Ephesians 4 and the Verse About the Sun Going Down

Somewhere in a box of our wedding gifts there's a plaque with verse 26 on it, cut down to five words: never go to bed angry. A teacher in the first marriage class Melissa and I ever sat through called it the most useful sentence Paul wrote for couples, and a room full of newlyweds nodded, me included. I don't buy it anymore. The plaque drops the first half of the verse.

Here's all of it, along with the verse that follows.

Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: Neither give place to the devil.

Ephesians 4:26-27

Paul starts by allowing the anger, and he doesn't say there won't be any or that you ought to be ashamed of it. Anger is permitted so long as it doesn't turn into sin, and then comes the limit on how long it stays. Verse 27 gives the reason, which is room.

Does Ephesians 4:26 really mean settle every argument before bed?

I don't think it does. The verse never mentions the other person. Nobody is told to apologize or to be apologized to, and the instruction is about what you do with your own wrath, whether you keep feeding it. Verse 31 comes at the same thing from the other end when it lists bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour and evil speaking and tells the reader to put them all "away from you, with all malice." Putting a thing away is something you do with your hands, and you can do it at eleven at night while the argument itself is still open on the table.

Some of my arguments with Melissa have been better after eight hours of sleep than after one more hour of talking. A plaque that turns a permission into a curfew has made up a rule, and couples who can't meet it end up feeling they've broken scripture on top of everything else.

What are apostles and prophets for in Ephesians 4:11-13?

Verse 11 lists the offices, apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers, and verse 12 says what they're for in three phrases that each start with the same small word.

For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:

Ephesians 4:12

I stop at the middle phrase, because "the work of the ministry" doesn't say whose work, and a lot of the teaching I grew up with heard it as the officers' work, the people at the front. Verse 16 points the other way, where the body grows "by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part." The joints supply it, so the ministry belongs to the saints generally. Verse 7 begins "unto every one of us," and Paul counts himself among the us, the same way he did in the pronouns I wrote about in Ephesians 1 and the small word that changes the pronoun.

Verse 13 is where I think the argument gets settled, though people seldom let it. The offices run "till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God." Look around any ward or any family dinner and ask whether we all have. Paul gives no other end date for apostles and prophets, so when somebody asks why I'm comfortable with living ones, I point out that the passage supplies a condition and it hasn't been met.

How does speaking the truth in love fit with one body?

Verse 15 is the one people quote when they want a disagreement to sound kind: "speaking the truth in love." Paul is describing how a body grows, and growth in his picture comes from joints that actually work, which means people saying the true thing out loud to each other. Politeness alone doesn't do that.

Paul did it himself when he told Peter to his face that he was wrong, and I went through that at some length in Galatians 2: Paul, Peter and Who Sat Where at Antioch. The unity of the Spirit in verse 3 has a bond of peace around it, and I don't read that peace as the absence of anyone saying anything.

Go back to the start of the chapter for a moment, where a prisoner is the one asking. He wants them to walk worthy, with lowliness and meekness and forbearing one another in love, and verse 3 names the task as "endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Endeavouring is effort language. Paul doesn't say the unity has to be built, only kept. The list that follows in verses 4 through 6 is a list of things already true: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.

I read that as the reason the anger in verse 26 has a time limit at all. If the oneness is the given thing, then a grudge is the thing working against it, and a grudge is also the likeliest thing to be mistaken for principle.

Verses 29 and 30 come back to it from the mouth side. Corrupt communication is to be kept out, and what comes out instead should be good "to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers." Then the sentence about grieving the Holy Spirit lands right between that and the list of bitterness in verse 31, which tells me Paul counted unkind talk as something that costs the Spirit, and not merely the listener.

Put off, be renewed, put on

Verses 22 through 24 hold three commands, and I'd read the order they come in slowly, because it isn't the order I'd have guessed.

That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

Ephesians 4:22-24

The renewing sits in the middle and it's located in the mind, between the off and the on, and I take that placement as deliberate, since a change of clothes without it would have been the easy version and would have changed nothing underneath.

What follows next is almost insultingly small, since Paul has just talked about the stature of the fulness of Christ, and verse 25 is about not lying. Verse 28 is about not stealing, and the thief's sentence goes further than I'd have taken it: "let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth." I'd have stopped at "steal no more." Paul ends the thief up as someone with something to give.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does "one baptism" in Ephesians 4:5 mean the water ordinance?

Some commentaries read it as a picture of being joined to Christ and nothing more, and the picture is surely in there. I wouldn't drop the water, though. This letter was read aloud to people who had been baptized, and I doubt they heard "one baptism" in a list with one Lord and one faith as only a figure of speech.

Does verse 14 mean questions are dangerous?

No, and I've heard it used that way and didn't like it. The children in verse 14 are the ones "tossed to and fro," which is a picture of having nothing underneath you. Asking why isn't that.

Who is the "perfect man" in verse 13?

It's one man, singular, and the "we all" is coming to him together. The grammar says nobody gets there alone, which is no help to those of us who'd rather finish our own cabinet first.

Why does a chapter this big end on lying and stealing?

I think Paul would say it's the same subject. If we're members one of another, as verse 25 puts it, then lying to my neighbor is lying to a part of me.

What I still don't like

Verses 17 through 19 still bother me, where Paul describes the Gentiles as having "the understanding darkened," and says they're "past feeling," and he's writing about the people most of us would call our neighbors. Most of the people I work with don't belong to any church I know of. I know Paul is addressing readers who used to be those Gentiles, and I know verse 20 turns to "ye have not so learned Christ." I still don't like the sentence.

— D.