What does it mean to put off the old self and put on the new? Here’s a perfect illustration. A list of things we are supposed to remove from our hearts and lives. And a list of things we’re supposed to build in. The transformation God has worked in us and desires for us to catch up with, is like night and day. From hostility to love. If only we would take the time to honestly face ourselves, then go after these things like God desires, some of us would be entirely unrecognizable—in a good way! There is doubtless at least one thing each one of us should take home from these few verses, so perk up those ears that are intended to hear. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you, then go in His strength and make the necessary corrections. Here we go! From Ephesians 4:31-5:2.
The Test
31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Amnesty Day! Yay! A day to get rid of a bunch of junk! Just put it at the curb. If the sanitation department doesn’t take it, someone else likely will. Amazing! Like magic! It just disappears!
Wouldn’t it be nice if rooting out all the wrong things in our hearts was as easy? I mean, it out to be as easy as swapping out the hearts we live from, right? Why didn’t God remove our old self, heart and all, and just leave us with the new heart and self? Why leave us to struggle between the two?
To test the genuineness of our faith. The genuineness of our repentance. And the earnestness of our love for Jesus Christ. We’re not alone in such testing. Hebrews 2:10 (NIV) tells us, “In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.” That’s Jesus. Jesus was tested in His love for His Father.
During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 5:7-10, NIV)
Jesus didn’t learn obedience in Heaven in the presence of His all-glorious Father, where everything is perfect. He would never think to disobey His Father in Heaven, but neither would He really be offered a choice. Why would He even want to? He learned what real obedience was as He lived down here among us. Where sin runs rampant. Where we do so much wrong that no one realizes it’s wrong! Where “friends,” even loved ones pressure us to ignore God’s way and do it man’s way. Where obedience to His Father would ultimately mean submitting to horrible suffering, or putting Himself first and saving His life. Some of our hardest testing comes from having to choose between obeying God or disobeying Him.
"Skin for skin!" Satan replied. "A man will give all he has for his own life. But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face." (Job 2:4-5, NIV)
Is Satan right? Satan is an astute observer of mankind. He knows us well. “A man will give all he has for his own life.” You want to test the genuineness of someone’s faith? Strip him of everything he has and see how he responds. Strike his flesh and bones and see if he doesn’t curse God. The New Testament agrees.
Romans 5:3-5 (NIV): Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
James 1:2-4 (NIV): Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
1 Peter 1:6-7 (NIV): In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
And perhaps the most important reason: Because Jesus left the pattern after which we should live.
For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. (1 Peter 2:19-21, NIV)
Our life wasn’t meant to be easy-peasy as soon as we believed in Jesus. Don’t get me wrong, we’re promised incredible blessing as we walk in Jesus’s ways, especially when sharing in His sufferings (Romans 8:17). No, we are under continual testing and trying to reveal what is in our hearts, whether true faith in Christ or a fair-weather fondness for Jesus.
Not all of our testing comes from unjust suffering. Perhaps most commonly, we’re tested by commands like those today: “Get rid of….” “Be….” Putting in the work it takes to repipe the plumbing of our mouths. Letting go of our lust for and trust in material things and learning love by sharing things we’ve labored to gain. From venting anger to controlling our response to provocation and bringing our thinking in line with God’s, viewing people and circumstances from His perspective. We are most frequently tested by whether we will turn from our old, natural, toxic ways to Christ’s new, Spirit-led, loving ways.
So here comes another challenge. Do you recognize the old self, corrupted by its deceitful desires? Do you recognize the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness? Paul gives us a list of behaviors that reveal the one nature over against the other.
Put Off the Old
31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
The old self lives very much for its own passions and pleasures. It is self-focused. And especially because of the world we live in, but also because God loves us so much, it is so easily provoked to anger. We don’t get something we want. We don’t get our way. We think we know best, but everyone ignores us. We expect and demand so much of others, all along thinking we give so much and deserve a little payback.
Well, we get payback, all right, but not what we wanted. Because everyone else in this world is just as selfish and is looking for their own repayment. And because God wants to humble us and break our pride and teach us to live for His purposes, not our own.
