Put Off the Old, Put on the New: Marriage in the New Creation | Ephesians 4:25-32
Brian Hedges | June 28, 2026
I want to invite you to turn in Scripture this morning to Ephesians 4. I’ll be reading from Ephesians 4:25-32 here in just a moment.
While you’re turning there, I want to mention a secular marriage researcher named John Gottman, who is kind of well-known now for his research at what’s been called the Seattle Love Lab. It was laboratory research where Gottman and his fellow researchers were interviewing couples, and they did this with thousands of couples over a number of years. They were observing the interactions between these couples: the words they would say, the body language, the tone of voice, the specific interactions of these couples. And John Gottman claimed that he could predict whether a couple would divorce after watching them interact and listening to them for just fifteen minutes, and he could make this claim with 91 percent accuracy, because he could detect the certain attitudes and dispositions towards one another that were so toxic to the marriage relationship.
He wrote a book based on this research, a very helpful book—not a Christian book, but a helpful book nonetheless—called The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, and in that book he said this:
“What can make a marriage work is surprisingly simple. Happily married couples aren’t smarter, richer, or more psychologically astute than others. They have hit upon a dynamic that keeps their negative thoughts and feelings about each other from overwhelming their positive ones. They have what I call an emotionally intelligent marriage.”
An emotionally intelligent marriage. Now, those are purely secular categories that he is using to describe healthy marriages, but Gottman was onto something that is true and something that we find taught with much more depth and richness in the Scriptures: the importance of certain kinds of emotional patterns of interaction. The Scriptures commend this to us, and we’re going to look at this today in Ephesians 4.
This is the third message in our series called “Redeeming Marriage.” Week one was all about God’s design for intimate partnership in marriage. We went all the way back to the Garden of Eden, Genesis 2-3, and kind of looked at marriage through the lens of creation, fall, and redemption; how God’s intention and design is oneness in marriage, but sin has interrupted that oneness, and so every marriage faces a certain degree of brokenness. But through the grace of the gospel there can be a restoration of that intimacy in marriage.
Last week we looked at Colossians 3, and we looked at the household code in Colossians 3 and how Paul does something really radical. He Christianizes the household code, and he shows that the supreme authority in the household is not the husband, it’s actually the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s when we put Christ in the center of our marriages and our households that we see the household transformed to become something that glorifies Jesus.
Today we’re looking at marriage in the new creation, in Ephesians 4. When I mentioned Ephesians, some of you probably expected me to say Ephesians 5, which does give instruction on marriage. It’s another one of Paul’s household codes. But having looked at that in Colossians last week, today I want us to focus on Ephesians 4.
One reason I want to do this is because one of my convictions is that the need for so many people in marriage is not just to look at the specific passages in Scripture that teach on marriage, but to actually apply basic principles of Christian living to the marriage relationship. There’s probably no passage in Paul’s letters that is more clear and more practical on the basic requirements of the new life in Jesus Christ than Ephesians 4.
I think what we’ll see this morning is that what researchers call emotional intelligence, Paul describes in terms of new creation, spiritual maturity. It’s more than emotional intelligence, but it’s not less than that. It includes the very skills that secular researchers show us help lead to a healthy marriage.
I’m reminded of a phrase or a sentence written by Peter Scazzaro in one of his books on emotionally healthy discipleship, where he says that there is no spiritual maturity without emotional maturity. That is one of the convictions of the message this morning, that there is no spiritual maturity without emotional maturity. We have to learn how to handle our words and our emotions in a God-honoring, Christ-honoring way. And the passage we’re going to look at this morning teaches us what that looks like.
So, let’s read Ephesians 4:25-32. Then I’ll give you brief context for the passage, and then we will dive into it this morning. Hear the word of the Lord.
“Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, 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. 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 is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, 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 forgave you.”
This is God’s Word.
These verses, of course, do not stand alone. We are right in the middle of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and have to remember what has gone before. Paul opens this letter by praising God for the spiritual blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus, as he talks about how God has chosen us in Christ and adopted us into the family of God and redeemed us through the blood of Christ, giving us the forgiveness of sins, and has sealed us with the Holy Spirit. He has prayed for the Ephesian believers that they would be filled with the spirit of wisdom and revelation so as to know the great benefits and blessings of redemption. And he’s gone on to talk about the new humanity in Christ.
