If I had been at home listening to that, I’d have pressed repeat. That was wonderful. Thank you.
Ephesians chapter 4. It is good to be back with you. I’ve been away for a bit, preaching away last week and then before that some time of so-called vacation. But I was able to catch up on a lot of work. It was helpful. But it is good to be back with all of you.
Ephesians chapter 4. Today we look at the subject of the great change. We’ve read the passage, verses 17 through the end of the chapter. Let’s read again verses 17 through 24:
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. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. 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.
Let’s look to the Lord in prayer.
Our Father, how thankful we are that you are our good shepherd. How we thank you for your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the great shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. How grateful we are that you have, as our great shepherd, provided for us all that you require of us. We thank you for your grace, and we thank you this morning for this portion of your word in which you guide us still, and we pray that you would minister your word to our hearts, lift our hearts to you, help us to see in this word today the instruction you have for us to live in a way that honors you, in a way that reflects our knowledge of Christ. Father, work in us that which you require of us. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
You have heard me say many times, and I’m sure you’ll hear it many times again, that the gospel makes essentially two promises. There is what we might say on the one hand, we can just characterize it as justification. And on the other hand, we can summarize it with the word transformation. The gospel promises us that in Jesus Christ and by our union with him through faith, because of who he is and because of what he has done for sinners, joined to him by faith, we stand right before God, acceptable before him, declared righteous, brought into fellowship with God, made his children and acceptable to him. That’s a marvelous thing.
But the gospel doesn’t stop there; it promises further that it will change us. It will not leave us where it finds us and make us acceptable in our sin. But rather, the gospel promises that God’s grace will make us acceptable in Jesus Christ, yes, but it will also transform us from the inside out. There will be this great change that comes about to those who are in Jesus Christ.
Now, this of course is the one side of the gospel promise that is so easily forgotten, and has been like that over the centuries. We want to say that God has accepted us in Christ, but we tend to forget that that same gospel promises transformation of heart and life. And because of that, of course, particularly in recent generations, we have seen the whole idea of conversion reduced to a mere decision that is made where we get a “get out of hell free” card, and that’s the end of what the gospel does for us.
A passage like this is given to us to put a lie to that kind of thinking and to instruct us that the gospel promises not only justification and acceptance before God; the gospel comes to us promising transformation of life as well. And what the Spirit of God stresses for us then throughout this passage, and as we’ve seen beginning with chapter 4 and verse 1, it promises us that the Christian, if anything, is a person who has been radically changed. And I say radically changed because it’s changed not in just some superficial kind of way, but we are changed people from the inside out.
We saw some of that in chapter two, where that change begins. We were dead in trespasses and sins, but God in his grace brings us to life in Jesus Christ and changes all that we are. Our affections and our appetites and everything about us has been wholly transformed. And now beginning in chapter 4, verse 1, we’ve seen that Paul turns then to apply that in such a way as to say we must be now what we have become in Jesus Christ. We simply call it conversion.
Having been brought by the Spirit of God to see ourselves as we are, lost in our sins, and having been brought by the Spirit of God to see the greatness of Christ and the value of Christ, we go running to Christ in faith and repentance. As Paul sums it up in the Book of Acts: repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And just as that faith expressed and exercised on our way in was anything but a once-and-done expression of faith, but rather the first of an ongoing life of trust and looking to Christ, so also our repentance on the way in, so far from being a once-and-done act, was indicative of the life of repentance as now we come before God, subjecting ourselves to the rule of the Lord Jesus Christ and living under divine control.
In terms of the context here, the whole of the Christian life is summed up in chapter 4 and verse 1, where Paul exhorts us to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called. We’ve been called to Christ, and that has necessary implications in the way that we live. God in grace has come and restored us to himself. And Paul says now that has a corresponding kind of life that must be evident in every one of us.
Or in terms of chapter 3 in verse 10, we saw that God has purposed to set the church on display as a showpiece of his grace. Chapters 4 to 6 then, as we are working our way through this, show us how God is putting us on display before the principalities and powers and showing the great things that he has done in us. So chapters 1 through 3, Paul explains for us in some detail how God has saved us, what God has done through Jesus Christ to restore us to himself. And now in chapters 4 through 6, we find what that life looks like now that we have been brought to Jesus Christ.
And the Apostle Paul in our passage now, beginning with verse 17, sums it all up in just basic terms. Verse 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.” We should no longer walk as the Gentiles do. Obviously, there’s some metaphorical language here. “Walk”—he’s not talking about the way you stride. It’s a metaphor for life. We should no longer live as the Gentiles do.
