Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. So let’s talk about forgiveness. But before we do, believe and behave are two factors you’ll need to keep in the back of your mind as you listen. But make sure you have pen and paper handy for this podcast. Well, that’s a lot to remember. Can you say important interactive lesson?

Ephesians chapter 4. Put on, put off. So here’s a question for you. Should I forgive someone who is not sorry they sinned against me? What do you think? Is it the Christian thing to do to always forgive everyone, no matter what?

I had two stories come across my news feed yesterday that brought this question to my mind again. You’ve no doubt heard stories about someone killed by a drunk driver or a school shooter, and when family members are given a chance to speak in court, through tears and from a broken heart they say they forgive the offender. On the other hand, sometimes years after an arrest, we’ll still see an angry father jump over the rail in a courtroom to try to get his hands on someone who has hurt a family member of his. Those two situations obviously are the extreme ends of the spectrum. But I’m going to get to the question about forgiveness today, and my answer might surprise you. So hang in with me for the full 20 minutes.

First, though, let’s make sure we understand the big idea in Ephesians chapter 4. Because you’re very perceptive, I’m sure you’ve noticed this pattern in the Apostle Paul’s writings. He typically presents important doctrinal truths and then afterward transitions to practical instructions for his readers. Christian doctrine and practice, as we say. He first explains what Christians should believe and then turns to how Christians should behave. For example, in Romans, Paul goes into great depth with a church he’d never visited to explain all about sin’s effects on the human race and what God has done about it, how he has made a way for sin to be forgiven through Jesus’ sacrifice of atonement.

That’s the doctrine of salvation, what Christians believe on that crucial subject. But then, chapter 12, verse 1, he turns a corner and gets very practical, explaining how Christians should now behave in view of what God has done for us in Christ. There he begins, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is a true and proper worship. And don’t conform anymore to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by renewing your mind. Then he gets into all kinds of practical things after that.

We’ve seen this pattern over and over. We saw it in Galatians. We saw it in Thessalonians. This is because Paul understood our faith is not just a set of beliefs to embrace, but also a way of life, a way of life that’s consistent with those beliefs: doctrine and practice, what to believe and how to behave. So, surprise, surprise, surprise, as Gomer Pyle would say, when we come to chapter 4, we see this same transition. The apostle Paul has been explaining what it means to be in Christ and all its amazing benefits, and then he turns to practical instructions, beginning of chapter 4 with this transition line: As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.

So then he turns to how Christians should be living out their faith. Here’s our key section for today. Listen how many practical instructions he gives just in this section. As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love.

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord: no longer live as the pagans do in the futility of their thinking, darkened in their understanding, separated from the life of God because of their ignorance due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they’ve given themselves over to sensuality and they indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed. That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. And in your anger do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down while you’re still angry, and give the devil a foothold. Anyone who has been stealing must steal no more, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those who are in need. And don’t let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen to you. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Which, by the way, happens when we deliberately disregard the kinds of things Paul is writing about. We grieve the Holy Spirit inside us. So, to summarize, Paul is insisting—that’s his word, insisting—that for those who are in Christ, our daily conduct must start matching up with our profession of faith. Our thinking and behavior must start reflecting who we are as God’s people. That’s what he means by walking in a manner worthy of our calling. Becoming a godly person in our day-to-day conduct does not happen automatically because we heard and responded to the gospel.

It happens, Paul says, as we start putting off some things and putting on some better things. We have the power and desire to do that now because God has implanted a new nature in us and given us the Holy Spirit as our helper. So, putting off wrong things we used to do and be, and putting on the qualities and mind of Christ, this is how we walk in a manner worthy of our calling. And if our faith is genuine, things will begin to change in the right direction in our lives. Sometimes this is called growing toward spiritual maturity. And by the way, spiritual maturity is as real a thing as physical maturity, and it’s pretty obvious when it’s happening.

The Apostle Paul here in chapter 4 mentions many ways things should begin to change in a true believer’s life. I’m going to briefly point out and define seven such ways. But before we’re through, I will get back to that interesting question about forgiveness I posed at the top, I promise. So here goes. If you want to turn this lesson from just a listen into a life-changing exercise, I suggest you make a list of these areas where Paul says change should be occurring and give yourself a score of where you think you are right now with each of them. Zero would mean I’m nowhere with this yet.

And five would mean, I believe I have a really good grip on this area, or you’re probably somewhere in between. Ready? Here’s the first one. Paul writes in verse 2, Be completely humble and gentle. Humility as in an internal virtue and gentleness with others is how it’s usually expressed. This might surprise you, but in the world in which Christianity was born, being humble was not considered a good thing.

The Greeks and Romans didn’t even have a positive word for what we think of as humility. The idea that humility is a good thing, the Western world learned from Christianity, from Jesus. The Greeks and Romans associated being humble with shame and being a loser. So, since that’s how the world around them viewed this, when early Christians displayed humility and treated others with gentleness, that stood out and got noticed. For us, this is imitating Christ, isn’t it? The Bible says he existed in the form of God, but didn’t consider his equality with God as something he had to hold on to, but emptied himself to become God’s servant and humbled himself by becoming obedient even to the point of death on a cross.