The passage immediately preceding this talks about how we have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self and are now being renewed in the spirit of our minds according to the image or the likeness of God our Creator.
That gives us the template, it gives us the pattern for understanding this passage in particular. It is this pattern of “put off, put on,” be renewed because of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Scriptures are very clear. The Scriptures give us commands—negative commands: put off, put away—positive commands: put on, live in this way, motivation. “Do this because of what Christ has done for you.” And that is the flow of thought in this passage, as Paul kind of works through that pattern of put off, put on, do it for gospel reasons, gospel motivations; and he works through a number of categories in this chapter.
I think it was over twenty years ago now when I first preached through Ephesians, and I quoted the Puritan John Owen. John Owen said, “Holiness is nothing but the implanting, writing, and realizing of the gospel in our souls.” That’s a good statement. “Holiness is nothing but the writing and the realizing of the gospel in our souls.”
We could paraphrase Owen today to say something like this: a Christ-honoring, spiritually healthy marriage is nothing but the writing and the realizing of the gospel in that human relationship. This passage will show us what that looks like. Of course, it’s not only for marriage; this extends to the whole church. So if you’re not married this morning, you could think through the specific application to your own spheres of relationships.
But I want to focus especially on marriage as we look at three areas of life where Paul gives us instruction this morning. We won’t cover every verse in this passage, but three themes, three areas that we see in this passage:
1. Words: The Currency of Communication
2. Anger: Healthy vs. Unhealthy Conflict
3. Forgiveness: Gospel Love in Action
1. Words: The Currency of Communication
Notice, first of all, verse 25: “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.”
There’s the pattern. Put away something—falsehood. Put on something—speak the truth. And do this because we are members of one another. There is a new relationship that we have in Jesus Christ.
This is showing us the basic pattern. And as the very first thing, Paul targets dishonesty in our words. “Put away falsehood,” put away lying, and “let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor.”
Then he returns to speech in verse 29, when he says, “Let no corrupting talk,” literally “no rotten speech,” “come out of your mouths.” The word “corrupting” was the word that was used for rotten fish or spoiled meat. “Let no [spoiled, rotten words] 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.”
Now, don’t go over those verses too quickly. You put those verses together, and Paul is giving us here a blueprint for healthy communication, healthy patterns of speech. And you can use this to evaluate your words. Evaluate your words using these four criteria:
Do my words, first of all, tell the truth?
Secondly, do my words build up?
Thirdly, do my words fit the occasion?
And fourthly, do my words give grace to those who hear?
You can evaluate your marriage in that way by looking at the patterns of communication between you and your spouse. So often, the breakdown in communication and marriage happens because one of those four criteria are being violated. Maybe there’s dishonesty, or maybe the words don’t build up but they tear down, or maybe the words don’t fit the occasion. You’re maybe saying the right thing at the wrong time and in the wrong way. Or maybe the words do not give grace, they do not encourage, they do not minister the grace of God in that situation.
This is one of the things that John Gottman recognized in his research, is that couples who spoke to one another in certain tones of voice and using certain kinds of words would find that their relationships tended to crumble over time, and he specifically targeted words of criticism. That would be the opposite of words that build up. Criticism tears down, whereas words that build up and edify encourage and strengthen another person.
So, Paul here is talking about something very practical, isn’t he? He’s talking about our use of speech, our use of words. The tongue, James tells us, is a very small member of the body, but it carries great power. He compares the tongue to a horse’s bit and a ship’s rudder and a tiny spark that can set an entire forest on fire. A very small thing that has tremendous influence. One of the most powerful influences either for good or for evil in your relationships, and especially in your marriage relationship, is your tongue. It’s what you do with your words.
James went on to say in James 3:9-10, “With the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers [and sisters], these things ought not to be so.”
When there is duplicity in our mouths, when there is hypocrisy in our use of speech, when we praise God on one hand and tear down our spouses on the other, you can be sure that the marriage is going to suffer. We must use our words in the ways that God has said, and marriage gives us daily opportunities for that. Every day, interaction with a spouse where you’re either blessing or you are cursing—even if you’re not using a swear word, if you’re tearing down, if you are diminishing rather than building up and encouraging, then you’re failing to do what God has commanded here.
