Ephesians 4:32 - Our Shining North Star

"Be coming to be unto one another kind, tender-hearted, forgiving each, just as also God in Christ forgave you."

-Kindness.  Generous, considerate, polite - precisely how the Lord relates to us (Rom 2.4, 1Pet 2.3).  Yes, kindness leads to repentance, more effectively than harshness and punishment, producing a more lasting and grateful life change.  And therein lies the key for Paul - we are to show our fellow believers the exact same kind of kindness and mercy and patience and understanding and leniency and forgiveness that God super-abundantly overflows to us each and every day.  Kindness in the Greek actually means something useful, something manageable or pleasant - as opposed to what is harsh, hard, sharp, bitter.  Someone that others will find pleasant and useful to be around.

-Tender-hearted means that my heart stays soft and gentle in all my relationships, especially within the body of Christ.  Sadly my fleshy propensity is to do just the opposite.  Especially as I get closer to others in community, people WILL bruise me or do something I disagree with or they don’t lead (or follow) the way I think they should or I don’t like their warts or they are just plain different.  And what do I do?  I shut them out.  I close my heart, I harden it towards this one who is supposed to be my brother, and the end result?  Meaningful sharing and serving fly right out the window.  There is no oneness even to guard, much less to leverage for the sake of glorious Gospel advance.

-The prescription for healing and preserving relationships?  It starts with forgiveness, a letting go.  We let go of the things we hold against our brother or sister.  We let them go as far as the east is from the west.  We let them sink into the bottom of the ocean depths, and remember them no more.  We no longer hold them in account against our brother.  Just. Exactly. Like. God. Did. With. Us.  (Jer 31.34).  The complete and permanent forgiveness we find in Christ is the starting point among the assembly of His followers - it is our shining north star, our precedent, our benchmark.  Forgiveness between believers is grounded in the deep-seated understanding that I have been forgiven an infinite debt, vast beyond all measure, completely unremittable, and I am hereby expected to extend forgiveness to others, seventy-times-seven (Mt 18.22).  I let the wounds and the warts go, and when(ever) those undertake to surface once again, I let them go again.  And again.  And again.  If we are to love our enemies and turn them the other cheek, how much more for our brothers and sisters in Christ?  And at this point, it is not at all about what I might require of the other person - it is all about what God requires of me.  And that, for my own benefit - holding on and not letting go not only falls short of the glory and grace of God, it poisons my spirit to the core.  Keep in mind as well, if I find that I cannot forgive the one who has sinned against me, it could very well be an indication that I have not truly been forgiven by the Lord.  Forgiveness naturally exudes from the one who has been forgiven by God.

Ephesians 4:31 - Presenting the Heisman

"All bitterness and wrath and anger and shouting and blasphemy, let it be put away from you, with all evil.’

-Bitterness.  All bitterness.  Bitterness is produced when someone else’s brokenness collides with my brokenness in a way that causes bruising.  If I fail to address it, the bruise can then fester, becoming a gangrenous sore which endangers the health of the entire body.  It could be repeated blows, or one big one, but collision with brokenness is unavoidable in a fallen world - it is my internal collision-adjuster which makes all the difference.  Undealt with, the festering bruise becomes bitterness, a foul weed whose root goes straight down into my heart and infects my entire outlook toward that person.  Now they are all bad.  They can do no good, and I want nothing to do with them.  From me they get the heisman - an emotional and social stiff-arm which puts meaningful sharing and serving together out of the picture.  The cure of course is forgiveness - found in the next verse.  Meanwhile, the body of Christ is rendered impotent, bruised and broken and definitely not all pulling together in the same direction (cf Philippians 1.27).  

-Bitterness erupts into all the other symptoms mentioned here.  Curiously, wrath and anger - what was just permitted, yea commanded in Ephesians 4.26 - is now to be eradicated, otherwise forbidden when it is rooted in self, steeped in bitterness and boiling over in ill-will towards my (would-be) beloved.  Rather than gentle and kind words spoken with self-control I wind up shouting.  Clamor is angry shouting, and yes, it is also to be put away entirely, unbecoming as it is to a true follower of Christ.  O no, no more shouting in anger.  I must let the Lord take that far from me.  Shouting in anger usually means I have lost all patience and any sembelance of self-control, no longer full of peace and gentleness, no longer controlled by God’s Spirit, I have now reverted to walking in the flesh.

-Blasphemy is speaking negatively about another person, either to their face or behind their back.  Normally we think of blasphemy as being words against God, but in fact the world blasphemes one another all the time (cf Matthew 27.39, 1Peter 4.4).  Slander.  Gossip.  Defamation.  Criticism.  Remember, it’s not that we can’t or shouldn’t deliver constructive criticism to others, but when we do, all our truthing is to be done in love (and to their face).  Our words and countenance must be bathed in love, wrapped up in a heart that moves towards others, especially those in our family (spiritual or otherwise), for their good.

-Evil here does not refer to general moral evil, but rather a special form of vice, ill-will, a malevolent disposition towards my neighbor.  It is the polar opposite of the kind of posture  should have towards the brothers and sisters in my assembly (cf 1Peter 2.1, James 1.21).  It is imperative that I rid myself of these negative feelings towards my fellow believer, whatever it takes.  I must allow the Lord to eraditcate them entirely.  Sadly, rather than deal with my negative feelings, I tend to voice them to others, which not only engenders even more deep-seated bitterness in my heart, but then also infects others.

-Bitterness.  Wrath.  Anger.  Shouting.  Slander.  Malice.  This is how the world relates to one another, and we must be different.  The next verse tells us how...