Those words quoted in Philippians chapter 2 were apparently an early Christian hymn or creed extolling the humility it required for God the Son to leave heaven, become a servant, enter our world, and become our Savior. Humility is purposely maintaining a low view of one’s own importance in respect to others. Jesus once said, Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart. So on our scale of one to five, how well do you think you reflect genuine humility? Second, the rest of the verse says, Be patient, bearing with one another in love. You probably know what patient means, and you’re impatiently thinking, Hey, can we skip this one?

No, but I will be very brief. For a Christian, it means to be long-suffering, precisely because you are humble enough to think you’re not the important thing in the world and everything doesn’t revolve around you. Patience shows itself in bearing with others, Paul says, which means putting up with little annoyances rather than being put out by them, rather than being short with people, demanding of others. How are you doing at putting on this kind of patience? A third characteristic of a maturing believer is in verse three, where it says, Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. I think Paul’s particularly thinking here about the Ephesians and how they relate to one another in their church family, but it also applies in other settings too.

As we saw in the development of the earliest church in Jerusalem, unity among the members was essential to achieving God’s objectives. When the church was unified, it moved forward and God blessed them. But when divisions arose, things ground to a halt until the problems were solved. A person who understands the premium God puts on unity is a person who does not insist on having things go their way, but can yield to others’ opinions and direction. They can follow leadership with a good spirit. They understand submission is essential to order and order to peace and productivity.

Being divisive is the last thing a godly individual wants to be. Jesus called this being a peacemaker. How much does that sound like you? Verses 17 to 19 introduce a couple things we should put off. There, Paul puts the finger first on sensuality, which leads to impurity. Clearly, he’s talking about immorality now.

He says in verse 17, it starts in people’s minds who allow themselves to be saturated with wrong thoughts and then plays out in their conduct as they get controlled by their desire for lustful pleasures. Everything from enjoying dirty jokes to relishing pornography to engaging in immoral relationships, all of that stuff would fall under this heading. If you understand that real godliness is thinking and living like Jesus, then it’s pretty hard to imagine anything more unlike him than sensuality and impurity, isn’t it? So how much of a place does immorality still occupy in your heart and life? If too much, you have to give yourself a low score here. And another thing to put off.

A fifth thing for our evaluation comes at the end of verse 19, and that is greediness, the need for more and more and more. Put off greed, Paul says. In Colossians, he equates it with idolatry. I think that is because the pursuit of money and things can become the highest objective in our lives. Many people worship money and the things money can buy. But greed is insatiable, isn’t it?

It promises satisfaction, but whoever really gets enough to be satisfied for very long? Jesus once said, You can’t serve God and money. Yet for many, a self-centered lifestyle all about materialism, trying to get rich, having more than others, is just the norm. And some Christians look no different than others who have no regard for God or His interests at all. How much of a grip does greed still have on you? If too much, give yourself a low score here.

Let’s take a sixth characteristic from verses 25 and 28, where Paul says, Put off falsehood, and then, Let him who steals steal no more. Lying, stealing, cheating—these are all common forms of dishonesty, and common they are. I learned from several years in the business world that for many, dishonesty is just how they roll. It could be anything from exaggerating and telling little white lies to influence an outcome, to not following through on promises, to outright scamming and taking advantage of people. There’s a wide spectrum of ways dishonesty shows itself, but God wants Christians’ conduct to be found nowhere on that spectrum. A proverb in chapter 3 of that wisdom book says, The integrity of the upright will guide them, but the crookedness of the treacherous will destroy them.

How well are you reflecting honesty and integrity in your life? One more for our survey. This is from verse 29. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up. This one is clearly about our language, our words. The term translated unwholesome there in the New International Version means foul or rotten.

But it’s not just about having a potty mouth, although that’s certainly included. This injunction could cover anything that has to do with speaking detrimentally to those who are listening to us, anything that kind of tears them down. Remember what we learned in James about the impact of our words on others. When people leave a conversation with you, do they feel built up, or do they sometimes feel a little yucky? Even if we have to correct someone, we can do it from a place of grace and do it lovingly and constructively. Our words should never be demeaning or leave others thinking, They claim to be a Christian and they talk like that.

If you claim to be in Christ, how well do you think your language reflects that? Put on, put off. Put on humility, patience, and unity. Put off every kind of immorality, as Paul writes elsewhere. Don’t let it once be named among you. Put off greed and dishonesty, along with all foul and demeaning language.

Put on, put off. Just like when you get up in the morning and you decide what to put on for the day, Paul is challenging us to decide every day to put on Christ and his qualities. Now, as promised, in our few minutes remaining, let’s address something that may be a little controversial, and it comes up in undoubtedly the most well-known instruction in this chapter, and it comes from the very last verse. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Or as my parents always quoted it at our house, Be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you. My question at the outset was, does God expect Christians to forgive everyone who wrongs us?