Let me give you a practical way to think about the influence of words. This is a concept I got from somebody else, I don’t even remember who now, but it’s one that I’ve used sometimes in marriage counseling.
Think about a bank account. Think about an emotional bank account. We know how bank accounts work. Bank accounts reflect what you deposit into the account, and you need to keep more money in the account, deposit more money than you spend, right? Otherwise you end in the red, you end up with an overdraft, you end up in debt and in money trouble. In the same way, you could think of your relationships as having emotional bank accounts, and the marriage relationship is like this. Every marriage, every marriage partner has got an emotional bank account where the spouses are continually putting in deposits and making withdrawals. And you can think about the very practical ways those deposits and those withdrawals are made.
Here’s a list—deposits:
Words of gratitude, when you express appreciation, when you express gratitude, when you say thank you
Words of affirmation and encouragement; again, when you’re building up the other
Words of empathy and understanding, where you are entering into the experience and the feelings and the emotions of the other person
Compliments, where you praise your spouse
The use of Scripture to encourage—not the use of Scripture to tear down or criticize or condemn, but the use of Scripture to encourage
All of those are ways of making deposits in the emotional bank account of your spouse.
In contrast to that would be the opposite. This would be harsh words; of course, lying words, deceitful words, but harsh words.
Remember that Paul said in Colossians 3 to husbands, “Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.” Harsh words tear down. This would include things like name-calling and belittling, criticism, contempt, swearing, accusation. It would include those kinds of statements that go like this: “You always…” do such and such, and then you make an overgeneralization, or “You never…” do such and such, and you make a generalization. Of course, you say things like that and immediately your spouse is going to go into a defensive mode, a defensive posture.
Here’s the deal: the withdrawals over time will add up, and if there are not sufficient deposits in the relationship, you will bankrupt the relationship.
Now, some of you this morning most likely have a serious deficit in the emotional bank account of your spouse, because there have been so many withdrawals, whether it’s been lying and deceit, or whether it’s been harshness and criticism or tearing down, or simply a lack of expressing gratitude and affirmation and praise and encouragement, you’re in the red. And the reason there is coldness, the reason there is distance, the reason there is a lack of closeness and intimacy in the marriage is, at least in part, because you have not built up your spouse. You’ve torn your spouse down.
If that’s where you are this morning, you need to do some serious work on your tongue. You need to do work in the realm of words in your relationships.
I want to give you some practical things to do for the sanctification of your speech. These are three practical disciplines that can help you with the sanctification of your speech.
(1) Number one, take inventory of your words. This is where you really slow down and you ask, “What kinds of words do I use? What kinds of words characterize my speech?” You might even ask your spouse, if you’re brave enough to do so, “How do my words fail to fit the pattern of Ephesians 4:29? Are my words building you up or tearing you down? Are my words fitting the occasion or not? Do they give grace or not? Where are my words hurting our relationship?”
Take some inventory. Look at your words. Look at recent interactions.
A good way to do this is take the most recent argument, the most recent conflict you’ve had with your spouse, and go through that, maybe a journal-type exercise where you name what happened. You write down what happened, and then you ask questions about your own interactions. You do some self-examination, and you think through whether this fits the pattern of Scripture or not. Take inventory of your words.
(2) Number two, pray this prayer, Psalm 141:3: “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.” This is sometimes a prayer that I pray when I’m going into a conversation that I know is going to be difficult, a conversation where great wisdom is needed, a conversation where I need to be very careful with my speech. And I’ll pray this prayer: “Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips.”
(3) Then number three, recover the discipline of silence. Go on a silent retreat. I’m really not joking. This could be a very helpful thing for you if you struggle with your words. If you’re used to just talking, talking, talking, talking, you have no control of your tongue, go somewhere where there’s nobody to talk to but the Lord, where it forces you to slow down and to be silent so that you can hear, so that you can listen.
You can do more modest forms of this. Take a break from the heated discussion and go for a silent walk. Drive without the radio. Sit quietly before the Lord. Somehow, you’ve got to move from the posture of speaking to the posture of listening.
