00:00:00:55 – 00:00:31:07
Clint Loveall
Hey, everybody. Thanks for starting the week with us. Glad to have you back. Glad to be back in Ephesians. We’re in the fourth chapter. We’re in the, What are we here? The 14th verse. And, kind of finishing a short section here, read a few verses. We’ll come back and and talk it through. We must no longer be children tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery or their craftiness in deceitful scheming.

00:00:31:12 – 00:00:54:56
Clint Loveall
But speaking the truth in love. We must grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth and building itself up in love.

00:00:55:01 – 00:01:23:48
Clint Loveall
We are coming out of a section in which we had talked last week, and if you haven’t seen that, it might be worth picking that one up. The idea of giftedness in the church, the idea of, people having specific gifts or using specific gifts to build the church up and having those within the community who had some authority and some giftedness to lead.

00:01:23:52 – 00:01:48:12
Clint Loveall
And, and now, continuing that thought, Paul says an interesting thing here. We must no longer be children. And I what I think is helpful about this metaphor that kind of weaves its way through here, Michael, is this idea of growth that Paul’s not criticizing, the idea that we know more than we once did. And in fact, I think Paul thinks that’s good.

00:01:48:12 – 00:02:30:49
Clint Loveall
I think he thinks that’s natural. But what he’s arguing is that we shouldn’t go backward. We are in Christ. We are something more. So we must no longer be children. We must mature, tossed and to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine and people’s trickery and craftiness and deceitful scheming. You could not we could spend a lot of time here, but the responsibility of the Christian community to be theologically grounded, to be sound in their thoughtfulness, in their doctrine, in their thinking and teaching and preaching.

00:02:30:54 – 00:03:09:31
Clint Loveall
We we must not allow ourselves to just be influenced by those who who don’t give us the truth and who don’t speak things that build up the body of Christ. I think, you know, it would be easy to, get carried away here, Michael, but I think this is just this is really good. Something we don’t often think about, that the church has as part of its calling a the task of thinking well and of holding.

00:03:09:36 – 00:03:18:25
Clint Loveall
Holding on to that which is true and helpful and good in the name of Christ. It’s not something we spend a lot of time with often.

00:03:18:30 – 00:04:04:43
Michael Gewecke
I think that this is a classic example of one of those texts that is maybe not incredibly well known, but by those who are referencing it, they often will reference it. Very heavy, because there’s a historic temptation. And by that I don’t mean lodged in the past. I mean that it has popped up over and over and over again throughout history for Christians to come and really be drawn to these texts where we’re told to not be like children, to grow up to desire the meat and not the milk, that these texts can become very alluring because what they do is they present a kind of hierarchy.

00:04:04:48 – 00:04:22:37
Michael Gewecke
And if that’s how you read them, if you read them, it’s just simply you should be the wise one. And don’t be like the children. Then what Christians end up doing is they define everyone else as being the children and then themselves as being the wise. And I think that these texts have built around them always thought the New Testament.

00:04:22:37 – 00:04:46:39
Michael Gewecke
If you read closely, there’s really protective mechanisms in there, and it exists here too, because verse 13, which just precedes our text to maturity, to the full stature of Christ. And we spent quite a bit of time on that last time. So jump back if you missed that study. But then we can continue in that same breath. We must no longer be children, right?

00:04:46:49 – 00:05:17:37
Michael Gewecke
Children, when compared to the full stature of Christ. And ultimately, as you’re going to move forward, all this idea of being tossed to and fro, the blowing about by every wind of doctrine, by tricking us, craftiness, deceitful scheming. This is less about whatever hot button issue comes to our mind, which is generally how we read the Scripture. We read it in light of our immediate context in our world and our culture, and the stuff that we are taught by the tossed and thrown ness of our moment.

00:05:17:42 – 00:05:52:11
Michael Gewecke
And instead we miss what’s happening, which is ultimately for the Ephesians and argument that there are things that are keeping them from the full stature of Christ, that it’s the unity that’s been argued throughout this entire book, which is at risk because the people can’t find a footing, a foundation, a central understanding of what matters. That then becomes the issue that keeps people because of this wind of doctrine, this deceitful scheming, they therefore aren’t able to grow up into Christ, who is the head.

00:05:52:12 – 00:06:22:10
Michael Gewecke
I think knowing the context that surround us is an essential part to understand the argument being made here. And I think what the argument is, if you want to simplify it, it’s ultimately children are caught up by whatever the anxious concern of the moment is, and they miss the more central calling. And that calling is fundamentally to be unified in Jesus Christ, and that unity has implications for the whole body, not just you and yourself.

