Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] All right. Hey, everybody. We're gonna be in Ephesians 4 tonight. As always, I'm excited and humbled to be able to preach on Sunday.
[00:00:13] But before we get started, I wanted to let you know a little something about me.
[00:00:18] It applies to the sermon, I promise.
[00:00:21] I love listening to rock music. To good rock music.
[00:00:25] And especially good Christian rock music. Which is hard to come by sometimes.
[00:00:31] And I just find the passion that's sung with, like, rock or metal music.
[00:00:36] Just to be very honest.
[00:00:39] And while we shouldn't get our theology from songs all the time. Please don't do that.
[00:00:44] There is one thing that came to mind. When I first started reading through this passage.
[00:00:48] And it just got stuck in my head.
[00:00:51] And so I'm a huge fan of the band Skillet.
[00:00:54] Not every album they put out is amazing, so. But they do have some good ones. And they've been doing it for 19 years. So they're bound to have some that are bad just based off of those numbers. But personally, what I like about them is the lead singer and his wife are very serious about good theology.
[00:01:11] John Cooper, who is the lead singer. Wrote a book a while back that I thought was going to be really bad.
[00:01:18] I mean, I bought it anyways, but I thought it was gonna be bad just based off of the title. But it really was like this deep philosophical dive. Into the liberalism that's in our culture today. And how that affects Christian theology.
[00:01:33] And, man, I was just blown away by it. Anyways, what's it called? Oh, man, I don't remember now.
[00:01:46] Great illustration. Thank you. I'll look it up. I'll let you know afterwards what the book is called.
[00:01:53] It's on My Kindle.
[00:01:55] Anyways, I'll stop talking about Christian rock and Skillet and all that. I promise I'll get to my point. But what the point is is that one of the most well known songs has a song. And it's titled Monster, Right? And the chorus says, you know, I feel it deep within. It's just beneath the skin. I must confess that I feel like a monster. And it's this betrayal of this internal battle. Between our old self, the monster, and our new self, who is in Christ.
[00:02:25] Sometimes our old selves still creep up on us.
[00:02:28] They sadly don't vanish instantly overnight. And the passage that we're reading tonight. Reminds us of our new identity in Christ.
[00:02:37] We're no longer what we once were.
[00:02:40] We are no longer slaves to the monster we were. But we are free in Christ.
[00:02:46] And that should change not just the way we think, but the way that we act, and not just how we act, but also in the way that we think it should change both of those things. So let's dive in to the reading for tonight. We're going to be in Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 17 through 24.
[00:03:06] The word of God 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. 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. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice any every kind of impurity.
[00:03:34] 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.
[00:04:05] Have you ever felt out of place anywhere?
[00:04:09] Yeah, sometimes it's in front of a large group of people.
[00:04:13] You know, it happens.
[00:04:16] But yeah, I feel out of place all the time.
[00:04:19] But when you're around, like it could be when you're around an old group of friends, it could be when you're in an old habit that you haven't done in a long time. And it kind of just hits you, right, like that version of me isn't here anymore. That version is gone.
[00:04:38] And this is what Paul is talking about in this passage, that we're no longer the same person that we were before. And in fact we're called to be drastically different than we were in the world before.
[00:04:52] This continues Paul's emphasis from earlier in this chapter on walking worthy in the manner in which we've been saved. You know, he divides sharply the world and believers. And this leads me to the first point tonight, that because we've been redeemed by Christ, we must not live as we did before.
[00:05:12] Our lives must be radically different now.
[00:05:19] Why use the word radically? Very intentionally, because this isn't a small change.
[00:05:24] This is literally dying to our old self and being reborn, renewed into a new life. Paul leads up to this by first explaining the way we were to show us what we are no longer supposed to be.
[00:05:40] I know I'm not the same person I was before my salvation.
[00:05:44] Yeah, indeed. Praise God. I often talk about how for a large portion of my life, you know, I was an unbeliever. I was an atheist. I thought pretty highly of myself during those times and I thought I knew more than other people. And I really prided myself on my intelligence. And it was one of the things that God humbled in me first was that in fact I knew so very little at the time. And still now I was like Job near the end of the book where God questions him and he asks him when, you know, like when do the goats give birth in the mountains and does the hawk take flight by your understanding? And I just love the illustration because Job is basically like no.
[00:06:27] The Lord says, you know, will they? He says, will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? And Job's answer is really like I am so insignificant. How can I answer you? As the exact quote from the book?
