Fight-or-flight instincts serve a necessary purpose for cornered people or animals. When people misrepresent us or wrong us, our self-preservation instincts naturally prime us to lash back at them. But God gives us a higher example in his gospel: an example of self-sacrificial love and forgiveness.
When Paul calls us to imitate God, he refers especially to sacrificial love and forgiveness:
“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Eph 4:32—5:2, NIV)
In the body of Christ, our fellow members are as human as we are, and some are emotionally dysfunctional. Simple misunderstandings can take on new dimensions for people who have been repeatedly hurt, and they may lash out and hurt others. But the conflict can stop with us. We need to speak truthfully, not slandering others by misrepresenting or caricaturing their intentions (4:31). We must speak truthfully to one another because we are fellow members of Christ’s body (4:25). Expressing anger in words that we can’t take back gives the devil a foothold (4:26-27). What we speak should be for the purpose of building each other up (4:29). That often means we have to swallow our pride, holding our natural instincts in check long enough to formulate a softer response that gives grace to the hearers. (A gentle answer often deescalates anger, whereas a harsh response escalates the conflict—Prov 15:1.)
Paul does not summon us to create unity in Christ’s body, but to preserve unity by being at peace (Eph 4:3). That is because Christ has already brought us together as his body (2:15-16; 4:4), at the cost of his own life (2:16). When we engender divisions in his body, we sin against Christ’s sacrifice. As we would suffer pain if our own body were torn apart, we cause Christ pain when we divide his body, by what we speak or how we act.
Paul applies this image both to ethnic divisions (2:11-13) and other relationships (4:25). Our goal, to which true ministry leads (cf. 4:11-12), is maturity in Christ: not a baby body, but an adult body (4:13-15). This is expressed in a body whose parts function together, in unity of faith in and knowing God’s Son (4:13), in speaking God’s truth in love (4:15), as each member of the body, joined directly to Christ, does its part in building up the whole body (4:16). We do need to guard the body against those who are out to advance themselves (4:14) rather than functioning as gifts given by Christ for his body (4:7-8, 11-13). Nevertheless, not only in local church relationships but even in online community, believers should deploy the truth in love, not in ways counterproductive to our unity in Christ.
The model of Christ’s divine love, so pivotal to Paul’s case in Ephesians 4:32—5:1, does not start there. The first part of Ephesians is lavish in its depiction of God’s love for us. For example,
God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us” (Eph 1:4-8, ESV).
Throughout the first part of his letter, Paul elaborates all sorts of blessings that God has given us in Christ. When, in the remainder of his letter, he summons us to love and serve one another, he calls us to give what we have received: grace. God gave us grace (1:6-7; 2:5-8), including by giving us some of his other servants to build us up (3:2, 7-8; 4:7). We also have opportunity to share grace with one another, including by how we speak (4:29).
We follow Christ’s example of sacrificial love—even for us his followers, who forsook him and fled when the time came to take up the cross and follow him (cf. Mark 14:50). We love because he showed us how. In the words of another apostolic author: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
