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Ephesians 4:1-16 · Unity in the Body of Christ
Walk In Love
Ephesians 4:1-16
Sermon
by King Duncan
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An insurance agent filed this claim on behalf of one of his clients:

The Insured operates a dude ranch and we insure all of his ranch buildings and his pickup truck. He had been having trouble with coyotes and had rigged up an ingenious sapling cage trap to catch the animals, after which he would shoot them. This time he decided to try something different, and instead of shooting the coyote, he tied a stick of dynamite to its neck and lit the fuse, opening the cage door at the same time. The coyote unobligingly ran under The Insured's pickup truck. The claim is for the truck which is a total loss. (1)

Our first response would be that the insured got what he deserved for his cruelty. Our second response might be to acknowledge that often when we give in to anger and bitterness, it is we ourselves whom we destroy.

St. Paul writes, "Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us...."

On June 18, 1972, a B.E.A. Trident crashed at Heathrow airport, London. As a result, 118 people lost their lives. What happened? After the usual intense investigation it was revealed that the pilot had been unhappy because of the way in which an airline strike had been settled. But there was more: As the pilot took the plane off the ground, he felt the plane to be badly off trim. The men who loaded the cargo had carelessly failed to keep the weight in balance. The pilot, already angry, became furious and over corrected, jamming his controls. The plane dived into the runway and 118 men, women and children were killed. (2) Sometimes a high price is paid for uncontrolled hostility.

The Los Angeles police department reported that during one considerable period, 80 percent of the morning rushhour accidents were caused by people who had earlier been involved in arguments with their mates before leaving home.

ONE OF THE MOST EASILY DOCUMENTED FACTS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE IS THE DESTRUCTIVE POWER OF NEGATIVE EMOTIONS. Hatred, hostility, bitterness are expensive indulgences. Historians tell us that World War I left the nation of Germany in shambles. Consequently, the people of Germany were bitter towards the entire world. That anger eventually led to World War II. After the second war a stone statue was erected on the Polish frontier. The statue was of a woman brooding in determination facing the Polish nation. Underneath that woman were these words inscribed: "Never forget, Germans, of what blind hatred has robbed you." Then below were listed the towns which once belonged to Germany but now belong to Poland. Negative emotions take their toll.

Psychiatrists at Duke University have concluded that persons who have continuing feelings of hostility towards others have an increased risk of illness and early death.

They base this finding on three studies of more than 2,000 people who were given the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, a standard test of mental attitudes, in the 1950's.

A followup found that those who scored high on questions measuring hostility were more likely to have died in the last 30 years than those who scored lower.

People who scored in the top fifth for hostility had four times the death rate of people who scored in the bottom fifth.

Dr. John C. Barefoot, who headed one study, told a meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society that it's not known why this happens or if people can change their behavior, but "It's not going to hurt people to adopt a more positive view of others." (3) That is certainly the understatement of the year.

NEGATIVE EMOTIONS ARE NOT ONLY DESTRUCTIVE BUT THEY ARE DEGRADING TO THE HUMAN SPIRIT. You may have read about a reply that came to the credit department of a jewelry store from an irate customer. It seems he was angry over a mistake in billing. He wrote: "You have made me so think, I can't mad straight!" Sometimes when we lose control we do ridiculous things.

There is an old Arabian Proverb, "Anger is a wind that blows out the lamp of the mind."

I was reading an interesting story about rattlesnakes. We can associate anger with rattlers but the truth of the matter is that an angry rattlesnake is superior to an angry man.

Rattlesnakes fight frequently, and they are not immune to rattlesnake venom. (They are able to eat their own venominjected prey only because the poison is broken down by the digestion; if bitten by another rattlesnake, they can die.) It is thus interesting that fighting rattlesnakes scrupulously avoid biting each other. Instead, they engage in peculiar, highly stylized wrestling matches in which each one tries to push the rival over on its back. The two adversaries face each other with their heads and about one third of their bodies raised vertically above the ground, bobbing and weaving, while sometimes rubbing their ventral scales together. In making contact and straining against one another, they may raise themselves several feet above the ground.The victor pins the vanquished with the weight of his body for just a few seconds, and then the loser glides away, defeated but unbitten and very much alive. (4)

Human beings are practically the only species on earth emotionally capable of killing their own kind. If any evidence were needed of man's fallen nature, it is here. When "bitterness and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking" get hold of us, we are not only less than the angels, we are less than animals. Who among us has not seen a normally intelligent, responsible human being act like an absolute idiot when out of control with hostility?