[00:06:43] And I realized how truly I understood. Little I understood and how much I hid behind. It was an emotional issue I had with God, but I disguised it as an intellectual problem with his existence. Anyways, I look back at that person and I cringe.
[00:06:59] I do praise God that I am no longer that person.
[00:07:03] However, the change in me didn't end with just my thinking. It resulted in a change of lifestyle. I realized I had to live radically different from the way my life had been before.
[00:07:17] So let's look at the text and what Paul's saying here in verses 17 through 19 says, now this I say and testify in the Lord, you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They're darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance in them due to the hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality. Greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
[00:07:45] What is going on here?
[00:07:48] First we have to understand what's being said.
[00:07:51] Is Paul just ragging on the Gentiles?
[00:07:55] Isn't he the one that said that it was his purpose to go and preach to the Gentiles the Savior?
[00:08:00] So indeed what he is talking about here isn't just the ethnic term of Gentile or a non Jewish person. He's equating a Gentile here with a pagan godless pre Christian lifestyle. When he's talking to the church at Ephesus, he's talking about people that no longer that we used to be this way, but we are no longer so our because of that our old pardon. He's equating the Gentile here with the pagan godless pre Christian lifestyles. But basically the whole section of that can be Summarized pretty straightforward. And it basically is that our second point, which is that our old self is naturally rebellious person apart from Christ.
[00:08:51] Let's break that down.
[00:08:52] Paul gets into some specifics here and starts talking about our minds.
[00:09:00] He says they're futile.
[00:09:02] What does that mean?
[00:09:04] Well, a commentary that I was reading used a definition that I really liked, and he described futility as silly methods at a meaningless goal.
[00:09:17] And I really like that definition because it gets to the heart of the issue. It's not just that you're chasing after something meaningless.
[00:09:23] Right. That would be futile is typically how I would think about it, just chasing something meaningless. But it's the intent as well, is that you were using silly methods to accomplish that.
[00:09:34] And so I really like that definition because it gets to the heart of the issue. It doesn't just mean searching for a meaningless goal, but you're being silly as well. The interesting thing about this word that's being used here, futile, is it's used in scripture a lot of other places. In fact, in the Greek version of the Old Testament, it's used as the same word in Ecclesiastes.
[00:09:58] And if you haven't read Ecclesiastes, there's a lot of talk in there about things being meaningless or vanity, you know, and it really is like the original emo album of our. Of our day. Before there was My Chemical Romance, there was Solomon.
[00:10:19] So, you know, let's. Let's read just from one verse. From chapter 1, verse 14 says, I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after the wind. That word there, vanity in the Greek translation of the Old Testament is the same word that's being used here for futile.
[00:10:40] So it's meaningless.
[00:10:45] Now, this isn't the only place this word is used. It's used 39 times in Ecclesiastes alone.
[00:10:51] And when studying the Bible, we definitely always want to note when something is repeated because it means it's important.
[00:10:58] So Paul knows his Jewish audience would be familiar with the idea of futility and how it's paired with not following in the ways of God, which. Which is the conclusion at the end of Ecclesiastes. What this shows us is that our minds aren't just a little messed up, they're broken.
[00:11:19] Right? Sin from living in a fallen world would produce. It produces a malfunction of the mind.
[00:11:29] Right? We need the Holy Spirit to heal our minds and redirect us back to God.
[00:11:35] Paul continues on saying that we have a darkened understanding which contrasts sharply with what the idea that he talks about earlier in the chapter where he says that we have the eyes of our heart being enlightened. So as opposed to being enlightened, we instead are darkened when we're separate from God.
[00:11:55] Not just are our minds darkened, but our hearts are hardened.
[00:12:00] Now, it's an interesting term.
[00:12:03] I always think when I hear heart being hard, I always think back to the story of Exodus, right, with Pharaoh. And it's like, and God hardened his heart.
[00:12:13] It's not that God changed Pharaoh's heart in Exodus. And it's not that God changed, you know, in having a hardened heart here. It's not that we are essentially having our will changed. What it happens is it has our will being strengthened. Unfortunately, we're choosing sin. And so our heart being strengthened then strengthens us to do bad.
[00:12:39] Just like Pharaoh, you know, it strengthened him in his resolve against letting the Jewish people go free.
[00:12:46] So it's not this God changing people's mind type of idea.
[00:12:50] It's really interesting about that. But it's not that our hearts are being changed, right? It's that they're being strengthened, but they are naturally sinful. Their desires are contrary to what God wants.
