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Embrace Your Sin to Heal it (Ephesians 4:31-32)

Negative Command: Don’t be Bitter (Ephesians 4:31)

Ephesians 4:31. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice.

Paul lists several aspects of bitterness here. First, he lists bitterness itself. Bitterness is spite that keeps a record of wrongs and develops a general attitude of resentment. Bitterness is revealed in jealous anger, and sarcastic, biting remarks about other people. Do you have lists of wrong things people have done to you or said to you? If so, you are bitter and need to confess this before God.

Then he mentions wrath. The word here is thumon. It’s a stirring of the emotions which ultimately results in a verbal explosion. Wrath is sort of the inward feeling of wanting revenge on someone.

Anger is similar, but tends to be more active and outward. We saw the dangerous results of anger previously when we looked at Ephesians 4:26-27. James also talks about the disastrous results of anger in James 4:1-2, saying that it results in murder.

Then clamor. This is just pure noise. Some people talk, not because they have anything to say, but because they simply like to talk. This is meaningless talk. These people would do well to remember an old proverb that says, “It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” It has also been said that “There are two kinds of people who don’t say much: Those who are quiet … and those who talk a lot.” That’s clamor.

Clamor also refers to people who resort to raising their voices and shouting and screaming at each other when in a disagreement. Raising your voice always causes more problems in an argument.

Next, evil speaking. The Greek word used here is blasphamia. It is where we get our word blasphemy. Did you know that you could blaspheme another person? We often think that we can only blaspheme God, but we blaspheme others whenever we talk negatively about them, or say evil things about them. This word can also be translated as slander, and we maybe could include all forms of gossip here. Gossip is when you say something about another person—even if it’s true—with the end result that it tears them down in the eyes and minds of other people.

We often hide gossip under a mask by saying things like, “I think we should pray for so and so, because he did this or she said that.” Or, we might call someone and say, “I need to ask your advice about how to handle this certain person who did this or said that.”

Gossip and slander tear down unity and love faster than anything else, and they must be rooted out of our lives. Paul says here that such things are evil speaking, blasphemous.

Finally, in verse 31, Paul mentions malice. The Greek word is kakia, and means hateful feelings, trouble, worry. You will notice that Paul puts malice in a special position, and connects it with the rest of the words by using the preposition with. What he is saying is that malice is the source from which those other kinds of negative talk flow.

Malice is the fountain head from which evil speaking flows. When you speak with bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor or slander about another person, it is because of malice within your heart. Not love.

Now those are the ones Paul lists here, and all of them are serious roadblocks to fellowship, unity and love within the church.

All of these are indications of bitterness, malice, and hatred toward others. All of these types of attitudes toward others fail to edify and encourage others, and therefore tear down the body of Christ rather than build it up. All of these, according to Ephesians 4:31 need to be put away from you. This is an imperative in the Greek. It’s not optional, it’s a command.

So that’s the negative command. The positive command is found in the first part of Ephesians 4:32. Rather than be full of bitterness and malice toward others, we must forgive them instead.

Positive Command: Forgive One Another (Ephesians 4:32a)

Ephesians 4:32a. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another …

In this verse, Paul uses three phrases to describe forgiveness.

He first says be kind to one another.

The word Paul uses here is chrestos, and because the Greek word for Christ is Christos, Christians from the very beginning saw its appropriateness.[2] To be kind, chrestos, to others is to treat others as Christ would treat them.

This word is also used in 1 Corinthians 13:4 as one of the ways love revels itself. Love is kind.

It is a word in Romans 2:4 concerning the patience, goodness and kindness God has toward us so that we will turn to Him.

Kindness is one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22.

And kindness is what God will show to us for an eternity in heaven. We saw this back in Ephesians 2:7.

Sometimes, we only want to be kind toward those who are kind to us. But again, this same exact word is the word Jesus uses in Luke 6:35 for how God treats the ungrateful and the wicked. He is kind toward them, even though they are in rebellion against Him and are therefore His enemies.

We are not simply to be kind toward those we like, but even kind toward our enemies. Even toward those we don’t like.

The second phrase is tenderhearted. This word is used only here and in 1 Peter 3:8. The word comes from two Greek words, eu, which means good, and splagchnos, which means affection—or bowels, intestines.

Greek people thought that the bowels were the seat of emotions. We talk about emotions like love coming from the heart, but the Greeks said they came from the stomach—or the splagchnos—the bowels. The prophet Jeremiah cries out in Jeremiah 4:19, “My bowels, my bowels!” Today, we would say, “Oh my aching heart!”

So although our version here reads, tenderhearted, they would have understood it to be tenderboweled.

Now personally, I would rather be tenderhearted, than tenderboweled. The thought of being tenderboweled raises the image of spending a lot of time in the bathroom … but that’s what the word really means. However, since we today think about emotions coming from the heart, it is fine for our Bibles to use the word tenderhearted instead.

Regardless, the point is clear. Paul wants his readers to have concern and consideration for others. To care about the needs and desires of others, more than they care for themselves.[3] Those who are tenderhearted look out for the needs of others.

And one of those needs, according to the next phrase in Ephesians 4:32 is forgiveness.

As I have frequently mentioned before, there are two words in the Bible for forgiveness. The first is aphiemi. It is a conditional type of forgiveness, which requires various steps and actions. It might be better translated as “release.”

The second type of forgiveness is charizomai. It comes from the root word charis, which is the word for grace, and so charizomai means to deal graciously with someone, to give freely. This type of forgiveness if freely offered by God to all people for all their sins, past, present, and future. There are no conditions of any kind for this type of forgiveness. This kind of forgiveness could be defined as graciously overlooking or letting go of an offense.

What type of forgiveness is Paul referring to here? It is the second type, charizomai forgiveness.

And this type of forgiveness doesn’t just come from God. As Paul indicates here, we are to extend this free, unconditional forgiveness toward others as well. Why? Because it is important for unity and love in the family of God. We are told in 2 Corinthians 2:10-11 that a lack of forgiveness allows the devil a foothold in our relationships.

If we fail to forgive someone, or refuse to forgive them, it becomes a wedge in the relationship which just serves to drive you further apart. Where there is no forgiveness there is resentment and animosity.

When there is disagreement, the ball is in your court. True forgiveness is not saying, “Well, I’ll forgive them if they say they’re sorry first.” No, charizomai is freely given forgiveness. You take the first step as God did for us. There are no strings attached, no conditions, no requirements. We are to forgive the other person even if they never ask for it, even if they keep sinning against us, and even if they never change their behavior or recognize that what they are doing is wrong.

Paul commands us here to completely and freely forgive one another. Rather than have malice, anger, and bitterness toward others, we are to freely forgive them.

So that’s the command. Now we come to the motivation. You should forgive, because God forgave you.

Motivation: God forgave You (Ephesians 4:32b)

Ephesians 4:32b. … even as God in Christ forgave you.

There are generally two types of people in the world when it comes to being forgiven. First are those who don’t think they need to be forgiven.

This first type, when they read this verse, see the word “you” but immediately think of other people. When they first read this verse, the idea that immediately pops into their mind is, “Wow. God’s grace is so great, it could have covered over the vast multitude of sins of a man like my neighbor.”

Do you see how easy and subtle that is? The text says, even as God in Christ forgave you, and some people read, even as God in Christ forgave everybody else.

No, the point is YOU. ME. I. You see, some of us think that everybody else is a pretty bad person and needs forgiveness, but not me. Yeah, sure, we’ve done a few things bad, but what about that man down the street. Watch out for him! Forgiving him would really crack the bank.

We are all experts at judging others, but blind when it comes to judging ourselves.

We see people live so foolishly, we wonder if they have any brains. We see all the faults of other people. All of their sins. All of their shortcomings. All of their failures. All of their bad attitudes and improper motives.

And God sees all of this as well. But He sees something more. He sees a person we never see.

And that person is ourselves.

Most people think they know themselves pretty well, but the truth is that we are mostly blind to our own faults and shortcomings. Most of us are mostly ignorant of our true nature and character. We are blind to our pride and our arrogance.

In the TV Series, “The Crown,” which is based on the early years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, there is an episode (Season 1 Episode 9, “Assassins”) where Winston Churchill is having his portrait painted by Graham Sutherland. They have a discussion about whether the portrait will be true to life or hide some of the details of Churchill’s age and weight. After Sutherland begins painting, they have this exchange:

Churchill: Am I to be allowed a peek?

Sutherland: No.

Churchill: Well, why not? I could give you advice. After all, I know this face better than you do. If you’ve made the neck too thick or the arms too long, I can tell you.

Sutherland: I find in general people have very little understanding of who they are. One has to turn a blind eye to so much of oneself in order to get through life.

Sutherland is exactly right. We think we know ourselves, but we are actually the one person we are most ignorant about. The psychologist Carl Jung said that the most important purpose we have in life is to get to know ourselves. And most people know far less about themselves than they think.

Jung pointed out that all of us have a shadow side that we hide and ignore. We don’t want others to see and we refuse to look at it ourselves. Jung taught that we cannot become a complete person, we cannot become who we are meant to be, unless we see our shadow, understand it, and integrate it into our life.

He said that all the negative traits that appear in our life are indications of where our shadow is controlling us without our knowledge. Anger, jealousy, bitterness, wrath, malice, all the things that Pual mentions here in Ephesians 4:31-32, are part of our hidden interior that need to be recognized and dealt with.

The problem, said Jung, is that most of us try to deal with these negative traits by shoving them down deeper. By trying to control them and hide them. But that never works. He said that we need to bring these things to the surface, bring them up to our attention, and then integrate them in our life by redirecting the negative traits toward something positive.

Jealousy can lead us to a greater drive to work hard.

Anger and wrath can be channeled into passion for a cause or to change something wrong with the world.

Fear can lead us to prudence and making wise choices.

We should stop trying to eliminate our flaws, and instead work to transform, redirect, and integrate them into who God made us to be.

Now, regardless of what you think about Carl Jung, he was simply saying what Paul is already teaching here. All of us have negative traits, and we need to recognize those traits and … forgive them! Accept them as part of us! Only in this way can we redirect those negative traits toward something positive.

It’s not good enough to say, in some general, vague sort of way, “Oh, I know I have my faults too.” We all are fatally flawed and have traits that destroy our fellowship with God and are foolishness in the eyes of men. We are most often ignorant about them.

“But,” you say, “If that’s true, how come nobody has ever told me?” Believe me, they have tried. They have tried over and over again, but you just couldn’t take it. Perhaps a great deal of what you call “nagging” or “bad temper” is really their efforts to make you see the truth.

So we must learn to see ourselves as God sees us … but before we can do that, we must first come to recognize that even though God sees our true selves, He continues to forgive us for all our faults. Only when we come to understand that we are fully and completely forgiven will we have the courage to allow God to reveal our true selves to us.

And then once we allow Him to reveal ourselves to ourselves, and we see how much He has forgiven us for, it is then that we find the freedom to forgive others also, as we have been forgiven.

So God sees everything negative we see in other people, and He sees everything negative in us which we do not see. Yet He loves us still. He goes on loving. He goes on forgiving.[4] We will not personally realize this forgiveness until we see that we too are sinners and in need of the forgiveness of God.

Now, there are some people who do recognize how much they need to be forgiven. Not all people are completely blind to their own faults and failures. Some realize how truly sinful and wretched they are. But the danger here is that these people often think that they are so bad, nobody—let alone God—could ever forgive them. When they hear this verse, and it says, even as God in Christ forgave you, they think, “No, you don’t know what I’ve done. God could never forgive me.”

These types of people try to live a good life so they can “work off” their guilt. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie called “The Mission” but the main character is of this sort. He is involved in the South American slaving business, but after a while realizes the wretchedness of such a trade, and so he becomes a priest and tries to work off his guilt.

Now in one sense, such work does make you feel better, but in all honesty, most of these kinds of people can never shake the guilt. Sometimes the guilt gets so bad, it causes severe depression and mental anguish so that the people get put into psychiatric wards.

Karl Menninger, the famous psychiatrist, says that if he could convince the patients in his psychiatric hospitals that their sins are forgiven, 75 percent of them could walk out the next day.[5]

Some people, although forgiven, cannot forgive themselves or believe that they have been forgiven.

They need to be shown the vast and eternal forgiveness and grace of God as presented in God’s Word. They need to be shown that although they have sinned, the penalty has already been paid for them on the cross of Christ.

God has forgiven you. If you don’t think you are a sinner, or have done anything really bad, ask God to show you how sinful you really are. It will send you to your knees. Or, on the other hand, if you know how sinful you are, but don’t believe God could ever forgive you, ask God to reveal to you the depth and length of His love and mercy toward you. God has forgiven you.

That is what the text says. Even as God in Christ forgave you.

Notice that it doesn’t simply say “God forgave you” but rather, God in Christ forgave you.

Some people think this means that God could not have forgiven us unless Jesus died on the cross. In other words, some people teach that God wanted to forgive us, but He first needed to be paid for the sins of the world, which is what Jesus accomplished through His death on the cross, so that now God can forgive us.

But think about what this view is saying. It is saying that God doesn’t actually forgive at all … instead, He gets paid off.

If you have a car loan or a house mortgage, and you send in your final payment to the bank, are they then going to send you a letter which says, “Congratulations! We have just forgiven your loan!” No. They did not forgive your loan; they got paid. Once the debt is paid off, forgiveness is no longer an option.

So you see, forgiveness and the payment of a debt are mutually exclusive. One can either forgive a debt or be paid for a debt, but you cannot do both. It’s the same with God. God can either forgive us for our sins, or He can be paid off for our debt of sins. But He cannot do both.

