Sunday message · What Difference Does God series
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Message Summary
In this second message in the series on what difference God makes, Pastor Phillip Santillan continues through Ephesians 4, looking at verses 25–32. His premise is that Paul’s instructions are not optional extras for people who follow Jesus. They are a standard we can hold our everyday decisions up against to see whether God is actually making a difference in our lives. He focuses on two differences Paul describes.
The first is that God shows us how to be people of truth. Before reading verse 25, Phil reminds listeners what Scripture means by truth: Jesus calls himself the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth (John 16:13), God’s word is truth (John 17:17), and the gospel is the word of truth (Ephesians 1:13–14). So the passage is less about avoiding lies than about becoming truthful people. Paul’s reason is striking: we speak the truth with our neighbor “for we are members of one another.” Honesty grows out of belonging to the body of Christ, not merely out of a desire to be moral. Children of God belong to a family, and that family should be marked by a refreshing openness.
Phil says that openness grows best beyond Sunday gatherings, in the church’s missional communities. He shares that during a recent hard season in his own marriage, admitting the struggle to a small group of men and letting them pray for him and speak gospel truth into his life was deeply encouraging. That, he says, is the difference God makes.
The second difference is that God shows us how to reframe our emotions, especially anger. Paul wrote from prison with every reason to be angry, yet he says, “Be angry and do not sin.” Anger, Phil explains, says “you owe me”: a reputation, a childhood, love, respect. Many scholars read Paul’s words as a concession rather than a command: if you are angry, do not let it drive your behavior. “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” is not a midnight deadline but a principle to get rid of anger as quickly as possible. Unresolved anger gives the devil an opportunity, the Greek word topos, a marked-off place in our hearts, and it spills into new seasons and relationships that cannot close an account they never opened.
Paul’s remedy has no shortcut: put away bitterness and wrath, be kind and tenderhearted, and forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. Phil stresses that forgiveness is not an emotion but a decision to close the account on what someone owes us, and that it frees the one who was hurt more than the one who did the hurting. The motivation never comes from the person who hurt us. It comes from remembering how Jesus canceled our own debt on the cross (Matthew 6:14–15).
He closes by admitting that living this way, open in community and quick to forgive, is not popular, normal or easy. But with God all things are possible, and this is the difference God makes.