[00:13:07] And we have a tendency then to become very self oriented.
[00:13:14] So our next point, right, is that a dead, hardened heart is disconnected from God and the life that he gives.
[00:13:28] Our hearts apart from God become, oh man, self oriented, deceived, corrupt.
[00:13:37] There's just not enough adjectives that I could use to describe which leads us to be impure, which in turn separates us from God.
[00:13:48] So Paul is talking not just about the, the Gentiles sinning here, when he's talking about do not live as the Gentiles do, but also he's talking about that sin and the way that they're living has separated them from God.
[00:14:04] He says they're alienated from God and that comes from the hardness of their hearts.
[00:14:11] When you think about this, it seems really easy to see in our culture today.
[00:14:17] You know, we're taught to live for ourselves or for our own personal truths rather than objective truth.
[00:14:25] We're told that the world should just accept us as we are.
[00:14:29] Unfortunately, the way we are is sinful and God calls us to change from those behaviors.
[00:14:39] But we become callous to sin and what it is and in fact turn to celebrating sinful behavior.
[00:14:50] You know, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, right? Everyone needs help for redemption. Praise God. He provided that through Jesus. Since alone we are unable to do it, I don't think we have a right understanding of how much sin mars who we are.
[00:15:12] I know it's not super popular topic to be preaching about is the prevalence of sin, but as we would rather hear. You know, lots of people like to hear the nice fluffy sermons about the love of God, but the thing that those are missing is that we can't understand how deep God's love for us is if we can't understand what we're being saved from because we don't understand.
[00:15:39] So Peter echoes this thought in First Peter, Chapter 4, he tells us, since therefore Christ suffered in our flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking. For whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin so as to live for the rest of time in the flesh, no longer for human passions but but for the will of God for the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties and lawless idolatry.
[00:16:14] With respect to this, they are surprised when you do not join them in the same food of debauchery and they malign you.
[00:16:21] But they will give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
[00:16:26] Does that sound familiar at all?
[00:16:29] One It's a lot of the same adjectives that Paul uses to describe what the Gentiles are doing, but doesn't it describe what it feels like the Church is facing in today's culture?
[00:16:41] Right there they not only just say it's not that they don't disagree with us, they malign us, they insult us. They would give, but they too will have to give an account ready to the judge living in the dead, which is the ultimate hope that we have.
[00:16:56] You know, we're called to no longer live in the way of the old self, reveling in sin, becoming callous to it. You know, as Cayce read in our call to worship. You know, I love Paul's phrasing. You know, should we continue in sin? By no means we should not. You know, we're called to live in a new way.
[00:17:22] So the depravity of sin is hard to convey.
[00:17:30] One of I've got a quote I'm going to put up here in just a second. This is from RC Sproul. I really like his phrasing here, but he says that sin is cosmic treason.
[00:17:40] Sin is treason against a perfectly pure sovereign. It's an act of supreme ingratitude towards the One whom we owe everything.
[00:17:50] And I'm sorry, the text is small on that. To the one who has given Us, life itself. Have you ever considered the deeper implications of the slightest sin? Or the most minute Piccadilly? What are we saying to our Creator when we disobey him at the slightest point? We're saying no to the righteousness of God.
[00:18:09] And we are saying, God, your law is not good.
[00:18:14] My judgment is better than yours. Your authority does not apply to me. I am above and beyond your jurisdiction. I have the right to do what I want to do, not what you command me to do.
[00:18:29] Sin is cosmic treason against our Creator. It's not something for us to take lightly.
[00:18:37] Left to ourselves, we're not just broken, we're in desperate, desperate need of Christ.
[00:18:46] To take this a little bit back to my introduction, do you see why the term monster is used for our old self in those lyrics that I was talking about? It's because it's not just he was a bad person that needed a little bit of help and then he was better, right? It's no a monster as what we were in our old self. We are committing violators of cosmic treason against our Lord.
[00:19:10] But Paul doesn't stop there. Praise God that he doesn't stop there, where we're dead and reviling and callous in our impurities. But rather he continues on in verse 20. 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 your new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
[00:19:51] Paul continues on by saying that we are not that way any longer. He says that we have learned Christ. We. We should be changed.
[00:20:02] So the fourth point tonight is that true learning is transformational.
[00:20:10] Now.
[00:20:11] We're not to continue living as we once did.
[00:20:14] If we have learned Christ, we are to live as a new creation.
