Movement Busters, Movement Builders
Paul now moves into the nuts and bolts of how this subversive counter-revolutionary movement works and the dynamics that animate it. He builds on the baptismal foundation he laid in the previous section. Note the repetition of the “put away” language from v.22). Instead of taking the first phrase of v.25 as a command (as in the NRSV and NIV), which is grammatically possible, I think it better to take is as the basis for the succeeding admonitions, “having put away falsehood” (as in the CEB, NET). Further, I think Yoder Neufeld is right to take “falsehood” as parallel to “your former way of life” of v.22, leaving us with a translation: “therefore, having put away this false way of living”.[1]
Having put the old way of life behind us in baptism, Paul begins his exhortations by urging his churches to live truthfully (“speak the truth”; see 4:15 and the comment there on “truthing it in love) with each other “for we are members of one another”. This language suggests more than simply “telling the truth”. That’s certainly included in Paul’s exhortation but seems a little trite if taken literally. If we are indeed “members of one another,” that is, organically related to each other, it seems appropriate to take “speaking the truth” in a larger sense of sharing the truth of the new life we’ve been given in baptism with each other (as we did at 4:15).
That new life, the attitudes and behaviors that bust or build God’s movement, looks like this according to Paul:
Movement Busters Movement Builders
Be angry (v.26) but do not sin (v.26)
Thieves stop stealing (v.28) do honest work (v.28)
No evil talk (v.29) but edifying talk (v.29)
Do not grieve the Spirit (v.30) (rather please the Spirit)
No bitterness, wrath, anger, kind, tender-hearted, forgiving (v.32) wrangling, slander, malice (v.31)
Now most of these movement busters and builders don’t need extensive comment. Understanding them is not the problem. Practicing them is. However, a couple of them do need some unpacking.
Paul’s teaching on anger is first. Traditionally, Paul is thought to be saying that anger can be justified and only becomes sinful if we allow it to linger and fester (“to let the sun go down” on it). Not allowing our anger to fester is certainly sound advice. However, it may well not be what Paul is talking about here. Let’s look a bit further.
The word “anger” is not used elsewhere in the New Testament. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint or LXX) this word parorgismos means “provocation to anger”.[2] In this case we would read “do not let the sun go down on your provocation to anger.” It is no longer anger that is the problem but that which provokes it. In this case, the sin is to be angry but to fail to deal with that which causes it. Whether anger is justified or not, it is a reality we face in the body of Christ. Things happen which make us mad. But it those “things that happen” that need to be dealt with, not our anger. Indeed, our anger should be the impetus for us to act and deal with what is causing it.[3]
In our context, “provocations to anger” will be attitudes and acts that violate the integrity of the body of Christ. The devil finds “room” in our community when we leave such “provocations” untouched and allowed to wreak further havoc among us. When relationships are fractured, injustice perpetrated, promiscuity tolerated, authority abused, and so on, these things must be dealt with post haste. Our anger at such happenings is the fuel that moves us to deal with them, however unpleasant and even conflictual that may be. Paul counsels “tough love” within the church here. In the spirit of Jesus’ own counsel in Matt.18, we must find ways to confront, have conversation about, and conciliate around our issues, thus demonstrating the love of God in action. Thus, Paul’s teaching here is much more radical than the traditional interpretation allows.
“Do not grieve the Spirit,” also needs some additional comment. What does this strange (to us) expression mean?
A review of what Paul has taught us about the Spirit thus far in Ephesians gets us started.
-the Spirit is the “seal” or down payment that initiates our experience of God’s salvation and assures us that God will deliver its full reality to us (1:14)
-the Spirit is God’s “wisdom and revelation” to us that we might truly know and encounter God (1:17)
-in the Spirit we are being built into a “holy temple,” “a dwelling place for God” (2:22-22)
-the Spirit is the source of God’s power in us (3:17)
-the Spirit is essential to our experience of God (4:4)
-here the Spirit is described similarly to 1:14 as the “seal” or promise of a full experience of salvation
To “grieve the Spirit,” then, means attitudes and actions that undermine the very best resource God has given us to experience him and be and do all that he has called us to be and do. The Spirit is the life of the body; to grieve the Spirit is to act in death-dealing ways detailed in this and other parts of this letter.
