Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. For you to forgive somebody else, listen, is not that you forget about the wrong altogether, it's that you choose. To not remember or hold that wrong against them because you know that God will take care of it. Has taken care of it on the cross or will take care of it now.
Vengeance is his, so I can put away all that wrath. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. You know what? I love weddings.
Young couples plan their weddings with so much excitement, anticipating living happily ever after, just like the fairy tales promised. They don't necessarily yet know that to be a good couple doesn't actually mean you never fight with your spouse. Good couples have learned to fight fairly and with a God-honoring end goal in mind. Today we are learning how to resolve conflict, and not just in marriage, but in all of our relationships. This is an issue that touches the life of everyone listening in one way or another.
Now, if you missed any of the messages in this study called First Love, be sure to catch up right away at jdgreer.com. Right now, let's join Pastor JD in a message he titled Fighting Jesus Style. We are in our fourth week of a series that we are calling First Love, and we are studying the New Testament's classic passage on romance and relationships, Ephesians 5, verses 21 through 32.
So, if you have a Bible, I'd invite you to take it out and open it to that passage now. Ephesians 5:21 through 32 is specifically about marriage and singleness, but I've showed you that Paul shows that these things are really just windows into our relationship with God and windows into our own hearts.
So, the things that we're learning out of this are going to apply to us, whatever marital status we are in at the moment.
Now, I hope that some of you married people had fun doing what I asked you to do last week. If you remember, I told you it's a way of developing your friendship to ask your spouse every day this week one thing that happened to you and how you felt about it. One wife complained that every time she asked her husband how he felt, all he said was, Hungry, and how can you serve me?
So, she said, I'm not really sure. Sure, he's been getting the point of these messages, which brings me to the subject of this week's message: conflict resolution and forgiveness. Conflict happens in all of our relationships, but especially in marriage. I'll tell you: one of my pet peeves is one of my pet peeves is wedding sermons. Because it seems like most of the sermons that I've heard at weddings over the years are sweet and sentimental and sappy, and it feels like you're just dumping saccharin in your mouth.
Most wedding sermons that I have heard have about as much depth and reality to them as a Hallmark card. If you have been married, you know that actual marriage is anything but sweet and sentimental. On the one hand, it is this glorious, burning joy that is better than you ever thought it could be. On the other hand, it is hard. It is harder than anything you ever encounter or ever realize.
It is blood, sweat, and tears. It is almost anything and everything except for sweet. Many married people, on many a night, go to bed after a hard day of marriage, and about the only Part of this Ephesians 5 passage that they can remember is the verse, This is all a profound mystery. I know, but we're going to talk about conflict and what it really looks like in all relationships. One of which is marriage.
So let me just dispel a myth right here from the beginning. Good couples are not couples who don't fight. Good couples are couples who have learned to fight fairly, to fight Christianly. And just in case you are one of those starry-eyed engaged couples who are like, oh, we never fight. Veronica and I were like that when we were engaged.
Oh, how fun it is to be young, naive, and stupid. You have a lot of wonderful things to learn in the days to come. You just can't be married to another sinner without there being conflict. And the closer you are in any relationship, the more the conflict comes to the surface. Listen to this: the problems that split up most marriages are not usually some special class of problems.
The problems that split up most marriages are usually generic problems that are present in every marriage. But what happens is that one or the other of the partners doesn't know how to handle conflict well, and they don't know how to keep minor problems from becoming major problems.
So the problems that split up their marriage are not problems in their marriage per se. but problems in them. That's why I told you the first week there are really no married people issues. There are individual people issues that just get brought out in marriage. And I told you, some of you don't want to admit that because it's really convenient for you to blame your spouse for all the problems that you're having.
And I realize that your spouse is probably causing some of the problems, but what you've got to see is that these are individual people issues that just come out in marriage.
So, we're going to look at two passages in Ephesians about conflict. The first one relates specifically to conflict in marriage, but the second one relates to conflict in the church. Because, in either case, the sources of conflict are the same and the solutions are the same.
