Everett Henes: Walking in grace

Think back to a time when someone extended unexpected kindness to you, offering forgiveness when you least deserved it. Perhaps it was a friend who overlooked your shortcomings or a stranger who showed compassion in a moment of need. These acts of grace serve as echoes of the Gospel message, illustrating the profound impact of forgiveness and love.

In Ephesians 4:31-32, Paul urges Christians to embody this same spirit of kindness and forgiveness, reflecting the transformative power of God's love in their interactions with one another. He writes, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

Paul concludes this section with a barrage of applications, all of it having to do with how we interact with one another. The Christian life is not meant to be lived alone. If what Paul has said earlier is true, about the church being a family, then it follows that those who are in the church ought to have a level of love and civility toward one another.

First, he says what should be put away: bitterness, wrath, clamor, and slander, along with all malice. These are all words we are familiar with. Bitterness speaks of the kind of resentment that refuses reconciliation. It is an unrepentant spirit. Wrath and anger can be thought of as two versions of the same source: resentment. Wrath is a long-term rage, while anger points to outbursts (leading to sin). Neither is fitting of a believer who has been spared the wrath of God for sins. The word for clamor can also be translated as shouting, usually having to do with disputes and quarrels. If the previous words looked to the what, this looks at the how. There will be situations in our lives where tempers flare, but how should we handle them? Paul says, first, we shouldn’t shout it out. This goes together with the next word, translated all malice, as it speaks to the idea of insulting others.

All of this makes sense, but we are struck by how ordinary these things seem to us. Paul is saying that we shouldn’t act like the world around us, and we shouldn’t give in to our sinful natures. Instead, he says, we should “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.” Again, we are familiar with these things. To be kind, or show kindness, is a fruit of the spirit. It can be explained to our children as simply, “do good to others.” Tenderhearted translates the word for compassionate. This means maintaining a soft heart toward others, thinking of what it must be like to go through their circumstances.

Lastly, Paul says that we should forgive one another. He adds the reason: as God in Christ forgave you. I am reminded of the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:23-35. There we learn of a servant who has been forgiven a great debt, though it would’ve cost him his life. He is seen, in the parable, immediately going out and exacting from another servant a far smaller debt without any mercy that he was shown by the king. The message from Jesus is clear: if we have been forgiven much, how can we not forgive those who sin against us?

Compared to our sins against an infinite, holy God, those sins against us are relatively small. This doesn’t mean it will always be easy, but forgiveness should always be the goal among Christians. Belonging to the same body, the church, gives us opportunities to see one another. We will get to know how we each react, maybe even what our struggles are. We are to put away that which will damage and even destroy the body and pick up that which will build us up. All of it, though, is grounded not in our niceness. Paul doesn’t say, "be nice to those who are nice to you." Rather, we are to have love for all the body not because of anything that they can do, only because of what God has done for you.

You are to love one another because God has loved you. He has forgiven you of your sins if you are in Christ and he has hopefully brought you into a local body. The only appropriate response for all of us is that love, patience and forgiveness for one another that we ourselves have received.

— Pastor Everett Henes, the pastor of the Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, can be reached at pastorhenes@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Everett Henes: Walking in grace