Colleen and Nikki talk about Ephesians 4:25-32 where the central passage teaches the idea of our grieving the Holy Spirit. Does grieving mean leaving? Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: In today’s episode, we’re going to finish up the end of chapter 4 of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. But before we get started, let me remind you that if you have any questions or comments for us, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can visit proclamationmagazine.com to view our online articles or sign up for weekly emails that will keep you in touch with what’s going on at Life Assurance Ministries. You can also find a place to donate there if you’d like to come alongside us with your financial support. Don’t forget to like us and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and please leave a written review wherever you listen to podcasts. Last but not least, we want you to know that all of the videos from the 2021 conference are available now on YouTube. You can find them by searching for Former Adventist Fellowship on YouTube and then clicking on the 2021 Former Adventist Fellowship Conference playlist. Now, Colleen, this is our first time recording since the conference. How are you guys recovering? [Laughter.]
Colleen: Well, that’s an interesting question. [Laughter.] Because as many of you know, the day after the conference my husband had surgery.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So I’ve been in a bit of an altered state, just dealing with that and helping him through the recovery phase, but he’s doing well, and I think I am too, but I have been a little distracted. [Laughter.] But the conference was wonderful. In spite of the fact that we didn’t meet together in person, we had maybe twice the number of people sign up as usual for a normal in-person conference, and we had the Zoom breakout sessions, which was an interesting experiment in talking to people around the world together. It’s a little more difficult than in person, but it was really rewarding, and it was fun to meet people whose names I knew and faces I didn’t. The sessions were awesome, and it’s so interesting because I just had an email yesterday that said something to the effect of, “In spite of the fact that this was virtual, I think it really was the best conference yet.” [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: But we always say that, don’t we?
Nikki: I was just going to say, I think we say that every year. [Laughter.]
Colleen: Um-hmm, we do. What stood out to you, Nikki?
Nikki: Oh, you know, it’s so hard to choose any one thing that stands out at these conferences. There’s so much about them that’s just wonderful, seeing all the people who we are used to seeing annually, seeing them interact online was a lot of fun, getting to see them.
Colleen: It was.
Nikki: And then the new people who get on.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And seeing how they’re coming to faith, they’re coming to see the problems with Adventism and find the freedom in Christ alone. And seeing them interact with the people who’ve been out for a while and seeing that encouragement between them. It was a lot of fun to see. You know, Colleen, one of the things that I saw come up a lot on the chat feed, because I was a distance viewer as well, and I helped you guys moderate that feed, and I kept seeing people say –
Colleen: Thankfully.
Nikki: It was great. I felt like I was a part of it. So one of the things I kept seeing was people would say, “I’m so glad you guys did it this way. I’m finally able to be a part of an FAF Conference. I’ve never been able to be a part of one. What can you tell them about that? [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Well, that’s kind of a funny thing that I was thinking throughout the weekend. We’ve always livestreamed the sessions. They’re always online. They’re always available for chat, and you can always join us, whether you live close or far. The only thing different about this one was that we had the Zoom breakout sessions. That was the only difference. And that is a difference, I admit to you.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But the main sessions have always been livestreamed and always had live chat available. So you can always join us, even if you’re not here in person. Now, not being here in person changes the nature of the fellowship.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: That is truly different.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: The sessions are all there. And I just want to say, would we consider doing this in the future? Absolutely. The one thing I would want to say is about the breakout sessions. We had people in the rooms with us when we did the breakout sessions at this conference. Not many, because there were just a handful of people there, but if we do do this again, with an in-person conference and try to Zoom the breakout sessions, the leader of the sessions probably would have to choose between focusing on the room or focusing on the Zoom. So Zoom participants might need to be content with mostly being observers, with the occasional moment for contact and comment –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – but it would not be really possible to combine the two and have a meaningful discussion, I think. I think it would need to be one or the other, just because of the nature of moderating a discussion. But yes, we’re definitely considering changing our format for even our weekly FAF studies in the future so that when we start meeting in person, we will have Zoom available. It will be going. It will be in the room. People can hear and see.
Nikki: That’s wonderful. That’s one of the blessings that has come out of this crazy year, isn’t it?
Colleen: It sure is, um-hmm.
Nikki: And people are reimagining how they do ministry. Well, Colleen, when we look at this passage, it has that verse in it –
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yes, it does.
Nikki: – that talks about grieving the Holy Spirit, and I know it’s closer to the end of the passage we’ll look at, but I do want to ask you, what did you think that meant as an Adventist?
