Building up or knocking down? Ephesians 4:29-30

Ever since I saw Building 429 at ALIVE I have been thinking about this verse.  Building 429 takes its name from this verse, and they did a nice job at explaining how they felt that all of their songs should be sung only to build people up!  Then today, I came across a John Piper teaching on Ephesians 4:29.  So that was it...its time to blog about it.

Ephesians 4:29-30

Let no rotten word come out of your mouth, but if something is good for the upbuilding of a need, (let that come out of your mouth) in order that it might give grace to those who hear.

I remember one time as a child that my dad actually washed my mouth out with soap. He took me to the bathroom sink, rubbed the bar of soap around in my mouth and then rinsed it out and made me go to my room. Do you know what I had said? I think I had called my brother "stupid" or something like that.

This may sound like an over reaction based on today's standards, but if you look at scripture then you believe it when Jesus said, "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man" (Mt. 15:11).

I had made myself defiled by calling my brother a name.
"But really!" someone will say, "What's the big deal with calling someone a name? It's not swearing. It's not taking the name of the Lord in vain. It's not a dirty word. Why get so worked up? What's really so bad about it?"

The answer is that when I call someone a name, or when we speak poorly about anyone else, it is being...well, mean. There is no good will and no kindness in it. It is ugly. There is no holiness, no love. To use Paul's phrase in Ephesians 4:29, it is a "rotten word." It comes from pride and one-upmanship and anger and resentment -- and it is all very sinful. That's why you need to watch it, lest you become accustomed to your sin and stop noticing it.

For me, this lesson taught me the truth of Ephesians 4:22-24: You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.


In the end the battle for purity in the mouth is fought in the heart, because "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." If you don't like what comes out of your mouth, listen carefully, because the apostle Paul says you need to watch your mouth from the inside out.

Let's look at verse 29. Paul uses the phrase "rotten word." The RSV translates it, "Let no evil talk come out of your mouths." The NIV and NASB use the word "unwholesome." And the KJV says, "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth." What is this idea behind the words, "evil," "unwholesome," and "corrupt"?

The Greek word (sapros) is used in only one other context in the NT, namely, the places in Matthew and Luke where Jesus says, "It is not the good tree that bears bad fruit "(Lk. 6:43; Mt. 7:17f; Mt. 12:33). The term for "bad" fruit here is the same word for evil or unwholesome or corrupt in Ephesians 4:29 -- "Let no evil talk come out of your mouth!" The image in Paul's mind is probably one of rottenness and decay, something that is spoiled.

This kind of rotten language must be taken off like old clothes. It is part of the old self of verse 22 that needs to be stripped away when a person becomes a Christian. Now what sort of talk does Paul have in mind when he says, "Let no rotten talk come out of your mouth"? John Piper gives us four types of rotten words that Jesus is referring to:

• "First would be language that takes the name of the Lord in vain. It is a great contradiction of who we are as Christians if we say, "God!" or "My God!" or "God Almighty!" or "Christ!" or "Jesus!" just because we are mad or surprised or amazed. No one with a good marriage would stomp on his wedding ring to express anger. It stands for something precious and pure. And so does the name of God and Jesus Christ.

• The second kind of language that Paul would call rotten would be language that trivializes terrible realities -- like hell and damnation and holiness. What's wrong with saying, "What the hell!" or "Hell, no" or "Go to hell!" or "Damn it!" or "Damn right!" or "Holy cow!" or "Holy mackeral!"? Among other things these expressions trivialize things of terrible seriousness. It's simply a contradiction to believe in the horrible reality of hell and use the word like a punctuation mark for emphasis when talking about sports or politics. The same is true of damnation. And if the divine command, "Be holy as I am holy," carries for you the same weight it carried for Moses and Jesus and the apostles, you will simply find that "Holy cow" or holy anything will stick in your throat because it treats something infinitely precious as a trifle.

• The third kind of language I think Paul would include in his command not to let any rotten talk come out of your mouth is vulgar references to sex and the human body. With this kind of language people take good things that God has made, and use them like mud to smear on whatever they get upset about. The whole assumption behind the use of vulgar four-letter words is that they communicate scorn or disdain or hate. How does this happen? How, for example, does the act of sexual relations, created by God as good to be fulfilled in marriage -- how does it get translated into a four letter word and carry the meaning of hate and scorn? The answer is easy: first you get God out of your mind. That's fundamental to all vulgarity. Then you get the sanctity of his creation out of your mind. And then, in your mind, you replace the tenderness of married love with the force of rape, and you've got yourself four letter word which does verbally the same thing that rape does physically: it expresses selfish, uncaring abusiveness. (Which, incidentally, is why I would say to Christian women, don't spend two minutes with a man who uses this kind of language: rape and rotten language come from exactly the same root.)

• The final kind of language I think Paul would call rotten is mean-spirited language -- like, "Shut up!" The words themselves are untarnished. But the usage is vicious and loveless.

Those are the four kinds of language, I think Paul would include in "rotten talk". Now let's step back and ask what Paul might mean by calling language evil or corrupt or unwholesome or rotten. If we think of spoiled or rotten fruit, like Jesus did, four implications come to mind.

• First, rotten fruit does not nourish. Neither does rotten language. It does not strengthen or improve or help. It is not useful for food. It is good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.
• Second, rotten fruit will probably make you sick if you do try to eat it. And rotten language can make people sick, too. In other words, it not only fails to give positive nourishment, it can cause negative harm. Words can wound a person very deeply. Words can be like the virus that transmits the disease of meanness or vulgarity from parent to child or roommate to roommate or colleague to colleague. Rotten language makes people sick if they are forced to eat it.
• Third, rotten fruit smells bad and makes the atmosphere unpleasant. I recall a couple of men in graduate school in Germany who seemed to carry the aroma of vulgarity about them. All they ever seemed to laugh at was sexual innuendo. The pitiful thing about it was that the nearer they got to the gutter the more they laughed. With their mouths they created an atmosphere like a stinking locker room. It was unpleasant for everybody but themselves. And it made noble and high and worthy thoughts all but impossible. It's hard to savor beauty from a garbage dump. Can you stand in an "adult" bookstore and look through the window (if there were a window) and be moved by the beauty of a setting sun?
• The fourth implication that comes to mind when we think of rotten fruit and rotten language is that it probably comes from a diseased tree. If the fruit is rotten as soon as it appears on the branch (as soon as the words come out of the mouth) then the tree is bad.

Jesus said, "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment men will render account for every careless word they utter; for by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned" (Mt. 12:34-37).

So if a person takes the name of God in vain, or trivializes the realities of hell and holiness, or turns sexuality into vulgarity, or makes words into weapons of one-up-manship and meanness, then we can say for sure, "There is a rottenness inside the tree as well as outside." If the fruit is bad the root is bad. "

The question for your mouth will not merely be the moral question: Am I avoiding dirty words? But the Christian question: Am I building the faith of others by what I say? Is my mouth a means of grace? Am I frightened and anxious and angry about my life, or am I filled and overflowing with hope that the Spirit of God will keep me safe for the day of redemption?