So how does the natural man respond to such attacks? Let’s take a look. And if the Holy Spirit particularly pokes you in the spirit at one of these, take special note and commit yourself to rooting it out over the course of this coming week.
First up is bitterness. The Greek here speaks of a harshness, an embittered, resentful spirit, an acridity like that of poison. Bitterness doesn’t just pop up. It comes from something that provoked us to anger or some repeated thing that keeps provoking us to anger. We didn’t take the time to correct our understanding or correct the problem. Instead, we tucked it away, perhaps even thinking how noble we were to overlook the offense. But we didn’t really overlook it. We just chose not to speak about it. At the time anyway. Because bitterness has a way of bubbling to the surface, popping out some noxious gas and then sinking back out of sight. Maybe in an unkind comment or a look or a tone of voice. Whenever something reminds them of the suffering they endure at the hand of their tormentor.
Bitterness is a poison that chokes godly love. It doesn’t prevent a caricature of true love; it actually turns what could be genuine kindness into the kind of gift you’d really rather return for a refund.
So Paul says, “Get rid of it.” Every form of it. There is no good bitterness. Not in the human heart.
Next up: Rage. The word here is the opposite of bitterness; it doesn’t sneak around in the shadows. It is a fiery explosion of anger, indignation, wrath. This one’s “loud and proud!” This is the verbal equivalent of a 20-pound sledgehammer to pound in a 2-penny nail. The purpose of rage is to strike terror into the hearts of those who oppose or hinder the will of the one who wields it. It is a massive weapon used to force their will on those around them.
It is no expression of love. As James writes, “for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” (James 1:20, NIV). You’ve undone your goal, if you use rage to correct people. It too must go!
Then comes anger. This is the same word we saw back in verse 26, “in your anger do not sin.” The propensity toward sin is great, because this is an anger that has taken up long-term residence. It carries the idea of a fixed opposition to the target of its anger, especially in terms of punishment or vengeance. When used of God, it is always right. God justly punishes the wrongdoer. When applied to us, it is too often controlled by our flesh, by our old, self-centered self. Therefore, every wrong is judged by how we were hurt, not by whether we were right or wrong. So we seek vengeance, not for the sake of justice or for the sake of God or for the benefit of the other, but for our own satisfaction and exaltation.
We cannot stand when certain people are proved right, when they are honored, when good comes to them. We want them brought low, humiliated, crushed. Unlike bitterness, which seethes out of sight but taints all our interactions with the object of our hatred, this anger is much more active. It looks for ways to tear their target down, even while maintaining a veneer of niceness!
In our anger, we must not sin. We must resolve before God whatever it was that provoked us as quickly as possible. That’s where we start. Where we end is with a complete removal of all self-centered anger from our hearts and lives. With enough practice clearing our hearts at each provocation, we will completely realign ourselves to see things as God sees them.
Next is brawling, which is an interesting choice of translation by the NIV team. If you’re like me, you hear that word and think physical fighting. But the underlying Greek means an outcry, shouting, clamoring against another. It is not physical but verbal. It is screaming and yelling. Like the proverb says, “If a wise man goes to court with a fool, the fool rages and scoffs, and there is no peace” (Proverbs 29:9, NIV). A fool has no good argument against the wise man, so he screams and rages and yells as long as he can in order to drive away his opponent, and thereby secure victory—at least in his own mind. We see a lot of this today across our nation. It’s basically an adult temper-tantrum.
How embarrassing it would be for the believer in Jesus Christ to behave in this way. This kind of “brawling” is for the sinner and the fool, who has no hope of getting his way by any other means. It is not for the one who trusts in God to bring about true justice in His time.
That brings us to slander. The Greek here is the word for blasphemy. We usually think of blasphemy in relation to God, speaking evil of Him, calling His works evil rather than good, cursing Him. But it is also blasphemy when we speak of people in any of those same ways. When we defame another, when we revile another, when we lie about another—and when we withhold the truth about another when that might cast them in a positive light. The goal of slander and blasphemy is to ruin the reputation of another and to cast a shadow over everything they do. It is to drive others away from them. It is not usually spoken directly to the person—because they might correct us and embarrass us—but to others who might not know the truth in order to line them also up against the target.