Ephesians 4:30 - How to make Dad really sad

"And do not be paining the Holy Spirit of God, in Whom you were sealed unto [the] day of redemption."

-How can it be, a mere mortal like me can cause pain in the heart of almighty God, that I could somehow sadden His Spirit?  The root in the Greek refers to pain of body or mind, but it usually describes the emotion which accompanies hardship or loss or disappointment.  And this is what we do to God’s heart when we do not guard the oneness, whenever we let fly our words of rottenness and withhold words of kindness and grace.  It makes our Dad really sad.

-And who would ever want to knowingly do that to a loving father?  What kind of callous ingrate would do that?  Think about it, from the time we first put one unsteady foot in front of another, we aim to be the apple of our daddy’s eye, we long to feel his pleasure, to make him happy and to feel his pride bursting on account of us.  We want to hear him say, ‘Well done, I am so proud of you.’  Under normal healthy circumstances it would immediately arrest any of us to learn that we did even one thing to break our father’s heart, to cause him pain and grief.

-Paul specifically says it is God’s Spirit we grieve, this third person of the Trinity, this One Who is constantly at work, forging the bonds of peace and love and unity between believers, the same One Who is making a permanent home in the heart of each and every believer.  The King of the Universe has put His royal seal on us by permantly sealing His Spirit into our lives.  He is our constant Companion, the promised Helper, an ever-present Source of supernatural strength and guidiance, redecorating our lives and recreating in and through us the life of Jesus.  At least, that’s the plan.  We must cooperate with Him, get in step and walk with Him, listen and respond to His lead, depend on Him every moment of every day (Romans 8.9-14, Ephesians 5.18).  We must not quench Him (1Thessalonians 5.19), do anything which would otherwise extinguish what He is doing in the hearts and lives of those who are His.  And we must not grieve Him.  More on this in the following verse...

Ephesians 4:29 - On E.D. and I.E.D.'s...

"Every rotten word out of your mouth let it not be coming out, but rather if a certain [is] good toward building up the need, in order that it should give grace to the [ones] hearing].’

-No rotten words.  No, not any, not one.  Only good words which build up, words which give grace.  Rotten is what happens to fruit and to fish (Matthew 7.17, 13.48), corrupted by age, generally of poor quality and not fit for public consumption.  We would never willingly serve such food to our family much less to guests - so why would I ever serve them even one single rotten word?  These may not actually offend our sense of smell or taste or sight, nevertheless they still reek of putrescence.  They sink down in our souls, full of foul nastiness.

-Building up the body, right?  The body building itself up in love, right?  That’s what we’re supposed to be doing here, building up one another.  At best we often waste our time with words and small talk which do nothing to spur our fellow Christ-followers on to love and good deeds (Hebrews 10.24).  But our rotten words - these have the exact opposite effect.  They wound.  They tear down.  They discourage.  We lash out without regard for how our words injure our brother, our sister, our loved one, this precious soul for whom Christ died.  We drop our verbal I.E.D.’s and leave them hanging like a severed limb.  We speak what’s on our mind and give expression to our feelings with little or no regard for the feelings of others, because in the end it’s all about me.

-What does it look like to give grace, i.e. with our words?  We’re talking about undeserved favor.  It is not the verbal tongue lashing we think they deserve.  t is not our knee-jerk fleshy retort when someone frustrates us or exhausts every last pittance of patience.  It is not harsh truth delivered with a dead thud in a loveless vacuum.  Rather, we give life.  We build people up with our words.  We encourage.  e affirm, acknowledge, appreciate.  No, they might not deserve this.  But they need it.  With our tongue, we wield such power - the power to meet a need, the power to (help) build the Church, the potential to give another a glimpse of God’s breathtaking goodness through the gift of a kind word (or through a harsh one withheld).  Thank you.  Good job.  You are special.  I’m proud of you.  Surely too many of us are coping with a lesser-known form of ED - edification-dysfunction, rarely hearing words of affirmation and appreciation, and (sadly) rarely giving them either.  But we can do this.  e must do this - the bride of Christ and eternity are in the balance.  Let’s double down and do this, get really really good at intentionally giving grace with our words.  God help us, indeed...

Ephesians 4:28 - Sharing on heavenly steroids

"The [one] stealing no longer be stealing, but rather be laboring, working with [his] own hands the good, in order that he may be having to be sharing to the [one] having need.

-Lying.  And stealing.  These are the default settings for a world adrift without God - leaders, students, law enforcement, business owners - they are all caught up in it.  Take what is not yours, don’t work if you don’t have to, beg, cheat, lie, steal.  The nations actually live in compounds, carefully esconced behind these high-walled enclosures topped with barbed-wire and shards of glass as protection against those who would come in and take that for which somebody else labored.  Burglar alarms, home monitoring, security cameras, padlocks and safes and trip wires - all these are measures developed to deter those who would take what belongs to someone else, Stuff for which they themselves did not work.  What is yours is mine.

-Each of us, we emerge from the womb with an acute, well-developed sense of ‘mine!’ - so innate is this, unfortunately, that most of us require patient instruction from an early age in the nuances of sharing and to acquire the awareness that what is yours is not also mine.  Unchecked, this trait can easily blossom into a callous disregard for both my fellow man and for honest work.  I will readily cut corners and do what I can to avoid having to work, up to and including reaching out and taking things for which I have not worked, even when they belong to someone else, all the moreso if I become convinced that my theft (and laziness) will go undetected or unpunished.

