Transcription
Introduction
Well, good evening, church. I want to welcome all you who are guests with us tonight. Grateful for you to be here a part of what we have here in our worship. We now begin our time to have our study from God’s word. We had in the start with what Sam had read in Ephesians 4 as our text for this evening. So, if you’d get into that once again, we are going to have that as our sole place to be in tonight. We’re going to go phrase by phrase for the most part doing a really good deep study into this particular text of Ephesians chapter 4.
Much like the song we just said, a creature, a new creature, that’s where this text comes from. So, just to get this started, there there comes a point in a child’s life whenever they finally have the freedom to go and maybe leave home without mom and dad being there with the places that they want to go. Now, just imagine for the first time a teenager getting to go to the movies maybe with his friends, and mom and dad’s not going to be there a couple rows back behind making sure that everything is orderly.
They’re going to let him go on his own with his friends. So, as he’s walking out the door, imagine mom saying, “Remember who your father is.” And that would not be indicating remember who your dad is in his name, because that’s certainly without a doubt easy to recall, but more so meaning the idea remember the family that you belong to whenever you decide how you’re going to be acting tonight without us. “Remember who your father is.” That it would even come into a good thought as one would leave the home not forgetting who their heavenly father is.
Understandably so, there’s this sense of recognizing who you are. There is an identity that you’ve got. And so, what we’re going to do tonight is see how that fits into the text of Ephesians chapter 4. Just to throw out there rather quickly, the first few chapters of Ephesians, Paul is laying out the calling of a Christian. He says things such as you’ve been chosen in Christ. And again, all of these are identity terms. Just to again, identify who you are now that you are a Christian.
You’ve been redeemed. You’ve been forgiven. You’ve been saved by grace. Brought near by the blood of Christ. You’ve been made a member of God’s household and on and on it goes. All of these different concepts to have us understand you’re somebody no longer who like you used to be. You’ve got an identity. You’ve got this calling. But then we get into chapter 4 and it starts off right there in verse 1 of chapter 4. He says, I therefore a prisoner for the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called.
There it is. That identity again, to which you’ve been called. So, what he’s now going to do is he’s going to transition. After thinking through your identity, now he’s going to talk about your conduct. You know who you are. Let’s talk about what you’re to do. And so, he doesn’t leave them hanging by saying you have become all of these wonderful things. You now have a father who’s adopted you. You’re just like one of which he loved since the beginning.
You’ve got all of these great things, but now there’s something to hold up to here. To walk in a manner worthy to the name that you’ve been given. That’s how we might also call that. So, in this we’re going to look more deeply because by the time we get to verse 17, Paul gets very, very specific as to what he means about this walk. And like I said, we’re going to take it part by part, phrase by phrase for the most part. Let’s get right into this for the sake of just getting our study going.
1. No Longer Walk as the Gentiles Do
This first section, verse 17 through 19, talks about no longer living as the Gentiles do. Now again, Sam read this in totality. Depending on that as a way to just have it in front of us again, be in the text, please, as we read this. So that you’re along the ride with what we’re we’re headed here with our text. So no longer living as the Gentiles do. That’s the first big section we’re going to be talking about. The first idea that he starts with in verse 17 is this charge.
He says, “Now therefore, I say and testify in the Lord, and what he says here is a language that should be holding quite a bit of weight. Again, a lot of like it is in scripture, whenever you just breeze through it, most of these things aren’t caught. And taking just a moment like tonight to saturate yourself and sit in it for just a moment, hopefully will bring about a deeper reflection and resonate with it in a way that maybe you haven’t before.
And so what he’s getting at here is this sense of just solemnly affirming something that he’s going to testify. He’s been given this by Jesus Christ, this testimony, this way of testifying on behalf of what Jesus would have him say, speaking as an apostle. There’s authority behind this. So it’s like an officer telling you, “Stop.” You as a citizen ought to stop. Because that officer is backed not only by the law, but also the governing bodies. And for us as Christians, we know law enforcement’s backed by God himself.