00:06:22:15 – 00:07:00:33
Clint Loveall
There’s an assumption here that those things are out there, that there are winds of doctrine, that there are ideas, that there are trickery and craftiness and scheming that threaten Christian unity and Christian truthfulness. And there is then a reason for us to be cautious and I think, you know, it would be easy to frame that. It kind of adversarially and, and you could rail against picking those things out and fighting each and every battle, which sometimes the church has done.

00:07:00:37 – 00:07:33:27
Clint Loveall
But I think it’s a better way to read this, to hear it as a clear call for faithfulness, for truthfulness. Don’t get caught up in those things. Stay to the path. And then the antidote for those things is it’s very interesting. The the opposite that Paul offers is one of my favorite verses here in 15. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ.

00:07:33:32 – 00:08:11:17
Clint Loveall
There is so much wisdom in these words. Speaking the truth that we are to confront falseness with truth that is part of the Christian task. We live in a world where we will encounter falseness. We live even within the church. As the Ephesians are experiencing, there will be differences of doctrine and theology, and it is Christian responsibility to hold on to the truth and to speak the truth in the face of falsehood.

00:08:11:22 – 00:08:54:41
Clint Loveall
But that is tempered with these simple words in love. If Christians cannot say what they say in love, then they probably ought to remain silent. And I think Michael, we have far too many examples in church of what happens when you don’t hold these two things in tension. When you have angry Christians who are convinced that they’re right and they say hurtful things, they say ugly things that they say unchristian things and they they do so under this umbrella of I’m just a truth teller.

00:08:54:41 – 00:09:18:45
Clint Loveall
I say it the way it is. I just call it like I see it. And they you lose the idea of love. And and Paul says that the truth matters, but the truth must serve a loving end. On the other hand, I guess you could find people who only say kind and gentle things, but maybe it doesn’t have truth in it.

00:09:18:45 – 00:09:49:46
Clint Loveall
And I just think the, the, the balance here of trying to find that middle ground where the things we say speak the truth clearly, plainly and boldly, but do so out of a position of love, out of compassion, out of care. And then Paul goes on to say, we must grow up in every way, which again is an appeal to this idea of maturity, and we grow into him who is the head into Christ.

00:09:49:46 – 00:09:52:36
Clint Loveall
This is I think, this is a really powerful verse.

00:09:52:40 – 00:10:20:07
Michael Gewecke
Well, the the problem, I think, is that we sometimes find this unsatisfying. Clint. We would really like to be the ones who get to define what the truth is. And we’d also like to massage what the loving presentation would be, if we’re going to be honest. And I think the metaphor that follows here is a really important one, because we’re joined in knit together by every ligament with which it’s equipped.

00:10:20:07 – 00:10:46:51
Michael Gewecke
And, and there’s a working properly, it promotes the body’s growth and building itself up in love. I want to be clear, this connectedness image really matters, right? Because it means that you have to have a balance. One muscle can’t be stronger than the other muscle. One bone can’t be better than the other bone. The body has to be knit together in such a way that it all functions towards the same end.

00:10:46:51 – 00:11:19:01
Michael Gewecke
If one thing gets out of whack, it’s going to pull the whole thing out of alignment, and it’s going to hurt the existence and the vitality of that whole organism. And so the metaphor here, which is living and which is held together in the kind of creative tension that clinched, it’s not accidental. It’s here to help us understand that this is a middle of the road kind of call that that truth and love have to be held in tension, and we’re often just quite bluntly going to find that unsatisfying.

00:11:19:01 – 00:11:35:56
Michael Gewecke
We would much prefer to just let loose and say, this is what I think. Well, okay, good. But that has to be held in tension with the rest of the body, and that has a way of curbing what we think, what should be, or even in some cases, what must be. And yet that’s part of the way that this system is designed.

00:11:35:56 – 00:12:02:17
Michael Gewecke
Why? Because it’s not about you and me. Fundamentally. It’s not about us reaching our end. We must, grow up in every way into the head, which is Christ. And that matters, right? That Christ is bigger than our experience, bigger than our imagination, bigger than the assumptions that we’ve made. That’s uncomfortable. It’s unsettling. But the way that we find stability in it is this knit togetherness that we have in community.

00:12:02:22 – 00:12:24:15
Clint Loveall
I think. I think so many times it’s tempting to feel that you have access to truth, to to really believe that you have it right and, and hopefully do. But then to envision that that truth is kind of a club, you know, you’re going to go out and and beat down falsehood, right, that you’re going to attack it.

00:12:24:19 – 00:12:51:24
Clint Loveall
And I think Paul paints a very different picture that we speak the truth in love, not in anger, not in fear, not in frustration, but in love. And as Christians are called to be truth tellers, it is to be undergirded with the idea that we say what we say out of a love for other people and a love for Jesus Christ.