Scripture reveals that He did the former. He freely forgives us for our sins. He does not get paid off by the death of Jesus. The blood of Jesus does not buy forgiveness of sins from God, because forgiveness of a debt, by definition, cannot be bought.

So when Paul writes that God forgave us in Christ, what does He mean? He means that in Jesus Christ, we were shown how God freely forgives us for all our sins. How do we see this?

Jesus came as the incarnate son of God. He was God in the flesh. And He did no wrong. He committed no sins. He lived a perfect life, and did not thing that deserved punishment or death. But we took Him, condemned Him, and killed Him anyway. We murdered God.

But on the cross, what did Jesus say? He said, “Father, forgiven them, for they know not what they do.”

In this way, Jesus revealed what God has always been doing. Just as Jesus freely forgave us from the cross, so also, God has always been freely forgiving us from heaven. Since Jesus perfectly reveals God to us, and since Jesus freely forgives us when we are committing the worst sin possible, we know that God freely forgives us of all our sins as well.

God forgives all the sins of all people. That’s how great and vast the forgiveness of God is. (Yes, I am aware of the unpardonable sin in Matthew 12:31-32, and have written a book on the topic. What is most important about that text, however, is that the forgiveness in view in Matthew 12 is the aphesis forgiveness; not charizomai. My book explains why this is significant.)

But if God freely forgives all the sins of all people, does that mean that everybody has eternal life?

No. Why not? Because eternal life is not given simply because someone has been forgiven for all their sins. Eternal life is not received when a person has their sins forgiven. Eternal life is received when a person gain the righteousness of God. There is a difference between having your sins wiped away and gaining the positive righteousness of God. To gain eternal life, we need more than just forgiveness; we need the life of God in us.[6]

But how do we get that?

By faith in Jesus Christ. When we believe in Jesus for eternal life, we are justified. That is, we are “declared righteous” by God. Before, we were only forgiven. Through faith, we are declared righteous and fit for entrance into heaven.

Have you believed in Jesus Christ for eternal life? Nothing you can do can get God to bring you to heaven. You cannot work hard enough. You cannot do enough good.

It is simply faith alone that will give the necessary righteousness for eternal life and entrance into heaven.

But that is not where we should stop, as we are seeing today in Ephesians 4:32. There is more to life than getting to heaven. There are relationships. Relationships with God and with one another.

And Paul is telling us today that a lack of forgiveness in the life of the Christian will damage those relationships.

Look at it this way. We are all sinners. Each one of us struggles in different ways with different things. One person may struggle with anger. Another with stealing. Another with lying. Another with controlling their tongue.

One person may have difficulty with lust – their thought life. That’s not a problem for someone else, but maybe they are tempted by drunkenness.

All of us need to realize that we all struggle with different things, and what I struggle with may not be the least bit tempting for you and vice-versa. Therefore, we need to show a little grace and kindness and forgiveness toward one another.

God did not wait until we had our act cleaned up before He forgave us and decided to love us. He loved us while we were still sinners. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And He continues to forgive us, because none of us are without sin.

This is our example to follow. We have been forgiven much by God. Therefore, when someone sins against us, it is a small matter for us to forgive them.

Now let me say three things in closing about forgiveness.

Silhouette of bird flying and broken chains at beautiful mountain and sky autumn sunset background

Forgiveness is Unlimited.

Sometimes, forgiveness comes around to haunt us. It seems like those we forgive just keep taking advantage of us. The person keeps failing, and we keep forgiving. So some people have a forgiveness limit. They say things like, “Well, OK, I’ll forgive you this once, but don’t do that again.”

Two little boys named Charles and James got into a fight. Charles ended up hitting James on the head with a stick, and when their mom came to sort it all out, she told Charles to apologize to James and told James to forgive Charles.

Charles apologized and asked for forgiveness, but James said, “Oh alright. I’ll forgive you tonight, but you’d better watch out in the morning!”[7]

That’s not true forgiveness. But that is the kind of forgiveness some people have. I’ll forgive you this once, but you better watch out.

Some people have a “three strikes and you’re out” mentality. The Pharisees in Jesus day were of this sort. They taught that if a person kept sinning against you, or failing you, you only had to forgive them three times.

But then the apostle Peter came along. And he wanted to be super spiritual, so he took those three times that the Pharisees taught, multiplied it by two, and then added one more for good measure. He went to Christ and said, “How many times should I forgive my neighbor, seven times?”

But Jesus said, “No. Not seven, but seventy times seven.” Now, some people multiply that out, and so “Oh, ok, so I only have to forgive them 490 times” but that’s not the point Jesus was making. He was saying, let your forgiveness be unlimited. Counting how many times you forgive someone is not genuine forgiveness.

But there’s balance here. While your forgiveness can be unlimited, God did give us wisdom and common sense. Which brings us to the second miscellaneous point about forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not Forgetting

Some try to include the idea of forgetting with forgiveness. They says, “Forgive and forget.” I used to do that as well. I used to look at verses like Psalm 103:12 which says he has removed our sin as far from us as the east is from the west and Hebrews 10:17 where it says God remembers our sins no more, and say, “See? True forgiveness forgets.”

But I don’t think my understanding of these verse was correct, and so neither was my application. Psalm 103:12 says nothing more than that he removes our sin from us. It doesn’t say anything about Him forgetting our sin.

And Hebrews 10:17, in context, is saying that in regard to our salvation, our sins are no longer an issue with God. Though we may forgive others and be forgiven, there are still consequences and results of sin.[8]

If someone borrows some money from you, and they squander it, and then are not able to pay you back, that may be an opportunity to forgive them. But forgiveness does not mean that you must give them money the next time they ask for some.

Sin has consequences even though it has been forgiven. Forgiveness does not include enabling the sin to continue. People have character flaws and the purpose of forgiveness is to help them work to improve their character in an atmosphere of love and kindness, not to enable them to continue in their sinful habits.

A Christian man I know owned a business, and he discovered that one of his employees was embezzling thousands of dollars. Did he forgive the man? Yes. But he didn’t forget and he didn’t keep the man as an employee. That would have been foolish.

You see, there are consequences to sin, and forgiveness does not always mean the removal of consequences. Let me give you some other examples.

It is unwise to have a child molester work with children, even though you forgive him. Parents, if your children have a habit of lying to you, you may continue to forgive them, but you will withhold privileges until they show themselves to be trustworthy.

Forgiveness does not always include forgetting. The balance in this is that true forgiveness does forget in the sense that it does not always drag up the past to throw it in someone’s face.

This is key to being a forgiving person.

A man was complaining to his friend that whenever he gets into an argument with his wife, she gets historical.

His fried tried to correct him, “You mean hysterical, don’t you?”

“No,” he said, “I mean historical. She always brings up my past mistakes.”

That is not forgiveness. Forgiveness does not throw the past in people’s faces. It means letting go of the offense, not carrying around a grudge, but also learning from those mistakes so that you do not enable a person to sin further in the future.

So, while there is a sense in which we should forgive and forget, we must not allow our forgetting to cause us to make foolish decisions in the future.

Forgive to be Forgiven

Finally, something should be said about the various texts in Scripture which indicate that we will not be forgiven by God if we don’t forgive others. Matthew 18:35 is one such text. Jesus tells a parable about a man who was forgiven much, and when he did not forgive someone else, the forgiveness that had been offered to him was taken back. Some say that if you don’t forgive, this proves you never had eternal life to begin with.[9]

The key to these sorts of texts is to recognize that they refer to aphesis forgiveness. The conditional forgiveness which gives us release from our addiction and bondage to sin. We can be freely forgiven by God, but still struggle with sin in our lives.

Passages like Matthew 18 (cf. also Matt. 6:12), are not about whether or not we have eternal life and go to heaven when die. Instead, they are about how to have good relationships with people here and now, while on this earth. If you want to have good relationships with other people, you need to own up to your mistakes and ask for forgiveness, while also forgiving others when they ask it of you.

As long as we harbor unforgiveness in our hearts toward others, we will live in bitterness and malice toward others, which hurts and harms us more than it hurts and harms them.

So this brings us full circle back to what Paul is writing here in Ephesians 4. It’s all about love and unity in the church, and if we live with anger, wrath, malice, and bitterness toward others, the church will never be a safe place of harmony and love.

To create the freedom and unity that Jesus wants and desires for us, we must first of all freely forgive others, and this will allow us to break free from the chains of bitterness that hold us back and keep us separated and divided from others.

Don’t let a lack of forgiveness get in the way of all that God wants you to know and experience. Forgive one another, just as God in Christ forgave you.

Do you want to be a forgiving person? If so, remember how much Jesus Christ has forgiven you. And then, stop focusing on the faults of others. Whenever thoughts about the sins of others come into your mind, simply push them away, and think on one’s own faults instead.

For it is there alone that you can make a difference. Of all the sinful people you interact with on a daily basis, there is only one whom you can improve very much.[10] Do you want to be forgiven? Then forgive as God has forgiven you. It is then that we will become like God. As someone once said, “We are most like beasts when we kill. We are most like men when we judge. We are most like God when we forgive.”[11]

In this section of Ephesians, Paul has listed five specific issues and sins that destroy our fellowship with God and with other people. Paul did not list these so that we can point the finger at other people and judge or condemn them for their faults and failures. No, Paul wrote these so that each of us can take a good look into our own hearts to see where we fall short and where we have these problems in our own life.

Where and how do you lie?

What are ways that anger gets the best of you?

How do you steal from others and take what doesn’t belong to you?

Who do you talk negatively about?

What are you bitter about?

Don’t try to hide these failings from yourself. Don’t try to ignore them or push them down. Bring them to the surface. Recognize that you have them. Own up to the. Admit, agree, confess that you have them.

And then forgive yourself. Learning to forgive, just as God in Christ has forgiven you, is the only way to liberate and free yourself from these damaging and destructive behaviors that control you. Acceptance and forgiveness will also help you redirect these behaviors into healthy and beneficial ways.

Elara had always been a people-pleaser, eager to fit into her family’s expectations and societal norms. She pursued a career path chosen more for its security than her passion, and her social life revolved around maintaining harmony, often at the expense of her own desires.

She read her Bible. She prayed. She tried to follow God and do what was right.

However, a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction began to grow within her. She had a longing for something more, a sense of purpose and meaning. She started to feel jealous that even though she worked so hard, other people seemed to get what she wanted and worked for, but they did it with far less work and effort.

She found that often, when she was stressed or tired, she would have outbursts of anger and frustration and her family or coworkers.

Occasionally, she found that she was binge-eating as a way to feel better about life and the hand she had been dealt. But as she gained weight, she started to criticize those who were heavier than her for having less self-control than her, but she also criticized those who were more fit than her because they were not really enjoying the good things in life and wasted all their time in the gym.

She also found herself buying more clothing and jewelry than she needed. And she started to feel dissatisfied with her car, and her house, and the fact that she couldn’t go on very many vacations. It was frustrating that she worked so hard but couldn’t buy everything she wanted.

Sometimes she would recognize that these traits were hurtful. Her greed and jealousy and anger caused life to lose some joy and damaged some of her relationships. So she tried to stifle the emotions and feelings and push them down deeper inside her and not let them out.

But the more she did this, the worse they became.

One day, Elara decided to try something different. She realized she was not becoming a better person, but bitter. The more she tried to control her negative traits, the more they controlled her. So she stopped fighting them. She embraced them. She recognized them for what they were.

Elara began journaling, reflecting on her thoughts and feelings. She started to uncover hidden aspects of herself, including creative passions she had suppressed and a desire to challenge beliefs she had previously accepted without question, including several beliefs about God and the Bible.

She gradually learned to embrace parts of herself she had previously deemed “bad” or “unworthy.” She forgave herself and accepted herself for who she was. Through this challenging but transformative process, she integrated these aspects into herself. And slowly, life began to regain its color, joy, and peacefulness. The negative traits that used to pull her down were transformed and redeemed into traits that spurred her on, inspired her, lifted her up, and encouraged and supported others.

She began making choices that aligned with her values and interests, rather than seeking external validation. She explored new hobbies, pursued a different career path that resonated with her, and nurtured authentic connections with others.

Through this process, Elara didn’t become a different person, but rather, she uncovered her true essence and learned to live authentically. She found a deeper sense of self-acceptance and purpose, living a life that was true to her core essence.

And it all began with self-knowledge and forgiveness. Know yourself and forgive yourself, just as you are fully known and fully forgiven by God. Only then will you enter into the life God has for you.

Notes on Ephesians 4:31-32

[1] Dale Galloway, You Can Win With Love.

[2] Stott, 190.

[3] Remember, hard-heartedness is the way we once were – in the old self, being past feeling (4:19).

[4] C.S. Lewis, 142-154.

[5] Michael Green, Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, #524.

[6] Zane Hodges, Harmony With God, (Dallas: Redencion Viva, 2001), 67-69.

[7] 1001 Humorous Illustrations, #385.

[8] Bob Wilkin, “An Enormous Debt Forgiven: Parts 1 and 2” Grace In Focus Newsletter, Jan/Feb, May/June 2002 newsletters. See also, Robertson McQuilkin, Two Sides of Forgiveness, in Nelson’s book of Illustrations, p. 317. See also Snodgrass, 264-265.

[9] cf. Robert H. Mounce, Matthew, NIBC (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 178.

[10] C.S. Lewis, 154.

[11] William Arthur Ward, Thoughts of a Christian Optimist.