And even that expression, “no longer living like the Gentiles do,” is something of a metaphorical statement too, isn’t it? After all, we are Gentiles. But this language finds its way back into the Old Testament even. There’s God’s people, Israel, to whom God has given his law and they are to live reflecting his holiness and living out his law and so on. And that’s carried over into the New Testament. There’s “us” and there’s “them.” There’s these people who have received the law of God and are required and commanded to live like it, and there’s those Gentiles who’ve not received the law and they look like it too. And that’s carried over into the New Testament as well.
Paul says basically, essentially here, you’re not supposed to live like the world any longer. You’ve been brought out of that world. In fact, that’s the language John uses, isn’t it? There’s an “us” and a “them.” We are people who have been redeemed by Jesus Christ. We are people who have received revelation from God. And that has some necessary entailments as to how we live.
So Paul begins with this broad statement: we must no longer walk as the Gentiles do. That expression, “walk,” by the way, is something that’s characteristic of Paul. We saw it in verse 1 of chapter 4: walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which we’ve been called. Now he says we must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. If you want to look ahead, we’ll see it again in chapter 5 and verse 2, where he tells us to walk in love. Chapter 5, verse 8: walk as children of the light. Verse 15: walk not as unwise, but as wise. Or as the King James translated, walk circumspectly, looking around, watching all of the dangers and walking wisely as God has commanded.
And what Paul insists on then is that the gospel has real implications as to the way we live. Throughout this passage then, particularly when we get to verse 20 and following, he’s called us to live in a way that’s different from the world (verse 17). Verse 20, and then again verses 25 and following, throughout all of these verses he shows us the sharp contrast between these two different ways of life. There’s how they live—and in fact, it’s how you used to live—but here’s how we live. And he outlines for us something of what it is like to live for Christ and the implications of the gospel.
The Futility of Their Mind
Notice again in verse 17 how Paul traces this sinful behavior back to root issues: “This I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their mind.” What an interesting expression, the futility of their mind. The emptiness of their thinking. This is one of those expressions that the scriptures use to teach what theologians call—I’ll teach you a big word this morning if you don’t already know it—the noetic effects of sin. Theologians have to come up with these kinds of words in order to justify a paycheck. If they didn’t come up with these kinds of things, then how would the church ever employ them and why? So we come up with this word: noetic effects of sin.
The idea there comes from a Greek word that means the mind. The noetic effects are the effects of sin on the mind, the effects of sin on the thinking. Part of the entailment of our spiritual death, stemming back to Genesis chapter 3, is that there’s a deep kind of ignorance, a deep kind of confusion regarding the things of God. We find this consistently taught through the scriptures. Paul speaks of it in many different kinds of ways—the gospel being foolishness to them and so on. And here he says the futility of their thinking.
This is the ignorance of the unregenerate mind, the inability of the unregenerate mind to grasp the things of God, the inability of the unregenerate mind to rightly appreciate the things of God, and even to form right conclusions regarding spiritual things. For example, have you ever considered the insanity—this is not politically correct to talk like this, I realize—but the insanity of idolatry? The prophets mock it, so I’m on good ground here. Here you cut down a tree and you’ve got this piece of the trunk and you carve eyes into it. It can’t see, but you’ve carved eyes into it. You’ve carved ears onto it. It can’t hear, but you’ve got ears on it now. You carve a mouth on it and it can’t speak, but there you’ve got your little god and you stand him up and you worship him. And then he falls over and so you get chains and chain him up around the tree so he’ll stay there, and you worship him. Something about that sounds stupid?
But not just in idolatry outright. Paul is speaking here in broad terms of the unregenerate mind and its inability to grasp spiritual things. Are you frustrated like I am when you see the stars of our society put up on a platform and asked a question about social issues or religious issues or moral issues, ethical issues? First of all, why would anyone care what a Hollywood star has to say about any social issue—morality, sexuality, abortion, whatever? People that can’t keep anything together. But there they sit, and they ask, “Now what do you think about God? What do you think about homosexuality?” or take your pick—family, sexuality, whatever. “Well, I think…” and here it comes. And you know, they haven’t thought at all. It’s not been the matter of studied reflection. It’s just what comes to mind. “Well, I wouldn’t want to believe in a God that punishes us for all the little things that we do wrong.” Oh, there they are. There you have it.
And not just the stars of our society, but the average run-of-the-mill man and woman, the same thing. They have no category for divine revelation. And you ask, “What do you think about…?” “Well, I think…” Whatever comes to mind is what they think now, and no basis for it. Never mind revelation; even empirically, they can’t even look at the consequences of the choices our society has followed and the awful consequences that have come as a result. But still, “I believe that we should do it this way.” And it’s foolishness.
