“All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling
must be removed from you, along with all malice.
And be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.”
In Paul’s letters, he often admonishes those to whom he is writing about specific behaviors that should be changed. The Letter to the Ephesians includes several such passages. Paul usually hears word of how his communities are behaving and addresses those behaviors with gospel values, making practical corrections to how they have been acting. The lines above are such an address. Like the above, however, Paul often goes beyond the simple behaviors, themselves, to focus on the condition of the heart, giving Jesus’s antidote for misguided interior dispositions.
The gospel is not simply an exterior code of conduct for us to adhere to, but an interior transformation of our hearts. Jesus, and Paul for that matter, realizes that there is a continuity between our hearts and our actions. While there is some value in changing the exterior (and sometimes this is the place to begin), real transformation happens on the inside. The interior is where healing happens, where wholeness happens, and where love happens. The mind, heart, and soul are where we become a new creation. As Paul writes to the Corinthians, “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”
In the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus makes several statements that reflect this interior and exterior continuity, for example:
- You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.
- You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
- You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on [your] right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.
- You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust...So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Paul’s lines above could be written to us today based on the exterior behaviors, but the interior transformation called for by Paul is a work of God (“as God has forgiven you in Christ”). The only way we can have lasting change on the outside is by being transformed on the inside by God’s mercy, forgiveness, and grace. It is the call to be a new creation, or to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. It is impossible without God. The only way we can really change our world is to change hearts, beginning with our own. The Holy Spirit, given to us in baptism, can change us inside and out by the gift of faith as we surrender our will to God’s will. The holiness that we are called to isn’t just about the exterior, it is about what’s going on inside. The Pharisees were whitewashed tombs, but we are called to be life giving wombs, giving birth to goodness and love from what is inside of us.