Adult Sunday School - Communication And Conflict Resolution - Part 2

Ephesians 4 and the Structure of Christian Communication

All right, well, we're gonna continue where we left off in Ephesians, and what I'd like to do today is we're gonna talk about four different rules of communication from Ephesians, and then we're gonna talk about four different, four extra rules about communication in general.

This is in no means intended to be exhaustive. In other words, I'm not intending to say everything that there is to say about communication and conflict resolution. In fact, I mean, with a lot of the things that we'll talk about today, I have lessons that I've prepared on each one of these points, and so I'm just gonna try to give you a little bit of a survey of things that are helpful for this topic in general that certainly deserve further study, commentary, and elaboration, but let's start with reading Ephesians 4, 25 through 32, and then we'll talk about what many biblical counselors describe as four different rules of communication that come from this passage.

So Ephesians 4, 25. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil.

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. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as good for building up as it fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 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 has forgiven you.

The Blessings of Union with Christ in Ephesians 1–3

So if you think about what's happening in the book of Ephesians in general, one of the things to realize is that like many of Paul's letters, most of these books are divided up in a fairly neat way. So if you think about what's happening in the book of Ephesians, you can just turn over a little bit to the beginning of the book, and what you'll note is that Ephesians 1, 3 says this.

It says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. And then what you'll find as you go through the book of Ephesians is a list of all those blessings that happen, which seems to extend all the way to the end of chapter three, okay?

So this is a book that starts out with thanksgiving to God for what God has done to us in Christ, and that thanksgiving is built upon, it's founded upon the person and work of Christ as it relates to his ministry to us on earth and everything else.

But what you'll find is as you read through the rest of Ephesians, you can just kind of read through a list of all the reasons we have for being thankful on the basis of all the blessings that we've received in Jesus Christ.

So verse four, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, verse five, in love he predestined us for adoption as sons. Verse seven, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.

And it just goes on and on and on, and that will last until the end of chapter three. So you think about this broader structure of Ephesians, you have the first three chapters are basically all the blessings that Christians have received in their union with Christ.

And then after that, when you get to this chapter four, verse one, you have a very pregnant therefore, like meaning like whenever you say therefore, you're supposed to ask what is it therefore. But this therefore is a very significant therefore.

So on the basis of all of those blessings that we received in Christ, here's how you are to walk, okay? So you have the doctrinal section as the first three chapters, and the last three chapters is essentially the practical section.

And this is often the way that Paul structures his letters in general. He starts with the indicatives, and then he transitions into the imperatives. So I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called.

So the rest of the book is going to describe what it looks like to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which we've been called. And then when you get to Ephesians four, 25 through 32, what we're gonna be looking at for part of our time here today, what you see is right here, we're firmly in this section which is describing what it means to walk worthy of the calling with which we've been called.

And you have a very important dynamic as it relates to sanctification that's happening in this passage, which is the put on dynamic. So if you'll notice within this section, you're going to see a series of contrast, okay?

So I hope you picked up on that as we read the section itself, there's a series of contrast. So therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth to his neighbor, right? So put off falsehood, put on truth speaking, be angry and don't sin, don't let sin go down on your wrath, let the thief no longer steal, but let him work and be generous.

So there's a series of put offs and put ons. And as biblical counselors, often we'll talk about this passage, we'll talk about it as it relates to four different rules of communication that we're gonna find here.

And these are just important things that we should be thinking about as it relates to our interactions with each other. And it has particular unique relevance to the subject of communication conflict resolutions, because if we were to follow these things, a lot of our problems would be at least significantly mitigated, right?

They may not be completely done away with, but they would be significantly mitigated. But as you think about Ephesians 4 .25, the first rule of communication is something that's kind of a fairly obvious kind of rule if you think about it, but then it's something that we so often fail to live up to in a wide variety of ways.

But if you were to think about the foundation for Christian communication, you should be thinking about the Christian's basic responsibility and orientation towards being truth tellers, okay? So you read Ephesians 4 .25, it says, therefore, having put away falsehood, so the put off portion of that, stop lying, right?