What is more important for us to note are the reasons Paul gives for such behavior. We are to “walk” (5:2) in ways that are life-giving “for we are members of one another”. If we are organically related to one another, our well-being and destiny are inextricably united. We must work to keep the life flowing through the whole system. Blockages and breaks anywhere lead to diminished well-being for the whole body.
We deal with the sin and difficulties in our communities through confrontation-conversation-conciliation to remove the provocations to anger from our midst so the devil has no foothold to continue to divide and conquer us. Again, it is the well-being of the whole community that is at stake in this practice.
Thieves no longer steal but engage in honest labor. It is interesting to note that erstwhile thieves are among Paul’s churches! At any rate, they engage in such labor “so as to have something to share with the needy” (v.28). For their own sake and integrity and for the reach of the church’s care for the poor, these reformed thieves do a 180° turn and instead of seeking their own interests by whatever means, they find themselves seeking the good of the poor by means of honest labor.
We forswear evil talk, talk which divides, demeans, and diminishes others, for such talk often irreparably harms the quality of our community. Trust, honesty, and transparency go by the boards when evil talk sows its wretched seeds. Instead, we discipline ourselves and our tongues so that our speech edifies others and graces them up to better fulfill their roles in the body and help it grow to maturity (v.29; see also 4:16). The health and well-being of the community again provides the rationale for such counsel.
We have seen above that “grieving the Spirit” has ultimately to do with the character of the congregation as a subversive counter-cultural movement.
We are to eschew bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander, and malice – quintessential movement busters – in favor of kindness, tender-heartedness, and mutual forgiveness. Obviously community well-being is to the fore here as well. But Paul adds something startling at this point. We are to forgive one another “as God in Christ has forgiven you” (v.32). This is no mere human action, the milk of human kindness showing our essential goodness. No, this is the radical, cross-bearing, suffering servant love that goes far beyond what we can generate on our own. God in Christ has forgiven us totally and completely, unconditionally, no longer counting our trespasses against us. In a word, God in Christ forgives in such a way that our sin never again shadows our relationship to him. That’s the way we are to forgive, says Paul. In forgiving others we are to let go of their sin against us in such a way that it never again shadows our relationship and vice versa. And his assumption is that we can indeed forgive that way because we have been forgiven that way. We also have the Spirit ministering God’s life to us and strengthening us to live as God desires.
We can now fill out an adjusted profile of these movement busters and builders along with their various rationales.
Movement Busters Movement Builders Rationale
Be angry at sin and injustice do not sin by failing to deal with it don’t give the devil room in the church
Thieves stop stealing do honest work to give to the poor
No evil talk but edifying talk to give grace to the community
Do not grieve the Spirit (rather please the Spirit) because you are a people of salvation
No bitterness, wrath, anger, kind, tender-hearted, forgiving as Christ has forgiven us wrangling, slander, malice
If we put all these rationales together, we get an overview of Paul’s vision for what the church’s “walk” looks like. We live our lives as a gift, a gift of salvation through the Spirit who empowers us to become God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people. The basis for this gift and power of new life is God’s total, complete, and unconditional forgiveness for us. In the power of such forgiveness we are able to live with each other graciously, even when we have to confront and correct matters that come between us, and are focused on our mission of standing with and caring for the poor.
Does that look like your church, or mine? Probably not much, unless I miss my guess.
Conclusion
Paul draws this section to its conclusion with an even more astonishing call: “Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children” (5:1). Paul is not alone here. Jesus calls us to “perfect” as God the Father is perfect (Mt.5:48) and Peter echoes Leviticus in calling us to holy as the Lord himself is holy (1 Pet.1:16; Lev.19:2). All of this is to say that as “beloved children” we ought bear the family characteristics.
