Ephesians Series #26
“Living the New Life”
Ephesians 4:20-24
I. Our Wealth and Worth In Christ 1-3
II. Our Worthy Walk in Christ 4-6
A. Walk in Unity 4:1-16
B. Walk in Newness of life 4:17-24
Paul emphatically and authoritatively issued a prohibition to this newly created community.
Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: That you should no longer live as the Gentiles live
He is talking about non-Christians. This has a definite link to the truth previously presented by Paul. On the basis of your high calling as children of God, stop living like the pagans around you.
Live different because you ARE different.
Because God has made you alive, enlightened and empowered you, you should live differently.
Something has changed. They were to “no longer” live like they used to before committing their life to Christ. They were different. They were to be done with the past and embrace their new life in Christ. A change of the core brings about a change in conduct. To make his point, Paul contrasts the core of the old life and the reality of the new life.
1. The old life 4:17-19
17 Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their thoughts having become darkened in their understanding, having become excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. 19 having become became callous, they gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.
If we work backwards from the end to the beginning, it might look something like this.
There was an intentional hardening of the heart toward God.
A refusal to embrace His ways
A repudiation of God’s work in their lives and authority over their lives
An intentional resistance to God’s voice
7 Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, "TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, 8 DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS AS WHEN THEY PROVOKED ME, AS IN THE DAY OF TRIAL IN THE WILDERNESS, 9 WHERE YOUR FATHERS TRIED Me BY TESTING Me, AND SAW MY WORKS FOR FORTY YEARS. 10 "THEREFORE I WAS ANGRY WITH THIS GENERATION, AND SAID, 'THEY ALWAYS GO ASTRAY IN THEIR HEART, AND THEY DID NOT KNOW MY WAYS'; 11 AS I SWORE IN MY WRATH, 'THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST.' " 12 Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called "Today," so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, 15 while it is said, "TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS, AS WHEN THEY PROVOKED ME." Hebrews 3:7-15
The hardening of the heart to God’s truth results in a spiritual ignorance. It doesn’t mean you are stupid or can’t learn. An inability to see life from God’s eternal perspective. A lack of spiritual insight to God’s person and purposes.
That ignorance blocks connection to the true source of life. You’re breathing but there is something missing. There is life apart from mere physical life.
The word of God is life – if you ignore the truth you don’t have the life.
The Holy Spirit is life – if you refuse the Holy Spirit you don’t have life.
Jesus is life – if you reject Jesus you don’t have life.
4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. John 1:4-5
9 There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. John 1:9
20 "Everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 "But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God." John 3:20-21
4 "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. 5 "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. John 15:4-5
Without connection to the light, there is a darkened understanding. An inability to consider the spiritual side of life. Incapacity to reason spiritual truth. The ultimate result of this hard heart is thinking that feels futile, empty, hopeless, or pointless. There is no lasting purpose to life. Life feels like it has no real meaningful direction or point. Without a vital connection to the source of true life, the only option is the flesh life. One can only pursue meaning in this life from life experiences and sensuality.
When you have no eternal purpose or direction, the alternative is a sensually focused life. It is like a house not connected to the main power line from the street. Your only alternative is to live life off of flashlights. There is no true light because there is no connection to the source.
Bible specifies some of those pursuits and practices of a life lived apart from God.
3 For we too were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, captives of various passions and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, detesting one another.3 For the time already past is sufficient for you to have carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable idolatries. 1 Peter 4:1-3
5 Consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. 6 For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience, 7 and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Colossians 3:5-8
These are all lifestyles of a life disconnected from the true life of God.
Paul included a greatly expanded list to the Romans.
28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer (alienated form the life of God), God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; Romans 1:28-31
Here, Paul instructs believers to life a differently life.
In light of God’s work in our life, we are to live differently than we did before Christ. So what changed? The basis of changed conduct is a changed core.
2. The NEW life 4:20-24
We can live differently because we are different. I would say the core of this passage is a command to live different because we are different. Stop living like this world system because you are not of this world system. You have been made new. Most of us are familiar well acquainted with Paul’s powerful summary.
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, he has become new.
a. The truth of the new life originates in Jesus
Jesus taught on the changed life. Jesus is the foundation of new life.
20 But you did not learn Christ in this way, 21since indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus
Paul announces a contrast with the previous section by using the word “but”.
He intends to contrast the old way of life with a new way. He contrasts what we used to be to who we are now. He contrasts the core of the old person with the core of the new person.
Your old way of life ignored Jesus. Your old way of life did not consider Jesus or embrace Him.
The new life has everything to do with Jesus. He is both the teacher and the content of the teaching. He is the truth and the teacher of truth. Paul said they learned Christ. They heard Christ. They were taught by Christ. What a contrast with darkened understanding and ignorance. So what is it that Jesus taught? What did they learn about the new life from Jesus?
b. The truth of the new life focuses on a renewed core.
