<p>4:32<i> And be kind to each other, sensitive, forgiving each other, even as God in Christ also forgave you</i>- The problem was that the Ephesians were not allowing the Spirit to work in their hearts. Therefore the internal attitudes of :31 remained; Paul urges that these should be replaced by the sensitivity to others which leads to kindness and forgiveness. And we recall that those who had left the faith were &quot;past feeling&quot; (see on :19). It is a lack of basic empathy or sensitivity which is the root of so much bad thinking and action. Captain Gustav Gilbert was the army psychologist who worked with the Nuremburg trial defendants; he concluded: &quot;In my work with the defendants I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It&rsquo;s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy&rdquo;. The gift of the Spirit creates sensitivity; because that same Spirit is operative in the hearts of others, and is the heart of God- who is the ultimately sensitive, seeing and knowing all things. The kindness which leads to forgiveness is the antidote to all the anger and associated issues spoken of in :31. As noted on :26, it is for us to overcome our anger by forgiving, regardless of whether there has been repentance. We are forgiven by God &quot;in Christ&quot;; we were granted imputed righteousness, by reason of our status in Him, rather than on the basis of our specific repentance over the millions of sins we have between God and us, whether or commission or omission.</p><p>Mt. 6:14 is surely alluded to here. The Lord Jesus said: &quot;If you forgive, you'll be forgiven&quot;. Paul subtly changes the tenses: &quot;You've been forgiven already, so forgive&quot;. It's as if Paul is saying: 'Think carefully about Mt. 6:14. Don't think it means 'If you do this, I'll do that for you'. No. God has forgiven you. But that forgiveness is conditional on the fact that in the future you will forgive people. If you don't, then that forgiveness you've already been given is cancelled. This is what Jesus really had in mind'. This would suggest a very close analysis of those simple words of Jesus, using all the logic and knowledge of Biblical principles which Paul had.</p><p>Paul does not say we should forgive as Christ <i>is forgiving</i> us. Our forgiveness was granted at baptism; the power of sin in our lives was overcome by baptism into Christ's death, which destroyed the devil. Therefore anyone baptized into Christ is not a servant of sin, unless they leave Christ. Of course, we know that in practice we all keep on sinning. But our spiritual man is in Christ, God looks upon <i>that</i> side of us, not upon the devil within us. We cannot destroy the devil within us- his destruction is in death (Rom. 6:23). That natural man cannot be made subject to God's word (Rom. 8:7; Gal. 5:17,18; James 3:8). What God requires is a growth in the spiritual man, living in a way of life which on balance shows that the new man is more fundamentally 'us' than the old man, and a 'putting off' or disassociation from the old man, of the type we see made by Paul in Rom. 7:15-25. As God eagerly looks upon that new man within us, so we too should perceive the new man in our brethren. Too often extreme brethren look upon how bad the old man is in a brother, and how publicly he is manifested (e.g. in marital problems)- rather than assessing the new man, &quot;the hidden man&quot; which is surely to be found deep within all believers.</p>