Redeeming Scripture Archives

Why Deceit is the First Sin You Should Get Rid of (Ephesians 4:25)

Defining Lying

The Greek word used for lying here is pseudos. It means false, or that which is other than the truth. We all have heard of a pseudonym, which means a name other than your real one – or a false name.

Here, the word pseudos is translated as lying. Now we all think we know what a lie is, but we need to be careful.

We all believe that a lie is simply when you don’t tell the truth. This definition though, is not very precise.

I testified in court several years back, and before I took the stand, I agreed to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

The first question I was asked was to state my name, my vocation, and where I lived.

So I told them my first and last name, what I did for a living, and the name of the town in which I lived. They accepted my answer and moved on.

But if lying is defined as telling the whole truth, I had just lied.

The whole truth, would have not only included my first and last name, but also my middle name, and maybe even my birth name, which (most people do not know this) is not my current legal name. And when I described my vocation, maybe rather than just give my title, I should have also provided the name of the place I worked and where it was located. Then when I told them where I lived, rather than just state the city, I should have provided the exact street address. All of this information is much closer to the whole truth.

But I didn’t say all of this. Does that mean I lied when I didn’t tell them the whole truth? No, I don’t think it does. I understood when they asked me where I lived that they didn’t need all that information, and that, by withholding it, I was not lying. And any judge, I believe, would agree with me.

Let me provide another example.

I traveled to India several years ago. I went with two purposes in mind. I went to India as a short-term missionary, but I also went as a tourist and to learn of the Indian culture.

Now on my Visa application, I was asked what my purpose was in going to India. And our mission’s leader told me that if I put down “Mission trip” as my purpose, most likely, my Visa application would get rejected. So instead, I put down “Tourist.”

Both answers would have been 100% truthful, but neither answer, by itself, was the whole truth. If I had simply put “Mission trip” that would have been leaving out the tourist aspect, and if I had put “tourist” that would have left out the Mission aspect.

Did I lie? Did I tell a half-truth? Did I tell a white-lie? Or was I fine? These are issues that could be debated.

And those are decisions that must be answered when you talk about the definition of a lie.

But whatever you believe regarding this, you must remember a few things. First, God does not lie (1 Sam 15:29; 1 John 2:21) and does not command anybody to lie. Yet frequently in Scripture, we see God purposefully withholding truth, or not telling the whole truth.

For example, in 1 Samuel 16 God commands Samuel to go and anoint David as King when King Saul was still alive. Understandably, this could be interpreted as treason against Saul, so Samuel was afraid for his life.

Samuel says, “How can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me” (1 Sam 16:2).

The Lord responds, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’”

And that is what Samuel did. So did God lie or command Samuel to lie? No!

God does not lie. But is He telling the whole truth here? No, it doesn’t appear so. And in fact, God does this over and over again in Scripture. This is one of the elements of progressive revelation. He progressively reveals more of Himself and His plan as history unfolds – but always – there is untold truth – always He has not told the whole truth.

In attempting to define what a lie is, I think we could say that a lie is when you speak something that is not true in order to deceive. In some cases, not all cases – but in some cases it is not a lie to withhold truth. The determinative factor is whether or not you are trying to deceive.

A deceitful lie is not even acceptable when it accomplishes some sort of good – like the preservation of life. Some Christians during World War II tried this sort of approach when they lied to soldiers in order to protect the lives of Jews. A lie is a lie is a lie. The end does not justify the means.

“The lie to preserve life [excuse] is a slippery slope which soon permits lying [in order] to preserve my life as I want it … [I do not believe that there is such a thing as] the well-intentioned lie.”[4]

But one little girl in Germany did the right thing and illustrates this well.

This German family during the Nazi Regime hid Jews in a secret compartment under a trap door, which was covered by a throw rug, on top of which they put their dining room table.

One day, the family had gone out to do some shopping, and left only their young daughter at home. The soldiers came knocking on the door, and when the little girl answered the door, they asked her if she was hiding any Jews in their home. She said, “Yes, we are.”

So they asked her where the Jews were, and she said, “Under the table.” So they tromp in and lifted up the floor-length tablecloth – but there were no Jews to be seen! So they laughed at the little girl, thinking she was either mentally ill or trying to be funny, and left.

Did she lie? No, she did not say anything that was incorrect. The Jews were hiding under the table. They were also under the rug and under the trap door, but I do not think she lied, because she did not say anything that was untrue.

Now, this sort of situation is always brought up in discussions of lying. Would you lie to hide Jews from the Nazis? Look, if you ever find yourself in a situation like that, you do whatever you think is best. A lie to save a life is not going to send you to hell. Nor will any lie, for that matter. God’s grace and forgiveness covers all deceit. But at the same time, as with that illustration with the young girls, remember that it is possible for God to intervene when we choose to speak the truth in trying situations.

But the reality is that most of us will never find ourselves in situations like that. Most lies occur in everyday, mundane situations at work and with our friends and family. And in these cases, we must also endeavor to speak the truth.

We must avoid speaking falsely with the intent to deceive.

Now sometimes, we speak falsely, but we do so out of ignorance. This is not a lie.

For example, if you ask me what time it is, and my watch battery has died, but I did not know it, and so I told you it was 11:00 when in fact it was 12:00, that would not be a lie, because I was ignorant of the truth.

But if my watch is working fine, and I intentionally tell you it is 11:00 when in fact I know it is 12:00, that is a lie.

Nor is it a lie if you fail to tell the whole truth – as long as you have no intent to deceive.

In other words, “we do not have to tell all the truth to everyone we meet. Privacy is a legitimate, necessary [and Biblical] part of life. People do not have the right to know everything. We are required not to lie; we are not required to tell all we know.”[5]

Like I did in court. Like the little girl protecting the Jews. Like God and Samuel in 1 Samuel 16.

Like all of us do every day. Almost every time someone asks us a question, we fail to tell the whole truth. As long as what we are not saying is not deceptive, then we are not lying.

For example, if I ask you what you did this week, it would not be a lie if you just gave me the highlights of your week. You don’t have to, in the name of honesty, give me a full account of everything you did during every second of every day for that week!

But balance is needed, and every situation is different. Sometimes withholding truth can be deceitful, even though it is not a lie, but that would have to be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Sometimes a failure to tell the whole truth is deceptive. Like obstruction of justice or lying under oath. It is also a prisonable offense to have information about a crime and not go to the authorities about it.

Let me summarize: A lie is to speak falsely with the intent to deceive. To speak that which is not true, OR to not speak that which is true, for the purpose of deception.

Deception is therefore the indicator. If you say something or refuse to say something so that you can deceive others, you are lying. A lie, therefore, is any attempt to deceive.

Now that we know what lie is, we can look in more detail at Ephesians 4:25. Paul gives us two commands regarding lying. The first is simply to refrain from lying. He instructs us to put away lying. In other words, don’t lie.

Don’t Lie (Ephesians 4:25)

The word Paul uses here in Ephesians 4:25 for putting away is the same word he used up in Ephesians 4:22 for putting off the old man. Remember it refers to stripping off filthy, stained, stinking clothes.

Lying, then is one of the stains of the old man, on our old clothes, from the old way of living. As Christians, we should no longer lie.

There are many Biblical reasons why not. Paul gives us one here. Let’s look at that one, and then we’ll look at a few others as well.

The reason Paul gives for not lying is found at the end of Ephesians 4:25. It causes disunity.

Lying Hurts Others

Paul says that we are members of one another. When you lie to another Christian, you are actually lying to yourself, because we are all part of the Body of Christ. Lying hurts other people.

The truth behind Paul’s statement here is greater than we first imagine.

Back in Ephesians 4:15, Paul exhorted his readers to “speak the truth in love.” We now see, here in Ephesians 4:25, that love for others is the primary reason we should speak the truth.

But love doesn’t just lead us toward truth. Love is the guiding ethic behind all Christian morality.

Earlier I stated that Christians often behave in ways that are less moral than non-Christians.

The reason this occurs, I am convinced, is because we lack love for others.

What happens is that we become so focused on being right, living right, behaving right, and believing right, that we become proud, arrogant, and self-righteous, which then leads to all sort of hateful behavior toward others. But we don’t see it as hateful. We see it as “Standing up for the truth” and “Standing up for what is right.”

The strenuous effort to live in correct Christian morality often leads to a rigidity, insensitivity, and pride and militate against our ability to practice love toward ourselves and other people. Ironically, the more moral we become, the less moral we become. We get so focused on living right, that we end up loving wrong, and therefore, completely fail to live right.

In fact, there is a part of me that would prefer to completely skip over everything Paul writes in the rest of chapter 4, and just point people to the instructions of Jesus to love your neighbor as yourself. For love, when rightly lived, is mostly oblivious to issues of morality.

Love does not make lists of demands or commands. Love does not keep records of wrongs. Love does not grade people based on morality. Loved does not inventory what we or other people do in comparison to some sort of personal standard of behavior.

Love is of utmost importance for ethics, but we must remember, that love in itself is the guiding ethic for Christian behavior. If we love God and love others, then we don’t need to know any of the other commands, for when we love, we automatically fulfill the entire law.

And that is what Paul is talking about here. The reason we should not lie is because we are all members of one body. When you lie to others, you are lying to yourself.

Now think about it. What would happen if certain parts of your body started lying to the rest of the parts of your body? Chaos would result, right?

The hand can’t do anything without the eyes and the nerves. But what if the eyes and the nerves decided to tell the hand that there was a big juicy hamburger in it – when there really wasn’t?

The hand would try to bring the hamburger to the mouth, but the mouth would refuse to open, because maybe it wasn’t being lied to. But if the mouth was being lied to as well, then it would try to eat a hamburger that wasn’t there, and the end result would be starvation …or the eating of the hand. Self-cannibalism. (That often describes the church, doesn’t it?)

Now if the foot was in pain, but it lied to the eyes and hands about it, the foot would get infected and eventually get gangrene and fall off – after the rest of the body had been infected.

You know, there are real, live, physical bodies that lie among the various parts today. Do you know where these people are? They are in mental institutions and hospitals because they cannot take care of themselves.

We, as Christians, as members of the body of Christ, if we lie to one another, we will become the spiritually insane.

So that’s the reason Paul gives, and considering the topic of his letter to the Ephesians –what the church is, and what the church is supposed to be and do, it makes sense that he provides this reason.

But Scripture provides us with many other reasons not to lie. Let’s look at a few of them. One we see in Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve disobey God and eat the forbidden fruit.

Lying is the Sin that Began it All

It was through lying Adam and Eve sinned in the first place. They were told just one little lie. In Genesis 3:1, the first thing the serpent does is implant a little doubt in their minds.

And after Eve answered in Genesis 3:2-3, the serpent told the first lie in Scripture. The first lie from a human.

But the serpent tells the first lie in Scripture when he says in Ephesians 4:4-5.

Now, was this a lie? Well, yes and no. They didn’t really die, did they? At least not physically, at least not right away. And they did gain a sort of knowledge about good and evil, didn’t they?

So in that sense, it was truth. But it was a lie in the sense that they did die spiritually – which is the more important and serious kind of death. Satan knew this, and so he lied and introduced spiritual and physical death to the world.

So how serious is lying? Every sin and evil and catastrophe and death in the world is a result of that first lie. You think one little lie is no big deal? The whole mess this world is in began with one little tiny lie. One little tiny falsehood from Satan started it all.

Parents, root out lying from your children when they are young – no matter how silly or insignificant the lie may seem. Lying leads to some disastrous results. Here we see spiritual death.

But lying also results in physical death.

Lying Resulted in Physical Death

Not only did a lie begin human history as we know it, but it also began church history. Now, when Adam and Eve lied way back at the beginning, they, and all who followed after them died spiritually.

But when church members in the early church lied, they were put to death by God. Do you remember the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5? They sold a certain piece of property and got more for it than what they had anticipated, so they kept the extra and gave the rest to the church. Now up to this point, you must understand, that they really had not done anything wrong.

But when Peter questioned them about it in verse 3, they lied and said that they were giving the full amount to the church. The result of this lie is that both of them were struck down.

For them, the lie resulted in physical death.

This is partly because lying is associated with the most serious of sins. We’ve looked at the lie that began it all in Genesis. A lie near the middle of world history in Acts 5, and now, here near the end of the Bible, we see another aspect to lying.

Lying is Associated with the Most Serious of Sins

Satan tells us that a lie is no big deal in comparison to murder and adultery.