Remember what James says in James 1: “Know this, my beloved brothers [and sisters]: let every person be quick to hear and slow to speak.” Quick to hear, slow to speak. Sanctify your speech. That’s number one.
2. Anger: Healthy vs. Unhealthy Conflict
Now, if words are the currency of our communication, the fuel that kind of drives our communication is emotion. It’s emotion. In fact, Jesus says in the Gospels, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” So it’s not simply a matter of dealing with our words; we have to get to the emotions beneath the words.
So here, point number two, I want us to look at one particular emotion, and that is the emotion of anger. I want us to see that there is a contrast between righteous anger and unrighteous anger. Practically, that means there’s a contrast between healthy and unhealthy conflict. Look at verses 26-27. Paul says, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.”
So Paul here conceives of anger, especially sinful anger, anger that continues immoderately, he conceives of this anger as something which gives an opportunity, a foothold for the enemy to get into our lives, to get into our relationships. “Give no opportunity to the devil.” But notice here that he says, “Be angry and do not sin.” He’s quoting from Psalm 4: “Be angry and do not sin.”
That suggests that there is a kind of anger that is righteous and there is a kind of anger that is unrighteous. “Be angry—” that could be a command; it could also just be a concession. “When you’re angry, do not sin.” But either way, it implies that there is a kind of anger that is not sinful and there is a kind of anger that is sinful. There is anger that is righteous, there is anger that then veers into the category of unrighteous, sinful, and unhealthy.
So we need to just distinguish between the two. There is a healthy kind of conflict and there is a healthy, righteous kind of anger. Anger itself is not necessarily sinful. Jesus, in his humanity, expressed anger. There are times in the Gospels, when you read through the Gospels, when Jesus saw the hardness of people’s hearts and he was angry. Remember Jesus when he cleanses the temple of the money changers in the temple. It’s a demonstration of Jesus’ anger as he is cleansing the temple. Anger itself is not necessarily sinful.
There are legitimate reasons for anger in marriage. For example, when behavior, the behavior of a spouse, is clearly sinful and dishonoring to God and destructive to the relationship, anger is an appropriate response. When you or your children are being harmed or put in danger, anger is an appropriate response. And when trust has been deeply violated through deception or infidelity or abuse or persistent, unrepentant sin, anger is an appropriate response.
However, there is also such a thing as sinful anger, because Paul here says, “Be angry and do not sin.” So when does anger become sinful? Let me give you some marks here of sinful anger. These are not all original with me, but I think these are helpful.
Anger becomes sinful, first of all, when it is self-centered. When my anger is focused on my desires, maybe even my petty and trivial desires, rather than on the glory of God, rather than on what is right and good and true, and rather than on the good of my spouse and of my relationship, my anger is just self-centered. I’m just not getting my way. Then anger becomes sinful.
When anger is immoderate; that is, it is out of proportion to the issue that I’m angry about, it’s anger that’s overdone, it’s overblown. What maybe would have been a very mild irritation becomes an explosive breakdown in the relationship. Immoderate anger is sinful anger. There’s a difference between striking a match, which you can blow out quickly, and the eruption of a volcano. The match you can deal with quickly; the volcano destroys everything in its path. And if your anger is more like the volcano than it is the match, then your anger is immoderate and sinful.
When your anger continues for too long, it’s sinful. Paul says, “Let not the sun go down on your anger.” He’s telling us that we are to deal with the emotions of anger quickly, and we don’t let that anger become long-term resentment and bitterness.
When anger is out of control, it is sinful. Jesus became angry, but Jesus never for one second lost control. We have to remember that self-control is a fruit of the Spirit, and a person who is living under the rule of the Spirit of God, a person who is filled with the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, bearing the fruit of the Spirit, is not going to be out of control even when they feel the emotion of anger.
Then anger that becomes punitive or vengeful—when what you want is to get back at your spouse. Your anger seeks to hurt or to embarrass or to punish or to get even. You want to say something or do something that hurts or humiliates or diminishes or demeans your spouse. Anger in those cases is, of course, sinful anger.
