A Changed Life
Notes
Transcript
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.
Change. Change is never easy, in fact, it is one of the most challenging things that we face in the human life. But, it is also unavoidable. I have heard it said that the only thing that will never change is that fact that things are always changing. So true. Situations will always be changing. We have seen it recently with people getting up in arms about the historic drop in the stock market that lasted a whole 2 days. Change will happen. I am sure many of you could think back to your younger years and just imagine how you would be shocked to have known how much things would change. People walking around with a device in their pocket that they could call people with, take pictures and videos with, and have access to all the worlds information. You would have said, “that will be the day”.
But we have witnessed it first hand. Situation and life has changed. We have very little control of the changes in our world. But there is something that can experience change that we do have control over. And that is ourselves.
The Christian life is a changed life. There is no scriptural evidence that can point to us coming to faith and continuing to live the same lifestyle that we were living prior to. And I know that the argument that people will like to go to is the thief on the cross. Yes, he was saved and died. He did not get baptized and he never was discipled and never joined a church. But he did not have the opportunity to do these things. He died. But, even in his last moments, you see his life change in the things that he said.
39 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!”
40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?
41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.”
42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
A changed life. What does this look like for us? Is it selling all of our stuff and moving to Africa to work in missions? Is it quitting our corporate job to go and work for a non-profit? Are these things good things to do? Absolutely, but these are not indicators of a Christ-serving life. Because you can do these things outside of the power of God. You can, as Paul says “walk as a Gentile” and still do these things. So what does it look like? That is the question that we are going to answer as we go through our text today.
Main Point: For those in Christ, we are to put on our new selves, which is the likeness of God
Main Point: For those in Christ, we are to put on our new selves, which is the likeness of God
I used this term, in Christ. For us to talk about what it means to have a changed life in Christ, let’s establish what it initially means to be “in Christ”. To be in Christ means that you have heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and have responded to it in repentance and faith. It means that you have heard and understand that you were created in the image of God but because of the sin of our father Adam, we have this separation between us and God. We try to make our way to him but our attempts are futile. This gap is closed by a sacrifice. And this sacrifice is Jesus. Because Jesus was both fully God and fully man, he is able to make a sacrifice that is an eternal sacrifice, once and for all. And when someone has faith in Jesus that he went to the cross and died for them and that he was raised from the grave, they are saved.
I have met many people who see this as the finish line of the faith. But that is the furthest thing from the truth. See, salvation is the starting line. What happens after that, after someone truly has faith in Jesus, is a changed life. And that is what our passage today is about.
We are going to break this into 2 pieces today. First, to understand our new life, we need to understand the old life.
The Old Self is Hardened
The Old Self is Hardened
Many of you have heard me say how much I like winter time more than summer time. This is a general truth. That is until it gets into the teens and single digits. Where we live, these days are very rare, but do happen on occasion. When this happens, most of the homes in our area are not equipped to handle temperatures this low. The heat in your house may be able to sustain a comfortable temperature, but there is one thing that cannot handle this frigid coldness, water pipes. The water lines in homes are generally in the crawl space and that crawl space is subject to the cold because it is not heated and insulated like the home is. Has anyone ever had their water pipes freeze up? See, you know that it does not matter how hard you turn the knobs on the faucet, that water is frozen and won’t move. It is hard.
This is the same for the heart of the unbeliever. It is hard and won’t move. Paul gives us a great description of what this looks like.
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.
If you have ever been in a court room, you have heard this word “testify”. When you testify, you are making an accurate and truthful statement. In the time of Paul, when you went to court, you had to have multiple witnesses to something to be able to make legal testimony. So this is a very strong statement that Paul is about to make. It is true. Not only to the Ephesian church, but to us today.
He tells us that the truth of the matter is that we are to no longer walk as the Gentiles do. If you know much about the church at Ephesus, you know that this was a diverse congregation. It was comprised of both Jews and Gentiles. Was Paul tearing down part of the church, was he alienating a part of the congregation? See, we have to look deeper than just that because Paul is not talking about an ethnic group of people here. When we keep reading, we understand that Paul is not looking at the ethnicity but, he is looking at their hearts. The call that Paul is making is that we are to no longer walk in the same moral capacity that we have, like the world does. He is calling them, and us, to no longer live like the culture that is around us. For them, the Gentile culture. For us, a progressive, liberal, immoral culture.
The people of the world live in the futility of their minds. What does this mean?
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.