-Note the reason cited here for working... in order to have something to share.  To share with those in need.  Yes, sharing is a heavenly transaction, and it flips the equation on its head.  What is mine is yours.  Here is where the early church shone, blazing like the midday texas sun.  There was not one needy person among them (Acts 2.44-45, 4.32-35).  Nope - not even one.  They shared all things.  All.  Things.  That’s what the Scripture says.  One person’s excess was (for) another’s lack.  It was sharing on heavenly steroids.  And yet no welfare state, this.  Each and every member was expected to work, and contribute as they were able.  I work as hard as I can - yes to take care of and provide for my family, but beyond that NOT so that I can enlarge my barns, accumulate more and bigger and cooler stuff and spend more on me and mine, but rather so that I can share.  What if the body of Christ still did this, really did this?  Do you think the world might stop and take notice and say, ‘Look how they truly love one another’?

Ephesians 4:27 - Sleeping with the enemy

-’...neither you [all] be giving a place to the enemy.’ 

-Yes, deal with your anger before sundown (i.e. as soon as you realistically can), before the enemy has a chance to inflict some damage on the body.  Diabolos.  He is the enemy (Satan means adversary in Hebrew).  This falsely-accusing, slandering, gossiping one, the enemy of God, of our souls - he comes to destroy (John 10.10), to tear down what is good, what God has built.  Imagine what would happen if ISIS were somehow able to set up a military base of operations in the area where you live.  Who in their right mind would allow such a thing if it were within the scope of their power to prevent it?  Exactly.  hat is precisely what Paul is talking about here.  Do not give the enemy a base of operations in your life or in the life of your assembly.  In other words, we must maintain a military level of vigilance over how we deal with our anger, as well as how we speak truth in love to one another.  Diabolos is also the father of lies, the crafty master deceiver who was a deceiver from the beginning and continues to deceive the whole world (John 8.44, 2Corinthians 11.3, Revelation 12.9).  He takes dead aim at God's Plan A for reaching the world - the oneness of the Body of Christ - and will do whatever he can to destroy it.  What he loves to do is create distance and doubt and distrust by falsely accusing others in my mind (cf Revelation 12.10, Zechariah 3.1, 1Peter 5.8), tempting me to not believe the best about my fellow believers.  Bitterness, unforgiveness, vain imaginations - he will slander others in my mind and wreak havoc in relationships however he can (or is allowed to) in a relentless attempt to create schisms and pull God's people apart (which over the centuries he has managed to do and continues to do with devastating effectiveness).  Unfortunately, while falsehood and anger (my anger) and unforgiveness persist, that gives space to diabolos, an open invitation for the enemy to move out and come in and steal kill and destroy all that God is building in my assembly.  I am sleeping with the enemy - or may as well be.  But love.  Love conquers all.  Love believes (and bears!!!) ALL things (1Corinthians 13.7).  Love casts out fear - and anger, and bitterness, and resentment, and unforgiveness.  We must embrace humility and love and one another and wade into and move beyond our hurts and woundedness and perceived slights and disagreements.  We must do whatever it takes to come together and build up the body and guard our oneness.  Because if we let the diabolos separate and keep us apart, for whatever reason, then he has gained a victory.  Not ultimate victory, which is certain (for the good guys).  But he will have taken some ground against the Kingdom of heaven.  And it was entirely preventable.

Ephesians 4:26 - Anger Management 101

"Be angered and do not be sinning.  Do not let the sun be going down upon your anger..."

-Anger.  Strong feelings of annoyance or displeasure or even hostility which can easily erupt in hurtful words and actions.  Here we have yet another challenge to oneness and growth of the Body.  But note that there is a place for anger.  Anger is a natural and sometimes necessary emotion, and unlike the lie, Paul does not carve out a zero-tolerance posture vis a vis anger.  While no quarter may be given to falsehood in any way whatsoever, the emotion of anger is actually allowed a place in both the lives of believers and in their local assembly.  There perhaps is no way to prevent feelings of anger from arising within us, subject as we are to all the vagaries of life in a broken world among broken people.  Stuff happens (or doesn’t), and sometimes it can make us angry.  People have warts, they carry around a lot of junk, and the closer we get to them in community, the more their junk is likely to put us out and make us angry.  Hey, God Himself gets angry.  The problem is not the feelings per se.  It is the sources of the anger and then what we do with the anger that makes all the difference.

-Studies have shown that anger uncontrolled and/or undealt with in fact increases my risk of heart attack, coronary disease, stroke, respiratory problems, weakens the immune system, is linked to greater levels of anxiety and depression, and generally shortens my life.  Turns out that God’s plan is actually some pretty good medicine, for both my body and my soul.

-So what we’re told here is, do not sin when you are angry.  Sin is about what I want, as opposed to what God wants.  So I first require enough self-control to be able to step back and look into my heart and at whatever is provoking me in order to be able to discern how much self is wrapped up in my anger.  Am I concerned more about what God wants, about His honor and reputation?  Or am I more concerned about me, about how I may have been injured or otherwise inconvenienced in this situation?  The more I find that this is about me, the more restraint I must show in my response.  And I may find that I just need to let it go (Matthew 5.39, 1Corinthians 6.7, Philippians 4.5) - that is mercy.  Which in fact is the same way that the Lord has dealt with us over and over, with kindness and tolerance and patience and forbearance (Romans 2.4).  If (when) a brother or sister makes me angry, I need to be careful not to respond in a way that injures them or the body.  That’s what the world does - the natural response.  The world lashes out.  The world gets even.  The world makes my brother pay for what he did.  The world divides and comes apart over offences and warts.  Not so with God’s people.  We come together and we hang in there, we build up in love and never tear down, thru think and thin, warts and all, even when things aren’t right or the way we like or how we think they should be.  And no, that’s not natural - it’s supernatural.  Out-of-this-world.  Uncommon goodness (for the common good).  And exactly what the world is dying for the bride of Christ to be.