Listen to James once again, James 1. He says, “Know this, my beloved brothers [and sisters]: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger.” Why? “For the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
There is a kind of anger that does not lead to righteousness; it leads to greater and greater sin and unrighteousness and breakdown and destruction. And Paul is warning us of this.
So there is righteous anger, there’s sinful anger, and that means that there are healthy and unhealthy ways of managing conflict. And I just want to quickly give you a paradigm for conflict management styles.
This is something that I’ve actually drawn from a kind of personality test that we have used often at Redeemer Church. I’ve used this sometimes with couples and use this with every person who joins our full-time staff or elder team. We try to understand what are our default ways of managing conflict. There are five ways, and some of these are more healthy than others. Here they are, conflict styles:
Number one, there’s competing. This is kind of the “I win, you lose” mode of managing conflict. Sometimes those of us who have a very competitive nature, we tend to think in this way. We think in terms of winning. We want to win. We may want to win even if we don’t care that much about the issue; we just want to win. We like winning the conversation, winning the debate, winning the fight. It can be very unhealthy and toxic in a relationship.
On the other end of the spectrum is accommodating. This is “I lose, you win.” This is the person who kind of passively just gives in. They’re not engaged. They’re not even bringing all of their thoughts to the conversation or to the marriage. This is also unhealthy. This is the person who just kind of rolls over and doesn’t do anything.
There is thirdly, compromising. “We both win some, we both lose some.” Every marriage is going to have some compromise. Every relationship that has any kind of frequent interaction, there’s going to be some compromise. There are some things that you give on, especially things that are not that important, and you’re willing to take some losses for the sake of the relationship.
There’s avoidance. The person who’s characterized by avoiding essentially says, “I’m going to pack up my toys and go home. I’m not going to play anymore.” And they just pull out. They withdraw. This is the person who stonewalls. This is the person who gives the silent treatment. This is the person who just avoids any kind of conflict because of fear of conflict. Both people lose when this happens. Nobody’s winning in this.
The most healthy kind of conflict management is collaborating. Collaboration says, “Let’s solve this together,” and the mentality there is “We win.” You’re thinking about a win for the relationship. You’re putting the relationship ahead of personal interest, but you’re thinking of ways that both partners ultimately win.
I would suggest that most of the significant issues in marriage are best approached through collaboration. It’s not one person steamrolling over the other, it’s not one person insisting on getting their own way, but it’s rather a collaborative approach to working through decisions together.
Now, let me just give you one other concept. No slide for this one, but I was kind of reminded of the importance of triage a few weeks ago when Holly and I were in the ER with her broken arm. On the wall of the ER, in the waiting area, there was a triage poster, and it listed five different categories of injuries or reasons that people would come into ER. I think a broken arm was like level three out of five. And of course what they do in ER is they treat the highest-priority cases first. So if someone has been in a terrible car accident and their life is threatened or they’re having a heart attack, they’re going to get treatment before the broken arm. And, you know, the broken arm is going to get treatment before the hangnail or whatever other reason people are coming to the ER. It’s triage. It’s a sense of distinguishing between most important and least important kinds of issues.
I think triage is also helpful in our relationships. When you’re navigating areas of conflict and disagreement, you have to ask, “Is this really important? Is this worth the discussion, the conflict? Is it a battle worth fighting? Is it a hill worth dying on?”
There are issues that may be mild irritations in your marriage. Maybe you don’t like where your spouse squeezes the toothpaste tube. Maybe you like to squeeze it from the end and he likes to squeeze it from the middle. Or maybe you don’t like the way she organizes the dishwasher or the refrigerator or something like that. Or maybe you don’t like it that your spouse constantly runs the gas tank at quarter of a tank or under, and you like to keep a full tank.
Those are mild issues that maybe are irritants in marriage; they’re not hills worth dying on. Those are not things worth fighting over. On those kinds of things, you should be able to give quickly.
On the other hand, there are some issues that have serious, significant consequences in our marriage relationships, and these are the issues that really do need prayerful, loving collaboration, where you work together to come to an agreement. These are things like vocational choices, stewardship of your finances, major purchases, matters relating to children—whether to have children or not, how many children to have—methods of education, long-term decisions about health and medical care, your expectations and boundaries of your extended family. I mean, those are the issues that bring into marriage counseling or, even worse, into the divorce court. Those are the issues that, if you will approach them with a spirit of collaboration and willingness to work together with your spouse to a healthy resolution, sometimes bringing in outside counsel, you will find so many of the issues that can be destructive in a marriage can be resolved.
