Transcript
It’s time to begin our service, and I am so glad to have you here with us today.
We are picking up today in the book of Ephesians. Today is our fourth lesson, looking at the second half of chapter 4. We are going to be focusing especially on verses 30 through 32.
I invite you to open your Bibles and turn there with me. For context, I will read from verse 25 down to the start of chapter 5. The apostle Paul wrote:
“25 Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. 26 Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and give no opportunity to the devil. 28 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. 29 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. 30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
“5 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Let us pray.
Lord God, help us to understand what we read today. May the Holy Spirit give us understanding. Help us in our lives to grow more like Christ, and we know that begins with us learning Christ. Teach us today, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I am glad to have a few minutes to spend with you again today as we examine these scriptures. Before we dive straight into examining our verses, let me first just remind you a little bit of what we have talked about in our last lesson.
Last time, we examined verses 25 through 29 and found that Paul began to speak to the Ephesians about specific behaviors and conduct that are becoming of a follower of Christ. As he did that, he showed us a pattern he keeps repeating: He first tells the Ephesians what to avoid doing, then he tells them what they should do instead, and finally, he tells them why.
So far, Paul has told them not to tell lies, not to steal, not to be harsh and cruel with words, and not to let their anger get the better of them. After sharing that list, Paul writes verse 30.
Grieve Not The Holy Spirit
Let me read verse 30 again to you. After telling them all these different things they should avoid doing, Paul writes:
“30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
Now, this is an interesting verse. It might almost seem out of place, but it is not out of place if we remember the pattern Paul has been following. He tells us what not to do, then he tells us what to do instead, and then third, he tells us the reason why.
So, as we see, that has been Paul’s pattern so far, and it continues to be his pattern after this. It lets us know that verse 30 is the reason why for verse 29. We should not say mean, cruel, and graceless things to other people because if we do, we will be grieving the Holy Spirit, which has sealed us until the day of redemption.
At the most basic level, verse 30 is the reason why we should obey verse 29. Paul is telling us that it grieves the Holy Spirit, which has sealed us, when we say or do these things he has warned against. The reason we should avoid those things is because if we love God—if we really love Him—we will not want to grieve Him. If we love God, we will not want to hurt His heart, and that is exactly what would happen if we did these things Paul told us to avoid. It would hurt the heart of God.
The Holy Spirit in you is grieved when you speak harsh things just to cut down other people. The Holy Spirit in you is grieved when you steal. The Holy Spirit in you is grieved when you fly off the handle in anger. The Holy Spirit in you is grieved when you tell lies. All of that grieves God.
That is a very simple thing to understand, and that is the first thing in verse 30 I want to draw your attention to.
God Has Emotions and So Do We
There is a second thing in this verse I would like to draw your attention to as well, and it is simply this: God can feel grief. God, the Holy Spirit, experiences grief at times. We would find that to be true if examined through the scripture; we can find places throughout the Bible where it talks about certain events grieving God. We can see the same thing with Jesus in the days of His ministry. There were circumstances that at times caused Him deep grief, even so much that He wept and cried and groaned and mourned.
Just let that sink in for a minute: God Himself experiences grief.
If you remember from our last lesson, when we examined verse 26 in this same chapter, there is the implication that God also experiences anger. As we look through scripture, we actually find there is a wide range of emotions that God experiences. Anger and grief are only two of the emotions that God experiences.
You and I, we have been created in the image of God. We are like God in certain ways, and one of those ways that we are like God is that we also can experience the same emotions that God experiences. The reason you can feel anger, the reason you can feel grief, is because you have been made in God’s image.
I want to point that out to you because that is something very important to grasp ahold of. It will unravel a whole lot of the false teachings in the places we come from. Where we come from, the only acceptable emotion is happiness. If you have any emotion besides happiness, they will basically tell you that something is wrong with you. They will even say sometimes that it is some sort of spirit. You have a spirit causing you to be angry. You have a spirit causing you to feel grief. They will even come to the point of telling you that negative emotions are sin.
But brothers and sisters, no one speaking by the Holy Spirit can call Jesus Christ accursed. Negative emotions are not a sin. Negative emotions are not something that is wrong with you, just like negative emotions were not something wrong with Jesus Christ, just like negative emotions are not something wrong with God Himself. When you experience anger over injustice and wickedness, that is a godly emotion. When you experience grief and sorrow, that is a godly emotion.
The people who cut themselves off from those sorts of things and suppress them are actually people who are being ungodly. They do not really know God like they pretend to.
It is not always happiness in this world—not for us, not for Jesus, and not for God Himself. Because evil is in the world, that evil will create situations that can grieve our hearts and make us angry. Remember what Paul’s framework here is: He wants the Ephesians to walk in love. Being loving people is Paul’s objective in his directions for Christian conduct. When you love something—when you really love something or someone—it is only natural for that to produce grief when there is loss or when that thing you love is pained and suffers.
Grief is a natural emotion to experience when something or someone you love is being pained and suffering, even up to the point of loss. Grief is the product of love, and grief is the godly response to certain situations.
When we have fake preachers telling you that something is wrong with you because you are experiencing negative emotions, I want you to know that fake preacher has no idea what he is talking about. Quit listening to him. Look at all the people he has driven to a suicidal condition by that sort of preaching. If you keep listening to him, he’s probably going to do the same thing to you. Get away from that.
If you are experiencing grief, what you need is not someone to yell at you and tell you something is wrong with you. What you need is a friend. In the book of Romans, Paul said, “Weep with those who weep, grieve with those who grieve, mourn with those who mourn.” That is the appropriate response to people in mourning and grief: to empathize with them in their sorrows. That is the biblical pattern for handling people who grieve—not yell and scream at them and tell them it’s a spirit and something is wrong with them. It is a wicked devil that motivates someone to behave that way towards people in grief.