[00:20:19] As our identity shifts, so should our habits.
[00:20:23] What I love here is that Christ is the subject of our learning, right? Paul didn't say that we taught about Christ, but rather that we are taught in Christ in him. And this is so cool because, right, it moves from this just being an intellectual exercise of hearing about who Jesus is and who God is, to knowing about Jesus and a true understanding of the person of Jesus. You know, we are called to be changed by the experience.
[00:20:52] It's not simply a gathering of knowledge.
[00:20:58] I love too that he says that Jesus is the truth and he doesn't use the phrase here, Christ is the truth or the Messiah is the truth, because that could possibly be misconstrued. No, he says Jesus as in Jesus of Nazareth, Nazareth is the truth, and in him we are saved. He makes certain we know that he's talking about the historical Jesus being the core of our salvation.
[00:21:25] Now, there's a warning here where he says, assuming you've heard about him.
[00:21:33] Now, this isn't just a line to discuss spreading the word of Jesus. It's also a warning against false teaching.
[00:21:39] Likely we know that in Ephesus there was a myriad of other religions being taught that we know specifically from the Book of Acts about the cult of Artemis.
[00:21:49] Here he warns against knowing, or he warns against not knowing the true Jesus. Right. We must be wary because not everyone claiming to know Christ is truly teaching him.
[00:22:02] We spoken quite a bit recently about the idea of unity in the church and kind of where we draw those lines or where we should start to draw those lines in other sermons. So I'm not going to dwell a whole lot here tonight on that, since we've had a couple of different sermons actually talk about those. But there's so much theology in this passage that's rich that we can see the work of not just salvation and redemption, but we see the entire Trinity in this passage, right? Verse 18 talks about being alienated from the life of God, telling us that God, God the Father, is the one who provides Life.
[00:22:41] In verse 23, we see that the Spirit is renewing our minds. And in verse 21, we see that Christ is the truth, specifically that he is the one whom God sent to perform the act of redemption for us.
[00:22:57] Jesus is crucial to this new life we live.
[00:23:03] Which takes me to the next point, that you cannot live this new life without knowing Jesus.
[00:23:11] Paul talks about putting off the old self as if putting off an old piece of clothing.
[00:23:18] Once we know Jesus, it's as if we see the dirty rags that we were wearing and we change those to brand new clothes, some fancy clothes, you know.
[00:23:33] This can only happen by knowing Jesus, though unless we fully grasp the vileness of sin and the work that Jesus has done, we cannot put off the old self.
[00:23:47] Paul uses this metaphor in Colossians as well. He explains there, but now you must put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander and obscene talk from your mouth.
[00:23:58] Do not lie to one another, seeing that you've 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.
[00:24:09] Again we see this inextricable tie between the knowledge of who Jesus is and what he's done for us and putting off of the old self.
[00:24:24] What does that look like practically? That's a question I always like to ask because I'm like, okay, that's cool and all, but what does that actually have to do? What do I do in response to that?
[00:24:35] So in taking off the old self, we must be striving to put away sin intentionally, daily and continually.
[00:24:44] It is not a one time thing that we did right, but something that causes us to change every day.
[00:24:53] Now, the enemy always beats me up on this point. So this I understand.
[00:24:58] Don't take this out of context. I'm not saying that we must be perfect because we certainly will not be right.
[00:25:04] However, when I mean intentional, I mean that our intent is to sin less, right?
[00:25:10] We have a right understanding of sin and we are not celebrating sin.
[00:25:16] That doesn't mean we won't struggle with it.
[00:25:19] So there's tension there, but there is hope that we're able to put off these sinful practices because of the new life we have.
[00:25:28] If we were still in our old selves, we would be trapped, right? But praise God, we're not.
[00:25:35] That is why it's so beautiful about the imagery that's used to put off the old self and becoming someone new.
[00:25:45] You know, this idea of renewal that Paul talks about, it's. I really like it because you see, it's not used in the past tense, right? Renewal, not renewed, saying is what it's written here. Our renewal is an ongoing activity.
[00:26:11] The passage is so rich in practical theology because here we see this idea of sanctification, right? For the believer. It doesn't promise us an instant deliverance from our troubles, right? But rather that we are free from the eternal punishment of sin in our old self, but that our new selves will continue to grow.