Negative emotions are destructive and degrading. NEGATIVE EMOTIONS ALSO DETRACT FROM OUR CHRISTIAN WITNESS.

We are told that Charles Spurgeon, that great preacher of yesterday had a pastorfriend who wrote the book entitled COME UNTO JESUS. Another pastor wrote an article ridiculing the book. At first Spurgeon's friend suffered in silence, but as time passed and the criticism gained wider prominence, his resentment and rage became nearly uncontainable. He wrote an angry response to the critical article filled with invective and spite. He said some ugly things he would never have said under other circumstances. Before he mailed the response, however, he showed it to Spurgeon and asked him whether he ought to mail it. After reading the letter, Spurgeon answered, "By all means, mail it. But first of all beneath your signature write, `By the author of COME UNTO JESUS.'" The response went unmailed.

Enough, however, on our dilemma. Anger, hostility, bitterness, etc. are destructive, degrading, and detract from our Christian witness. But how do we deal with these powerful, negative emotions?

Milton Layden, a Medical Doctor has written an excellent book entitled, ESCAPING THE HOSTILITY TRAP (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1977). In it he suggests that at THE BASE OF ALL DESTRUCTIVE HOSTILITY IS A FEELING OF INFERIORITY. Now we are not talking about constructive angeras when Jesus drove the taxcollectors out of the temple. We are talking about the man who blows a relatively small matter out of proportion and stalks out of a meeting or physically attacks his opponent or makes others miserable for days on end because of a minor slight. Such anger is the product of a deep sense of low self esteem. Such persons make the headlines on a regular basis.

One of those whose name lives in infamy was raised by a very dominant mother, who showed him no affection, love, or discipline. His friends at school had little to do with him, and at thirteen, his school psychologist said he didn't know what it meant to be loved. The girls teased him, and the boys beat him up. As an escape from all the abuse, he joined the marines, but only found more abuse there. They called him Ozzie the Rabbit, which he hated, so he got in a lot of fights, rebelled, and finally was courtmartialed and dishonorably discharged from the marines.

There he was, without family, friends, and love. He was losing his hair, and had no skill or selfrespect.

He eventually married an immigrant, who bore him two children. But soon, even his marriagethe only source of security he had ever knownbegan to crumble, and his wife hated him. Having lost all selfworth, one day he crawled to her, begging, with tears, that she show him some attention. In front of his friends she mocked his failure and ridiculed his impotence.

Finally, his ego lay shattered, and he was without any human affection at all. A few days later, November 22, 1963, he went out into the garage, took a rifle, drove into Dallas, and put two huge holes in the head of our former president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. His name, of course, was Lee Harvey Oswald. (5)

An extreme example, to be sure. What I hope we will see, though, is that the same sense of inferiority that drove this tortured man to act out his rage on a president can cripple many of us. The list that Paul gives us bitterness, wrath, clamour, evil speakingare all the product of our feelings of inferiority.

Paul, however, gives us the prescription. "Be ye therefore followers of God..." One translator (ASV) has rendered this as be "imitators of God." That's a big order. Who among us is up to imitating God? Can you think, though, of a more effective formula for escaping our feelings of inferiority?

Let's use an example. For 33 years Yul Brynner was the King of Siam in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, THE KING AND I.

We are told that in the earlier years Brynner was made up to resemble the part. By the time he reached his sixties, however, he no longer required makeup. He had become the part.

What better way to escape our feelings of inferiority than this? "Be imitators of God," Paul says. "Walk in love, as Christ hath also loved us." There is the ultimate secret. We can walk in love because we are loved. We are important persons in God's eyes because of what Christ has done in our behalf.

No psychology text ever written will give us a better formula for the low selfesteem that causes us to be slaves to negative emotions. Anger and hostility are destructive, degrading and detract from our Christian witness. But we do have a choice. We can escape their stranglehold. We can be new people. We can be bigger peoplebigger than our negative emotionsby walking in the footsteps of One far greater than we. "Be imitators of God...Walk in love, as Christ hath also loved us."

1. Brian Herbert, INCREDIBLE INSURANCE CLAIMS (Los Angeles: Price, Stern, Sloan Publishers, 1982).

2. Robert G. Tuttle, HELP ME GOD! IT'S HARD TO COPE. (Lima, Ohio: C.S.S. Publishing Company, 1984).

3. NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, p. 5, April 27, 1987).

4. THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE

5. James Dobson, HIDE OR SEEK, (Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1974).

Dynamic Preaching, Collected Sermons, by King Duncan