Colleen: That’s a good question. You know, I have a lot of trouble in a lot of these situations remembering exactly what I thought, and I think it’s because I was very seldom very well clarified about these theological points.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But as I remember it, in general I assumed that grieving the Holy Spirit meant if I sinned, He said goodbye. And I never understood the concept of an indwelling Spirit to be a Holy Spirit who sealed us and was with us and kept us eternally. That was completely foreign to me. So if I sinned, He left. It was funny because last night I asked Richard what he thought as an Adventist, what he thought it meant to grieve the Holy Spirit. He said, “I thought it meant that He was always watching me, and if I finally sinned enough, He would leave and never come back. He said he didn’t understand the indwelling Holy Spirit either. He never thought of the Holy Spirit as being present to help him. He thought of the Holy Spirit being present to watch him, and if he really messed up badly enough, that was it, curtains, over and out forever. The Holy Spirit, from an Adventist perspective, was kind of like Santa Claus, He’s always watching, you’d better be good, you’d better do right because if you do good, then you’ll get a gift, and if you don’t, you’ll get a lump of coal. And He’s always there, and you can’t fool Him, so you’d better watch out. What about you, Nikki?
Nikki: Well, you know, I always thought that grieving the Holy Spirit meant sending Him away, like almost like casting Him away –
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: – if I sinned enough or in a particular way, or at all. I’m not sure I was sure on the degree required to grieve Him away, but I definitely felt like He was a come-and-go kind of guy. Yeah, you know, I think I did have a picture that I could grieve Him away completely, but I didn’t think that that would happen until closer to the end, for some reason. I don’t know. I felt like I could prove myself worthy for Him to return. I didn’t have a picture of indwelling, I didn’t understand indwelling, and I certainly didn’t understand that He Himself is our guarantee of salvation. So not only does the Holy Spirit indwell us but He’s our guarantee. He’s not going anywhere. I had just had grieve synonymous with leave. It was the same thing.
Colleen: Yes, exactly. Well, it does rhyme.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Well, there you go. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] It kind of reveals our worldview, doesn’t it? For a person who is all material, with no immaterial spirit, salvation, then, has to be about obedience and good deeds because what else do you have? The concept of believing, of being made alive after being spiritually dead, was completely missing from our Adventist worldview. So how do you understand any of this without leave if you’re bad, stay by if you’re good, and it’s all up to how you behave as to what the Holy Spirit will do.
Nikki: I know I’d like to just say that I think some of this comes from the social dynamics inside the earliest years of Adventism. If you did not do your part in the great work –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – you were publicly shamed and sent away, and so it’s not hard to think of a God being the same way.
Colleen: Absolutely. Well, let’s read this passage, Nikki. Could you read Ephesians 4:25-32 for us?
Nikki: “Therefore, ridding yourselves of falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, because we are parts of one another. Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity. The one who steals must no longer steal; but rather he must labor, producing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with the one who has need. Let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but if there is any good word for edification according to the need of the moment, say that, so that it will give grace to those who hear. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. All bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.”
Colleen: Such a wonderful passage, and you know, as a Christian instead of an Adventist, I see it completely differently. No surprise there, huh? [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: Once again, Nikki, we were talking before the podcast about the fact that all of this passage makes sense if we remember that it’s being written to those who have experienced the indicatives –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – of the gospel. This is not a passage instructing us how to make sure we get saved. This is a passage written to believers who have trusted the blood of Jesus and His resurrection and His finished work for the atonement of their sins and have repented. So, Nikki, when you look at verse 25, “Laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.” Go ahead, Nikki, how do you see verse 25? What is Paul saying about falsehood?
Nikki: Well, you know, when I started looking at this for this podcast, it was after the conference, and I read, “Therefore, ridding yourselves of falsehood,” and I stopped. And I thought, boy, that’s what we just spent the weekend doing.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: Ridding ourselves of falsehood, and I wanted to go look at that word “falsehood” in the Greek, and I saw that it can be used for false religion.
Colleen: Interesting point!
Nikki: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. There’s a command here. This isn’t just, you know, pretty poetic, “this is what I hope for you.” This is a command, ridding yourself of falsehood. Or I think the way that your version read it, it was “lay aside.” It’s calling us to actively make a decision to do something. We’re removing falsehood from our life. We have to replace that with truth. And then we have to speak that truth, each one of us, with our neighbor, also something we did at the conference and something we’re to do in our day-to-day, because we’re parts of one another. We’re responsible to each other and for each other in the Body of Christ.