Ephesians 4:29-30 – What REALLY is Foul Language?

By Jeremy Myers

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How do people who ride horses control such a huge, strong animal? That’s right—with a bit.

How does a single man in the bridge of a boat control the boat and where it goes? That’s right—with a rudder. Though the ship is large and though there are fierce winds, ships are turned by a very small rudder to go wherever the captain desires.

How does a huge forest fire get started? That’s right, with one careless spark. One careless match, and thousands of acres go up in smoke.

Humanity has accomplished some great and wondrous things. We have tamed some of the fiercest and terrifying animals on the face of the earth.

We have understood and controlled the qualities of metal and rock in order to build huge skyscrapers and span large rivers with bridges.

We have even learned how to defy the laws of gravity so that we can fly by controlling the laws of aerodynamics and combustion.

Man had achieved some amazing things. There are many animals and natural laws and elements of the earth that we have learned to control.

But there is one thing which very few learn to control. In fact, some have even gone so far as to say that if you can control this item, you are perfect. If you can tame this object, you have done more than any man or woman before you.

What is this object? Well, some of you know. Everything I have just said today comes straight out of James 3. The object in question is the tongue.

There we are told, along with what I have already said, that the tongue is a world of evil among the parts of the body. It sets the whole body on fire and is itself set on fire by hell. Only a man who is perfect is able to completely control his tongue. In other words, only Jesus has been able to completely control His tongue.

But this does not mean we should not try. In Matthew 7:15-20, Jesus says that the fruit of Christ-like living is Christ-like words. As Christians, we are to be like Christ. That is what our name means. And since Jesus was able to control His tongue, and control what He said, we must try to do the same.

In the passage before us today, Ephesians 4:29-30, Paul tells us to do just that. He tells us to watch what we say. To control our tongue. To keep from speaking evil.

As we work our way through the book of Ephesians, we are in a paragraph where Paul deals with five deadly sins for the life and health of any church. We have already learned about the dangers of lying, anger, and stealing, today we look at the fourth sin—speaking evil words.

The Bible frequently talks about the power of our words. This power of speech has the ability to create or destroy. To build up or tear down. Proverbs 18:21 says that the power of life and death are in the tongue. Therefore, we need to be very careful what we say, and how we say it. In Proverbs 13:3, we are told that the one who watches his mouth closely, saves his life, but the one who opens wide his lips goes toward destruction.

That is what Paul tells us today in Ephesians 4:29-30.

Ephesians 4:29-30. Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good, for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

In Ephesians 4:29-30, just like the other sins, Paul gives a negative command against the sin, a positive command to replace the sin with, and then a reason why we should obey.

So let’s begin with Ephesians 4:29, and the negative command.

Negative Command: Speak No Evil (Ephesians 4:29a)

Paul begins by giving the negative command: let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth.

A corrupt word is anything that is not glorifying to God. It is in the singular here, so we should not let even one bad word proceed from your mouth. The word used for corrupt is sapros, and means unwholesome, or rotten.

In Matthew 7, it is used of rotten, or bad fruit. Have you ever cut open an apple only to find it full of worms? That is the idea here. When I was younger, my mother bought a few boxes of Macintosh apples from one of the roadside fruit vendors that you see this time of year.

We had ten kids in our family, and she thought we could eat a few boxes of apples. Well, we did alright on one, but then became tired of eating apples, and we forgot about them down in the basement. A few months later, when cleaning the basement, we came across that box of apples, and you guessed it—they were covered in mold, some of the rotting juices and seeped through the bottom of the box and were making a little puddle on the concrete floor. They were rotten—sapros.

This word sapros is also used in Matthew 13:48 for bad fish. Have you ever smelled a rotting fish? I was watching a Discovery channel special this past week about shipwreck salvage crews. One ship, in a storm, had become beached, and sat there for several months before the salvage crew was able to come and get it off the shore.

To aid them in this, they had to make the ship as light as possible. When they opened up the holding tanks of the ship—which happened to be a cod fishing boat—they discovered hundreds of thousands of pounds of stinking, rotting cod. Now smells are not something you can see, but as I was watching the show, the look of pure pain the crossed the salvage crew’s faces, the gagging, the watery eyes, the covering the mouth and nose with shirt sleeves—all showed me how much those fish stank. That is sapros.

Bad language is called foul language for a reason. It stinks up the air. It pollutes the environment. My family and I went camping a while back at a local lake. We were sitting there on the shore, enjoying a sunset in the quiet evening hours, when along comes two teenage boys in a slow moving rubber raft, and every other word out of their mouth was some sort of expletive. It was worse than many R-rated movies. It was terrible. It ruined the whole atmosphere. It was sapros.

I read a story of an old Christian man who went to a barber shop which he had never been to before to get a haircut. You know how barbers are, they talk about everything and anything, and seem to have strong opinions about it all. Well this barber was no different except that he had a foul mouth as well. Finally, about half way through the haircut, this old Christian man turned to the barber, pointed at his own ear, and said, “Does this look like a sewer to you?” The rest of the haircut was done in silence. Sapros.

How many of you like to have bad breath? I hate bad breath. But many people, who also hate bad breath, don’t seem to care how they foul the air with their words. When you allow foul language and cursing to pass through your lips, you are emitting a stench worse than bad breath, because it is foul to the ears and to the mind.

The Bible tells us that our prayers are like sweet smelling incense to God (Rev 5:8), but when we use our mouths poorly, they are foul. Foul language, corrupt speech. Paul says don’t let it proceed from your mouth.

But when it comes to foul speech, what does Paul have in mind? What exactly is sapros speech?

Many Christians are very watchful about not saying any bad words. You know, the four-letter words which are impolite. The coarse words which we often hear on movies and TV shows and in some public conversations. But these are not the only types of sapros speaking. In fact, such coarse language is not even the worst kind of language.

As you read Scripture, the words which are the most evil, the most destructive and damaging, are the words that tear other people down. We Christians are often quite attentive to not saying four-letter bad word words, but then turn around and speak the truly bad words of gossip, slander, blame, accusation, undercutting, spreading rumors, and talking negatively about other people.

Truly corrupt talk is not so much when you “curse like a sailor” but when you talk about other people in a way that tears them down in the minds of those who hear you. I encourage you, when you open your mouth, don’t be as concerned about the four-letter words escaping your lips as you are about the corrupt words that spread slander and gossip about other people.

We know that this is the type of language that Paul is most concerned with, because of the positive command he writes in the second half of Ephesians 4:29.

So the negative command in the first part of Ephesians 4:29 is to stop speaking what is corrupt, to keep ourselves from speaking what is evil. Instead, in the next part of Ephesians 4:29, we need to exchange our corrupt speech with good speech that is edifying.

Positive Command: Speak what is Good for Edification (Ephesians 4:29b)

The positive command in verse 29 is to speak what is good. The word used here for good is agathos. It is used in the accounts of the Rich Young Ruler (Matt 19:17; Mark 10:18; Luke 18:19) to refer to God. Jesus tells the rich young ruler that no one is good, agothos, but God alone.

So how do you know when you are speaking what is good—what is agathos? Well, ask yourself—is what I am saying something Jesus would say? Or, would I say what I am saying if Jesus were present? Would I talk this way to Jesus? If not, then you are not speaking what is good.

So what does speaking what is good look like? What do those who speak what is good talk about? Well, that is what Paul tells us in the last part of Ephesians 4:29. He gives us here the reason we should not speak what is corrupt, but speak only what is good. And that reason is for edification.

We should speak this way, at the end of Ephesians 4:29, for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers

Edification is the key word here. It is used several times throughout Scripture in specific reference to the main activity a church should be doing when they meet together. It is similarly translated “to build up.” We’ve already seen this term twice back in Ephesians 4:11-16 when Paul gave us the blueprints for church growth. (cf. also 1 Cor 14:5, 12, 26; 2 Cor 12:19; Eph 4:12, 16; 1 Thess 5:11).

The Greek is a construction term for raising up a building, strengthening a wall, fortifying a structure. Paul is saying here that the words we say should strengthen, fortify, build up and encourage one another. Negative words tear down. Good words build up.

There are many ways to edify others through our words. One of these, of course, is through providing others with good teaching and training about Scripture. This helps build up people’s minds and spirits.

But this is not the only form of edification. Probably some of the best forms of edification are words of encouragement and praise giving to others. When we tell people how they did a good job, when we talk positively about them to others, we are building them up with edifying words.

Paul says that this way of talking is necessary. Edification is not optional. It is necessary. It is something we must do. Why?

At the end of Ephesians 4:29, because edification will impart grace to the hearers.

Even when we talk positively about someone to others, it is edifying to those who hear, because they see that you are an encourager, and they are presented with a positive example for them to edify.

When you are always gossiping about others, and spreading rumors or lies about them, people come to realize that you cannot be trusted, and that your words are often mean and slanderous. So they won’t share anything with you, and will not want to listen to what you have to say. But when you praise others and build others up with your words, this is edifying to everyone involved.

What is ironic is when some Christian says a bad four-letter word, and other Christians then judge, condemn, and accuse them for this bad word. But which is worse? To say a bad four-letter word, or to tear down and condemn someone who says a bad four-letter word? Paul indicates here that it is the latter. It is corrupt speech to tear down someone else. He says nothing here about saying “bad” words.

In fact, Paul himself said bad words elsewhere. In Philippians 3:8 he says that all the things he has lost are nothing but skubala compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus Christ. This word skubala is usually translated as “dung” or “rubbish” in English translations, but it really means shit.

Yet if a pastor or podcaster were to say “shit” in his sermon or Bible study, Christians would look sideways at him and maybe even start talking negatively about him. Well, which is worse? To say “shit” or to tear down and condemn someone who says “shit”? Paul argues that it is worse to tear someone down.

So Ephesians 4:29 could be translated this way: “Rather than tear someone down with your words, build them up and give them grace!”

In Ephesians 4:30, he provides the motivation. In Ephesians 4:30, we learn that speaking evil grieves the Holy Spirit.

Motivation: Speaking Evil Grieves the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30)

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

What is most ironic about this verse is that it is often quoted out of context by Christians as a way of accusing and condemning other Christians who they think are doing things that should not be done. If a person doesn’t like a sermon, or a worship song, or maybe they have a bit of a negative attitude, some Christians will condemn the negative person by quoting Ephesians 4:30 about them. “Oh, they’re grieving the Holy Spirit by the negativity.”

Well, maybe they are a bit, because they are talking negatively also, but the person quoting the verse is also grieving the Holy Spirit because they are tearing down someone else.

What does that mean? Well the key is in the end of the verse. Paul could have mentioned many things about the Holy Spirit, but he mentioned the fact that we were sealed by Him for the day of redemption.

We already talked about the sealing of the Holy Spirit back in Ephesians 1, when Paul gave us the different things that God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit do for us. He told us in Ephesians 1:13-14 that we were sealed by the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of our inheritance in heaven.

We saw there that the idea is like an engagement ring. The Holy Spirit is an engagement ring given to all believers by Jesus Christ. The church is the bride of Christ. At the end of the church age, there is an event in Heaven known as the Marriage of the Lamb. That is when Jesus spiritually marries the church.

The Holy Spirit is given to us as a seal for this day—as an engagement ring. When you believed in Jesus Christ for eternal life, one of the things that happens is that the Holy Spirit immediately entered into your life and began to dwell within you.

His task is to begin to make you into a new person, which is known as the process of sanctification. There are some things He does automatically, but for the most part His influence is not irresistible. The work of the Spirit can be resisted. When the Spirit tries to accomplish something in your life, you have two options. You can either submit to the influence of the Holy Spirit within, and live in obedience to Him, or you can rebel against the influence of the Holy Spirit and live in disobedience to Him.

He wants to guide what we do and what we say, but if we do not let Him guide us, then we will be guided by our flesh instead, and will continue to live in sin. If we do this, we are resisting the Holy Spirit, which grieves Him. It makes Him sad. It is like a slap in His face.

Imagine an engaged couple. They are so very happy. They go everywhere hand in hand. They gaze into each other’s eyes. He has twenty pictures of her in his wallet which he shows to everyone he meets. She has a diamond ring on her finger which she shows to everyone she meets.

One day, he asks to take her out to dinner, and she says she has already made plans. She is going to go out to dinner and a movie with her old boyfriend from high school who was the star of the football team, and is now the youngest CEO ever of a Fortune 500 corporation.

How would that make her fiancé feel? It would grieve him to hear such news, right? Now she might tell him that it means nothing, and that she loves him, but still, he has to wonder why, if she loves him, does she want to spend time with an old boyfriend? In this case, the man would probably feel a bit sad that his future wife has decided to do this.

But if her friendship with this former boyfriend-turned-CEO continued, and it became more serious, eventually, the man would become quite grieved, worried, and distressed.

That is similar to the way it is when Christians, as the future bride of Christ, who have received the engagement ring of the Holy Spirit, decide to go back to our old way of living. It saddens and grieves the Holy Spirit.

This is not a perfect illustration, because the passage says we are grieving the Holy Spirit, which would be like grieving the engagement ring, but still, the picture is clear. Paul is simply telling us here in Ephesians 4:30 that corrupt speech grieves or saddens the Holy Spirit.

Of course, we can safely say that any sin in the life of the believer grieves the Holy Spirit, but Paul is specifically talking about the sins of the mouth. It is tearing another brother or sister down that grieves the Holy Spirit.

