Putting Off The Old Man
Thank you to John Campbell for the Outline.
In today’s Gospel Lesson from Matthew 9, Jesus tells a paralytic that his sins are forgiven. This, of course, shocks everyone. And it really should shock us. The interesting thing is how the paralytic’s friends are shocked more because they expected and wanted a temporary physical healing rather than a spiritual healing. That’s its own sermon.
We also have the skeptics, who see in Jesus declaring the forgiveness of sins a claim that He is God. And it’s true, Jesus agrees only God can forgive sins and He still does.
Addressing His skeptics, to prove that Jesus has authority to forgive the man’s sins, Jesus tells the man to walk. If Jesus can heal a man by His own authority, He must be God, and must also have the power to forgive sins.
Because Jesus intervened in His life, he has become radically different. It is important to note that Jesus did not say to this man, “If you can get up and walk, your sins are forgiven.”
We do not walk to get right with God, but if we have been made right with God we will walk properly, which sets us up nicely to look at our epistle lesson from Ephesians.
Ephesians is interesting, in that it seems to have been put together with a balanced approach to following the greatest commandment, and the second greatest commandment we’ve been seeing come up.
The first 3 chapters of Ephesians open with God’s plan of salvation, being right with God, and why we should love him for what he did. The second half addresses how we live today, with our family in Christ. That’s the model for the lesson choices throughout the year as well.
In a sense, the Epistle reflects the Gospel. First, Jesus takes care of what is most important, the man’s right standing with God. When he can stand right with God, he can walk again with his neighbors. But you can’t walk right in the world if you aren’t right with God who made it.
It's interesting how our fallen world has sought to destroy Christianity, by stressing works, and how we
But Christ teaches us time and time again, how we treat one another matters. Love your neighbor as yourself. He places us in a body, not just leaving us as a bunch of individuals with their Bibles but binds us.
The beginning of Chapter 4 describes that unity. There is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism, and a body to maintain that unity. So, with this in mind, I want to look again at our epistle lesson, especially focusing on verses 17-20. There is something very interesting there.
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. 18 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. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ
To begin, Paul sounds rather serious, adamant, doesn’t he: Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer…
And you know that whatever comes next, you know Paul means it.
Do not walk like the Gentiles in their futility of their minds.
That’s our theme, so what does Paul mean by futile Gentile minds. We know there is no separation between Jew and Gentile in the Gospel. Gentile minds are not futile just because the people don’t have Jewish blood. And not only is he teaching Christians here, but Gentile converts, who came to believe in Christ out of the worship of Pagan gods. In Ephesus, the biggest was Artemis a.k.a. Diana, a goddess of childbirth and fertility. Ephesus was the hub of a fertility cult.
Pin that. In describing what to watch out for, Paul points to the hardness of Gentile hearts, because Gentile hearts have become craven to sensuality and every kind of impurity. Up until the Roman times, Gentile temple worship almost always involved a cult of prostitutes. Priestesses served as temple prostitutes, meant to fulfill the disgusting desires of the depraved.
This is one way in which the belief in the God of the Bible has always been different. Many often critique Christianity saying that it is anti-Women because it didn’t allow women in the temple to run it with the men. Well yes, that’s true, but it is also true that in the temples that women served as priestesses, they served to service the craven sensualities and every kind of impurity that Paul says has no place among God’s people, the cultural sins that the Gentile men lusted after.
This legacy of fulfilling sensual desires in houses of worship had to start, and it begins by putting off the old man, and putting on the new man, as he discusses in verses 22-24. And we have the ability to do it, because of everything that Paul has said before it.
We, however, sit like a beggar wearing an old coat, who when receiving a new coat, just puts that one on too. We want both coats.
We each have two natures, the old man and the new, the fallen Adam and the risen Christ, and there is a constant struggle between the two.
What’s so amazing is that when God’s image is restored in us, we do not become like Adam before the fall, merely neutral or innocent: we become holy and righteous in the eyes of God, just like Jesus. But we can’t just sit their blinking: we are told to walk, and we must walk.
The old nature in you has his own personality. He may be given to lying. The new nature in you does not lie –it can’t– but your old nature wants to do it all the time, says v.25, to save face, to look good. We are to let our new nature in Christ reign in our minds and bodies,.
Maybe your old nature has a temper, Paul says in v.26-27. You may have to work harder than others do to suppress anger. Anger is natural: even Jesus got angry, but anger is not a license for sinful behavior.
Paul warns against sinful anger by telling us not to let the sun go down on our wrath. Playing with anger like a boy playing with matches. Paul then addresses those who struggle with stealing in v. 28 and destructive talk in v. 29.
Each time Paul not only points at what we should give up, but also what we should take up. You struggle with anger, take up patience. You struggle with stealing, work harder, and give to the poor. Failing to obey the apostle in these things grieves the Holy Spirit, v.30, and not only in some abstract sense. The Holy Spirit is a person, not a force. He is witness to our lives, but much more - He is the Lord and giver of life and has sealed us until the day of redemption.
But he is with us, sent by Jesus to into this world to equip us to do what we couldn’t on our own.
When we confess our sins and turn once again to Christ he works on us and in us to produce righteousness and holiness and grace. I’m preaching this sermon series, “We Need Grace” because that is exactly what we need. And that’s what we have in Jesus. We can forgive because Christ has forgiven us. On the cross Jesus paid the penalty for our sins so that we can live. He died so that we don’t have to die in our sins but through repentance and faith can receive eternal life. On the cross Christ took our old self, crucified and killed it, and through his resurrection we have a new self (Gal 2:20). Now we’re just learning to live like that new self, learning to show kindness and compassion and to forgive. Every day we’re learning to think differently in Christ. And that’s my closing big idea. Think differently in Christ.
