Keep Your New Shirt On (Ephesians 4:25-5:2) Series

What we've seen over the past week weeks, is that God has a plan. God is making one family, who will live in peace with him and with each other. And to that end, Jesus gave each of us a ministry in the church, to build the church up, help it grow in love and unity. The problem is, some of you are still living like you used to, before you gave your allegiance to Jesus. You leave these walls, and you walk the same road of sin and wrongdoing you used to walk. And as long as you live this way, you're useless to God.

Paul gives us two pictures in Ephesians to help us think about how we should live. There are two roads we can take in life. We can walk in the road of obedience and faithfulness to God, or we can walk on the road of sin and wrongdoing. Which road will we take? Last week, Paul gave us the picture of two shirts. When we give our allegiance to Jesus, we take off our old self, the one being ruined by deceitful desires, and we put on the new shirt being created in holiness and righteousness.

The problem is, we keep finding ourselves digging in our closet, trying to find that filthy old shirt. The shirt was comfortable; it was familiar. We remember that shirt as being far greater than it actually was. It's just a filthy rag.

Today's passage is basically a more detailed explanation of this shirt imagery. What does it look like to take off your old shirt of sin, and put on the new shirt of holiness and righteousness? What does this really mean? What does God want?

Verse 25

Therefore , taking off the lie, speak truth, each of you with his neighbor

because we are members/parts of one another.

Paul begins here by saying, "taking off the lie." it's the same verb he uses to say, "take off your old shirt." When we lived in sin, wearing that old rag, what we were really wearing was a lie. We wrapped ourselves in lies to excuse our behavior. If we are living in sin, we have to lie to ourselves to hide from our guilt and shame. We say, "I can't help sinning. Or, I deserve it. Or, it doesn't hurt anyone. Or, they deserve it. Or, it makes me happy." If you are living in sin, wearing the old shirt, the first thing you have to do is take off the lie. Be honest about how you are living, and why you are sinning. Every sin starts with a lie. So take off the lie. Stop deceiving yourselves.

Then what? "Taking off the lie, speak truth, each of you with his neighbor, because we are members of one another."

Your responsibility to live in God's truth doesn't end there. If you see a brother or sister wearing their comfortable old sins, you need to speak the truth to them. At an old job, one of my co-workers went to the same church as me. Everyone knew he called himself a Christian. Everyone knew he didn't live like a Christian at work. He wore the lie. I saw this, and I did nothing. How do you confront a hot-head? How do you speak the truth in love, when you worry he's going to turn around and say terrible things to you? I chickened out, and I did nothing. I failed him.

We are members of one another. You have a responsibility.

And if you aren't living rightly, and someone from this church comes to talk to you, you need to understand why they are doing it. I hope, they are doing it because they love you, and they are concerned about you, and they know that we are all members of Jesus' one body. They could let you go, and do your own thing, and tell themselves that each person's faith is basically a private matter. That would safer for them, and easier for both of you. But if they do that, they will be harming the church. There are few things in life more painful, more difficult, than being told you are living wrong in some way. Or that people are concerned about you. It takes humility to hear this. No one likes to be corrected. Your immediate response is going to be to say, "They are judging me." "They are condemning me." Or you'll immediately say, "They're wrong about me. I'm okay." Your response should be, "They love me a lot. They took an enormous risk in talking to me about it, because they are concerned about me, and about this church as a whole. So I need to genuinely consider whether or not they are speaking truth into my life."