So, Ephesians chapter 5. Verse 25, if you've got it there yet, Ephesians 5, 25.
So let's go through the middle three verses of this passage. Husbands, he says, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might. Sanctify her. If you underline stuff in your Bible, underline the word sanctify. Sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
Paul, in the space of these two or three verses, shows you both God's goal for marriage and then the means that God has for achieving that goal. The goal is our sanctification. That's why I had you underline that word. That's just a big, kind of fancy word that means to make something holy. To sanctify your spouse, for you to be sanctified, is to become holy, more like God.
The pattern, the means for achieving that goal is the cross. The cross, think about it. The cross was about our conflict with God. We had irreconcilable differences with God, and the cross is what God did to resolve those irreconcilable differences. That's how we must learn, Paul says, to respond in our marriages.
So if you want to understand why conflict is there in your relationships. If you want to understand what God's purpose is in that conflict, and if you want to understand what you are to be doing about that conflict, then you gotta understand this principle. And that is this: that one of God's primary goals in marriage is not just making you happy through a suitable marriage partner, it's making you holy. by teaching you to wash the feet of another sinner. That's why I told you, I know that some of you who are married feel like you married the wrong person.
And what I'm telling you is quite the contrary. Because in one sense, you always marry the wrong person. You never marry a perfect person. The right person becomes the wrong person. And that's God's purpose.
Because God's purpose in marriage, hear this, is not just to make you happy by giving you a suitable marriage partner. It's to make you holy by teaching you to wash the feet of another sinner who has hurt you and disappointed you and betrayed you the way that you have done to Jesus. And in becoming like Jesus and learning to love and forgive like Jesus, you become holy.
Now, let's go backwards in Ephesians. Flip back one chapter. If you got your iPad, skim back one finger swipe to Ephesians 4. Because Paul. Is going to go into more detail in this passage about where conflict comes from and how you are to resolve it.
But what you're going to see is the exact same principle at work, exact same principle, because whether it's conflict and relationships at work, your friendships, or in marriage, it's all the same. All right, I'm going to give you three commands or highlight three commands in Ephesians 4 about how to fight. You probably never heard a sermon on how Jesus fights and how you can fight like Jesus. That's what we're going to talk about: how Jesus fights and how you can fight like him. And I'm going to end by giving you some really practical steps.
Ephesians 4, verse 25, this is such a great passage. I'm telling you, it really is. Verse 25. Therefore, having put away all falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.
Now, that's a reference back to the body, right? And up until now, when we talked about the body as a metaphor, we talked about it in relationship to marriage. The husband and wife become one body. But now, when he talks about the body, what's he talking about? It's talking about the church.
Right, so the context of Ephesians 4 is the church. The church is a body. The way that husband and wife, in many ways, become one body. Verse 26: Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down in your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.
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. Let all bitterness and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. All right, command number one. If you underline stuff, underline, be angry and do not sin. Jump down to verse 31: put away all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander and malice.
And put a little one beside that, because that's your first command. Notice that Paul did not tell you never to get angry. In fact, in one way, he commanded you sometimes to be angry. That's an imperative, be angry. But he said that when you get angry, don't sin.
Well, what's that mean?
Well, he defines it for you in verse 31. To be angry without sin is to be angry without bitterness, wrath. Anger there should really be translated rage in that verse, clamor, and slander. What are those things and where do they come from? Those things are when an irritation or when anger has taken on a deep burning quality.
When anger has become resentment and bitterness and hatred, when you fantasize about stomping the face of that person who hurts you with golf cleats, you are safely within the realm of those things that he listed out there. Where do those things come from?
Now, I want to explore this for a minute, the source of these things, because, you know, it's one thing to tell you to cut them out. Don't do that anymore. But unless you get down to the root of where these things come from, all you're doing, it's like mowing over the top of a weed in your yard. It's just going to grow back within two or three days. In order to get the weed out, you got to pull it up by the roots.
