Passage: Ephesians 4:25-32
The Big Idea
“Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.” The Spirit isn’t a force; He’s a Person who loves us, and love can be hurt. When He committed to us, He knew we’d break His heart, and He loved us anyway. Paul names the things that grieve Him: lying, unresolved anger, stealing, rotten words, bitterness, and an unforgiving heart. And He shows us what brings the Spirit joy: kindness, tenderness and forgiveness, flowing from eyes fixed on Jesus.
A Broken Heart
Have you ever had a broken heart?
I once read people online trying to describe what heartbreak feels like. One said it’s like being punched in the stomach by Chuck Norris. Another said it feels like your heart is being ripped out and stomped on. Another described it beautifully and painfully: the loneliest, most desperate feeling, not being able to stop crying, and knowing that even when you do, the loss is still there. All the plans and dreams you made together, gone. The finality of it, and the fact that you have no say. Having to keep working and doing chores while feeling separated from your own life.
Today’s passage centers on this command: Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.
Synonyms for grieve include: agonize, anguish, bleed, hurt, mourn, sorrow, suffer. In other words: don’t tear His heart out.
I firmly believe one big reason I’ve gone through so much suffering in my life is so I could understand this verse more deeply: this Person, how He feels about me, how He longs for me, how He loves me. Paul calls it “the fellowship of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:10).
We’ll see that we grieve the Holy Spirit by:
- Living like the world.
- Lying.
- Staying angry.
- Stealing.
- Speaking rotten words.
- Holding bitterness.
- Refusing to forgive.
When you decide to love someone, you put yourself at risk. They might hurt you. They might break your heart. But the Holy Spirit commits to us anyway. He knows we’ll hurt Him, and He loves us anyway. How can He put Himself out there like that? He isn’t insulated from the pain of relationship. If anything, He feels it far more intensely than we can imagine.
And His grief isn’t petty or oversensitive. Spurgeon wrote, “He is grieved with us mainly for our own sakes, for he knows what misery sin will cost us; he reads our sorrows in our sins … He grieves over us because he sees how much chastisement we incur, and how much communion we lose.”
The Passage (Ephesians 4:25-32)
Paul writes: Put away lying, and let each of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry, and don’t sin; don’t 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 he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only what 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, wrath, anger, 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.
Let’s walk through the heart of the Spirit that’s been entrusted to us.
Lying (Ephesians 4:25)
Put away lying, because we belong to one another.
A body that lies to itself ends up hurting itself. That’s what happens with leprosy: nerves stop telling the truth about pain, and the body gets damaged without knowing it.
When the Spirit sees the body lying to itself, He grieves. He longs for truth and healing, but healing can’t come when we lie.
Pinocchio was lucky. His nose grew when he lied! We have consequences too. Lying produces stress in our bodies and minds. No one sees it at first, so we think we’re getting away with it. But the Spirit sees us becoming stressed out, burned out prisoners of our own lies, and He grieves. We should be the ones mourning, but He mourns for us. He urges us, begs us, leads us to tell the truth.
Anger (Ephesians 4:26-27)
Be angry without sinning. Don’t let the sun set on your anger, and don’t give the devil a foothold.
Letting anger get the best of you breaks the Spirit’s heart.
- You can get angry. But there’s a time limit on anger, so it doesn’t take root and infect your heart.
- When it infects your heart, it builds little handholds for Satan to grab on to.
- We focus on how wronged we are and how much we deserve to be angry.
- God is more concerned with your spiritual houseguests. He understands what you’ve been through, and He knows His own power. He asks you to let Him be your avenger (Romans 12:19). Why? Because He’s good at it, and we aren’t! He can and will defend you if you let Him.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t want Satan coming over for dinner with the two of you. Can you imagine the tension at that table? Awkward!
Stealing (Ephesians 4:28)
The thief must stop stealing and work honestly, so he has something to give to those in need.
The Spirit’s heart breaks when we decide we need something more than what He has provided, when we put our wants ahead of others’ needs.
- Why did you think you needed to steal? Don’t you believe He loves you?
- It’s a relationship breakdown: the flesh deciding it has to provide for itself.
- He wants us free from the “getting what I need” prison.
So much popular music celebrates the endless hustle to get more money and more influence. It breaks my heart to listen to a lot of it: people who don’t have a Father like I do, who can’t trust anyone, who are all alone, doing their best, with isolation and despair cutting through every line.
When we trust God to provide exactly what we need when we need it, we’re free to focus on loving Him instead of getting stuff, and free to give to others in need.
Corrupt Words (Ephesians 4:29)
No rotten words, only words that build up and give grace to those who hear.