And you want to scream sometimes, and you want to say, “Does anyone care whether or not it’s true?” This god that you want to believe in, this god that you don’t want to… Does anyone care about truth, reality, and correspondence to reality? Does anyone care about that? And you see that, and you see it, and you see it, and every time we ought to think, “It’s just an expression of the unregenerate mind.” The futility of their thinking.
Paul says that’s the way the world is. Without Christ, as he’ll say here, alienated from the life of God, there’s an ignorance that’s in them, and their life reflects it. Deep down, there’s serious confusion, misunderstanding, and it shows itself in the way they live. One commentator puts it: they’re left fumbling with inane trivialities. That says it pretty well. A little more intelligent than most of us talk, but it says it pretty well.
Well, you expect to see something. I mean, after all, these are people made in the image of God. And with that, there’s a memory, if you will, a memory of God. And there’s this irrepressible sense of whatever we would call it—religion, God, Godness. We’re not sure. But because of that irrepressible sense of God, inevitably there are expressions of religion of some kind, and so they go through ceremonies, and they go through various kinds of religiosity, and they get through, and they feel better now. And no one stops to think, “Is it true? Did it do anything? What’s the point of it all?” Well, this is what Paul has in mind here when he speaks of the unregenerate mind as futile, empty. It has nothing to do with their IQ; these are otherwise intelligent people. There’s this dimension that they cannot grasp.
A whole book of the Old Testament is given over to this: the Book of Ecclesiastes. “I’m going to find fulfillment. After all, there’s this great big God-shaped vacuum inside and I know I’ve got to fill it. And so I want to fill it with this, I fill it with that, I fill it with that.” And at the end of it all, it’s vanity and all is vanity and we can’t find it anywhere under the sun.
So Paul goes on and notice how he presses this further. The Gentiles walk in the futility of their minds, “being darkened in their understanding.” I’m not sure what that adds to what we’ve just seen—futility of their minds, darkening their understanding—I’m not sure what it adds, except that it presses the point further. It’s like this thick fog hanging before their eyes; they just can’t see through it. You go to them with the gospel, you press on them the beauty of Christ, the urgency of the need of Christ, and they yawn, or worse. They can’t see it.
The futility of their thinking being darkened, and he presses it further: being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them. Simply put, it’s not that they’re stupid, it’s not that they have a low IQ, it’s just that they have no capacity, no category for this kind of thing.
You’ve experienced it, I’m sure. You sit through a sermon that’s just particularly effective in expounding the glories of Christ, and the urgency of the gospel, and the value of Christ, and the beauty of Christ, and you get through and you say something like, “I don’t know how anyone could sit through a sermon like that and not come to Christ.” You ever do that? I see some smiles. And we forget at those moments, well, that’s exactly the problem. Their mind is futile. This is a category, a dimension that they’re not capable of.
And so verse 18 continues: they’re darkened in their understanding, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, “due to the hardness of their hearts.” There’s just a callousness about them. In fact, Paul goes on to say that in verse 19: “They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” It’s Romans 1 all over again; God’s just given them over to do it their own way. And it’s exactly the worst thing that could ever happen to any individual, for God just to give them over to do it their own way. And here, they give themselves over to pursue whatever it is they want. However extreme or however refined, whatever they think, that’s what they pursue. And being alienated from the life of God, this futility of their thinking, their emptiness, shows this other kind of life that we have been redeemed from.
And this is why we love to say that a Christian—every one of us, man, woman, and child—every one of us in Christ is a walking, living, breathing miracle. God has opened our eyes to make us see. Paul says we don’t live like that. We’ve been made a different kind of people. What a pathetic portrait of humanity this is, isn’t it? Fumbling around in the dark, and they don’t even know it. And this was every one of us before Christ came and opened our hearts. This is the condition that was described in chapter 2, verses 1 and following. We were dead, all of us, we were dead in trespasses and sins. Well, that’s what this rest of humanity is.
But That Is Not the Way You Learned Christ
But now notice the contrast, verse 20: “But that is not the way you learned Christ.” That is not the way you learned Christ. I think it’s a little more pungent the way that the King James translated it: “But you have not so learned Christ.” In fact, if you want to press it here, he’s giving some emphasis to the pronoun “you.” But you, you have not so learned Christ. There’s a difference, there’s a contrast that’s being pressed here. That is how the world is, in its ignorance, the futility of its mind, and it shows in the way of life that they live. But you, on the other hand, you have learned Christ.
