Ephesians 4:25-5:2 Commentary

Few themes in advertising and social media are more prominent than transformation. We like to put next to each other before-and-after pictures of people who are overweight and people whose weight is later more appropriate, as well as pictures of things like kitchens before and after they were remodeled. The juxtaposition is meant to impress viewers with both the dramatic changes that have been wrought and, sometimes, at least, the skill of the transformer.

Those pairings, however, often at least imply that the transformations are fairly painless. They don’t reflect the amount of blood, sweat and tears that must generally be invested in order to make dramatic changes. Advertisements and social media sometimes at least imply that people shed pounds as easily as we let water pour off us, and that bathrooms magically transform into a comfortable oasis.

In this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson Paul juxtaposes “before and after pictures” of faithful responses to God’s amazing grace. He points to the startling transformation the grateful reception of God’s grace triggers in the lives of God’s dearly beloved people. The contrast between Ephesians 5 and 6’s before and after “pictures” could hardly be more stark.

But while preachers sometimes at least imply that this renovation is a kind of DIY project, that could hardly be less true. In fact, when we preach as if Paul is simply offering some self-improvement advice, we shrink both the power and scandal of his ethical calls. So wise preachers don’t just announce that Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson includes radical stuff. We also proclaim the gospel that is the way this transformation is grounded in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Paul strongly implies that in this Lesson’s very first word: “therefore” [dio]* (that can also mean “as a result”). Verse 15’s dio means that what the apostle writes in subsequent verses directly flows out of what he has already written to Ephesus’ Christians.

Among the apostle’s favorite themes are the new life of faithful obedience to which God has graciously raised God’s dearly beloved children (2:1-4). This has, by the grace of God, relativized the barriers that naturally separate Jesus’ friends (2:14ff), uniting into one body all of Jesus’ adopted siblings (4:4ff).

In Ephesians 4:17ff. Paul continues by condemning what he calls the Gentiles’ natural “futility”of thinking that manifests itself in “sensuality” and “impurity.” In verse 20 he goes on to remind Ephesus’ Christians that they “did not come to know Christ that way.” Instead, the apostle insists, “You heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus” (21). So Paul clearly anchors his calls to thankful living and transformation in the work and person of Jesus Christ.

The apostle, in fact, bookends this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson  with a similar summons. In Ephesians 5:1-2 he offers a remarkable call to be “imitators [mimetai] of God … as dearly beloved children [tekna agapete], and live [perpateite] a life of love [agape], just as Christ loved [egapesen] us and gave himself up [pardeoken heauton] for us as a fragrant offering [prosphoran] and a sacrifice [thysian] to God.”  Here too the apostle grounds his ethical exhortations in the first and second persons of the Trinity.

Reflecting on this, the New Testament scholar Sally Brown notes that the roster of virtues Paul calls Christians to display aren’t necessarily explicitly Christian. Ancient literature, Brown says, was full of such lists. “What makes this material distinctively Christian,” she adds, is “the theologically framed motivations that accompany them, along with the world-shifting theological vision they presuppose.”

As preachers consciously remember that, we can begin to explore the transforming difference that God’s grace makes in Jesus’ friends by the power of the Holy Spirit. Led by the Spirit, preachers might choose to organize that exploration in one of several ways. We might look at the pairings together, or first explore the behaviors that Paul calls us to put off before moving on to explore the behaviors that are consistent with a faithful response to God’s grace. Preachers might also let the Spirit direct us to focus the sermon’s attention on some but not all of the before-and-after pictures.

However, preachers might also choose to organize a sermon around some of the themes that are common to this list of vices to be shed and virtues to be practiced. My colleague Stan Mast offered one way to organize those virtues in a fine earlier commentary on this passage.

Yet preachers might also consider organizing our preaching on Ephesians 4:25-5:2 around another group of themes. Among those themes are the importance of community. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson reminds God’s dearly beloved people that the transformed life is one that does what it can to build up the faithful community and those whom God has enfolded into it. Paul even alludes to that when he speaks in verse 25 of Christians as “all members of one body [allelon mele].”