If we lie, we often say, “Well, at least I’m not a murderer or an adulterer.” But you want to know what? If you think this, you are believing a lie. In Revelation 22:15, God is talking about some of the gravest of sins, those with the worst consequences, and He lists sorcery, sexual immorality, murder, adultery and…lying.

Lying is right up there with murder and adultery, both of which, God also hates.

This is because these sins are completely contrary to God.

Lying is Completely Contrary to God

Proverbs 6:17 lists a lying tongue as one of the six things God abhors.

Why is this? Because God is truth and light (Psalm 31:5; John 14:6; 1 John 1:5), lying is completely contrary to God. In Him there is no darkness, there is no falsehood. Lying is the exact opposite of what God is.

Who is the greatest evil being in the universe? Obviously it is Satan, or the Devil. Lucifer. And what is the devil’s primary activity?

Well, according to verses like John 8:44 the most evil being in the universe spends most of his time lying. He knows that one of the best ways to pursue his plans is through lying.

He is the greatest of all counterfeiter. According to Revelation 16:13, he has his own trinity. Revelation 2:9 tells us he has his own church, and his own ministers are mentioned in 2 Corinthians 11:4-5. He has developed his own system of theology as Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 4:1, and his own sacrificial system – 1 Corinthians 10:20, and his own communion service – 1 Corinthians 10:21. He has his own gospel – Galatians 1:7-8 and his own throne – Revelation 13:2 – and worshippers – Revelation 13:4.

Everything Satan does and says is a lie.

And did you know that lying is the main weapon of the devil? We’ve already seen how he used it at the beginning to instigate the fall of mankind into sin, but he uses it still to darken the eyes and hearts and minds of all people. Lying is the main weapon of the enemy in his fight against God.

Therefore, when we lie, we are joining with Satan in fighting against God. Speaking the truth is joining with God in fighting against the devil. We will talk more about this when we look at the spiritual armor in Chapter 6 – and specifically the belt of truth, and the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

Lying is completely contrary to God and his purposes, who is the God of truth and light.

But another reason not to lie, is because liars are often self-deceived.

Liars are Often Self-Deceived

Satan is so good at what he does, he has even lied to himself. He has deceived himself into thinking he can defeat God. This again shows the seriousness of lying. Those who lie are often self-deceived.

They can often tell when others are lying to them, but they are never able to tell when they are lying to themselves. A liar has often pulled the hood over his own eyes. They often think that lying is not so bad, or that God doesn’t care too much about it.

Sometimes liars become so good at lying that they don’t even think they are lying. They can twist words, and twist the meaning of words so that they can say one thing but mean another, and all the while, they are thinking to themselves that they are not lying.

Some politicians and lawyers are experts at this – but we all do it at times. That’s because lying is so easy to do.

Lying is So Easy to Do

The difficult part about lying is that it is so easy to do. A young boy was once asked by his mother what a lie is, and he said, “A lie is an abomination to the Lord, but a very present help in time of need.”

That’s the way it seems sometimes, doesn’t it? Sometimes the lie just pops out. We’ve all had it happen.

Maybe we’re just trying to protect someone’s feelings and so we lie to them. Or maybe we are trying to protect ourselves from having to explain our actions or our choices. Little lies pop out all the time. It is often easy to lie, so we need to keep on our guard against lying.

Part of the reason to avoid lying is that lying is hard to maintain.

Lying is Difficult to Maintain

The person who lies needs to have an incredible memory, because they have to remember what their lies were and who they told them to. This is known as a web of lies.

And often, in a web of lies, the spider who spun the web gets tangled in it himself.

In fact, one lie generally leads to another and another. In order to keep the truth from being found out, you usually have to tell more lies.

It’s like that Veggie Tale Video called “Larry Boy and the Fib from Outer Space.” The Fib in the video is a lie told by Junior Asparagus which just keeps growing because he has to keep telling lies to protect the first lie he told.

And finally, by the end of the half hour video, the Fib has grown so huge that nobody can stop it – not even Larry Boy. And the Fib threatens to destroy the whole town.

And although the first lie seemed so easy, Junior Asparagus finds out that keeping a lie going is more difficult than if he had just told the truth in the first place, because he has to remember what lies he has told to whom, and the lie gets more and more complex and more and more strong.

But near the end of the story, the Fib is defeated because Junior Asparagus, who told the first lie, discovered the cure for lying.

And the cure is simply the second command in Ephesians 4:25. To give it, Paul quotes from Zechariah 8:16 and it’s simply this: speak truth.

So command number one: Don’t lie. The replacement for lying, of course, is to tell the truth.

Tell the Truth

Jesus said in John 8:32 that the truth will set you free. And it will. Telling the truth is much more enjoyable and causes many less problems than trying to protect yourself by lying. If you’ve been caught in a web of lies, the solution is to speak the truth.

Now, if you’re a liar, which we all are, this is much easier said than done. But there are some steps which can be taken.

The first step to defeating lying is to admit that you are a liar.

In fact, it has been my observation that one of the tell-tale signs of a chronic liar is the absolute refusal to admit that they lie. They are, first and foremost, lying to themselves!

So the first thing to do is to admit that you lie. We all lie at times don’t we? King David says in Psalm 116:11: “All men are liars.” So if you say you are not a liar, you are lying, which makes you a liar.

Once you have seen the truth that you often fail to speak the truth, you then need to ask God to forgive you for the lying you have done, and for the strength and ability to speak only the truth. Make this prayer the constant prayer of your heart.

And then, the only thing left to do is to commit yourself to speaking the truth. It will take an act of the will, and constant watchfulness and discipline, but there really is no other way to stop lying.

Learning to always speak the truth is one of the first steps in the life of discipleship with Jesus. As Christians, we should always be known for telling the truth.

In fact, truth telling forms the foundation for all other forms of morality, because if we can’t tell the truth to ourselves about ourselves, if we are deceiving ourselves about the faults and sins in our own life, then we will never be able to fix or correct them.

So this week, have a conversation with Jesus about your honesty. Let Him point out areas in your life where maybe you are not telling the truth. Where maybe you are deceiving yourself or others. Commit to telling and living the truth in all areas of your life. This is the only way to move forward and onward as a follower of Jesus. Stop deceiving yourself and others, and follow Jesus into truth!

Endnotes on Ephesians 4:25

[1] Paul Lee Tan, Encyclopedia of 7.700 Illustrations

[2] “Numbers tell the Story” USA Today, January 9, 1992, sec. 4D.

[3] Psychology Today, December 1992, 9.

[4] Snodgrass, 256.

[5] Snodgrass, 256.

Ephesians 4:20-24 Out with the Old! In with the New!

By Jeremy Myers

Outline for Ephesians 4:20-24

1. You don’t learn Christ by sinning (Ephesians 4:20-21)
2. You learn Christ by: (Ephesians 4:22-24)
  1. Put off the Old (Ephesians 4:22)
    1. Renew the Spirit of Your Mind (Ephesians 4:23)
  2. Put on the New (Ephesians 4:24)

A few years ago, I watched on television an edited version of a movie called “Trading Places.” It starred Dan Ackroyd and Eddie Murphy. Ackroyd was a rich business executive stockbroker, and Murphy was a recently arrested con-artist. Dan Ackroyd worked for two old men who decided to do a little experiment on the age-old question of nature versus nurture, or genetics versus environment. Is a person they way they are because of their genetic make-up, or because of the environment they live in?

So they decided to trade Ackroyd’s life for Murphy’s without the two of them knowing it. If I remember correctly, Murphy got all of Ackroyd’s money and cars and houses and job while Ackroyd was stripped of everything and put out on the street.

In the movie, it was amazing to watch the change. Ackroyd, not able to access any of his bank accounts or get into his house or go to his job—thought he was going insane and even become somewhat of a criminal. Murphy, on the other hand, became a distinguished gentleman and changed his lifestyle and language and everything about himself.

Now, near the end of the movie, Murphy and Ackroyd discover the bet these two old men had made, and together, conspire to financially ruin the two men—which they are able to do through buying and selling futures in lima beans or something silly like that.

These two men changed their lifestyles because their environment had changed. And among the things that had been changed were their clothes – what they wear. And we’ve all heard the saying that “The clothes make the man.” This was true in the movie, and surprisingly, it is spiritually true for the Christian.

As we work our way through the book of Ephesians, we find ourselves in a section where we are commanded to walk in purity. To be holy. To live a clean life. In Ephesians 4:20-24, Paul tells us to do this simply by changing our clothes. He says in this section that we didn’t learn about Christ by sinning, and so we won’t continue to learn Christ by sinning either. We only learn about Christ as we put off the old way of living, the old clothes of sin and works righteousness, and put on the new clothes of Christ’s righteousness.

I. Learn from Christ (Ephesians 4:20-21)

Ephesians 4:20. But you have not so learned Christ,

The word But points us back to what we saw previously in Ephesians 4:17-19. In those verses, Paul lays out a picture of how all Gentiles are futile in their thinking and totally separated from the life of God because of how ignorant and sinful they are.

And we saw in our study of those verses, that although we are tempted to nod our heads in agreement at how sinful and evil “those people” are, Paul was actually laying a trap for his readers. The description was not so much about other people, but about you and me.

It is true that having a futile mind is the primary problem with humanity, but as Paul continues to reveal, the problem can only be solved when you and I take responsibility for our own futile ways and start living in godly ways instead. The problem is not with “them” but with you and me, and the sooner each of us takes responsibility for our own mindset, the better off the world will be. The world changes one person at a time, and the only person I can change is me. The only person you can change is you. So start with you.

Paul tells us how in Ephesians 4:20-24.

He says first, of all, in Ephesians 4:20, that you have not so learned Christ. In other words, you do not learn about Christ from the sin which sprouts from a futile mind.

It may seem rather obvious, but we do not learn about Christ by remaining ignorant and foolish in our thinking.

Of course, maybe it’s not as obvious as it seems, because there are many Christians who seem content to remain uneducated about the things of God, the ways of Christ, or the teachings of Scripture. They became a Christian, and that’s good enough for them.

The whole point of Christianity is not just to become a Christian so we can gain eternal life, but so that we can become a disciple and start living the abundant life that God wants for us. And for that to occur, we have to learn. We have to think. We have to take steps to change things in our life.

And that is what Paul is talking about here. He is talking about setting on the path of discipleship. He is talking about learning about Christ in the school of Christ.

There are some who look at this phrase in verse 20 and think it refers to becoming a Christian in the first place. One famous pastor, for example, says, “To learn Christ is to be saved” (MacArthur, Ephesians). But this is not true at all. The Greek word here is the verb emathete, which everywhere in Scripture refers to learning truth so that it can be applied and obeyed. Even the noun form of the word, mathetes, means “disciple” which we all know is someone who learns and obeys. To learn Christ does not refer to becoming a Christian but to developing in your personal relationship with Christ as a Christian (cf. Wiersbe, 40).

You do not gain eternal life by learning about Jesus Christ. You gain eternal life by believing in Jesus for it (John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47). But after you believe, Jesus calls you to follow Him on the path of discipleship. Of mathetes. This is accomplished by learning more about Jesus and discovering ways to change your life so that you can become who He wants you to be.

The rest of this passage explains a bit more on how to do this, on how to learn Christ through discipleship.

Ephesians 4:21. … if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus:

The word if here doesn’t mean Paul is questioning whether they had heard Christ and had been taught by Him. It is a first class conditional sentence, which means that Paul is assuming the truth of it. He is saying, Since or Because you have heard Him and have been taught by Him.

But this terminology is quite odd. Paul reminds the Ephesians Christians that they have heard Christ and been taught by Him. This is not physically or literally possible. None of these Ephesians Gentile Christians would have been present in Israel when Jesus lived or taught. None of them would have seen Jesus in person perform His miracles, teach His parables, or listen to His Sermon on the Mount or any of His other teachings.

So how is it that Paul can remind the Ephesians Christians that they heard Him and were taught by Him? These phrases cannot refer to hearing the physical voice of Jesus while he was on this earth, because there is no way that all of these Christians to whom Paul was writing could have heard Jesus speak. They were separated from Jesus by time and geographical distance.

Many Bible scholars agree that what Paul might be saying here is that when they heard the Word of God proclaimed to them, they were hearing Christ. The Bible is the written Word of God. And according to the Gospel of John, Jesus is The Word, the physical manifestation of God and God’s teachings here on earth. So, when you read and study the truth of God’s Word, you are hearing Christ and being taught by Christ. So if this view is correct, then Paul is just using a figure of speech to say that when people read the Bible or hear a sermon, they are sort of hearing Jesus speak through the Bible or through the sermon. As John Stott writes, “When sound Biblical … instruction is being given, it may be said that Christ is teaching about Christ” (Stott, 179).

