Duty and Joy

Text: Ephesians 4:25–5:2

As we begin the prayer of great thanksgiving every Sunday, we recite a portion called the preface. The preface varies with the season, but it always starts with our proclaiming that it is our duty and our joy to praise and thank God. This phrase, “our duty and our joy,” was a new addition, added in 2006 when the current hymnal was published. Before that, we said “it is salutary,” a word that means “of some benefit,” which was less specific and also less edgy.

It was a good update. Duty and joy are semi-old-fashioned words that together are the heart of Christian action. Their interplay is a constant theme of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and especially the passage we just heard. The words belong together. Without the other, each becomes flat and weak. Duty without joy becomes mere obligation. Joy without duty becomes mere sentimentality.

This letter, probably not written by Paul—but let’s call him Paul anyway—this letter does what Paul’s other letters often do: tells people how to behave. These letters to the churches reveal problems when they propose solutions. There is no point in telling people to change their ways if their way is just fine.

What is the problem in Ephesus? Imagine a world in which people remain angry with one another all the time and criticize each other. Where they speak evil of others. A world in which people are bitter, and quarrel with and slander others. It is not hard to imagine such a world because this is the world we live in now. We are, sadly, not surprised. This is how things work. We are old hands at letting the devil in, as Paul describes it.

But this is neither how things should be nor the way they have to be. For Christians, Paul writes, there is an alternative way to live. And the letter to the Ephesians is like a user guide to that life, written to people who claim to follow Jesus. The Christian identity of the readers brackets these verses, explaining at the first why we should behave the way Paul says and explaining at the end how we can go about doing that.

For starters, we are all members of one another. We are part of one body, the body of Christ as Paul put it a few verses back. We are all members of one organic system, working together, in different parts. The parts must tell the truth to each other. If we are one body, we cannot by definition do otherwise. If we do otherwise, we are not one body. Falsehood breaks the connections between people, and nothing works as it should.

This is making room for the devil: To consider ourselves to be unconnected, or not importantly connected, to other people. To mock relationships that center on love and to glamorize relationships that honor competitive and warring enemies. To see ourselves as independent, not interdependent. Otherwise, like a physical body, humanity will be weak and ill.

Once we become followers of Jesus, we are part of a new way of being, Paul says. A better way. We are no longer alone. We cannot act as if we were alone. Our decisions are not made by us alone, and we do not make decisions for ourselves alone. What we do is affected by and affects others. Do not steal, Paul writes, not because stealing is wrong in the abstract, but because otherwise one could be providing for others in need. Do not speak evil, because otherwise one could be giving grace to others. It is an opportunity thrown away.

The instructions in these verses are not achievements to be accomplished. Nor are they simply marks or identifiers of a Christian life. They are duties to be performed. They are things we must do, and we must do them because we follow Jesus.

We are to heed Paul’s instructions because it is our duty. This is not a question of merit (we are not better persons because of it), and it is not a question of salvation (God will not love us more or less). But just because we are saved by grace, or just because we know that we are loved unconditionally, does not mean that we are off the hook and should not judge ourselves. We should.

But we need to distinguish between judging and evaluating. It is clear, as someone pointed out in Bible study a few weeks ago, that God judges us. But judgment is not the same as an evaluation. God’s evaluation, we teach, is always positive. That does not mean God likes all the things we do. God seems to have goals for us—that are made clear in scripture passages like this or through the prophets or in the life and teachings of Jesus—but those goals are not the same as expectations. God is not disappointed in God’s children, whether or not we meet the goals.

The list of instructions in this passage is founded on three principles. First, that we tell the truth to one another. Second, that we rely on one another. And third, that we try to imitate God as revealed to us in Jesus. The instructions do not work if we ignore any one of these things.

We will not succeed if we lie to each other (or to ourselves, I imagine). Or, as a corollary, if we lie about each other (bearing false witness). We will not succeed if we try to live a good life without the help of others. And we will not succeed if we try to do this without God’s help and guidance.

Paul is not asking for superhuman efforts or results. He is not promising that we can transform the world all at once. This is not a miracle cure. He is not demanding purity, but an intentional effort to put aside, as he says, what is usually so compelling to us. No one claims that it is easy to put away bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and all malice. Or to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, and forgiving. But it is our duty to, nonetheless. Paul is asking the Ephesians—that is, us—to remember that they have become new people. And that in calling ourselves Christians we have made a commitment to being new people who are trying to live a new way for the sake of a new world.

Practically, we are likely to act the same old way and for the same old reasons. But Paul’s manual says that—even so—when we make decisions, when we act, when we speak, we must be mindful of the instructions that we have heard. And we must ask ourselves: am I speaking, acting, deciding for good or evil, for life or death, out of malice or out of forgiveness. What am I thinking about?

When we become followers of Jesus, we adopt the view that a different way of living is possible. The conviction that this is so is the joy that blossoms out of this passage. Bitterness and malice do not have to be the way of things. We have signed up to be part of that project. It is our duty and our joy.