Ephesians4:25-28
Living for Christ means we live for others.
There is no substance at all to the thought that we can be solo, hermit or lone-ranger Christians.
Being called to Christ means being called to community.
Yesterday we saw how Paul has called us to put on a "new self" which has its roots in being like Jesus. Now we are being called to live in community and over the next three days we'll look at three paragraphs that have to do with this communal life.
There are three community concepts at stake today: Truth, Anger and Work.
TRUTH is foundational to communal life. We are part of one body. When I am not truthful it is very damaging to the body, because the truth will eventually come out and those I have misled suffer from my deceit.
ANGER is something many Christians deal with very badly. We think that being angry is wrong and so we bottle it up and it comes out in horrible unexpected ways. Paul is clear: Don't sin in your anger and don't bottle it up. Badly dealt with anger is Satan's foothold: When we sin in our anger we hurt others and when we bottle it up we hurt ourselves. We must learn to deal with anger constructively.
While it looks like vs.28 is about theft, it is actually about WORK. Theft is what we resort to when we are too lazy to work. Theft is not only theft in the criminal sense, but theft in the sense of someone playing the victim and abusing the generosity of others. The outcome Paul seeks here is not the absence of theft, but a dignifying work ethic that not only supports the worker but assists the needy.
Paul calls us to community, but not superficial community, rather courageous community where the truth is told, anger is constructively resolved and a dignifying work ethic is the order of the day.
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