And while this is true, the terminology Paul uses here seems to be a lot more intimate than that. I feel that there is a vast difference between actually hearing Jesus versus just reading about Him in Scripture. There is something vastly more intimate and personal with being taught by Jesus than with hearing a sermon in which some pastor teaches about Jesus.

I mean, if you could hear Jesus and be taught by Jesus, wouldn’t that be better than hearing me talk about Jesus?

Of course! But it’s not possible, right?

Well, don’t be so sure. The terminology Paul uses here is so strange and odd that almost all studies of Ephesians comment on it, but few really know what Paul is talking about, and go to great lengths to try to explain the phrases away, so that Paul is just talking about reading your Bible and listening to sermons.

But what if Paul is saying exactly what he means? What if there was a way to hear Jesus and be taught by Him? Paul seems to indicate that there is, and that the Ephesian Christians were doing it. In fact, some Bible scholars believe that there may have been a school in Ephesus where Christians practiced the spiritual art of learning to listen to the voice of Jesus and speak with Him.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could do that?

What if I told you that you could?

To be completely honest, I have become convinced that you and I can listen to the voice of Jesus and speak with Him. You and I can hear Jesus and be taught by Him.

In John 16, Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to His disciples, and He explains some of what the Holy Spirit will do. Among other things, Jesus says, the Holy Spirit enables the disciples of Jesus to hear directly from Jesus. Jesus says in John 16:14, “He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” This point is so important, Jesus repeats it in verse 15. It is not wrong, therefore, to think of the Holy Spirit as the inner voice of Jesus.

And I have become convinced over the last couple of years that Jesus wants to speak directly to each one of us through the indwelling Holy Spirit, which is the Spirit of Christ in us.

You and I can literally have a conversation with Jesus.

The way this happens is through literally having a conversation with Jesus in your spirit, in your mind. It feels a little bit like prayer, but rather than just you talking to God, you give space and room for Jesus to talk with you. You hold a conversation in your head with Jesus.

I wish I had included a chapter about this in my book What is Prayer? but I was not aware of this aspect of prayer yet. In that book, however, I did argue that prayer is simply having a conversation with God as though you were talking to a friend. And that is still true. What I failed to say in that book, however, is that a conversation is a two-way street. A conversation is not a monologue to a friend; it is a dialogue with a friend. And that is how prayer should be as well.

I have started to practice this conversational prayer this last year and have found it to be life transforming. I give room for Jesus to talk with me and teach me and I have found prayer to be much more thrilling, engaging, and enjoyable than ever before, because it is not longer just me talking into the void, hoping God in heaven hears and responds. No, now I am having an actual dialogue with Jesus.

I know this may sound a little “woo woo” to you. A little strange. Especially if you come from the same conservative Christian background I come from. If so, I want you to consider what Paul writes here in verse 21, what Jesus says in John 16, and also consider the fact that since Jesus is alive, and since Jesus loves us, and since Jesus sent His Spirit to indwell us, why would Jesus remain silent? He wouldn’t. He doesn’t. He wants to speak to you. He wants to teach you.

I wish I had time to say more about this. But I am still learning about it myself. All I can do is invite you to try it for yourself. Next time you are struggling with something, or have questions about a biblical text, or just want to talk with Jesus about anything, then do it. Just invite Jesus to talk with you and then listen for the inner dialogue. It’s that simple.

I should issue one warning. If you start trying to have a conversation with Jesus this way, your rational, scientific, critical mind will tell you that you are just having a conversation with yourself. That you are just making the whole thing up. I still struggle with these thoughts all the time. But in response to that, I will say this about my own personal experience: Jesus sometimes says things to me in our conversations that could never have come from my own head. Some of the things I have been taught could not have come from my own imagination.

Anyway, that is what I think Paul is referring to here. The Ephesian Christians had gone to school with Jesus. They heard Him. They spoke with Him. They were taught by Him. And Paul is reminding them of this fact.

And then at the end of Ephesians 4:21, Paul writes as the truth is in Jesus. Again, the grammar and terminology here is very strange, and if you look up various translations of Ephesians 4:21, you will see how scholars have struggled to understand what Paul is writing. In this way, the last part of verse 21 is an introductory statement for what follows. Paul is saying, “And here is the truth Jesus taught you.” So all of Ephesians 4:21 could be translated this way: “You heard from Jesus. You were taught by Him. And here is the truth that Jesus taught:”

Then in Ephesians 4:22-24, Paul summarizes that the Ephesians Christians had been taught by Jesus.

So let us look at these final three verses of this passage to see what Jesus taught to the Ephesian Christians.

II. What Jesus Taught (Ephesians 4:22-24)

Ephesians 4:22-24 form a short three-point chiasm. In verse 22, Paul writes that the Ephesians Christians were taught to put off the old man. The parallel statement is in verse 24, where Paul writes that the Ephesian Christians should put on the new man. The central statement of the chiasm is in verse 23, which Paul says that the Ephesians Christians are to be renewed in the spirit of their mind. Since this is the central statement of the chiasm, it helps explain the outer points. How does one put off the old man and put on the new man? Both are accomplished through the renewal of the mind.

Let us consider all three points. I will take the outer points first, and then look at the inner, central point in verse 23.

A. Put off the Old (Ephesians 4:22)

Ephesians 4:22. … that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,

The first thing Jesus teaches us to do is to put off … the old man.

The term used here for put off means to take off, or to strip off. It is frequently used of getting out of filthy clothes.

Imagine yourself working in a manure pit on a hot summer day. It’s slippery so your fall occasionally into the manure, and it’s hot so everything—including yourself—stinks. When you get home, what’s the first thing you do? Do you go sit on the couch and grab a snack? No! You are filthy! The first thing you do is strip off those filthy clothes.

That is what Jesus instructs us to do when we listen to Him. He shows us how to put off the filthy, stinking, rotting, corrupt parts of our old self. In Romans 7:24, Paul calls it the “body of death.” It’s a corpse that is strapped to our back.

The rotting old man is a symbol of spiritual and inner decay. It represents the shadow side of a person, that which is hidden, unrecognized, and undealt with. Jesus wants us to face it, bring it to light, and bring healing, renewal, restoration, and redemption to those areas that are in decline and decay.

When we talk with Jesus, He says, “Why are you carrying around that rotting corpse on your back? Let me help you get rid of it.”

That phrase at the end of Ephesians 4:22, where we read that the old man grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, refers to all the traits of ignorance and uncleanness that Paul listed in Ephesians 4:17-19. We talked about those previously, so I don’t need to go over them again.

But as a reminder, those negative traits in verses 17-19 are not about other people. They are about us. About you. About me. And many of us still have many of those traits. That is why Paul is writing this section in Ephesians. He wants to point out to his readers, which now includes you and me, that we still have many sinful habits of behavior and ignorant patterns of thought. And Jesus wants to change you. He wants to change me.

And when Jesus comes to talk with us, this is exactly what He does. When you seek to have a conversation with Jesus, you will know that you are just making it up if what you think is the voice of Jesus starts to condemn and accuse a bunch of other people, and points out all of their sins and faults and failures to you.

Jesus doesn’t do that. He works with you … on you. As you converse with Jesus, He will walk with you through the various rooms of your house and start pointing out the trash hidden in the closet. The cobwebs in the corner. The rooms that have locked doors which no one is allowed to see into. Jesus will work with you on your house. On your life. On your maturity. Not on someone else’s.

Jesus will point out to you where you are holding on the old man, the old self, with its deceitful lusts. And they are deceitful. I have had many arguments with Jesus about this. He points something out to me, and I say, “That’s not sinful. Why do you want me to change that?” And we get into a discussion about it. It can sometimes get heated … on my part anyway. Jesus is always patient.

You see, the old man is deceitful. It lies to us. It tells us certain things are okay to hold on to. But Jesus never lies. Jesus always speaks the truth to our heart, soul, and mind. And Jesus will point out the lies of the old man. Jesus wants to bring us to truth and light. And that is what He does. Step by step. Bit by bit. Piece by piece. Room by room. Out with the old. In with the new.

In fact, in with the new is what the parallel verse talks about in Ephesians 4:24. We still want to deal with the central verse in this chiasm in Ephesians 4:23, but let us first consider verse 24, since it is parallel to verse 22 that we just looked at.

A’. Put on the New (Ephesians 4:24)

Ephesians 4:24. … and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

Jesus does not just go through our life getting rid of the corrupt old man. He always replaces it with the new man.

When you listen to Jesus, He shows you which parts of your life need to go, but in the process, doesn’t just leave a hole or void there. He replaces it with something new. Old habits get replaced with new habits. Old patterns of thinking get replaced with new patterns.

Indeed, this is what repentance is all about. Lots of people think repentance is just turning from sin. But it isn’t. Repentance is a two-part process. It is a turning from sin and replacing that sin with something righteous.

One of the reasons so many people struggle with patterns and habits of sin in their life is because they fail to replace the sinful patterns and habits with a righteous pattern and habit. It is not enough to just take off the old man. You have to replace the old man with the new man.

If you spend certain time, energy, money, or resources engaging in a certain destructive practice, then when you seek to get rid of it, you should start using that same time, energy, money, or resources for something holy and righteous instead. Otherwise, the old habits see an empty room and just come right back in, usually stronger than ever before.

When we hear from Jesus and learn from Him, He shows us the sinful parts of our life that He wants to get rid of, and He also shows us the new parts He wants to add.

All of us do this every day in our regular lives. At the end of your work day, you don’t take off the dirty clothes, and then shower, and then put the old clothes back on. No. You take off the dirty clothes, take a shower, and then put on new, clean clothes.

And this new man, these new clothes, unlike the corrupt and deceitful old man, is described here in Ephesians 4:24 as being created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

Created according to God means that it is a new creation. Paul is not telling us to renovate or remake our old man into new man. He is telling us to put on a completely new and different man. We are not putting on old clothes after they have been washed and mended. We are getting a whole new wardrobe. A whole new set of clothing. A whole new man.

And this new creation is in true righteousness and holiness. Righteousness refers to how we interact in our relationships with other people. Holiness refers to how we interact in our relationship with God. These two words summarize the ten commandments.

When Jesus starts to point out to you the things He wants you to change, it will usually be in some sort of behavior toward God or some sort of behavior toward people.

It is a long process. It is a lifelong process. But Jesus is patient and walks with us through it all. When we enroll in the school of Christ, class is never over the teacher never gives up on us. He helps us get rid of the old and bring in the new.

B. Be Renewed (Ephesians 4:23)

Ephesians 4:23. … and be renewed in the spirit of your mind,

Now, we still have Ephesians 4:23 to consider. It is the central verse in the chiasm of Ephesians 4:22-24, and is, therefore, the main point.

Paul shows us that when we hear from Jesus and learn from Jesus, He helps us put off the old man and put on the new man by being renewed in the spirit of your mind.

The word spirit is a reference to the inner human spirit of a person. It’s not the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit doesn’t need to be renewed. But our human spirit does. And one thing that Jesus does is renew the spirit of our mind. He does this, of course, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, so that, for the spiritual man, there is almost no difference between the human spirit and the Holy Spirit. The two become one.

Paul writes about something very similar over in Romans 12:1-2 where he says that we are transformed by the renewal of our mind. The concept of transformation there is the same idea found here of putting off the old man and putting on the new. Over there, however, Paul doesn’t mention the spirit of our mind. He just writes about the renewal of the mind.

From this, it seems, we can see that renewing the spirit of the mind is the same thing as renewing the mind.

What this means is that changing the way we live begins with changing the way we think. All change begins in the mind. With patterns of thoughts. With ideas.

What you know and what you think determines who you are and how you behave. Physically, you are what you do, but spiritually, you are what you think (Wiersbe, 40). That’s Biblical truth. Proverbs 23:7 says, “As a man thinks … so is he.” Your mind is not renewed simply by gaining knowledge, but by changing the way you think.

And this is why it is so important to enroll in the school of Jesus. Jesus teaches us a new way to think. Jesus shows us how to look at things differently. Jesus transforms our mind. Jesus helps us integrate things that need to be added to our thinking, and helps us get rid of damaging and destructive patterns of thought. Jesus can help us deal with thoughts about old trauma, and negative thoughts about who we are as a person. Jesus shows us different ways of interacting with temptations and addictions, and new ways of viewing other people.