We do this, of course, not on our own steam. We do it by living out the love we have been given by the Father’s unique Son as he sacrificed himself to the Father for us. In his love we too can love as a child of the Father, thus “imitating” him as did Jesus Christ. This call to imitate God puts all the movement builders Paul has enumerated for us in context. They are each and all of them together expressions of this imitative love that proves to the world the Father’s love for his creatures and creation.
We Practice “Walking” as God’s Subversive Counter-Revolutionary People (10)
4:25-5:2
Since forgiveness is so crucial to everything Christian, I offer for our “practice” section on this passage the following reflection on forgiveness by Professor Ben Myers on his blog “Faith and Theology” (http://www.faith-theology.com/2006/10/theology-for-beginners-19-forgiveness.html). Read this carefully and meditatively and consider your own views and practice of forgiveness in its light.
Summary: The freedom of the Christian life is above all the freedom of forgiveness: living in the forgiveness of God, we are set free to forgive the debts of others.
We have spoken of the freedom of the Christian community. And we must now focus on the most distinctive and most fundamental form of this freedom: the freedom of forgiveness.
Right from the start, the Christian life is constituted by the gift of forgiveness. At the beginning of the Christian life, the bath of baptism dramatically enacts the free and unconditional gift of forgiveness by which God receives human beings into the fellowship of his own triune life. In baptism, the past is washed away. All our guilt and shame is removed – it is drowned and left behind in the water. In this way, the power of the past is broken, so that a person emerges from the water into new life, into a life wholly open to the future of God’s coming kingdom.
Forgiveness is not, however, merely the start of the Christian life. Each day and at every moment, we continue to live by the power of forgiveness. Each day, the Christian community repeats the same prayer: “Forgive us our debts!” Each day, we continue to need and to ask for God’s forgiveness. Thus although we are baptised only once, throughout the whole Christian life we continue to share in the eucharistic meal – the meal of forgiveness. Just as we share together in the bread and wine, so we are reminded that God’s forgiving grace is our food and drink, our nourishment, our very life. To eat and drink forgiveness, to be sustained by forgiveness – this is the meaning of the Christian life.
And so our prayer each day is: “Forgive us our debts!” Forgiveness is the opposite of being treated as we deserve to be treated. It is the opposite of restitutive justice. It is the opposite of “karma,” of reaping what has been sowed. It is the opposite of every kind of moral legalism. So too, it is the opposite of making amends for the past. It is the opposite of conditions, negotiation, exchange.
Forgiveness is not restitution – it is unconditional pardon. It is cancellation of debt. Forgiveness therefore involves both a recognition of the debt that is owed, and an irreversible decision that the debt will be cancelled. It is thus not a matter of simply forgetting the past – it is a powerful annulment of the past, an act in which the chains of the past are broken. Through forgiveness, the past itself is thus transformed into something new, just as the future is suddenly opened in a new way. Liberated from the power of the past, I am now set in motion towards a future rich with hope and possibility. This, then, is the unique freedom of the Christian life: to stand forgiven before God, and thus truly to be free in relation to my own past and to the future of God’s kingdom.
But our daily prayer is not only “forgive us our debts.” In fact, our prayer is: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are in debt to us.” This prayer means: “Set me free from the past, just as I release others from the chains of their past. Cancel my debts today, just as today I release others from the debts they owe me. Do not demand restitution for guilt from me, just as I refuse to demand restitution from others. Set me free from the need to make amends, just as I excuse others from this need. Forgive me unconditionally, just as I forgive without negotiation or condition.”
To pray this way is to pray for something radical, something that shatters all our assumptions and expectations about the basic patterns of ordinary social life. In our world, you don’t get anything for nothing. If you want something, you must pay for it; you must make some kind of exchange. But forgiveness overturns the entire economy of exchange – in forgiveness, I give you something for nothing, without requiring payment or exchange, without demanding anything in return. In the economy of exchange, you are bound to me by various contracts and conditions – but in the economy of forgiveness, you are set free from all bondage to me, unconditionally liberated from all indebtedness to me.
