Be Made New
Following Christ our Head • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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The Christian is not a person who was bad and is now good. The Christian is the person who was dead and has received a new life. Jesus Christ is now living His life in you. But sometimes we have a tendency to drag our old life along with us as we walk with Jesus and with one another in the church. Paul is going to follow up on last week’s passage about all of us growing together into Christ our head through love by telling us to put off the old humanity marked by an empty head and a calloused heart and put on the new humanity, learning Christ.
Don’t Walk with an Empty Head and a Calloused Heart
Don’t Walk with an Empty Head and a Calloused Heart
Testify in the Lord - Paul has his own story to tell. Jesus had made him new, changed his mind, healed his spiritual blindness, and his whole life had changed. He wants this same thing for everyone. Fullness in Christ comes through a changed life.
This is what Paul is talking about when he says,
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.
“Futility” means emptiness, uselessness, fruitlessness. Apart from Christ, no matter how smart you are or how many degrees you attain, your mind will never attain fruitful thinking. Why?
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.
This explains a common complaint I hear from people. Why does so-and-so not understand…? Why are they so closed-minded? Paul has a very detailed explanation. It’s a spiritual blindness.
All of us can be blind to something here and there in our lives. But people who experience true spiritual blindness like we see here are alienated from the life of God. Spiritual insight comes from the Holy Spirit. As we saw in Ephesians 2, when we are living in our life dominated by the flesh,
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
If the Holy Spirit does not regenerate your mind, you are spiritually dead. You can’t escape the thought patterns of this world, formed by Satan himself. That is power greater than you. It takes a power greater than that to free you and give you new life. That power and that life comes from God. You need somehow to be in the life of God.
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.
Why are people alienated from the life of God? Because of the ignorance that is in them, and that is due to their hardness of heart. Spiritual blindness is not healed with more information. This is why lack of understanding is not solved by arguing with someone or preaching truth at them. We need a change of heart. Ignorance doesn’t come from a lack of information. It comes from a heart that is hardened toward God. An empty head comes from a calloused heart.
Where does a calloused heart come from? We all know to some degree because we’ve all been there. Some people have been so hurt or shamed or lied to and told they could never be loved, or filled with self or pride or lust, they won’t or can’t let God in. You can try to explain God to them, but until they have an open, tender heart, they can’t hear it in any effective way.
It can be painful to watch someone living this lifestyle. Verse 19 says,
They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
Look at the emptiness of this life. I am callous but I give myself up to sensuality. I can’t feel anything, but I want to feel something. This is where addiction to substances comes from. This is where codependency comes from. This is where people-pleasing comes from. This is where religion comes from. We seek a high that can cut through the callouses on our hearts. It makes us “greedy to practice every kind of impurity”. I will try anything as long as I don’t have to let God in.
As Christians, it’s easy to judge people like this. We get frustrated with them, or angry with them. But how does Jesus treat people like this? Paul can testify in the Lord…
His lifestyle before meeting Jesus was seeking the spiritual high that comes from religion. His religion measures progress by keeping more rules, more perfectly than anyone else. Getting more stars on the Sunday school chart. Having more answers than anyone else. And showing your zeal by destroying anyone that threatens your religious bubble. This was Paul’s empty lifestyle.
Then Jesus met him on the road to Damascus. He knocked him off his high horse and made him walk in a new way. He blinded him physically so that he could cure his spiritual blindness. This is the severe mercy of Jesus for people walking in emptiness without the life of God. Verses 17-19 are Paul’s testimony.
Everyone one of us should remember from whence we came. I would be among that number if they Holy Spirit had not regenerated me. Which should give us compassion for anyone still living that life.
But we also don’t need to walk that way any more. I can’t learn Christ, I can’t grow in His fullness, if I hold onto a lifestyle alienated from the life of God. But praise God He can change us.
Learn Christ and Be the New Human
Learn Christ and Be the New Human
Verses 20-24 contrasts the old, empty lifestyle apart from the life of God with what we are experiencing now as Christians. He describes our new experience as learning Christ and being a new human.
But that is not the way you learned Christ!—
A change has happened. You don’t learn Christ by practicing every kind of impurity. But when you are in the life of God, we can learn Christ.
Pause here for a moment. The Christian life is not changing from one set of doctrines to another. It is not gaining knowledge about the vices of one lifestyle and the virtues of another so we can become better behaved people. The Christian life is learning Christ, getting to know the person who is uniting me with the life of God. So, how do we learn Christ?
assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus,
You have to have heard about Him. If you are a Christian, do you ever thank God for the person that first told you about Jesus?