Well, I can give you anger management techniques. But all that's doing is clipping off the top of that fruit. You've got to get down to the root of where malice and wrath and all this has come from. And you've got to pull it up by the root because Paul didn't say, contain your wrath, contain your anger. He said, pull it up all together.
You are listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. To learn more about this ministry, including how to partner with us financially, visit jiddygreer.com. We'll get back to our teaching in just a moment, but dream with me for a second. Imagine a world where everyone has access to the life-changing truth of the gospel, where God's word is proclaimed without availability and cost getting in the way. That's our huge vision here at Summit Life.
With your prayers and generous financial gifts, we're able to produce Bible-based radio programs, podcasts, devotionals, and more to help us all spread the gospel both deeper into our own lives and then wider into a world in great need. But we can't do this all alone. You noticed I said, with your support, you're an integral part of our team, helping to spread the good news of Jesus all across the globe as you support the work here. Trust me, you're making an eternal difference with your gift each month. Would you join us in advancing this God-given mission today?
Become a gospel partner right now by calling us at 866-335-5220 or visiting jdgreer.com.
Now, let's finish up today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD.
So, where do they come from? How do we get to the root of it? I'm gonna give you two reasons. I'm gonna have to go to other places in the Bible to show you this, but this is behind what Paul is saying. The first one, James chapter 4.
This is so important. James 4, James literally asked the question: what causes quarrels and fights? and malice and wrath and anger and clamor and slander. What causes that among you? All right, here's the question: Where does conflict come from?
That's what he's asking. If I were to ask you if you were married, To turn to the other person and identify the source of your conflict, that would be dangerous, right? Because many of you would have one word as an answer for where your conflict comes from. And you would say, you, you were the source of my conflict. You are the source of my rage.
And James says, think a little deeper. Think deeper. Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You see, you desire and you do not have, so you murder. You covet and you cannot obtain, so you fight and you quarrel.
Yet you do not have because you do not ask. The reason that we have conflict, you get right down to it. The reason we have conflict is I am not getting what I want. And the reason my anger is directed at you is because somehow you are keeping me from what I want, or you are not giving me what I want and I deserve. That's why my anger is directed toward you.
I've got this series of things, and when you are not giving them to me, Then I want to murder you. And some of you are like, Yeah, now you're talking about my marriage. By the way, James, you notice is writing to church people, not to prisoners.
So when he says murder, he's not meaning just literal murder. He's also meaning metaphorically that you're keeping me from what I want. I want to despise you. I despise you. It's what Paul calls malice, bitterness, wrath, anger, and glamor.
But the problem, James says, listen to this, is found in how controlling your desires are on you. Your desires have become so important to you that you hate anyone that keeps you from obtaining those desires. Your desires have become an idol. You see, an idol is anything that you feel like you have to have in order to achieve happiness or peace. And when you have an idol, you hate anyone or anything that keeps you from that.
I could keep explaining this to you, but sometimes the easiest thing to do is just to tell you what this looks like in my own life. One of my many idols is the idol of control. Especially as it relates to my schedule and my time. When my wife comes home 25 minutes late after what she has told me she will be home. I find myself literally at the table about to lose my mind.
I am enraged because she Has gotten in the way of me controlling my schedule and my time, and now I can't do between three and five what I had clearly planned to do between three and five.
Now, truth be told, a little anger is probably appropriate in that situation, especially if she didn't call or she didn't keep her word. But it's gone beyond that for me. It has gone to wrath and malice and rage because she has gotten to the core of something that I want and I feel like I deserve. And so I'm angry at her about that.
Now, you could switch out the idol with any number of things. Your partner is not giving you the respect that you feel like you deserve. The respect that you want, and so you rage at them. You're not getting the tenderness or the affection from your spouse. You're not getting the recognition from a boss.