Forgiveness is thus something shocking, something astonishing and unexpected. It lies outside the basic patterns and assumptions that underpin our entire culture. It is wholly undetermined and contingent. It is an event that can never be anticipated in advance. It is an irruption of the ordinary. Until we have been shocked and astonished – yes, frightened! – by the power of forgiveness, we have not yet even begun to understand what is involved here.
Forgiveness is shocking because it is a miracle. In and of myself, I lack the capacity to forgive – but as I receive the forgiving love of God in Jesus, I am empowered by the Spirit to become an agent of that same forgiveness. Because I have been forgiven, I can and must forgive. When I forgive a person who has wronged me, that person is truly forgiven – she is liberated from the chains of the past and set free to participate in the life of God’s coming kingdom. So too, when this person forgives me, I am truly forgiven – I am liberated from the past and welcomed into the life of the kingdom. Through the power of the Spirit, human society in all its forms can thus begin to glimpse and to participate in the life of the kingdom through this astounding miracle of reciprocal forgiveness.
To forgive, therefore, is not only a personal act – it is also a social and political act, an act pregnant with the promise of a new future for our world. In international relations and in domestic penal policy, it overturns the politics of vengeance. In social relationships, it overturns the demand for retribution and compensation – the violent demand to be “given one’s due” at any cost. Indeed, in the first century the early Christians interpreted Jesus’ entire ministry as a liberating act of debt-cancellation: in Jesus, the Year of Jubilee had arrived, a time in which all debts were written off, so that the poor could be released from their financial servitude. This, too, is what forgiveness means today. This is what we are asking for when we pray: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors!” The prayer for forgiveness is thus a revolutionary act, a radical contradiction of the whole economy that underlies the accepted patterns of thought and behaviour which drive our culture.
Indeed, the petition for forgiveness is identical with the petition for the coming of God’s kingdom: “Your kingdom come, your will be done; … and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors!” To live by forgiveness is already to participate in the life of God’s coming kingdom. To practise forgiveness in all our day-to-day social interactions is already to show the power and the life of God’s kingdom.
For the kingdom of God – the kingdom that Jesus announced, the kingdom that is now approaching all history like a fast train from the future – is a kingdom of forgiveness, a kingdom whose fundamental economy is one of unconditional, liberating love. To live in the power of this liberating love is the meaning of Christian freedom.
We have spoken of the freedom of the Christian community. And we must now focus on the most distinctive and most fundamental form of this freedom: the freedom of forgiveness.
Right from the start, the Christian life is constituted by the gift of forgiveness. At the beginning of the Christian life, the bath of baptism dramatically enacts the free and unconditional gift of forgiveness by which God receives human beings into the fellowship of his own triune life. In baptism, the past is washed away. All our guilt and shame is removed – it is drowned and left behind in the water. In this way, the power of the past is broken, so that a person emerges from the water into new life, into a life wholly open to the future of God’s coming kingdom.
Forgiveness is not, however, merely the start of the Christian life. Each day and at every moment, we continue to live by the power of forgiveness. Each day, the Christian community repeats the same prayer: “Forgive us our debts!” Each day, we continue to need and to ask for God’s forgiveness. Thus although we are baptised only once, throughout the whole Christian life we continue to share in the eucharistic meal – the meal of forgiveness. Just as we share together in the bread and wine, so we are reminded that God’s forgiving grace is our food and drink, our nourishment, our very life. To eat and drink forgiveness, to be sustained by forgiveness – this is the meaning of the Christian life.
And so our prayer each day is: “Forgive us our debts!” Forgiveness is the opposite of being treated as we deserve to be treated. It is the opposite of restitutive justice. It is the opposite of “karma,” of reaping what has been sowed. It is the opposite of every kind of moral legalism. So too, it is the opposite of making amends for the past. It is the opposite of conditions, negotiation, exchange.