Colleen: And as members of the Body of Christ – and once again, that’s what this passage is addressing is the Body of Christ, that’s the primary application – when we are in the Body together, we become one people in Christ. It’s something we can’t see, but it’s something that the Bible says is true, and we know it, because it’s a spiritual reality. So there’s a way in which in the Body we have to allow ourselves to see what reality is as Christ defines it. We can’t come indecisive and unable to act with integrity when we deal with one another. If we refuse to see reality and truth, then we relate to the world as if white is really black. In fact, it’s interesting, when I think about the conference, how Adventism, for all its religiosity, actually is the world, and we learned that white was black and black was white. But when we come to the Body of Christ, we have to speak the truth as the Bible defines it, like you say, laying aside false religion, false definitions, and allow ourselves to be corrected by the word of God and speaking that truth to one another, and sometimes that involves speaking to our fellow believers the truth about the religion we came out of.
Nikki: Yeah, especially when it’s deceiving other Christians.
Colleen: Yes, exactly. We have to be able to do that. So in verse 26 he moves from falsehood to anger. You had some really interesting comments about that, Nikki. I’d like us to talk through that. Would you share with us some of the things you thought about, about “in your anger, do not sin”?
Nikki: So this is a verse that I’ve always pondered and thought a lot about. Does this mean that if I go to bed at night angry about something that I’m sinning? And is anger sin?
Colleen: Me too, um-hmm.
Nikki: James says that human anger does not produce the righteousness of God, but Paul is saying, “Be angry, and yet do not sin.”
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: So I’ve always wondered about this anger thing. I also know that anger is informative.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: It will let us – it’s indicating that there’s an issue. I don’t see Paul saying that we’re not to ever feel angry. He says, “Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” As I was thinking about that while we prepared for this podcast, I wonder if this has to do with not allowing your anger to go unresolved. When we let our anger go unresolved, we give the devil an opportunity. We are capable at that point to sin from that place that we’re not examining, we’re not looking at, we’re dismissing, putting it away, and now we’re acting out from it. I feel like Paul might be saying, “Don’t sin in your anger, but deal with it. Don’t let it go unchecked because the devil will use that in your life.”
Colleen: And it’s interesting, when you think about “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger,” what happens when the sun goes down? Everything is submerged in darkness.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So not letting the sun go down on our anger has a picture, in my mind, of keeping our anger alive but putting it away in the back where we can’t see it clearly. It’s still festering. It’s interesting when I think about anger in my own life, or any negative emotion, resentment or anything that’s closely related to that, I can barely submerge those so I don’t look at them. But if I don’t look at what they’re coming from and resolve them with the Lord, they still give me a place, like a crack, where I can be tempted to feel sorry for myself, to be snarky, to be resentful or to be vindictive in a really subtle way. But we have to submit our anger to God’s word, and you know, I know this sounds like a broken record because I’m always saying this, but I cannot overemphasize how much God’s word has done to help me see my own hidden sin.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: God’s word is alive and sharper than a two-edged sword, and it reveals ourselves to ourselves and it reveals God’s will to ourselves, and so I realize that I can’t just roll my anger into the back where I don’t see it, like the sun’s gone down on it, and think, “Okay, I’m not going to look at that anymore.” No, quite the contrary. I have to know I’m angry, know why, and submit all of that to God’s word and see “What does He say about this?”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: What does God say about what was done that caused this anger? Is this anger really something that’s because of an attitude in me resenting something that is not resentable from a perspective of God’s word? God’s word has a way of shining the light and showing me how to repent and submit and trust and know that God has the last word. My anger cannot. It’s too big to carry. I can trust Him with whatever it is, and I can trust Him to fill that hole or to heal that wound in me.
Nikki: And there is righteous indignation, there is righteous anger. Righteous anger is fundamentally righteous. It’s defined by God. What makes God angry makes us angry.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: It’s a concern for what’s holy or the purity of truth. You know, we often feel that, don’t we, in this ministry?
Colleen: Yeah, absolutely.
Nikki: We feel that passionate desire to guard the gospel. Even David said in Psalm 139:21, “Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?” So I looked a little closer at this word “anger,” because my kids and I and my husband, we’re going through James after church with the kids.
Colleen: Ah, yeah.
Nikki: And so we’ve just looked at this human anger not producing the righteousness of God. The word for that anger is different from the word for the anger Paul uses here in this verse.
Colleen: Interesting.
Nikki: The word for “anger” in James, and then even a little bit further down in this passage, means “wrath, passion, punishment, and vengeance.” That’s human anger. But the anger that Paul uses here in verse 26, it just means “anger,” [laughter] just angry, irritate.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: So the anger itself is not the sin. It’s maybe what’s causing the anger, you know? And then what you do with it. So that was interesting. That was helpful to me.