It’s like any parent who hears their children talking negatively about each other. As parents, we want our children to defend each other, support each other, love each other, and have each other’s backs. But when they are fighting, and condemning each other, it saddens us. It’s the same with God. When His children fight, He is grieved. The Holy Spirit wants to unify us, and the Spirit is saddened when we fight.

Where I see a lot of this fighting is on social media. It seems that social media causes Christians to argue and fight and name-call in the most horrendous ways. And the worse part about it is that we are doing it in a public setting for all the world to see! It’s one thing to have a disagreement with another brother or sister behind closed doors, but on social media, we argue and bicker in front of everyone! I am convinced this deeply grieves the Holy Spirit.

On a different note, we must be careful not to confuse grieving the Holy Spirit with some of the other sins against the Holy Spirit. For example, Matthew 12 talks about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. That is a serious sin, and Jesus calls it the unpardonable sin. This is a sin only unbelievers can commit. It comes from a state of such hardness of heart that such a person will never come to faith in Jesus. If you worry you have committed it, this worry means you haven’t.

There is also the sin of resisting the Holy Spirit (Rom 1:18-20). Anyone can resist the Holy Spirit, whether believers or unbelievers. It is committed by unbelievers who resist the drawing and convicting work and influence of the Holy Spirit in their lives. It is committed by believers who resist the illuminating and sanctifying works of the Holy Spirit in their lives. When believers resist the work of the Holy Spirit, it can also be called quenching the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19).

Now, some teach that if you grieve or quench the Holy Spirit, He leaves you. This teaching comes from a misunderstanding of the different roles the Holy Spirit had between the Old and New Testament.

In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit only came upon certain individuals for certain tasks, and only for a certain period of time. Sin would cause the Holy Spirit to leave.

For example, after King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband, his sin was pointed out to him, and he prayed a prayer of confession. His prayer is recorded in Psalm 51.

Then, somebody wrote a song based on Psalm 51 called “Create in Me a Clean Heart.” And one of the lines in the song—like one of the lines in the Psalm, says “Take not your Holy Spirit from me.” And so people get the idea that the Holy Spirit comes and goes from the Christian by whether we sin or not.

What they don’t understand is that for the New Testament Christian, things are much different. First, the Holy Spirit indwells every believer, not just some. Second, He indwells permanently. He does not come and go. John 14:16-17, 1 John 2:27 and many other passages make this clear that when He comes, He abides forever.

When He comes to abide within you, He does so permanently. He remains. We will see, when we look at Ephesians 5:18, that sin can cause you to stop being filled or controlled by the Holy Spirit, but that does not mean He leaves you or stops indwelling you. It deeply saddens Him because He is dwelling within you and you are not giving Him control.

Grieving the Holy Spirit is simply making the Holy Spirit sad because we have chosen to sin rather than obey His influence in our lives. Specifically, Paul talks of this here in reference to our words.

Paul draws this idea from Isaiah 63:10, which says the Israelites grieved the Holy Spirit. There, it refers to Israel’s rebellion in the wilderness, which led to their rejection by God. That whole generation died in the wilderness. And if you remember, the primary sign of their rebellion was in their words.

The Israelites were constantly complaining and murmuring against God and His chosen leader, Moses. And as you read the accounts in the Exodus and Numbers, God is saddened over and over by their ungratefulness and their complaining, and over and over again, He comes to the verge of destroying them.

Grieving God means to make Him sad by our words and our actions against Him, and against His leaders.

Again, take Moses as an example. Israel’s rebellion led Moses to sin with his mouth (Ps 106:33, Num 20:10; Deut 3:26), and eventually, to disobey God by striking the rock rather than speaking to it for water. This also grieved God, and as a result, Moses was not allowed to receive the inheritance in the Promised Land.

So grieving the Holy Spirit is caused when we speak against God or against other Christians, and it can bring about serious repercussions to the believer who does it. Physical death, as we see in the case of the Israelites or loss of inheritance—not loss of eternal life, but loss of inheritance and reward in heaven—as was illustrated by the life of Moses.

Do not speak evil words to one another, for it grieves the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is given by God to the church to help us become like Jesus, and to grow us into unity and love for each other. But when we speak hateful and hurtful words that tear others down, that spread lies about others, and that fail to edify and build up, this grieves the Holy Spirit. Gossip, slander, and accusation are all words, as James says, that are fueled by hell.

So don’t let your words be fueled and inspired by hell. Instead, let your words be fueled and inspired by the Holy Spirit. Speak only what is good and profitable toward others. Use your words to encourage and edify and build others up.

Conclusion

Have you listened to yourself talk recently? Try it for a week. What you say, how you say it and to whom you say it.

Such an exercise will give you your spiritual temperature. It will diagnose your spiritual health.

Do you have a wayward tongue? God wants you to get rid of it. Words are a very powerful thing, and all of us need to have control over our words. The excuse we sometimes use of just “speaking my mind” is generally just an excuse for a lack of control over our tongue. A lack of control over your tongue leads to corrupt communication.

The remedy for such corrupt communication is found in Matthew 12:34. Jesus says there that the mouth speaks out of the overflow of the heart. We have all heard it said that you are what you eat, but Matthew 12:34 tells us that you are what you say. What you say and how you say it reveal what is in your heart.

So if you want to change the way you speak, you need to change what is in your heart. The remedy to corrupt communication is to fill your heart with the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ, so that only truth and beauty can emerge from your lips. Study the life of Jesus. Pray to become more like Jesus. Strive to live like Jesus.

The love of Jesus will fill your heart with love, and out of the overflow of love within your heart, your mouth will begin to speak loving words.

Ephesians 4:17-19: Sacred Selfishness

By Jeremy Myers

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Imagine that I was a guest speaker at your church. Or maybe at your social club or gathering of friends. Maybe you had heard that I have some insightful ideas and some things that will better help you understand God and yourself, and so you showed up to hear what I had to say.

And imagine that after the introduction, I stood up, and one of the first things I did was spend several minutes insulting you, your friends, and everything you had ever thought, said, or done. Imagine I said something like this:

Thanks for having me to speak, you morons. You’re all a bunch of idiots. You have never had an intelligent thought in your life. Everything you think and say is nothing but stupidity and ignorance. And it’s your own fault, really. You have intentionally turned away from wisdom and knowledge and decided to keep yourselves dumb and oblivious to anything approaching intelligence.

And it’s not just your mind, but your actions and behavior as well. Have you ever done anything loving or kind in your entire life? No. Everything you do is pure stupidity. You are filled with nothing but greed, lust, hate, and violence. Seriously. You may be thinking, “But Jeremy, we do some good things. We’re not all evil all the time.” Well, you’re wrong. Everything good that you think you do is actually just done out of selfishness, ignorance, arrogance, and pride. You’re greedy all the time, and everything you do is just to satisfy your own lusts.

If I was a guest speaker at your gathering, and that is how I started my talk, how would you respond?

Ironically, there are many Christians who would probably shout “Amen!” because, oddly, some Christians like to be regularly whipped with a verbal tongue lashing. Some Christians like to be verbally abused by pastors. They’re Christian masochists. They enjoy being reminded how depraved, immoral, and evil they are.

But the majority of people would be offended. And rightly so. Nobody wants to be insulted. Nobody wants to be told that they are nothing but ignorant sinners and that everything they do is wrong.

I myself would be offended if anyone said such things to me. In fact, if some preacher or teacher said these things, I would want to ignore everything else they taught, because one of my central beliefs is that if a person cannot say something with love, then they are not speaking truth. While it is not kind and loving to speak untruth, it is a fact that genuine, godly truth will always be spoken in love. Paul says in Ephesians 4:15 that we must speak the truth in love. So if someone is not speaking the truth in love, then they don’t need to be listened to.

In fact, I would argue that love is a litmus test for truth. If someone thinks they have the truth, but they cannot say it in love, then they don’t have the truth. True truth, when truly spoken, will be spoken in love. Therefore, if someone is claiming to speak the truth, but they say it with hate and venom, then they are not speaking truth, but lies and deceit.

So, if I came to your gathering and said the things I accused you of being ignorant, perverse, immoral, having no understanding about God, being spiritually empty, hard of heart, callous, full of lust and sensuality, and greedy for all forms of impurity, you would have every right to ignore everything else I said. In fact, even though my words would be accusing you, or others, of being evil and ignorant, it would in fact be me who was evil and ignorant for talking in such a manner. It would not be you who was sinning, but me.

With all of this in mind, it is absolutely shocking to me what Paul seems to say in Ephesians 4:17-19. Here he is, the so-called Apostle to the Gentiles, absolutely blasting all Gentiles for being ignorant, backward sinners. After just saying that the truth should be spoken in love, Paul seems to abandon all pretenses of love to speak some hurtful truth, which indicates a complete lack of truth. Listen to his words in Ephesians 4:17-19:

This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

Frankly, I don’t much care for what Paul writes here in Ephesians 4:17-19. I don’t like his tone. I don’t like his words. I don’t like his message. From a strictly face-value perspective, I think Paul is flat-out wrong. What he says and how he says it pisses me off.

I know. That is shocking to hear. Paul is an inspired biblical author. He can’t be wrong.

But I’m going to be bold enough to say it. If the traditional understanding of Paul’s words here is correct, then Paul is wrong. His words are harsh, judgmental, and unloving, and aside from that, Paul is flat-out wrong.

Or, at least, the way we read Paul is wrong.

But most of us think Paul is absolutely correct here. And do you know why? Because we see that Paul is condemning “those evil Gentiles.” He’s not condemning me. He’s not condemning you. He’s condemning them. And so we smugly nod our heads in agreement with Paul, because his words are not a description of me. They’re a description of those evil sinners over there.

As we read through this list of sinful attitudes and behaviors, all of us can think of someone we know that they apply to. Maybe it’s a neighbor we despise who has no interest in God and is always getting wasted on the weekends and never has a stable relationship. Maybe it’s a boss or coworkers who is hateful toward us at work, and seems to only care about getting more and more money. Maybe it’s those idiots on the other side of the political aisle who are destroying our country. Maybe it’s the Wall Street executives or the pharmaceutical CEO’s or certain social media influencers or sports stars or Hollywood idols or famous musicians.

That’s who Paul is describing. Not me. Not us. Them.

And that is the way the way the majority of people read this text. It’s the way the majority of pastors preach this text. The usual approach to Ephesians 4:17-19 goes something like this:

Those non-Christians are evil. Paul’s describing them here. And sure, some of us Christians used to be that way, but we’re not that way any longer. We’re the good guys now. Those non-Christians are evil. Our task as Christians is to go save them and make them like us.

And then the teacher will quote Isaiah 64:6, “All their righteous works are filthy rags,” or Romans 3:10-12, “There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.”

And that is how this text is usually preached. I used to preach it that way. In fact, my original sermon on Ephesians 4:17-19 is still on my website, and you can find it on there still, if you want. I recently went and looked at it, and it pretty much fits with the summary I provided above.

And I am appalled. I repent of ever teaching this passage that way.

Why am I appalled? Why do I repent?

Because in the last fifteen or twenty years, God has taken me on a journey to show me how wrong I was in my views toward others. I am still on this journey with God, and still have a long way to go, but God is showing me a completely different way to view other people, and at the same time, a completely different way of reading and understanding Scripture.

So today, I can say I was wrong. And I can also say that the common way of reading Paul here in Ephesians 4 is also wrong. I think the majority of Christians have misunderstood what Paul is saying here. It is completely out of character for Paul, the gracious and loving Apostle to the Gentiles to spew such venom toward the Gentiles as he seems to do in Ephesians 4:17-19 (cf. Barth, Anchor Bible Commentary).

And let’s face reality here as well. If Paul’s words in these verses are to be understood at their face value, then Paul is absolutely wrong in what he says. The only people who can agree with what Paul seems to say about non-Christians here, are people who don’t actually know any non-Christians. And again, that was me for most of my life. I didn’t really know any non-Christians and so I just took Paul at his word here, and in other similar passages, and put a blanket condemnation on them all. They’re all ignorant fools. They’re all blind, violent, backward sinners with no redeeming traits at all. And because of this view I had of them, I didn’t really want to get to know any of them either. Why would I want to become friends with such evil people? They’re wickedness would probably rub off on me somehow. I’d be guilty by association.

But then God started to do some crazy things in my life. Things that were very, very painful at the time, and in many ways, are still quite painful. Through these events, I was forced to encounter many non-Christians. And I was absolutely shocked by what I found. In more ways than I could count, I discovered that many of the non-Christians I encountered behaved more like Jesus than did most of the Christians I knew. I encountered more love, grace, forgiveness, acceptance, generosity, and kindness among non-Christians than I ever had in church.

If you have experienced this, then you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t experienced this, it’s probably because you are still too involved in your local church to have genuine friendships outside of church. I know that may be hard to hear, but I have come to believe in a principle that I have found to be always true among Christians. It is this: Christians who think all non-Christians are always evil, greedy bastards don’t genuinely know any non-Christians.

I said what I said. And I stand by it.

When you genuinely get to know non-Christians, you discover that many of them are wise, kind, loving, generous, patient, joyful, gentle, and loyal. Many of them are more like Jesus than many Christians. Are they perfect? Of course not. Just like Christians aren’t perfect. Do they still have faults and failures? Absolutely. Yes. Just like Christians.

You might say, “But Jeremy! They’re headed for hell! We’re going to heaven.” Well, I’m not talking about that. Except I will say this: That mentality right there is what causes so much arrogance and pride among Christians. Be very careful about thinking that way. I explain more about this in my book What is Hell? and so won’t say anything more about this now.

