The Way of Holiness (Ephesians 4:17-24)

Introduction

What is the aim of your Christian life?

I’m asking, what do you focus your attention and effort on most days?

There are many good targets we might aim for:

We ought to be good (virtuous or commendable) men or women.

We ought to grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We ought to strive for increased wisdom (or the ability to apply biblical truth and principles in a wide variety of situations).

We ought to pray for and work for growth in the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).

But what would you say is your main or overarching or comprehensive goal?

Do you know that God has already told us what His main or comprehensive goal is for Christians? It shows up here in our passage this morning (in v24) in the form of an implied command – “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24).

God’s goal for His people is to create (or re-create) them in righteousness and holiness – to make them like Him.

Elsewhere, the Apostle Paul commands Christians to “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God… 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” (Romans 12:1-2).

In other words, God intends for His people to live as devoted unto His service, aiming for lives of holiness, doing what is acceptable according to God’s will.

And in Romans 8, the Bible tells us that God’s “purpose” for those He “foreknew” and “predestined” for His salvation is to “conform” them to “the image of his Son” (Romans 8:28-29).

Brothers and sisters, we are not to be conformed to the thoughts, words, and deeds of this sinful world, but we are to be conformed to the kind of thinking, speaking, and acting that reflects the image or character of Christ.

Today is my last of three sermons which highlight Three Reformers – Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. As I’ve said repeatedly, it has not been my goal to preach on three men, but rather to celebrate and affirm important contributions each of these distinct Protestants have made to Christian belief and practice.

During the Protestant Reformation, Ulrich Zwingli recovered the priority of the Bible in the life of the gathered church. He preached expositionally through books of the Bible, and Protestants have been prioritizing this sort of preaching ever since.

Martin Luther is probably the best-known reformer, and he is still (I think) the classic explainer of the doctrine of justification. If you want to know what the Bible means that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, then Luther is probably the best person to read (other than of the biblical authors).

Today, our focus is on John Calvin. Calvin is not usually as well-known as Luther, but for some reason, Calvin is the most polarizing reformer – some Christians love him, and others hate him. Whatever you think about Calvin, I encourage you to read from Calvin himself before you decide whether he was good or bad. I think if you actually read Calvin, you’ll probably have a hard time speaking ill of him.

Calvin was about as diligent and sincere and thoughtful of a Christian as you’ll ever know. He suffered constant physical ailments throughout his life, he and his wife lost an infant child to death, and Calvin experienced both incredible wins and crushing losses during his pastoral ministry. Through it all, Calvin wanted to live and to help others to understand the ordinary and meaningful Christian way of life.

Calvin created the first Protestant systematic theology, and he wrote commentaries on most books of the Bible, so it’s hard to narrow down just one primary contribution Calvin made to Christianity. Every Protestant (church and Christian) bears Calvin’s influence, whether they realize it or not (even those who don’t like him). But I think Calvin’s most notable emphasis on Christian living and thinking may be on the subject of holiness – an all of life effort and aim to be conformed to the image of Christ (i.e., to submit to God’s conforming word and rely on God’s transforming Spirit in every way).

Let’s consider this subject today, and let’s look together at a passage of Scripture which highlights holiness… both as a gift of God and a command for Christian living.

Scripture Reading

Ephesians 4:17–24 (ESV)

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.

Main Idea:

The all-encompassing goal of the Christian life in this world is holiness, which includes putting off the old self and putting on the new with God’s help.

Sermon

1. The Way of Vanity (v17-19)

The natural way of living in this world is vain, dark, and sinful (i.e., unholy).

A characteristic of our culture (at least for a while now) is that of tolerance. Many schoolteachers, journalists, legislators, human resource officers, academics, politicians, and all kinds of cultural influencers seem to promote a level of tolerance so extreme that they are quite intolerant of anyone who is not tolerant.

Tolerance (according to Merriam-Webster) is the ability to express sympathy or to indulge beliefs or practices that differ or conflict with one’s own. In our day, tolerance has become a full embrace of relativism and liberalism.

Relativism is the idea that all knowledge is relative, including ethics – that true and false, right and wrong, these are completely dependent on the person or people who hold them. Relativism in practice means that nothing is actually true or false, right or wrong… it just depends.

Liberalism is similar, but it seems to me that liberalism is the outworking of relativism. People who believe that all knowledge is relative and that all moral standards are dependent (upon perspective and circumstance), they tend to be open-minded to every new idea and every new way of living… so long as it’s not at all traditional. They tend to be pretty hostile to the ideas and ethics of the past – those ideas and ethics that gave them all the social goods and stability they now enjoy.

