The theme of this last part of the chapter is simply “Words are powerful.” Much like in the book of James, which compares words to a fire that consumes, Paul here warns against “corrupting talk.”
Some versions say “unwholesome” “evil speech” or “hateful speech.” The term in Greek is “sapros” which means to be rotten like old foods or rotted like old wood. In the gospels, Jesus uses it to describe bad fruit versus good fruit.
We can look at this concept of words being like rotted timbers and tie it to Paul’s discussion of his words “building up”, and tie that back to the way Paul describes the church as being built up into a holy temple for the Lord.
We as a people need encouragement. We need it because life is hard. We need it because every discouraging word and thought hits with many times the weight of the positive. We need it because we are lonely, sometimes because we really are alone and isolated and sometimes because we are surrounded by people but without real connection. We need it because we are all fighting sin every day.
In Hebrews 3:13, we’re told to encourage one another daily. As we try to walk worthy of the calling, much of that is our responsibility – the discipline of taking off the old and putting on the new. But at the same time, we know it is Christ in us who started the good work of sanctification and will complete it. It’s easy to see sanctification as these two things, but here Paul talks about another key component of sanctification – one another, living in community, living in encouragement. Part of our sanctification comes from one another as we use our powerful words to build each other up.
And when we use those words to do the opposite, Paul tells us it grieves Holy Spirit. This is a call back to Isaiah 63, one of the rare instances of the term Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. “Yet they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he turned and became their enemy and he himself fought against them.”
The Holy Spirit is not a force, but a person. He rejoices and he is grieved, specifically when one person he is in and is regenerating harms another with their words.
Instead, we must allow the Holy Spirit to “put away” the bitterness, wrath and slander that we tend toward, and to instead build within us kindness and compassion. But not only to those we love, those we are in community with, but those who have wronged us. Christians are those who have been forgiven, and have so learned to forgive others.
We are warned, in fact, that God will not forgive us unless we forgive others. So let us commit to building the kind of community that God has already made possible. A community based on trust, generosity, encouragement, and blessing to the glory of God.
This is the community Jesus died and rose again to create. If you want a piece of this community, all that is asked is that you repent and believe.
– Sermon Notes, Bart Hodgson, Seed Church, Lynnwood WA, November 22, 2020