Colleen: It’s always helpful to me to remember that God made us to have emotions, and our emotions are data. They’re not intrinsically right or wrong. How we act on them may be, but the emotions themselves are simply data, and the Lord asks us to know what the data is informing us of and then bring that to Him, bring that to His word, and He will show us how to navigate that.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Our emotions are not “the truth.” They are simply data about what is going on around us.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That was really helpful for me to realize.
Nikki: Yeah, it is.
Colleen: In verse 28 he talks about stealing. You know, you don’t think about the Body of Christ engaging in stealing, but he says, “He who is stealing must steal no longer; but he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so he has something to share with one who has need.” So, Nikki, what is he saying here about stealing?
Nikki: This actually reminds me of the Sermon on the Mount, and I’ll tell you why. One of the things that the Adventists who take issue with us saying that the Old Covenant is obsolete, they say that, “Okay, so if you give up the Ten Commandments now, that means that you can go on and you can murder and you can steal and lie.” Paul just covered this. He said, “Speak the truth.” He said, “In your anger, do not sin.” Remember, Jesus said, “I tell you that if you’re even angry with your brother, you’ve committed murder.” Again we have not to steal, “The one who steals must no longer steal.” But it goes further than that, just like all those commands in the Sermon on the Mount, “You have heard that it was said, but I tell you.” So he’s saying, “Rather labor, produce with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with the one who has need.” So it’s more than “Do not steal.” It’s “Do the work to take care of your needs and the needs that may come up for someone else.” This is going even further. So you can’t say that a New Covenant Christian believes that they just get to go out and do whatever they want. The commands that the apostle gives us here in his letter to the Gentile church take us far deeper and further than what the Decalogue ever did.
Colleen: That’s such a great point. Paul kind of fleshes that out a bit in 1 Corinthians 2. In 1 Corinthians – well, in various places in 1 Corinthians, actually, he says “We toil, working with our own hands.” And then again later he says, “The Lord has directed that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living from the gospel, but I did not make use of this right.” And he says, “I didn’t make use of any of these things, but we endure all things so that no one can bring any cause against the gospel of Christ.” This business of working and giving and stealing, Paul lived this. It is not stealing for a gospel worker to receive money for the gospel. It’s the command of God. And yet, at the bottom line, the commitment of all believers is that everything the Lord gives us through our work, through our diligence to honor Him, is to be used to give back to the Body of Christ and to the world at large so that the gospel can spread. And it’s interesting because these commands often are given to believers to first care for the body of believers, and that’s something I never understood as an Adventist, that we’re not just commanded to go out and feed the people on the street, although that is part of what Christians often do, but our command is to care for one another first, like parents putting on the oxygen mask on themselves on a plane that’s in trouble before trying to take care of their children. We are commanded to work and not to steal so that we will have things to contribute and to give to those in need. Well, then in verse 29 we come to one that I think is an ongoing issue, even in the Body of Christ. “Don’t let any unwholesome words come out of your mouth.” What is Paul saying here to believers, Nikki? What does this all even mean? What are “unwholesome words”?
Nikki: As I read this, I was thinking about the context we’re living in now, with all of the chaos, all of the opinions that are flying through cyberspace and that are being hurled at each other, even in the Body of Christ.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And I actually started thinking about the public shaming, the slandering, the memes –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – the sarcasm, the cancel culture –
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: – all of that, I see Christians doing this to each other.
Colleen: I do too.
Nikki: And I see Christians doing this to promote truth, which I want to say, I don’t think that’s very effective. I think we cut off people’s ears when we are snarky and sarcastic about God’s truth. I don’t think that that fulfills the command to speak the truth in love.
Colleen: I agree.
Nikki: That was one aspect I thought about when I looked at this, “not allowing unwholesome words to come out of our mouth,” but you know, you can also use this to discuss the fact that – I’ll tell you, as an Adventist, some of the humor that I heard –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – some of the joking –
Colleen: Oh, yeah.
Nikki: – some of the social commentary was not reflective of a born-again group of people. And I noticed that even more so when I was born again and I started hanging out with believers.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And I would listen to them, and it wasn’t a lot of, you know, filthy humor or sarcasm or –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: There was kindness and rejoicing in the truth and a very different – just a different way of talking altogether.