This is why it is so important to get into conversations with Jesus, because the things that Jesus wants to point out to you is specifically for you alone. He will not say the same things in the same way to anyone else in the entire world.

Yes, it is important to read the Bible and hear other Christians teach about the Bible, as I am doing here. These are important because they show us the types of things that Jesus might say to us individually. But when Jesus really enters into a conversation with you, He will go much deeper and get much more specific than any Bible verse or Bible podcast can do. He will delve into the spirit of your mind in a way that no one else can.

Now, what sorts of things might Jesus say to you? What are some of the possible ways that Jesus would instruct you to put off the old and put on the new?

The rest of Ephesians 4 and 5 are all about some of the things Jesus will change in your life. In every example that follows, Paul tells people “Don’t do this … now instead do this.” These are examples of putting off the old and putting on the new (cf. Ephesians 4:25, 28, 29, 31-32; 5:3-4, 7-10, 11-13, 15-16, 17, 18-21).

And it is worth pointing out that you can’t make all of these changes all at once. These will take a lifetime of discipleship to Jesus. Putting off the old man doesn’t occur one time when you receive eternal life. You still have the old man hanging on in various ways in your life. Our job is to put on the new man by listening to Christ, learning from Christ, and renewing the spirits of our minds.

Conclusion

Do you want to change something in your life? Do you want to get rid of something from your old way of living? The way ahead is quite simple—it’s not easy—but it is simple—learn from Christ, hear Him and be taught by Him. Let Him walk with you through the house of your life to clean it up and turn it into what He wants. Your life will never been the same.

And as we do this, just like with Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd, the clothes will make the man. As we put on the new man, as we renew our minds, we will become new men and women of God.

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.

The Task of the Church (Part II): Growing Adults (Ephesians 4:15-16)

By Jeremy Myers

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In Ephesians 4:14-16, we have some clear instructions on what the church is supposed to do. There are two parts to these instructions of God about the task of the church, and so we will consider them in two different studies. I previously considered Ephesians 4:14, and this study looks at Ephesians 4:15-16.

(#AmazonAdLink) Both of these studies, along with all the others in this series, are drawn from my book, (#AmazonAdLink) God’s Blueprints for Church Growth.

The Task of the Church (Part II): Growing Adults (Ephesians 4:15-16)

“… but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.”
Ephesians 4:15-16

When the majority of people in the United States think of “church growth” they think of a church that has more people attending the Sunday morning service this year than last year. Such numerical growth in the pews leads to a larger budget and maybe a larger building.

So it is not surprising that one popular book on church growth begins with the following statement:

Since 1966, [our church] has grown from 125 to over 13,500 in worship. We have gone through five building programs and two complete relocation projects, the last of which cost over ninety million dollars (including land, construction costs, and architects’ fees). We have gone from an annual budget of eighteen thousand dollars to an annual budget of eighteen million dollars.^[1]

This is the popular definition of church growth. According to most, church growth is measured with bodies, bucks, and bricks, with more people, more money, and bigger buildings.[2]

Since growth is one of the top priorities of every local church, those who measure church growth with bodies, bucks, and bricks will often use whatever means necessary to get such things. I have a comic strip in my office showing a pastor asking his elders for ideas on how to grow the church. He says, “Besides calling every Sunday ‘Easter,’ does anyone else have ideas for improving church attendance?”

I also have an article from TIME magazine about a church whose “Ultimate Goal” was to get 40% of the people in its area back to church within one year. The article reported that in order to accomplish this, the pastor sang and danced the Lord’s praises in an “electric whirlwind” which he termed, “Aerobics of the Lord.” He executes choreographed jumps, leaps, and twists that the faithful try to copy. And when the Spirit really moves, he pours buckets of holy water on his ecstatic audience.^[3]

Yet this is fairly mild compared to what some churches do. One pastor in California collected a file of news clippings about how churches were employing innovations to keep their worship services from becoming dull. In only five years’ time, “some of America’s largest evangelical churches have employed worldly gimmicks like slapstick [comedy] … wrestling exhibitions, and even a mock striptease to spice up their Sunday meetings.”^[4] If churches want more bodies, bucks, and bricks, these are some of the things that churches can do to accomplish this kind of growth.

However, just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should. But maybe the real problem isn’t so much in what these churches are doing, but why. Maybe the problem is that they are chasing after the wrong type of church growth. What if numeral growth is not biblical church growth? What if God’s idea of church growth is not measured with bodies, bucks, and bricks, but with some other measurement entirely?

If this is the case, then most of what we do in church could possibly be wrong! After all, if our definition of church growth is wrong, then the methods we use to achieve this growth will also be wrong.

Thankfully, the solution is relatively simple. If a poor definition of church growth leads to flawed methods to achieve this growth, then the simple fix is to get a right definition of church growth. Once we properly define church growth, then our methods will fall into place as well.

What Church Growth Is

The definition of church growth proposed in chapter 1 of my book, (#AmazonAdLink) God’s Blueprints for Church Growth. I state that church growth occurs when we teach and train the people who are the church to become what God wants them to be so they can do what God wants them to do. This definition of church growth is drawn primarily from Ephesians 4:15-16. These verses show what church growth is and how church growth is accomplished.

The definition of church growth was foreshadowed in Ephesians 4:13, where Paul described the model that church growth is patterned after. A completed building should end up looking like the model. The model in Ephesians 4:13 was Christlikeness. This is what Paul states in Ephesians 4:15 as well. While the first part of the Church program requires us to protect the spiritual children, this is primarily so that the second part of the church program can be accomplished, which is to grow the children into adults. Paul wants his readers to grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ. In other words, a church is growing when the people in the church are becoming more and more like Jesus Christ.

Remember, the word “church” is not defined by how many people meet, or even when or where they meet. The church consists of the people of God who follow Jesus into the world. Church growth happens when spiritually immature Christians (the spiritual children of Ephesians 4:14), are corrected, trained, taught, encouraged, and equipped (2 Tim 3:16–4:4) in such a way so that they become spiritually mature Christians.

Church growth happens when the individual Christians who make up the church grow into spiritual maturity as exemplified in their Christlike behavior toward other people. They grow by learning the Bible and learning to obey the Bible. They grow by learning what their spiritual gifts are and finding ways to put them into practice so that they become who God made them to be. Church growth, therefore, is about building up one another to Christlike maturity and service.^[5] Ultimately, they do this by learning to live and love like Jesus. That is biblical church growth.

Logically, this means that it is possible to grow a church and actually shrink in size. If a church of 100 loses 50 members, but these 50 become more like Jesus Christ, then that church is growing. Alternately, if a church of 500 doubles in size, but few mature into Christlikeness, then that church is not growing, even though they have gone from 500 to 1000 in attendance. With this understanding, it is entirely possible that a church is still growing even if they lose most of their people, hardly have any budget, and have to sell their building. A local church with few bodies, bucks, and bricks can still be a vibrant and growing church. A church in which the people are maturing is a growing church, regardless of how many people there are, where they meet, or how much money is in their ministry budget.

It is helpful to think about church growth the way we think about family growth. Nobody believes that only large families are successful. While I myself come from a family with ten children, and while I believe my parents were very successful in raising all ten of us, my family was not “successful” because there were ten children. Similarly, we don’t think a family is a failure because they don’t “grow” from two kids to four, or from four kids to eight. A family with only one child, or even no children, can be successful if the members of that family grow together in unity, love, and faithfulness to each other and to people in the world. This is true of a husband and wife with no children just as it is true for a family with ten or more children.

Furthermore, we don’t think that a family is a failure because the parents don’t get raises at their job every year or buy bigger houses. Some of the richest families in the world are also the greatest failures at being a family. Family “growth” and success is not accomplished by increasing the size or wealth of the family, but by growing in maturity and love with each passing year.

Just as with a family, so also with the church. True church growth occurs when Christians grow up into Christlike maturity, so that they love God, love each other, and love the world more with each passing year. The goal of the church, according to Ephesians 4:15, is for Christians to grow up into maturity, becoming more and more like Jesus Christ. When this happens, church growth happens as well, for the people are growing into Christlike maturity.

How Church Growth Is Accomplished

The entire paragraph of Ephesians 4:11-16 has been building up to this single point. Once the spiritual children in the church have been protected from false teachers and false teachings, it is time for them to mature and become spiritual adults. How does this happen? Paul writes that growth into maturity comes through speaking the truth in love. The primary method to accomplish church growth is by speaking the truth, and speaking it in love.

Speaking the Truth

The phrase speaking the truth is one word in Greek. This word is used only one other time in Scripture (Gal 4:16), where it refers primarily to teaching the Word of God or preaching the gospel (cf. Gal 4:13). If the phrase means the same thing here, then Paul is writing that the primary way church growth is accomplished is through speaking the truth of Scripture with an emphasis on gospel-related truths.[6] This means that teaching and learning about Scripture is one of the primary keys to church growth. One reason God provided Scripture is so that His people could learn it and grow into maturity as a result.

Yet the preaching, teaching, and learning of Scripture is often the one thing that many Christians do not want or desire. Many local gatherings of believers tend to focus on everything but the teaching and learning of Scripture. Yet this is simply a sign of spiritual immaturity. While new Christians desire only sweet milk, mature Christians crave the meat of the Word of God. It is the teaching and learning of the truths of Scripture that turns baby believers into mature adults, and helps guide adults into the proper way of life.

Yet although the church has the largest and most fascinating collection of infallible truth that exists in the world, we tend to keep the light of God’s truth locked up in the closet so we can focus on the latest fads of entertainment and newest insights from popular psychology. Walter Kaiser writes this:

In the midst of all the feverish activity to restore the church once again to her former position of influence and respect, all sorts of programs and slogans have appeared. But regardless of what new directives and emphases are periodically offered, that which is needed above everything else to make the Church more viable, authentic, and effective, is a new declaration of the Scriptures with a new purpose, passion, and power. This we believe is most important if the work of God is to be accomplished in the program of the church.^[7]

If the church is going to protect children and grow adults into spiritual maturity, we must focus on the truth of Scripture. Though the church doesn’t have a monopoly on truth, and while many in the world are not ready to hear the truth, it does seem strange that the church is often cautious about boldly proclaiming the truth of Scripture to the Christians in the church. Rather than offer the one unique and shining jewel that we do have, we try to keep people’s attention with poor copies of worldly music, entertainment, and social clubs … and we will always fail.

The one thing the church can offer, and the one thing the church is instructed by God to offer, is also the one thing we fail to offer. What is that one thing? It is truth. The truth of God is the one thing that sets the people of God apart from all other people on earth. We have something they need, and something they crave in their inner-most being. We should, therefore, be focusing on the truth, and specifically, the infallible truth of Scripture. When people start to hear the truth, and when their lives begin to get transformed by the truth, they cannot get enough of the truth. They soak it up like rain in a dry and thirsty desert.

Only truth transforms lives. Only the truth of God helps people grow spiritually. And when lives are transformed and people begin to mature, then the church begins to grow. But speaking the truth by itself is not enough. Paul goes on to clarify that when we speak the truth, it must be presented in love.

Speaking in Love

Some Christians seem to focus primarily on speaking the truth, yet with a lack of love. If they see someone who is in sin or who has a false belief, these Christians feel it is their responsibility to point it out. We all know Christians who always seem to be critical and judgmental of others. They are on the lookout for those who say or do something wrong, and when they find some real or imagined fault in others, they feel it is their responsibility to point it out. Such Christians believe that truth is the highest ideal and that they are God’s appointed defenders of truth in this world.

This tendency is sometimes found in those who claim to have “discernment ministries.” Such ministries seem to do little more than point out the errors of other ministries. A while back, in the span of a few weeks, I watched one of these ministries attack James Dobson and his “Focus on the Family” ministry, Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” Rick Warren’s book, (#AmazonAdLink) The Purpose Driven Life, the theology of several well-known pastors, and the phenomenon of contemporary Christian music. Such ministries see themselves as defenders of the truth who help keep Christians on the “straight and narrow” road to heaven. Yet they do little more than divide the church.

Of course, there are some who err on the other side. The opposite extreme is found in those ministries and Christians who just want everybody to get along, to love one another, and be in agreement on all things. They only want positive words to come from their pulpits and out of their printers. They never want to rock the boat or stand up for the truth. Their greatest fear is that someone might get offended by something they say.

