Developing A Loving Community

Ephesians 4:1-16 Part Four

There are three things in life you can be certain of: death, taxes and conflict among Christians.

Christian conflict. It should be an oxymoron, like airline food and military intelligence. These two things should not go together–but they do. Christians are supposed to get along. Jesus said that the world of unbelievers would recognize believers not by their singing or their political allegiance, but by their love for one another. But what does it mean for a local body of believers to love one another? Does it mean we smile at each other? Do we pat each other on the back and say, God loves you? We love our children, we pat them on the back, but we also correct them and train them when they need it. It may be difficult to understand love in this way. If we love one another we will give correction if headed the wrong direction, we will speak out when sin is present.

Turn to Ephesians 4:15. Paul tells us to "speak the truth in love". It is a short phrase that seems simple enough, "speak the truth in love." How difficult could it be. Well it isn’t as easy as it sounds, is it? We mess up this simple command because of the need for balance between truth and love. If you have truth but no love, you are a cactus Christian. You may be right much of the time, but you are prickly and sharp and people don’t like to be around you. On the other extreme, if you have love but no truth, you are a chameleon Christian. You are gentle and safe, but you change colors and beliefs such that you stand for nothing. . There must be a balance between truth and love.

Sometimes it is hard to grasp what exactly this looks like, so let me give you some more guidelines and examples. Jump over to v. 29 of chapter four. Speaking the truth in love is defined in this verse. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. We are told to not let unwholesome talk come out of our mouth. First it is important to see that we have control over our speech. Paul says, do not let it happen. What is the worst excuse in the world when you ask someone why they spoke harshly? "I just couldn’t help myself." You and you alone control your tongue. If the words start to come out, stuff them back in. Where do you think they got the expression, "bite your tongue"? That is excellent advice. No one "makes’ you say anything. Wouldn’t it be great if we could install a purity filter on our mouths. Whatever awful thing we said would pass through the filter and come out sounding rosy and nice? What would you be willing to pay for such a filter? Do you realize you already have such a filter? It is called your brain.

But what does it mean to speak an unwholesome word? It is further defined in the same verse.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. We can only speak words that are helpful for building others up, according to their needs, and that it may be for their benefit. Let’s say you feel you need to talk to someone about a problem. Before you say a word, ask yourself, "will this benefit the other person? Do they have a need that I can help by speaking with them?" If that question is not clear, then bite your tongue. Now make sure you understand what it means to be a benefit to another person. Let’s take 2 examples. Person A is discouraged, what they need is encouragement and you can benefit them by encouraging them. Person B is making bad choices about their life. What they need is Godly wisdom and counsel and you can benefit them by helping them make right choices. In both cases you are speaking the truth in love. To person A you say: "I understand how you feel, God is good, you’re going to make it." That is truth in love spoken according to their need. To person B you say: "can I show you a better way? I think it might work better if you consider this." That is truth in love spoken according to their need. Speaking the truth in love is other-centered. You are not thinking about that you need, but what the other person needs at that moment.

That is a little bit about what it looks like, which leads into why we need to learn to speak the truth in love to one another. Other than the fact that God commands it and that Jesus modeled it. One of the best known examples is probably the woman at the well in John 4. He speaks gently and lovingly to a Samaritan woman, which was a total break from every Jewish custom, but he tells her the truth about her life and her choice to worship Jesus. Another reason has to do with the contagiousness of sin. For this we need to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter five. In the first part of the chapter Paul is reminding his readers about a man in their church who was committing public immoral acts. The Christians at Corinth were not only allowing such indecent acts, but some were proud of them. Pick it up in verse six. Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? In this case the sin was so bad and the person so unrepentant of his sin that they had no choice but to remove him from their body. Lest we think that was harsh, most readers of 2 Corinthians think that this same man returned to the church later. But the idea is that sin is like yeast in a bread dough–if let go, it penetrates the whole lump. Sin that is tolerated usually grows and has a negative effect on everyone, not just the person sinning. How do we get rid of the sin in our midst? By speaking the truth in love to one another. This is our responsibility, not just for the benefit of the other person, but for the benefit of the entire church.

Let me give you an example from the world of crime in the big city. In the 1970's and 80's crime in big cities like New York was skyrocketing out of control. Nothing seemed to help. Finally, the chief of police in New York city attempted to implement what is called the broken window theory. The broken window theory teaches that if there is a broken window in a building, soon all of the windows will be smashed. If a damaged car is left on the street, in a mater of hours it is completely destroyed by vandals. Similarly, if graffiti and other seemingly small crimes are let go, then it has an eroding effect on the morality and behavior of everyone else. Crime penetrates the city like yeast in a ball of dough. The way to reverse the process is to get tough on all crimes, no matter how small. This sends a message to all that decent behavior will be enforced and is good for all. This worked so well and the crime dropped so dramatically in New York city that it has been adopted in many other cities with similar positive effects. The application to us then is obvious. Allowing sin to go unchecked is like allowing a broken window in New York City. It demoralizes all, it reduces the standard of holiness in the community of believers. The way to reverse this trend is speak the truth in love to one another. Don’t wait until the sin is out of hand, take care of it in the early stages.