-Now part of this coming together, this hanging-in-there in community depends on me doing something with my anger, something healthy and constructive and which shows off the goodness of God.  We’re not talking about simply ignoring an offence or a situation which isn’t right.  Nor are we stuffing our anger.  We’re dealing with it, not necessarily right away but sooner rather than later - we’re letting it and the offence go (true mercy, unfeigned forgiveness - not conditioned upon an apology), and we’re communicating directly yet gently with the responsible parties in order to possibly try to rectify the situation if we can.  We can talk about how this situation made us feel.  We can lovingly speak truth to the other person(s) involved.  And we’re taking care to not be talking about the situation with other parties (gossip), unless of course they need to somehow become part of the solution.  We cannot control the situation or their response, but we can and must control ours.  And while it’s not possible to do so in our own strength - things like love, peace, long-suffering, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control are all fruit of God’s Spirit (Ephesians 5.18) - we guard the oneness.  We love one another with God’s everlasting love, and His love bears all things (1Corinthians 13.7) - there is no escape clause, no get out of the jail free card in the Body of Christ.  We are family, and leaving is not an option.  Not what God intends, at least.  Oh Lord, have mercy on our fractious, schismatic, petty, partisan ways, on a Body we have chopped and spliced and beaten and bloodied and divided almost beyond recognition.  Are we beyond hope? 

Ephesians 4:25 - Divergent

"Therefore, having put away the lie, be speaking truth each with his neighbor, because we are parts of one another."

-We are aliens, new creations who are other-worldly, different from the rest of the world because God Himself has remade us into totally new and different people, and now we are like Him.  The two ways in which this is most notably visible is that our lives are (or sure as heck should be) characterized by righteousness - we do everything right, and truth - everything we know, think, believe, say, and do is founded upon and in accordance with what is true.  Unlike the nations, who are walking in darkness, living lives which are rather devoid of truth.

-And this is precisely where our path diverges from the world.  One of the first things on which we must focus, assuming we are all in for this new life - and this ties back to helping the Body of Christ grow - is to get rid of any falsehood in our relationships with one another and embrace this high standard of speaking truth with one another, the same truth and love to which Paul referred back in Ephesians 4.15.  This is one essential ingredient to building true community.  But recall that the very core of the brokenness associated with the old man was rooted in deceit, the obfuscation of truth, deceiving others, deceiving self - living a lie and walking in THE Lie, the advent of which gave birth to all the brokenness in the first place.  And so in laying aside and jettisoning the deceiving-and-deceived old man, we are getting rid of all vestiges of the Lie.  We are purging it from our lives and from our midst, because we are new people, entirely new creations, and we have been recreated to increasingly reflect this One Who made us and is remaking us to be like His Son, Who is the embodiment of Truth.

-Specifically, we relate to fellow members of the Body of Christ truthfully.  Granted, this particular bar may not appear to be such a stretch for those of us who have grown up in the relatively upright moral climate of the US.  Ours is still fairly well steeped in a Judeo-Christian ethic - more than likely we can tend to take truth in relationships for granted.  We all learn from childhood that honesty is the best policy, do we not?  Truth may no longer be absolute, but it is still ingrained in our culture.  Here honesty is rather assumed (unless you're dealing with a crook or a politician, which of course can sometimes be the same thing), and dishonesty when found out is normally subject to some form of chastisement or other even more adverse consequences.  Not so with the nations.  Go someplace where the Gospel has not permeated the culture, where it has never been, and you will find that dishonesty is actually somewhat the norm.  The lie reigns supreme, and corruption is rampant.  People simply don't default to being truthful with one another - they cheat, they cut corners, they take bribes, they deal dishonestly whenever it suits them - far more often that what you see in the places where evangelical Christianity has gone.  And this pervasive dishonesty of course flies in the face of community because you cannot trust your neighbor.  Thus we see one huge way that a local assembly of Christ-followers will stand out, shining like a city on a hill.  Honesty.  Doing what is right.  People just don't live and relate to one another like that among the nations.  But we did not learn Christ in this way, Paul says.  We are truly divergent.  We are part of a Body which must trust and depend on one another and come together for the sake of a greater cause, the Great Commission, for the sake and honor of our King, this One Who called us into His Kingdom and out of darkness.  Truth.  Let our lives be marked by this, in all our dealings.

Ephesians 4:24 - A Real-life Invasion of the Body Snatchers

"...and to put on the new man the [one] according to God having been created in righteousness and piety of the truth."

-The new man, brand new, not merely a self-makeover, but so much more - a total me-metamorphosis from the inside out.  Firmly grounded in truth, the Truth of God, about Who He is and who I am in relation to Him - I wear this new man like an all-encompassing cloak, a robe of righteousness.  A brand new creation am I (2Corinthians 5.17), created (or rather re-created - yes, re-born, John 3.3) in His image, to be like Him.  No longer fallen, flawed, broken, dying - actually my old man has died and something new (alien?) has taken its place (Romans 6.4) - a real-life invasion of the body snatchers!  Literally, an alien heavenly seed somehow got planted in my soul and I have been born again (1Peter 1.23).  I have died and not gone to heaven but rather have brought heaven to earth!  This is who I am if I have put my trust in Christ and have truly begun following Him.  In God’s eyes, I’ve done everything right, fully devoted to Him and to what He wants.  I am not some raucous rowdy rebel given to wanton sin and pleasure.  I am no longer some spiritual ne’er-do-well, a prosaic happy pagan content only to care about the here and now and the threefold self.  I am a walking, talking outpost of heaven, clothed with and indwelt and possessed by the heavenly Commander-in-Chief Himself.  And He's not come to take sides, He's come to take over.  His truth (THE Truth), His ways have carried the day in my life, and intend to do so through my life.  To extend the knowledge and celebration of His mighty goodness to my family and to families everywhere.  Praise Him...!