[00:26:35] Romans, as Cayce read earlier, points to this. Romans 12 is actually what I ended up quoting here, where it reiterates this idea, where Paul tells us in an often quoted verse is, 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, acceptable and perfect. Right? This idea again here, the idea renewal is in the present tense. It's an action that is occurring, not an action that has occurred.
[00:27:09] Okay, I think. I think we're getting near the end. Okay.
[00:27:16] There is a lot. There is a lot here. I really love this passage and it was really hard to kind of Drill down into certain things. I sent our text message group actually like a list of what my outline was originally. And I was like, should I just put this all in the bulletin? And it was like, I don't even know. It was three pages long in Word documents. And so they told me to dial it back, so I did.
[00:27:38] So you're welcome. You can thank John and Orey and everybody else and Josh from being in that chat and reining me in. But, you know, so we're going to get to our final point.
[00:27:52] Our final point, and we're going to sit here for a little while is because it's probably the most important is that our new identity in Christ necessitates a change in our thinking and behavior.
[00:28:11] So our new identity in Christ necessitates a change in our thinking and behavior. We're changed by this renewal, this ongoing renewal that we've been talking about.
[00:28:23] And our new identity demands new habits.
[00:28:27] We must seek a deeper understanding of truth when we engage with our own beliefs and the beliefs of other people. We must not accept the cultural norm that your beliefs can be true and mine can be true as well when they are in direct contention with each other.
[00:28:44] Right?
[00:28:46] The world will tell us one thing, but our faith and the word of God tells us something different. Those two things cannot coexist. One of those things must be right.
[00:28:57] Our God is a God of order and logic. Is the orderly process by which we can know truth. You know, truth cannot be relative because if anyone ever tells you that, if anybody ever talks to you and tries to tell you that truth is relative, which most people don't do, that it's not really a common thing that comes up. It's. It's more subtle than that, but it really is.
[00:29:18] The idea that truth, that we cannot know truth, then just ask them if that's true. That's what I always teach people to say. Is that statement true? You know, because if you.
[00:29:34] Our truth cannot be relative because if anyone ever tells you that. Right? It's a self defeating statement. That's what I mean to say. It's either always true, in which case that means truth is not relative, or it is true. And that means that the statement is always true, making it false anyways. Yeah, that's a self defeating claim. The thinking is very sneaky though, you know, it sneaks into many areas of our culture, as I was mentioning earlier, kind of like morality, you know, it doesn't matter what reality is, it becomes what I want it to be. Right? It's not that this Thing is good, but I want this thing to be good, so I will convince others that it will be.
[00:30:18] I am vehemently opposed to this idea of moral relativism, which is just the fancy way of saying that morality can be whatever we want it to be.
[00:30:30] There are things that are objectively. And when I mean objectively, I mean always wrong.
[00:30:36] Right. Regardless of the legality or how the world sees them.
[00:30:41] And I believe we know that from God's moral law.
[00:30:45] You know, I've had an interesting conversation with my brother about this, about moral relativism, because he believes that, you know, morality comes from cultural norms around the certain areas. But the problem is that breaks down over time. I mean, the easiest example to go to is just back into World War II with Nazi Germany, where everything they were doing to the Jewish population was legal, right? Like, it wasn't.
[00:31:11] Yeah, they followed. They followed the government's law, but they broke God's law.
[00:31:18] And that's the one that we need to follow. So there's this idea about objective truth, objective morality. And I could really talk about this a whole lot because I love it. But I'm gonna stop here. We're circle back to my main point, right? Is that we must seek to understand truth.
[00:31:36] That is God's word, right? So we need to be able to understand truth because there is truth, and that truth is God's word.
[00:31:47] We are to learn Christ, and that is to change our thinking and behavior.
[00:31:56] The primary way we do that is through the word of God, is through scripture. So the primary means of our change comes via Scripture.
[00:32:07] All right, so let's talk about how we change our thoughts to align with this new identity. And this is a really interesting idea. Again, this is the idea of renewing our thoughts, which is an ongoing process of changing our thoughts and what that looks like. You know, I think it's a common misconception these days that we are a slave to our emotions and our thoughts as they exist.
[00:32:31] This is simply not supported by scripture, which calls us to be different and is not supported by any means of psychology either.
[00:32:40] I love this idea of the renewal of the mind because it shows I can change how my mind is at times. My mind is very adversarial to me as I struggle with depression or anxiety. Yet I have strategies that help me cope, and they change my thinking when I start to struggle. It's a concept in psychology. It's called cognitive behavioral therapy is the fancy word for it. But all it means is what Paul's telling us here is that we can Change the way that we think. Through the continual renewal of our minds, we can retrain how our brain processes things and is the most.