He’s established that authority. So what Paul’s saying is he represents the Lord. I say this to you on behalf of the Lord. So when we come to what follows next, we need to hear it as something that’s much stronger than, “Hey, I’m going to lay out a lifestyle for you that might work well, so maybe you can take a few notes here.” That’s not what he’s getting at at all. The weight of what he’s saying here is this is something serious. And I’m saying it on behalf of the Lord.
And so then there comes this charge because there’s a certain life we’re called to live here. That’s what he’s getting to. Since we belong to Christ, this charge is you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. It indicates that you once did. And that means that you don’t anymore. Because there’s a point at which you don’t have that as part of who you are. The idea of the word walk itself refers to this whole course of your life, your habits, your overall lifestyle, the choices you make, the thoughts you entertain, the behavior you exhibit.
All of this, your relationships, the way you conduct yourself from one day to the next is what Paul’s really getting at here. So, for you [snorts] as a Christian to come to terms with the authority that Paul sets right here as a gauntlet, it’s to say I need to pay attention. Because you may have the same header as in the ESV or something much similar to this. This whole section starts with the words the new life. Some of us come to Christ and just never dawned to the reality that, “Oh yeah, I’m to live differently now.”
And we get all of the understanding that there’s undoubtedly something different about Christians, but how am I to do that? We never really get often times get to where we see it from the start. And so it’s scriptures like this we go neck deep into and hopefully in a very personal way relate to. That I have a responsibility as one who is a Christian. And so what Paul says here, notice again the language, no longer you’ve done it. You’ve done it enough. Something has changed. You came to Christ. So you cannot continue conducting your life according to those same patterns that controlled you before Christ came into your life.
There has to be a change in direction, and that is what we call Christianity. Christ does more than change where you spend your Sunday morning. He does more than change how you dress in your Sunday best. It’s much different now. He changes the direction of your life. And so what Paul now does, going into the depth of these next couple of verses, he talks about the change of that direction, describes the old direction. So now he’s going to describe the Gentile walk in the back end of verse 17, moving all the way through verse 19.
2. The Futility of Their Minds
So again, let’s go through this segment by segment. This idea of feudal thinking. He says that no longer like the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. Futility is a word that we don’t use often, at least at settings outside of where we are here. But here’s what he’s getting at. Stop having your life filled with emptiness. Stop having all of your activity being pushed towards something that doesn’t really have an end that’s purposeful. The way of thinking that’s ultimately leading you nowhere, and it’s not worthwhile. In fact, what we would just demon up as is aimless.
It feels like you’re doing something, but you’re not. And that’s important because Paul begins here with the mind. It starts here. Before Paul talks about behavior, he talks about your thinking. Because eventually we live according to the way that we think. I’ve talked about that quite a bit, so much that I felt like I needed to put the brakes on that, but Paul naturally gets into it with this text, is no longer live in such a way where you think like you used to think.
And driven by the ways of this world. A person can be absolutely intelligent. They can be highly educated. They could even have great success in the career field, capable of making extremely complicated decisions that no one else might be put on the wire to make. But all the while thinking wrongly about the most important things in this life. Things that pertain to life and godliness. What am I here for? What makes something right or wrong? What is my life worth giving itself to?
Who gets to determine how I live? A really good biblical example of this, how it is when one pursues a life like this and kind of the result of it is what Jesus talks about with the rich fool in Luke chapter 12. This guy was going all in when it came to the life he was pursuing of the eventual Basically sit back, relax, you’ve got ample goods stored up for years to come, eat, drink, be merry. And that’s like kind of the the the desire for many. And Jesus said, teaching us in that text, that guy was foolish because the Lord required his life of him that night.
He, thinking he had so much more to live for. So, when God, here’s the ultimate idea, whenever God is removed from all of these different questions, like what’s my purpose? What am I to do day after day? What’s driving my life? Whenever God’s not in those questions, our thinking becomes futile. Aimless. We may accomplish all kinds of things and still miss the purpose for which God had created me. You can spend your whole life climbing and eventually discover that the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall all along.