Jay Adams has noticed this modern tendency and writes:

In some circles, the fear of controversy is so great that preachers, and congregations following them, will settle for peace at any cost—even at the cost of the truth, God’s truth. The idea is that peace is all important. Peace is a biblical idea (Rom 12:18 makes that clear: “If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with everybody”), but so is purity. The peace of the Church may never be bought at the cost of the purity of the Church. That price is too dear.

But why do we think that we can get along in the world or for that matter, even in the Church, without conflict and controversy? Jesus didn’t. Paul didn’t. None of the preachers of the apostolic age who faithfully served their Lord were spared controversy. Who are we to escape controversy when they did not? The story of the advance of the Church across the Mediterranean world from Jerusalem to Rome is a story of controversy. When the gospel is preached boldly, there will be controversy.^[8]

These two approaches reveal two extremes. Some teach the truth without love, and others teach love without truth. But in Ephesians 4:15, Paul calls for both. He calls for a balance between truth and love. To err on one side or the other causes great problems. Truth without love is harsh judgmentalism and dogmatism. Love without truth is blind sentimentality. But truth in love is compassionate concern.

Truth without love makes Cactus Christians: they’re full of good points, but prickly, and painfully difficult to be around. Love without truth makes Cotton Candy Christians: they’re sweet and look good, but there’s nothing of substance to anything they say or do. They’re just a lot of fluff. But truth in love makes Christlike Christians. They are not afraid to speak the truth, but know that such truth must be spoken in love, and that sometimes, love requires a person to not speak at all, but live the truth instead. A Christlike Christian seeks to balance truth and love. Truth, as important as it is, must always be taught in a loving manner.

The difficulty, of course, is that every “truth-telling” Christian thinks they are speaking the truth in love. I have heard Christians say the most hateful things, and when challenged about it, have defended their words by saying, “The loving thing is to tell them the truth, no matter how painful it might be.”

But when it comes to speaking the truth in love, the question is not whether you think you are loving, but whether the other person thinks you are loving. If you speak something you believe to be true, and the other person believes your words or actions were hateful and harmful, there is a good chance you were not speaking truth.

When we properly understand God, Scripture, and correct theology, it will always lead us to love. This is why love is the litmus test for correct beliefs. If our beliefs, doctrine, and theology are leading us to be judgmental, mean, and rude toward other people, then the truth is not in us. Where there is no love, there also is no truth. If someone truly knows the truth, they will be the most loving person you know.

This is exactly what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13. He says that even if you have all knowledge, but have not love, then you have nothing. This means that even if you can win at Bible trivia, can recite hundreds of Bible verses, and can argue theology with the best theologians in the world, but have not love, then you have nothing. Without love, there is no truth. Without love, knowledge counts as nothing. If you know the truth, it will lead you to love, and love provides evidence that you know the truth.

Furthermore, I would argue that love is the main truth which Christians should be preaching, teaching, and revealing through our lives and actions. Since God is love (1 John 4:8), all truth about God will be wrapped in love, focused on love, revealing love, and leading people to love. If the church could focus on only one truth to teach and practice, it should be the truth of love. The main truth presented by the church should be that God loves us, accepts us, forgives us, and desires nothing more than to be in fellowship with us.

As always, Jesus is the perfect example of how this is carried out. During His life and ministry, He never avoided the truth, but spoke it plainly in the most loving words possible. Though Jesus often had disagreements with the religious leaders of His day, and though He spoke many hard words to them, I doubt that a single one of them ever thought that His words were hateful, mean, or cruel. Though the words of Jesus are often read in harsh, accusatory ways today, it is possible to read the “hard” words of Jesus with a loving, pleading, and beseeching tone. When you do this, the words of Jesus take on a completely different meaning, which better matches the overall tenor of His life and ministry. The tone and demeanor of Jesus were always full of love, even when He had hard truths to speak.

God behaves similarly, which is not surprising, for Jesus perfectly reveals God to us. What is surprising about God’s revelation of truth to us, is that He rarely speaks truth to us until we are ready and willing to hear it. God does not sit us down on the first day of our Christian life and beat us over the head with every wrong thing we do and incorrect belief we hold. Instead, God reveals His truth to us slowly, over time, as we mature and become ready to hear it and respond to it. This means that it is loving for God to withhold the full truth from us. It is loving of God to slowly reveal truth to us over time.

Sometimes, God will not point out our faults to us unless we honestly ask that He do so. We all sin in various ways all the time, and often, we are unaware of the myriad ways we disobey God. But in His patience and loving kindness, He waits to reveal our faults to us until we ask for Him to search our hearts and see if there is any wicked way in us. Even then, He gently whispers to us by the Holy Spirit about the skeletons in our closet, or He kindly takes us to Scripture to reveal our faults to us. But God never beats us over the head with some harsh judgmental attitude or hurtful words. Softly and gently, tenderly and kindly, He washes our feet with the water of the Word and cleanses us from all sin.

When we seek to speak the truth in love, we must seek to follow the example of God. Just because we see faults in someone else, this does not mean we are obligated to point it out. And even when we are invited, within the boundaries of a close friendship, to lovingly correct someone else, we must never do so in harsh, judgmental, or accusatory words.

It is also critically important that we seek to be part of the solution. When we correct someone, we must also be willing to take the time and effort to help that person through their faults and mistakes. We must never “hit and run.” When Jesus set out to wash the filthy feet of His disciples, He didn’t simply point out the dirty condition of their feet, but actually got a basin and a towel and knelt at their feet to wash them Himself. Jesus took the role of a servant and came alongside them to wash their feet for them. When we see somebody with “dirty feet,” we must be willing to help them wash their feet. If we are not willing to help, then we should keep our mouths shut.

Another example is found in Acts 9:10-13. God tells Ananias to go see Saul who has been blinded. Saul’s reputation of persecuting Christians has preceded him, and so understandably, Ananias is a little scared. He says, “God, I don’t think that’s the best idea. If Paul doesn’t kill me, he’ll imprison me for sure!” Ananias clearly and blatantly rejects God’s command.

Now if we were God, most of us would do one of two things in the face of such disrespect. We would either flat-out rebuke the man, saying something like, “You sinner! Away from me you evil doer!” This response would be truthful, but not very loving. This kind of response would be truth without love. The other way to handle such disobedience would be to ignore it in the name of love. In this case, God could have said, “Ananias, I understand your fear. I would be scared too. So it’s okay if you don’t want to obey me right now. Maybe someone else will come along.” This seems to be loving, but there’s not much truth. In fact, in the name of love, such a statement actually contains a lie. It is not okay to disobey. Very often, when love is the goal at the expense of truth, lies creep in (which is not very loving).

These are two of the possible responses to Ananias’ disobedience. The first is to be so focused on the truth, that we beat people over the head with it saying “Obey or else!” The other is to be afraid of offending people, and say, “Okay, I understand that you’re scared. If you don’t want to obey right now, that’s fine.” These are the two extremes. One reveals truth without love, and the other reveals love without truth.

But God speaks the truth in love to Ananias. In Acts 9:15, God said, “Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake.” God says, “Go. And let me give you some reasons why you should. I am not rebuking your lack of wisdom for resisting My viewpoint. I am also not denying your feelings of fear. Instead, I am telling you why you should obey, and also telling you that everything will be okay.” This response is both truthful and loving. So in Acts 9:17, Ananias went.

This is how God deals with us as well. He never gives us truth without love, and never hides the truth in the name of love. Instead, He always speaks the truth in love. Scripture repeatedly tells us that God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and wrath (Exod 34:6; Neh 9:17; Ps 86:15; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2). When we resist and rebel, He gives us reasons to obey. If we continue to resist and rebel, His reasons slowly but surely become much stronger, until, after a while, He begins to discipline us. Truth balanced with love is how God deals with us and how we are to deal with one another.

Here are eight tips on how to achieve this balance between truth and love. If you sense the desire to correct someone who is sinning, there are several things you need to think through before you talk to that person.^[9]

First, remember what the ultimate source of truth is. If you feel someone is in sin, you had better have a strong biblical case. You cannot base truth on what your opinion is, or on what your traditions are, or on what some pastor, teacher or author said. God’s word is truth. Jesus prays in John 17:17, “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your Word is truth.” Before you confront someone with the truth, make sure you have a biblical case.^[10] This helps too, because then it is not you saying “I think you are wrong” but it is God’s Word saying “Here is what you are doing wrong.”
Second, make sure God is actually calling you to address the problem. Maybe He just wants you to pray about it. In fact, it might be a good idea to do nothing but pray about it for a whole month before you say anything—just to see God work. Also, it is often true that when God points sin out to us, it is actually our own sin He is pointing out, but we often project this conviction of sin onto others. Recognize that when you become aware of sin in others, it might actually be your own sin that God wants you to see.
Third, ask yourself what you might have contributed to the problem. Often, the problem you see in others is a problem that you yourself contributed to (Paul wrote about this earlier in Ephesians 4:1-6).
Fourth, try to discover what your motive is in pointing out the error. Maybe you simply want to get noticed, or maybe you want to get back at someone, or maybe you have had a bad day and feel like lashing out at someone. If you are unsure of your motives, spend a lot of time in prayer before going to the person.
Fifth, if you confront, are you doing it in a biblical way? Have you gossiped about this to anyone or, according to Matthew 18, are you following the steps for church discipline? Always try to keep the circle small.[11]
Sixth, you might want to ask yourself if you are demanding perfection. Nobody is perfect except Christ – not even you. And remember that with the same measure you use, it will be measured out to you at the judgement day. Are you overcritical and judgmental, or are you gracious and understanding about other people’s failures because you know you have your own struggles?
Seventh, if you do confront the person, can you give input in the form of constructive suggestions rather than outright criticism and complaint? Rather than just point out sin, provide some steps to correct it, or explain how you yourself struggled with this problem in the past, yet was able to experience victory over it.
Finally, are you willing to be part of the solution? God may be showing you this error because He wants you to help out, not to criticize. This final point is critically important. Since we are all part of the church body, we are all supposed to help and love each other into wholeness. If we are not willing or able to love and serve others in their areas of sin and weakness, then we probably have no business pointing out their sin to them. It is not loving to point out someone’s sin if we are not also willing to help love and help them through it.

These eight ideas will help you balance truth and love, which leads to personal growth.

Since God wants His church to grow, and since the church consists of the people of God, this means that the first stage of church growth involves the personal growth of individual Christians. And people grow mentally, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually when they encounter the truth of God spoken in love. In other words, speaking the truth in love leads to the personal growth of those who hear it

Personal Growth

In the last half of Ephesians 4:15, Paul writes that we will grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ. This statement reveals two truths about personal growth. First, it reveals that when we grow, we grow up in all things. This is growth into complete maturity. When we grow in this way, everything about us changes. God wants us to grow and change from spiritual children into spiritual adults. But this requires going through spiritual adolescence.

The teenage years are a rough time for most people because it is a time in which they transition from children into adults. It is during these years that people change mentally, emotionally, and physically. Many teenagers think they have all the answers, even when they don’t. Also, hormones begin to rage, which causes numerous changes. Male voices start to deepen. Hair grows in strange places. There are physical changes as well. Legs and arms get longer. Muscles begin to grow, and female bodies start to develop curves. Some kids become quite awkward as they learn to deal with all these changes.

Something similar happens as Christians mature. Our tastes and desires start to change. We develop different interests than those we once had. Like teenagers, we sometimes become “know-it-alls,” condemning and criticizing everyone who believes or behaves differently than we do. We might bounce around from group to group, theology to theology, trying to find “the one.” We might also enter into a stage of spiritual awkwardness. But God wants us to grow up into all things, and although He gives us everything we need for life and godliness, we need to grow into these areas so that we can become mature adults.

The second truth about growth from verse 15 concerns the goal. The goal is to become like the Head of the church, Jesus Christ. This is quite humbling, of course, since no person will ever fully be conformed to the character of Jesus while in this life. This means that we will never fully mature. Any Christian who thinks they have “arrived” in their spiritual maturity is deluding themselves. As long as we compare ourselves to Jesus Christ, we will always fall short.

Teenagers provide another good example. Teenagers often have heroes, whether they are musicians, sports stars, or movie actors and actresses. It is not uncommon to see Junior High girls trying to look and act like some famous female musician or movie star, while Junior High boys attempt to emulate NFL quarterbacks or rock stars. As a result, teenagers often copy the behavior and antics of these “heroes,” whether good or bad. However, regardless of how well a fourteen-year old boy throws the football, he will fall short of throwing like Tom Brady. There is always room to grow.