The issues here in Ephesians 4:17-19 seems to be about intelligence and morality, not eternal destiny, and when it comes to intelligence and morality, there is almost no difference between Christians and non-Christians. If there is a difference in intelligence and morality between the Christians and non-Christians, I would have to say that non-Christians have us beat. If moral development was a race, the church is losing.

And why are we losing? Because we have an ingrained sense of moral superiority which allows us to ignore all evidence to the contrary. We think we have the once-for-all final truth about life and knowledge and morality in the Bible, and so we can ignore any ideas or progress in culture about truth and morality. We hold firmly to truths “once for all delivered to the saints” and think we don’t need anything else. And as we sit there with our Bible on our laps and our hands in the air, culture passes us by. But rather than learn from others, we prefer to use passages like Ephesians 4:17-19 to condemn others so that we can safely and comfortably ignore them.

All of this is wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

So what are we to do with passages like Ephesians 4:17-19? And why did Paul write it?

There are three steps to seeing what Paul meant when he wrote this text, to understanding why Paul wrote it. I am going to walk you through these three steps. The first step will be to simply look at the text itself, to understand the words and phrases of Ephesians 4:17-19. This will be a straightforward and literal reading of the text.

The second step will be to notice something very strange about the text that most people miss. There are numerous contextual clues that most people miss which provides insight on how to properly understand what Paul was saying and why he wrote these verses. So the second step will be to point out these contextual clues.

Thirdly, and finally, then, only after we make this crucial observation, we will be able to see what Paul really meant when he wrote these words.

So that is how we will proceed. First, a straightforward reading and explanation of the text, then a missed observation about the text in its wider context, so that, finally, we can understand what Paul was doing when he wrote the harsh words of Ephesians 4:17-19.

Explanation of Ephesians 4:17-19

Ephesians 4:17-19. This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind. Having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

With that word, therefore, Paul is providing instructions based on what he just finished writing. Ephesians 4:11-16 contains what I call “God’s Blueprints for Church Growth.” In that passage, Paul explains how we are all to be ministers to each other using the spiritual gifts God has given.

Now Paul is going to build on that by showing that members of God’s church should walk in purity. But Paul does this in a strange way. He does this by condemning the way of life in which the Gentiles walk.

What is interesting about this is that the Ephesian Christians were Gentiles. And in Ephesians 4:18-19, Paul goes on to say some pretty negative things about Gentiles. Isn’t this odd? Paul bashes the character, intelligence, and behavior of the people he is writing to! Why would he do this?

Well, the typical answer in the average commentary is that while the Jews used to divide the world up into two groups of people—Jews and Gentiles—with the birth of the church, which included both Jews and Gentiles, there were now three groups of people: Jews, Gentiles, and Christians. And so, the explanation goes, even though the Ephesian Christians were Gentiles, they were actually now a separate people group. They were, in a sense, a third race (1 Cor 10:32). They were Christians now, and not Gentiles. So when Paul bashes the Gentiles here, he is not bashing the Ephesian Christian Gentiles, but the regular, heathen non-Christian Gentiles.

Frankly, I don’t like this explanation at all. I think it is wrong. I think it completely misunderstands the message and purpose of Paul. After all, back in Ephesians 2:11-22, Paul says that while there used to be two groups of people, Jews and Gentiles, insiders and outsiders with God, Jesus has now broken down the dividing wall of hostility so that now, all are accepted, forgiven, and welcome into the family of God.

But now it seems strange to me that, after tearing down the middle wall of separation, the wall of hostility and enmity, the wall of judgment and condemnation of other people, it seems strange that Paul would now erect a brand new wall, this time, not between Jews and Gentiles, but between Gentiles and other Gentiles. After tearing down the wall of enmity, is Paul really constructing a new wall all over again?

I cannot see Paul doing this. He was the Apostle of grace. He was the Apostle to the Gentiles. Well, we will see later why Paul is wrote what he did here. For now, let us continue looking at the text of Ephesians 4:17.

Also note the verb walk. It is used twice in Ephesians 4:17, and it is a key word for the rest of chapter 4, all of chapter 5, and the first half of chapter 6. Ephesians can be summarized with three verbs: Sit, Walk, Stand. Chapters 1–3 are about being seated with Christ. Chapters 4–5 and half of chapter 6 is about walking with Christ. And then Ephesians 6:10-20 is about standing our ground with Christ.

So we are in the walk section of Ephesians. The verb walk refers to our manner of life, our conduct, the way we behave, the way we think. And rather than telling his readers right away how they should walk, which he begins to do in Ephesians 4:17, Paul first provides a negative example of how the Gentiles walk.

I also want to point out that the words no longer in verse 17 are a hint at what Paul is doing. This phrase serves as a reminder to his readers that they used to walk in the way he is about to describe, and that there is a distinct possibility that they can still walk in these same wicked ways. Some people say that it is impossible for true Christians to habitually practice, or continually walk, in certain sinful behaviors and attitudes. But Paul’s instruction here that his readers no longer walk in the ways he is about to describe is a clear indication that Paul knows that true Christians can, and do, walk in these ways.

It is a helpful principle of biblical interpretation and biblical theology to remember that every prohibition in Scripture, every command to refrain from a certain behavior, is inherently an admission that true Christian can, and do, live in such sinful ways. Any positive imperative written to the New Testament Christian, presupposes by its very nature, that the opposite of that imperative can take place in that believer’s life. If the Bible tells Christians not to do something, then this is inherently an admission that Christians can do it. When there is an instruction to not do something, as we have here in Ephesians 4:17, it implies that even though a person is a Christian, it is still possible for them to continue to do what the instruction tells us not to do.

This is an important theological point, because there are many people today who preach and teach that true Christians cannot habitually sin or will not live in certain patterns of behavior. But the Bible indicates otherwise by including commands to not live in these ways.

With this in mind, let us look at the rest of this passage to see the ways in which Christians are supposed to no longer walk.

In the rest of the passage, Paul lists several characteristics of these Gentiles. Different Bible translations offer different suggestions for how to translate and punctuate the list of traits, but I’m not going to get into the various options. All that matters for our purposes is that we understand the terms and phrases in Paul’s warning.

The first trait is in the last part of Ephesians 4:17. Paul writes that Christians should not walk as the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind.

This statement would have been a bit of a shock to the first century reader in Paul’s day. “The Greco-Roman society considered the mind to be the best, noblest, and most worthwhile part of the human being—they even considered it to be divine. And with geniuses like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to boast of, they took great pride in their intellectual enlightenment.”[1]

So Paul’s statement in Ephesians 4:17 about the futile mind of the Gentiles would have shocked most people in his day. Saying that we have a worthless mind would get the same reaction today, right? I mean look around! Look how much we’ve accomplished! All the cures for diseases we have. How far we’ve come in our understanding of the human body, and of this world, and of the universe, and the nature of molecular structures! The advances in philosophy, psychology, physics, medicine, biology, and every other field shows that we are not futile in our thinking. Imagine someone showing up today and telling the entire scientific world that their thinking is futile and worthless!

But that is essentially what Paul is doing with this first descriptive phrase. He is telling the Greco-Roman world that they are futile in their thinking, in their patterns of thought. How can Paul say this? How can Paul say that Gentiles have a worthless mind?

Paul doesn’t mean that the mind is unable to accomplish great things and come up with great ideas. What he means is that it is aiming at a meaningless goal with silly methods.[2]

So what if we can send a man to the moon, and find a cure for cancer, and clone a human being? So what? How will any of that help you when you die without God? All of our accomplishments and achievements are worthless then. Pointless. Meaningless. Futile.

Humans have made great academic strides in nearly every possible direction, but our advances have led us only closer to death and destruction. Carl Jung raises the question this way:

How is it that, for all our progress in all the administration of justice, in medicine and in technology, for all our concern for life and health, monstrous engines of destruction have been invented which could easily exterminate the human race?[3]

Jung goes on to say that these devilish engines and destructive ideas were developed by minds of “reasonable, respectable citizens” who are everything we would wish that all great humans could be. Yet it all leads to greater futility, pain, subjection, violence, death, and destruction. “Our rationalistic attitude,” Jungs writes, “leads us to believe that we can work wonders with international organizations, legislation, and other well-meant devices.”[4]

This is what Paul means when he is talking about the futility of the mind. Humanity has the brightest minds working on the hardest problems, but nothing seems to be helping. The same problems keep cropping up over and over and over. We make progress in all sorts of areas, but when it comes to the condition of the human heart, mind, and soul, no real progress is being made at all!

Now, you may be tempted to think that the problem with all these great thinkers, inventors, doctors, scientists, and philosophers is that they were not Christians. It is those “Gentiles,” as Paul indicates, that are the problem. It’s not us. It’s them. If they simply adopted a heavenly perspective, an eternal mindset, then things would turn out better.

If that is what you are thinking that right now, then hold on to that thought. It will be addressed shortly. If you agree with that idea that the whole world would be better if the whole world became Christian, then just hold on to that thought, and we will see how Paul addresses it.

The rest of the descriptive phrases are essentially the same, and will be covered more quickly. Paul is basically condemning all the beliefs and behaviors of the Gentiles, which again, is a very strange thing for the Apostle of the Gentiles to do.

The next trait of the Gentiles is that they have their understanding darkened. Here again, the emphasis is on the lack of knowledge among the Gentiles. Their mind is darkened, meaning there is no inner light in their minds. They have an inner shadow that obscures and hides all the great essential truths from their understanding. Since this trait is so similar to the previous one of Gentiles being futile in their minds, nothing else needs to be said here.

The third characteristic of the Gentiles, according to Paul, is that they alienated from the life of God. This means they don’t know or care about God or what He wants, and so they live as they please. The next part of Ephesians 4:18 tells us why they are this way. They are alienated because of the ignorance that is in them, and because of the blindness of their heart. They are willfully determined to stay in their sin. Again, there is an emphasis here on mental ignorance and blindness, showing that the root problem is a problem in the mind. Paul seems to be implying that the Gentiles having nothing good going on inside their mind.

Next, in the first part of Ephesians 4:19, they are past feeling. They are without feeling. This doesn’t mean that they don’t have physical sensation, feelings, or emotions. They do. The first century Mediterranean world was motivated by honor and shame, and so in that context, this phrase means that they have no sensitivity toward the issues of honor and shame. Today, we might say that their conscience been seared (1 Tim 4:2). They are no longer sensitive to the sensations of a guilty conscience.

Then we read that they have given themselves over to lewdness. Lewdness can also be translated as lasciviousness, debauchery, sexual excess, absence of restraint, or insatiable desire for pleasure. And finally, Paul writes that the Gentiles do all of this uncleanness with greediness. They engage in all of these behaviors that Paul has listed, and they cannot get enough of such things. No matter how much they live in such wicked ways, they are always greedy for more.

Now what are we to make of this blanket condemnation by Paul of all things Gentile? Sadly, most Christians seem to rip passages like this out of context so that they can smugly condemn and judge anyone else who is not a Christian. They also use texts like this to ignore any ideas or wisdom that might come from a non-Christian. For example, I purposefully quoted Carl Jung above. Because many people feel that certain elements in his life prove that he was not a Christian, and therefore, they can disregard anything he taught or said. Christians will similarly completely discard ideas from the great philosophers and scientists of history.

I recently heard a famous pastor in California say that the Bible contains all truth, and so if something is not found in the Bible, then it is not true and can be ignored. What a shocking statement! It’s also completely contradictory to any possible way of living. For example, this particular pastor made this statement on social media. Well, the technology behind social media is not in the Bible. The people who created the computer code, and developed the apps certainly were not using biblical truths to do so. And electricity and computers aren’t in the Bible. Nor is the polyblend suit and satin tie this pastor was wearing in the picture on his social media post. Nor the spectacles he had on his face. Nor the pulpit he was standing behind. Nor the microphone he was speaking into.

And yet, according to this pastor, if it’s not in the Bible, it’s not true. It is because of passages like Ephesians 4:17-19 that this pastor feels totally justified in making such a ridiculous claim. He can point to Paul’s description here and say, “See? Non-Christians are futile in their thinking. They are spiritually blind and mentally ignorant. They have no connection with God, and nothing good to say. Everything they do is nothing but sinful sensuality and lust. So we can safely ignore them all.”

What an attitude! In fact, let me go a step further and say, “What an ignorant attitude!” Any Christian who says that non-Christians are ignorant and blind and so can be ignored, is themself ignorant and blind.

But wait! Isn’t that what Paul himself just said? Didn’t Paul just say that non-Christians are ignorant and blind, darkened in their understanding, futile of mind, given to nothing but sensuality, lewdness, and greediness? If I just said that anyone who says such things is ignorant themselves, and Paul just said such things, then am I saying that Paul is ignorant?

No, I am not. Here, as always in Scripture, context is critically important. And people like that famous pastor who think that Paul is issuing a blanket condemnation of all non-Christians here in Ephesians 4:17-19 have missed a very important truth from the context of this passage to show us what Paul was actually saying (Note: all similar passages have similarly contextual clues about what is really going on. Cf. Eph 2:3; 5:3-5; Col 3:5-10; Rom 1:19-24).

Let us briefly look at this overlooked contextual observation to see what Paul was saying, and then, once we have understood the context, we can reconsider Ephesians 4:17-19 again, to see how to properly read this text.

An Overlooked Observation

So what is Paul saying in Ephesians 4:17-19? Paul seems to be blasting the Gentiles. He seems to be issuing a blanket condemnation on all Gentiles for everything they think, say, and do. And since Paul is the Apostle to the Gentiles, this seems to be a very strange and unloving approach. Paul has just written in Ephesians 4:15 that we should speak the truth in love, but there seems to be very little love in Ephesians 4:17-19.