It's ironic just how intolerant relativistic liberals can be!

But this way of thinking and living is not new. Every generation, from Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, and every society of humans has been eager to embrace a worldview and a way of life that is contrary to God’s truth and moral law.

Remember the ancient serpent’s tempting words in the garden – “Did God actually say?” (Gen. 3:1). Sinners want to believe anything other than what God has said, and sinners want to do everything God has commanded us not to do.

This is why the Apostle Paul says (in our main passage) that the “Gentile” way of “walking” is “futile” or “vain,” “dark,” “ignorant,” and “callous” or “shameless” (Ephesians 4:17-19). He’s using the word “Gentile” here to refer to all those who do not have and/or do not obey God’s word. It is those who remain “alienated from the life of God” because of their “ignorance” (v18).

Friends, there is no such thing as a neutral way of life for humans in this world. To live according to God’s truth and God’s commands is to live according to holiness; and to live without God’s truth and against God’s commands (i.e., to live in opposition to what is authentically true and good and beautiful) is to live according to unholiness or unrighteousness – in other words, it’s vanity, darkness, and sin.

The drunk who gives himself up regularly to a state of drunkenness is not just making a simple mistake.

The young man who regularly views adult material online is not committing a victimless crime.

The older man who fritters his twilight years away in self-indulgent luxury and distraction is not just missing out.

He is living a futile life, he is demonstrating an ignorance about what is truly good, and he is practicing rebellion against the God who made him.

He is shamelessly embracing a way of life that alienates him from God and from those who love him.

The adulterer who gives herself up to a man that is not her husband is not just indulging her emotional and physical desires.

The young woman who pursues a career above marriage and children is not being empowered.

The older woman who spews bitterness and resentment is not just hard to be around.

She is embracing a life of futility, she is ignorantly trading what is truly good for what only feels good, and she is following a path away from the God who made her.

She is shamelessly walking in such a way so as to alienate herself from God and from those who truly love her.

So it is with the persistent liar, the illusive thief, the disobedient child… every effeminate man, masculine woman, and sexual deviant… all the greedy professionals, the negligent fathers, and selfish mothers… the lazy, the prideful, the hypocrite, and the overt idolator (those who worship any but the God of the Bible or practice any religion other than the one God has revealed as true).

It may seem like I am being incredibly intolerant here, but I am saying that it really does matter how we live. There really are only two ways to live, and I am saying that the way of vanity is truly self-destructive and soul-destroying. Tolerance for wickedness and sin may seem charitable or kind, but I’m saying that a life of unholiness leaves a wake of dysfunction, a trail of pain, and a legacy of regrets.

Brothers and sisters, this life of futility, darkness, and sin is what Christ calls us to leave behind… this way of vanity and unholiness is the path we (Christians) “must no longer walk” (v17).

The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the announcement that God offers forgiveness and blessing to those who would simply turn away from sin and trust in who Jesus is and what He has done… And this same gospel calls repenting and believing sinners to a new way of life – a life of holiness and Christlikeness, a life of obedience and self-discipline… a life of killing sin, not entertaining it.

If we are believing ones, if we are trusting in Christ, if we are calling ourselves Christians, then we must now make it our goal to “walk” the way of holiness… to live the way we are being “taught” in Christ… to put off the “old self” and put on the “new,” which is “created” and being conformed to “true righteousness and holiness.”

This is God’s goal for His people, and this is what we desire for ourselves if we are truly counted among God’s people.

2. The Way of Christ (v20-24)

The Christian way of living in this world is renewal toward holiness, including putting off the old self and putting on the new.

There is a sense in which the Christian life does not begin until or unless a sinner is subdued or overcome by Christ. One of the most common discussions I have with people who think of themselves as Christians centers on trying to help them figure out if and when they were actually converted or saved or born again.

In our neck of the East Texas woods, it’s common (at least it still is for now) for people to have some basic understanding of the gospel.

they usually know that Jesus died for sinners,

they usually know that people must believe in Jesus,

and they usually know that Christians ought to be (in some way) connected to a church (though they may place the lowest priority on actually being at church on Sundays).

It's also common for people to have been baptized at some point during their lives – usually when they were a child or teen. But the testimony I often here is one where the person heard the gospel, got baptized, and then continued a life of a lot of unholiness for a long while.

It may certainly be that a sinner can become spiritually alive and still wallow in sin (at least for a time). Christians still sin, and sometimes Christians sin pretty big and for a long while.