This is evil and unbecoming of a child of God.
Finally, there is “every form of malice,” which is a catch-all for the things the precede it and anything not otherwise mentioned. Malice is the evil, depravity, wickedness that just hates people and wants to harm them or see them suffer. It underlies all the other things we just talked about. In fact, all these words, all these forms of anger are just variations on a theme. No form of hostility is permitted to the believer, whether Paul specifically lists it here or not. The list is not meant to be exhaustive, but illustrative. All such things as these must be put away from we who believe in Jesus Christ. There is no excuse for any of them to be found in us!
Theologians say that whenever something is repeated in the Bible, it is of vital importance. “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!” God is extremely holy and we can absolutely bank on that!
Well, this list alone is a repetition, but you can find similar lists in 2 Corinthians 12:20, Colossians 3:8-9, Titus 3:3, and in bits and pieces peppered throughout the Scriptures. Do you think it’s important? Do you think these are things we should one day get around to? Or should they be of the highest priority in our daily lives?
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!” And so should we be, says God’s Holy Spirit through His chosen authors of Scripture. Not someday, but now.
Power to Change
Paul didn’t tell us just to put off the old self, as if by doing so there would be nothing left but good! No, sadly, shockingly, there would simply be nothing left! Apart from Jesus Christ, all we have is wickedness, hatred and corrupting lusts! As Jesus said to His fellow Jews, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him” (Matthew 7:11, NIV)!
That’s why we were given a new heart and a new self when we trusted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God wasn’t interested in obliterating us, but remaking us according to His likeness.
But His likeness is so foreign to us, that we actually think it is unattainable. I don’t know, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we can get there! God’s instructions in Scripture aren’t written to us as an exercise in futility, as an impossible goal only meant to frustrate us—or as high-sounding words devoid of any real purpose!
In his second letter to Timothy, Paul writes of the last days and what men will be like at that time. He makes a statement that I wrestle and wrestle and wrestle with to understand. He describes the people of that day as “having a form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5, NIV). And I wonder, does that just describe unbelievers who establish their own standards of righteousness but have no real power? Or does it also describe believers in that day, who read the Word of God, acknowledge that it is good and right, but deny that there is any way they could ever fully live it out?
Did we come to Christ by our own strength? It is easy to think that is so, since not all of us felt an outside force or power come upon us when we made the decision to accept Christ and the Good News He brings. But if so, would we then also feel like ours is the only power we have by which we can clean up our lives?
Do we miss the fact that it is only be the power of the Spirit that we can come to Christ? And so do we miss the fact that there is real power available to us to put off the old and put on the new nature we’ve been given?
God forbid we deny His power in our lives, His power to help us overcome our old nature, and not just overcome, but jettison it and all its trappings from our lives! We have the power of the Holy Spirit, the God who made the universe, dwelling in us. By His power, we can live transformed lives. These calls to put off those things and put on these, they are not impossible, pie-in-the-sky instructions. They are meant to be attained and experienced!
We have to put in our effort, but in hope and trust that God will put in His! As Paul wrote in Colossians 2:6-7, “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” By faith, by reaching out and grabbing hold—and by the power of the Holy Spirit to change our hard, arrogant heart into a soft, receptive one. He still has power! Power to make you succeed in obeying His commands.
Do not deny His power to conform you to His likeness. Do not deny that He does indeed have miracle-working power for you and for everyone else! These commands and the transformed likeness God calls us to are too hard for us to attain by our own power, yes, absolutely. But they are not too hard to attain by His power!
So, let’s go forward, in the confidence that “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8, NIV). Look to our almighty God for strength to walk in these commands, not to ourselves!
Put on the New
32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
There is nothing new in this instruction, nothing we haven’t seen before. The new self is characterized by kindness, compassion and a forgiving heart, as opposed to the old self, which is characterized by meanness, selfishness and a grudge-keeping heart.
