Sermon Tone Analysis

The Renewed Mind

Ephesians 4:20-24

 

The Renewed Mind Requires an Outside Authority

 

The next 5 verses offer a stark contrast to the previous 3.  Paul has been describing the garments of the non-Christian, and it has not been a pretty picture.

His description is so accurate, getting to the core of the human problem.

When given a chance to do it their way, people slide into sensuality and animal-like behavior.

Now Paul turns to describing a different mind.

He talks about a mind that has learned Christ and is different in many ways.

Lets see what he has to say about it.

The “you” in 4:20 stands in contrast to those whom he has just described.

The Greek literally and forcefully reads “but you not...”  They would be remembering themselves as recently having been described that way, but there was a clear point at which they gave all that up to be a part of God's kingdom, God's family.

They were now not part of that group any more.

The apostle's next phrase is quite interesting because of how he expresses himself.

He is clearly looking back to some event when they learned about Christ.

He uses an aorist active indicative which points to some point in time, in this case in the past.

Learning about Christ and understanding enough to be saved normally doesn't happen in a minute.

Though salvation does happen instantaneously, learning of Christ and becoming a disciple takes place over a period of time.

So he is talking about the salvation experience in this passage.

Imagine someone coming from pagan background learning about Jesus Christ and placing their faith in Him.

It wouldn't necessarily happen in a minute, it would take place over an hour, hours, days or months.

Yet looking back, a person would say "That was when I learned Christ".

Paul is talking about being on the receiving end of Acts 5:42,

Acts 5:42

    And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.

Salvation is often portrayed as a punctiliar action in the aorist tense.

Matthew 11:29 has Jesus making a altar call saying, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.”

This is in the aorist tense and also says to μανθάνω of me, “learn of me”, as in Ephesians 4. Jesus calls them to make that choice to become a disciple based upon what they know.

It is the clear teaching of the New Testament that we are saved and become disciples of Jesus Christ when we have knowledge of him, his work, and our proper response to it.

A proper response is nothing less than become a disciple, to follow him completely.

This is a very important point because many people make a profession of faith in Christ without a complete knowledge.

I heard a sermon once where the preacher told of leading another man to Christ and when he finished praying he said he felt such peace because he now had accepted Christ, Muhammad, and Buddha.

He obviously didn’t understand.

Our knowledge of God and Christ must be according to the scriptures and if it is not we may end up living weak and defeated Christian lives.

I am not saying that what we know at the exact moment of prayer for salvation that is what is important because we will continue learn and grow.

But it does emphasize how important it is to study the scriptures so that we can learn and grow.

Paul is here emphasizing the knowledge that they had that led them to abandon their former way of life.

Notice that Paul does not refer to their ecstatic experience, or their walking the aisle, or any other deed.

It was their knowledge that led them to change their life.

A related passage is James 4:4.

James 4:4

   “You adulterous people!

Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

When we learn of Christ and become a disciple we make a clean break with our sinful and worldly habits, or at least that is part of the salvation decision.  1 John 2:4, 15.

The one who says, 'I have come to know Him' and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him...If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

The way of God and the ways of the world are incompatible.

This passage speaks powerfully to us in our day on a number of fronts, but let me mention two.

First, the anti-intellectual bent of Christians.

I read the quote from James Orr, written 100 years ago, that Christianity is different from all other religions because it contains doctrine.

It is the religion that values teaching.

But there is a resistance to teaching among the people in the Western world.

Os Guiness has written, “Anti-intellectualism is a disposition to discount the importance of truth and the life of the mind.”

R.C. Sproul affirms the same thing, “We live in what may be the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Western civilization. . . .

We must have passion—indeed hearts on fire for the things of God.

But that passion must resist with intensity the anti-intellectual spirit of the world.”

More particularly, the church avoids learning too.

Way back in the 1960’s Harry Blamires, who was tutored by C.S. Lewis, was writing concerning weakening minds in the church.

He turned out to be the bellwether, the first of many to sound the same alarm.

Blamires wrote, “We speak of “the modern mind” and of “the scientific mind,” using that word mind of a collectively accepted set of notions and attitudes.

On the pattern of such usage I have positied a Christian Mind, chiefly for the purpose of showing it does not exist. . . .

There is no Christian mind. . . . the Christian Mind has succumbed to the secular drift with a degree of weakness unmatched in Christian History.”

More recently, Mark Noll identifies the same problem when he says, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”

J.P. Moreland indicates the dire consequences of such weak mindedness, “The contemporary Christian mind is starved, and as a result we have small, impoverished souls.”

The consequences are more serious than individuals have impoverished souls.

The lack of intellectual engagement has lead to incorrect doctrine.

David F. Wells writes, “Sustaining orthodoxy and framing Christian belief in doctrinal terms requires habits of reflection and judgment that are simply out of place in our culture and increasingly are disappearing from evangelicalism as well.”

(/Truth/, p. 173)

 

Second, our lack of engagement with the scriptures has led us to uncritically accept the some of the most poisonous aspects of our culture.

I don’t want to imply that we can somehow stand outside our culture even though in the midst of it.

However, we don’t have to blindly accept it.

For example, we are all part of this capitalistic society that makes us all into consumers.

Most Christians would argue that cultural things like being a consumer are harmless to our Christian faith.

Let me challenge this assumption tonight.

Being a consumer fundamentally runs counter to living an obedient Christian life.

What does being a consumer mean?

It means focusing on my needs and having my needs met a good as possible.

In fact, if the producer does not meet my needs effectively I will take my business somewhere else.

I may even go in to the establishment and give the owner or manager a piece of my mind.

This is a person who may need to hear the gospel from my mind, not rantings about my needs not being met.

So by virtue of my being a consumer I express my fleshly bent toward selfishness and totally miss out on an evangelistic opportunity.

Is this an isolated, rare result of capitalism?

I don’t think so.

I think that being a consumer has many negative implications for Christians, but that Christians don’t recognize it.

The values at the core of capitalism are not God's.

How important is this?

It is only important if we want to live to God's highest glory.

To clarify let me state once again that I know that we cannot live outside our culture.

And, I believe that capitalism is the best economic system ever created.

However, we cannot afford to uncritically accept the culture as a neutral factor either.

Our culture is primarily shaped by men in the futility of their minds so it will be anti-God.

Let me give one more illustration of the church losing its ability to discern what is right and wrong with culture.

We live in a culture that values experience over knowledge.

Having a celebrity endorse a product is far more valuable than having data to show it works.

What does it matter that Tiger Woods drives a Buick?

More than that, our society believes that everybody is essentially good and can be made to improve their performance.

It is no accident that there has been a virtual explosion of self-help books written and published.

When these things converge, a celebrity who can help you get better, it makes for a powerful product.

Unfortunately, there is a parallel movement afoot in the Christian church to bypass the mind and get straight to the heart.

Experience over knowledge.

There is the feeling that knowing gets in the way of experiencing.

They neglect the fact that Christianity is a religion based on knowing (as I indicated this morning).