Introduction – The Most Important Thing About the Church

Continuing with this series of homilies on the book of Ephesians and the Church, I’d like to start with the end of our New Testament reading and work my way back to the beginning.

This is because the end of this passage tells us maybe the most important thing about the Church, that which is most foundational to her identity and mission. Listen closely:

‘Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

‘Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.’

Ephesians 4:32-5:2

Paul tells the Ephesians there to do four things to one another: be kind, be tenderhearted, forgive, and walk in love. But what’s the motivation? ‘Forgive one another, as God in Christ forgave you’… ‘Be imitators of God…walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.’

Those verses tell us that Christianity is different to moralism or legalism.

Moralism says, ‘I will make myself good through an effort of my own will’.

Legalism says, ‘I will keep the rules so that I might be superior to other people who can’t’.

Christianity says something altogether different: ‘You are a sinner just like the rest of the world. That is the truth and you must face up to it. But God loved you so much that he sent his Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for you. He has given his most precious and beloved son to suffer and die for you. Now, the only appropriate response is to be transformed by that love and to become an imitator of God.’

Can I give you a silly comparison to show you how this works in the human heart? When I was a teenager, one of my friends introduced me to a certain heavy metal band. Hard to imagine, I know, but I was hooked from the moment I first heard one of their songs. I spent the next few years working in a fish restaurant to afford to buy their albums. I bought an electric guitar and started playing it day and night. And I tried to start a heavy metal band of my own.

What was going on there? Well, my heart had been captivated by this music. I loved it. And so my desires, my actions, and my will were transformed. And I wanted to become like those guys. I wanted to imitate them.

Notice I wasn’t trying to imitate them for any other reason: I didn’t want, for example, to fit in with others with liked Metallica, and I wasn’t doing it to bring myself some kind of material advantage. No, my young heart simply loved the music and loved them for making it. I was transformed and became an imitator of the love that had transformed me.

Do you see what I’m saying about the Gospel? When we contemplate the love of God in sending Jesus Christ to save us from our sins by dying for us, when we hold that before our eyes and we are captivated by it, we begin to love God for his goodness towards us. That love can’t help but transform us, and so we become imitators of him.

One of my favourite films is called ‘Of Gods and Men’, a true story of French monks living in Algeria amongst Muslims in the midst of a brewing civil war. They are a truly Christlike, gentle presence in the midst of a turbulent and dangerous world. In an early scene, one of the brothers, an aging doctor called Luc has a conversation with a young Muslim girl who asks him what it is like to fall in love. He gives a beautiful description and says, ‘Something inside you comes alive, but you’re in turmoil, especially the first time’. She responds that she’s not felt that love and doesn’t feel it for the boy her parents want her to marry. She asks Luc if he’s ever been love and he answers, yes, several times, ‘But then I experienced an even greater love and I answered that call. Sixty years ago’.

That is what I am talking: the experience of a love so great, so wide and deep and vast and holy, that is changes you from the inside out. Once you’ve experienced such a love, the idea that you would obey out of slavish morality or legalism is not something to contemplate. You obey because you want to imitate the object of your love. You obey because you want to draw closer and to know the warmth of that love. Anything that would separate you from that love grieves your heart, just as a young lover is grieved when he is separated from the object of his affections.

So, the most important thing about the Church, most concisely put, is the Gospel: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.

The Church is a response to this message and to the command, repeated in various different ways: ‘Now, go and do likewise’. Imitate God in his love for you: give, forgive, act with kindness and gentleness, walk in the light.

Some Practical Examples from the Rest of the Passage – Honesty, Forgiveness, Truthful Speech

Very quickly, then, here are some practical examples from the rest of the passage:

Firstly, live honestly: ‘Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labour, doing honest work with his own hands’ (Ephesians 4:28).

What does that mean: to do honest work? It means not to steal. To do a good job. To not deceive the one you are working for. In other words, it is a command to live your life in the light. The biblical writer John is especially fond of this metaphor: ‘God is light’ (John 1:5). So we live in the light because God is light and he dwells in the light.

Secondly, forgiveness. Why forgive? Very simple: because God in Christ has forgiven you. This one is easy to illustrate: Matthew 18:21-35. Jesus tells a story in answer to the question, ‘How many times should I forgive?’ He says there was a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. One owed him an absolutely huge, unpayable amount, and so the king ordered him, his wife and children, and all that he had to be sold. He begged the king to forgive him. And forgive he did. But then this servant found another servant who owed him a lot less and the first servant refused and put him in prison till he paid the debt. Then the king found out about this and wasn’t best pleased. So, he said, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And then he puts him in prison and reinstates the debt.

That one speaks for itself really, but the point is that the unforgiving servant should have been transformed by that event such that he too became a forgiving man. He should have sympathised and understood the horror of being in debt and the joy of forgiveness. But he hardened his heart instead and how ill-fitting.

So forgive. Why? Not just because, but because God has forgiven you and loved you so much in doing so.

And then, thirdly, this emphasis upon truthful speech: ‘Having put away all falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbour, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil’ (Eph. 4:25-27) and it continues in that way. Translation: if you are angry with someone, try not to sin, but speak to them…quickly, before the Devil gets an opportunity and starts to cause havoc in the church.

There’s a verse in the reading from last week that I didn’t mention then but it’s relevant now. There, the Apostle Paul tells the Ephesians to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). In other words, be honest with people but do so in a loving way. Don’t use difficult truths to tear others down, but speak truthfully with love so as to deliver that person from some folly or to help them to improve or grow or for some other good reason. Similarly, just loving someone but speaking falsehood or omitting difficult truths isn’t enough either: if you really love, you won’t avoid telling the truth out of cowardice or a misplaced sense of compassion. You will tell the truth because you love the person.

How does that relate to what I’ve been saying? I said that we obey and act in a righteous way because we are captivated by God’s love and we want to imitate his love in sending Jesus to the cross for us. Well it seems to me that the message of the cross is the perfect embodiment of this phrase, ‘speak the truth in love’.

The cross reveals the truth about us: we are sinners, so sinful in fact that this bloody, sacrificial death of the righteous and holy Son of God was necessary for us. And if we’re honest with ourselves it’s not actually that hard to believe that this was necessary.

But is this word of criticism spoken out of anger or malice? Of course not. It is the supremely loving action of God to sacrifice his own Son in order to save wretched human beings from their sin. The Apostle Paul puts it like this: ‘He who did not spare his only Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give him all things?’ (Romans 8:32). Translation: the most costly, the most precious, the most beautiful thing that God could have given to the world was his Son, Jesus. And he did it. And so now we can be confident that he'll give us everything else we need because everything else is far less than that.

The cross is judgement and criticism, yes, but it is also love.

This is what it meant for God to speak the truth in love to us. And now we are called to do the same for one another: to live true, honest lives, and to speak, when necessary, words which are difficult precisely because we love one another and we do not want our brothers and sisters to persist in folly and darkness. Again, just as God has done for us.

Conclusion

Friends, when we approach things in this way, the Church becomes a picture of the Gospel. This is what God desires of us. Go and do likewise.

Amen.