We are called to love our neighbor as ourself, to care about them in every way we wish others would care for us. But we don’t use their failure to treat us as we want to be treated as cause to treat them the way they treat us! How they treat us has nothing to do with how we treat them or why we treat them with even greater dignity than they accord us!
Be aware that these next instructions apply in particular to our treatment of brothers and sisters in Christ. They are not limited in application only to believers, but our love for others who believe in Jesus Christ should be so distinctly different that the world recognizes we are disciples of Jesus: John 13:34-35 (NIV): “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
We should be kind to all people, but especially to fellow believers. We should do them good and be of every possible benefit to our brothers and sisters in Christ, even more than we are to unbelievers. We should be gentle and pleasant to all people, but especially to those who belong to the family of God. Not just in word, as we saw a couple weeks back, but also in deed.
Instead of hostile, cutting, false words, we should think about what help each other needs to grow more in Christlikeness, and we should use our words to “spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24, NIV). That’s why we need to meet regularly and frequently with one another (Hebrews 10:25)!
Instead of blasting our fury for all to hear, our words should be gentle, gracious, pleasant and benevolent! Not exclusively, but especially to those who belong to the body of Christ. How embarrassing it would be for an unbeliever or another brother or sister to visit our church and hear us speak demeaningly, harshly, cruelly to each other! Would they be drawn to join us? Of course not! Not unless they too are the belligerent, overbearing type! It’s an embarrassment even if there is no visitor among us!
Can we change? Absolutely! There is not one of us in this room who is more powerful than God. If we remain in our sin, it is not because God is too weak; it is because we are unwilling to budge.
In truth, if we hold on to all the old grudges, if we take up new offenses, it will be impossible to look on each other with compassion and treat each other with kindness. So forgiveness is key to treating each other with grace and mercy.
Paul tells us to forgive each other just as in Christ God forgave us. Hear this: Forgiveness is not dependent on the offender asking for it. It depends on our experience of love from someone greater, which grants all the security we need and satisfies all our heart’s desires for acceptance and value.
Back in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught us to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44, NIV). High-sounding words. Did He do it? What did He say while they crucified Him? “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34, NIV).
How about Stephen, when the very same people were enraged at his righteous rebuke and began to stone him to death? “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60, NIV). Which of his killers was asking his forgiveness?
Jesus didn’t command and display these things because His enemies and persecutors and murderers were begging for forgiveness. He did it because His heart was filled and satisfied with the love of His Father. There was nothing He needed or lacked from those around Him, so He could look on them with compassion and mercy, even while they railed against Him and celebrated His torment.
No, forgiving someone who harmed or offended us doesn’t depend on them coming back to seek forgiveness. It flows from a new heart, satisfied and confident and secure in the love of God our Father.
So why are we to go and show a brother his fault when he sins against us? (Matthew 18:15) For one, because we “must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to [our] neighbor, for we are all members of one body” (Ephesians 4:25, NIV). For honesty’s sake. For genuineness of relationship.
For another, out of love for them! To win them over! Because if they have truly done wrong, we want them to recognize it and repent, so that they can grow in Christlikesness even as we also seek to grow! And so that they do not remain under the wrath of God for their treatment of another of His precious children—you and me! It’s not for us, but for them! It’s not for us to get some satisfaction over them, but for their benefit.
But if we’re unwilling to forgive them, even if they don’t come seeking our forgiveness, we are in effect holding onto that offense, tucking it away, down in the recesses of our heart. And that hurt becomes bitterness that poisons us. Then every time we see the person, every time someone mentions them, every time we interact with them, it is like a thorn jammed into our flesh, never removed, hammered again and again and again, until our resolve to be kind to them breaks down and the infection of anger begins to seep out, eventually spewing out at the least provocation. I speak from personal experience.
Forgiving those who sin against us is the only sure defense against the bitterness of offense and hurt and anger. It is key to keep from feeding the old self and to strengthening the control of the new self over us. A readiness to forgive—from the heart—anyone who seeks it comes from a heart that has learned or is learning to forgive without being asked (Matthew 18:21-22).
