C.S. Lewis wrote, “There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan.” Satan is always seeking to counteract the work of God in the lives of believers and the Church as a whole Body. Just as God has a desire for you to walk worthy of your salvation in Christ, so too, the Devil would have you walk unworthily. Just as God would use you to build up the Church through maturity and unity, Satan would have you break the Church down through immaturity and disunity. The Church and every believer that makes up the Body of Christ belongs to Him. We no longer have the world, the flesh, or the Devil as a master of our lives. Satan still tries to claim believers as his own, but he cannot. We must understand that every inch of ground the Devil seems to have in our life, family, church, community etc. is given to him as we yield to the flesh and not the work of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Satan is seeking to do a counterfeit work in the life of the church. God uses us to build the church, and the Devil seeks to use Christians to fulfill his dirty work amongst God’s people. Martin Luther noted, “For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel.” God builds the Body of Christ through our walk in Christ. Specifically, God works through us as we walk worthy of our wealth in Christ. Our walk is built on our belonging to Christ and leads to behavior that will match. The relationship that we have with Christ and one another has real expectations. We are to walk worthy of our wealth in Christ in faithful obedience. God’s grace enables us to obey His expectations through faith in Christ. God’s desire for us is that our walk would be consistent. Inconsistency in the Chrisitan life is perhaps one of the greatest hinderances to a believer and local Church. The life that we now live is new and is to be consistent with our new position in Christ. Furthermore, it is not only to be consistent with who we have now become in Christ, but it is to completely contrast who we once were. A worthy walk is simply growing in Christlikeness in our life. As we grow in Christlikeness, we grow in maturity and unity that builds the Body of Christ and glorifies God.
Ephesians 4 has given us the practical expectations of our eternal position of being in Christ. We have experienced transformation and now must be continuously transformed into the image of Christ through putting off the old man and the putting on of the new. This is where our wealth becomes our walk. Being in Christ has totally and radically changed us. We aren’t who we were and now are becoming who we became. Ephesians 4 has shown that we are to have our theology, thoughts, temper, and tongue rooted in Christ. All that we are, think, say, and do flows from our relationship to Him. Paul closes the chapter out by giving us the steps of a worthy walk. We have already seen how the chapter builds on itself. We need proper theology to have a proper thought life. We need both to tame our tempers and tongues that he now addresses in today’s passage. Eph. 4:25-32 says,
“25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:27 Neither give place to the devil.28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.30 And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.”
The steps of a worthy walk are going to have two key aspects to be able to faithfully walk worthy in obedience to Christ. The two keys in this passage are the words “give” and “grieve.” We are either giving ourselves over to the Devil’s desires through the putting on of the old man and fulfilling the lust of the flesh, eyes, and pride of life. Or we are giving ourselves over to the work and will of God by yielding to His Spirit and putting on of the new man by faith. We are either grieving (to afflict with sorrow and distress) the Holy Spirit by giving ourselves over to our old man or we will be grieving the Devil by walking worthy of our salvation by putting on the new man. Right now, we are either hurting or helping ourselves and the church. For us to take the steps of a worthy walk, we must see how not to walk worthy and how to walk worthy in this passage.
To better understand how to walk worthy of our wealth in Christ I believe we need to see how not to walk. For some reason many Christians have a hard time doing the basics of Christianity. We have all the theoretical knowledge of what we should do but we don’t have the practical obedience of being what we should be. Often, we make the Christian life solely about outward behavior or performance. In doing this, we strip the motivation of our belonging to Christ and replace with the motivation of trying to feel good about ourselves. Yes, behavior matters. But all the right outward behavior without the motivation of our inward belonging to Christ will not lead to a worthy walk. A worthy walk is from the inside out. There are three steps that will keep us from a worthy walk. As we go through them, ask yourself, “Does this describe my thoughts, temper, or tongue?” If so, yield to the Lord’s correction and be renewed through repentance and faith from the inside out.