[00:33:19] This therapy is, in fact, the most studied and empirically validated method of treatment for depression known currently.
[00:33:26] So instead of spiraling into a panic attack like I can do, I can go through steps and I question those thoughts and I push back on them. But what do I push back on them with? I push back on them with truth.
[00:33:39] So, you know, it. It's weird. I've got a little notebook. I have to go in my little notebook and I have to write down the idea, you know, this is the thought that's causing me to be anxious. What's the evidence for that thought? What's the evidence against that thought? Now write. A reconstructed thought is basically the whole experience. But it always ends up being like, oh, no, I feel overwhelmed. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don't know how I'm gonna get all this done. I don't know what's gonna happen.
[00:34:01] And I end up drilling that down and say, okay, there are a lot of things on my plate right now that I'm doing. However, that doesn't mean that I'm overwhelmed or that I'm going to be unable to accomplish anything else the rest of my life. Right. Like, it's. Let's dial it back, you know, don't be dramatic, Steve. That's a lot of what this is.
[00:34:24] Thank you.
[00:34:26] Yeah. But, you know, so I go back and I question those thoughts and I push back on them with truth. And I believe that this idea here isn't just for mental health. Right. But I believe it has to do with our thought, life and any sin as well. Right. We aren't trapped in our old selves. We don't have to succumb to that. We can change. And in fact, we are commanded to try.
[00:34:50] We must not succumb to. To the callousness of the world with sin.
[00:34:58] Now, that all being said, it's very, very important to note we have the working of the Holy Spirit in us to help us with this.
[00:35:08] So this is not a work that Steve alone is doing inside of his mind. This is not a work that we are all doing as we grow in with Christ. Paul is very explicitly saying here in the text that the Spirit is what is renewing our mind.
[00:35:23] So not only does this scripture and psychology back up these ideas, but we're told that we have a helper that will help renew our minds as well. And we must not minimize the role of the Spirit in the work that it's doing in our lives and in our minds.
[00:35:44] All right, okay.
[00:35:49] There's a lot in this passage. I love it because there's just so much in it, and it resonates a lot with me personally. I know this passage because I've studied it as well for my own thoughts and processes as I talked about with my struggles with mental health. But also, it has almost is the entire gospel itself presented in it. Right? It says that we're dead, that we were callous, we were impure, but we are not that way anymore, and we are not that way anymore through the work of Christ.
[00:36:22] So let's recap a little bit.
[00:36:24] First, we are called to walk differently.
[00:36:29] And that isn't optional.
[00:36:31] It should be the natural response of our redeemed hearts.
[00:36:37] We must be sure not to underestimate sin and how rebellious we are.
[00:36:44] God is so perfect and holy that justice must be paid when his law is broken.
[00:36:54] So we break his law and we sin. You know, we miss the target. We are committing cosmic treason, as RC Sproul says. You know, we aren't left to our own devices, though, but we are saved through. Through the redemptive work of Jesus on the cross, who died for our sins and restored our relationship with God. So while in our sin as being as vile, as wicked, or as impure as our sin is, it has been paid for, and we are not to be held back by it any longer.
[00:37:29] Our hearts were deadened and callous, but we are no longer like that.
[00:37:34] We must put off the old self and put on the new self.
[00:37:38] That can only be done through knowing Christ, and that should transform who we are.
[00:37:44] We are in a constant state of renewal that requires us monthly, daily, hourly, minute by minute, even to renew our minds.
[00:37:54] And that must be intentional.
[00:37:56] We won't accidentally fall into this renewal.
[00:38:00] We must be intentional in aligning with the work of the Spirit, in changing our thoughts, in changing our behaviors.
[00:38:09] So every day we must take off the old self, put on that new self, clothe ourselves in what Christ has done for us.
[00:38:21] Let's pray.
[00:38:23] Lord, thank you for your word.
[00:38:27] Thank you for all you have done for us. Thank you. That though we have sinned and how horrible that is in breaking your law, that through your love for us, you still sent Jesus to die on the cross to redeem us from that, so that way we might be restored to right relationship with you.
[00:38:48] God help us walk holy in this new person, in this new life, in a dark world where we are told that we will be maligned, Lord, and that we will be. That we will struggle. Help us with the continual renewal of our minds as we go out and as we draw nearer to you through your word, through scripture, in Jesus name we pray. Amen.
