Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:32
Today’s Scripture
Ephesians 4:25-32
Listen to Today’s Devotion
Today’s Devotion
I used to work with a woman named Madge, who was an amazing cook. “You should taste my pea and ham soup!” she said one day. After replying that I really didn’t like peas, Madge smiled and said, “You will after you try my soup.” The next day she handed me a container of her soup, made especially for me.
“Did you try my soup?” Madge asked me a couple of days later. “I will—soon!” I said, hoping she wouldn’t ask me again. But she did—the next day, and the next. “Don’t leave it too long or it’ll spoil,” she added on the fourth day.
A week later, Madge’s uneaten soup had spoiled, and I threw it away. I felt dread as she approached me. “You did try my soup, didn’t you?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “It was . . . delicious.”
In Ephesians 4, Paul calls us to deal with speech-related sins like angry words (v. 26), unwholesome talk (v. 29), and slander (v. 31). But before these comes a more basic call to “speak truthfully to your neighbor” (v. 25). I had looked at Madge and told her a lie. I knew what I needed to do.
I walked into Madge’s office, confessed my lie, and sheepishly asked for her forgiveness. Madge walked to me and gave me a hug. “Of course I forgive you,” she said. “How could I not, when I know how much God’s forgiven me?”
Reflect & Pray
How many sinful words or actions has God forgiven you for? How can that reminder help you forgive someone today, with the Holy Spirit’s strength?
Forgiving God, please enable me to forgive others.
For further study, read The Risk of Forgiveness.
Today’s Insights
Paul sets up these instructions in Ephesians 4:25-32 by reminding his readers what life was like without Christ: “You must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts” (vv. 17-18). Then he implicitly acknowledges how every believer in Jesus once lived that way: “You must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body” (v. 25). As we shed our old way of living, exchanging it for the new life in Christ, we’ll find it natural—even fulfilling—to “be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (v. 32).
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