You are not getting from your spouse the sexual fulfillment that you feel like that is owed to you. And so, what do you do? You rage at them because I have this desire, and you're not giving it to me, and so I hate you for that. Nothing in you, listen, nothing in you is supposed to be so important to you that it produces malice, wrath, or hatred when you miss out on it.
Now, whenever you see those emotions, they all point to the fact that something in your life has become an idol. They are what I've described to you before, like smoke from a fire, that you can trace the trail of the smoke back down to the fire at the altar that you're worshiping at. Write this down. What is it that I want bad enough that I'm willing to yell at, tune out, abuse, or neglect to get? What is it that I want and demand so badly that I'm willing to yell at, tune out, abuse, or neglect to get?
That's an idol. Where are you bitter at your spouse?
Now, truth is, they might be at fault. But the rage and the bitterness point toward a deeper problem. in you. What you should do about those passions, James says, look at verse 3. is you should pray about them.
You should pray about them. You have not because you asked not. In other words, you should trust God with these things and you should leave them to him. A verse that I've memorized to help me in situations like this: Isaiah 26, 2 and 3. I will keep him, God says, in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon me or is fixed upon me.
So I know that whenever I'm not in perfect peace, that is a little signal to me that my mind is not fixed upon God. When I'm enraged, when I have bitterness, the problem, yes, someone may have disappointed or hurt me, but it points back to an idolatry problem in me because these things are indicating my lack of perfect peace is indicating that something has become too important to me and has replaced the role of God in my life.
So, where do these things come from? If you hadn't written this down yet, put letter A: desires that have become idolatrous. That's where malice and rage and all those things come from. Here's letter B: Here's the second reason: when you take upon yourself the responsibility for vengeance. When you take upon yourself the responsibility for vengeance, let me describe it like this.
God put inside of you this little tuning fork called a sense of justice. And whenever something is unjust, it goes off and you've got to see it resolved. That's why we love revenge movies because it's being resolved. And especially if the injustice is directed toward you, you just feel like you're not at peace until justice has been served, right? It's like something that's got to resolve.
And when you are repaying somebody for the injustice they did to you, you feel in that moment nigh unto deity. I mean, you feel the authority of God repaying justice where justice needs to be. to be repaid. Which is what makes what Paul says in Romans 12, verse 19 so very important in getting rid of malice. Do not ever take revenge, my friends.
Not in the big things, not in the small things. Never take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath. Because it is written, it is mine always to avenge, I will always repay, says the Lord. Paul says, look, justice will be served. And because justice will be served, you can leave room for the wrath of God.
It means you never have to take upon yourself the responsibility to vindicate the wrong that was done to you. You know, one of the things I've realized is, some of you will hear this is over the top, but let me just say it like this. I realize that every single wrong that has ever been done to me. Every single wrong that has ever been done to me will be repaid in one of two places. It will either be paid for by Jesus on the cross or it will be repaid by that person in hell.
Therefore, I do not have to take upon myself the responsibility to right any wrong because God is going to take all the vengeance that is necessary. It's either going to suffer, Jesus suffered for it, or the person is going to suffer for it. And the point is, I don't have to take it as my responsibility anymore. That releases me from all that malice and wrath and rage because it's just that I don't need to have it anymore. At Mireslav Wolf, who was a Croatian refugee.
His family was murdered as a part of that situation. When he got here, he was a Christian. When he got here, he said, I was shocked to hear in the United States all these theological liberals say that if you believed in a God of judgment and justice, that you would become a judgmental, violent person. He said, the only kind of people who would make a statement like that are Are theological liberals who'd never actually suffered any injustice? He said, Believe me, when you've actually suffered injustice, like watching your family be murdered, the only way to ever escape the bloodthirsty quest to revenge and to shed blood and to rage against somebody.