Put away falsehood. Let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Now you think about this, that God is a God of truth, and we're typically, we're typically tempted to think about lies as if they're no big deal.

But then if you think about the nature of how lying works, have you ever noticed it's almost impossible to tell just one lie? You understand what I'm saying? I'm not encouraging you to try to experiment on seeing if you can figure out how to do this.

But I mean, often, when you tell one lie, what happens? What's that? You have to tell another one. You have to tell another one, right? And then you have to tell another, so you tell one lie, and then people ask you more follow-up questions about that lie, and then you're gonna have to, on the spot, come up with more lies that you're going to tell in order to explain the first lie, and then pretty soon, you get lost in all of your story that you're making up completely on the spot at that point, not even knowing where you're going with this story, and pretty soon, someone's gonna catch you in that because they're gonna realize inconsistencies between what you're saying, because none of it's based on the truth.

You're just making it up on the spot, but as you think about this principle of speaking the truth, it is very difficult to just lie once. The Bible talks about sin is enslaving, and lawlessness leads to more lawlessness, and so the more that you develop a habit of lying, the more that you learn to excel at it.

One of the things that John MacArthur always says related to this topic is that, as it relates to parenting in general, is that one of the worst things that your kids can learn to do is learn to lie well, because if they can learn to lie, they can learn to basically hide any sin.

There's no sin they won't commit if they learn how to lie, because then they realize that if I can get away with it, and I can learn how to cover for it, they give themselves over to greater sins, and greater sins, and greater sins.

It really is, truth is the foundation for the life that we're supposed to be living, and when you build your life on the foundation of lies, the issue is that there's no telling where you're gonna go, so one of the things he always talks about is how, as a parent, you should treat lying in your children in a very serious way, way more serious than most things, because you don't want your children, in particular, to learn how to excel at lying.

There's no telling what they'll do at that point, but yeah, as I said, God's the God of truth. Satan is the father of lies, and there's many ways in which we can use even the truth to deceive people, right?

So what we have here is we have a command to speak the truth. We don't necessarily have a command to say every true thing that comes into your brain, right? Like meaning, so you think about, therefore put away falsehoods, each one of you speak truth to your neighbor, like you don't have to say, hey, you know, honey, I don't like, you know, that dress makes you look terrible.

You don't have to volunteer like every true thing that pops into your brain, along those lines, but we do have a general responsibility to be truth tellers, and as I said, like you don't have to say everything, but there's always, there are certainly like different, there's different ways in which we can use the truth in order to deceive, right?

So just because you say something that's technically true, that doesn't mean that that's the whole truth, and that doesn't mean that that's the most relevant thing that you're going to say, and that doesn't mean that you're off the hook.

I mean, you know, if your wife were to ask you why you took so long, and you said you were getting gas, but what you were really actually doing was meeting a woman you were having an affair with at the gas station, would that be true?

Well, it would certainly be true, but it certainly wouldn't be the whole truth, and it wouldn't certainly be the most relevant thing that you should be saying at that point. In that way, you can use like the truth as a cloak for a bias, but in so much of our communication problems that we have with each other, a lot of our, like a lot of our communication problems are centered around this notion of our responsibility to speak the truth and speak what is real, and not just be filling our words with lies.

So, first rule there, put away falsehood. Let each one of you speak the truth as neighbor for we are members of one another. Second rule, keep current. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity for the devil.

I mean, there's a lot you can say about the nature of like righteous anger and unrighteous anger, and is this a passage that, like what's the best way to translate this verb, be angry in this passage, and I'm really not gonna describe, go into all that today.

I mean, if you have questions about that, I'll do my best, but there is certainly a principle here that everyone should be able to agree upon, and that's the principle of keeping current, and so much of the problems that people have in relationships, they often, they do center around violations at this principle.