Ephesians 4:23 - A daily dose of mind-soap?

"...but to being renewed in the spirit of the mind of you..."

-Old man gone, and in his place, a new mind, new again, present tense, ongoing, moment-by-moment, constantly made new again.  Not merely some freshening up - that is an entirely different word in the Greek.  No, the root of this word means brand spankin’ new.  Interestingly, this is the one time this word is used in the NT.  Our mind gets totally made new again, brand new thinking based on truth that I did not have before.

-And from whence, would you suppose, does this truth come?  How about the myriad things vying for my attention?  Hollywood, the mainstream media, government and our state-sponsored educational system, our friends on Facebook, the world?  No, no, no, a million times no - not one of these is a reliable source of truth.  God is Truth, He is the God of Truth (Isaiah 65.16), there is no other truth - all truth is found in Him and derives from Him.  Your Word is Truth, Scripture says (2Samuel 7.28, Psalm 119.160), everlasting, never-changing.  The spirit of our age insists that there absolutely are no absolutes, that truth is relative, uncertain at best and certainly non-binding.  The world and the devil have always striven to throw off the ‘shackles’ of truth, they twist it and stretch it and color it and hide it and flat out ignore it.  Which again is why theirs is the way of the empty mind, why we wind up with our minds having been steeped in a bubbling kettle of half-truths and misinformation, needing to be washed clean every day.  We need a daily dose of mind-soap.  Indeed, we should, we must commit ourselves to a daily diet of God’s Truth, found first and foremost in His Word (cf Daniel 9.13, John 17.17).  And Jesus - He likewise is Truth, is the embodiment of Truth (John 1.14, 1.17, 14.6).  A daily dose of Jesus - just what the doctor ordered.  And the Spirit, the Spirit of Truth - He guides us into all the truth, whatever it is (John 16.13).  We must be constantly walking in the Spirit, listening to Him, depending on Him (more on this in the next chapter).  Yes, and as we feast on a steady diet of this life-giving, emancipating, soul-satisfyng truth, our minds will literally be regenerating and metamorphosing into something truly glorious...

Ephesians 4:22 - On Two-Dog Fights and Chasing Chimeras

"...to put away you according to the former lifestyle the old man the [one] being corrupted according to the lusts of deceit..."

-The old man, the former lifestyle - this is who I used to be, the way we were.  BEFORE we learned the Truth about Jesus and began following Him.  Truth is, this old man was AND STILL IS headed in the WRONG direction, headed straight towards certain destruction, gradually being destroyed.  This is the Law of Corruption, to which all of creation has been subjected (Romans 8.21).  Stuff breaks down.  Everything breaks down - nothing lasts forever.  We experience this ultimately in death, the process of death, whose genesis we see when the first couple chose NOT to follow the Lord.  And death now is the lot of fallen man, mortal, dying, fatally consigned to tread the wide road which leads to destruction.  And, irony of ironies, it took a death, an unlikely death in the fulness of time, the implausible impossible death of eternal immortal God, to reverse the curse and finally break the stranglehold which this law of destruction had over us.

-Some insist that the old man has been forever removed from us in Christ, but Paul says he is still kicking, still hanging around - if we let him.  A rotting mass of moral filth, our old self is dead weight at best.  Specifically, the old man is being destroyed according to what Paul calls the lusts of deceit.  The key word here is deceit.  Lust technically is simply desire - desires are normal, God-given in fact.  It is the object of our desire which determines its moral goodness or lack thereof.  And the problem is that we desire, we attach our heart to things which lead us away from God and which ultimately destroy us.  Enticing, tempting, they may have every appearance of goodness (cf Genesis 3.6), but it is a fool’s paradise, leading us down the primrose path.  Yes, it is this obfuscation of the truth which gets us off track - precisely what the serpent did to Eve (cf 2Corinthians 11.3), which again is what cranked up the whole process of death to begin with.  And it continues unabated to this day (2Timothy 3.13, Titus 3.3).  If we let him, our old man will doggedly persist in dragging us after things which are contrary to truth - half-truths, blatant falsehoods - constantly striving in the vain attempt to fill the infinite abyss with chimeras, illusory apparitions, anything actually other than the One Who made him.  And the outcome is of no consequence, deceived as he is, like a canine creature of habit he will never stop returning to his vomit.  It is the old proverbial question of which dog wins in a 2-dog fight?  The one you feed...

-So Paul says, stop feeding him.  Once and for all, lay the old man down.  Take him off like the nasty ratty old coat that he is, thrown him off, and don’t put him back on ever again.  That is no longer who I am.  The former thoughts and habits and hangouts and hangups - old man, gone for good.  And thankfully, there is no vacuum left behind in his place...(next verse!)

Ephesians 4:20-21 - The Great Deviation

"But you [all], not thus you learned the Christ...if indeed Him you heard and in Him were taught, just as truth is in the Jesus...’