And yet, I think a pretty good indicator of spiritual life (genuine conversion to Christ) is the presence not only of conviction but also of repentance.

It’s one thing for us to feel bad or guilty because of our sin, but it’s another thing entirely for us to start making plans to avoid sin or for us to take action to kill our sin. And this is more than mere self-discipline; I’m talking about going to war against sinful desires that maybe no one else knows about, sinful behaviors for which people usually give us grace, and sinful ways of thinking that may not seem to matter all that much to others around us.

I can start eating less and exercising more out of a sense of pride or egotism. I can also start voting republican and listening to pop-Christian music because I’d rather people think of me as “conservative” than think of me as some crazy liberal. But if I start trying to eradicate greed or lust or selfishness or bad theology in my life, that’s evidence that God is probably at work in me.

John Calvin didn’t say much at all about his own conversion, but he did speak to this idea of being subdued or overcome by Christ – having his own will and mind and desires redirected by the God who saved him.

Calvin said, “since I was too obstinately devoted to…superstitions [that I could not] be easily [removed] from so profound an abyss… God, by a sudden conversion, subdued and brought my mind to a teachable frame… Having thus received some taste and knowledge of true godliness, I was immediately inflamed with so intense a desire to make progress [in it], that although I did not altogether leave off other [pursuits], I yet pursued them with less [enthusiasm].”

Calvin had been a student of law, and he intended to pursue a vocation of nobility, but he threw himself into the study of the Bible, and he began a life of whole-hearted devotion to growing in Christian holiness and Christlikeness.

Now, I’m not saying that a Christian has to give up on any career outside of the local church. This is not at all true. Most Christians have served and should serve the Lord in jobs and roles that are not directly related to the life and function of the gathered church. I hope more Christians will think of their non-church job or labor as a service to Christ and others.

But every Christian (whether he be a pastor or a machinist, if she is a teacher or a mother, if he is a ditch-digger or a burger-flipper, if she is an accountant or a home-maker)… every Christian must make it his or her aim in life to grow in holiness, to put off the old self and put on the new.

Friends, a Christian accountant is not just someone with a cross on the wall in his office, but an accountant whose books you can trust because he would sooner leave his job or torpedo his career than fudge his numbers.

This is the sort of change the Bible is talking about in v20 of our passage today. The Apostle Paul says that the way of vanity, darkness, and sin is “not the way you learned Christ!” (v20). No, the “way” of the Christian is utterly “new” (v24).

The language we see here v20-24 seems to sarcastically imply that if we don’t understand this life-transforming and redirecting reality of Christian living, then we must not have “heard about” Christ or we must not have been “taught” what is basic to being “in” Christ (v21).

In other words, if our lives are not being transformed from the way of vanity to the way of Christ, or if we ourselves are not putting off the “old self, which belongs” to the way of vanity and putting on the “new self which is created after the likeness of God,” then we may need to revisit the question – “Have I really understood and believed the gospel?” or “Am I really a Christian?”

Friends, none of us are as holy as we ought to be, but if holiness is not a major concern of yours, or if growing in holiness is not something you think much about, or if pursuing holiness doesn’t cost you much energy or attention, then it may be that you are still walking the way of vanity and not the way of Christ.

The Christian way of living in this world includes actively putting off the old self and putting on the new. And if you’re a Christian, then this is already what you want to be doing every day.

Let’s me point out several ways we might give ourselves to ordinary Christian living – the way of holiness or the way of Christ. As Paul goes on in Ephesians 4, he offers us some specific applications that we can take to heart. I will note five of them.

Put away falsehood and speak the truth (v25).

We ought to make a solid effort to know what’s true (according to God’s word) and to speak it… about ourselves and others.

No good ever comes from believing or saying what is false, so we should try to get rid of false thinking and false words.

Be angry, but don’t sin in anger or hold onto your anger (v26).

Friends, there is good reason for us to be angry sometimes, but we must not let our anger lead us to sin, nor should we let our anger fester within us.

We can be angry, but we ought to tell our emotions what to do, not the other way around.

Don’t give an opportunity “to the devil” or to temptation (v27).

Brothers and sisters, this is a principle that has a whole bunch of everyday applications.

When you sin, consider, “What were the circumstances?” or “Why did I believe a lie in that moment?”

As the Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthains 6, “not all things are helpful… and… I will not be dominated by anything” (1 Cor. 6:12).

What do you do or see or hear that often leads you into sin?

