A New Life
Chris Polito
Ephesians • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 4 viewsWe are a new creation in Christ! The old is gone!
Notes
Transcript
The Walk
The 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.
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.
They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
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,
to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,
and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
If you were here a couple weeks ago I talked about our Christian walk. How we are to walk in a manner worthy of our calling. We were lost, now we are in Christ so what does that walk look like for us as believers.
A baby learning to walk has to have trust.
Trust in parents to help them balance.
Trust in parents to catch them if they are falling.
Trust in objects they hold on to to support their weight.
They hold on to something Take a couple steps as they are still reaching back towards the object that was getting them through the times of uncertain balance.
But really these things weren’t the source of true balance they were just a crutch till they developed into a new person so to speak. One that understood how to distribute it’s weight and and navigate life with out a crutch.
We as Christians aren’t much different than babies. We had things that we trusted in to get us through life’s challenges. Things that brought us a sense of comfort or confidence that if we fell we would be okay.
It could have been things that were actually destroying our lives like drugs, alcohol, an abusive relationship. It could have been something we allowed to shape our identity like our job, our belongings, our role in our family or in our role in society.
No matter what it was. If it was healthy or not. If we were using it as our source of balance in life what is going happen if we are forced to let go of it? We will lose our balance and fall.
Our Christian walk is no different.
It starts with submitting our lives to Christ. And honestly how many of us are going to submit to someone we don’t have trust in?
It’s a type of faith that will take us from...
“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.”
To...
This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.
So the first thing I want to point out is that we see from the text that he isn’t talking to unbelievers. That he is addressing the believers in Ephesus.
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.
So prior to Jesus it was Jews and Gentiles. It was God’s chosen people and everyone else.
But now that Christ has came, died and was resurrected tearing the vail and providing access to God for all who believe it is Christians or those who follow Christ and gentiles those who don’t. So if you’re here and you are a follower of Jesus he is talking to you just as much as the church at Ephesus.
And he is telling us we must no longer live the way we did before we were Christians.
A little background on Ephesus
The Gentiles in Ephesus were particularly sinful. Ephesus was a leading city of commerce and culture in the Roman Empire, the home of the pagan temple of Diana, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Worship of Diana involved the worst immorality of any degraded pagan religion.
That influence made Ephesus a wretched hive of scum and villainy, a twisted and wicked place. Temple prostitution, crime, immorality, idolatry, and every conceivable form of sin abounded.
Many of the Christians in Ephesus came out of that kind of background. In contrast with that evil background, Paul made his appeal, “Don’t live like that any longer!”
Even though a lot of us aren’t coming out of that type of sinful situation it doesn’t lessen what ever it is we are coming out of because all sin causes separation between us and God.
So he starts off by saying it is futile to live like that. It leads to nothing.
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.
Second, he says, it reflects darkened understanding, a result of having turned their backs on God. Their hearts are hard, and as a result, their mind is dark.
He points out that lives separated from God’s holiness are ignorant lives. This is hard for the sophisticated, educated people of Ephesus to accept. How dare someone call them ignorant. Paul did not contend they had no knowledge.
He contended the knowledge did no good in leading them to a lifestyle that pleased God. Without such a lifestyle, their minds did not function properly.
Think about it. Someone could have all the knowledge of God they wanted but without divorcing themselves from the lust, the immorality the debased ways of the world what good would it do them? None because their hearts would chase after those desires before their intellect would pull them away from them. When we are led by hardened hearts we can easily find ourselves chasing afters our desires that can lead us straight to destruction.
So he starts with a command. You must no longer walk the way you once did.
Then he moves on to warning. A hardened heart will lead you to a darkened understanding and a life alienated from God.
Then third he gives some raw examples of what that looks like. He says don’t believe me just look around and tell me what you see. What you see is...
They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
Their hard heart, which yielded a darkened mind, led to an unholy life.
Paul says they have given themselves over to sensuality, a life without concern for the consequences of their actions.
Their desire for sensual pleasure overrode every other regard. No matter what they did, such desire was never satisfied.
They always wanted more. Lust not love dominated their lives. Such Gentiles certainly did not serve as models for the church. They were not mature. They did not bring unity.
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,
4:20–21. In contrast to this former way of life, the Ephesian Christians were to live righteous lives. Paul says, “This is not how you learned from Jesus to live!” “Your hearts are no longer darkened. You have learned the truth, which is to be found in Jesus.”
to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,
and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Picture those that have very dirty job’s returning to their house after a long day’s work. So a coal miner, a mechanic, construction worker what ever it may be. He comes in with his work boots on covered with mud, his overalls soiled, his hands filthy, and accompanied by a dominant odor. Imagine that he walks in the house, dressed as he was at work, and reclines on the couch? How would his wife respond?
She would likely say (among other things), “Take off those clothes. Put some clean clothes on. Take a shower! What were you thinking.”
This is basically what the apostle says in Ephesians 4 when instructing believers in how they should live. We see in verse 22, put off your old self. Then in verse 24, put on the new self. And sandwiched in between is this in verse 23, be renewed in the spirit of your minds.
Put Off the Vices of the Old Self
Put Off the Vices of the Old Self
Think of the old self as the filthy clothes that accompany the workday. They are the vices, the worldly habits of sin. Paul says, put those off. In another place, he says, put them to death
For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
He says kill them.
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
These manifestations of sin and depravity must be dealt with a holy intolerance to them.
Why? Because they belong to the old you, your former manner of life. They are from the old world system and order. And because the old self is corrupted through deceitful desires.