Yell and scream at their loved ones’ funerals and bring more heartache, more pain, and more suffering. And I am talking about Kevin Crase specifically, in case you are wondering. He is a wicked and ungodly man, and what I am describing is his behavior. Sadly, it’s the behavior of other Message preachers too, because that is who he learned that ungodly behavior from. He learned it from Branhamite preachers. We pray the Lord rebukes all these wicked, ungodly men who are abusing innocent people in their times of sorrow and grief.
Brothers and sisters, let’s not be that way. Let’s not condemn the emotions that God Himself feels, but let’s realize we were made in His image, and it’s only natural that we have seasons of time where we can feel grief and sorrow—just like God does.
Sealed Till the Day of Redemption
Now, there is a third thing I would like to also point out to you that we can learn from verse 30. We can learn this from the way the verse is worded and its context. Paul wrote, “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed until the day of redemption.”
So, the Holy Spirit that is in us seals us until the day of redemption. That is speaking of the redemption of our bodies. The redemption of our natural bodies is a future event that we are waiting for. That is the day our bodies will be resurrected, transformed, and glorified. The curse that we carry in our bodies today will no longer have a hold, and that curse is death. This is the day of redemption Paul is speaking about—the day in which Christ will redeem our mortal bodies.
Now, there is contained in that statement the same concept Paul first explained back in chapter 1. It is what some people call “eternal security.” It is the belief that, once the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, it permanently seals us. We are sealed for the day of the redemption of our bodies. We don’t yet have that full redemption in the here and now, but we will have it in the hereafter. It is guaranteed, certain, and absolute. We have God’s seal on that absolutely certain promise of the coming redemption. Nothing can stop it, nothing can take it away, and nothing can hinder it. We are sealed until the day of redemption.
That seal takes effect the moment we receive the Holy Spirit. When we believe in Christ and the Holy Spirit indwells us, we are sealed with the certainty of total redemption from that moment. We will never perish—from that moment. Jesus said, “Whoever believes in me has passed from death unto life.” From the moment we come to saving faith, the Holy Spirit enters into our hearts, and we receive eternal life.
You can’t lose eternal life. If you can lose eternal life, then it was not really eternal life, was it? Eternal life lasts for eternity—otherwise, it wasn’t eternal life. That eternal life, that sealing by the Holy Spirit, comes with salvation itself and at the moment of salvation itself.
That truth is what underlies Paul’s statement here in verse 30, and Paul has already explained it in more detail back in chapter 1.
Grieving the Spirit
Now that brings us to the fourth thing I want to point out to you. This fourth thing is closely related to what I just explained. When we have received the Holy Spirit, we are permanently sealed until the day of redemption.
But consider the context of what Paul is saying here. Paul has said, “Do not grieve the Spirit by whom you were sealed.” The way Paul states these things leaves us with the distinct impression that there is a possibility that a person could do just what he has warned against. There is a distinct possibility that someone who has been sealed with the Holy Ghost, someone who is saved and Spirit-filled, may indeed do something that can grieve the Holy Spirit.
And, you are all Spirit-filled people. You can read this as well as I can, and maybe you understand this a little better than I do. But to me, the plain reading of this verse seems to indicate that grieving the Holy Spirit, which has sealed us, is a real possibility.
When I see that, it lets me know that it is entirely possible for a person who is a Christian, someone who is born again, someone who has been filled and sealed with the Holy Ghost—someone who has been sealed and cannot become unsealed—to fall short of the character Paul is describing.
Paul’s phrasing here leaves open the possibility that someone can be saved and yet still do something that grieves God. And Paul’s phrasing also indicates to us that, even though they have grieved the Spirit, they are still sealed to the day of redemption.
This lets us know that Christians can make mistakes. Christians who are saved and Spirit-filled can still do things they ought not to, and it will grieve the heart of God. But they are still sealed. It doesn’t take away their salvation.
Now, that is not a license to live in sin. It’s not a license to do bad things. But what it is, is an assurance to us that even if we are seeking to do our best, yet we make a mistake from time to time, we are still sealed. We didn’t lose our salvation because we messed up. We don’t lose our salvation because we may fail to perfectly live up to this lifestyle Paul is describing.
But I will tell you this: I can’t help but read these passages and also see that a person who grieves the Spirit of God, if they are a genuine Christian person, is going to feel bad about that. They are going to wish they hadn’t done that. There is going to be some inner turmoil in a genuine Christian. Their conscience is going to be saying, “Hey, that was not a good thing.”
They are not going to move along like nothing happened. There is going to be some conflict in their heart over their behavior. Because the Spirit of God in them is going to be grieved. And if the Spirit of God in you is grieved, you are going to know it. The Spirit of God in you is going to let you know He is grieved by this thing.
So, understand, Paul is letting the Ephesians know they have an assurance of salvation, even if they make some mistakes. But that is not a license to live in sin.
And, I hope you can see that in verse 30 as well. If not, that’s okay. Maybe you understand it better than I do, but that is the best of my understanding.
I am going to stop here today. I know we have only looked at this one verse, but I don’t want to put too much into one lesson. That way you have time to think and consider things.
I invite you to come back next time. We will finally get down to verses 31 and 32, and we will be looking at forgiveness. So, come back next week. For now, be encouraged by the truth: grief is a normal, natural, godly emotion, and so is anger at injustice and evil. The Holy Spirit in you and I has sealed us until the day of redemption, and nothing can take that away, even if we may slip up at times of weakness or mistake and grieve the very Holy Spirit that seals us.
It is comforting to understand we have that assurance. Let us close in prayer.