In fact, I love the language that he uses here. This is not the way you have learned Christ—not just learned from Christ, but learned Christ. Interesting, isn’t it? In fact, the next expression follows suit: “assuming that you have heard…” Now, if you have my version here, the ESV, it’s “assuming that you have heard about him,” or some of the other versions, “you’ve heard of him.” A very simple, straightforward translation here would read—it just seems a little different from the way we’re thinking—but the straightforward translation simply is “assuming that you have heard him.” Christ the preacher.
It’s one of those marvelous verses that speaks of another preacher involved when the preaching of the gospel goes on: that Christ is preaching. And he’s saying here, when you’ve heard him, and you’ve learned him, well, there’s a big difference. That’s the change. This is the moment of what we call conversion. We hear Christ, we learn Christ, and everything changes.
I know that not every person can remember the moment they came to Christ, the moment of salvation. It’s different with everybody. I wouldn’t try to put everyone in the same kind of mold, but I remember that. I remember this moment. I was a young boy. You’ve heard me say it a thousand times. A young boy, and I grew up hearing the gospel every day, every day, every day, every day. It was the world I lived in. And come that Sunday morning, total surprise, I heard it for the first time. God opened my heart and I saw everything differently. Paul says we have learned Christ. We’ve heard Christ. And what a difference it has made.
This is the testimony of our baptism, isn’t it? We go into the water, come up out of the water, and we say, “That old life’s gone. I’m a new person now. And who I am is defined entirely now by Jesus Christ.” Now all of this is the necessary entailment, the promised entailment of the gospel. This is the promised entailment of salvation—that coming to Christ is more than acceptance. Coming to Christ we find total transformation of life as well.
Put Off and Put On
And just so that there’s no mistaking it, notice how Paul presses that matter further in verses 21 and following: “Assuming that you have heard him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus.” All right, we’ve learned something. We’ve been taught having come to Christ. What is it we have been taught? Verse 22: “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 put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
We have learned, coming to Christ, we have learned to put off and we’ve learned to put on. Now he uses the imagery here—again it’s a metaphorical kind of statement—he uses the imagery of taking off clothes and putting on new clothes. I remember, oh this is years ago, when I was pastoring in Skippack, I visited here one Sunday evening, and Pastor Boyd was preaching, I think from this very passage, and he gave a wonderful illustration of it that every guy, I think, every guy can relate to very well. It made an impact; I can still remember it. Boy, it’s been 10 years probably at least.
He said, “I have a favorite sweatshirt at home that Cheryl doesn’t want me to wear.” Okay, then you guys already know what we’re talking about. I’ve got one—well, I’ve got two now. I had one that I wore for years and Kim just… she would not let me out of the house with it. And finally it ended up with so many holes and the holes got so big it just had to be thrown out. And I really mourned the event and Kim was really happy. “You are not going outside with that thing on.” She wouldn’t even let me go out to the mailbox. Well, now I have some other favorites like that. They’re not quite as bad as that one got, but I go home—I’ll do it today—I’ll go home and I’ll change and that’s the sweatshirt that’ll come on and it’s comfortable. But “You are not going outside with that on.” And so I’ll call her a snoot. And she’ll say, “Honey, there is a long way between that sweatshirt and snootiness.”
Paul’s using that kind of language here. Take off those old clothes. Those ways that used to characterize you, the ways that still characterize the man of the world. We learned coming to Christ to take that off and put on a new set of clothes.
Now this is interesting too, and I want you to see another statement that’s related to that: Colossians chapter 3, where Paul makes a similar statement. We’ll be right back here to Ephesians 4. Notice verses 9 and 10: “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” Notice then, Paul speaks of this same metaphor, taking off and putting on, as something that has been the experience of everyone who has come to Christ. We have put off and we have put on. It’s essentially what Paul is saying in Ephesians 4. We learned in hearing Christ; we learned to put off and to put on.
But now notice here in Colossians 3 verse 12: “Put on then as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another…” and so on. Look at verse 14: “Above all these, put on love.” So is this taking off and putting on something that has been the experience of everyone who has come to Christ? Or is it something that must become the experience of everyone who is in Christ? The answer is yes. This is one of those passages that we find so often in the Apostle Paul where he’s commanding us: simply be what you are.
You learned it when you came in. Take off that old set of clothes and put on a new one. You learned that at the beginning and, in fact, that has been your experience. And now every day of your life must experience the same. Put off the old stuff and put on the new every day. Be what you are, be what you are. Have you died with Christ and been raised with Christ to a new life? Well, then be that way. That’s Romans chapter 6. Are you joined to Christ? First Corinthians 6. Well then be like that; live as one who is joined to Christ. Or Colossians chapter 3: have you been raised with Christ into the heavenlies, and you’re exalted with him in heavenly places now? Well then live like that and set your affections on things above and so on. Be what you are.