Darkened. Like they are locked in a cellar with no cracks or crevices anywhere for a sliver of light to break through. That is the extent of their understanding. What has caused this darkness? Sin against God Almighty. And because of this sin, they are alienated. Alienated from the life of God. To be an alien of something it means that you are outside of it. Sin has made people be separated from God. Why? Hardness of heart. Cut off from the things of God because of having hard hearts, unreceptive hearts. What does it mean to have a hard heart?
19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
I know we have people in here today who have experience splitting wood. When you don’t split wood very often and spend several hours swinging a splitting maul, you end up with blisters. No one likes blisters. They hurt and sting. The way to keep from getting blisters is for you to have callouses on your hands. Callouses protect your hands from getting blisters because they make your hands hard. In a wood splitting sense, callouses are good. But in a spiritual sense, it is bad to be calloused. To have a heart that is hardened to the point that you have protected yourself from the gospel.
As someone who has come to faith, to think of it like that is hard to picture. That your heart is calloused so that it is protected from the gospel. What is being protected? Sensuality, greed, impurity. A hard heart, a calloused heart is protecting these things from the gospel.
Being restrained can have a positive outcome. Think about our law system. If police officers were sent to serve an arrest warrant on someone and showed up with no form of restraint, then taking them into custody would be much more difficult. Or think about delivery trucks. If the Amazon truck was bringing you packages and the back of the truck had no sort of restraint system for the freight, there is no telling what kind of condition your package would be in when it arrived. Restrained can be good.
These descriptions that Paul gives us here about someone with a hard heart paint a very vibrant picture of someone who has no restraint. Someone who lives their life anyway they want. No remorse, no repercussions. But is this the life of someone who has come to faith in Christ? I think that the answer is absolutely not. The way Paul describes this, this type of person does not have the ability to come to faith outside of the power of God working in them through the Holy Spirit. Can we all agree on that?
If this is true, then we must know that if someone is truly a Christian, then their life will reflect that in their beliefs, morality, and actions. You cannot claim to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus, and continue to live your life with no moral restraint. Following the ways of this corrupt world. Affirming and following the things that God hates like sensuality, greed, and impurity.
This world beats it into us that to be happy, you have to do whatever feels right. You want to sleep with someone who isn’t your spouse? The world tells us that is just fine. You want to affirm that homosexuality is actually something that is righteous and not something that is detested by God? The world tells us that is just fine. You want to never be generous about anything and continue to build wealth instead of be a blessing to others? The world tells us that is just fine.
At what point is the line drawn by people who claim to be followers of Christ that there is a stark difference by the standard of scripture as to what a believer looks like and what an unbeliever looks like? Paul draws a deep line here in this passage. So he has pointed out to the church then and to us now what the unbeliever looks like. Now he tells us about what he calls the “new self”.
The New Self is Holy
The New Self is Holy
I love the distinction that we see in scripture of an old self and a new self. Having the very direct descriptions of what unbelievers appear to be and what true followers of Christ embody. And Paul is one of the most descriptive about this. He has shown us in the previous verses what an unbeliever appears to be. And then he makes a turn in this section.
20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!—
YOU! Who is you? He is talking to the Christians in Ephesus. But we can read this today for us as well. This is not the way that we learned Christ. We didn’t learn Christ through being alienated from God and having darkened understanding. We didn’t learn from the hardening of our hearts and the pursuit of impure things. We didn’t learn Christ from our minds being futile to the things of God.
21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus,
If someone claims to be a Christian, then they must have heard about him and have been taught in him. You cannot be a Christian and know nothing of Jesus Christ. I love to get online and watch sermons from other churches. I really like to listen to local churches and I will often just find a random church to watch. I want to say that I have heard some really good sermons that have really touched me and taught me. But, I have also watched sermons where there is nothing said about Christ. Well, that isn’t a sermon, so whatever you want to call it.
I am concerned that there are many people going to churches week in and week out where they learn nothing about Jesus. They may hear some great music and be entertained and have a charismatic preacher. But if they leave there and are not encouraged by the word of God and over time learn deeper and deeper things of Christ, then how can they grow as a Christian. And if you have never learned anything about Jesus, then who are you following?
We live in a world that is desperate for truth. And we have the truth that they are searching for. Just as Paul tells us, the truth is in Jesus. We must teach Jesus as a church and we, as Christians, must constantly be learning about Jesus. So, as Christians, what should we have learned through Jesus.
22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,
There are times when I am a sucker for a good reality show, and yes, I know that there is not much real in reality tv. But there was a show a while back that I enjoyed called, The Biggest Loser. If you don’t know it, they would have people go to a camp like place with a dietician and personal trainers. All of the contestants would be morbidly obese. And the goal was to be the “Biggest Loser”. Over the course of the season, some of these contestants would lose hundreds of pounds. And even when you are a very large person, when you lose hundreds of pounds, your clothes don’t fit anymore. And they don’t fit anymore, because in essence, you have a “new body”.