And then we are “taught in Him”. Paul’s language is not normal, and it is purposely so. How are you taught “in” someone? You can be taught about someone, or by someone. But Jesus is a special kind of person. To really learn Him, you have to be in Him. He had told His first disciples,
I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
The Christian life is not a matter knowing about Jesus. It is being in Him. It is a new life in which He lives His life in us and through us. That is the only way we can have the life of God. Because the truth is in Jesus. You won’t find it anywhere else.
assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus,
So, whatever we need to know about living this new life, the life of God, we can learn in Christ.
It also stands to reason if someone is going to teach me in Him, they must be in Him already. If you are looking for someone to teach you in Christ, look for the person who seems to really have Christ living His life in and through them. The Bible can teach you a lot of things, and it guides our experience. It is God’s word to us and it will always be part of the process. But someone who is in Christ can give you the guided tour.
What is the truth we find in Jesus? That we require a new life, a complete change.
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.
The word “self” in these verses is the word for human or humanity. Put off the old human and put on the new human.
So, what does mean? It means new desires and new thinking, resulting in new behavior.
In verse 22, Paul links the old human with a set of deceitful desires that corrupts your lifestyle. At the core of who you are, underneath your thoughts and your actions, are a set of desires. When we are alienated from God, our desires come from a calloused heart. They aren’t necessarily wrong desires, we just seek fulfillment in wrong ways.
For example, we all desire meaning and purpose, hope, happiness, significance, and security. But we saw in verse 18 that our calloused hearts lead to ignorance. Our futile thinking limits us to one way of fulfilling those desires. I do what makes me happy. I serve myself. Which is “self” is a perfectly good translation here.
In our ignorance, we believe we have to create our own fulfillment. So we seek our meaning and purpose in a career, or we become dependent for our happiness on a certain person or group, or we seek our significance in education, or our security in money. In the end, none of those things fulfill us. They weren’t meant to bear the weight and either they or we are destroyed in the process.
So, to put off the old human is to put an end to our old pattern of fulfilling our desires through futile thinking and selfish behavior. I no longer have to create my own happiness.
Paul says in verse 23, be made new. Everything changes. My desires now lead me to Christ. I seek my meaning and purpose, my hope and happiness, my significance and security in Him.
Then our thinking changes. Paul says “be renewed in the spirit of your minds”. That seems like an odd phrase. But he is contrasting the renewed mind that has a spirit with the futility or emptiness of the minds of the gentiles in verse 17. In other words, to have a spiritual mind is the opposite of having an empty mind. Your mind is now full of the truth that is in Jesus. Your thoughts are no longer limited to sensuality and greed. Now your mind has substance. There is a new spiritual person residing in your mind.
We tend to think of spiritual things as less substantial than physical things. We can’t weigh them on scales or eat them for lunch. But Paul says, the new human is the restored image of God. What is more substantial than God? Though He is a spirit being, just one word from Him either creates or destroys worlds filled with physical things. Your new self in Christ is created after the likeness of God.
Paul says that is true righteousness and holiness. Paul had tried to fulfill his desire for meaning and purpose through a religion that could be measured by keeping laws and making sacrifice. His testimony in this passage is that being made one with the life of God as he has learned Christ is the true substance of all that he was seeking in religion. Righteousness and holiness are not a new set of behaviors. They are being made one with God through Jesus. The truth is in Jesus. The spiritual mind is in Jesus, true righteousness and holiness are in Jesus. We want to learn Christ.
What does the new human look like?
If you’ve ever met someone who is very wise, generous, humble, and kind, but also very childlike in their desires, innocent in their sense of humor, pure in their thought life, they’re not running after the latest fad, deeply content, if their life goals revolve around making others happy in God, it’s a sign they have put on the new humanity. When someone delights in the truth that is in Jesus, they have been made new. When that person speaks the truth to build others up in love, they are learning Christ. When they are willing to bear the cost of love and the persecution that comes from living in true righteousness and holiness, Christ, the new human has come to live within. Jesus is the One who, for the ignorance and callousness that was in the hearts of men, endured the cross so that we could be made new.
Communion
Questions for Discussion
How did you celebrate Independence Day?
Can you share about a time when life changed so dramatically that you felt like a different person afterward?
What do we learn about God in this passage?
What does it mean to be alienated from the life of God? How does Paul say that happens in verse 18?
How should we treat people who are living this way?
What do we learn about ourselves from this passage?
What does it mean to learn Christ (verse 20)?
Who is someone that taught you in Christ to put on the new humanity? What did you learn from them?
How would you describe a renewed, spiritual mind?
How will you respond to this passage this week?
Who is someone with whom you can share this passage this week?