So we looked at words (currency of communication), we looked at anger and these healthy versus unhealthy ways of managing conflict; but what about those situations where the sin is so deep, where the wounds are so deep, that the marriage has been hurt so deeply that it requires something more than just good communication and trying to manage conflict? You’re beyond that. The hurt’s too deep. What’s needed then?
3. Forgiveness: Gospel Love in Action
The answer is in verses 31-32—point number three: forgiveness, or gospel love in action. Let’s look at the text.
“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 forgave you.”
Now just notice the pattern again. Put away six things—put away bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, malice. Put on three things: kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness, gospel motivation. Do this as God in Christ has forgiven you. There’s the pattern. That is the blueprint.
So how does this apply, especially in the marriage relationship? And I want to talk about a couple of different categories.
First of all, this calls us to have a basic disposition in our marriages so that we are characterized by a culture of kindness. Kindness is maybe an underrated virtue. Kindness is so important in our relationships. God has been kind to us, he’s been tenderhearted to us, and Paul calls us to be the same in our relationships with others.
So practically, in marriage, this means that you cultivate a culture of kindness. That means you put away harshness, you assume the best of your spouse, you give one another the benefit of a doubt. You are quick to forgive the little daily infirmities and weaknesses and imperfections of your spouse. It means that you don’t hold onto grudges, that you do not keep a running record of your spouse’s mistakes to drudge up in the next argument. Remember, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:5, “Love does not keep a record of wrongs.” It means that you have a short memory regarding your spouse’s faults. A culture of kindness—that should be the default atmosphere in a Christian marriage.
However, there are situations, of course, and we know this, there are situations in marriage where the wounds go so deep that something more than daily Christian kindness is needed. Here, we are called to costly love, costly forgiveness, and the hard work of repentance.
So this is when there has been sin. When there’s been sin of a degree and of a kind that brings real wreckage into the marriage relationship. And I want to address both those who have been sinned against, those who have been hurt, and those who are guilty of the sin, who have done the hurting; and give just a few points of counsel.
First of all, for those who have been hurt: First of all, be sure you’re safe. I’m here speaking of those rare marriages (but they do exist), where there has been abuse, and especially where there is physical abuse. Your safety and the safety of your children is the very first priority. That means if there has been physical violence you need to call the authorities, you need to get out, you need to find a place of safety, you need to get help. The church can offer some of that help, law enforcement can offer that help. Safety comes first.
You need to remember that forgiveness is something that is freely offered, and God calls us to offer that forgiveness, but trust is something that is earned. And sometimes when the trust is broken because of deep, egregious sin, it does take time for that trust to be won back. Distinguish between the two, between forgiveness and trust. Nevertheless, you are called, if you’ve been hurt by your spouse, you are called to forgive as God has forgiven you.
What about for those who are actually the sinning partner, those who are guilty of having hurt their spouses? When we’re talking about “small” sins, which I put in quotes—no sins are insignificant or small, but I’m talking about when there are sins that, they’re genuine sins, but they have less destructive consequences—this should be the pattern. You should be able to say, “I was wrong. Will you please forgive me?” Those are words that every spouse, those are words that every Christian needs to learn and should say frequently, as frequently as you have sinned against others.
There are some marriages where a spouse never says those words, where a spouse never has the humility to admit wrongdoing, the spouse never has the humility to seek forgiveness. When that is the case, you can be sure that marriage is going to be unhealthy, and the longer it goes, the more the heartbreak will grow.
When there are big sins—that is, sins that are greater in their consequences and in their destructiveness—there must be confession, there must be repentance, and there must be a willingness to accept the consequences of your sin and then entrust God with the rest. You cannot demand forgiveness of your spouse. You can ask it, you can request it, but you have to leave that then in God’s hands, and you trust him with the consequences.
