Ephesians 4:17-24
17Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20But that is not the way you learned Christ!—21assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Intro
Illustration: “A good set of clothes makes all the difference. A Methodist church tried to get a man to attend, but he never did. "Why don't you come?" the minister asked, and the man finally admitted it was because he didn't have proper clothes. So a member of the congregation took him to a clothing store and got him a nice suit, shirt, tie and shoes. But on the following Sunday, he still did not show up. So the minister visited him again and asked him why he didn't come. ‘When I got dressed up in my new suit,’ the man explained, I looked so good I decided to go to the Episcopal church.’”
Four Characteristics of the Ungodly Lifestyle Believers Are to Forsake
1. Unbelievers are Spiritually Unproductive (v.17)
a. Not stupid, but spiritually and morally, their rational processes are distorted and inadequate
b. Inevitably fail to produce godly understanding of moral living
c. Don’t understand that good deeds ? righteousness before God
d. "No Longer Walk" – “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.” (v.17)
1) Expresses daily conduct and refers back to what Paul has said about the believer’s high calling in Christ (v.1)
2) Christians should not continue to live like ungodly because:
3) Christians are part of the body of Christ
4) They have been spiritually gifted by the Holy Spirit
5) They are edified through other believers
2. Unbelievers are Spiritually Separated from God – ”They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” (v.18)
a. Ignorant of God’s truth?1 Cor. 2:14-16 – “‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct Him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.”
b. Result: a willing spiritual darkness and moral blindness?2 Tim. 3:7 – “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”
3. Unbelievers are Morally Insensitive – “They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” (v19)
a. They become increasingly apathetic to moral and spiritual things?Rom. 1:32 – “Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”
b. This is an inevitable process of continued sin and rejection of God
4. Unbelievers are Behaviorally Depraved (v.19) - They lose moral restraint (esp. sexual) as they willingly succumb to sensuality and license
Characteristics of the Godly Lifestyle Believers Are to Present
1. Begin with salvation – “But that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus,” (vv.20-21)
a. “learned…heard…taught” are figurative descriptions of salvation
b. The truth about salvation leads to the fullness of truth about everything–God, man, creation, history, life, purpose, relationships, heaven, hell, judgment, etc.
c. 1 John 5:20 – “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.”
2. Repentance & Submission – “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,” (v.22)
a. As in, to strip away old, filthy clothes:
?“Seek the Lord while he may be found;? call upon him while he is near;?let the wicked forsake his way,? and the unrighteous man his thoughts;?let him return to the Lord,? that he may have compassion on him,? and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” (Isa. 55:6-7)
b. “Your old self” – the worn out, useless and unconverted sinful nature corrupted by deceit
1) Salvation is a spiritual union with Jesus described as the death plus burial of the old self and the resurrection of the new self walking in newness of life
2) Paul’s theme in Rom. 6:2-8 –?“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.?For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.”
3. Renewal – “and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,” (v.23)
a. Salvation involves the mind, the center of thought, understanding, belief, motivation, and action?Col. 3:1-2, 10 – “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth… and [you] have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”
b. When a person becomes a Christian, God gives him a completely new spiritual and moral capability that a mind apart from Christ could never achieve?1 Cor. 2:9-16 – “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.”
4. Renovation – “and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (v.24)
a. The renewal of the mind in salvation brings not simply a renovation of character, but transformation of the old to the new self (2 Cor. 5:17)
b. In Christ, the old self no longer exists as in the past; the new self is created in the very likeness of God?Gal. 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
c. Righteousness relates to the Christian’s moral responsibility to his fellow men (the second table of the law, or commandments 5-10)
d. Holiness refers to the Christian’s responsibility to God, reflected in the first table (commandments 1-4)
e. Sin still exists in the believer’s unredeemed human flesh?Rom. 7:17-20 – “So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.”
Conclusion
1. 1 Corinthians 5:17 – “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!”
2. The KJV says “the old is passed away”–it is dead, deceased
3. Brewster’s Millions: the old man in the movie is YOU and ME
4. Why do we submit to the demands of the dead, if we belong now to the living Christ?
