Take It All Off!

“Having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” [1]

Some things have no place in the life of a Christian. The elements commonly identified with this dying world were part of your life before you came to faith. But now that you are born from above and into the Family of God, these features have no place in your life. As followers of the Risen Son of God, you need to take off those elements that have no place in the life of the child of the Living God. Take it all off. Don’t allow these dishonourable items to remain on your life a moment longer. Before you leave this service today, take it all off!

GETTING READY TO TAKE IT ALL OFF — Before a change in lifestyle can glorify God, it is necessary to be born into the Family of God. No one is born Christian. It is true that infants and those who are incapable of forming conscious thought are kept safe. They are not saved, in the sense of being set free through their faith. They are not capable of being conscious of their fallen condition. Yet, we know that all mankind is born in sin. The birth of a child is not a sinful act, nor is the creation of that life a sinful act. Indeed, God gave the gift of sex to glorify His Name through giving men and women pleasure, through providing for the propagation of the race, and to serve as a picture of the union of the Bride of Christ with Christ Jesus the Bridegroom. We read of the creation of the first woman for the first man in the Book of Genesis.

The Lord God had created Adam, the first man, and placed him in the Garden of Eden. There, Adam was to work the garden and to keep it, indicating that God has blessed work, giving man purpose in the labour of his hands. However, God noted that man was incomplete. Therefore, we read in Scripture, “The LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’” [GENESIS 2:18].

God didn’t simply tell the man that he was incomplete. God allowed the man to maintain his dignity by discovering on his own that he was deprived, incomplete. Thus, we read, “Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So, the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,

‘This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.’”

The Word appends this explanatory notation. “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” [GENESIS 2:19-25].

Woman makes man complete; she was created for man. Together, man and woman reflect the fulness of Christ and His church. This is evident from even a cursory reading of Paul’s words in the Letter to Ephesian Christians. There, the Apostle has written, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.