He said, the only way is to know that God is the one who gets justice, and so you don't have to. He said, it is because I believe in a God of justice that I develop the capacity to forgive those who had murdered my family. Because I know that God will take care of that. And he says, that frees me from that responsibility, and therefore I don't have to take vengeance because it's not mine. You know, I hear people say sometimes, like, well, you should just forgive and forget in your marriage.
And I understand kind of what they mean, but I mean, let's be honest. When you've really been hurt. You can't forgive and forget, at least you can't forget. I mean, be honest, if somebody has really hurt you, you can't just be like, oh, I don't remember that anymore. It's too painful.
God doesn't forgive and forget. You're like, what? God is, you know what we use the word omniscient? Which means he's all-knowing. There's no day that God looks back on and is like, I cannot remember what happened on that day.
He doesn't forget anything. When we say God forgives and forgets, what we mean is that God chooses not to remember or to hold that against us because Jesus has paid for it on the cross. For you to forgive somebody else, listen, is not that you forget about the wrong altogether, it's that you choose. To not remember or hold that wrong against them because you know that God will take care of it. Has taken care of it on the cross or will take care of it now.
Vengeance is his, so I can put away all that wrath. You see where Paul says back in Ephesians 4: Don't let the sun go down on your wrath, give no opportunity to the devil? You see, when you hold a desire for vengeance, watch this. You are actually opening the door for Satan to enter your heart because you are doing the same thing Satan did that made Satan Satan. You know how Satan became Satan?
And Satan wanted to be God. When you were taking a role of vengeance on yourself, you were wanting to play God and to actually give vengeance. And what that is happening is that is corrupting and destroying you. And many of you are right there. You got bitterness in your heart toward a spouse, toward a fiancé, toward an ex-boyfriend, a girlfriend, an ex-spouse.
And you know, I've heard this before: that holding unforgiveness and bitterness in your heart is like trying to repay another person by drinking poison yourself. You have got to let that go. You have got to say, This is an issue between me and God, and you have got to forgive because vengeance doesn't belong to you. And you have to separate yourself from that, it belongs to him.
So he gives you that first command: put away all malice and wrath and hatred. And in order to do that, you got to know where it comes from. And it comes from two places: one, it comes from idols that you worship that have replaced God. And number two, it comes from your desire to play God and get vengeance. And if you will let God be God in your life on both accounts, then you will find that that stuff just goes away naturally because you've pulled up the roots of malice and anger and hatred and rage.
When you find yourself with hateful and rage-filled feelings, you know an idol has formed in your heart. It's time to destroy it and move on in freedom. You are listening to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian J.D. Greer. So, JD, this month we're giving away your most popular book, and it's popular for a reason, because it helps answer questions so many Christians have about their salvation.
What do you hope readers will take away from your book, Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart? My prayer is that people will finally find that security in Christ and that assurance of heaven that they long for. That God wants you to have. It's like a father wants their children to be assured of his relationship to them. When I go away on a business trip, I never say to my kids, hey, kids, you know, I'm going to come back.
I love you. Or maybe I'm not really your dad at all. Why don't you think about that while I'm gone and let that compel you to become better children? Right. I mean, no dad would say that.
No, no. Because I want my kids to know that whether they're good or bad, whether they succeed or fail. My love for them doesn't change, and God wants us to have that knowledge. The other thing I realize is that all the great acts of obedience in your life, all of them, Arise when you are assured of your salvation.
So that's what I hope this book does, and that's why we offer it. It's a little, honestly, a little bigger, bulkier than most of our things that we do, but we really wanted to make it available to our audience because, I mean, really, this is a way of saying thank you to so many of you who are so generous to us and allow us to do what we do. Summit Life is kept on the radio and online by listeners like you.
So when you're hearing our program, you've got another listener to thank for the message. Give today and remember to ask for your copy of Stop Asking Jesus into Your Heart. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or you can donate and request online at jdgreer.com.
I'm Molly Vitovich. Be sure to listen tomorrow as Pastor JD reminds us to check the smoke detector in our relationships. See you Wednesday here on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
