What Does Gentleness Or Meekness Mean In The Bible?

Introduction

How would you define gentleness? What would be some synonyms of gentleness? How about some antonyms?

Those are some of the same things I thought. In Galatians 5, where the fruit of the Spirit is listed, gentleness is translated from a greek word that is the same word we translate meekness.

Now many of us may think of gentleness or meekness as being weak and that’s not quite the truth. In truth, gentleness does not mean you are weak, but in fact you are strong, but choose to display it to others in a calm, controlled way.

Meekness is power under control.

Warren W. Wiersbe

I love this definition. I believe this is exactly right. Uncontrolled power comes out as abuse or rage. Controlled power is meekness or gentleness. I have the power to hurt you, but I will not use it, instead I will be kind to you. I will address you in an even-tempered way.

This is how we define gentleness in the Bible and this is a fruit that the Holy Spirit produces in you as you yield to him in your daily life.

Welcome to Cornerstone Church where we are continuing a series called A Fruitful Marriage where we are looking at marriage through the lens of the fruits of the Holy Spirit and today we are looking at the fruit of gentleness.

Let’s open our passage for today.

Ephesians 5:22–27 (ESV)

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

Ephesians 5:28–33 (ESV)

In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Today we are continuing with our text in Ephesians and with the idea of gentleness in mind I want to focus on verse 26 today. The command is for husbands to love their lives in the same way that Christ loves the church and offers himself as a sacrifice for the church.

Behind Christ’s sacrifice, there is a motive, he’s doing it with a purpose. What is the purpose of his love? So that he might sanctify or make holy a bride. That’s the purpose. We see this as a purpose found in marriage as well.

The husband and wife love each other in such a way, a gospel-reflecting manner, that they are sanctified or they are made more like Jesus through their marriage. That’s one of the purposes in marriage, is that we are made more like Jesus through a lifetime of marriage. Specifically we are taught how to love deeply, truly and intimately via marriage and those are things that God wants for us.

Now, the last part of this verse is where I want to focus. It says that we are sanctified, having been cleansed by Jesus by the washing of water with the word. Now, you might read that and be a bit confused on the meaning, so let me help you with that by quoting the Apostle John.

John 15:3 ESV

Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.

Let’s look at this idea for a moment. Paul says we are cleansed by the washing of water with the word. In other words, the church is given a “word-bath” by Jesus. He washes us by speaking words over us that cleans us.

This matches with what Jesus says to the disciples in the upper room. He says you are clean because the word that He had spoken to them. He actually declares them clean in John 13:11, but not all of them (obviously referring to Judas).

Big picture for a moment - We are born in an unclean world, with people of unclean lips, we ourselves are unclean. This is old information, going back to the beginning of the Old Testament. The Book of Leviticus highlights different reasons why we are unclean and the process for becoming clean, which was cumbersome in a lot of ways, at least to our modern minds.

When we say unclean, there is an obvious connection to sin, but not everything highlighted in Leviticus is sinful, it’s just unclean, so this isn’t a synonym for sinful. You could be unclean from touching something unclean like a dead animal for instance. You weren’t necessarily in sin, you were just unclean.

Today though, we might say we are unclean in a spiritual manner because we are dealing with guilt and shame from our former life. We might say we feel unclean because we were in the vicinity of someone doing something sinful. In marriage, there may be feelings of uncleanness because of our past or because of some careless things done or said, not always sinful, but just careless.

Years ago, while Autumn and I were dating, we engaged in premarital relations. And while we confessed that and Jesus obviously forgives that, it’s not the unpardonable sin, once we were married, we still felt unclean in a lot of ways. We were forgiven, but still dealing with shame and hurt from our decisions. So this spiritual feeling of being unclean is still alive today. it’s not something that was just an Old Testament idea.

I’m sure many of you can relate in a lot of different ways, so let’s move on to this idea of how to deal with our uncleanness. How to do we become clean? Paul tells us. He says it’s through the word. Jesus washes us clean with his words. He says cleansing things over us and those words penetrate our hearts and we believe them and the truth of what He says and it changes us. Simply put, Jesus says you are clean, you believe Him and it makes you clean.

At this point, you might be thinking, Pastor, I thought we were talking about gentleness today. And you would be right. Gentleness is power under control. What’s the most powerful tool that you have? It’s your words.

Proverbs 18:21 ESV

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.

Your words have power! They are powerful. You can bring death or your can bring life and it’s all done with your tongue! So when we talk about power under control, think about the tongue.

The Apostle James says, this guy is a small member, but it can set a forest on fire! Who can control it? And as I started to looking into the word gentleness in the Bible, here’s what I found: In a lot of places, when this word gentleness is used, it’s in the context of speech. It’s talking about being gentle with our words! Here’s some examples -

Proverbs 15:4 ESV

A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.

2 Timothy 2:24–25 ESV

And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth,

1 Peter 3:15–16 ESV

but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

And there are many more! One of the ideas here is that our gentle words can actually affect our relationships. What we say and how we say it, matters! This matters in every relationship, but it may be most important in our marriages and sadly, I see a lot of couples who could have great marriages really struggle because of their tongues. I’ve also seen couples in bad relationships with a lot of it due to how they communicated with one another. My main point - our speech, our communication with our spouse should be gentle.

So with all of this in mind, I want to give you…

Three Essential Elements of Gentleness In Our Speech

A few weeks ago I asked you what the secret to a good marriage was, and someone said “communication”. That’s certainly a big deal when it comes to marriage.

