Ephesians 4:25-32 “Put Away Falsehoods”
When I was preparing this sermon, I was thinking about how I should start. Not once but twice, the wind got a hold of the pages of my Bible and blew me back to the start of the Letter to the Ephesians. You know, a lot of wind comes out of the pastor’s office! This is where Paul is first addressing the people in the church in Ephesus. He uses some profound words. It must have been the Holy Spirit blowing back the pages of the Bible to make sure that I would see these words of encouragement.
Listen to how Paul addresses this church—and believe it to be our church—all of us here today: The first thing he says is that we are saints in verse 1:1. The Greek word that is used by Paul is αγιος. It means “holiness” or “saintliness.” He sees all of those who are in the church as particularly holy.
I remember praying over a meal in a restaurant once with a group of people and referring to all those gathered around the table as saints. Some of the people questioned me about this afterwards. They were not sure if they liked being called saints. They thought that it was less than humble.
One lady who had two children with her could not believe that anyone would ever refer to her children as saints. She commended me on seeing some good in her two kids, whom most regarded as more of a devilish ilk.
Maybe some of you are feeling that you are not up to par with being a saint. That is of course what every good saint would think! But, Christ has made you holy and there is no use in fudging the question really. You are saints because of the undeniable holiness that is in you because Christ is in you. So, when we read what else Paul has to say to the people in Ephesus, remember that he considers them to be saints.
The next thing that Paul says in his addressing the folks in the letter is that he is thankful to God for them. “I thank God for you!” And, I do, too! I just thank you for being you; the one that God created. I would never want you to be anybody else but the one God created.
Paul’s gratitude, though, may also have to do with the fact that he is missing other Christians in this moment. He is in prison, house arrest as it were, in Rome near the end of his ministry, his life actually. There is no mention of another Christian writing this for him as was the case with other letters, so one can assume that he was isolated from the church, from other Christians, and that he was missing that company of like minds and hearts and was truly thankful for the times that he had been in Christian company. He writes this perhaps with his hands and feet in shackles. He knows that he is not long for the world. He will be martyred within a year of writing this letter. In spite of this, he has words of encouragement.
After saying and building us up with these encouraging words of new understanding and perception in life, Paul starts talking about what is expected of us in this new life with Christ. He has some very specific rules to live by in this new life. First, he says that we must all put away our falsehoods and speak truth with one another because we are all in Christ. We must think of it in this way: we are now in Christ. The Truth is in Christ. If we are false, then we are in conflict with Christ.
We dare not forget Christ’s own words in John 14:6: “I am the Way, the TRUTH, and the Life.” Because we are now the living and breathing body of Christ in the world, we are the Truth. At the Pua Kea Regency when we were going over this text at the Bible Study hour, I asked everybody there, “What is the Truth?” One of the participants, who was there for the first time actually responded with “I am the Truth.” Of course, she was remembering her scripture and speaking the words of Christ, but the way it came out of her was so profound that I just had to affirm it! “Yes, you ARE the Truth because Christ is in you and you are the Body of Christ.”
Keep thinking in this way as you look at the next line. The word “angry” is a poor translation. This word in the Greek means “wrath” and “judgment” (οργή). If Christ is in you, and the Truth is in you, then actually some of the Final Judgment of God is in you, too. I think that is what Paul is trying to say. We Christians are allowed a modicum of righteousness. If someone calls you on this and tells you that you are being judgmental, thank that person for the compliment! “You see some of the righteousness of the Lord in me—praise God!”
Remember when Jesus turned over the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple of Jerusalem? Many non-Christians look at that and say that Jesus was not being Godly at that time. At the marriage at Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine, he refused his mother in public. In Mark Chapter 8 Jesus angrily rebukes Peter and says to him: “Get behind me Satan.” In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus shows frustration towards the Disciples that have fallen asleep rather than keep watch with him. Even on the Cross Jesus cries out to God in apparent complaint: “Why hast Thou forsaken me.”
Honestly, if you cannot be angry about being crucified, then there is something wrong with you. You are probably insane! We Christians are not that crazy. We do get angry when we see injustice taking place.
Paul in his letter to the Ephesians tells them “Be angry!” The Bible does not tell us to be milquetoast. It says to be angry. Indeed in Revelations 3:16 we read that we ought not be “lukewarm” but that we must either be cold or hot as Christians. That is in the letter to the Church in Laodicea that we will be reading tonight in Bible Study. So, being passionate about your faith is a good thing. And, likewise being passionate about an injustice or a hurt is a good thing. Just do not get angry over that which is unrighteous in its nature because that must be seen as a sin and will give opportunity to Satan to grab hold of you.
The next line in Ephesians tells us that we must not let the sun go down on our anger. This is such good advice. Sometimes when we get angry and stay angry then we forget what it is like not to be angry. Anger becomes our way of life. Then, one day it just explodes out of us. School students plan to shoot their fellow students, as we saw again this last week in Colorado. Workers get angry at frozen wages and higher taxes and take over the streets of Athens—just when my own daughter is there trying to have a nice quiet visit. If these had let the anger go on that day before the anger took over their lives, then Satan would not have had a chance to gain a foothold in their lives.
In the Bible we can read throughout that the wrath of God is always followed by the mercy of God. In your own life, because you are the Body of Christ and are anointed by God, you will feel Godly wrath at injustice and unrighteous behavior well up in side of you. Be angry. Then right after that you will know if it was righteous anger because the mercy of God will well up inside of you just as powerfully and extinguish that anger. Jesus never stayed angry. Jesus never gave anybody the silent treatment for days or weeks.
The next thing we read in our scripture tells us how to be angry. We “let no evil talk come out of our mouths, but only such as is good for building up others, as is fit for the occasion, that it may impart grace to those who hear.” If we do become angry, then it is still goodness that must come out of us for the building up of others in Christ. In our day, we call this sometimes “tough love.”
Right after that the Bible tells us that we should not grieve the Holy Spirit. This means that just because we become angry at unrighteousness, this does not mean that the Spirit that has renewed our minds is going to forsake us, leave us, never want to have anything more to do with us. The Bible says that we are sealed, crazy-glued, epoxied, with the Holy Spirit until the day of our redemption. You have been renewed in a Spirit of new perception and understanding of all things. There really is no undoing that. Once your mind comprehends that the world is actually round, there is no way of tricking it back into thinking that the earth is flat. Once you have been born to a new life, there is no going back! At the end of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus in resurrected form comes to the Disciples and, as it is written, “opens their minds to understand the scriptures.” Once your mind has been opened to understand the scripture, how are you going to close it again? It is not going to happen!
The last words of this scripture for this morning again are said for the building up of our souls in Christ. “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” All that was Christ is within you because you are the physical body of the lord in the world now. The great forgiveness that would allow the Lord to even ask God to forgive those who nailed him to the Cross—that forgiveness is within your hearts as you have accepted Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
I was walking along the beach the other day here in Waimea when I happened upon a shark that had been beached on the sand. It looked as if the tail had been bitten off, perhaps by another shark. The shark was relatively large. If it had its tail still, it would have been about five feet I think. Its eyes were still staring at me it seemed, even in death. Its jaws were shut. So, it looked like it had a little grin on its face. I wondered if the shark had ever known a tender moment.
But, we are not sharks—we are the children of God. We are the Truth and God’s mercy in the world. Amen.