The New Self at Home Among Neighbors

Grace and peace to you who read this today.

When I wrote to the saints at Ephesus, I had just told them to put off the old self and to put on the new, "created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:24). Now watch what I do with that. I do not leave the new self hanging in the air like a fine idea. I bring it down into the street, into the workshop, into the house where tempers flare and words fly. "Therefore, having put away falsehood…" (Ephesians 4:25). Therefore. The new life must have a body to walk around in, and that body is your ordinary day among ordinary people.

See how I go, one thing at a time, and how to each command I fasten a reason. This is not a list of rules I toss over the wall at you. It is the shape of a life that belongs to Christ, and I want you to see why it fits.

First the tongue. "Let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another" (Ephesians 4:25). Falsehood is what the old self reaches for — it is easier, it protects us, it hides us. But you are no longer strangers cutting your own deals; you are limbs of one body. When your hand lies to your foot, the whole body stumbles. Truth is simply the body telling itself the truth so it can move as one. So put the lie away — the flattering lie, the covering lie, the small convenient lie — and speak plainly to the one beside you, for he is part of you.

Then anger. Notice I do not say anger is always sin. "Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil" (Ephesians 4:26-27). There is an anger that burns at what is wrong, and it need not be evil. But anger is a fire, and fire kept overnight in the house of your heart will find something to burn. So deal with it while the light lasts. Do not carry it to your bed and nurse it into bitterness by morning. I tell you plainly why: an unforgiven grudge is an open door, and the devil is looking for open doors. Shut it before dark.

Then the hands. "Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need" (Ephesians 4:28). Mark the whole turn here. It is not enough that the thief stop stealing — the hand that once took is now to work and give. The old self takes; the new self makes and shares. Grace does not merely empty a man of his old sin; it fills him with a new usefulness. He who took from his neighbor now labors so he may have something for his neighbor. That is the gospel running down through the arms.

Then the mouth again, more closely. "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear" (Ephesians 4:29). Ask this of your words before they leave you: do they tear down or build up? Do they fit this moment and this person, or are you only relieving yourself? Words can carry grace — real grace, a gift to the one who hears. Your speech can be a means by which God feeds a weary soul. What a thing to be entrusted with. Do not waste your mouth on rot.

And then, in the middle of these homely commands, I lift your eyes higher than you expected: "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption" (Ephesians 4:30). Do you feel the weight of it? These are not merely social faults. The Spirit of the living God dwells in you — the same Spirit who, as I told you at the first, sealed you and stands as the guarantee of your inheritance (Ephesians 1:13-14). He is a Person, and He can be grieved. Your lies and your bitter words and your cruelty do not merely offend a rule; they wound the tender Guest who has made your heart His home and who will not let you go until the day of redemption. Let that steady you. He grieves because He loves, and He loves because He is not leaving.

Then I gather it all up. On the one side, everything to be swept out: "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice" (Ephesians 4:31). See how it runs — bitterness settles into wrath, wrath boils into anger, anger spills into shouting and slander, and under it all sits malice, the will to harm. Put it all away. On the other side, everything to be put on: "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another…" (Ephesians 4:32).

And now hear where the whole passage has been walking all along. Why should you forgive the one who wronged you, when it is the hardest thing you will do? Because — "as God in Christ forgave you" (Ephesians 4:32). There it is. There is the ground under every command in these verses. You do not manufacture kindness out of your own store; you have none. You forgive as a forgiven man. You give because you were given to. When you stand over someone's debt to you, clenching it, remember your own — remember what it cost God in the flesh of His Son to cancel yours, and how freely He did it. I was a violent man and a blasphemer, and mercy found me and made me His. If He forgave me that, who am I to hold the small coin of my neighbor's offense?

So take one thing from this today. Do not try to carry all of it at once. Is there a lie you have been living behind — speak the truth. Is there an anger you have carried past too many sunsets — go and lay it down before dark. Is there a word waiting in your mouth to wound someone — swallow it, and reach instead for a word that gives grace. And is there someone you have not forgiven? Look at the cross, and forgive as you were forgiven.

The Spirit within you is well able to do this in you. Do not grieve Him; walk with Him.

Grace and peace be with you.