First of all, before we look to the wider context, an alert biblical thinker will recognize that Paul is engaging in a classic scapegoating technique. He is portraying a group of outsiders as monsters, so that they can be safely sidelined, ignored, or in some more extreme cases, arrested or even killed. All hatred, war, and violence comes from scapegoating, and one of the primary purposes for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was to unveil the scapegoating sin that all humans practice.

Paul knows this. It is quite evident from various other texts that Paul knows that humans love to scapegoat other humans, and that Jesus came to reveal it and put an end to it. But Paul engages in it here. … Or at least, he seems to.

Paul uses a classic scapegoating technique to create a division between two people groups. He is creating an “us vs. them” division. Insiders vs. outsiders. Though Paul earlier said in Ephesians 2, “You were outsiders, but now you are insiders,” Paul now seems to say, “There is a new group of outsiders. It’s those nasty Gentiles.” (cf. Perkins, New Interpreters Bible Commentary, 67).

And this is a very curious thing to do, because previously, when Paul referred to Gentiles, he was referring to the Gentile Christians of Ephesus. In Ephesians 2:11 and 3:1, he doesn’t say, “You Gentile Christians,” but simply “You Gentiles.” But now Paul issues a blanket condemnation on all Gentiles. But his readers knew, as you and I do, that he’s not talking about the Gentile Christians in Ephesus, but all the other Gentiles. Paul is now contrasting the Gentile Christians from the Gentile pagans, even though he has called both groups “Gentiles.” He is creating a division between the two groups. At least, that’s what he seems to be doing.

Which is very strange, because previously when Paul wrote about Gentiles, Paul said that the dividing wall of enmity between them and God had been torn down (Eph 2:14). But now, it appears from a surface reading of the text that the wall was not, in fact, torn down at all; it was only moved. While there used to be a wall between Jew and Gentile, now there was a wall between Christians and everyone else. So there are still two groups, and there is still a wall between them. And just as before, one group should shun and reject the other, just as it has always been.

And many Christians today agree. That famous pastor says, “Ignore everything non-Christians say. Just read your Bible. That’s all you need.” Others say, “Shun non-Christians. Ignore them. Don’t hang out with them. They will drag you down into their sin and shameful ways of living. Don’t read their books. Don’t listen to their music. Don’t fellowship with them in any way. If you must interact with them, do so only to invite them to church or share the gospel with them.”

Is this really what Paul is saying? Did Paul really tear down the dividing wall of separation in Ephesians 2, only to reconstruct it in Ephesians 4?

No.

Quite to the contrary, Paul performs a masterful move here which reveals the truth of what he is actually saying. Though Paul initially seems to be erecting another dividing wall of separation, he then, with just a few words, tears it all down and shows the Ephesians Christians what he really wants them to see.

Let me walk you through it. In Ephesians 4:17-19, Paul writes a disparaging description of Gentiles. He knew, due to the propensity humans have for scapegoating others, that his readers would be nodding their heads in agreement with what he writes. As they read his words, they would be saying, “Yes! Those Gentiles are so evil and depraved! I’m not like that, thank God. But they are. I need to stay away from such sinners! I need to ignore them.” Many Christians today have the same attitude.

But then Paul turns the tables on his readers. He makes a masterful move. It’s a theological checkmate. In the following verses, in Ephesians 4:20-22, Paul turns the tables on his readers and basically says, “Remember how I referred to you as Gentiles before? And I’m writing here about Gentiles also, and you thought I was referring to someone else, those non-Christian Gentiles? Well, I’m not. I’m still writing about you!”

In Ephesians 4:20-22, based on something Paul says, we learn, much to our shock, that in Ephesians 4:17-19, Paul was not writing about unregenerate Gentiles at all, but about the Ephesians Christians themselves! And therefore, Paul is also writing about us!

In Ephesians 4:20-22, Paul says to the Ephesian Christians, “Now that you are a follower of Jesus, you need to put off the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.” In other words, Paul is saying, “That description of Gentiles I provided earlier? That’s a description of the old man that is still living in you! It’s you I was describing! Not them. And you need to get rid of that way of thinking and living!”

Further evidence for this is that Paul goes on in the rest of Ephesians 4 and Ephesians 5 to give some very specific examples of how they should put off the old man and put on the new. He tells them how they should no longer be like the description he provided in Ephesians 4:17-19 and should instead be who Jesus has called them to be.

Do you see what a masterful move this is? It uses the behavior of others to hold a mirror up to our own soul. Paul blasts Gentile thinking and behavior, knowing full well that his reading audience would be nodding their heads in agreement. Some would be shouting “Amen!” Others would be saying, “Preach it!” Then, after they’re all worked up into a lather, Paul says, “Oh, and by the way, I’m talking about you.” Imagine the silence that then settles over the listening audience. And Paul basically goes on to say, “And the simple fact that you thought I was talking about someone else reveals the truth of this description for you. You are futile in your thinking, and darkened in your understanding, and blind in your hearts because, although you are a Christian, you are still carrying around that old man! Get rid of him!”

Talk about a gut punch.

Now this is a very common tactic for Paul. He does something similar in Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, and Colossians. In various places, he talks about various sins that Gentiles commit, and then he turns the table on his reading audience and says, “But I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about you! The things you condemn in others, you are guilty of yourselves! Don’t worry about them! Focus on your own life!”

Essentially, Paul is holding up a mirror to the souls of his readers by getting them to condemn some other group of people, and then he says, “Look! You’re looking into mirror. They are the mirror of you!”

And even though this is a common tactic for Paul, you should know that Paul didn’t come up with it himself. It is a very common literary device found all over the Hebrew Scripture. The prophetical book of Amos is one famous example.

The book of Amos was written to the people of Israel, and it begins by pronouncing judgment upon all the nations that surround Israel. Over and over, Amos lists the sins that these nations committed, and then he condemns them for it. Amos does this with Damascus (Amos 1:3-5), Gaza (Amos 1:4-8), Tyre (Amos 1:9-10), Edom (Amos 1:11-12), Ammon (Amos 1:13-15), Moab (Amos 2:1-3), and Judah (Amos 2:4-5). But then, beginning in Amos 2:6, the prophet turns the tables on his readers and says, “Hey … as I was going through that list of sinful nations and condemning all their sin, and you were nodding your head in agreement about how sinful and wicked those other nations are … Guess what? You are all guilty of exactly the same things!”

You can almost imagine the scene:

Amos: The people of Damascus are evil! God will punish them!

People: Yeah!

Amos: Gaza is so wicked, God will destroy it!

People: Yes! Get rid of them all!

Amos: Tyre is full of sin and rebellion! Destruction is coming!

People: The sooner the better!

Amos: And the same goes for the ignorant, idolatrous, greedy, sinful people of Edom, Ammon, Moab, and Judah!

People: Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!

Amos: And worst of all, the greatest sinners of all … is you!

People: Yea… wait … what?

Amos: Everything those other people have done, you’ve done worse!

People: No. That’s not true.

Amos: It is. Look at yourself. Take a careful look. Judgment is coming. If you want judgment to fall upon your enemies, then be careful, because it will fall on you first. You are just as bad as they are, if not worse.

This is exactly what Paul is doing here in Ephesians 4. He describes the traits of the Gentiles, knowing that his reading audience will be nodding his head in agreement about how wicked and evil “they” are. And then Paul holds up the mirror, and says, “Yes. I’m describing you. So get rid of that old man and put on the new.”

So Paul is not constructing a new dividing wall of hostility. Jesus tore down that wall. Paul is not building a new one. He is not creating a new “us vs. them” division made up of insiders and outsiders.

Paul is setting a trap for his religious readers. He’s pulling the rug out from under his readers. In Ephesians 4:17-19, he paints this vivid picture of the Gentiles—futile minds, darkened understanding, hardened hearts—and it’s easy to nod along, thinking, “Yeah, those outsiders are a mess.” It’s comfortable to point fingers. Then in Ephesians 4:22, he turns it around: “You were taught … to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires.” Suddenly, it’s not about “them”—it’s about “you.”

Paul’s not subtle about this elsewhere either. In Romans 2:1, after slamming idolatry and immorality, he hits the self-righteous with, “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself.” It’s a classic move: lure you into agreement, then flip the mirror. Here in Ephesians, the trap’s sneakier—4:17-19 sets up the “Gentile life” as the foil, but 4:22 reveals that “old self” isn’t gone just because you’re a Christian. It’s still lurking, and those traits—insensitivity, lust, impurity—can be yours if you’re not careful. Paul is saying, “Don’t get smug in condemning non-Christians. Their sins are still yours as well. In fact, since you claim to be an enlightened follower of Jesus Christ, your sins are worse!”

But we refuse to see it, because it’s so much easier and more enjoyable to point the finger at someone else. Let me quote Carl Jung again. He once wrote, “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” He also taught that one of the best ways to see our own souls is to see it reflected in the mirror of other people. He said that everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. One of the best ways that God uses to reveal to us the faults and problems of our own soul is to see it reflected back to us through the lives of other people. Other people are the mirror to our own soul. Carl Jung taught that our relationships with others are the mirrors of ourselves.

And many Christians condemn Carl Jung and ignore his insights in psychology because they claim he wasn’t a Christian. But Jung is teaching the same thing that Paul teaches here. Both are teaching that it is helpful to look at the sins of others, not so that we might condemn them, but so that we might get a glimpse into the problems of our own soul. We look to others as a mirror for the self. That is what Jung taught and that is what Paul teaches here in Ephesians 4:17-19.

Each of us have an inner shadow, a hidden, unrecognized, unacknowledged, messy part of ourselves that we shove down so that we don’t have to deal with it. When we see sin, hypocrisy, or arrogance in other people and it grates on us, maybe it’s not just them. Maybe it’s the mirror flashing something we’re wrestling with too, something we don’t want to deal with.

The world is a mirror that reveals ourself to ourself, as we really are. When we have emotional responses to others, particularly those that cause irritation or discomfort, this response can reveal unresolved or unacknowledged aspects of ourselves. The “irritating” traits we see in others might be connected to our own hidden self, the unconscious part of our personality that we repress or deny. By examining our reactions to others, we can gain insights into our own unconscious patterns and work towards greater self-awareness and personal growth.

But we must be careful. The mirror of others is not an exact mirror. For example, if you find yourself constantly annoyed by someone who is always late, this doesn’t mean that you also are always late. You’re probably not. You are probably very punctual, and so it annoys you when others are late. But that annoyance is an opportunity to learn something about yourself. Maybe you have tendencies towards perfectionism or control, which you are projecting onto the other person.

This is what Paul is doing in Ephesians 4:17-19. He purposefully creates a scapegoat out of the Gentiles, so that he can expose the scapegoat for what it is and hold up to his Gentile Christian audience their own hypocrisy and self-deception. He uses Gentile non-Christians to hold up a mirror to Gentile Christians so that they can get a glimpse into the shadows of their own soul.

This brings us to the third and final point. We looked at the meaning of the text of Ephesians 4:17-19, the overlooked observation that helps us better understand what Paul is doing, and now, with this observation in mind, we want to talk about the proper way of reading this text.

The Proper Way to Read Ephesians 4:17-19

It should be obvious by now that Paul, as the loving and gracious Apostle to the Gentiles, is not blasting non-Christian Gentiles for how sinful and evil they are. This would contradict Paul’s mission and ministry, and pretty much everything he has written in Ephesians up to this point. He is not issuing a blanket condemnation on all Gentiles. He is not condemning them all or judging them all. Rather, he is holding up a mirror to the Ephesian Christians, and thus to us as well, so that we can see that the problem with the world is not “out there” but “in here.” The problem is with me. With you.

Paul is playing on a form of religious bigotry that all religious people have. Though we used to be just like the people we condemn, and though in many ways, we are still just like them, we think that we are now better than them. We look down our spiritual noses at them and say, with the Pharisee, “God, thank you that I am not like this sinner” (Luke 18:11). Paul is doing the same thing Jesus did when He pointed out the hypocrisy and spiritual blindness that exists among the religious people of His own people in His own day when He called the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs” (Matt 23:27-28).

The reality is that we are just like those we condemn. Sure, we’ve been redeemed, but this doesn’t make us perfect. We still have lots of faults in our own lives that requires Spirit-filled work to fix. By holding up the Gentiles in a negative light as he has, Paul is actually holding up a mirror for the Ephesian Christians to look into, so that they can see their own faces (Jas 1:23) and then go away and do something about what they have seen.

Paul’s language is rhetorical and pastoral, aiming to contrast the “old self” with the “new self” in Christ (as the chapter continues). Ephesians 4:17-19 is not a Gentile condemnation, but a call to Christian transformation. If we use this text to condemn and judge non-Christians, then we are guilty of the sins listed in this text. The text is not at all about “them” out there, but about “me” in here, in my heart.

For if we are truly honest with ourselves, we will recognize that genuine Christians can have many of the traits mentioned by Paul in Ephesians 4:17-19. Many Christians are futile in their thinking, insensitive, or indulgent, hard hearted, greedy, and full of sensuality. Many Christians really don’t know the first thing about God, though we certainly talk like we do.