And this is Paul’s point here exactly. We learn this on the way in, and every day of our lives we must learn it anew. Verse 23: he uses the language of being “renewed in the spirit of your minds.” Well, how can we be renewed? That’s something only God can do, right? And yet he commands us to “be renewed in the spirit of your minds and put on the new self.” How can we do that? I answer: the Spirit of God works through means. The Spirit of God does not work in a vacuum. It is not just the Spirit at work. It is the Spirit and the Word. And of course it is the Word mixed with faith and so on.
And so Paul says here, recognize the great change that has come about in every one of us. And now work that out. Take off those old clothes and put on the new. Given the remains of sin, every day, every day, every day, I need to be renewed in the spirit of my mind. At the outset of the Christian life, I learned it: put off the old, put on the new. And I can look back to that, and I can see a radical change at that moment in who I am—my affections, my appetites, and all. And yet, every day, I must strive still to be what I am, to be what I have become in Christ.
Specific Applications
Well, that is the broader statement of it all. We come to verses 25 through 32, and Paul here gives us specific applications. And we’ll have to work through these next time, but let’s glance through them quickly.
We have here a series of prohibitions. Don’t be like this, but be like that. Don’t be like this, but be like that. Don’t be like this, but be like that. And we have a contrast with each one. Each prohibition is followed by a positive command—a sin to avoid, and then a virtue to replace it with. And often there’s also this explanatory motive that comes with it as well. We’ll see that in some detail next time.
But notice just first of all quickly:
1. Verse 25: falsehood must be replaced with truth. “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let every one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” Because God is a God of truth, all relationships must be marked by truth, honesty.
2. Number two, verses 26 and 27: anger must be replaced with self-control. “Be angry, do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your wrath, and give no opportunity for the devil.” Interesting addition there in verse 27, isn’t it? The devil’s taking advantage of an angry moment.
3. Number three, verse 28: theft must be replaced with—you would think here, theft must be replaced with honesty. No, he says theft must be replaced with generosity. Verse 28: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” Interesting.
4. Number four, verse 29: unwholesome speaking must be replaced with healthful and helpful speaking. “Let no unwholesome talk,” or my version, “let no corrupt talk come out of your mouth, but such as is good for building up as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” The wide-reaching restrictions that this places on our words and our talking is staggering. It doesn’t say just stop cussing. It says when you open your mouth, make sure it is to bless.
Closely in keeping with that, verses 31 and 32: animosity must be replaced with kindness. No settled resentment, no passionate rage, no settled hostility, but rather kindness and a compassion that forgives and is willing to forgive and ready to forgive. “Be kind to one another.” Surely one of those virtues that we most appreciate in other people is kindness. And notice the standard, verse 32: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.” Our lives, he is telling us, are not just to be nice generally. He’s saying that Christians are not to be just nice generally. Specifically, a Christian is one who is to be kind in the way that is gospel-shaped and Christ-shaped. As God has dealt with us in Christ, so we must deal with one another.
Well, here then is how we have learned Christ. We learn right up front that we must put off and put on. It’s not enough just to put off; we must put on. And it’s not enough just to put on; we must put off the old ways. This, he says, is what a Christian is. We are people who have been rescued by Christ, yes. We are people who have learned Christ in some deep, life-shaping ways.
There’s a passage from the life of Augustine, the towering fifth-century theologian, that I think illustrates this so well. In his former life, I think as many of you know, before coming to Christ, he was very profligate. Sometime after coming to Christ, he said he was walking down the street one day and one of his former lovers came running up, “Augustine, Augustine!” He didn’t pay any attention. “Augustine!” She caught up to him. “Augustine, it is I.” And he looks at her and he said, “Yes, but it is no longer I.”
The gospel promises deep transformation of life. This is what we have to offer the world as proof of the power of the gospel of Christ. We are truthful, self-controlled, generous, kind, and when we speak, we bless. That sounds a whole lot like Jesus, doesn’t it? And that, of course, is the point. We have learned Christ. Therefore, we must put off the old ways and put on the new.
Let’s pray.
Our Father, how we need passages like this. We praise you for the great work that has begun in us. We feel it, we’ve experienced it, we sense it and we love it. And yet, we also sense that it is not done. We thank you for passages like this, by which you will shape us further into what you have called us to be. Make us, we pray, more like Jesus, we ask in his name. Amen.