-Two magnificent buts in this letter.  The first (in chapter 2): you were enemies, excluded, and so on and so forth, BUT God... Now here: the nations are thus and thus, BUT you...!  The former is the Great Intervention.  Here we have the Great Deviation.  In fact, it is directly due to the fact of the Great Intervention that you all are now part of the Great Deviation.  So, not thus, Paul says.  Not like them, not like this.  Not in emptiness and darkness and ignorance and callousness towards the truth did you learn about Christ.  Not stumbling around and living like everyone else, not living and learning by base instincts.  No, you all are different, you all are truly deviants.  (In the best way, of course...!)

-Paul makes a safe assumption, one which he has made for the entirety for this letter, that these ones in this assembly in Ephesus have heard and have truly believed the truth about Jesus.  Yes, Virginia, there absolutely is such a thing as absolute truth, and this truth is in Jesus.  You want off the way of the empty mind?  Learn about Jesus.  Learn FROM Him.  He IS the Truth and the Way, the way into heaven and out of the Cult of More.  He is the Beginning and the End, and the end of the Law of Futility.  To believe and fully follow Him is to deviate off the wide and well-trodden way of the nations, the way of the empty mind which leads to death, and to embark upon the narrow way, the way of the Cross, of denying and dying to self - AND of breathtaking goodness, unspeakable joy, indescribable peace and eternal life.

-Heard AND taught.  note the distinction here - they wound up being deviants in part because they both heard and were taught.  Deliverance from this Cult of More, escape from the prevaling way of the nations is not effected in a single dose, a single hearing about Jesus.  Old thought patterns and values long embraced must be diligently retrained and resected.  Pressure to conform is constant, it continues daily even after I hear and believe in Jesus.  My flesh along with the world and the devil are always nipping at my heels, nagging me to regress and choose the old way, enticing me at every opportunity to prioritize the three-fold-self and live into the ever-present now.  Every day I must take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, beginning again as if nothing yet has been done for my Savior, constantly renewing my heart and mind with the light of God’s Word - embodied only in the Word-made-flesh, the God-Man, Jesus.  Each and every day and throughout the day, moment-by-moment glory beckons, an adventure of following and learning from Him, listening to His Spirit and living more and more fully into what God wants.  Which is ultimately what my soul wants.  Breathtaking goodness.  This is what I was truly made for, and by the grace of God, in truth, i. am. a. deviant.

Ephesians 4:19 - The Cult of More

"...who, having gone numb, they gave themselves over to wantonness unto work of every uncleanness in greediness."

-But Paul continues about the world which is lost and separated from God, from His Light and Truth.  They have literally become numb to the truth.  They feel nothing.  They feel no regret, no conviction or remorse, no sense whatsoever of the emptiness and futility of their lives, of the infinite abyss in their heart which is never ever filled in the least little bit by all the things which people pursue and consume in order to try and fill it.  Feeling nothing, they put feelings first, fully engaged in dogged pursuit of whatever makes them feel good.  That’s the new modern moral compass, is it not?  If it feels good, it must be right?  If it feels good, do it?  This is the mantra of the nations, and it’s actually not new at all, as old as the hills, described by this grecian Jew some 2000 years ago.  I want what I want when I want it, and if it makes me feel good I want it, and I will do it.  

-The word is generally translated as ‘sensuality’, which does indeed capture this idea of putting feelings first, that which captivates and stimulates my senses.  But it is stronger than that even - a picture of unbridled lack of restraint, an inability to say no.  And this is exactly what Paul is saying.  The world is into anything and everything that is unclean, and they cannot get enough of it, whatever it is which they are trying to cram into their lives in this vain attempt to fill their perpetually empty heart.  It is the Cult of More - unable to find peace or contentment and never having enough, they want more, they need more, they must have more.  To be in the cult is to not know it even is a cult, brainwashed as I am to think only how the cult thinks, a warped misleading version of truth, often unwilling and unable to extricate myself in the least.  The world says this is all there is, and I better grab as much of it as I can, 'cuz if I don’t somebody else will.  Go for it, just do it, have it your way, survival of the fittest, and so on and so forth.  Me, me, me, mine, mine, mine, more, more, more.  More money, more free time (aka me-time), more travel, bigger house, bigger car, bigger wife, better toys, better stuff, bigger and better ad nauseum - and to say no to self is to stand out, like some strange freakish alien.  Why would I say no?  Why should I not enlarge my barns?  I can afford it.  There’s nothing wrong with it.  And the whole world downs that koolaid, esp. in the affluent West.  We go for more because we can afford it.  No need to say no to more - why should we?  Listen to Paul...

Ephesians 4:18 - The Way of the Empty Mind

"...being having been darkened in the thinking, having been estranged from the life of God through the ignorance being in them, through the hardness of the heart of them...

-The nations are walking the way of the empty mind, journeying through life without The Truth, and thus they are walking (and stumbling) around in the dark.  They are in fact quite un-enlightened.  Darkened, cut off from the Light, cut off from Jesus, Who is the Light which enlightens every man (John 1.9, 1.4).  So they don’t know the Light (or even much about it), and in truth are rather unwilling to come to the Light (John 3.19-20).  Darkness does tend to have a certain appeal once you have acclimated and adapted to it.  The nations in fact repeatedly reject the open invitation to come to the Light, ashamed and guilt-ridden, afraid of exposure, and have wound up with a spiritual condition known as cardio porosis, not a heart that is porous so much as petrified, hardened up and covered over with a callous, repeatedly rejecting the appeals of Heaven and rather impervious to them as a result, at least while their heart continues in a place of pride and unsurrender.  Godlessness is a disease which, once contracted, nothing short of a miracle can cure.