It is the same for us as Christians. Our hero should be Jesus Christ, and we should want to talk like Him, be like Him, and live like Him. But we should also realize that there will always be room for growth and development. We can never stop striving after the goal of maturity in Jesus Christ. We should make decisions and choices in our lives with this goal in mind. When people look at us, they should be reminded of Jesus Christ. With Jesus Christ as our head, we will experience personal growth into all things.

This finally leads us to church growth. When individual Christians grow into Christlike maturity as described above, the church grows as well.

Church Growth

Paul concludes this revolutionary passage on church growth by summarizing and reminding his readers that all growth is accomplished only when every part does its share. Just as a body will never mature if the arms refuse to work, so also a church will never grow if certain members refuse to take part in God’s work. Paul writes that:

… the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

Ephesians 4:16 is a summary of everything Paul has taught up to this point. He previously mentioned the spiritual gifts God provided to help church leaders train the rest of the church body to carry out church ministry. Here, Paul basically says the same thing, and points out that when each member does its share, church growth will occur.

Church growth is not primarily when more and more people are added to the church, but when each individual person in the church grows into Christlike maturity and starts using their spiritual gifts to love and serve other people within the church. When every part does its share, the church grows into health and love. This causes the growth of the body, which is true church growth.

A healthy and mature body knows what each part does best and how to use those parts correctly. An eye does the seeing, the ear the hearing, the mouth the talking, the feet the walking, and the hands the working. And according to verse 16, every part, even down the joints, needs to do its share if the body is going to grow into health and effectiveness.

God is the one who created the church, just as He created our physical bodies. And He put the church together the same way He put our bodies together. Each part of our body is like each person in the church. Each part serves a purpose and has a function, and each part is connected to every other part so that the whole body works together as a whole to accomplish what God wants and desires. When every part does what it is supposed to do, then the body grows into a healthy, mature, and complete person, glorifying God and serving the world. It works exactly the same way for the church body.

Furthermore, when it comes to the health and growth of the church, it is best to follow the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you feel like you are not being helped, loved, served, or fed in the church, rather than complain about it, make sure you are doing what you can to help, love, serve, or feed others. It may be that you are not being edified in the church because the person who should be edifying you, is not being edified by you.

In this way, church relationships are symbiotic. Other parts of the body of Christ may be weak and sickly because you are not doing what you are supposed to be doing to help them. And since they are weak and sick, they cannot do what they are supposed to do to help you. Since someone needs to step up and serve, it might as well be you. The best way to have your own needs met is to start meeting the needs of other people. When you help, love, and serve others, this allows them to grow in health and maturity, which allows them to start helping, loving, and serving you.

When each part does its share, then each part is cared for by all the others and so the body remains healthy. The mouth could not eat if the hands did not bring food to the mouth. But if the mouth refused to eat, the hands would not have enough energy to bring food to the mouth. When every part does its share, the entire body is strengthened, so that every part can function for the benefit of every other part. When every part serves, the whole body grows.

This is when church growth occurs. Whether we’re talking about two people, two-hundred, or two-million, when those people love and serve each other, it causes the church to grow. This type of church growth does not require gimmicks, ingenuity, creativity, cleverness, or fancy marketing schemes. Every part of the body has a task, and if every part does its task, the church grows. It is so simple—only God could have designed it. These are His blueprints for church growth.

The End is Love

Paul’s instructions on church grown ends with love. As Paul laid the groundwork for what he would write about church growth, he frequently mentioned the importance place of love in the life and health of the church. We are to be rooted and grounded love (Ephesians 3:17), to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge (Ephesians 3:19), and bear with one another in love (Ephesians 4:2).

As Paul concludes the section of his letter about church growth, he returns to the centrality of love. We are to speak the truth in love so that we may all work for the edification of the body in love. Church growth only happens within the context of love.

Love is the beginning, middle, and end of church growth.

Love causes Christian maturity, and Christian maturity results in love.

If you want your church to grow, don’t focus on programs, budgets, or attendance numbers. Instead, just focus on love. As we love and are loved, we will all grow into the love of Christ, and each person will become mature spiritual adults, who are able to love God, love each other, and love the world just like Jesus Christ. This is true church growth.

Notes:

[1] Bob Russell, (#AmazonAdLink) When God Builds a Church, (West Monroe, LA: Howard, 2000), 3. On page 8, he does qualify this statement by saying that “Although we rejoice over our numerical growth, we know that God doesn’t measure success in terms of attendance, offerings, or size of buildings. He measures effectiveness in terms of faithfulness to His Word, conformity to Jesus Christ, and ministry to those in need.” The rest of the book is excellent in laying out 10 principles to grow your church, but still, it seems that the basic message of the book is “Do these 10 things, and you too can have a church that grows numerically.” Cf. p. 10-11.

[2] See my book, (#AmazonAdLink) Church is More than Bodies, Bucks, & Bricks (Dallas, OR: Redeeming Press, 2015).

[3] Sol Biderman and Sao Paolo, “Padre Marcelo Rossi” TIME Magazine (Feb 28, 2000).

[4] John MacArthur, (#AmazonAdLink) Ashamed of the Gospel (Wheaton: Crossway, 1993), xvii.

[5] This is seen partly by the noun “growth” in verse 16: auxesis is only used of spiritual growth (cf. Col 2:19). The verb in Ephesians 4:15, auxano, is sometimes used of physical growth, but always has in mind factors outside oneself, or an element of life placed within a person by God, which brings about the growth. This kind of growth is never a self-achievement.

[6] The gospel, of course, is not simply the message about how people can go to heaven when they die. The gospel is every truth from Scripture related to the person and work of Jesus Christ. In other words, all biblical truth is gospel truth. See J. D. Myers, The Gospel According to Scripture.

[7] Walter C. Kaiser Jr., (#AmazonAdLink) Toward an Exegetical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 242. Italics mine.

[8] Jay Adams, (#AmazonAdLink) Preaching to the Heart (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Press, 1984), 17.

[9] Modified from Cathy Miller, “Ten Questions to Ask Before you Complain to Church Leaders” (Moody Magazine, Issue 96, 1996), 80. See also, Ken Sande, (#AmazonAdLink) The Peacemaker (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997).

[10] Cf. Bob Russell, (#AmazonAdLink) When God Builds a Church (West Monroe, LA: Howard, 2000), 153.

[11] This does not hold true for predatory sins that harm others, such as rape, murder, abuse, or threats of physical violence. In such cases, it is your responsibility to go straight to the police or authorities.

The Task of the Church (Part I): Guarding Children (Ephesians 4:14)

By Jeremy Myers

The Task of the Church: Guarding Children (Ephesians 4:14)

“… that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting …” (Ephesians 4:14)

Anyone who has been around children for very long knows that they can say and believe some of the most amazing things. One little boy came home from Sunday school very excited about the lesson he had learned in Genesis 2 about how Eve was taken from Adam’s side. But a few days later, he came home from school in a very distressed mood. When his mother asked what was wrong, he replied, “My side hurts. I think I’m going to have a wife.”

Another little boy, after being told that God is One, asked when He would be two.

I also read about a group of children who were asked what God does all day. One responded, “He walks on water.” Another said, “He lives! He lives!” A third said, “He organizes heaven, sending people down here in cloud elevators so they can help us earth people out.” One of the little boys said, “He builds boats. All kinds of boats. Nobody knows why.”

When this same group of children were asked what God creates, one little boy answered, “God makes bees with little wings all day. Probably out of mud.” A different child said, “He makes grass a lot of the days. That takes up a lot of hours. Did you ever see how many pieces of grass there are?”

Then they were asked if they could name any of the Ten Commandments, here is what a few of them said:

“Buckle up for safety!”

“Don’t smoke in the bowling alley.”

“Don’t drink beer.”

“Brush your teeth.”

“Don’t go to work on Sundays. And if your boss says she’ll fire you, call in sick.”

“Don’t copy someone else’s paper.”

“I think ‘Don’t kill’ is one. But maybe not.”

“Don’t eat when you have a fever and feel like throwing up.”

“Say ‘No’ to drugs.”

“Don’t talk to strangers.”

“Thou shalt not stab.”

This is part of the wonder and joy of working with children. They are so trusting and have such vivid imaginations. But at the same time, children have some of the most amazing misconceptions and misunderstandings. Sometimes this is the result of their own immaturity and innocence, while at other times, it is due to their gullibility. Children are easily deceived. Children can be told the most outrageous lie and they will believe it because they often don’t know any different.

There was an old Peanuts comic strip where Lucy told Linus that snow didn’t fall from the sky the way most people thought. Rather, it grew up from the ground in the night like a flower and then the wind blew it around. Linus, because he didn’t know any different, believed her.

Children are easily tricked. Easily deceived. And most of the time, it’s a cute characteristic that children have. Almost any story can captivate a child’s attention. Almost any magic trick, no matter how silly, can amaze them.

But it is far from cute when adults have the same gullibility. What is adorable in a child is not at all adorable in an adult. Children are not supposed to stay children forever. Children are to grow up and mature so that they become productive members of society. Sadly, many adults, though they may have matured physically, are still mentally, emotionally, and psychologically immature. It is a sad state of affairs when this happens.

The same thing can happen when it comes to spiritual maturity. When people first believe in Jesus, they are born again into the family of God, and are spiritual babes in Jesus Christ. No matter how old they might be physically, they are spiritual children. And just as humans are supposed to mature as they get older, the same thing is supposed to happen with people the longer they are “in Christ.” But just as physical maturity can sometimes be stunted, so also, some Christians never mature into spiritual maturity.

In fact, it is a sad reality in the church that many modern Christian adults are childish in their thinking. While immature spirituality should be expected from a new believer, many Christians remain childish for far long. While every Christian starts off as a baby Christian, some Christians remain that way for most of their Christian lives.

God wants baby Christians to become mature Christians. He wants Christians to move on from “milk doctrines” that make us feel warm and fuzzy, and start ingesting the meat truths of the Word that we mull over and think about (cf. Heb 5:11–6:3). It is only when Christian do this that they lose their gullibility, and become able to discern good from evil, truth from falsehood, correct doctrine from heresy.

As we think about growing the church God’s way, we have learned that God’s church grows as the people of the church develop into Christlike maturity. And believe it or not, this maturing process is the main activity which God desires for the church. Though people often say that evangelism and world missions are the primary activities of the church, effective evangelism and world missions only take place as Christian mature in the faith and develop Christlikeness in their beliefs and behaviors. All of the activities of the church in this world depend upon Christians growing into spiritual maturity. The task of helping baby Christians grow into mature Christians is to be the primary program of the church.

One of the important parts of planning and constructing a building is the “Architectural Programming” phase. This phase of the design process usually begins before the blueprints are drawn up or the ground is broken. This phase of the construction process helps determine what kind of building will be planned and built. Architectural Programming determines how large the building will be, what materials will be used, how many people the building can hold, the number of rooms it will have, and a whole range of similar details. Therefore, it is appropriate to think of the programming of the church. And as we have just seen, “The Program” of the church is to turn baby Christians into mature followers of Jesus Christ.

God’s Program for His church is not primarily about a music program, an educational program, or a youth program. God’s Program for the church He is building centers around helping people mature in the faith. While music, education, and youth events might help people mature, they are not the only ways that people do mature. God does not care so much about the number of meetings at the church, or the frequency and variety of church events. He doesn’t even care about the number of people. The primary thing God cares about in the church is whether or not the people within it are developing into spiritual maturity.

So when a local gathering of believers is trying to decide whether or not they are accomplishing God’s will for the church in their community, they must not look at the numbers of bodies who sit a pew, the amount of money collected in the offering, or the square feet of the building in which these things take place.[1] The only Program God wants to know about is whether or not the people who make the church look, act, and love more like Jesus this year than they did last year.

This is exactly what Paul writes about in Ephesians 4:14-16. Back in Ephesians 4:13, Paul wrote about the model for the church, which is the measure, stature, and fullness of Jesus Christ. He now turns to describing the two steps for accomplishing this Program in the church. The church must first seek to guard and protect new believers (Ephesians 4:14), and then it must seek to help guide and grow mature believers into greater depth and Christlikeness (Ephesians 4:15-16).

These two aspects of the church Program will be considered in two different studies. This study looks at the topic of guarding the spiritual children in the church (Ephesians 4:14), and the next study will consider Ephesians 4:15-16 about guiding and growing spiritually mature Christians into greater depth and Christlikeness.