Colleen: And even in bodies of believers, unfortunately – well, or fortunately, it’s the way the Lord has made this situation – we are living spirits in still-mortal bodies, and we still have a law of sin in the flesh, and this is an area where I think that sin in the flesh comes out when we feel threatened or cornered or not certain of what to do.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And we even hear believers speaking to each other in sarcastic, passive-aggressive ways, blaming, shaming, and I think sometimes it’s a way to hide our own feeling of failure or vulnerability or not having done something well. But it can be extremely damaging. I have seen believers cause great emotional hurt and fear in others by unfiltered speech, if you want to call if that, and I think Paul is saying here, we have to submit those moments where we feel vulnerable and ask the Lord, “Show me how to love for you right now,” so that we’re not putting unwholesome talk out there and shaming our brothers and sisters, because speech that hurts and marginalizes does not lead to truth and reality and trust in the Lord, and that is sin against our brethren. We can make the difference between teaching and helping a brother who kind of maybe seems slow on the uptake or somebody who’s behaving badly, our speech can help them learn to trust God or to retreat with a feeling of failure, and God is asking us not to make them feel like failures, but to give them the grace, as He gave us grace, and this is speaking of believers here.
Nikki: This time that we live in right now, it creates a lot of opportunity for fretting and for venting –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and struggle, and that’s natural and that makes sense, as we look at what’s going on around us, but when I look at this passage here and it says not to let unwholesome words come out of your mouth, but if there’s any good word for edification according to the need of the moment, say that, so that it will give grace to those who hear. And I think of some of the moments over the course of the year where I have longed for edification and encouragement with the truth and been met with something altogether different. I believe that now more than ever, as the church watches the landscape shift and crumble around us, that it makes sense that we need to talk about it and process it, but we always have to do it with the goal of seeking truth and building each other up and not inciting each other in our fear and in our anxiety. And when we do that, we give grace to those who hear. And you know, it’s fascinating to me, and I keep pondering this, people are coming to faith in the middle of all of this. We have brand new Christians, which means they are coming into the church, and they’re looking at how the church responds to chaos and how believers respond to fearful things, and it’s our privilege to show them the peace and the hope that we have in Christ and to build them up in that and to stabilize them with the truth. And so I feel like this is just kind of a giant moment for us to be able to stand up and do that for each other.
Colleen: That’s true. It’s an unprecedented moment. And, like we’ve said before, this is the moment the Lord chose to put us here –
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: – living on this earth in fellowship with one another. He chose us for this.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And we don’t know exactly what tomorrow will look like, but we can know He put us here for this time for His glory.
Nikki: Yes.
Colleen: I take a lot of courage from that.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Well, then, Nikki, we come to that text, 30.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] “Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” What is Paul saying, and what is he not saying here?
Nikki: There is nothing in here about the Holy Spirit leaving.
Colleen: Nope.
Nikki: And you know, I want to say, like you started this with, we go back to the indicative. What is true? Well, Paul started the letter to the Ephesians in chapter 1 by saying that when we believed the gospel, the word of truth, that we were sealed with the Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance in the saints, and so we take that knowledge, and we overlay it on this verse, and we see that He is with us, He has sealed us, He has promised to stay with us all the way to the end. He’s not going anywhere, and leaving is not in the language here whatsoever. So now we just deal with what does it mean to grieve the Holy Spirit?
Colleen: You know, I was listening to one commentator who was talking through this passage, and it was such an interesting thought. He said, “Grief is a love word. You don’t grieve what you don’t love or whom you don’t love. A loss is not really a loss if it’s not impacting your life, or a transgression is not an affront if it’s not something that hurts you.” He said, “Grieving the Holy Spirit suggests the Holy Spirit loves us.”
Nikki: I love that.
Colleen: And we’re being commanded not to grieve this one who loves us, and like you said, Nikki, He’s our seal. How can we possibly get the seal, who seals us for eternity, for the day of redemption – that’s a done deal – how can we get Him to leave? We find out from other passages, like 1 Corinthians 6, for example, the Holy Spirit is in believers, but believers can sin, and Paul commands us not to sin because it brings the Holy Spirit along with us as we sin. You know, we were taught as Adventists that if we walked into a movie theater, our angels would leave us.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: She never spoke about the Holy Spirit leaving us because, of course, He wasn’t with us in the Adventist paradigm, in that sense. But she let us know that God’s protection of us ended when we walked inside those doors.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That’s not true. Biblically, the Holy Spirit seals us, we are hidden in Christ, and everything we do from that moment on is in the presence of God because He has sealed us. So this is an admonition to remember that we are the Lord’s and to submit our moments of temptation and our moments of uncertainty to Him and say, “Show me how to navigate this,” instead of just automatically doing fight or flight or indulging our flesh, because the Holy Spirit will be with us and will be grieved if we bring Him into our sin.