-Excluded from the life of God.  Excluded from the life of God.  What tragedy, this.  And really, how does this phrase set with me?  Should it not stick in my throat and make me gag with great grief and horror?  The nations are estranged from God, alienated, and to be sure, this does for them make the whole realm of the spirit seem strange and foreign.  The truth of God is not in them - they are ignorant of it, and so yes, Paul exhorts God’s people to NOT live like this.  Do not live life with a heart that is hard, hardened against the stuff of heaven, against the things you cannot see or feel or touch or replicate in some controlled laboratory experiment.  Do not live like heaven is some strange alien world, out-of-sight out-of-mind and irrelevant.  It is in fact our home, our destiny, our eternal destination.  And do not live like God is a stranger.  Do not live each day or even start your day apart from this One Who made you, Who so loves you, Who blesses you, Who rescued and remade you to show off His breathtaking goodness to this world which is estranged from Him, adrift in darkness.  Truly, no greater tragedy than that even one of these precious souls for whom God sent His only begotten Son should live even one day much less an eternity separated from Him.  It starts with me...

Ephesians 4:17 - THE MATRIX HAS YOU

"Therefore this I am saying I am witnessing in [the] Lord, no longer you all to be walking, just as also the nations to be walking in futility of their mind...’

-In the previous section, Paul exhorted those who follow Christ to walk worthily, the way of heaven, to live out their heavenly calling for the sake of this body, all these others who follow Christ right along side me.  To live fully into a life of serving and of building up one another - others-focused, others-first.

-Paul now invokes divine authority in exhorting these same believers to shed whatever vestiges of worldly walking still remain in their lives.  The path on which the nations tread is vanity, the way of the empty mind.  It is empty because it is devoid of truth, and thus it is devoid of God (2Ki 17.15, er 2.5, Rom 1.21).  All is empty when disconnected from the Source, this One from Whom and through Whom and for Whom is all.  To be sure, not all of this empty existence is predicated upon falsehood or lies, but the fundamental premise of life, the foundational truths about Who God is and who I am in relation to Him - these have been rejected.  God Himself has been rejected, out of mind, and in turn He has given the nations over to a reject mind (Rom 1.25).  Emptiness.  It is me-first, the center of my universe, looking out for number one - the default position of the nations walking the way of the empty mind.  Emptiness.  Always seeking never finding satisfaction, happiness, peace.  None of this can ever be found in more than a fleeting form apart from the Source.  We grasp at vapors, our every bucket-list leaking like a sieve as long as we are disconnected from our Creator, as long as we conduct ourselves in ways which are devoid of truth about Him (cf Jer 2.13). 

-It is the Law of Futility (cf Rom 8.20) - all of creation enslaved to the temporal reality of the cotton candy syndrome - nothing satisfies.  Nothing.  Satisfies.  Not ever, ultimately.  Nothing enjoyed apart from my Creator, not one created thing will provide anything more than a fleeting sensation of satisfaction, promising and tantalizing as it may appear at the outset.  The corollary Law of Diminishing Returns insures that invariably I will need more and more of the same to subsequently achieve a similar level of satisfaction (which is still fleeting at best), or tedium will set in and I will grow tired and increasingly dissatisfied with this one and move on to the next new big thing.  This is the way of the nations, always seeking, never finding, and the question arises, ‘Is this all there is?’ - a gnawing sense that there is more to life than this way of emptiness.  And we either choose the red pill like Neo where we wake up and begin a pursuit of the truth (which we ultimately find in Jesus), or we choose the blue pill, we supress the questions and continue our comatose existence, striving after the wind and filling our hearts with so much cotton candy.  The matrix has you, Neo.  Choose the red pill...

Ephesians 4:16 - Love and parts: realizing the whole goal

"...out of Whom all the body being joined together and united together through every joint of the supply, according to a working in proper of each individual part, is making the increase of the body unto building up of itself in love."

-We are talking here about a massive construction project, an immense undertaking launched by Christ Himself, not some temporal edifice of steel and concrete but rather a living and breathing organism, a glorious spiritual body which has been and is spreading throughout our entire planet, to every tribe and tongue to the ends of the earth.  Worldwide today some two billion people name the Name of Jesus Christ.  Does that mean they all have crystalline clarity on the truth of Who He is, or even have genuinely put their trust in Him?  Perhaps not all, but that’s not our call.  No matter how many are actually following Christ, what we know is that these souls with all their warts and idiosyncracies and ethnoliguistic differences have been and are being brought together as part of one giant forgiven family, a living assembly of adopted sons and daughters united by Christ, by a common faith in this only begotten Son of God Who is the only Way to the Father.

-Joined and united together... every part has a joint.  Much more than a religion, not merely a movement or some collection of adherents to an ancient creed, in this body of Christ, every part has a joint, two thousand million joints, and they all come from Christ.  He creates and sustains each union, unfailing, enduring.  Yes, fellowship may suffer interruption due to geography or circumstance or (God-forbid) disobedience and unforgiveness, but the joints themselves are permanent, eternal, indestructible.

-Proper working of each part... every part has a part.  As we have just seen and read elsewhere, there is an order to this body, a master plan, each individual part being specially outfitted and intentionally placed in the body by the Holy Spirit according to God’s grand design, precisely how He wants it (1Corinthians 12.18, 12.11).  And yes, what this means is that each individual part has a purpose, a role to fulfill.  Each and every member of Christ’s body has a unique gift (at least one - 1Corinthians 12.28, Romans 12.6), and it apparently is only as these gifts are being used (and used properly in accordance with the Manufacturer’s instructions) that the body is able to growth.  Yes, the growth of the body, both in numbers and in health, is dependent on each part doing its part, truthing-in-love and serving in the unique capacity which God intended (as we just read in Ephesians 4.12).