Paul focused on three aspects of the new life. There will need to be a discarding of the person that we were (the old self or old man). There will need to be the emergence of the new person (the new self or man). There will need to be a continual renovation of the thinking.
Basically Paul is describing a change in the core of our being. There is a self or core that dictates everything we do. Until the core changes there can be no conduct change.
1. The old self must die.
22 that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,
There are numerous passages that refer to this concept.
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and die it produces nothing.
I have been crucified with Christ.
Die to self
Here, the old man, the old self, the person that we were must disappear. We must be made new. The old core can only produce corruption and deceitful passions. It operated out of darkness, ignorance and resistance of God. It appears on the surface that this is something we are instructed to do. It is clear from other parts of Scripture that we cannot regenerate ourselves. It is a distinct work of God through the Holy Spirit.
4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, 5 He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Titus 3:4-7
Paul referenced Jesus teaching that this is something that must take place. He is not really telling us to lay side our old self because we can’t. Paul put these three concepts together in his letter to the Colossians and expressed it differently.
9 Do not lie to one another, having laid aside the old self with its evil practices, 10 and having put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him— Colossians 3:9-10
This passage describes a onetime event with ongoing results. The old man was killed the new man created make way for the continual renewed thinking.
2. The new self must emerge
24 and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Ephesians 4:20-24
As opposed to the old self driven by fleshly passions and corruption, the new self has been created by God characterized by righteousness and holiness and truth. We learned of the creation of this new self in the tenth verse of chapter two.
10 For we are His creation—created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should live in them.
Christianity is about a core change, a new birth, regeneration, a new life from the dead.
Chapter two clearly taught the fact that even though we were dad in sin (read unresponsive toward God and spiritual things) God made us alive in Christ. This is much more than revitalization of the old; it is a killing of the old, a discarding of the old and a resurrection to new life. So many places in the New Testament discuss this radical transformation and new life in Christ. Christianity is not a religious belief but a change at the core of our being.
It is not merely an intellectual embracing of a moral code. So many appeals to behavior change in the New Testament are based on a change at the core. You are not a Christian merely because you embrace Christian principles or even exhibit certain Christian behavior. You are a genuine Christian when by faith there is a radical transformation at the core. This radical transformation can only be accomplished by the Holy Spirit. John goes so far as to claim that those who have experienced this transformation don’t sin any more.
9 Everyone who has been born of God does not sin, because His seed abides in him; he is not able to sin, because he has been born of God. 10 This is how God’s children—and the Devil’s children—are made evident. Whoever does not do what is right is not of God, especially the one who does not love his brother. 1 John 3:9-10
In this passage, Paul calls us to live differently because we are different. Peter goes so far as to say that if we are not living differently and growing more like Christ it is due to a memory lapse.
9 The person who lacks these things is blind and shortsighted, and has forgotten the cleansing from his past sins. 2 Peter 1:9
This is like retooling a factory after new management takes over. There is a new core philosophy and even a new product line but it will take some time to change over the old machinery to correspond to the new direction. The members of our body were tuned to the old manager, the old self. God first fires the old self and replaced him with the new self.
That new self must now retool the body and the passions and the memories and patterns of thought and reacting to correspond to the purposes and desires of the new self that full desires what God desires.
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires. 13 And do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness. Romans 6:12-13
3. The thinking must continually be renewed
23 and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
The greatest challenge of the new self is the renewing of the thinking. The old man was hard toward the things of God, ignorant of His will, void of true life, in the dark, and living a futile life based on futile thinking. Verse after verse of the New Testament calls for a renewal in our thinking. The ability to think and reason on a spiritual level comes with the new self.
That capacity must be continually applied to a renewing of our thinking. Ultimately all behavior is based on a line or reasoning. We all do things for a reason. There is a stimulus, a time of reasoning and which brings about feeling and choosing. All feelings are hotwired to a thought process. After awhile the time between thought and action shrinks; a habit has formed. We shift to autopilot.
That is not necessarily a negative thing. It all depends on the thoughts and corresponding actions. The Bible calls us to renew our thinking so that we behave according to God’s ways.
Paul called the Romans to change their behavior by renewing their thinking.
2 Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. Romans 12:2
we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 10 so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience Col 1:9-11
There it is again. Live different because you ARE different.
The contrast between the old and new is radical.
Hard heart
Ignorance
Lifeless
Darkened understanding
Futile Thinking
Sensual living
New Heart
Knowledge
Alive
Enlightenment
Renewed Thinking
Holy living
Later Paul tells them not to live like the Gentiles because even though they were formerly darkness, now they are children of light in the Lord, so live like it. The rest of Ephesians will flesh out what that new life looks like. Live different because you ARE different.
• Make certain of a core change; the old self discarded, the new self emerged
• Think differently.
• Live differently.