The “falsehood” [pseudos] (25), and “stealing” [klepton] (28) that Paul calls God’s adopted children to shed erode the bonds of trust God uses to hold communities together. What’s more, the “bitterness [pikria], rage [thymos] and anger [orge], brawling [krauge] and slander [blasphemia], along with every form of malice [pase kakia]” that the apostle condemns are highly destructive to any community.

By contrast the godly virtues of speaking “truthfully [aletheian] to” our “neighbor” [tou plesion] (25), not “letting the sun go down while … still angry [parorgismo],”(26) and speaking “what is helpful [oikodomen] for building [do charin] others [tois akouousin] up” (29) strengthen the community of God’s adopted children. What’s more, the practices of being “kind [chrestoi] and compassionate [eusplanchnoi] to one another [and] forgiving [charizomenoi] each other” enhance any community in which Jesus’ friends find ourselves.

Preachers might also note the large role that godly speaking plays in the lives of people whom the Spirit has transformed. In a 21st century culture that treats words as cheap, Paul summons Christians to a careful use of our words. He summons us to “speak truthfully,” (25) and let only words that are “helpful for building others up according to their needs” (29). The apostle, what’s more, invites Jesus’ friends to get rid of “slander” (31).

Love, too, plays a vital role in this list of vices and virtues. That’s, of course, most obvious in Ephesians 5:1-2’s reference to Jesus’ friends as “dearly loved children,” whom the apostle summons to “live a life of love, just as Christ loved us.” The love God shows in Christ’s life of love summons to us the kind of love that is agape, the self-giving and surrendering as well as unconditional kind of love.

Those who choose to preach on this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson do well to note a couple of more things. First, Paul doesn’t explicitly say that it’s the Holy Spirit who equips Jesus’ followers both to shed the vices he condemns and adopt the virtues he encourages. So preachers who wish to be faithful to the gospel will want to supplement what the apostle writes in this Lesson with a description of the way the Spirit empowers God’s dearly loved children to imitate God.

Secondly, preachers should remember that scholars puzzle over to what exactly Paul refers when he summons the Christians in Ephesus not to “grieve [lypeite] the Holy Spirit with whom you were sealed [esphragisthete] for the day of redemption [hemeran apolytroseos]” (30). The context of the list of vices and virtues at least suggests that Jesus’ friends give the Holy Spirit pain when we do things like speak falsehood rather than truth, let the sun set on our anger and steal. Verse 30 at least implies that we bring joy to the Holy Spirit when we do things like doing something useful with our hands so that we have something to share with people who have needs and speak words that help build up our fellow image-bearers of God.

The Message lyrically paraphrases Paul as writing in verse 30, “Don’t grieve God. Don’t break his heart. His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don’t take such a gift for granted.”

And finally, of course, preachers must deliberately remind ourselves and our hearers that neither the shedding of the vices Paul rejects nor the practice of these Christ-like virtues rescue us from eternal separation from God. God saves God’s dearly beloved people by grace alone that we can only gratefully receive with our faith.

But Ephesians 4 and 5 words are certainly words of grace. After all, in them God doesn’t just commend the most purposeful and meaningful kind of life we’ll ever live. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson also summons Jesus’ friends to reflect God’s amazing grace to our neighbors, communities and world that’s dying to see and know that grace.

*Denotes the Greek words that are the basis of the English translations used in many Scriptures.

Illustration

Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North includes a description of Tenji Nakamura, the brutal commander of a Japanese POW camp where thousands of POW’s and locals died in forced labor. He escaped prosecution. But after the war, when doctors diagnosed him with cancer, his wife lovingly cared for him. Flanagan writes about that love’s transforming power, Nakamura’s “wife’s goodness brought out so much that was good in him. He bore his illness with stoicism and humor.

“He made time to see others who were even sicker than he; and even did some work with a charity that took meals to the old. He was kinder and more thoughtful about one and all: his family, his friends, his neighbors, even strangers. Tenji Nakamura was stunned by this discovery of such goodness in himself. ‘I am,’ he decided, ‘a good man.’ And this thought gave him immense comfort and a tranquility in the face of his cancer that amazed all who knew him.”