00:12:51:28 – 00:13:28:21
Clint Loveall
And that is the highest of standards. It it’s much easier to shout down falsehood and attack what you see as deceitful than it is to speak Christian truth from a place of love and from a heart of love that is really about building up in Christ. And Paul says it here at the end for the body’s growth in building itself up in Jesus.

00:13:28:26 – 00:14:17:24
Clint Loveall
You can be you can hold on to truth and be wrong in how you do so. And I, you know, that’s, that’s a cautionary word for the Christian church. And we’ve not always we’ve not always remembered to get love into our truth and balance truth with Christian heart. And, I think these are in the moment we live in where we have access to immeasurable opinions, and we have more than ever before in human history, avenues to disseminate our opinion and share our opinion and our comments and our thoughts.

00:14:17:29 – 00:14:35:35
Clint Loveall
What a what an important reminder Paul gives us that it’s not just about saying things that are true, it is also about why we say them and how we say them, and that that’s a good word for us in the moment we’re in.

00:14:35:40 – 00:14:57:52
Michael Gewecke
I think a balance to this conversation is going to come tomorrow. I do think that you need to come and join us because there’s some really concrete thinking still to happen about the fact that our Christian imagination does change our understanding of what is true. And so I’m not going to jump into a conversation we’re going to have.

00:14:57:52 – 00:15:35:33
Michael Gewecke
I just want to be clear. There’s a kind of so what written throughout this text. It’s not just that Christians are called to speak the truth and love for the sake that truth is spoken. Truth is in this context for the sake of building the body up. And that is so important that we remember the why. Because even if you take as an illustration of this apparent there parents who discipline their children in such a way that it cuts their children down, and it makes them small and it makes the adult feel like they can let loose of their anger and frustration.

00:15:35:40 – 00:15:59:54
Michael Gewecke
If you’ve ever had that in your own life, either experienced it or maybe, unfortunately, that came out of you. You know, that’s a very dissatisfying, a very disconnecting kind of discipline. There’s another kind of discipline, a kind of boundary setting, which is rooted in love and deeply connective and hurts within for the other person, while still providing a kind of structure for them.

00:16:00:09 – 00:16:28:48
Michael Gewecke
Clint. That’s what I see in the text. Like this. It’s not that we as Christians possess a thing that we call truth, that then we lord over others as if we are the franchise owners with the thing. No, it’s we have been given the truth so that it might inculcate a community that grows, so that we might be the kind of people that work up in our life together, such that we might even reflect the head who is Christ?

00:16:28:48 – 00:16:54:28
Michael Gewecke
It’s the kind of gift we’ve been given in Christ is the gift of maturation. And some Christian traditions would use, you know, perfection or growing or there’d be different ways that they’d speak about how, regardless of that, the point I think here is that this is supposed to lend us on a journey somewhere. And I think that we sometimes forget the journey part of it.

00:16:54:28 – 00:17:13:43
Michael Gewecke
We forget the ligaments connected and all needing to be in balance. We get fixated on our part of the equation, and this text is a good reminder to us that we need to get back to basics, understand that we are part of a larger thing, and that though sometimes may be dissatisfying. That’s exactly the way that Christ designed it.

00:17:13:48 – 00:17:46:26
Clint Loveall
It is, I think this is a humbling kind of text, Michael, if we take it seriously because it invites us to think about the person we would like to unleash truth upon, maybe a family member, a coworker, a friend, a community member. But but somebody who we would kind of like to tell off. And, you know, you you do this and it makes everybody this and you and you think you this, but you it that idea of the catharsis of just letting them have it.

00:17:46:26 – 00:18:12:57
Clint Loveall
But then to really ask, what is that from my would I be doing that because I love that person, because I want them to grow, because I want them to know truth? Or would it just be attacking from a place of something else and think most of us, if we’re honest, are going to say that holding truth and love together is no, there’s no easy feat.

00:18:12:57 – 00:18:30:36
Clint Loveall
Certainly. Certainly that’s true for me. I like to think maybe that’s universal. Maybe everybody experiences some of that, but that that’s the Christian ideal of speaking the truth in love is, it’s a high bar.

00:18:30:41 – 00:18:48:37
Michael Gewecke
We’re in a very substantive part of this text, and certainly glad that you’ve been willing to go with us into it. There will be a lot more to come this week. Hope you’ll join us for that. Definitely. Like this video will help others as they study through this book in the future. Subscribe so you don’t miss a study like this and we will see you all tomorrow.

00:18:48:39 – 00:18:49:17
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody!