This Is a Holdup!

...with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing one another in love (Eph 4:2).

During a robbery, criminals steal everything of value they can get their grubby little hands on.  Smash and grab.   Take.  Take!  TAKE!!  But Paul’s describing a completely different kind of holdup here.  This caper is not about taking but giving.  This holdup is to be executed “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing one another in love” (v2).  Humility.  Gentleness.  Patience.  Love.  No taking.  Only giving.  

This is a holdup!

Before we examine the crime scene, let’s back up just a bit.  Paul is teaching us how to walk all over again.  He’s writing to his friends back in Ephesus about what it looks like to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (Eph 4:1).  From his cell in Rome, the apostle has spent the first three chapters letting us know just who Jesus is, what He’s done, who we were before He saved us and who we are in Christ.  To jump right into the commands that begin here in this chapter without the proper perspective would be simply brutal.  To try to obey these orders without Jesus is just legalism.  That’s what folks call salvation by works.  Not only is it exhausting and oppressive, it’s absolutely impossible!!  That’s why Paul’s letters to the churches begin by a glorious portrait of that radical and risen Rabbi from Nazareth.  

Once you and I see Jesus for who He really is, it changes how we see everything.  Ourselves.  Others.  Our place in life.  Our work.  That’s specifically important to Paul because he’s trying to inoculate the Ephesian church against a nasty heresy that’s making the rounds.  A false gospel of self-salvation has done a lot of damage in churches just down the road in Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis.  The apostle knows that once we take a long, deep look at Jesus, we won’t be fooled by counterfeits.

Meanwhile, back at the holdup.  This becomes obvious when we examine the evidence at the scene.  Check out the phrase “bearing one another in love” (v2).  The Greek verb here is anechomai.  While you can translate this to mean to endure, it’s more than that.  To sustain, lift up, hold up under possible difficulty, give patient attention to, endure with self-restraint.  When we live life with other folks, we truly need support from each other.  We can’t do it alone.  We sustain each other.  We lift up each other.  We hold each other up when times are tough.  So it’s a holdup.  But not THAT kind of a holdup.  We don’t take.  We give.

This is a holdup!

Can we be brutally honest?  Good.  Life with other Christians is messy, frustrating and often infuriating.  While you would hope that living around folks who’ve submitted to the leadership of Jesus would be all rose petals and rainbows, it’s far from it.  People still lie.  People still cheat.  People still sin.  And that’s just the way it’s gonna be on this side of eternity.  Jesus has saved me and placed me in a church with a motley crew of knuckleheads, morons, idiots and weirdos.  And they’re thinking the same about me!!!  That’s EXACTLY why we need endure each other.  We need to be patient with each other.  Life is a big steaming pile a lot of the time.  Let’s lift each other up.

Paul makes it clear that this holdup is done “in love” (v2).  That’s the self-giving, self-sacrificing, put-others-first-and-me-last love.  Agape love.  Over in his letter to the church in Colossae, the apostle wraps up a list of the wardrobe each believer must wear.  And there’s one final and important accessory.  “Above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col 3:14).  As love bandits, we don’t take.  We give.

This is a holdup!

So what kind of evidence do we find at the scene?  The first is humility.  The original text uses the word tapeinophrosune.  You don’t find this noun anywhere outside of the New Testament.  Chances are Paul coined the term himself because there was no other word in the Greco-Roman culture that described the kind of humble attitude found among Jesus’ followers.  It’s actually a mashup of two other Greek words: “low” (Gr. tapeino-) “mind” (Gr. -phrosune).  We’re called to lift each other up by lowliness of mind.  This is modesty, having a humble opinion of one’s self, a deep sense of one’s moral littleness, a quality of voluntary submission and unselfishness and a complete lack of arrogance.  I can’t lift someone up when I’m fighting to be on top.  I can only support them when I’m underneath.  

God calls us to humility.  He calls us to a “low mind.”  “In humility (Gr. tapeinophrosune) count others more significant than yourselves” (Phil 2:3).  Humility is an essential part of the ensemble the apostle lists over in Colossians (Col 3:12).  There’s an old country song called “Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble.”  Truer words have never been spoken.  It is VERY hard to be humble.  But Jesus did it (Phil 2:5-8).  And He did it for you and me.  The other important aspect about humility is what happens when we fail to get down off our high horse.  “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (1Pet 5:5).  Anytime God is my enemy, I’m gonna lose every single, stinking time.

The next piece of evidence at the scene is “gentleness” (v2).  This means meekness, mildness, gentle friendliness, strength that accommodates another’s weakness and considerateness.  Let’s be VERY clear about something.  Paul is not telling you to be a wuss.  He’s not commanding you to be a wimp.  He’s not demanding you to be a doormat.  He knows the tremendous power that lives inside of you: the Holy Spirit (Col 3:16).  This very same source of mind-boggling energy who “raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you” (Rom 8:11).  We need to remember to not bulldoze those around us with the power of God that dwells in each one of us.  We must accommodate the weakness of those around us.  Strength under control.  Paul lists this trait in the fruit of Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness (Gr. praotes), self control; against such things there is no law” (Gal 5:22-23).  Notice the combination of gentleness and self-control as next door neighbors.  That’s no coincidence.  Gentleness is strength under control.

The next piece we see at the scene is “patience” (v2).  This is another compound Greek word: makrothumia.  “Far off” (Gr. makro-) “burning anger” (Gr. -thumia).  Think of a long fuse.  A fire in the distant future.  It describes longsuffering, endurance, steadfastness and perseverance.  Numerous times in the Old Testament, folks praise God for long fuse.  “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex 34:6).  We see it again in Num 14:18; Ps 86:15; Jer 15:15.  As God remakes us into the image of His Son, He’s giving us a long fuse too.  

I have to be transparent here.  Too many times, my apparent humility is just a front.  I want to My gentleness is really just passive aggressiveness.  And I have very little patience in most cases.  I quit on people.  I give up on them.  There’s been some improvement.  But it’s been frustratingly slow.  But Jesus has shown me so much humility, so much gentleness, so much patience.  He’s held me up in His divine, self-giving love.  And He’s used His church to do it too.

There’s been a holdup.