Ephesians 4:16-24: The New Life

Notes:

17 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!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Relationship within the Church

Personal relationship with Christ

“Now this I saw and testify (insist!) in the Lord…”

Southern Accent: “I do declare!”

Understanding How Gentiles Works

“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.”

Mental Malformity

“Futility of their Minds”

O’Brien: “Gentile thinking suffers from the consequences of having lost touch with reality and is left fumbling with inane trivialities and worthless side issues.”

Futility: “Meaningless, useless, worthlessness, or emptiness.”

LXX=Word used for everything is meaningless.

Marcas Barth: “With one single word Paul describes

Brain Blindness

“Darkened in their Understanding”

Interpretation of reality is darkened.

Snodgrass: “Intellectually blacked out.” Marcus Barth

Spiritual Issue

“alienated from the life of God”

BECAUSE (they are culpable of…)

Their ignorance (they are culpable of their ignorance!) DUE TO Hard hardedness

Hard hearted: “Lose the capacity to feel shame or embarrassment.” Louw and Nida

Romans: “God gave people over to the desires of their hearts.”

Ephesians: “Paul uses the same word here to say they give themselves over.”

“Culpable Rebellion”

Callous

Giving themselves up to sensuality WITH greediness.

Addictive nature of sensuality:

This is the idol they have bowed down to.

Has a sexual emphasis to it.

To feed “every kind of impurity”

Martin Luther’s definition of Sin: Homo incurvatus in se (“a human being curved in upon self”) was Martin Luther’s definition of sin

Blaise Pascal:

• Pride takes you from God and lust binds you to yourself.

• The sensibility of man to trifles and his insensibility to great things indicates a strange inversion.

• Our own interest is again a marvelous instrument for nicely putting out our eyes.

Getting to know the world for the first time as a church planter.

Living in a Gentile community

Why are bad people so good?

Overly optimistic view of culture. Redeemers of Culture

Too negative? “This is not a discussion about human worth, ability, or accomplishment, nor was Paul unaware that some Gentile philsophers wrestled with ethical questions and sought high morals. The passage is a rejection of the Gentile way of life, not a rejection of the Gentiles as persons… Paul’s statements here are both a rejection of the dominant lifestyle of the society in which the readers lived and a call for them to reject it.” Snodgrass.

Understanding How You Learned Christ

20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus

Stern rebuke.

“This is not how we behave in our family!”

How do we learn Christ?

Jesus as the Truth! What does that mean for you?

“Learned Christ”

“Truth in Jesus”

Mark Noll begins his assessment of the problem by saying, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

“TAUGHT in Him”

How have you been schooled by the Messiah?

Lit: “Just as truth is in Jesus.”

Only time “Jesus” is named by itself.

Not INFORMATIONAL but RELATIONAL

Sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Not merely Martha information, but Mary information.

Do you know Jesus?

Do you love Jesus?

Grow in LOVE.

“The truth is that too many people claim the name Christian without ever learning what it means.” Snodgrass

We never take a break from learning Christ.

Know the cost:

It requires time, talents, money, and CHANGE!

To know Christ is the Experience of Dying and Rising with Jesus.

Gentle and Lowly: The power of Jesus’ LOVE, not the force of condemnation.

Have you been schooled by Christ?

Like a great teacher?

New Self is a Cruciform Uniform

The Cruciform Uniform

O’Brien: Nowhere in literature is it found to put on and off a ‘person’. You can put on clothes, but that’s an external event.

This is about an internal putting off and putting on.

22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,

Example of Cleaning the Bosman’s Barn

Taking off the clothes infected my body.

What does “Put on” mean?

Those were old clothes?

My clothes…

Take him or her off!

Clothes you need to take off?

Happens once! Conversation!

23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,

Mental

Present tense: Keep being made new.

“To be made new” in the spirit of your minds…

Your minds are taken over.

O’Brien: “The sphere of this renewing work, then, is the person’s inmost being (cf. ‘the inner person’ of 3:16), and the implication is that ‘the pattern, motivation and direction of our thinking needs to be changed.’”

John Stott: “‘If heathen degradation is due to the futility of their minds, then Christian righteousness depends on the constant renewing of our minds’.”

24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Righteousness and holiness defines TRUTH

Lit: “Righteousness and holiness of truth.”

You can do it!

Not false righteousness.

Not false holiness.

You are a Christian before any allegiance.

“Do not live like the Americans do with their futile thinking.”

“The more we conform to our society, the less we understand conversion.” Snodgrass

What’s left of Ephesus?

Symbols of a Dead Society.

Ruins of Ephesus: This is what their lust and greed led to…

Selling off the Temple Marble. Rebuilt it. Flood plain. Silting just overcame. City just became less and less important.

But what Lives? What is their Legacy?

This Letter! The TRUTH!

This letter! The word!

Take a look at screen time:

Mirror of our own desires.

Molder of who they want us to be.

You’re going to be look weird! But your legacy will live longer than American Society!

Ephesians 4:22–24: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Colossians 3:9–11: “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”

Romans 6:3, 6: “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?… For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”

Romans 13:14: “Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”

1 Corinthians 12:13: “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”

Galatians 3:26–28: “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”