3. Darkened in Understanding, Alienated From God
And that, my friend, is futility. So, Paul says that was the life you came out of. Don’t go back into thinking that way again, because it’s going to get you nowhere. In fact, the Gentiles, how they walk, they have a darkened understanding. And that’s what he says at the start of verse 18. They’re darkened in their understanding. So, now the picture gets a little bit stronger. Futile thinking eventually affects the ability to see things clearly. Sin has darkened their understanding.
Jesus said in John chapter 3 verse 19, “This is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people loved darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” So, you’ve got something that indicates how to turn your life around only to have yourself back away from it and then just keep yourself in the dark, staying blind. Therefore, you’ve got no understanding. Jesus connects darkness with what people love. Some people just love remaining spiritually blind.
Sometimes people don’t see because they simply don’t know, but sometimes people don’t see because they don’t want to see the truth when they encounter it is going to require something different in their life. It’s going to require change. And they’d rather not have anything to do with that. And that’s what sin can do to us. That’s the warning. So, for example, the longer that I may be defend something or if I go on continuing to excuse some type of behavior or if I’ve got myself feeding this habit continuously and not even recognizing what others are warning me about regarding it, the easier it is for me to begin to take it in and no longer see that it’s destroying me.
It’s blinding me. Eventually, the darkness settles in and what once bothered me starts to feel normal. And Paul gets to a little bit more of that in just a moment, but notice what he says next in the next part of verse 18 that these people are alienated from God. And again, this is this is a state that we were all once in. And Paul’s wanting us to reflect back as if to say, “Let’s not have that be part of what we go back to here.” Because then he goes a little bit deeper once again with this idea that these are alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.
Alienated separated. They’re estranged. These people are cut off from the fellowship of God. Just like two family members who haven’t spoken in years they’re still family but the relationship is broken. There’s distance between them. There’s no relational connection. And look at what they’re separated from, the life of God. God is the source of true and real spiritual life. Jesus says in , “I am the way, I am the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
But you get so many often finding themselves pursuing it in many different ways. So this isn’t simply a person making some bad decisions here. This is talking about someone specifically who’s disconnected from the source of life itself. And that’s where sin ultimately will take us. Sin will take us away from God. Sin’s going to pull us into a direction that isn’t designed for what God had in store for us. And it’s away from him who made us. And here’s the thing that’s so wild about this. When alienated from God, the life can still be lived in such a way that there’s laughter, that there’s still great success in your career, that people love you and adore you and admire you and courage in all sorts of ways.
4. Callous, Given Up to Sensuality and Impurity
You may still have loads of money and lots of friendships and go on great adventures. Life may be bright and beautiful. Yet something fundamental is broken because you as the creature are living apart from the creator. And that’s the alienation. That’s the ignorance that’s creating the hardness of heart over time. And so Paul essentially says here, “You were there. Christ brought you out of that. So don’t walk back into that. Be careful.” He says in verse 19 that they’ve become callous.
And I think that this might be one of the most frightening parts of the passage. And I maybe just because I relate to callousness and maybe you do too in a way that is familiar. Get to that in a moment. But callousness is something that develops over time. We know what it’s like to have them on our hand. We know what it’s like over a period of time to get them on our fingertips. If you’re a guitar player, you know that you have to break in those fingertips for many days before the burn goes away and you get the hardness. Same goes for this.
What he’s talking about, you do something long enough, eventually what was once soft is going to become hard to where you no longer feel the sensation. The same thing can happen spiritually. Paul’s saying that something will bother your conscience. And then you do it again. And then you do it again. And now you’re justifying it. Perhaps looking at how others are going about their life and thinking, “Well, nothing’s wrong with them. Therefore, I might find myself with no problem at all as well.” You excuse it, then you do it again.