Step one of not walking worthy is to help the Devil. By helping the Devil in his work of darkness we are going against the work of God for us, in us, and through us. By helping out the cause of Satan we give him more ground to do his evil work in our life and the life of our family, church, and community. Eph. 4:25-29 gives us a few ways that we can help the Devil’s work. The verses say, “25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.26 Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:27 Neither give place to the devil.28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.29 Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” Eph. 4:27 says that we can give him a place or an opportunity to work. How do we do this? Well, the verses make this clear as well. When we don’t tame our temper, tongues, and go about thieving then we help him gain ground in our life, church, and community. Any ground that the Devil has in your mind or life is his because you gave it over to him. What do we know about the Devil? What we know is that all these things that Paul tells believers to put away from their life all characterize Satan himself. We are to put away lying and we know that the Devil is the father of lies (John 8:44). Satan has been a liar from the beginning (Gen. 3). It is his nature to lie. He only tells partial truths mixed with falsehood as seen in his twisting of scripture in Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13). Dishonesty is the work of the Devil. We are most like the Devil when we tell lies (including exaggeration, deceit, gossip). We help the Devil when we believe lies and promote lies. That’s always been his mission is to cause destruction through dishonesty. The Devil is not just a liar but he’s an angry liar and thief. He is filled with malice and hatred toward God and all those who are in Christ. He is our adversary, slanderer, accuser, and tempter. When we let anger dwell in us it gives the Devil a place to do some of his most vile work. An angry spirit is never one that is walking worthy. Being controlled by anger accomplishes the Devil’s work for him. His desire for you and me is to become as bitter as he is. We help the Devil when we do his work of being dishonest, angry, and thieving in our walk. When we walk according to Satan’s characteristics, we are walking contrary to who we are in Christ. It doesn’t fit us or our wealth in Christ. Corrupt communication only corrodes our walk. Living with a fierce temper and filthy tongue helps the Devil get a foothold in your walk, home, church, and community. Don’t help the Devil do his dirty work.
Step two of not walking worthy of our wealth in Christ is to hinder the Holy Spirit. Eph. 4:30-31 says, 30 “And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:” When we give place to the Devil to do his wicked work through our untamed tempers, tongues, and thieving hearts we grieve the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Triune Godhead. He is not merely a force or power, He is a person. He is God. What we know from scripture is that he can be resisted through unbelief (Acts. 7:51), quenched (1 Thess. 5:19), and grieved as seen in this passage. To grieve means to give severe emotional distress and sorrow. When we refuse to yield to the work of the indwelling Spirit of God within us who works through the Word of God, then we are hindering what God would desire to do in us and through us. He sealed the believer to sanctify, strengthen, and sustain the believer. We hinder his work to do those things in our life by giving place to the Devil and walking unworthily of our salvation. When we refuse His renewing work in our life, we hinder the growth of maturity and unity that He wishes to bring about through our daily walk in Christ. We hinder the Spirit’s work in our life by living with “bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil speaking and all malice.” When our tempers and tongues remain devilish, we grieve the Spirit and stunt the growth that He desires to bring about in our life. Our life is to be characterized by “. . . righteousness and true holiness..” (Eph. 4:24) which is a work of the Spirit of God in the life of the believer. When we help the Devil, we hinder the Spirit. When we hinder the Spirit’s work in our life, then we also help the Devil’s work in our life.
Step three to not walking worthy of our wealth in Christ is to hurt the church. When we help the Devil, we hurt ourselves and our local Church. Everything in your life is either helping or hurting the local Body of Christ (both your attitude and actions). When we hinder the Spirit’s work in our life, we also hinder his work in the church. Nothing is more harmful to the Church than giving a place to the Devil and grieving the Spirit of God through our wicked tempers and tongues. When we refuse to grow in maturity in our walk then we hurt the unity of the church. Two of the biggest actions that hurt the church are undealt with tempers and tongues. When there is bitterness, unforgiveness, gossip, and slander in the church body there will be discouragement, division, and destruction. If we currently are not helping the church, then we aren’t walking worthy. You can have all the personal devotions in the world in your private time, but if you are hurting the church with your temper or tongue then your walk is not worthy of your wealth in Christ. It doesn’t match. Eph. 4:32 shows us that we hurt the church the most through unkindness and unforgiveness. By hurting the church, we hinder the Spirit’s work in the Church and we help the Devil’s mission to distract, discourage, and divide us up so that we would be of no use for the kingdom of God.
If you are saved and follow these three steps, then I promise you that your walk will not match who you are in Christ. You miss out on the work of God in your life. You will be unsettled. You will struggle. You will be used in the work of darkness. You will be useful but for the Devil’s desires. You will lose the power in your testimony, and you will become calloused to the word, work, and will of God in your life. How does all that sound? I figured it didn’t sound too good. However, there is a real issue in the Church today because many Christians and Churches are walking unworthily of their wealth in Christ because they refuse to deal with their tempers and tongues. If we can get a hold of obeying Eph. 4:1-3 then all the issues of maturity and unity in the rest of Eph. 4 will naturally flow from a consistent walk of faith in Christ.
Grow with me as we study the believer’s wealth and walk in Christ.
Grow deeper.
Grow higher.
Grow wider.
Grow With Pastor Joe 
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