Just like these people had to get rid of the old clothes and get new clothes because of the change in their life, the believer must do the same. The old self belongs to the old way of life, the Gentile life and Paul describes it. Why does it no longer belong to the believer? Because it is corrupt because of deceitful desires. The desires are deceitful and the life is corrupt because those things cannot be in the presence of holiness.
John really does a great job in his epistles of describing this. He uses the analogy of darkness and light. Darkness is the old life, and light is the new life. Darkness is the deceitful desires and the light is the life marked by Jesus. These 2 things cannot exist together. You can put yourself in the darkest room imaginable and strike the smallest match that you can find, and it will light the room up. It is because darkness cannot exist where there is light. So we put off the old self, because the old self and new self cannot coexist. So if we put off the old self, then what do we do?
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.
Be renewed. We must be renewed. To be changed from the old self. Paul uses this same picture in his letter to the Romans as well. With them, he puts an emphasis on being transformed. Romans 12:2 “2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,”
Transformed. How are we transformed. The transformation is us putting off, imagine ripping it off and throwing it with all you have, and putting on the new self. And transformation is when something used to look like one thing and now it looks like something else. It is unrecognizable to those who had seen it before.
Paul has told us what the old self looks like. What does the new self look like?
Created after the likeness of God. In this language, there is something so obvious that we almost miss it. I know that many of us have been told that if we can think we can do something, we can create it for ourselves. But Paul doesn’t tell us that we can change ourselves. He tells us that we can learn about Jesus, hear about Jesus, and you might could take the language of putting off the old self as something that we might could do. But, no where is scripture is anyone other than God described as the creator. Paul tells us that our new self is something that is created after the likeness of God. No one can create anything in the likeness of God, other than God himself.
And we know that we cannot do this because he describe the new self as one that has the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. As human, we are born into sin. So there is nothing that is righteous and holy about us. This is why we need the gospel of Jesus. Being saved by grace through faith in Jesus. Then we get the Holy Spirit which empowers us to do these things. We are able to throw off the old self and put on the new self which is righteousness and holiness. And we do this through the power of God in the Spirit of God working in us through the word of the son of God, Jesus, on the cross.
What a wonderful testimony that we have. And just as Paul said as he opened up these verses today that he testifies this, we get to testify this.
Conclusion
How do we testify this today? I want to give us practical ways that we testify this. If you are a follower of Christ, people should be able to look at how you live and know that something is different about you.
you vocabulary changes
your activities change
your actions towards others change
your thoughts change
your thoughts towards others change
What you input into you changes (watch and listen to)
your focus changes
But, what we must realize is that even if all these things change, and we still don’t put on a new self, then we are nothing but wolves in sheeps clothing. You can do all of these things and still not be a follower of Christ. This is how the Pharisees are described in the gospel accounts.
So, if you have never came to true faith in Christ, then all of these things are pointless and you will go to Hell for all of eternity. I once heard someone describe Hell perfectly. Hell is a really real place and eternity is a really long time.
Because of this, God call us to respond to the gospel in faith and give our lives to Jesus. So that is the call today if you have never done this. Turn from your old self and turn to Jesus to put on righteousness and holiness, which only comes from him.
This is the changed life that Paul calls us to. You have seen the changed life that Paul has described. And we know that we can see when someone is living a changed life. And we as a church want to celebrate when someone has had a life change by coming to faith and throwing off the old self and putting on the new self.
Now, I want to wrap this up by talking about us, as a church, celebrating life change. I am going to say something that might make some of you here uncomfortable. But there are some here who have been here the entire time I have been the pastor here, some of you have been here for a year or more even. But there are a number of you who verbally say that you are a follower of Christ, and I am not saying that you are living a life that is contrary to the qualities of a believer. But you still have not followed through in obedience by being baptized as a believer. Of going into a pool of water, declaring your faith in front of the church, and being immersed into the water to declare that you are living a changed life. And if you say that you are a new creation in Christ and refuse to be baptized in recognition of how we are commanded to be baptized, then you are being obedient.
See, the church celebrates life change through the ordinance of baptism. And we want to celebrate many of you who have yet to be baptized. So I am calling you out. What I want you to do it to take out the bulletin right now, take my phone number and text me right now that you are ready to be baptized. And then I will get with you and we will talk about it and find a time for the church to celebrate this.