No Longer Be Children

When Paul wrote about children in Ephesians 4:14, he was not thinking about those members of the church under the physical age of ten. He had spiritual children in mind, regardless of whatever physical age they might be. A new believer is a child in the faith, whether they are five years old or ninety-five. When we first believe in Jesus, we are born again into the family of God, and start our live as a spiritual babe in Jesus Christ. But we are not to remain in such a state.

The sad fact, however, is that many Christians remain in the infant stage for far too long. While many Christians sit in pews and sing worship songs on Sunday morning for decades on end, some of them remain immature the entire time. So Paul calls the church to help these Christians grow up so that they will no longer be children.

But how can you tell who is a spiritual child and who is not? Christian maturity comes down to two things: beliefs and behaviors. Christian maturity is not measured by how much time a person spends sitting in a pew or reading their Bible. It is measured by how well a person understands the life of God and how well their own life imitates His. Let us briefly consider both aspects, beginning with beliefs.

Beliefs are critically important for growth into maturity. We are what we know. Furthermore, sociologists and psychologists have discovered that a person’s view of God largely determines how that person lives. People who believe that God is vengeful and angry will often be violent and unforgiving. People who believe that God is gracious and loving will more readily love and serve others. So the beliefs of a person help guide that person’s behavior.

Yet how can we know which beliefs indicate maturity? Scripture helps us in this regard. For example, Hebrews 6:1-3 contains a list of six key doctrines which are foundational for every new Christian to understand. The author of Hebrews states that people must understand these six truths in order to move on to the true “meat” of Scripture. These foundational teachings are (1) repentance from dead works, (2) faith toward God, (3) the doctrine of baptisms, (4) the laying on of hands, (5) the resurrection of the dead, and (6) eternal judgment. Do you understand and comprehend what the Bible teaches about these six areas? If not, then according to the author of Hebrews, you are still a Kindergarten Christian. This is not wrong; it just means you have some learning to do.[2]

Sadly, by using this one instrument to measure the maturity of modern, western Christianity, it appears that the majority of Christians might very well be classified as immature. Earl Radmacher was exactly right when he once said that American Christianity is a mile wide but an inch deep.

Similarly, A. W. Tozer said that much of the failures of our Christian experience can be traced back to our habit of skipping through the corridors of the kingdom like children through a marketplace, chattering about everything, but pausing to learn the value of nothing. The church has great power and influence in society, and our presence is evident by the vast number of church buildings and Christian slogans that dot our cultural landscape, but few Christians have progressed much past a milk diet of basic Christian truths.

These basic truths are a great first step, but they are only the first step. We must move on to maturity. We must grow up.

But it is not just theology that indicates maturity. It is not just about what we believe. It is also about what we do. Proper Christian behavior is also required for growth into Christian maturity. Earlier in Ephesians 4, Paul revealed that spiritual maturity can be measured by involvement in ministry. Each member of the church is part of the work Crew on God’s construction site, and each person only grows into Christlikeness as they discover the ministry to which God has called them and start practicing it in their life.

Church ministry is not fulfilled by sitting in a pew on Sunday morning while trying to stay awake during the sermon. Christian behavior does not consist in smiling happily while chatting with friends in the foyer for twenty minutes on Sunday. True Christian ministry and behavior consists of how we live our day-to-day lives with our friends, family, and coworkers. It is measured by how we interact with our neighbor, the server at the restaurant, and the check-out lady in the store. Ultimately, the true test of Christian maturity is love.

In fact, love brings us full circle, back to our beliefs. Christianity is known for its large diversity of beliefs. This is one of the reasons there are so many denominations. How can we know which beliefs are right and which are wrong? The answer is love. Love is the litmus test for good theology. More specifically, love that looks like Jesus Christ is the litmus test for good theology.

If our beliefs do not lead to loving behavior toward others, then we can be sure that our beliefs are wrong. Since God is love, and everything God does is focused on revealing His love, this means that when God’s life is working through us, we too will live with love for others.

But sadly, once again, much of Christianity is not known for its love. Though we Christians often describe ourselves as loving, the average non-Christian rarely describes us in similar terms. Instead, words like “hypocritical, judgmental, and mean” are more often used.[3] Therefore, on this basis, much of modern Christianity can be described as immature. Christians who do not have a ministry and who are not lovingly serving others through the daily and weekly use of their spiritual gifts are not living the way a mature Christian would. Many Christians are immature Christians because they are not doing what God intended the members of His church to do.

Many people seem to think that the longer they are Christians, the more mature they become as a Christian. But this is just not true. Maturity in Christianity is not measured by the length of time one has been a Christians. While it is true that a new Christian cannot be a mature Christian (1 Tim 3:6), a long-time Christian may not be a mature Christian either. A man who has been a Christian for forty years is not necessarily more mature than one who has been a Christian for two. Maturing in the faith takes discipline, correction, training, teaching, instruction, and lots of practice (2 Tim 3:16–4:4).

It is like anything else in life that takes time and practice. For example, I play bass guitar. I’ve been a bass player for thirty years. When I first started playing bass guitar, I remember talking to every bass guitarist I could about how to play the bass. I wanted tips and suggestions on how to improve my ability no the bass. One question I always asked was how long they had played bass. Most of the answers I got were in the eight to ten-year range. So as I set out to learn bass, I couldn’t wait to be able to say that I had played bass for ten years, because by then, I would certainly be good.

But I never took a single lesson. I never bought an instructional book. I never took a class. In fact, after the first year of playing, I put the bass aside, and have only played about a dozen times since then. Yet I still own the bass, and I pick it up every couple years to play for twenty minutes or so. Yet I can truthfully say that I have been playing bass for almost thirty years. However, I am worse today at bass guitar then I was at the end of that first year. I have not improved because I have not practiced. So also, just as length of time does not guarantee mastery of a musical instrument, length of time as a Christian does not guarantee maturity in the Christian life.

But everybody must start somewhere. And everybody, when they first believe in Jesus for eternal life, starts out as a newborn Christian. They are an infant. A spiritual babe. As new Christians, the first thing they must do is focus on growing up. They must learn what to believe and learn how to behave.

However, just like regular children, new Christians don’t really know what they need to grow up. They don’t know how to talk, eat, get clean, or move around. All they really know is that sometimes they are hungry and sometimes they are tired. Sometimes they cry a lot. If given a choice, many of them would pick candy as the main element of their diet, and television as the main activity. But this is because children simply do not know what is good for them. They must be taught and trained by loving, protective adults. The children in the church must be protected and provided for. Those who are spiritually mature must guard the children and give to them what they need. This is what Paul goes describes in the rest of Ephesians 4:14.

Guarding Children

In Ephesians 4:14, Paul mainly emphasizes the guarding of spiritual children. He writes that there are false teachers prowling about, looking for immature Christians who can be led astray. Therefore it is the responsibility of the spiritually mature Christians to make sure that this does not happen to the immature Christians. It is the responsibility of the spiritual adults to guard the spiritual children from false teachers and false doctrine.

God wants the people in His church to have correct doctrine. And although God makes all believers into new creations when we first believe, this does not mean that all of our incorrect ways of living and wrong ways of thinking are instantaneously and completely corrected. Though we pass from death to life when we believe in Jesus, this transformation does not immediately affect all our beliefs and behaviors. We still retain many bad habits and ideas. It is the responsibility of the church, and specifically the pastor-teachers, to teach and train new Christians about what they are supposed to believe and how they are supposed to behave.

God gave the ability to some Christians to use the Word of God to teach and train other Christians, so that these new Christians can start doing the work of ministry. When new and immature Christians are taught what to believe and how to behave, they grow up in the faith and start loving and serving others, so that the entire church is strengthened. But until new Christians have matured a bit, they often fall prey the false teachings that abound in our fallen world. This is why it is important for church leaders to guard immature believers from false teaching and false teachers. Let us consider both dangers more closely.

From False Teaching

Ephesians 4:14 reveals that when new Christians are not adequately guarded by mature Christians, several bad things happen. First, the immature Christians are tossed to and fro. Like a child in a professional wrestling match, immature Christians get tossed around in the ring when they try to stand against sin and Satan. They are easily defeated and easily deceived. This is because they have not yet been trained to correctly discern truth from error. They fall prey to false doctrine and those who teach strange ideas.

This has been true of new Christians since the very beginning of the church. The early church fought against numerous heresies. One of the earliest was the heresy of the Gnostics. In the Greek language, gnosis means knowledge, so the Gnostics taught that in order to receive all that God wanted for you, you had to be given a special and deeper knowledge of God. This heresy led a lot of Christians astray, and the book of 1 John was written to combat an early form of this heresy.

Sadly, various forms of Gnosticism are still rampant in the church today, especially among those that place a heavy emphasis on gaining special knowledge, blessings, or experiences in the Christians life. Gnostic ideas are also found in the dualistic tendencies of some churches to emphasize the spiritual realm over the physical. Any group of believers that focus more on the Holy Spirit than on Jesus has likely succumbed in various ways to this ancient heresy. After all, the Holy Spirit does not like to take center stage, but always points people to Jesus. So mature Christians today can help immature believers avoid these ancient false teachings.

Then there was the heresy of Arianism. This teaching has nothing to do with Hitler’s sadistic dream of an Arian race. Instead, this false teaching claims that Jesus Christ was not fully God, but was just a human like the rest of us. Many Christians fell into this trap in the early days of the church, and there are some even today who argue that Jesus was not God, but was just an enlightened human who shows us the way that we too can become enlightened.

Later in church history, the church struggled against the heresy of Pelagianism. Pelagius taught that humans were born sinless and that, through sinless living, could attain heaven by good works and human effort. Many followed his path, and indeed, many still do. Any time you encounter someone who teaches that good works are necessary to make it into heaven, you are encountering remnants of the Pelagian heresy. Oddly, many of those who most loudly decry the Pelagian heresy turn around and teach the necessity of good works in order to attain heaven. They say things like “Salvation is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone” or “Faith without works is not really faith at all.” Such statements show that good works are required to attain heaven.[4] The anti-Pelagians have become Pelagian.

We could go through the centuries of church history and list one heresy after another, one false teaching after another. The truth is that the church is always being attacked by falsehood. But as every new wind of false doctrine rises, the church also rises against it, to teach the truth and call people to hold fast to what we have received. Nevertheless, there have always been those within the church who were immature, who were children, and who fall prey to these false teachings. They are the ones that Paul refers to in Ephesiains 4:14 who are tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.

The picture Paul describes is of a small boat on a stormy sea getting tossed to and fro by the waves. Those who have been on a stormy sea, or even on a stormy lake in a small boat, know that it is a very frightening experience. Every swell threatens to capsize or crush the vessel. And there seems to be no end to the threatening waves. They just keep coming, one after another, pounding, crashing, and breaking. You expend all of your energy trying to get to the safety of the shoreline without seeming to make any progress. This is how it feels to be caught in the torrential waves of false doctrine. It is frightening and exhausting.

A new Christian reads some book or hears some teacher who says one thing, and the statements seem to be logical and biblical, so the new Christian thinks that what they heard was correct. They often begin to excitedly tell their friends and family about what they have learned. But it is not long before one of these friends questions or challenges some of these ideas, and suggests that the new Christian read a different book or hear a second speaker who teaches the opposite. When the new Christian follows this suggestion, these new ideas also sound logical and biblical. So the new Christian becomes confused, and a little bit scared. They want to believe what is right, but have trouble determining which teaching is right and which is wrong. After a few of these issues pile up in their minds, they begin to feel battered, beaten, and tossed about by the winds of doctrine.

But note that the waves which might toss a small boat back and forth will barely touch an ocean liner. The church is a like the giant ocean liner. Church history, tradition, and teachings provide stability in the storm and firm decks on which to stand, so that there is no fear for those on board. But those who stray from the teachings of the church will get tossed to and fro by the waves, and will face the fear and uncertainty that comes with them. It is the church’s responsibility to call all new Christians to board the ocean liner, where they can gain their sea legs in a manageable and safe environment.

Paul continues this line of thinking by the next phrase in Ephesians 4:14, where he describes these children as being carried about with every wind of doctrine. Again, picking up the imagery of a boat at sea, this would be like a boat which has no sail and no oars. A boat of that kind is at the mercy of the wind. If the wind blows east, the boat goes east. If the wind changes direction and blows west, the boat goes west. A boat without any way to maneuver is a boat that is carried about with every wind. And that is exactly what happens to children who have not been grounded in the Word of God. When people fail to become founded upon the Word, they get carried about by every wind of doctrine (cf. Jude 12; Heb 13:9).