I will never forget a situation where I regretted not acting. A friend of ours had been abandoned by her husband and another couple let her live in their basement for a while. After a while we helped her move out into an apartment. It was a hot day and we were all drinking lemonade and water. She picked up a large cup, looked at the husband and asked, "is this your cup?" He answered, "yes," and she proceeded to drink from it. Do you see what was wrong with that picture. She had become so familiar with this guy that she gladly drank from his cup. Only months later we learned he divorced his wife and our friend was pregnant by him. Do you see how I ignored a broken window? I let it go and metaphorically speaking, all of the windows were smashed out. If we want a loving community we all need to be willing to address the broken windows in our own lives and the lives of others.

But if we confront these kinds of smaller issues, won’t that just cause more conflict, the very thing we are trying to avoid? Remember, we are not trying to avoid conflict, anyone can do that. We want to resolve conflict and in the example I just shared, the moment I saw her drink from the guy’s cup, there was a conflict. So how do we begin to approach these kinds of sensitive issues? That brings us to the second major point in your outline. We need to be speaking the truth in love. But there is a missing element. When we speak the truth in love, what else is happening? Someone is listening, right? So we need to learn how to speak the truth in love but equally important we need to learn to hear the truth in love. You see, in a relatively short time I could teach you how to speak the truth in love. There are some do’s and don’ts and some skills related to speaking in love. But hearing the truth in love is actually much more difficult. This gets down to the very core of our being. We don’t want anyone telling us we may have dome something wrong. We get defensive, we think it is none of their business. Speaking the truth in love is uncomfortable, hearing the truth in love can really hurt.

Why do we need to be able to hear the truth in love? Well the obvious answer is that if we are commanded to speak the truth in love, as I said before, this assumes that someone else is doing the listening. But a more complete answer can be found in Psalm 139. At the end of that chapter David prays what I call one of the most dangerous prayers in all of the Bible. ²³Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. ²⁴See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. This is a prayer to be searched out by God. For God to look hard into the deepest past of our hearts, to see things that only he can see. To uncover hidden motives, selfish attitudes and warped coping mechanisms. But doesn’t God know these things already? Of course he knows them. God knows all there is to know about us, that is what the rest of this Psalm is teaching. This prayer then becomes a permission for God to tell us what he already knows. He doesn’t need permission in the normal sense of the word. But we are saying to God, if you tell me these things, I will listen. God can try to tell us these things all he wants, but if we are not ready to listen, we will not hear. What does Jesus repeat over and over in his teaching? "He who has ears to hear." Only those ready and willing to listen will truly hear the truth. (Johari window)

So we invite God to tell us about ourselves, does he whisper it in our ear? Does he write it in the sky? Probably not. He often tells us directly from his word, but so often God uses other believers to minister to us. If you need encouragement, if you need to be prayed for, if you need help with something, God helps us by sending other Christians to do the job. It is the same with this kind of need. If you ask God to show you your anxious thoughts and your offensive ways, he is likely to use another person to tell you. We don’t condemn one another, we don’t beat up on one another, but we love one another by speaking the truth. If someone speaks to you in love, your job is to listen in love as if God were speaking to you.

One of the best places to do this would be in the context of a small group. Ideally a small group is a place where trust is developed and confidentiality is practiced. Especially in this type of environment we are more free to confront and challenge one another. A Biblical example of this would be from Prov 27:17 As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. How does iron sharpen iron? Small pieces of iron are scraped away to make a sharp blade. If the blade were alive it would say ouch because part of it is being forcibly removed. Men can sharpen other men in this way. It can be a little scarey, it can even hurt a little, but if as a result we become sharper, if as a result we listen more effectively to what God wants us to hear, then it is all worth it. Pieces of us are chipped away in order to make us more like Christ.

Women can use the verse from Titus 2:4-5, Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. Generally speaking older Christian women will be more mature than the younger women and are given the privilege and responsibility of training them. This is the same kind of training that parents do for their children. This is the way Christians are supposed to treat one another. In an atmosphere of love we challenge, confront, and encourage each other. Not because we are better, but because a little leaven, a little sin harms everyone and because God wants to use us to speak his truth to one another. If this is the ideal, why do we fear it so much? On the speaking end we are afraid that we will appear judgmental and on the hearing side we are afraid of being exposed for who we truly are.

Let me tell you how I overcame the bulk of my fear in this area. In my seminary days I was taking a class called Counseling Skills training. As the name implies, the goal was to learn counseling skills, not just theory. A large part of each class was spent in groups of 3-4 students with one trainer. The students were to attempt their counseling skills on each other. That was hard enough, but the trainer was constantly interrupting us to tell us how to do it better and what we could do differently. Almost everyone was frustrated by this and it became almost exasperating. We would think, why does this person have the right to tell me what to do, I’m not as bad as they think I am. Do you recognize these thoughts? They are similar to those we have when others are trying to help us in other areas of life. Every class I was frustrated until one day it hit me like a brick. The trainer was only trying to help me be better. They had my very best interests in mind, they were not trying to hurt me. What I did after that was to give up my right to protect myself. My attitude was completely turned around after that. I really enjoyed coming to class and being constantly challenged. God was sharpening me through that experience and I came to love it, so much so that I became a trainer after that.

Do you realize the enormous amount of energy we expend to protect ourselves? We are afraid to get close to one another. We are afraid of being exposed. We are afraid to confront sin lest someone expose us as well. What if everyone gave up their right to protect themselves? Can you imagine a church where we regularly spoke and listened to the truth in love? Are you ready to give up your right to protect yourself? The very thing you are holding on to for self-protection is the very thing that enslaves you. Give up your right, let it go. God has only your very best in mind and he just might want to use the person sitting near you to teach you something new.

Rich Maurer

November 11, 2001