Many of us think that since we have believed in Jesus, we’re good to go. That we are morally and spiritually superior to everyone else. But this is pure self-deception! It is futile thinking! Faith doesn’t automatically erase human flaws. We all can still chase impure desires despite our belief in Jesus. Some of us might lean on ritual or dogma (futile thinking) without genuine transformation or become desensitized to others’ needs while clinging to a moral high ground. The “continual lust for more” (NIV) does not seem to refer to sexual lust itself (which some Christians are guilty of), but could even manifest as an obsession with status, control, or material blessings under the guise of spirituality.

Many Christians struggle with hypocrisy, judgmental attitudes, arrogance, blindness to personal faults, unwillingness to learn or consider different perspectives, a lack of empathy for non-Christians and other similar traits. In fact, all such traits are far worse in the Christian than in the non-Christian, for it is Christians who claim to be different. Yes, such human failings are not exclusive to Christians; they just sting more when wrapped in a faith that’s supposed to counter them. Christians are just as broken as anyone, but the stakes feel higher because of the ideals they claim.

We need to remember that when someone becomes a Christian, human nature doesn’t just vanish. Faith might redirect people, but it doesn’t erase the raw stuff we’re made of—things like pride, fear, and selfishness. Christians are still wrestling with the same impulses everyone else does. Paul’s “old self” (Ephesians 4:22) doesn’t just vanish at conversion; it’s a lifelong fight. Some don’t fight it hard enough. Some retain the old self and simply learn to cover it up with outwardly righteous words and behaviors, but this just makes the problem even worse.

How does it make it worse? Christians become very good at hiding their flaws in church and from one another. But when we hide the flaws instead of deal with them, the flaws only become larger. They are amplified. Certain church environments, those that are insular, dogmatic, or performance-driven, can breed hypocritical judgmental traits. When faith becomes about rules, status, or “us vs. them,” it’s easy to slide into judgment, arrogance, or hypocrisy. Empathy gets sidelined when the focus is on being “right” rather than being loving. When the goal shifts from following Christ to policing others, we lose empathy and become judgmental instead. It’s far easier to spot sin “out there” than deal with it “in here.”

And in the churches where perfectionism is taught and sin is often condemned, some people are afraid to admit their own flaws. Admitting flaws or considering other perspectives takes guts. Some Christians might cling to certainty, using arrogance as a shield, because questioning feels like a threat to their identity or salvation. It hardens them, ironically, against the humility their faith calls for.

Sometimes complacency sets in. For some, faith starts strong but turns into a routine. They lean on the label “Christian” without the ongoing self-reflection or growth Jesus modeled. That blindness to faults or unwillingness to learn might come from resting on past decisions rather than living them out daily.

In Ephesians 4:17-19, Paul is not telling us to point the finger at those evil non-Christians and condemn them for all that is wrong with the world. He is, instead, pointing the finger at himself. And inviting us to point our finger at ourselves. The problem with the world is not someone else. For me, the problem is me. For you, the problem is you.

In Kindergarten we are taught that whenever you point the finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back at you. That is how to read this text, and Paul deftly does some finger pointing at others to reveal to the Ephesian Christians that they should stop worrying about what others do, and instead take a look at their own life. Who cares what “they” do? Life isn’t about fixing them or controlling them. Life is about you becoming who God made you to be.

Think of it as sacred selfishness. Before you can even begin thinking about fixing others, you must first work on yourself. You must first know yourself, and then work to accept yourself, love yourself, forgive yourself, and develop yourself into the person God wants you to be. And this is a task that will take your own life.

We object by saying, “But if all I do is focus on conforming myself to who God made me to be, then how will those people over there stop sinning? How will they get fixed?” The truth of the matter is that they are probably saying the same thing about you. So rather than everyone focusing on everyone else, imagine how much better the world would be if everyone just worked on themselves.

Christians often thing, “Well, the whole world would be better if the whole world became Christian.” And while that might be true, it reveals an internal problem for why it will never be true. As long as we are focused on the problems with “them” out there, the world will never improve. Think of the pride and arrogance it takes to say that the whole world would be better if the whole world was like us. And it is this pride and arrogance that leads to all the negative character traits that Paul lists in Ephesians 4:17-19.

The problem, Paul reveals, is not “them” at all. It’s you. It’s me. And we can’t change them. But there is one person in the world I can change, and it’s me. There is one person in the world you can change, and it’s you. The world is changed one person at a time, and the person you can change is not anyone “out there.” The only person you can change, the only person you should try to change, is you.

True and lasting change does not come from trying to get everyone else to behave like you. No, that will never work. It’s also futile, ignorant, and arrogant. But the world can change, and will change, if you seek to change yourself. Again, Carl Jung says it best:

As any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who will experience it and carry it through. The change must begin with an individual; it might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look around and wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself.”[5]

We are, each of us, “that infinitesimal unit on whom the whole world depends, and in whom, if we read the meaning of the Christian message aright, even God seeks his goal.”[6]

When we see someone acting ignorantly or arrogantly, it is not an opportunity to condemn them, but to take a good look into our own soul and see what work needs to be done inside. We must come to terms with our own shadow. We must learn to deal with the parts of ourselves that the mirror of others reveals to us.

Notes on Ephesians 4:17-19

[1] Swindoll, 123.

[2] Snodgrass, referencing Barth, 230.

[3] Jung, Collected Works X, (Amazon affiliate link) “The Undiscovered Self,” 276.

[4] Jung, Collected Works X, (Amazon affiliate link) “After the Catastrophe,” 217.

[5] Jung, Man & His Symbols, (Amazon affiliate link) 101.

[6] Jung, Collected Works X, (Amazon affiliate link) “The Undiscovered Self,” 305.

By Grace are you Saved Through Faith (Ephesians 2:8-9)

By Jeremy Myers

2 Comments

I firmly believe that the Bible teaches that we receive eternal life by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. But is that what Paul is teaching in Ephesians 2:8-9 when he writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast”? Though many Christians think so, I do not. This study of Ephesians 2:8-9 will explain what I think Paul is really talking about in these verses.

Before we get to that, I want to address a question from a reader about whether it is sinful or not for Christians to engage in New Age practices.

Question from a Reader about New Age Practices

I feel like a lot of Christians are against things like manifesting, meditation, and positive affirmations. I do believe Jesus died for my sins and he is the way to heaven. But most of my day is centered around these New Age practices because they help me clear up the doubt and fear in my life and bring me to a better mental state and ultimately so much more happiness. Is there anything wrong with this and should I feel guilty for it? Is this talked about in any of your books? I would love to hear more about what you have to say. I appreciate your response it was a weight lifted off my shoulders.

Great question! To my knowledge, I have not written about this anywhere.

Let me give you a principle that I use in my life that helps me often make tricky decisions about morality. There are two ways to approach life regarding biblical morality. They are this: First, some people think we should only do what the Bible commands. Second, some think we can do anything the Bible doesn’t forbid.

The first group thinks that we should only do what the Bible tells us we can do. Everything else is potentially sinful. This is why some extreme groups, like the Amish, don’t have electricity and won’t drive cars or have phones. That’s super simplistic, and there are other reasons also, but one reason for this approach to life is that the Bible doesn’t mention such things, and so we should avoid them.

The second approach is that we should only avoid what the Bible strictly forbids. This is the approach that most Christians try to follow, but even here, there is a wide diversity of opinion on what the Bible forbids. For example, lots of Christians in previous generations taught that playing cards was sinful. But the Bible doesn’t forbid this practice anywhere. So why did they think cards were sinful? I honestly don’t know, but they probably had their reasons.

These issues sort of go hand-in-hand with whether the Bible is prescriptive or descriptive, but that’s a slightly different issue, and so I’ll leave that one alone for now.

Anyway, I do follow that second option. For the most part, God gives us freedom to live life how we want, as long as we don’t go against the clear teachings of Scripture on moral issues. This is not a fool proof plan, because of course, the Bible never strictly forbids slavery, but we all know slavery is evil. I use a bit of trajectory hermeneutics to help make these sorts of conclusions.

So how can we apply this to New Age practices?

Well, I need to be honest. I am mostly ignorant of New Age practices and beliefs. I did a little reading and watched a few videos, but based on my extremely limited knowledge, it seems to me that many of the New Age practices are quite similar to some of the practices mentioned in the Bible, but the New Age approach sort of removes God from the equation.

So for example, many New Age practitioners talk about Manifesting or the Law of Attraction, where, which some positive thinking about yourself and the universe, you can bring good things to yourself and turn hopes and dreams into reality. Well, this is somewhat similar to prayer. Rather than trying to manifest your hopes and dreams into reality, why not have a conversation with God about your hopes and dreams instead?

What about positive thinking? Well again, why not think positive thoughts about who you are in Jesus Christ? Why not recognize all the truths from Scripture about what God thinks about you?

Does this mean that manifesting or positive thinking are sinful? …. Probably not. I just don’t think it is anywhere near as effective as prayer or as claiming the truths of Scripture about yourself.

Now look, I would avoid some of the New Age beliefs that teach we are all mini gods. That’s not true. Or that all roads lead to heaven. I am not a universalist and so don’t agree with that either.

Anyway, I am not an expert on any of this. I would love it if you weighed in below by leaving a comment. Let me know what you think about mystical beliefs and practices and how they line up with Scripture or contradict it.

By Grace are You Saved Through Faith … Ephesians 2:8-9

This study was difficult for me to prepare, because I could spend hours talking about Ephesians 2:8-9 and all the various ways of understanding this verse, and also the importance of understanding the key terms in this verse, such as grace, saved, faith, and the “gift of God” at the end of the verse. I have lessons on all these words in my Gospel Dictionary Online Course for those who join my discipleship group.

But let me just try to summarize everything for you. Let us begin with the traditional understanding of Ephesians 2:8-9. The verses say this:

Ephesians 2:8-9. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Traditionally, Christians believe that Ephesians 2:8-9 is talking about how to receive eternal life. I even taught this in the past, and you read my old teachings on Ephesians 2:8-10 here. Christians think this because of the word “saved.” Most Christians think that the word “saved” refers to receiving eternal life and going to heaven when you die.

Therefore, most Christians think that this verse is teaching that God offers eternal life to use solely by His grace, and we receive this free gift through faith … that is, by believing Jesus for it.

There is also an issue there at the end of the verse about the “gift of God” and what it refers to. What is the gift of God that Paul is referring to? Is it the grace? The faith? the salvation? I have taught about this frequently in the past, so I’m not going to dive deep into the question now. (See these articles: Faith is NOT a gift from God, Is faith the gift from God, Faith is Not a Gift from God) The answer to the debate, however, is that the Greek words have the entire “by grace are you saved through faith” package in view. The gift that Paul has in mind is all that God has done for us human to offer us salvation by grace through faith. That’s all I’m going to say about that, and you can read those other articles for a longer explanation.

Now, it is 100% true that we receive eternal life by grace through faith. The Bible teaches this everywhere (cf. John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47).

However, although the Bible everywhere teaches that we receive eternal life by grace along through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, Ephesians 2:8-9 is not one of the verses that teaches this idea.

The reason is because the word “saved” in Scripture does not ever actually refer to receiving eternal life. As I briefly explained in the previous study of Ephesians 2:5-7, the word “salvation” means “deliverance” and the context of the passage determines what kind of deliverance is in view. When you perform this study on every passage in the Bible (as I have done), you discover that the Bible never uses the words “saved” or “salvation” in reference to receiving eternal life.

Not even here in Ephesians 2:8-9.

Again, as we saw last time, the salvation of Ephesians 2 has in view the way God has delivered us from our bondage and slavery to the sin of blame, accusation, scapegoating, and violence that dominates and rules the world. Since Cain murdered Abel, the world has run on violence. We know of no other way to live.

But God, through the person and work of Jesus Christ, came and rescued us, delivered us, SAVED us from this way of living and showed us a completely different way of living. This new way of life is what we were made for originally, and what God has always modeled for us, and what we are now to walk in, as we follow Jesus.

God revealed this to us out of His grace, and as we follow this new way by faith, we will be saved from the death that has enslaved humanity.

In other words, Ephesians 2:8-9 is not about how to go to heaven when you die, but rather about how God stepped in to the human problem to rescue us from our slavery to death.

So with that in mind, here is how to read Ephesians 2:8-9:

God gave us an amazing free gift [by grace] in showing us how to live a different way than through violence and bloodshed [are you saved], and while this new way of living is counterintuitive and seems to contradict everything we think we know about life, if we believe that what we see in Jesus is the true way to properly live life [through faith], then God will lead us into this new way of life. This entire thing did not come from ourselves. We humans did not think it up and come to this new understanding on our own [and that not of yourselves]. This entire revelation of the new way to live life is a gift from God [it is the gift of God]. No one can boast that they thought this up on their own [not of works so that no one can boast]. Nope, it’s solely and only from God.

Does that way of reading these verses make sense?

This way of reading the verse fits perfectly in the overall context of Ephesians 2, where Paul has laid out the problem of humanity in Ephesians 2:1-3, the solution to this problem that has come from God through Jesus in Ephesians 2:4-10, and the application of how to live this new way in Ephesians 2:11-22.

Again, Ephesians 2 is not about how to go to heaven when we die, but is about how to bring heaven down to earth by living at peace with one another here on this earth, just as Jesus did during His life and just as God wants us to do in ours. And our world desperately needs this way of living right now, doesn’t it?

We will pick back up next time with Ephesians 2:10 as we continue to talk about this new way of living as revealed in Jesus.

Sin Leads to Wrath (Ephesians 2:3)

By Jeremy Myers

Question about Critical Race Theory

I listened to your recent discussions of Critical Race Theory, and while I agree that there might be some concerns with CRT, since the goal is to get rid of racism so that all people can live in love and unity with each other, shouldn’t we accept and embrace CRT, or at least allow it to have a voice in our schools and churches? CRT is part of an overall conversation about race relations, and is therefore a good thing. Right?