And then after enough time, what once bothered you barely even registers your nerve endings, your spiritual nerve endings. That’s callousness. Callousness means becoming insensitive to the shame that you would feel when you do something you know you shouldn’t have done. It brings the hardness over those moments where guilt starts to ride you. And that’s a good thing to have because that leads to repentance. You become insensitive to things like God’s word when you hear it because your ears have just closed and your eyes have been blinded and no longer feel with your heart what God would have you respond to.
And you no longer become impressed with things that are true and all inspiring. I mean, it’s one of the questions we got to ask is what used to bother me that doesn’t bother me anymore. And I’ll let you create that in your own mind as to what that would be without suggesting anything, but there are a lot of things that we find ourselves getting back into. That at first we know maybe we should stop, but then we only find ourselves all the more comfortable.
What used to bother you? That doesn’t bother you anymore. We should want hearts that remain tender before God. When scripture confronts us, or like we talked about on Wednesday night, whenever we have the word heard today, don’t walk away from it. Don’t put the layer of wallpaper up. We should have this desire to be to feel scripture, to recognize his word, to hear it in such a way that whenever I sin, I want my conscience to recognize that. I want to be able to respond to it because I feel that.
When God calls me to change, I want a heart that’s soft enough to move. That’s what I want. That’s what Paul would wish us to have. And so, he says they’ve given themselves to sensuality. They’ve given themselves up to that. Notice the language again, given themselves up. That is total surrender. They didn’t have to. They willingly did it. That was their choice. They’ve handed themselves over to their desires. Sensuality, not one of those words we use often outside of these sort of settings, means you live by your appetites.
Think of an animal. Animal will do what an animal has to do to eat or to to to eat and have its desire for all other things and it doesn’t have any sense of when to stop. They do what feels good. They do what they desire. And the flesh does the same. What satisfies me becomes what governs me. Whenever I find myself given up to sensuality and there comes a point when a person stops fighting desire and begins allowing that desire to take the lead in their life day after day after day and then you can just start to backtrack.
Every bit of what Paul said, now the heart’s gotten hardened, I’m blinded, I’m darkened with understanding. I’m alienated from God. So if there are things that used to bother me that don’t anymore and I’m standing here in a life that I don’t even recognize the stuff that I should perhaps we should recognize maybe sensuality has taken its toll. The opposite of a Christian disciple is someone who’s given to sensuality. Jesus doesn’t teach us to let every desire take the steering wheel.
He teaches us caution. He teaches us how to put in place that which is called self-control. He teaches us that some desires must be denied or they’re going to get something into our life that will destroy us when we’re handed over to that. And there’s a huge difference between being tempted by something and giving yourself up to something. Paul’s describing a person who’s surrendered to it. Who’s laid themselves down to say, “I’m not even going to try to fight it off anymore.”
And so Christians can’t develop the lifestyle of Jesus while continually surrendering themselves to whatever their appetites are. Whatever the desired outcome is, I’ll take it. Can’t do that. That’s not who we are anymore. And notice the end of verse 19, he says that they’re greedy to practice every kind of impurity. Greed is just the desire for more. You’ve got a substantial amount or perhaps you have enough to be content, but there’s this drive to only want more.
And what Paul is doing here is he’s applying that to impurity. Not money. We hear greed, we think money or covetousness or ideas of what I can gain more of. But Paul’s talking about this nature of sinful appetite. Given into just doing more of what that animal would do just to get that fix. To get that desire fixed. And your appetite for sin, it ain’t going to be like, “Hey, that’s enough. You need to stop.” “Hey, you did that once before. You might not want to do that again.”
That’s not how that works. Usually it’s going to ask for more. And then it’s going to suggest a little bit more. And then it’s going to convince you to go a little bit further. And then it’s going to remind you of just the little good that was in it so that you can go back and have it some more. And now it’s something stronger. Now it’s something different. Now it’s something that I keep secret. I’ve noticed that temptation to sin often gets more difficult whenever boredom sets in.
