Ephesians 4:15 · Passage · Truthfulness
Speaking the Truth in Love
Ephesians 4:15 is the fifth verse of a six-verse paragraph, Ephesians 4:11 to 16, in the second half of Paul's letter.
Ephesians 4:15 is the one verse of the New Testament that joins the verb for speaking truth to the words in love.
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ Himself, who is the head.
- The passage
- Ephesians 4:11 to 16, Ephesians 4:25
- Book
- Ephesians
- Hold in memory
- Ephesians 4:15, Ephesians 4:25
Summary
Ephesians 4:11 to 16 traces the church from Christ's gifts to its full growth. Christ gives teachers to equip His people, so that they become mature and stop being carried about by every new teaching. The growth comes as the members speak the truth to one another in love, and it ends in Christ, the head, from whom the whole body builds itself up. Truth is what is spoken and love is how it is spoken, and the paragraph holds the two together.
- Speaking the truth is Paul's answer to the deceit that keeps believers infants (Ephesians 4:14 to 15).
- The words en agape, in love, stand in both Ephesians 4:15 and Ephesians 4:16.
- Barnes and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown disagree whether Paul's participle names speech or a firm hold on the truth.
- The verb Paul uses for speaking the truth, aletheuo, stands in the New Testament only in Ephesians 4:15 and Galatians 4:16.
Paul's Paragraph on Growing Up
The paragraph follows Paul's call to walk worthy and his words on the one body.
Speaking the Truth in Love studies Ephesians 4:15 within the paragraph of Ephesians 4:11 to 16, where Paul explains how believers come to maturity in Christ. It belongs to the value of truthfulness, because Paul makes truth spoken between believers the means of the church's growth.
The question the study answers is what Paul means by speaking the truth in love, and why he makes it the way the church grows. It follows the paragraph step by step, reads the Greek verb and its two readings, sets out what love adds, and names the cost Paul knew in telling the truth.
Ephesians 4 begins with a call "to walk in a manner worthy of the calling you have received" (Ephesians 4:1). Paul then names "one body and one Spirit" (Ephesians 4:4) and the Christ who "gave gifts to men" (Ephesians 4:8).
The gifts in the church, with the lists of 1 Corinthians 12 to 14, are taught in The Gifts of the Spirit.
The Outline of Ephesians 4:11 to 16
Truth spoken in love is the turning point of the paragraph.
Paul's paragraph climbs from the gifts of Christ to a body that builds itself up in love.
An outline of eight numbered parts in the Berean words, seven through Ephesians 4:11 to 16 and the eighth from Ephesians 4:25.
The Verb Aletheuo
The Greek word behind speaking the truth is aletheuontes, a present active participle.
The Berean's "Instead" (Ephesians 4:15) renders the Greek particle de, which the tagged text glosses "however".
Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?The verse stands here because Paul's question shows the verb used of words spoken at a cost.
The STEP lexicon glosses the verb "to be true (in doctrine and profession)". Albert Barnes noted that the margin of the King James Version reads "being sincere" at Ephesians 4:15.
Truth Spoken in Love
Paul and John set love and truth side by side in other letters.
Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth.The verse stands here because it shows love taking the side of truth, so the two are never set against each other.
Little children, let us love not in word and speech, but in action and truth.The verse stands here because John asks for love shown in action and truth, the deed beside the word.
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown (1871) wrote that truth is "never to be sacrificed" to a false charity, "yet it is to be maintained in charity". Adam Clarke held that the truth "must be preached in love" and called scolding and abuse in matters of religion "truly monstrous".
Love has its own value study.
Voices on Truth and Growth
A teacher of the third century and an English commentator of the eighteenth speak to the passage.
died 220 · Tertullian
Tertullian stands here for the one body of Ephesians 4:16 and the one Lord over its many gifts.
“This, too, I may confidently say: he who has likened the unity of our body throughout its manifold and divers members to the compacting together of the various gifts of the Spirit, shows also that there is but one Lord of the human body and of the Holy Spirit.”
Tertullian · Against Marcion Book V · on Ephesians 4:16Patristic
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Matthew Henry stands here for what Galatians 4:16 asks of those who hear the truth.
Read the page on Matthew Henry
“It is no uncommon thing for men to account those their enemies who are really their best friends; for so, undoubtedly, those are, whether ministers or others, who tell them the truth, and deal freely and faithfully with them in matters relating to their eternal salvation, as the apostle now did with these Christians.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Galatians 4:16Puritan
Speaking or Holding, and Which Truth?
Commentators divide over what the participle means and over which truth Paul has in view.
The first question is whether aletheuontes means speaking the truth or holding it.
Truth said aloudAlbert Barnes
Albert Barnes, in his Notes, Explanatory and Practical (1832 to 1869), rendered the participle literally "truthing in love" and held that the truth is "to be spoken".
His ground is Galatians 4:16, where the same verb names what Paul said to the Galatians.
The objection: Ephesians 4:14 speaks of false teaching, which a true confession answers as much as a true word.
Truth held fastJamieson, Fausset and Brown
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown translated it "holding the truth" and "following the truth", the opposite of error or deceit.
Their ground is the contrast with the winds of teaching in Ephesians 4:14.
The objection: in Galatians 4:16 the verb is plainly Paul's speech, so it can name what is said.
The second question is which truth Paul means, the gospel taught in the church or the truth of everyday speech.
The gospel taughtAdam Clarke
Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible (1832), wrote that "The truth recommended by the apostle is the whole system of Gospel doctrine".
His ground is the faith and knowledge Paul names as the church's goal (Ephesians 4:13).
The objection: the same chapter turns this truth into a rule for all speech between neighbours.
Every word spokenAlbert Barnes
Barnes held that "Christians are to speak the simple truth, and nothing but the truth", against "all trick, and art, and cunning, and fraud, and deception", in his Notes on Ephesians 4:15.
His ground is the plain command of Ephesians 4:25.
The objection: the paragraph's subject is teaching, from the gifts of Ephesians 4:11 to the winds of Ephesians 4:14.
Truth Between Neighbours
Ten verses later Paul gives the same truth as a command for daily speech.
Ephesians 4:25 names the falsehood put off with the noun pseudos and gives a present command, laleite aletheian, speak truth.
The truth that builds the church in Ephesians 4:15 is owed to each neighbour as well.
The putting off of the old self and the putting on of the new in Ephesians 4:22 to 25 is taught in Put Off, Put On.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament, the tagged Greek text (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible TBESG lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, based on Abbott-Smith, Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922)
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832 to 1869), on Ephesians 4:15.
- Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Ephesians 4:15.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Ephesians 4:15.
- Tertullian, Against Marcion, book 5, on Ephesians 4:16.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Galatians 4:16.
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