-Increase of the body building up of itself... This is the goal, this is reason why God left me here on planet earth.  Yes, I can and must glorify Him by celebrating and showing off His breathtaking goodness in all that I do (1Corinthians 10.31), but I can (and will) do that in heaven.  What I can only do here on planet earth is help to build up the body, as Paul just mentioned in Ephesians 4.12.  The fact that he repeats it here illustrates how doubly important it is that I do my level best to figure out what my role is meant to be, and then get in the game, commit to truthing-in-love and begin serving in some capacity.  A limp, non-functioning limb is useless, and in fact throws off and hinders the whole rest of the body.

-In love... the great command (Matthew 22.37-39), the new command (John 13.34-35), the goal of our instruction (1Timothy 1.5), the greatest of these (1Corinthians 13.13), all that we do (1Corinthians 16.14) - love is the fulfillment of the entirety of our faith (Galatians 5.13-14, James 2.8).  It is the distinguishing mark of every bonafide Christ-follower (1Corinthians 13.1-3, Galatians 5.22, 1John 4.7-8), the proof of the pudding (Ephesians 1.15, Colossians 1.4, 1John 3.14) and the benchmark by which we measure all spiritual endeavors (1Thessalonians 3.12).  It is the ether of our existence, the air we breathe, the atmosphere in which we travel, and vibe we exude at all times.  It colors our glasses and colors our deeds.  Love, unrestrained, unbiased, unconditional, is the totality of the Christian faith, love which came first from God to us and which we then reflect back to Him and redirect to those around us.  It is both the bricks and mortar, the strength and sweat of those building, and it is the finished product, the final outcome.  Those who follow Christ are not building themselves up in wealth, not in influence, not in buildings or programs or numbers.  Some of these no doubt can be attendant by-products of God’s work in and through His people (and sadly sometimes can be misguided detours along the way), but are not measures of it and are certainly not proof of it.  Spiritual maturity is measured not by any of these temporal things.  If we have not love, we have nothing, nothing at all to show for all our pomp and posturing and professing.  Our goal is love, realized through love.

Ephesians 4:15 - Surefire recipe for real spiritual growth

-’...but truthing in love we should grow unto Him in the all, Who is the Head, Christ...’

-Truthing in love.  Truthing in love.  We’re talking about the verb form of the Greek word for ‘truth’, truth in action, living out and manifesting that which is not hidden nor concealed.  The primary instinct of fallen man is to hide (from God, from one another, cf Gen 3.7-8).  But those in Christ are set free from the fear of condemnation, of rejection.  Think about it - why do we hide?  I hide from God (and those in authority) because i’m afraid of getting in trouble.  I am consequence-averse.  And I hide from my fellow man because I don’t want him or her to reject me.  I like to be liked.  I want people to want me to be around, to accept me.  Well, in Christ consequences and rejection are all ultimately done away, removed as far as the east is from the west.  There is now no longer any condemnation for those who are in Christ.  And the whole point of what Paul is trying to communicate here is that those in Christ stick to one another.  No need to hide, no fear of rejection.  We accept and live openly with one another, warts and all, just like Christ accepts us.  Thus as His people we can and should be flying in the face of all forms of falsehood, of hiding and deceit and tricks, of schemes and subterfuge, living into truth.

-Truth.  Unchanging, unwavering, a steady rock and anchor in the tossing seas of uncertainty and compromise.  Truth does not tune its finger to which direction blow the winds of popular opinion, political correctness, practical expedience.  It is concerned not with expedience, nor convenience, nor comfort.  Truth is all about the character of Almighty God, because all truth derives from this One Who Himself does not ever change nor give in to the oscillating currents of popular opinion.  He is neither hidden nor is He silent.  God is, and He is Truth.  His Word is Truth.  Jesus is The Truth.  Yes, virginia, there is such a thing as timeless absolute truth.  Absolutely.

-Here we find the anchor for our soul and the building block for spiritual maturity as well as for oneness in the Body.  Notice however that there is not truth apart from love.  Love is the atmosphere in which truth goes forth - warm, caring, gracious, gentle.  Truth delivered in the absence of relationship and lived out in cold and austere harshness dies a thousand deaths.  But this loving truthing is turns out to be the key which unlocks guaranteed progress in the faith.  And since we are talking about we and not just me, we thus are talking about a steady diet of God’s truth served up in an atmosphere of kind, committed, open relationships.  A veritable smorgasbord of honest, caring two-way communication not only with my heavenly Father but also with those in my faith community.  Assuming I have one (I should)... If not, I desperately need to find one, a place where I can be in community and experience that comm(on)-unity.  I need them, and they need me.

-Because here we find a surefire recipe for real spiritual growth.  This truthing-in-love within a caring faith community creates a fertile spiritual climate where abundant verdant growth is virtually assured.  ‘We should grow’ is aorist subjunctive, which is tantamount to saying that growth should AND WILL happen, as long as the antecedent condition is met.  Truthing-in-love with like-minded others is not just words on a page.  THIS is how we grow to become more like Christ.

-WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE IF I COMMITTED MYSELF TO LIVING INTO TRUTH?  truth AND love.  HOW MIGHT I LIVE AND RELATE DIFFERENTLY, TO GOD, TO MY SPOUSE, TO MY BOSS, TO MY PASTOR, TO MY FELLOW BELIEVERS?