The old self is warped and inclined in itself with wrong desires and lusts. Paul is saying, put it off. Put it to death.
He is pointing out the urgency of this to people that are living in a world that is doing everything it can to domesticate their sinful behaviors. Sound familiar?
We can’t domesticate sin; it’s dangerous and deadly.
Marty- Right around my senior year of high school myself and a few of my buddies got caught up in the uprising of Oxycontin.
Oxycontin was an opiate that was way stronger than anything on the market at that time.
While we were all abusing this medication equally there was one difference among one of my friends and the rest of us in those early days.
One of my friends found a way to try and domesticate his sin/addiction.
Not only was that medication way stronger than anything else it was vastly over prescribed. So you had a handful of us at 18-21 years old abusing this medication when ever we could get our hands on it but my one friend found a doctor to start prescribing it to him along with other dangerous medications.
So you have a most of us getting them on the streets when ever we could but my one friend was now supplied by a doctor. So it went from something we all we were doing and knowing the whole time it was wrong to my one friend thinking there is no problem now. I don’t have an issue what I am getting comes from my doctor.
That battle with addiction lasted longer for some of us than others. We knew what we were doing was wrong and when you know something is wrong God can work through your conscience to draw you away from that.
The problem lies when you don’t think it is a problem. My buddy that had domesticated his addiction would be 44 years old right now but unfortunately he passed away from an overdose 20 years ago. His dad actually ended up dying the same way from the same meds from the same doctor a few years later.
So often, this is the way it is with the sin of pride. We may think we have it domesticated, but in a moment we don’t expect, we find out who the real master is.
So Paul tells us to put off our old self, because we have been made new in Christ. There are many scriptures about this with many great truths for us to cling to.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Truth: You are new in Christ, even today.
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices
and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Truth: Your old, sinful nature is dead. You learn to grow in your new identity in Christ as you learn more about His character.
“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.
Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
Truth: God calls us to let go of “former things,” so we can cling to our new identity in Christ.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,
Truth: God continually makes us new. Every moment of every day brings a fresh beginning.
Renew Your Mind
Renew Your Mind
How do we learn how to do this? We see in verse 23 that we are renewed in our minds. This is where the battle takes place. In the 21st century, the mind is a neglected territory. Too often, we look past the mind (what we think) to focus on the heart (what we feel and love). But the heart is led by the mind. And it’s only changed by the renewal of the mind.
In another place, Paul says that we are not to be conformed to this world’s manner of thinking, but rather, we are to be transformed by the renewal of our minds.
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Our minds are never neutral. They’re always being shaped. They’re always being conformed.
The question is, what are they being conformed to?
Who or what is shaping them?
How are they being shaped?
This is part of what it means to live as a Christian. Our new life in Christ transforms how and why we live.
A new life means a new walk.
Put on the Virtues of the New Self
Put on the Virtues of the New Self
And then we are to put on. We are to put on the virtues of this new life in Christ.
And, again, Paul shows us that this is not just a list of things to do but an overarching framework established. He not only tells us how to live but also why. We are to put on these virtues; these acts are consistent with what God has called us to be. Because this is how God has remade us. It’s who he has made us to be.
If you are looking for a list of what to put on it’s everything the Bible tells you to do.
If you’re looking for something a bit more concise, it’s to remove yourself as the center of the universe and put God there.
And as you do make your decisions and live in accordance with what he says and for the reason that God says.
And this is what he gives us in the next several verses (and throughout a lot of Ephesians). Next week Pastor Tony will take us through some practical examples of what this new life should look like.
Paul will list things like...
(1) Put off lying and speak the truth to one another.
(2) Deal with your anger promptly and properly, lest you leave a house key for Satan.
(3) Don’t steal, but work hard and honestly, so you can share with those in need.
(4) Instead of being careless, consider how to say what is most appropriate and life-giving to others.
(5) Do not grieve the Holy Spirit.
(6) Forsake the fleshly reflex that pivots on self and instead dispense grace by imitating Jesus.
Habits are tough to break. By very definition, they are things we are accustomed to regularly doing. One of the reasons why they are tough to break is because of how they interact with our brains. There is nothing more habitual for us than sin. This is why we must work tirelessly and tenaciously to deal with our sin. We do this with the regular priority of putting off, renewing our minds, and putting on and most importantly the ongoing ethics of confession and repentance. We will never turn away from sin if we are not grieving over it when it occurs.
So in closing I want to say I think we do a fair job at preaching the gospel to you guys. Pointing out that all have sinned. Everyone of us. Showing all the ugly selfish sinful ways that we put our own fleshly desires before God.
But I don’t want this beautiful message of God loving us so much that he sent his son to not just die for our sins but to take the time it takes to slowly but steadily shape us back into the people he designed us to be.
Paul says in...
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
So if your beating yourself up because you find yourself doing the same things over and over again I’d ask you are you grieving over those things ?
Are you practicing confessing your sins to the Lord?
Because if you say yes to both of those things I don’t think a true biblical repentance of turning away from those things is far behind.
One degree of glory to the next.
Think about a college degree. Those take time. 2 year. 4 year. 6-8 years.
Heck think about it in measurements. On my miter saw one degree of movement isn’t very much at all.
But God is moving you in a different direction. One that is leading you towards him. The you that was strictly serving your flesh, only pleasing your desires has now moved one degree off that path, and next is 10, them 20, then 45, then 75, then 90 and at 90 degrees you’ve turned a corner and are heading a different direction. The most beautiful part is God won’t stop till it’s 180 degrees and you are no longer headed towards the world but straight towards Him.
Let’s Pray.