Corrupt words are rotten words: words that don’t come from pure love for God, but from a desire to be noticed. Pride. Words that point people to their own goodness and self-sufficiency instead of to grace.
Imagine someone says, “Man, I keep sinning. I’m tired and burned out.”
- Rotten response: “You’re not that bad. Did you really mean to? It was probably just a hard situation. Try a little harder. You can do it!”
- Grace response: “Friend, that’s sin. But if you humble yourself and ask for God’s help, trusting Him to supply what you lack, you’ll see victory. You have access to His grace through humility and faith!”
My prayer is that the Church becomes skilled at grace: skilled at explaining the difference between proud self-effort and the humble faith God gives grace to. Not because I want to impress anyone, but because I want to make Him happy!
Sealed (Ephesians 4:30)
Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit, who sealed you for the day of redemption.
He’s all in with us. He’s riding it out with us to the end. No one is as committed to you as God is!
So we fall in love with Him along the journey. It’s like almost any action movie: two people thrown together on a wild ride end up falling in love along the way.
Spurgeon pictured it vividly: “I think I now see the Spirit of God grieving, when you are sitting down to read a novel and there is your Bible unread… You have no time for prayer, but the Spirit sees you very active about worldly things, and having many hours to spare for relaxation and amusement. And then he is grieved because he sees that you love worldly things better than you love him.”
God is in love with you. He won’t leave you alone. He’ll pursue you in your darkest times and rescue you. Will you respond to that love, or turn your back and grieve Him? It’s an every-minute decision.
What if I took my wife on a lovely date, walked her to the car after dinner, shut her door, and said, “See ya! I’m off to do my own thing now”?
Bitterness and Its Cousins (Ephesians 4:31)
Put away all bitterness, rage, anger, shouting, slander and malice.
- “Can’t I be just a little bitter?”
- “Can’t I blow up quickly and then cool off?” (wrath)
- “Can’t I just bury my anger deep down and let it simmer?” (anger)
- “Can’t I give them a piece of my mind?” (clamor: loud complaining)
- “Can’t I be a little mean every once in a while?” (evil speaking)
Sure, if you want to break God’s heart. Go for it, if that’s all Jesus means to you.
“Will God forgive me every time?” Yes, absolutely. But what we sow, we reap. It breaks His heart to watch us make such foolish choices, and it will break ours when we realize what we missed with Him. We could have known the fellowship of His sufferings. Instead we chose the way of pain.
Kind, Tender, Forgiving (Ephesians 4:32)
Be kind, tenderhearted and forgiving, just as God in Christ forgave you.
So we’ve seen the list of what breaks God’s heart. The big question is: what do we do with all the difficult people around us who bring these things out in us?
Be kind. Be tenderhearted. Forgive. And keep your eyes on Jesus Christ!
- Be kind. Think of ways to bless them. Look out for their good. Help them. “You’re crazy! They’re a jerk to me!” Jesus said to love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you (Matthew 5:44). How can we possibly do that? Get your eyes on Jesus Christ. That’s how.
- Be tenderhearted. Don’t be hard. “But you don’t know what they did to me, how they made me feel!” You’re right, I don’t. But Jesus does. Get your eyes on Him.
- Forgive. Every day. Every time. Just as God in Christ forgave you.
(Forgiving doesn’t mean pretending a wrong didn’t happen, or staying in a dangerous situation. It means releasing the debt to God and letting Him be the judge.)
This is what makes the Spirit rejoice! And when the Spirit rejoices with you, you’ll be filled with joy.
William Cowper wrote:
What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.Return, O holy Dove, return,
Sweet messenger of rest;
I hate the sins that made Thee mourn,
And drove Thee from my breast.The dearest idol I have known,
Whate’er that idol be,
Help me to tear it from Thy throne,
And worship only Thee.
Spurgeon ended his own sermon on this verse with an urgent plea, which I’ll paraphrase: Are you backslidden, cold, drifting? Don’t stay there a moment longer. Don’t be comfortable for a single second without the Spirit’s sweet presence. Find the sin that has grieved Him, give it up, put it to death on the spot. Turn back with a broken heart, keep praying, and don’t rest until you know His nearness again.
Grace Takeaway
The Holy Spirit loves you with a vulnerable, committed love; He sealed you knowing you would hurt Him. Lying, lingering anger, grasping, rotten words and bitterness all grieve Him, mostly because of what they cost you. But kindness, tenderness and forgiveness make Him rejoice. You can’t produce those by willpower toward difficult people. Get your eyes on Jesus, remember how God in Christ forgave you, and let the Spirit’s joy fill your heart again.
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