Living Out a New Identity

Confession

Pastoral confession: One very significant part of my calling as a pastor is preaching funerals.

Though it is a hard and emotional part of my job, it is also an honor to minister to families and be a part of speaking, what I pray is, truth and comfort to them and those attending.

Here’s the confession: as your pastor, there is a possibility, only God really knows, that I will be asked by your loved ones to preach at your funeral some day.

Now here me, this is not me wishing anyone to die, but over the years there have been moments where I have thought “what would I say about him/her if I was asked to do their funeral?”

I know it is a weird and morbid thought, but you don’t often get a lot of notice when your called on to do a funeral.

I don’t have a folder on my computer filled up with funeral sermons for everyone in the church (I am not that weird), but to you ever think about how you would want to be remembered at your funeral?

Paul has spent the first 3 chapters of his letter painting the glorious picture of our Father in heaven.

His nature, character, power, and handiwork.

And also how He has and is working in and around us to shape us and direct our lives.

So when he begins 4:1 with the word “Therefore” he is pointing us back to that picture as he transitions to how those truths influence and transform us and how we live our lives.

Specifically, Paul is laying out what it looks like to for us to “Walk worthy of the calling we have received.”

What does it look like to be the people God has saved and set free by His grace and through our faith?

Up to the point Paul has described what theologians call “positional holiness”

He has focused his attention wholly on our who we are IN Christ.

Our position with God because of what Christ has done and our faith in Him.

We are saved by grace, redeemed, sealed with the Spirit, promises a great inheritance, a part of God’s family, united together as the body of Christ…and so many more things.

Now in chapter 4-6, Paul’s focus is on personal holiness, or progressive holiness.

In a sense, positional holiness would be like you being offered a new job. At the moment you accept than offer you have been given a new POSITION, the pay, benefits, office, and everything else that comes with it is yours in that moment, but you now have to DO the job.

Personal or progressive holiness is the act of living out the new identity we have received as believers in Jesus.

Paul has already made it abundantly clear that we cannot earn our own salvation (or accomplish our own holiness). By God’s grace, through faith, we are given salvation as a gift for our loving Father.

But how do we LIVE OUT that new identity?

How do we live WORTHY of this call?

What does it look like to WALK WORTHY?

We are going to look at three general points amongst many specific things Paul mentions in these 58 verses.

And I want us to ponder 3 questions as we do.

In the first section, 4:17-24, we see that walking worthy means we have a new way to BE.

New way to BE.

First question to ponder: Who are you trying to be?

The way we dress, talk, and act is often modeled after someone else.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, we are influenced by the people and culture around us.

If you don’t believe me, go spend a week in the Upper Midwest, or the east coast.

Count how many times a day someone asks you “Where are you from?” or how many times you hear someone say a word very differently than you would ever say it.

Where we live influences how we speak, act, and even dress.

Listen to Paul’s words in 4:20-24

Ephesians 4:20–24 CSB

20 But that is not how you came to know Christ, 21 assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, 23 to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.

Paul uses the image of changing clothes to describe what we are do to in this progressive process of growing in Holiness.

Take off the Old self and put on the new self is life taking off your work clothes after a long day at work.

You have been the banker, teacher, supervisor, or whatever all day long, but when you put on your sweats you become something different.

There is an active role in us BEING or LIVING OUT the a life of faith in Christ.

Paul lists the vices we are to put off as believers in Christ.

And then finished chapter 4 with a list of virtues that should be actively growing in our lives.

Ephesians 4:32 CSB

32 And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.

Knowing who we were and who we are now in Christ matters

Our new identity requires new clothes.

Faith in Christ leads us to a new/renewed identity and leads us to put on a new way of thinking and living.

we are to dress according to who we are in Christ.

just like me putting on a football uniform doesn’t make me a football player.

Putting on Christian behavior doesn’t make you a Christian.

Our faith saves us, then calls us and leads us to live according to who Christ has made us to be.

Who are you trying to be?

New way to WALK.

When I was a kid I wanted to be like my dad and I have the scar to prove it.

When I was just round 4 years old, my dad was shaving with a straight razor in our back bathroom. He had laid the razor down for a second to do something as I wandered into the bathroom.

I guess I was watching him and thought “I want to shave like daddy!”

So I hopped up on the toilet, grabbed the razor to start shaving, and cut my thumb wide open.

Several stitches were required and now nearly 40 years later I still have the reminder of trying to be like my dad as I am slowly becoming more and more like him everyday.

We imitate the people we want to be like.

Ephesians 5:1 CSB

1 Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children,

Paul urges the Ephesians to “imitate God”, following that imperative with another imperative that describes what that looks life

Ephesians 5:2 CSB

2 and walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.

Second question: How are you walking?

The new identity we possess as followers of Christ changes the way we “walk”, or how we live our lives.

To imitate God means to WALK like God walks

And the first way Paul describes how God walks is that God walks in love.

To walk in love means to live in a way that isn’t focused primarily on yourself and what benefits you the most.

Specifically, Paul mentions sexual sin, coarse and foolish speech and joking, and greed as the opposite of walking in love, or walking like God walks.

The commonality in all of those is they are fueled by self-centeredness and the worship of one’s self.

That isn’t the way of Christ, how He “walked” in the world, nor should it be true of a genuine follower of Christ.

Secondly, Paul says to imitate God, we “Walk in Light”

Ephesians 5:8 CSB

8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light—

To Walk in the LIGHT means to walk in truth, goodness, and righteousness, to walk in the way of God, exemplified in Christ, and revealed in the Word of God.

Paul lists sexual immorality, impurity, greed, and filthy talk as examples of the darkness we need to avoid and expose in the light of God Word.

There could be lots more added to that list, but Paul’s concern isn’t that we have an exhaustive list of all the things we are to avoid, the Pharisees had already provided that list.

Paul’s prayer and instruction is to test what is “pleasing to the Lord”.

It is far more important for us to live in such a way that pleases the Lord, than it is for us to try and avoid all the ways we can list how we might sin.

God desires for us to pursue our JOY in Him and His ways, not in sex, pornography, the pursuit of wealth, our hobbies, or anything else we could list.

Finally, Paul says to imitate God we “Walk in WISDOM”.

Ephesians 5:15–17 CSB

15 Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise—16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17 So don’t be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.

As Christians, we are called to live according to the wisdom of God.

Proverbs 9:10 CSB

10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

Knowledge and reverence of the God who created the universe are the foundations for true wisdom.

Walking in God’s wisdom isn’t easy as we are constantly bombarded with messages that lead us to question God or draw us away from Him.

To that Paul urges us to “pay careful attention to how we walk.”

Making most of the time we have been given.

Staying sober-minded and tuned into the Spirit’s leading.

And to be devoted to a community of faith that can help us grow in wisdom.

How are you walking?

New way to LOVE.

The third question we must ask ourselves is:

How are you loving?

Walking worthy looks like embracing the loving roles we are called to:

Love one another well- A person in Christian community

Love our spouses well- A husband or wife

Love our kids and families well- A father, mother, son, or daughter

Love people around us well- A employee, boss, neighbor, friend, coach, parent, patron....

How do we want to be remembered?

Your familiar with the saying “Live your dash.”

It means to live the days between the day you were born and the day you die with intention, purpose, and passion.

Most of our days will be filled with normal, everyday stuff, very little extraordinary.

going to work, taking care of the family, cooking, cleaning, and fixing.

But each of those days add up to a whole life and the decisions we make, the words we say, the time we take, the energy we give…all of that adds into the whole.

So what will we be about?

Who will we seek to BE?

How we will seek to WALK?

And how will we seek to LOVE?