What do you think? I’m not talking about the little annoying pokes and jabs. We’ve already heard Paul say that we should bear with one another. That means be a big enough person to absorb the small stuff. But how about the big stuff, the real gut punches? I mean, is that part of what it means to be godly, that we just forgive everything?

Hmm. How about if I ask the question a slightly different way? Do I have to forgive someone who’s not even sorry that they wronged me? I’ll bet this is a question you’ve wrestled with at some point if you’re a Christian and if you’re serious about following Christ. What does he expect of us? And probably not just theoretically, but in your real-life relationships when people have seriously hurt or wronged you.

And no, I have. I read a Christian counselor who framed the issue this way. He said, This question is actually raised by New Testament texts where Jesus himself is teaching. For example, in Mark chapter 11 at verse 25, Jesus says, Whenever you stand praying, forgive if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. Now that sounds like Jesus is saying we forgive whether someone has asked for forgiveness or not, whether they are sorry or not. If we want God to forgive us and hear our prayers.

But wait a minute. There are also other texts like Luke 17 verses 3 and 4 where Jesus said, If your brother sins against you, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. Even if he sins against you seven times in a day and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him. So Jesus, on the one hand, said, If you’re worshiping and an issue comes to your mind about another person who has wronged you, forgive them so that God will hear your prayers. I think that means internally forgive them in your heart and mind right then, because the person’s not there at that moment, so you really aren’t forgiving them. You’re forgiving them in your heart.

So that’s something we should always do. Jesus commands it. But then we’ve got this other statement where he says to forgive your brother when he comes to you and repents. That’s a personal interaction between us and them. So in that case, forgiving someone is not just an internal attitude that we should have, but an outward action toward them. It’s a relational thing.

Those two things are different, aren’t they? And I don’t think they’re contradictory. By that I mean, there’s a kind of forgiveness that’s an attitude in our heart, and then there’s a forgiveness that is relational. It’s an action that we take toward other people. One is inward, the other is outward. I know God always wants Christians to have a tender heart, to cultivate an attitude of forgiveness in our hearts, to not leave room for bitterness and anger to grow there.

And they will. In verse 31, the immediately preceding verse, it says we must put aside all anger and bitterness. So in our hearts and in our minds, Christians must release the one who has offended us and wronged us. We release them from our anger and our desire to get back at them, whether or not they ever ask for our forgiveness or ever seem repentant. Never let bitterness take root inside, because that will eat at your soul and soon it will affect others. That’s what Hebrews 12, verse 15 says.

This internal attitude of forgiveness is necessary for our own soul’s health and our mental well-being. But the action of forgiveness, that’s a step beyond. If we take that step and announce to someone, I forgive you, when someone has never asked for forgiveness and have not shown any sorrow for their sin and have not owned their wrong, I’m not sure we’re doing them any favor. In fact, that might be misleading them about how forgiveness actually works. Does God forgive sinners who will not repent? The answer to that is no.

Even among believers, among church members, the New Testament tells us if someone has sinned against us significantly enough that it’s creating a problem inside of us, we should go to them and let them know how we feel, and if necessary, take another person so they understand this is serious. If they listen and respond well, then forgiveness and reconciliation takes place. But if they do not listen and do not respond well, the leaders of the church may have to discipline them by removing them from the fellowship. Hmm. So what I’m suggesting regarding forgiveness is that we should always be ready to forgive anyone who’s wronged us. We should never allow bitterness and anger to build up in our hearts against them.

And if the one who has wronged us asks for forgiveness, we should always extend it. However, if someone is unrepentant, obstinate, unwilling to ask for forgiveness, I think we may be undercutting the importance of repentance and confession if we tell them they’re forgiven or try and act as though we’re not hurt by their actions. Does that make sense? I can’t think of another way of reconciling all the different verses in the New Testament about this topic. So, in addition to the other things we are to put on and put off, any time we are wronged, put on a heart of forgiveness. Always cultivate a tender heart and don’t allow bitterness to take root there.

Always be ready to forgive anyone who asks for forgiveness too, remembering how often God has forgiven us when we’ve confessed our sins to Him and how much we need Him too. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul. So, how did you score? You know, humility is such a misconstrued term. I think of humility as not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less often.

When we put on Christ, there should be a difference in your life, and immorality, dishonesty, greed, unwholesomeness should be like a foreign concept. So here’s today’s challenge, and I’ve already tested it out, so now it’s your turn. I asked three of my closest friends to judge me according to the aspects Paul talked about. How do you think you’ll measure up? How do you think they’ll score you? If people around you can’t recognize you as a Christian, then have you really embraced Christ?

And pay attention to where you need work. I certainly did. And when it comes to forgiveness, I completely agree with Paul. How about you? Let us know. Email us at info at sharetheword.org.