Here is what Paul writes: 

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says: “When He ascended on high, He took many captives and gave gifts to His people.” (What does “He ascended” mean except that He also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) So Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip His people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. – Eph. 4:4-13

Our unity runs deeper than we can understand. We are all, as we said earlier, bricks in His new building, the replacement, so to speak, for the Tabernacle and the Temple, and beyond this, we all share the same Spirit. The same Holy Spirit is at work in each of us. So we are not even any longer truly distinct entities. If I were to use Venn diagrams and draw one circle for me and one circle for one of you, there would be a large region of overlap, because the one Holy Spirit is in both of us. 

Let’s talk about the Old Testament scripture quote in here. This is from Psalm 68, verse 18. The entire Psalm seems to be describing a military victory procession, the result of God defeating all His people’s enemies. In the past, when there was a great miliary victory, the winners would take the valuable spoils of the losers with them. And as part of the celebration, when the soldiers came back to their people, they would throw some of these spoils of war, whether coins or other valuable items, into the crowds that were welcoming them. And so the picture here is of Christ the victor, being given everything, for dying on the cross and then being resurrected unto life. We know that, this makes Him uniquely worthy to open the seals of Revelation, and we know from other passages that in doing this, He has defeated even death, forever. And so the picture here is of us, gathered around like the crowds observing the victor coming home, and as He goes by us, He throws to us incredibly valuable gifts. He gives us apostles, the forerunners of the gospel, and prophets, who tell us what is to come and who rightly divide truth from falsehood, and evangelists, who continue to share the good news of the gospel around the world, and pastors, who shepherd believers and help them to grow together and keep them protected and rescue them when needed, and teachers, who help explain the Word of God so that all can understand and apply what it teaches. If you view these as people, these are the “captives”, or if you view them as abilities, these are the “gifts”. From my perspective, as one whom Christ has saved, I see myself as one who has been captured by Him from Satan, and I also see my ability to teach as His gift. 

And the point here is that these gifts are not for the benefit of the people that have received them. Indeed, these people are captives. They no longer live for themselves. Their gifts and indeed their very lives are for the body, to equip them for works of service, so that we can all live a life worthy of the calling we have all received. 

And as we are all being built up, we will grow. We will mature.  We will be built up. And it is through these processes, along with our individual devotion to God, that we will become increasingly humble, increasingly gentle, increasingly patient, increasingly bearing with one another in love, and increasingly unified in the Spirit through the bond of peace. 

Paul goes on:

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head, that is, Christ. From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. – Eph. 4:14-16

When I think about being blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming, my thoughts go back to my dad’s funeral, where I was given the booklet we have already talked about. At the funeral, my stepmom, my sister, and I were also given special candles, called Sheva candles. Sheva is the Hebrew word for the number seven. In Jewish tradition, when a close family member dies, those closest to the person are to “sit sheva”, which means to not leave their home for seven days. During this time, they are not to work, or cook. They are simply to “sit.” People are supposed to visit them throughout these seven days, to get things done that need doing, and also just to “sit” with them. If the person grieving wants to talk with them they can, and the person sitting with them will talk about whatever they want to talk about, but the “sitter” is not supposed to initiate conversation. Sitting in silence is fine too. The stricter versions of the traditions include covering up all mirrors, so you don’t look at how bad you look, and also includes having a short service every day, where they pray together the prayer at the staple in the booklet. During all this time, during these seven days, a candle, the Sheva candle, remains lit. It is large enough to burn for 7 days. 

I took my Shiva candle with me back to South Carolina, and the morning after our late night flight, I lit my candle and put it on the mantle. Whenever I walk into the living room of our house, I look at it. I watched it getting lower, and lower, and lower. When I first lit it, it was somewhat challenging moving it to the mantle, because moving too quickly would have blown the candle out. Symbolically, I think of that candle initially being potentially blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. But because the candle is enclosed by a cylinder, as the candle continued to burn, it went lower, and lower, and lower, down to where no wind could affect it. You could say that the candle has had to die to self in order to become able to resist the false winds. And this is not a Biblical analogy – it is my own – but I think it fits. We too need to allow God to burn us down – we need to die to self – in order for us to become what God wants us to be.

Perhaps I am stretching the analogy too far, but I like to picture a second candle growing larger, being built as the one in the jar burns down. This second candle is entirely unlike the first one. It is living, and growing, and becoming more and more beautiful, even as the original candle diminishes and becomes less and less presentable. Take what you will with this picture.

As for the Scripture itself, believers here start out with a Greek word this version translates as “infants.” I think perhaps a better phrase would be “little children.” Little children can be easily misled. And they are quick to become emotional, to break down, to cry. This is the picture we should have of ourselves, if we choose to not do what it takes to grow in Christ, if we don’t read our Bibles, if we don’t pray, if we don’t regularly fellowship with a church body. And of these three things I have mentioned, it is the third one which really gets the emphasis here in Ephesians. If you are not in a church body, how will you benefit from the teachers and pastors and others who God has placed among you to expressly help you to grow? 

Then we will become the body God calls us to be. It’s not really about us as individuals at all. There is very hard for us to accept or understand in our individualistic culture. But it is the clear message of Ephesians. 

I’ve been struggling the past week or two with foot pain. The pain is in a very specific place, below the second toe of my left foot, and it kind of feels like I am walking with rock in my shoe at that very place. What has happened is that the tendons and ligaments that support that one small, seemingly innocuous toe joint, have become inflamed, swollen, and weak. They are not supporting the joint correctly, so the joint kind of subtly sticks out under my foot, and then when I walk, excessive pressure is put on that point. This one tiny issue is affecting my entire body. It is hard for me to walk, and when I do walk, I compensate using muscles I should not be using in that way, and I get more aches and pains.  

As I was writing this message, I began to wonder if maybe this issue has happened solely for the sake of this sermon illustration. I can’t say that makes me particularly happy, but I will accept it. Again, here is the end of the passage: Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head, that is, Christ. From Him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

I find that the phrase “speaking the truth in love” is often misused. People take it to mean permission to say hurtful things to people “for their own good.” But that is not the meaning here, which can be seen if you look at the context. The word “instead” means there is a contrast. To what is the phrase being contrasted? To being tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. In other words, the contrast to being told the truth in love is being told falsehood with evil intent. Is there ever a time for a hard truth to be told? Yes, but the spirit in which it is told is extremely important and can determine whether the truth is or is not received. I think of the phrase, “Come, let us reason together,” from Isaiah 1 as a better framework for speaking truth that is hard for someone to accept.   

I don’t think we should avoid having difficult “truth-telling” conversations with people, but I think they should be bathed in prayer, and we should ask for wisdom in how to share such things with as much love as possible. The word for “love” in “speaking the truth in love” is agape, the self-sacrificial kind of love, the kind of love used to describe Jesus’ love for us, exemplified by His death on a cross. It is in this spirit of dying to self that we should seek as we undertake not only hard truth telling, but also any activity that has as a goal the growing and building up of the body of Christ.