Nikki: And I want to say, this emphasizes the fact that for the born-again believer, our obedience is motivated by love. We’re not working toward salvation, we’re working from salvation. We’re living from salvation.
Colleen: So true.
Nikki: And we don’t want to grieve the Holy Spirit. You know, inherent in that word is “severe sorrow.” We don’t want to bring Him to severe sorrow. We love the Lord, and I actually think, I wonder, if perhaps when we grieve Him if this is part of why we also find that our affections have changed, and we hate our own sin. We grieve when we struggle. It almost seems like part of the sanctifying process.
Colleen: I think so. You know, we’re given a new heart and a new spirit when we are born again. We are literally brought from death to life when we believe. We have new affections. We have new concerns. We do love the Lord. It’s so interesting too because there are places, like in 1 Corinthians 9, where Paul says, “If anyone loves God, he is known by God.” Love for God is not something we drum up. It’s something that comes from knowing and being born again and His knowing us. So we are motivated by love because God gives us Himself. He gives us a new spirit; He gives us a new heart that loves Him.
Nikki: So I was curious, when we were preparing for this podcast, about whether or not anyone else say this passage the way I did, and I was talking with Kelsie Petersen and asked her, “What did you think it meant to grieve the Holy Spirit?” And she said, “Well, I thought it meant that I had sinned really bad and He put me in a timeout and left me, kind of like a peeved parent.”
Colleen: Oh, interesting.
Nikki: And that kind of sums it up. And she said, “And it was like He gave me the silent treatment,” and I remember feeling that, you know, that I was kind of going to get the silent treatment and He was gone until I proved that I was worthy. So I thought, okay, so many of these ideas that we get in our heads come from Ellen, whether we’ve read her or not. I’ve never read Ellen. But they usually come from her, and so I went online, and I looked to see, what does she say about grieving the Holy Spirit? I have more quotes printed out than we have time for me to read, and there were many more on the website. So if anyone wants to look for this, I would say, do a search for “grieve away,” just those two words, and see what comes up. And I’ll share a couple of the quotes with you. She says, “When the Holy Spirit is regarded as a welcome guest at these gatherings,” and she’s referring to social gatherings, “when nothing is said or done to grieve Him away, God is honored, and those who meet together are refreshed and strengthened.” That was in ML 205.2. Then she says, in another place, she says, “But the Holy Spirit does not abide in the heart of him who is peevish if others do not agree with his ideas and plans. From the lips of such a man there come scathing remarks, which grieve the Spirit away and develop attributes that are satanic rather than divine.” That’s from CS 115.2.
Colleen: Wow.
Nikki: Another one, “Cherishing a spirit of criticism and faultfinding, a pharisaical piety and pride, they grieve away the Spirit of God and greatly retard the work of God’s messengers.” That’s the Review & Herald, and she’s speaking of people who are working for the church and complaining about it.
Colleen: Of course.
Nikki: She talks about us even grieving away heavenly messengers. She said, “All who will open their hearts to receive Him may have Jesus as an honored guest.” You get the theme?
Colleen: Oh, my!
Nikki: He’s a guest. There’s never a permanent dwelling, Christ in us, us in Christ. He’s just a guest. “And when they meet for worship, angels of light will accompany them, for they are sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation. The glory and majesty of one angel was sufficient to cause the stern Roman soldiers who guarded the tomb of Christ to fall to the earth as dead men. Then what power might attend the servants of Christ if they would live so as not to grieve away these heavenly messengers.” Over and over again she speaks of “grieving away” God’s provision, God’s care, His angels, His very person, that we can grieve Him away.
Colleen: This is New Age talk, Nikki. This is making Christ not permanently present. The first quote you read had the Holy Spirit as invited guest. This one had Christ as a welcome guest. She has no concept of an indwelling Spirit, a non-leaving Christ, and in this last one you read, this business of angels of light coming to worship? There’s nothing in the Bible about that. There’s nothing that says angels will attend your worship. That’s a very Adventist idea. Angels of light? The only place I know where that’s mentioned in the Bible is in Galatians –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – Galatians 1, where Paul says, “Even if a gospel comes from an angel of light, if it’s different from the one I preach, he is to be accursed. That’s the only angel of light I know from Scripture. She’s tipping her hand. She’s not writing from a biblical worldview at all. And you’re right; she’s talking about grieving away. This passage does not say that.
Nikki: I have another one for you. You’ll like this one. This one is to parents.
Colleen: Oh, boy.