One of the things I wanted to do when we started out our marriage, Elizabeth and I, is take this principle very seriously, because I understand what happens when you shelve problems, okay? So, I've been around relationships where the communication that is happening in those relationships is just kind of a running list of unresolved problems.

Like, that's what you hear. You hear the record. Like, every time anything comes up, even tangentially related to anything, what you're gonna hear is the running list of unresolved conflicts that are happening, and part of the problem is that you just, I mean, imagine, like, this is called shelving, right?

Shelving problems. But, I mean, imagine, like, you have dirty dishes that you're putting on a shelf in your kitchen, and that you're not gonna clean, right? Just imagine you pile up those dirty dishes on the shelf over and over and over again.

Well, pretty soon, like, the whole place is going to stink, right? Like, that's the way it works, but then, like, that's what happens in many relationships where, like, what we're doing is we're taking these problems and instead of actually dealing with them, we're putting them on a shelf, and they're right there, they're visible, but we're not actually, you know, fixing anything, and what ends up happening is the whole atmosphere of a home begins to stink and smell, because you're not dealing with the things that God wants you to deal with.

But notice what it says. It says, be angry, do not sin, do not let the sun go down in your anger. A practice that we have developed over the course of our marriage is just a simple commitment that we've made, and we haven't been perfect on this, but for the most part, we've been faithful by God's grace in following this, that we don't wanna go to bed without, with unresolved conflict.

So we don't wanna, we don't wanna just go to bed bitter. We don't wanna go to bed angry, and you know what? The times that we've, like, violated that principle, I can look at our life, and I can look at our marriage, and the times that we haven't, like, been faithful to just dealing with today's problems today, like, these problems, they don't just go away.

Like, if you don't deal with them today, then what's gonna happen is you're gonna spend the whole rest of your day tomorrow feeling like you're unreconciled, not feeling distant between, distance between both of you, because you have a problem that you are, you have a dirty dish you're putting on that shelf, and you're just gonna look at it, and everyone knows it's there, and no amount of pretending is gonna, going to pretend it away, but notice what it says.

It says, be angry, do not sin. Do not let sin go down in your anger, because when you do, what are you doing? It says you're giving the devil an opportunity, right? So if you don't deal with, if you don't deal with those issues, you don't deal with those problems, what's going to happen is you're giving the devil an opportunity to sow division within your home, to create distrust between both of you.

I mean, this is true of, you know, husband's wife, this is true of parent-child, this is true of every kind of work relationships, these church relationships. You know, I've seen this situation play out over and over and over again in the life of church body, where two individuals have conflict, and they're not really willing to deal with it, and then instead of just getting together, having a conversation, pursuing biblical means of reconciliation, you have awkwardness, right?

I know plenty of people who refuse to go to church, because it would be so awkward to go to church, because if they go to church, they're going to encounter that person they have an issue with that they refuse to deal with, and so instead of going to church, miraculously, it's amazing how this works, but then they feel called to go to a different church, right?

They feel like the Lord is leading them on to greener pastures, and a lot of that just reduces to the fact that they have an issue they need to deal with, and they're too much of a coward to deal with that issue, and so instead of dealing with it as God has commanded, they feel the Lord's leading them elsewhere.

But you know what, like, I mean, you think about this response, be angry, do not sin, do not let the sin go down in your anger. A lot of people, they're shocked at the sin of other Christians against them, but if you can learn how to deal with sin in a biblical way, like, then you have a God-honoring relationship at that point, and like, the issue is not, like, most people conceive of, like, the way to have a good God-honoring relationship is to not sin against each other, but that's not really the way that we have a good, like, a God-honoring relationship with Christ is by never sinning again, like, what we learn is we learn to deal with our sin by confessing our sin to God, bringing those offenses before Him and accepting His forgiveness, and the same thing happens as it relates to, you know, relationships with each other, is that, yeah, it'd be wonderful if we could all never sin against each other ever again, but if that's your standard of what it means to have a good relationship is to be in a relationship where you never sin against each other, you're never gonna be in a good relationship.

