Fighting, Jesus Style

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer.

For you to forgive somebody else, listen, it's 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 in hell. Vengeance is His so I can put away all that wrath. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovich. And we're so glad that you joined us today.

You know what? I love weddings. Young couples plan their weddings with so much excitement, anticipating the living happily ever after, just like the fairy tales promise. But to be a good couple doesn't actually mean that you never fight with your spouse. Good couples have learned to fight fairly and with a God honoring end goal in mind. Today we're learning how to resolve conflict. Not just in marriage, but in all of our relationships. This is an issue that touches the life of everyone 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 J.D.

Greer.com. But right now let's join Pastor J.D. in a message he titled Fighting Jesus Style. We're going to talk about 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 tell 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 he's been getting the point of these messages, which brings me to the subject of this week's message, conflict, resolution, and forgiveness.

This is what we're going to be talking about. Conflict happens in all of our relationships, but especially in marriage. I'll tell you 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 saccharine 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's 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.

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. 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 that 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, 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've got to 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 I'm telling you it's 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've got your iPads, 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 are in marriage, it's all the same. I'm going to give you three commands or highlight three commands in Ephesians 4 about how to fight. You've 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, it's how Jesus fights and how you can fight like him.

And I'm going to end by giving you some really practical steps for ways to put this into practice. Ephesians 4 verse 25, this is such a great passage, I'm telling you, it really is. David Palleson, one of my favorite Christian counselors, says that in a pinch you can do all of your counseling out of the book of Ephesians. And one of the reasons is because of passages like this one. 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? He'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.

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. All right, now what are those things? 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 hurt you with golf cleats, you are safely within the realm of those things that he listed out there. Where do those things come from? I want to explore this for a minute, the source of these things, because 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've 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 those things 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. We'll be right back with the rest of our teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to quickly share a little bit about our new resource this month. If there's one thing we all need help with, it's not just forming healthy relationships, but actually building more deeply into those relationships. To get started, we've created a book of devotionals for anyone who feels distracted and even disconnected from the people in their lives at times. And in addition, we've got a set of 20 conversation cards to help kickstart faith-based conversations in your home. There's nothing greater than experiencing deep community with those we love. And what better way than to talk about the things that matter, not only to us, but to God. Give us a call at 866-335-5220 or go online to jdgrier.com and reserve your copy today. Now let's return for the conclusion of today's message.

Here's Pastor JD. So where do they come from? How do we get to the root of it?

I'm going to give you two reasons. I'm going to 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 4.

This is so important. James 4. James literally asks the question, What causes quarrels and fights and malice and wrath and anger and clamor and slander? What causes that among you? 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 are 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, 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 have this series of things, and when you are not giving them to me, then I want to murder you.

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, better than his wrath, anger and glamour. But the problem, James says, listen to this, it's 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.

You can ask anybody that knows me. I just have a real problem with that. So when my wife, you know, this may or may not have happened this week, I can neither confirm nor deny, 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 could trace the trail of the smoke back down to the fire at the altar that you're worshiping at.

They're like overreaction alarms. 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? 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 ask 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 am 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 haven'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, don't 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 realized 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 gonna suffer, Jesus suffered for it, or the person's gonna 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, I don't need to have it anymore. Miroslav Volf, 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, 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 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, well, you should just forgive and forget 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, right? I mean, be honest.

If somebody has really hurt you, you can't just be like, I don't remember that anymore. It's too painful. Here's what I say. Don't throw rocks at me.

Let me finish this. God doesn't forgive and forget. You're like, what? God is, you know, we use the word omniscient, which means he's all-knowing. There's no day that God looks back on and is like, oh, God, 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, it's 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 in hell. 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?

Satan wanted to be God. When you were taking a role of vengeance on yourself, you were wanting to play God and 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 fiance, toward an ex-boyfriend, a girlfriend, an ex-spouse. And 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're listening to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian J.D. Greer. Our current resource this month is a set of conversation cards and a study called Devotions for the Distracted Family. J.D., I know you have a specific aim in mind when we pull together helpful resources like this. So what do you hope listeners will take away from this study?

We grow best in our faith in community. Whatever that community is, your family, your small group, friends who are like family, and of course your local church, our goal is to keep you and those you're closest with talking and communicating in that group about important things like faith, relationships, and even rest. We've created a book for anybody who feels distracted or disconnected at times. We've given you a tool in these conversation cards that will help kickstart conversations, ask meaningful questions that will take your conversations places they may not otherwise go.

I think you'll find these really, really helpful. We would love to be able to give these resources to you as you participate in the ministry that God has given us here. Give today and remember to ask for your copy of Devotions for the Distracted Family and the set of conversation cards.

Call 866-335-5220, or you can donate and request the pair online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch and I'm so glad you joined us. Be sure to listen tomorrow as Pastor JD reminds us to check the smoke detector in our relationships, a metaphor we can all use right away. We'll see you Wednesday here on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.