When it comes to marriage, I believe the way we talk to our spouse and the words that we use matter! So what I’m going to give you today are three essential elements of gentleness that needs to mark your speech, your conversations with your spouse.

Your Words Should Be Edifying

When we say edifying, that means the words you use should build up your spouse. They should be words that build up something in them. God gave us a spouse to build us into the image of Christ, so our words should be words that edify.

This is incredibly important, because as the proverb says, life and death are in the power of the tongue and I look at this as speaking life. We are speaking life over areas that Jesus wants to encourage in our spouse.

Ephesians 4:29 NIV

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.

Now typically this will likely be in areas of struggle. In other words, the dead or dying parts of your spouse need the most encouragement and upbuilding. If your spouse is ridiculously beautiful, like my wife, then you she may need to only hear me say that once a day, but if your wife struggles to feel beautiful, you may want to say it more often.

One reason this whole concept is important is because if you think about why people have affairs, it typically isn’t just an animalistic desire for sex. It starts with a person who listens and responds differently than your spouse. He or she tells you things that your spouse refuses to say about you. It may be things that you are desperate to hear. He tells you that you are beautiful and your spouse hasn’t said it in years. She tells you that you are a good dad, even if your spouse has never uttered those words.

Words are powerful.

Your Words Should Be Nourishing

In our passage today, it says in verse 29 that no one hates his own bodies, but they nourish it and cherish it. This is a picture of gentleness, especially when you look at the original greek words.

The word nourish in the greek language (ektrepho) is an interesting word, it was a term for breastfeeding, to nourish is like that. It’s a word that gives you a connotation of gentleness. You picture a mother with a young baby how she holds it and feeds it. This is what that word is drawing a picture of.

It literally means “to bring up” and in bring up a child, it’s the same word in Ephesians 6:4, where it says bring up children in the discpline and instruction of the Lord. Same word, nourish or bring them up. What makes this part of the passage so fascinating to me is that it’s written directly to husbands. Verse 28, In the same way (the ways Jesus loves the church by washing her with the word), husbands love your wives as your own body.

Does this mean that women shouldn’t be nourishing? Absolutely not, but I do think men struggle with this more than women. But women take note, when it comes to being gentle and loving, I believe we all struggle with speaking nourishing words in our families.

So nourishing words are words that bring us up and feed us. They raise us and give us them things that we need, just like food does. This idea is not just for spouses, but a calling for all of us to give out nourishment to others.

God will make us broken bread and poured out wine to feed and nourish others.

Oswald Chambers

So what does a nourishing word look like? Great question. If the first point today was that edifying words build up, nourishing words feed. And I’m going to say it like this, your words to your spouse should feed their heart and souls.

Practically that means we speak things that they need to hear. It’s food for them. It’s something they can draw strength from. Let me give you an example. When I speak to Autumn in a nourishing way, it gives her strength for her day. So let’s say she is getting ready for a big day at work or homeschooling or whatever. A word that might feed her, and it may look different for your spouse, but a word that might feed her is something along the lines of “You’ve got this. You are the best dental hygienist around. You really strive to do quality work and that company is lucky to have you.” Or, “you are the best teacher our children could have. You love them and want what’s best for them. You are amazing at this.”

These are words that feed her soul. As she goes throughout the day, she will grab these words and hold on to them. She will recall them later when doubts enter her head and things get hard. Nourishing words feed us.

By the way, she does the same for me. I probably wouldn’t still be a pastor today if she hadn’t spoke nourishing words to me along the way. She does this very well.

Your Words Should Be Cherishing

Not only does Paul in verse 29 say that we nourish our bodies, we also cherish them. And so, I’m saying, our words to our spouse should be words that cherish. When we are speaking gentleness, this is one of the key ways that we do that, by speaking cherishing words to our spouse.

The greek word here is “thalpo” which is a metalurgy term that means to warm. Think about it as warming metal up to make it malleable. To cherish is to warm up. I love this picture of cherishing, it’s kind of like cuddling with your spouse. Autumn is always cold, so when we go to be she is right next to me, stealing my warmth.

To cherish means to warm. To speak cherishing words means to speak words that warm the heart. So if we are building up our spouse, speaking words that uplift, encourage and edify and we are speaking nourishing words, words that feed their souls. To speak cherishing words means to warm them up to light them up or to start a fire within them.

When you cherish something, you are holding it as a treasure. When we speak to our spouse like they have value, in a way that shows we treasure them, that looks quite different than the way the world works. The world says we should speak words like this only to get something out of it, but in marriage, our role is always to give into the marriage, never looking to receive from it. Again contrary to the world’s view of marriage, which looks to see what you are getting out of it, not what you are putting into it.

Landing The Plane

So as we look to end today, I want you to take this seriously and I am going to challenge you to speak gently to your spouse. Try a 30 day challenge, speak gently to your spouse and if you don’t, they can call you on it. Try a 10 day encouragement challenge. Sit down and intentionally encourage your spouse for 10 days straight. See what happens in your marriage.

Conclusion

Today, like last Sunday, I want to end with a short time of testimony. If you have something to share about your spouse, about how they talk to you that encourages you or something from this series overall that has made an impact on your marriage, I’m going to give you time to share.

Prayer & Journaling Points

Lord, in what ways have I used my words to hurt my spouse and how should I repent of that?

Father, what new ways can I use my words for edifying, nourishing and cherishing my spouse?