Forgiveness is not restitution – it is unconditional pardon. It is cancellation of debt. Forgiveness therefore involves both a recognition of the debt that is owed, and an irreversible decision that the debt will be cancelled. It is thus not a matter of simply forgetting the past – it is a powerful annulment of the past, an act in which the chains of the past are broken. Through forgiveness, the past itself is thus transformed into something new, just as the future is suddenly opened in a new way. Liberated from the power of the past, I am now set in motion towards a future rich with hope and possibility. This, then, is the unique freedom of the Christian life: to stand forgiven before God, and thus truly to be free in relation to my own past and to the future of God’s kingdom.
But our daily prayer is not only “forgive us our debts.” In fact, our prayer is: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are in debt to us.” This prayer means: “Set me free from the past, just as I release others from the chains of their past. Cancel my debts today, just as today I release others from the debts they owe me. Do not demand restitution for guilt from me, just as I refuse to demand restitution from others. Set me free from the need to make amends, just as I excuse others from this need. Forgive me unconditionally, just as I forgive without negotiation or condition.”
To pray this way is to pray for something radical, something that shatters all our assumptions and expectations about the basic patterns of ordinary social life. In our world, you don’t get anything for nothing. If you want something, you must pay for it; you must make some kind of exchange. But forgiveness overturns the entire economy of exchange – in forgiveness, I give you something for nothing, without requiring payment or exchange, without demanding anything in return. In the economy of exchange, you are bound to me by various contracts and conditions – but in the economy of forgiveness, you are set free from all bondage to me, unconditionally liberated from all indebtedness to me.
Forgiveness is thus something shocking, something astonishing and unexpected. It lies outside the basic patterns and assumptions that underpin our entire culture. It is wholly undetermined and contingent. It is an event that can never be anticipated in advance. It is an irruption of the ordinary. Until we have been shocked and astonished – yes, frightened! – by the power of forgiveness, we have not yet even begun to understand what is involved here.
Forgiveness is shocking because it is a miracle. In and of myself, I lack the capacity to forgive – but as I receive the forgiving love of God in Jesus, I am empowered by the Spirit to become an agent of that same forgiveness. Because I have been forgiven, I can and must forgive. When I forgive a person who has wronged me, that person is truly forgiven – she is liberated from the chains of the past and set free to participate in the life of God’s coming kingdom. So too, when this person forgives me, I am truly forgiven – I am liberated from the past and welcomed into the life of the kingdom. Through the power of the Spirit, human society in all its forms can thus begin to glimpse and to participate in the life of the kingdom through this astounding miracle of reciprocal forgiveness.
To forgive, therefore, is not only a personal act – it is also a social and political act, an act pregnant with the promise of a new future for our world. In international relations and in domestic penal policy, it overturns the politics of vengeance. In social relationships, it overturns the demand for retribution and compensation – the violent demand to be “given one’s due” at any cost. Indeed, in the first century the early Christians interpreted Jesus’ entire ministry as a liberating act of debt-cancellation: in Jesus, the Year of Jubilee had arrived, a time in which all debts were written off, so that the poor could be released from their financial servitude. This, too, is what forgiveness means today. This is what we are asking for when we pray: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors!” The prayer for forgiveness is thus a revolutionary act, a radical contradiction of the whole economy that underlies the accepted patterns of thought and behaviour which drive our culture.
Indeed, the petition for forgiveness is identical with the petition for the coming of God’s kingdom: “Your kingdom come, your will be done; … and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors!” To live by forgiveness is already to participate in the life of God’s coming kingdom. To practise forgiveness in all our day-to-day social interactions is already to show the power and the life of God’s kingdom.
For the kingdom of God – the kingdom that Jesus announced, the kingdom that is now approaching all history like a fast train from the future – is a kingdom of forgiveness, a kingdom whose fundamental economy is one of unconditional, liberating love. To live in the power of this liberating love is the meaning of Christian freedom.
