Attitude Series

• We are darkened in our understanding!

• Sin blinds us to the truth. Sin will cut off the optic nerve of the Spirit, so we end up living life doing whatever we see fit.

• Like the person in the darkening twilight who cannot see things very clearly, the Gentiles had allowed their sense of moral distinctions to become blurred.

• The eyes of their hearts were not enlightened (cf. Eph 1:18), and they suffered from a moral and spiritual black-out. Boles, K. L. (1993). Galatians & Ephesians (Eph 4:18). Joplin, MO: College Press.

• Why is it that when someone is addicted to drugs, EVERYONE around them can see where that pattern of life will lead the person; everyone except the one who is addicted?

• They cannot see it. Sin darkens our understanding

• The third negative issue concerning our old pattern of life is…

• We are excluded from the life of God!

• Verse 18 is the only place in the New Testament, where this phrase used.

• It refers to missing out on the life that God has offered to us.

• When in this state, we see the pleasures in a life of sin, but not the value of a life of goodness with God.

• Verses 18-19 explain why all this happens to us. It is the fourth mark of the old pattern.

• 18 …because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. 19 They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.

• The hardness of the heart is a stubborn heart that will not open up or listen.

• Have you ever had a callous? The place where you have the callous has little to no feeling.

• This way of life is not going to end well for us. It will also damage those in our path, our spouses, children, everyone we are close to in life.

• Let’s turn to verse 20-24

• SLIDE #6

• Ephesians 4:20–24 (CSB) — 20 But that is not how you came to know Christ, 21 assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, 23 to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.

• SLIDE #7

II. The challenge to change our pattern of life.

• Paul tells his readers that being in Christ and still living like they were not; is not the way they were taught!

• The word YOU in verse 20 is EMPHATIC in the original text.

• Folks, I am not here to beat anyone up, but one of the reasons the church is losing impact in our society is that too many of us are still living like we did before we became Christians.

• This is nothing new, Paul was dealing with the same issue in his letter to the church at Ephesus!

• In verses 20-24, Paul offers three challenges to the church.

• First, lay aside the old way of life, as the CSB reads, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires

• The grammatical structure of these verses tells us that all three of the issues we will cover are in the aorist verb tense, which in the Greek means a one-time act in the past, with continuing results.