Everybody wants love and unity among all people. I completely agree that love and racial reconciliation are taught in the Bible and are godly goals.

The problem, however, is that while CRT claims to work toward unity, forgiveness, and reconciliation, it actually does the exact opposite. The reason it fails is twofold.

First, in the attempt to achieve racial reconciliation, CRT demonizes one particular race, namely, white people. Love, unity, and reconciliation can never occur when one group seeks to accuse and condemn another group. Such behavior does nothing but amplify the division and strife. Reconciliation can only occur when all parties agree that we are all equal in God’s image, and are all willing to view and treat each other in light of this equality.

But secondly, CRT does not lead to love and racial reconciliation because it seeks to achieve unity and love between the races through law, and specifically, through hedging around the law. Hedging around the law always leads to the opposite of what God wants. Let me explain what this is before I explain how CRT does this.

Law-hedging, or hedging around the law occurs when people take the commands and laws of God, and in an attempt to help people obey those divine instructions, create a secondary set of laws to keep people from breaking the primary law.

I talk about this in my sermon on Luke 6:1-5 and the Sabbath law keeping. “Don’t do work on the Sabbath” becomes don’t walk a certain distance on the Sabbath, don’t spit, don’t light a fire, and don’t rub heads of grain between your hands.

We have similar law-hedging rules today.

Don’t lust becomes don’t let women be beautiful (which is doubly sad, because the women get punished for the sins of men). If we really wanted to put up a hedge around the prohibition to lust, we should gouge out men’s eyes … as Jesus suggested (Matt 5:29).

Don’t get drunk becomes “Don’t drink.” Oh, let’s hedge that one too: “Don’t even have alcohol in your house.” But we can hedge that one too: “Don’t even have alcohol in your town. Let’s have dry town.” During the Prohibition Era, our country tried to really hedge around this one by banning all alcohol in the country. You know how well that turned out.

So that is hedging the law. And hedging around the law always results in catastrophe. It always leads to the exact opposite of what God wanted. Rather than result in love, law-hedging leads to hate.

Why? Because as soon as you build a hedge around the law in an attempt to keep the law, you are now using a standard which is not biblical to judge and condemn other people. And this standard based on human traditions leads to criticism and judgmentalism of people who may be engaging in behaviors that God is okay with, but you are not, because you use the standard of law-hedging while God uses the standard of love.

This is how hedging around the law leads to hate.

And this is exactly what happens with Critical Race Theory. CRT creates a system of laws and rules intended to “force” people to “do the work of antiracism.” I found a great article from Krista Bontrager called “The New Legalism” which explains how this works with CRT. After talking about how the Pharisees hedged around the law in the days of Jesus so that they could actually do the opposite of what the law required, Krista says that CRT advocates are doing the exact same thing today. CRT hedges around the biblical instructions against racism, not to end racism, but to do the exact opposite!

Here is a bit of what Krista writes in the article:

I have become persuaded that Social Justice and Critical Race Theory ARE the holiness codes of our cultural moment. “Doing the work” of antiracism has come to comprise the accepted values, language, and moral code—not just in our culture, but in many of our churches too.

“Social Justice Warriors” act as the new Pharisees. They are standing by watching, willing and ready to point out others’ moral shortcomings according to their human traditions—their hedge laws. The clear message: obey their “laws” or risk being cancelled. Within the church (or Christian higher ed), the sincerity of your faith may even be questioned!

This popular graphic is used all over the internet to explain the new definition of “White Supremacy.” The actions and attitudes listed here indicate what makes a person “unclean.” Ideas such as “White privilege” or “color blindness” are the new “holiness code” or “hedge laws” that are put forward to help prevent us from participating in covert racism.

But the question is: does this complex list demonstrate how I MUST live out God’s law of loving my neighbor? I would say no. Showing partiality, using slurs, or hating my neighbor in my heart because of her ethnicity would violate God’s standards of justice (Gal. 5:20). This graphic implies little more than a bunch of “hedge laws” that are intended to tell me how I must obey God’s commands. There is nothing about White privilege or White fragility in the Bible. There are no commands in Scripture about decentering Whiteness or performing the works of antiracism.

BUT many Christian leaders are talking as if there are!

I am opposed to racism. Racism is evil and must be purged from the world. Racism does the exact opposite of what God wants or desires, and in fact, has no place in the Kingdom of God, but rather belongs to the kingdom of darkness and the rule of satan. We must all work to bring love, healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation to all the people of the world.

But CRT does not accomplish this. Like the hedging-laws of the Pharisees, the laws and regulations of CRT accomplishes the opposite of what it claims. It does not bring love or reconciliation, but instead only amplifies hatred, discord, and jealousy among people, and thus, creates more racist feelings and tensions. Do not be led astray by Critical Race Theory. It does not help in creating unity. Instead, follow Jesus into love, grace, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness. These are traits of the Kingdom of God and these are the only way to restore unity and reconciliation to this world.

This all fits with what we learn in our study of Ephesians 2:3.

How Sinful Desires Lead to Wrath (Ephesians 2:3)

Ephesians 2 is all about the primary problem that humans face in this world, which is the problem of hatred, division, strife, and racism. Humans have always suffered from religious hatred, economic hatred, racial hatred, and cultural hatred. We use this hatred to accuse, condemn, and kill one another, and we do it all in God’s name.

In Ephesians 2, Paul describes this problem, shows what Jesus did to fix it, and then invites us to apply the example of Jesus to our world so that we can live in love and unity with each other. Ephesians 2:1-3 contains Paul’s description of the problem we humans face. We have already considered Ephesians 2:1 where were learned what the great problem of humanity is and how it leads to death, and then also Ephesians 2:2, where we learned that the accuser, satan, is behind this great human problem.

Ephesians 2:3 now shows how we humans have fallen prey to the lies of the accuser, and also shows how our actions lead to the destruction of humanity.

Ephesians 2:3. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

Here in Ephesians 2:3, Paul begins by saying All of us also lived among them at one time. There are no exceptions here. All means all. You, me, Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, everyone. Paul even includes himself in this. He says all of us. All of us at one time lived as the rest of the world lives, caught up in sin that leads to death (Ephesians 2:1) and under the control of the accuser, satan, which rules the kingdom of the air (Ephesians 2:2).

Paul says next in Ephesians 2:3, that all of us were gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.

There are several things to note about these statements.

Sinful nature = Flesh

First, I am not fond of the term “sinful nature,” and it is not the best translation of the terms here that Paul wrote in the Greek. The Greek word is sarx, which is best translated as “flesh.” I argue in my Gospel Dictionary course that we do not have a “sinful nature” and should stop using that phrase. The biblical term is “flesh,” and it refers to the human tendency to use religious laws as a way to justify our violence against other human beings. It is “religious zeal carried out through religious violence.”

When Paul writes about “the flesh,” he is thinking the tendency of religious zealots to think that their faithful obedience to God’s commands (and more specifically, the manmade rules humans have constructed around God’s commands) puts them in better standing with God than others (cf. 2 Cor 10:3; Gal 2:20). This fits exactly with what we discussed above with Critical Race Theory.

Cravings = Lusts

Second, the term “cravings” could be translated as lusts. The word “lust” is a weighty theological word which reminds us of the three forms that sin takes … the lust of the eyes, the lust the flesh, and the pride of life. These are the three sins that Jesus was tempted with in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13), and are also the three sins that Eve was tempted with in the Garden (Genesis 3:6).

These cravings, or lusts, are closely related to desire, which Paul also mentions in this text.

Desire

Third, the word “desire” is a key term in Scripture, as it summarizes the basic source of all sin. As far back as Genesis 3 and Genesis 4, we see that desire led Eve to eat from the forbidden tree, and desire led Adam to imitate her actions, and desire led Cain to murder Abel (Gen 4:6-7).

I previously recorded a video about the importance of desire in understanding … pretty much everything … including sin, Scripture, and human society and culture. Watch it to learn more:

So when these three terms are properly understand, Paul is saying that all people on earth used to live according to religious zeal that led us to engage in violence against our enemies. We did this because desire caused us to want what others have and destroy those who were different from us. This is the way all of humanity lives, because we didn’t know any other way to live. Sacred violence runs the world, and we all use this sacred violence to get what we want and justify the violence we use in the process.

The end result of this sort of living is wrath. But what is wrath?

What is Wrath?

Paul says … like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.

When most people read about “wrath” in the Bible, they think of the “wrath of God.” They think of God’s anger directed toward sinful human beings.

But this is not what the Bible teaches about wrath. In fact, in Scripture, wrath does not come from God at all. Most of the time, when the Bible talks about wrath, it simply uses the word “wrath” as we see here in Ephesians 2:3, without any reference to God at all. There are a couple of texts in the New Testament that do indeed use the term “wrath of God,” but I am convinced that those references are not referring to the way God really is, but instead refer to the way some religious people think about God.

I know that’s a challenging idea, but let me put it this way. There are many Christians today who teach that God hates certain types of people. You will hear some preachers say “God hates Muslims,” or “God hates homosexuals.” When you hear a pastor say such hateful things, are you to assume that since a pastor says it, this is the way God really is? No! Instead, you are to realize that some people have really bad ideas about God, and our job as followers of Jesus is to recognize pastors who preach hate are not accurately representing God the way He really is. We are to refute such false teachers as not properly showing what God is like as revealed to us in Jesus.

So in the few places where the New Testament speaks about “the wrath of God,” those texts are not correct representations of what Paul thought. Instead, in those texts where Paul writes about the wrath of God, he is quoting some bad Christian teachers from his day who wrongly believed that God was wrathful. Paul quotes these bad teachers, not because he agrees with them, but because he wants to refute them. And that is what Paul goes on to do.

It’s called Epistolary Diatribe, and Paul engages in it quite frequently. Paul quotes someone he disagrees with so that he can go on to show how they are wrong. That is what is going on when Paul writes about “the wrath of God.” Paul does not believe that God is wrathful. Paul knows that God is not. Yes, wrath exists, but it does not come from God. I will eventually have an entry in my Gospel Dictionary online course on the word “wrath” which will explain more.

So what is wrath if it is not God’s anger directed toward humans?

Wrath is the devastating and destructive consequences of sin that fall upon humanity because we sin. Wrath does not come from God; wrath comes from sin. Sin bears its own punishment with it, and Paul calls it “wrath.” When we sin, there are natural consequences that result, and these consequences destroy, hurt, harm, kill, ruin, and damage humans, animals, climate, relationships, government, culture, society, economics, and every other aspect of this world.

Wrath is a fire that destroys everything it touches, and the fire of wrath is sparked by human desire that leads to human violence.

The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand led to Word War I, which caused the mistreatment of the German people, which led to the rise of Adolph Hitler and World War II. One act of human violence led to the death and misery of millions. This is wrath. It is a contagion that starts with a spark and spreads to destroy countless lives.

Do you see why this is the greatest problem that humans face? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could end all the violence? Wouldn’t it be great if we could fulfill the desire of every beauty pageant model and achieve world peace? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could bring an end to wrath?

Ah, well, that is exactly what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. And that is exactly what Paul goes on to begin describing in Ephesians 2:4.

Summary of Ephesians 2:1-3

We humans do not function properly in our roles as God’s image on earth. Instead, we were subject to the ways of this world and to the lies of satan. This led us to sin according to our desire, resulting in our own mutually-assured destruction.

More succinctly still: Because we did not follow God in the ways of love, unity, and peace, but instead followed satan in the ways of desire, sin, and death, humanity is doomed.

Ephesians 2:1-3 has explained the greatest problem that humanity faces, which is the universal human problem of desire that leads to accusation and blame, which results in a contagion of death and violence. Most humans have absolutely no idea how to break free from all this violence. Our only solution is to have more guns and bombs than the next guy.

But Paul has a better solution. And it is revealed to us in Jesus Christ. And as Jesus showed us how to solve the problem of human violence, we as the church can show the world how to solve the problem also, which in turn, can start to bring an end to violence.

This is what Paul goes on to describe in Ephesians 2:4, where we pick up next time.

Embrace Your Sin to Heal it (Ephesians 4:31-32)

Negative Command: Don’t be Bitter (Ephesians 4:31)

Positive Command: Forgive One Another (Ephesians 4:32a)

Motivation: God forgave You (Ephesians 4:32b)

Forgiveness is Unlimited.

Forgiveness is not Forgetting

Forgive to be Forgiven

Notes on Ephesians 4:31-32

Ephesians 4:29-30 – What REALLY is Foul Language?

Negative Command: Speak No Evil (Ephesians 4:29a)

Positive Command: Speak what is Good for Edification (Ephesians 4:29b)

Motivation: Speaking Evil Grieves the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30)

Conclusion

Ephesians 4:17-19: Sacred Selfishness

Explanation of Ephesians 4:17-19

An Overlooked Observation

The Proper Way to Read Ephesians 4:17-19

Notes on Ephesians 4:17-19

By Grace are you Saved Through Faith (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Question from a Reader about New Age Practices

By Grace are You Saved Through Faith … Ephesians 2:8-9

Sin Leads to Wrath (Ephesians 2:3)

Question about Critical Race Theory

How Sinful Desires Lead to Wrath (Ephesians 2:3)

Sinful nature = Flesh

Cravings = Lusts

Desire

What is Wrath?

Summary of Ephesians 2:1-3

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