Nikki: “Those who are brought into covenant relation with God are pledged to speak of Him in the most respectful, reverential manner. Many refer to God and mention His name in their religious conversation much as they would mention a horse or any other common creature. This dishonors God. By precept and example, parents should educate their children on this point lest by irreverence they grieve away God’s Spirit from their hearts and the hearts of their children.”
Colleen: [Gasping] My goodness!
Nikki: Speaking of God in familiar ways, in regular, common ways, will grieve away God’s Spirit from our hearts and our children’s hearts.
Colleen: Wow.
Nikki: There were many, many quotes, more than I can share here. But the bottom line is, our behavior, including being silly with our friends, can grieve away the Holy Spirit. It’s no wonder we felt He came and went and was a little bit fickle.
Colleen: I felt that. And I certainly learned that, about being silly with my friends or speech. I definitely learned – and I had forgotten it until you shared the quote with me last night – I had forgotten that I had learned that you can’t speak lightly of the name of God because it’s irreverent. But, Nikki, that woman spoke often of Satan –
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: – of how he wants us, how he’s tempting us, how we’re not to give him any place, but don’t talk about God, it’ll make Him trivial, but go ahead and talk about Satan and how he’s trying to get you. She completely upended reality and made us fear Satan, not God, like the Bible says to do, and we were to imagine God as not even really near us. He was so distant we couldn’t talk of Him, and if we brought Him near, we’d make Him common. She deliberately taught us not to honor God, not to fear God, not to love God, not to know God, and the God of the Bible, by contrast, reveals Himself to us and wants to be known. It was a shock to me when I learned through listening to Gary Inrig over the years that God revealed Himself. He revealed His personal name to Moses and Israel. He revealed Himself as Father to the church. He wants us to call Him these things. We’re not making Him common. He wants us to know Him.
Nikki: He says to enter the throne room boldly.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Yeah, I often felt as an Adventist that I was a mouse in a maze trying to sniff out the cheese, doing everything I could to find God, hitting walls here and there that He put up, and if I was smart enough, I would make it to the cheese.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: But He sent His Son to die so that He could reveal Himself to us and reconcile us to Himself. God would be working against God to set up obstacles, like the ones I had in Adventism. He would never do that.
Colleen: No! He would not do that. Read the Bible and it becomes clear He would not do that. We really had a worldview set up, Nikki, and we didn’t even know all of those details. We didn’t remember or know they came from her.
Nikki: I’ll tell you what, if I was an Adventist listening to this, remembering myself as an Adventist, I would be pretty upset hearing us talk because I would think, “No one ever said those things to me.” But we’re talking about logical conclusions, and we’re talking about the kinds of things that get handed down generation to generation in family rules and norms that may never be attributed to Ellen White.
Colleen: Yes. That’s right. That’s exactly right. And yet they come from her.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: They come from evil. Well, let’s conclude this passage with Paul’s last two verses. The first one is a command, again, to believers of how not to behave with one another, and the last verse is a command how to behave with one another. So he asks us to let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander be put away from us, along with all malice. Nikki, you did some research into those words, and I just thought some of the insights you had as to the understanding of the meanings gave a lot of depth to this passage. Could you share some of that, please?
Nikki: Yeah. I was telling you that I used to look at verses like this and think, “Okay, these are all bad things. I need to not do these bad things,” but I wouldn’t look any further into what they all actually meant. And so I took a little bit of time with that, and this is where I discovered that the word for “angry” was different in this verse versus the one in 26. This is about wrath, that we are to remove all wrath and punishment and vengeance. Remember, like you said, vengeance is mine says the Lord. And the bitterness, it has the meaning of malignancy. It is rooted in a person and begins to create trouble.
Colleen: Interesting.
Nikki: Wrath is outbursts of passion. Clamor – this one was interesting – emotional, boisterous screaming. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: And the one that surprised me, slander, the word there is “blasphemia,” and it means switching right for wrong, calling what God disapproves right. I got this from Strong’s. It’s #988, if anyone wants to look it up. But they reference Romans 1:25, exchanging the truth of God for a lie. And then malice, properly understood as, “An underlying principle of inherent evil which is present even if not outwardly expressed.” So we are talking about matters of the heart even here.