Listen, if your sin is rooted in family-of-origin dysfunction or long-standing patterns of emotional dysfunction, so that this is almost second nature, the way you’re behaving is almost second nature for you—and you don’t want to sin, but you keep doing the same things over and over again; it may be an addiction or something of that nature—then what’s required of you is doing the hard work of growth and transformation. That may mean counseling or therapy or all kinds of help that you find from the church and from trusted professionals who will help you to get on the right track and to begin to live in the way that God calls us to live.
One more category not on the slide. What if you are a marriage partner and your spouse simply refuses to change? Maybe the sins against you are not sins that are at the level of divorce, they do not qualify for what the Bible says are sins warranting divorce. Nevertheless, these are sins and behaviors that are destructive and that have hurt you and that have hurt your marriage. What are you called to in that situation?
I’m thinking of those who maybe are married to a non-Christian or married to someone who’s not a growing Christian or married to someone who is stuck in patterns of emotional and spiritual immaturity. You may be thinking, “All this stuff is good, but I wish my spouse would hear it, and they’re not here or they’re not listening.” What does God then ask of you?
Here’s what I’d say to you this morning: you can influence your spouse, but you cannot change your spouse. What you can do is you can take responsibility for your own discipleship. And regardless of whether your spouse ever changes or not, you can recognize that God is calling you to be a whole, mature, growing, healthy follower of Jesus Christ. You don’t wait for your spouse to change. You start changing in all the ways that God shows you. You follow Jesus even if you do it largely alone, and you recognize that the grace of forgiveness to which God calls you may be a very costly grace, but it is not more costly than the grace that God has already shown you in Christ. God has shown you more grace than you’ll ever show your spouse. Be humbled by that reality and forgive as God in Christ has forgiven you.
So this morning we’ve looked at words and anger and forgiveness. Every marriage will have a mix of these things. Every marriage has conflict. Every marriage requires forgiveness. The question this morning is whether those issues in your marriage will be shaped by the old way of living or shaped by the new creation realities that are ours in Jesus Christ. Paul says, “Put off the old self, put on the new self, be renewed in the spirit of your mind,” and then he tells us how to live in the new way.
Listen, John Gottman and the secular researchers on marriage, they can tell us a lot of helpful things about marriage, but what they can’t do is give you the power of the indwelling Spirit of God to change you from the inside out. They can’t point you to the gospel that tells us about a divine bridegroom who loved his bride all the way to the cross and was willing to give his life for her in self-sacrificial love.
The gospel gives us something greater than psychology can ever give us, as helpful as psychology can be. The gospel gives us new hearts. The gospel gives us new motives. The gospel gives us the greatest example of all, Jesus Christ, and the gospel assures us of God’s grace at work in our hearts and in our lives to make us more like Jesus.
There’s an old hymn which has a stanza that I think is fitting for the conclusion this morning. I want to read these words to you and then close in prayer. It goes like this:
“May the mind of Christ, my Savior,
Live in me from day to day,
By his love and power controlling
All I do and say.”
That’s what we’re called to. Have the mind of Christ. Let the mind of Christ be in you, so that his love and his power are guiding your life. Let’s pray together.
Our gracious, merciful God, we thank you this morning for the practical instruction of your word. Sometimes your word comes to us with hard edges. It confronts us in our patterns of sinful speech or sinful anger, unhealthy conflict, unforgiveness. And Lord, my guess this morning is that every one of us, if we are honest, as we look into the mirror of your word we can see things that need to be changed—not just things that a spouse needs to change, but things that we need to change. So, Lord, help us this morning to take an honest account of ourselves. Help us to recognize those things that your Spirit has pointed out, things that require repentance and spiritual growth. And help us, Lord, this morning, to be those who not only hear the word but who do the word. We ask you to give us grace to put into practice what you’ve commanded us to do and to fuel us today with motivation that comes to us from the gospel of Jesus Christ, knowing that we have been freely loved, we have been freely forgiven in Christ, and our grateful response is to now imitate Christ in that love and forgiveness.
Even as we come to the table this morning, may we come with our eyes on what Jesus has done for us, what a great sacrifice he has made for us. I pray, Lord, that that sacrifice would move us, would grip our hearts this morning, humble us, so that we would drop all of our defenses and instead submit ourselves to Christ’s lordship and to live as he has called us to live. So work in our hearts through these means of grace, we pray. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