An idle mind starts looking for something to feel. It’s just constantly thinking about what it can go pursue and catch or chase. And almost make sport of with the sin. Something just to satisfy this boredom. But here’s the reality of that. Sin promises satisfaction, but what it’s going to do is keep pushing satisfaction further and further and further away from you. That’s part of its deception. And look at the progression that Paul’s giving us here. Again, feudal thinking to darken understanding to alienation from God then to a hardened heart this surrender to sensuality and now this appetite for more impurity.
And it’s almost like he’s just showing us how far this road can go if we’re not careful. And it’s a terrible road to travel. And so that’s why now he begins with you must no longer walk as Gentiles do. He’s saying, you know where that road leads. You’ve been there. No longer do that. Learn from it. But ultimately, what he’s saying is that Christ has called you out of it. So you don’t have to keep walking that life anymore. There’s something better now. And so that’s where we see the transition in verse 20.
5. That Is Not the Way You Learned Christ
Putting on the new self over the next four verses. And so he says in verse 20 that that is not the way you learned Christ. You learned Christ differently than going and dabbling into all of these sins. Those sins, those sensua- that life of sensuality and desire did not lead you to knowing who Jesus was and the love that he had for you. I love how he puts that. Because he says that’s not the way you learn Jesus. That’s not who Jesus is. He’s not going to reveal himself to you through his word as you’re living a life of just muck.
It ain’t going to happen. That’s not what you learned from him. That’s not the life you’ve watched him live through his word. That’s not what he showed you. You didn’t learn Christ through feudal thinking or the hardened heart or through your sensuality or your impurity. You learned it through an entirely different way. And so what that indicates, he doesn’t say that here, but what that indicates is you’re only going to continue to learn him through this different way.
Notice Paul’s wording. He doesn’t say that they learned about Christ. He says that they learned Christ. So they have this understanding of him. Christianity is more than just collecting information about Jesus, knowing some book, chapter, and verses that you can reference. It’s much, much deeper than that. You can have all this information about where Jesus was born and know the apostles. You can even know some of the miracles, even know the 66 books of the Bible because you learned them in Bible class as a child.
You can have that squared away. But learning Christ means that his teaching begins to shape the way that you manage your life. Developing the lifestyle of Christianity requires what we’re talking about here. You see that Jesus is your pattern. You see that Jesus’ word governs the decisions over your life. That his way becomes my way. And that’s what it means to learn Christ. And so he says verse 21, the first part of that, that you heard him and you were taught in him.
You heard about him. Paul is saying that the truth is in Jesus. Jesus really becomes this defining reality of how I begin to understand life. If I try to seek life outside of him, I’m only going to just be searching in vain. It’s not going to give me the answer. So, what does love look like? Look at Jesus. What does purity look like? Look at Jesus. How does it look to treat people? How does it look to obey God? How does it look to set yourself apart?
How does it look to put your friends before yourself? All of this, we look at Jesus. What should I value? Look at Jesus. So, what should I do with my anger, my pride, my lust, my selfish drive? All of this, look at Jesus. That’s where it starts. And so, what we get here is I sit at the feet feet of Jesus and I learn. And this is where Christianity requires humility. We don’t have it all figured out. There’s so many things we have yet to learn. And some of us have been in this for quite some time.
So, we don’t get to the point to where we recognize I no longer need him. I’ve got to remain teachable. I have to be willing to let Jesus tell me whenever I’m wrong and I accept it in a way that’s humble. I have to have some habits that feel normal uh some habits that feel normal need to be challenged in my life. [snorts] And that’s the kind of stuff that Jesus will bring. The attitudes that I’ve carried for so long and I’ve just called it who I am.
6. Put Off the Old Self, Put On the New Self
That’s who’s who I am. No, it’s not. It’s who you were. In Christ, you put on someone much different with the attitude. I have to be allowing truth to change me. And that takes humility. Because I’ve truly learned Christ, something has to happen to the old life. If I come to him and I know him and I’ve learned of him, the old has to go away. So, that’s what he says in verse 22, “Put off the old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and it is corrupt through deceitful desires.”