Colleen: Which we can only put off by returning to the Lord, to knowing we are born again, to knowing that we’re believers, and asking Him to show us how He wants us to live in Him. You know, I have experienced in the Body of Christ things that I would consider to be velvet-gloved malice –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – feelings of resentment or anger or jealously from people, and it’s cloaked in such sweet-sounding words that are designed to let the people around you think nothing’s wrong and there’s just sweet brotherhood between us, but underneath there’s this really definite sense of, “Now, I’ve paid you a compliment, but I’m done now. You can go.” We can show malice to one another even kindly, and Paul is saying no, that’s not okay. It’s also interesting that slander, as you said, has the sense of blasphemy and untruthfulness about it. We can not only blaspheme the truth of God, but set up situations that create us an impression that other Christians are faulty or are teaching bad things or are hurting the Body when, in fact, they may not be. Bottom line, how do you navigate this? Well, the only thing I can come to is that the word of God exposes us to ourselves, and I have to come to the Lord and say, “I don’t even know my own sin. And I know I’m saved, I know my spirit is alive, but I know my flesh is weak, it has lots of scars. Please show me how to navigate in a way that honors you and loves these people for you. I don’t know any other way to do it.”
Nikki: This takes me to David’s prayer in Psalm 139, when he says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” We have to rely on God to expose our hearts to us because we are broken people, and we can very easily self-vindicate whatever it is that we are doing or thinking, and so, like you said, it’s about being submitted to the Lord and to His word, and I believe it includes praying for Him to reveal any hurtful way in you and lead you in the way everlasting.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And I think that’s how we go from verse 31 to verse 32.
Colleen: Yes. Talk to us about verse 32, Nikki. What does Paul say as a concluding thought to this idea he has developed?
Nikki: He’s telling the brothers and sisters to be kind to one another, and behind that word “kind” also there’s service. This actually was a common name for slaves in the Greco-Roman worlds, “kind service.”
Colleen: Interesting.
Nikki: And compassionate, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has forgiven you. We talked a little bit about that, “just as God in Christ has forgiven you,” and what that looks like before we started recording, and I needed to work through that because, especially in our culture now, there’s such a therapeutic picture of forgiveness. But this says “just as,” and the way that God in Christ has forgiven us, it does include repentance.
Colleen: On our part.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Yeah. That’s a really interesting point. He is not saying here that if somebody – let’s start with an unbeliever who knows you well and has transgressed against you and wants to keep you close. He is not saying here, “Well, you just have to forgive and forget. It’s the Christian thing to keep them in your life.” That’s not what this is saying. God in Christ forgives us when we trust our sins to Him, when we trust the Son, when we accept the fact that He has paid for our sin, and we cast our sin on Him and say, “I am completely broken, and I need a Savior.” So if we’re forgiving one another as Christ forgave us, he is saying here that the things that we can honestly forgive are the things for which there is repentance. And if someone does not repent for the wrong they’ve done to us, we can turn that over to God because we know He does have the last word, and He is just, and He asks us to leave room for the wrath of God. Don’t take these things upon ourselves. They’re too big for us to bear. He bears this. But we can forgive in the sense of giving up our right to get even, giving up our right to expect what we think we should expect from them and allow God to fill our hearts in those holes these people have left, knowing He will be just and He will care for us in the process.
Nikki: And, you know, as a mother I have to add the parable of the debtor. My kids, they will have such wonderful conversations with us about God’s grace and forgiveness, and then they’ll have a squabble, and one will try to make things right and the other will not be interested, and it’s a difficult thing as a parent to get in there and carefully help them see how we do extend forgiveness when people repent and ask for that, and it’s hard for us. I’m using them as an example, and kids forgive me, I know that this is something I have to remember too –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – that when someone does come, we don’t get to decide whether it was good enough. Did they apologize well enough? [Laughter.]
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: We forgive because Christ forgave.
Colleen: Yeah. That’s a very good point. We don’t get to decide if their repentance is appropriate. If they ask forgiveness, Jesus said we forgive seventy times seven. If a person asks for forgiveness, we forgive. So as we come to the end of this chapter in Ephesians, we want to remind you that if you haven’t trusted the Lord Jesus, if you don’t know you’re born again, if you don’t know you’re part of the Body of Christ, you can know. You just have to know that you are broken and sinful by nature, that you can repent before the cross of Christ and admit that you need Him, you need His blood to cover your sin and His sacrifice to pay for your debt, and thank Him that He is your Savior and Lord and trust Him. And the Lord God will see you as perfect in Christ when you trust His shed blood on your behalf.
Nikki: So if you have any questions or comments for us, please write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can visit proclamationmagazine.com to view our online articles or sign up for weekly emails that will keep you connected to what’s going on at Life Assurance Ministries. You can also find a place to donate there if you’d like to come alongside us with your financial support. Don’t forget to like and follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts, and we will see you next week with a walk through Ephesians chapter 5.
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