But it is not just the winds of doctrine that blow immature Christians around, it is also the false teachers who teach these doctrines. The false teachers are the true danger that Paul focuses on in the rest of verse 14, for without false teachers, there would be no false teaching.

From False Teachers

Paul continues in Ephesians 4:14 to write about the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. False teachers are tricky, cunning, and crafty. They are deceitful. They plot schemes and carry them out. Part of this is because they themselves are deceived. Many false teachers, I believe, don’t set out to become a false teachers, and often do not realize they are false teachers.

Most people who teach false doctrine are fully convinced of the truth of it themselves. False teachers truly believe that they are right. This is what makes them so persuasive. They honestly believe that they have discovered a set of truths which everyone needs to believe. But the real truth is that they too have been deceived and tricked into teaching what they teach.

There are, of course, some who purposefully set out to deceive. The old Steve Martin movie, “Leap of Faith,” though intended to be a satire of modern-day healing ministries, also revealed how some false teachers are simply in the ministry for the money and the fame. Some don’t believe a word of what they are teaching, but they teach it anyway because it bring in lots of money.

Nevertheless, for the most part, false teachers do not know they are false teachers, and therefore, false teachers are hard to recognize. False teachers do not wear signs proclaiming who they are. They are, as Jesus said, wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matt 7:15). Sometimes, the most vociferous and argumentative defenders of the truth, who go about accusing everyone else of being a false teacher, are false teachers themselves.

Furthermore, just as no false teacher believes they are a false teacher, nobody sitting under a false teacher believes that they are receiving false teaching. After all, if a person knew that they were learning from a false teacher, they would stop listening to them. Nobody intentionally listens to and obeys a teacher they know to be false and deceptive.

So how do false teachers become false? It happens in a variety of ways. Sometimes a teacher gets tired of not getting the attention they think they deserve. So in order to get attention, they invent or develop a brand new idea or an exciting way of teaching, and oftentimes this teaching turns out to be false. Through sly words, fine-sounding arguments, and phrases that tickle the ears, they gain support and popularity.

Though they do not intend to teach falsely, they do not teach with the right motives. Rather than teach to spread the truth, they teach to gain popularity or a following for themselves. They want to be known and recognized. They want to be the largest church in town or the most popular podcast online. Often, money is a factor as well, so that rather than teaching to grow spiritual children into adults, they teach to grow their own wallet and bank account.

This means that two reliable signs of a false teacher is when they only seem to care about growing the numbers of followers they have, or they often talk about giving money to support them and their ministry. Any time a teacher starts talking a lot about numbers, red flags should go up in the minds of the mature Christian. The sad reality is that these false teachers are not just led astray themselves by the lure of power and riches; they also lead astray spiritual children who have not been grounded in good doctrine.

And lest we get too puffed up with pride about our own ability to spot false teachers and sniff out bad doctrine, we must recognize that all Christians (including you and me) have occasionally fallen prey to false teaching. In fact, we can also say with a high degree of certainty that all Christians (including you and me) currently believe some false theology. There is not a single person on the face of the earth who is 100% correct in everything they believe. This is why we must continually be learning, studying, refining, and correcting ourselves under the authority of Scripture.

If you have been caught up in error in the past, or if you are afraid of being caught up in error in the future, you can mature and protect yourself from false teachers by taking time and making effort to study good biblical teaching and listen to good biblical teachers. Ask God to reveal to you where you are wrong in your thinking and theology, and then ask Him to direct you to good resources and teachers who can help guide you into the truth. Most importantly, never be afraid to question or challenge anything you believe. You can only discover false ideas if you question those ideas.

To truly see where you are lacking in your theology, seek to put into practice what you have learned. Only by ministering and serving others will you be able to see if what you are learning is truly leading you into love. After all, love is the litmus test for good theology. When you learn and live this way, you will no longer be spiritual children (cf. 1 Cor 13:11), tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, but instead, you will become a mature and Christlike spiritual adult.

This is the first aspect of God’s Program. It is what keeps us from false teaching and false teachers. Although Ephesians 4:14 mainly talks about the importance of guarding the spiritual children in church, the other aspect of proper parenting is giving to the children, or providing for them. Paul doesn’t mention this, but it is appropriate to include it because there is so much confusion today about what exactly a new Christian needs.

Giving to Children

Children are not born into this world knowing what is good for them. They need to be trained to eat their vegetables rather than fill up on licorice and Twinkies. They need to be told to not sit too close to the TV, to go to bed at a decent hour, and to treat other children with respect. If parents allowed children to make all their own decisions, few children would live past the age of ten.

It is the same with spiritual children. When we first become Christians, we do not know what is good for us. We want cotton candy sermons that are light, airy, and sweet on the tongue. We want high-energy music that gives us goosebumps. We don’t want to hear about getting rid of sin or practicing spiritual disciplines. We prefer to be carried everywhere, and don’t want to learn how to walk in the Spirit. And oftentimes, when we don’t get our way, we throw temper tantrums and get angry at the leadership of the church for not giving us what we want.

Sadly, most churches today seem to operate under the conviction that new Christians (and even non-Christians) know best what they need. They run surveys to discover what the “felt needs” are of new and non-believers, and then organize the church around these needs. When the church operates under this mentality, it functions like a family that assumes children know what they need. The end result of focusing solely on these “felt needs” is that the young Christians remain weak and sickly children who never grow up or mature.

I agree that it is critically important to meet the physical, emotional, relational, and psychological needs of new and non-Christians. After all, if we only seek to meet the spiritual needs of people, we have fallen into the ancient trap of dualism, thinking that it is only the spiritual aspects of life that matter. The church is to minister to the whole person. Nevertheless, the church must not primarily take its cues from new believers or unbelievers about what the church should be doing and offering. Why not? Because new Christians and non-Christians don’t really know what they need. They know what they want, but this is quite different from what they need.

If parents met only the “felt needs” of their children (as far too many are now doing!), we would be near the end of civilization as we know it. When my daughters were young, they thought they needed a dog, a pony, a kitten, a fish, a horse, a lion, a bird, and just about every other animal they saw. When it came to food, they thought they needed jelly beans, licorice, chocolate ice cream, juice, chips, and green olives. (Yes, my oldest daughter loved green olives when she was two.)

But as parents in the family, my wife and I (actually, my wife more than I) knew what our daughters needed better than they did. Did they need food? Yes, but not junk food. They needed healthy food, and we added in sweets and candy as a treat after the healthy food was eaten. Did they need companionship and something to take care of? Yes. It is good to develop the caretaking abilities of children. But they didn’t need to be Noah, gathering two of every animal they saw. Did they need time to relax and be entertained? Sure. But this doesn’t mean they get to watch television all day long.

The same is true for the church. Those who are more mature in the faith and who know sound doctrine, should be the ones who decide what to teach. And those who, through constant practice, are able to discern good from evil (Heb 5:15), should be the primary decision-makers about what to give to the new and immature believers in the church.

New Christians do not know what they need. Most think they need big churches with numerous options and lots of activities to divert their energy and attention from the troubles of life. They want a large children’s program and youth group, forty-five minutes of quality, heart-pounding music, and a dynamic speaker who takes them on an emotional roller-coaster complete with side-splitting jokes and tear-jerking stories. When they leave church, they want to feel all warm and fuzzy inside and as if God Himself has sung them to sleep.

None of these are bad things. Youth groups and children’s programs are good. Quality music is a must. It is a sin to bore people with the sermon (the ideas in Scripture are the most exciting ideas that exist). And people should absolutely feel closer to God when they hang out with other believers. But these are not the only things that new Christians need.

New Christians, like new babies, need milk—and lots of it. Milk helps newborns grow, and it helps protect them from sickness and disease. There is also a bond that forms between the mother and the infant as the baby feeds. Spiritually, the mother of the new Christian is the church. So with all of these benefits, it is the responsibility of the spiritually mature adults in the church, and especially of the pastor-teacher, to make sure that milk is what new Christians get. Whether it is provided through a special service or in a small-group study, new Christians need spiritual milk.

What is spiritual milk? It is nothing but the pure and simple teaching of the Word of God, and the activity of showing them how to practice these truths in their lives. Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:2 that Christians, as newborn babes, should desire the pure milk of the Word, so that they may grow (cf. also Heb 5:11–6:3). If a church is not giving to its people the clear and systematic teaching of Scripture, complete with explanation and application, and finished off with actual practice in the community, then they are not giving to the people what they need. Such church leaders are starving their children and should not wonder why the Christians in their church never seem to mature.

And note that as a child grows and develops, they eventually should become self-feeders. That is, while it is important for parents to feed their children when they are young, people should not continue to be fed by their parents for their entire life. Part of the maturing process is that children learn to prepare their own meals and feed themselves. So while it is a valid criticism for new Christians to say that they “are not being fed” by the church, it is not valid for those Christians who think they are mature to make the same complaint. By the time a baby Christian becomes a mature Christian, they should be able to plan, prepare, and eat their own spiritual meals.

If parents continue to feed their children for 48 years after they are born (barring any special mental or psychological factors, of course), that parent is a failure. At some point or another, those parents must show their children the door, saying, “It is time to be an adult on your own.” Yet ironically in the church, it is usually those Christians who consider themselves to be “mature” who complain that they are “not getting fed” by the pastor’s sermons. It is important to be fed spiritually … when you are spiritual baby. But as you mature as a follower of Jesus Christ, you should learn to feed yourself.[5]

And so it is a pastor-teacher’s responsibility along with the other overseers of the church, to protect the church from false teaching and false teachers. The best way to do this is to provide good teaching from good teachers, and then lead by example on how to live out these teachings in our daily lives. It is not enough to tell a child they can’t have Twinkies and soda pop every day. The spiritual leaders of the church must also provide good, healthy meals to the children so that they can grow and mature. These children will ultimately be able to study Scripture for themselves and teach it to others also.

As great as children are, the main goal of child-rearing is to help them grow up to become productive members of society. This involves guarding them from harm and giving them what they need. The same is true for the church. As great as new believers are, the goal of the church is to help new Christians mature into productive members of God’s kingdom. For this to happen, they need to be protected from what will harm them and they need to be guided into sound doctrine. This is what Paul goes on to explain in Ephesians 4:15-16.

Notes:

[1] See my book, (#AmazonAdLink) Church is More than Bodies, Bucks, & Bricks (Dallas, OR: Redeeming Press, 2015) for more on this subject.

[2] I have written a book on all six doctrines, but it is not yet published. Join my discipleship group at RedeemingGod.com/join/ to get notified when this book is available.

[3] See Dan Kimball, (#AmazonAdLink) They Like Jesus But Not the Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan: 207) and David Kinnaman, (#AmazonAdLink) UnChristian (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012).

[4] See J. D. Myers, The Gospel According to Scripture for a longer explanation of why such statements are wrong.

[5] For a longer explanation of this point, see the article here, which is mostly written by Vince Antonucci: “Waa! I’m Not Getting Fed!”

Defining Lying

Don’t Lie (Ephesians 4:25)

Lying Hurts Others

Lying is the Sin that Began it All

Lying Resulted in Physical Death

Lying is Associated with the Most Serious of Sins

Lying is Completely Contrary to God

Liars are Often Self-Deceived

Lying is So Easy to Do

Lying is Difficult to Maintain

Tell the Truth

Endnotes on Ephesians 4:25

Outline for Ephesians 4:20-24

I. Learn from Christ (Ephesians 4:20-21)

II. What Jesus Taught (Ephesians 4:22-24)

A. Put off the Old (Ephesians 4:22)

A’. Put on the New (Ephesians 4:24)

B. Be Renewed (Ephesians 4:23)

Conclusion

Explanation of Ephesians 4:17-19

An Overlooked Observation

The Proper Way to Read Ephesians 4:17-19

Notes on Ephesians 4:17-19

The Task of the Church (Part II): Growing Adults (Ephesians 4:15-16)

What Church Growth Is

How Church Growth Is Accomplished

Speaking the Truth

Speaking in Love

Personal Growth

Church Growth

The End is Love

Notes:

The Task of the Church: Guarding Children (Ephesians 4:14)

No Longer Be Children

Guarding Children

From False Teaching

From False Teachers

Giving to Children

Notes:

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