I love the language just because it’s very familiar to us. Putting off, we put off clothing every day. We know what that is like. And so, that language of take it off, lay it aside, it’s got good reason behind it. Because you don’t want to put the old stuff on. You don’t want to be identified like that anymore. It’s dingy and it’s growth. I remember being at camp midsummer, one of the things we did at camp, Shield Camp, 5 days straight, midday before lunch, the hottest part of the day it seemed like, we’re working.
And we’re doing some really cool projects around the campground, but one of the requirements is you wear jeans. And so, that also means maybe wear some safety shoes if you’re really into it. I didn’t have safety shoes, but I had jeans and I’ll tell you I only had one pair of jeans that I wanted to get dirty for that kind of work. That year I had the assignment of chopping down trees, walking through bushes that had thorns all over them, and my pants got sticker burrs, I had bleeding in my leg from all the branches that got Anyway, spare you the story.
After day one, I remember the next day thinking, “I got to wear these pants for 4 more days.” Put them on and sure enough on my thigh I felt a sticker. I’m like, “Man, this is not going to be comfortable.” All that to say, we are sometimes so inclined to put our old life back on that it’s comfortable even though it stinks and it’s disgusting and we’re embarrassed of it when people truly know that that’s what we’re doing. And we think little to nothing of it.
And Paul’s saying that that’s not who that’s not who we are. We’ve put all of that off. The former self is gone. Some of us have been Christians for years. Yet every morning we’re still tempted to reach for something out of that old wardrobe of ours. Why? Maybe our old anger. Sometimes that old language that we just can’t seem to get rid of even though we heard it growing up in our house all those years. That old way of lust and how we look at the opposite sex.
That old bitterness that we hang on to just being a cold curmudgeon. The old selfishness and how it’s all about me and I’m the one who’s just going to sit at the head spot of the table every time and get my food first. All this to say all these things keep dragging us backwards. Old friendships that we still stay in contact with us that have no lean towards eternal living. Old ways of handling conflict. Old entertainment that should stop because it’s not good for us.
Even the old way of thinking about your finances, my friend. God has a lot to say about that. The old way of treating your spouse. The old way of talking whenever you’re frustrated. All that Paul’s saying put it all put it off. It’s not you. It’s not your identity. And then he tells us why. It belongs to your former manner of life and it’s corrupt through deceitful desires. Here’s the thing I think he’s saying, sin lies. It lies. That’s one of the strongest thoughts in this whole section is that those desires are deceitful.
Those desires make us make us promises, don’t they? All the time, this is going to make you happy. Do it just this once and it will satisfy you. This will make you feel better. You need this. Oh, you deserve it. Nobody will know. It won’t hurt anything. I mean, the list could go on. But what we see is that sin is constantly promising more than it could ever deliver you and it will always be that way. The old life was corrupt. And Paul describes it in a way that carries the idea of this continuing corruption.
It’s just going to continue to die and decay. Putting on the old life ain’t going to bring you no life. It ain’t going to bring you no good. Because that life is just deteriorating. So he says, quit putting those old clothes back on. Verse 23, instead be renewed in the mind and the spirit of your minds. And this is where the battle is really fought. Remember where Paul started in verse 17 with that futility of their minds? [snorts] So where does renewal happen?
Where does this new way of perceiving and seeing life happen? Right here. You and I process so much information. And we’re dividing up all the time what’s true, what’s not true, what might be. I’ll come back to that. All of that to say, there is a constant process happening up here. Christian transformation requires a new way of thinking. You can’t become who we’re talking about becoming without this new life. You can’t crack it. You got to start new.
And the idea here is that we continue to be renewed day by day by day. And this explains why developing a Christian lifestyle takes time. It ain’t going to happen overnight. Cool stuff can happen overnight. Your day from one day to the next can take quite the leap and bound, don’t get me wrong, but it ain’t going to be perfect until we see him as he is. But until then, we’re always being renewed. We come to Christ with maybe these years of habits, we’re going back to just all of these assumptions we’ve carried for so long in our life, accumulated so much garbage in the way that we react to stuff, the thought patterns that we got, the desires that we keep playing back to from whenever we were boys and girls and not men and women.