The way to be in a good relationship is to learn how to deal with your sin, and not only learn how to deal with it, but deal with it quickly, right? Now, I mean, certainly, if you and your spouse get in a fight at 11 o 'clock at night, you may not be able to resolve all of that, right?

I mean, you may not be able to resolve everything. It may be impractical or unreasonable to spend the next two hours untangling that mess until it's one o 'clock in the morning and you have things to do early in the morning, but certainly, you can say, hey, look, I don't know what's going on right now, but I love you and I care about you, and I don't wanna go to bed mad at you, so I'm gonna pray about my part.

Why don't we pray to God together about our parts in this? And why don't we talk about it tomorrow and talk about more specific ways that we can ask forgiveness, but I don't wanna go to bed with bitterness and anger in my heart, and I have that right now towards you, and I can just say that, hey, I know that's probably wrong, so will you forgive me for that?

And give each other a hug and go to bed and determine to talk about it later. So most people generally don't have to have everything, feel the need to resolve everything right then, but certainly, there's a difference between doing that kind of thing and just going to bed angry and sleeping on the couch, those are two very different kind of experience.

So I don't think this is a command, in other words, to sort out all the mess as long as it takes with or without sleep and everything else, but certainly that you can have a forgiving posture that you extend towards each other and you commit to the process of pursuing reconciliation later, for sure.

So four rules, one, speak the truth, two, keep current, three, edify. So notice what it says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, in verse 29, but only such as good for building up as it fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear and do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

The idea of edification in the Bible is the idea of using your words to build each other up. That isn't just a prescription to have only nice, pleasant things come out of your mouth that the other person is going to enjoy hearing.

So part of edifying is that you're gonna have to say things that sometimes people don't wanna hear, you're gonna have to say things that are true, that need to be said. But at the same time, the goal of our communication shouldn't just be to tear down other people for the sake of tearing them down, right?

That shouldn't be the goal, it's just to basically look at another person and say, you're worthless, you're not worth it, you're just so stupid. I mean, that kind of stuff has no purpose, like there's no edifying purpose with things, speaking in that way.

There's language that we can use in such a way to just tear people down, destroy them. You always do this, like this is who you are. There's any number, as I said, of ways that we can use our words just to tear down, but there might be plenty of times where you use your words in such a way to say something that they need to hear, which is hard, but you're saying it because you love them and you're trying to build them up, you're trying to help be an instrument in their life that's going to identify areas of unfaithfulness and speak those to them with the goal of trying to build them up.

So often when we're talking to each other, what we're doing is we're thinking about our communication towards them through the lens of what we want to have happen, right? So, like if your spouse sins against you, your family member sins against you, whatever it is, I mean, so much of our communication really isn't designed to help build them up, it's just to express how upset we are, right?

So I'm just so tired of being treated this way and I just don't deserve to be treated like this and you don't love me and you don't care about me and I don't deserve this and you're so mean to me and those things, all those things, maybe there's some truth to all of them, like in terms of the first category of things, pick the truth, but the issue is none of that's designed to build them up, it's just to vent, right?

Like when you think about the nature of what you're trying to do in communication with other people, it should be to build them up, meaning, what that means is like your goal in communication should be that I want you to be more like Christ, that's what I want.

I'm not trying to like have a problem-free life, I'm not trying to be treated like I always dreamed, you know, since I was a little kid. My desire in whatever this relationship is shouldn't just be to fulfill some fantasy of what I thought a relationship should be at some point because like I need to be talked to in a particular way in order to feel okay about myself.

So for most people, they go into communication, they go into conflict resolution primarily thinking about themselves and their own agenda and what they want, right? So most of what we're doing in these moments is trying to tell other people all the ways in which they violated our personal preferences, we're trying to tell them all the ways in which they failed to live up to our standards and you know, failed to like help you to be emotionally okay and everything else, but then like the goal is to edify it.