We who believe in Jesus Christ need to seek the forgiveness of those we’ve offended, do not misunderstand me here. We do. Because Jesus commands it. Because we need to grow in love. Because we need to own up to our sins and renounce them. Because we want to guard our brothers and sisters against any root of bitterness that may spring up in their hearts. It is an expression of kindness and compassion toward God’s other precious children.
Forgiveness doesn’t depend on the other person, but on us. Likewise, treating another brother or sister with kindness and compassion doesn’t depend on them and how well they do whatever we expect of them. It depends on us, whether we have forgiven them from the heart.
Remember, God was offering you forgiveness before you ever sought it. He made all provision for it by the sacrifice of His only Son, Jesus. This instruction here is to forgive each other in the very same way as God in Christ forgave us.
The worst thing we can do is to withhold forgiveness, especially from those who seek it. Then the Lord will withhold forgiveness from us (Matthew 6:14-15; Matthew 18:23-35! Nor do we ask others to prove the genuineness of their repentance before we forgive them (Matthew 18:21-22). Does God withhold His forgiveness until we get our lives in perfect alignment with His? No! Actually, having forgiven us, knowing full well the “weakness” of our repentance, He comes alongside us to guide us, instruct us and empower us to make good our repentance. Just be careful not to resist His help!
Imitate God
1 Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
All of Chapter 4 is summed up in the first two verses of Chapter 5. Yes, we’re actually moving into the next chapter!
We’re not just called to forgive others in the same way God forgave us, but by rooting out all the evil in our old hearts and building in all the right things commanded in Chapter 4, we are learning the ways of God. We are walking after the pattern Jesus Himself set by His life on earth, after the pattern the Spirit set for us in the record of these Holy Scriptures.
All these instructions teach us what it looks like to become an imitator of God. And we’re called to do so as His dearly loved children. This is not impossible, because God Himself makes it entirely possible. It is because of the security and vastness of His love for us, that we can treat all people everywhere, especially fellow members of this body, with love and compassion and kindness and forgiveness and generosity and honesty and humility and gentleness and patience.
Our new self was “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24, NIV). Here, Paul is saying the same thing: “Be imitators of God...and live a life of love” (5:1-2a, NIV).
And what is love? Love is defined by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ out of love for His Father for the benefit of others. “A fragrant offering and sacrifice to God,” as Paul put it (5:2b, NIV, emphasis added).
That last little bit there is of vital importance. If we want to live a life of loving sacrifice, a meaningful sacrifice, our sacrifice must be pleasing to God. It must be made to God. Otherwise, it is in vain.
To love people, to give up ourselves for their good, is not to become their doormat and do whatever they want us to do. It is not to lose our will and personhood to another human being! That’s not the example Jesus left to us!
Jesus surrendered Himself entirely to do the will of His Father. And that’s the pattern we must imitate. God the Father defined what love was for Jesus the Son to carry out. God the Father defines for us what is pleasing to Him and what is not. If we offer to Him something He hasn’t asked for, and in particular something He doesn’t want, then our sacrifice is not for Him but for us. It is not pleasing to Him and will be rejected.
He has told us clearly in these many verses what sacrifice is pleasing to Him. If we refuse to do these things, and instead come up with something we think He ought to be happy with and offer that to Him, sorry, no dice. We have to offer to Him the sacrifice that is pleasing to Him. What is pleasing to Him is every instruction we have talked about over the course of these two and a half years that I’ve been with you.
Jesus gave His life up for us—He gave it up to His Father, to do the will of His Father, to please Him. In Romans 12:1 (NIV), Paul calls us to be “living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God”—this is true worship!
We are living sacrifices when we do what God wants us to do rather than insisting on our own way. We are holy and pleasing to God when we do what God instructs rather than putting it off as too hard or offering Him something else or something less in its place.
Today is Mother’s Day. You’re supposed to give your mom a gift that she would enjoy. If you asked yourself, “What do I really want?” and gave that to her, do you think she’d be delighted? “Here, Mom, the X-Box I always wanted!” Yeah, no. I’m sure she’d be real sweet about it. You might never know how disappointed she was. But a real gift is what the recipient desires, not what the giver wants.
Same is true of God. And all we’ve been talking about, these are the sacrifices that please God.