You see, all that’s still there. And all that’s got to get worked on. All that’s got to get transformed. And it happens when we renew our minds through the thinking, through the guiding of the Holy Spirit. His word transforms. So, Jesus begins reshaping all of this. All of this gets built in such a way that we learn how to think about people. We learn a whole new way of life and how it orients even around things like sex and money. All that is part of the new way of living.
And all of that is critical to living. How you think about your body, how you think about success, all of that is part of what we’re seeing here with this renewal of thinking. You start seeing suffering and you even start seeing your enemies through the eyes of Christ with compassion and this desire to alleviate their pain and suffering to give them something that you know you’ve received, which is mercy. That’s the new way. Your time takes on a greater purpose with this new life.
Even what matters most in life begins to change. Paul also tells the Romans, this is , he tells the Romans this, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. That by testing you may discern what is the will of God, and what is good and acceptable and perfect.” And all I’m hearing there is Paul’s talking about how you develop the Christian lifestyle. We’re weighing new information all the time, new ways of thinking all the time, new patterns all the time.
It’s happening. As we get into God’s word, as we meditate on his word, as we encounter moments like this with his word being preached or taught, we engage in that new way of thinking and it’s refreshing and renewing, stirring, allowing us to bring about something that’s retraining us. And eventually when the mind changes direction, guess what happens? Life changes direction. It all starts here. So, verse 24, finally Paul says, “Put on the new self, created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness.”
So, different than the activity of taking off the old self, putting it aside, laying it aside. That that requires your will. You got to choose to do that. No one can do it for you, not even Christ himself. But, the same goes for putting on the new man. There’s the other side of the clothing picture now. And so, there’s this renewed sense, there’s this fresh clothing, there’s this putting on of something so much better. And I think it’s critical to just make mention that Christianity isn’t just like removing bad things from your life and checking the boxes. Well, I got that down. Now, I got that down. Now, I got that down.
God is creating something in you. The prophets talk about how we’ve been given a new heart. A heart that can feel again. We once had a heart that was a stone. He removes that. Puts his spirit in in us in such a way that we then become people made in the likeness of God. We are, as Paul says, this new self in true righteousness and holiness. We’re created after that, like that. That’s the design. That was his plan. And that’s what we have being implemented. God is restoring his image in us day by day by day.
And so, righteousness deals with what’s right. Holiness deals with the life that’s set apart to God. And so, all of this is just transacting in our life. So, whenever I ask, “What is God trying to develop in me?” there’s the answer. He’s developing me a person who quietly resembles him. And his the goal to make me just like him. A person who increasingly sees the life of Christ and follows it. So, from there my desires change. My priorities begin to shift.
Different habits start to develop. I react differently. I value things differently. The whole direction of my life changes. And this reaches much deeper than well, I started attending worship. And I’ve cut out a couple things in my life and I’m doing really good. And then we just blanket it and stop there, check the box that I’ve changed my life. Paul’s talking about becoming a different kind of person. A person who’s new. A creature that can grow.
Conclusion
And that takes us all the way back to the beginning. Remember who your father is. Remember the family you belong to. Don’t forget your calling. It’s who you are. It’s your identity. And then let your conduct fit it. Develop it. Day by day by day. So, let’s end with this simple question. What from my old life am I still putting back on? What from my old life am I still putting back on? What pair of dirty jeans keeps finding its way back into my spiritual wardrobe and is just a thorn in my thigh?
Christ has called us to something better. And that’s to put off the old life to let him renew the mind and every day put on the new self. Other language like take up your cross daily, Luke says, and follow me. Because if you want to live the life of Jesus, you have to develop the lifestyle of Jesus. And maybe today you need to put on Christ in baptism. And have your sins washed away. You confess his name. And you make the commitment to live a life that completely changes direction and you keep your eyes fixed on him.
And that, my friend, is life. If you need to obey the gospel this evening or if you have anything else that we can help you with in your walk with the Lord, let us know as we stand and sing.