So what that means is like you should be desiring for them that they are more holy after this encounter, right, and that means they're more devoted to God, that's what you should want, you should want, you should want as a result of this encounter for them to be more committed, more sanctified, more devoted to the Lord and that should come out in your language, right?

You should be using your language in such a way to communicate that your chief desire is not just to have like some person who is some fantasy person that you've developed in your mind, your chief desire should be that you want for them that they honor the Lord more faithfully and what your words are communicating is that desire.

So you're wording your communication to them in such a way that is clear to everyone around you that you care more about serving the Lord than anything else, you wanna serve the Lord more than you wanna die and you want that for them too and if you could like understand that, it would fundamentally change the way that you would talk, right?

When you talk to me that way, it makes me concerned about your relationship with God because it says something about you right now, right? Like the way you're communicating, the way you're acting is deeply distressing, it's concerning, like that's very different than you hurt me and I don't deserve this and how dare you, you hurt my feelings and all that.

It's like no, I love you, I want you to honor the Lord and this is not loving and honoring the Lord, right? God sees what is happening right here. God sees what's happening, he's watching what's happening and he sees this and you have a problem with him that you need to deal with that is showing up in the way that you're talking to me, right?

Now, if you talk that way, no one's gonna accuse you of just being a self-centered person who's trying to get your way but that's the idea, like our words shouldn't be corrupting but only such as good for building up like as fits the occasion that may give grace to those who hear and don't agree with the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

So the idea is just to say, first rule, speak the truth, second rule, keep current, third rule, edify like our goal of our communication should be building up and then fourth rule, speak kindly. So notice what it says, let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander be put away from you along with all malice.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you. So the idea here is just to say that like anger can take many forms, like anger can take many different forms.

There's like quiet anger and then there's loud anger and this list here describes the whole spectrum of anger that you can imagine. So like what is bitterness? Bitterness is quiet anger, right? It's cold anger, it's not really hot anger but like when you're bitter at someone, you're often trying to punish them by failing to do the things that you're called to do, right?

It's like you know a bitter person, if you've been in a relationship with any length of time, you try to give someone a hug and what you get is like a dead board. Like you understand what I'm talking about, like you hug a person, there's nothing there, it's just stiff, it's rigid.

Like that's a sign that there's bitterness there, isn't there? Like there's something, like whatever that is, that's not kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another in God as Christ has forgiven you.

There's some like obstacle in the way that's keeping all that and that's typically what you're going to describe as bitterness. Wrath is like about the hottest, like if you think about anger on a spectrum from cold to hot and bitterness is often on the cold end of things and then wrath is on the hot end of things.

I mean wrath is like the yelling and the screaming and the throwing things and all that kind of stuff, the temper tantrums, all that. So wrath is like on the hot end of things, anger is just like your neutral word for all of it, right?

Bitterness, wrath, anger. Clamor, this is a funny word in Greek but clamor is basically like it's a word you might understand as like the banging together of pots or something along those lines. Like meaning like it's noisy, it's loud, it's disruptive, it's like no one wants to be around that, that's what clamor is.

Like most of, like when you think about a fight, like a fight when people are arguing, you most naturally think about like clamor, right? Just loud, noisy, serves no useful purpose. We just talked about the rule of edifying, like whatever's happening when like clamor is happening, there's nothing good that's happening there, no one's being edified, no one's being built up, people are just getting it off the chest, right?

So notice like bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander. Like slander is where we use our words with the intent of trying to destroy other people, right? So you're trying to use your words to tear them down by not speaking what's true about them but speaking lies about them in order to tear them down, to destroy them.

The text is saying like get rid of all that, right? Let all be put away with you along with all malice. And what are you to do like in place of that? So like there's an important principle of put off, put on here that I can elaborate on that is very important that you understand.

But like a lot of us, like we, and this is encouraged by just all the anger management stuff and all that kind of and everything else. But I mean, when you think about the way that we think about fighting sin, most of the time we're thinking about fighting sin in such a way where we're just fixated on the put offs.