Get rid of that stuff! Don’t give opportunity to temptation!

What do you do or see or hear that often leads you into holiness?

Make it a priority to add that stuff to your life!

Don’t steal but do good and profitable work (v28).

This is a specific command about work, but the principle is broader than that – Paul is calling upon Christians to understand the root of their sin… it is a twisting or a corrupting of a good thing.

Do you want something of value, but you can’t afford it?

Well, don’t steal it! Instead, learn what it means to do good work and earn a profit!

And then, make good use of the resources you have.

This same principle can be applied to virtually any sinful inclination we have.

Do you tend to be prideful and selfish?

Well, don’t just try to think less of yourself; turn your attention a bit more toward others!

Do you tend to be harsh or unforgiving?

Well, don’t just try to be kind; go out of your way to express forgiveness to those who’ve wronged you.

Don’t speak corrupting words but edify with your words (v29).

This one is like the one before, but it’s especially aimed at our words.

Don’t just try to say less stuff that cuts or kills others around you; think of how you might say more stuff that builds them up or encourages them in the Lord… encourages them in righteousness.

Friends, the Christian way of living in this world is renewal toward holiness, including putting off the old self and putting on the new.

This is not just for super Christians; this is for every Christian.

We must not only be those who believe that Christ has died for our sin, we must also be those who make war against the sin that still remains in us – that’s the sin for which Christ died, and we ought to make it our aim to eradicate that stuff from our lives (as we are able).

Of course, we will never be able to get rid of sin entirely in this life, but this should be no excuse for us to keep on sinning. Rather, we ought to admit our weakness, and we ought to rely upon God’s help as we strive for holiness.

3. The Help of God (v24)

God makes the Christian holy, and God helps the Christian grow in holiness.

Note how our passage speaks of the righteousness and holiness that Christians are to pursue. It is not something we have to earn by our effort or achieve over time. Rather, it is something God has already done and is doing in us… and we are to cooperate with God’s Spirit as He works holiness in us.

The Apostle Paul says that Christians are to “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). This is a past-tense reality that produces or generates a present-tense reality.

And the Bible speaks like this in many places.

In 2 Cor. 5, the Bible says, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).

And in Colossians 3, Christians “have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of [God]” (Col. 3:10).

And in Romans 6, Paul says, Christians “were buried… with [Christ] by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).

Friends, to be a Christian is to be one whom God has already made holy or righteous or new. This is a fact. It is a present-tense reality.

It is our union with Christ, which God Himself has done, that makes us holy; and now God has begun the work in us to make us practically what He has made us positionally… and we must strive toward holiness with God’s help.

John Calvin said it like this, “When mention is made of our union with God, let us remember that holiness must be the bond; not that by the merit of holiness we come into communion with him (we ought rather first to cleave to him, in order that, pervaded with his holiness, we may follow [wherever] he calls), but because it greatly concerns his glory not to have any fellowship with wickedness and impurity.”

In other words, Christian are bound to God by holiness – He has made the believer holy in and through Christ; and therefore, we ought to strive to eradicate all the wickedness and impurity that remains in us (practically), because God cannot have fellowship with such things, and we do not want to be associated with them.

Calvin went on, “[God] tells us that this is the end of our calling, the end to which we ought ever to have respect, if we would answer the call of God. For to what end were we rescued from the iniquity and pollution of the world into which we were plunged, if we allow ourselves, during our whole lives, to wallow in them?”

In other words, since God has rescued those who believe from sin and corruption, and since God’s own goal for His people is holiness, then what in the world are we doing if we continue wallowing in the very sin and corruption God has come to rid us of?

No, this is not the way of Christ. This is not the way of Christian living.

Brothers and sisters, the all-encompassing goal of the Christian life in this world is holiness, which includes putting off the old self and putting on the new with God’s help.

We needed God to come and scoop us from the mire of our sin and to clean us up for life with Him… And He did!

We still need God to ongoingly exercise mercy and compassion on us, because we still sin, we still think and speak and act in ways that are corrupt and shameful… And He does – He is rich in mercy, and His mercies are new every morning!

And we need God’s help as we strive to live in the new way He has called us to live – the new way in Christ, the new way of holiness, the new way of ordinary Christianity… And He is eager to give us exactly what we need!

May God help us to trust Him for the holiness that only Christ can give. May God help us to rely upon His aid as we strive for holiness in our everyday lives. And may God grant us increasing success as we make it our aim to put off the old and put on the new… walking as children of God, aiming for holiness because our Father in heaven is holy.