So you can think about a list of sins that you might describe, like hey, I need to stop looking at porn or something like that. So, and then what you're trying to do in your mind is trying to figure out how to stop doing that, right?

I need to stop being, like I need to stop when I go to the store stealing things. So imagine, just take an example like that because that's an example that's in the passage here. In, let's see, verse 27, or 28, let the thief no longer steal but let him labor with his hands, doing all his work with his own hands.

He may have something to share with someone in need. Like imagine someone who identifies himself as suffering from kleptomania or something like that, right? So they go to the store and they feel this overwhelming impulse to take things that don't belong to them.

Like the way that, like the world teaches us to train about things, trains us to think about these things and the way we talk about these things in the church is that, all right, I need to figure out how to stop stealing stuff.

And so we fixate on like the put off, meaning I need to stop stealing stuff, I need to quit taking things that don't belong to me. But notice what's actually happening here. It says, all right, let the thief no longer steal but rather let him labor, doing all his work with his own hands so that he may have something to share to someone in need.

Notice like the idea is not just to focus on trying to stop stealing. The point is you're supposed to get a job and work and start being generous. Because why? Because a generous person, like if you can cultivate like the virtue of generosity in your own heart, a generous person doesn't struggle with taking things that don't belong to them because the generous person loves to give.

Do you understand? Like the generous person loves to give so taking becomes unthinkable, right? Now, turn to our discussion on speaking kindly. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander be put away from me along with all malice.

What we think about that, what we think that means is we think that means I need to stop getting so mad. I need to stop yelling so much. I need to stop getting so frustrated, right? Like that, but that's not, it's saying put that off.

Yeah, we certainly need to put those things off but how do you do it? All right, well look, look at the put on in verse 32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you.

You're not just trying to stop being angry all the time. You understand? What you're doing is first and foremost, you're thinking about what Jesus has done for you by dying on the cross to forgive you your sin.

So you're renewing your mind. You're thinking, you're saying hey, I am a great sinner and Jesus is a great savior and he has forgiven me all my sins, past, present, and future. He's cast them into the depths of the sea.

He's thrown them as far as the east is from the west and he's determined to hold them against me no more, to remember them no more. That's what God has done for me. So I'm a great sinner. Jesus is a great savior.

You're reflecting on that, right? And on the basis of that, what are you doing? You're saying be kind to one another. Do you know that if you make an intentional effort to be kind to people, it's almost impossible to be mad at them, right?

The only reason you're gonna do that is because of what Jesus has done. But what I'm trying to say is that a lot of people are just focused on trying to stop being mad instead of focusing on putting on the virtue of kindness.

Undeserved kindness on the basis of what God in Christ has done for you. So meaning, if you can turn yourself into a person who doesn't return evil for evil, into a kind person by the power of the spirit, reflecting on what Jesus has done for you, you're not gonna struggle being angry anymore.

Do you understand what I'm saying? So the point isn't, like, what I'm trying to say is the point isn't just to stop being, man, I need to get my temper under control. I need to just stop blowing up. It's like, well, no, you need to fixate on what Jesus has done for you and learn how to be a kind person, a person who doesn't return evil for evil.

But I mean, that's over and over what you're gonna find as you read the New Testament, like, return no one evil for evil, but if your enemy hungers, feed him. If they thirst, give them drink. For in so doing, they'll reap coals of fire upon your head.

Like, do good to those who persecute you and despitefully use you, because then you'll be sons of your Father who are in heaven but those are four rules of communication from Ephesians 4. How long do we have here?

10, 30. All right, any questions about those so far? If not, I have more. Well, feel free to interrupt whenever, right?

I do have a comment a lot of people think about. It's really, I'm doing this again.

Yeah, I mean, that's a common thing in parenting to where you can be fixated on all the bad, like, all the time wasters that your kids are doing and everything else, but then it'd be much more helpful to provide a positive vision of what they should be doing with their time other than just, like, fixating on all the things they shouldn't be doing, right?