In Ephesians so far we have seen the amazing love and kindness of God toward us. We are not the same people we were before we heard and believed the Gospel, and we have so many more wonderful things to look forward to than we could ever find in this life. We are a privileged people, chosen and saved and eternally blessed by the Lord. But we were made new in order to walk in the good works which God prepared in advance for us. Our gratitude should overflow in a humility that is eager to learn the ways of God. And God has given us five kinds of trainers to grow us all into His likeness. But the greatest hindrance to knowing and walking in this new life does not come from outside us, but as the saying goes, “We are our own worst enemy.” From Ephesians 4:17-24.

Imperative

¹⁷ So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.

In Ephesians 4:17, Paul tells us that the biggest thing that stands in the way of our maturing in Christ...is our own way of life. Many of us have grown up in the church and believe ourselves to be fully informed and transformed. But the church has struggled with making a clean break from worldly ways and worldly thinking since the beginning! Otherwise, Paul wouldn’t have had to write these things!

And Paul doesn’t make this optional. He insists on it, that we no longer live as the Gentiles do. Their thinking, their philosophies, their basic understanding of the operation of life and all things in the world is flawed and futile.

All they know is this life. All they know are false gods. Until and unless they accept that the God of the Hebrews is the only true God, they will never understand what this life is for and how it needs to be lived. So to walk in the pattern of the Gentiles is a complete waste of the days that we have here on this earth!

Notice, this letter is written to Gentiles. So he’s not talking about Gentiles in general, that we all need to start living as Jews or something like that. He’s talking about Gentiles who do not know God or believe in Him. That’s who they were, remember? Chapter 2:2-3! Sinners, under the wrath of God, following the ways of the world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the one working in all the disobedient (Ephesians 2:2). They used to live just like them, gratifying the desires of the flesh, of the sinful nature, following its thoughts and desires (Ephesians 2:3). That’s the way of death and eternal destruction. That’s an utter waste of this life!

We’re no longer to value what they value, to live by their principles, to trust in their wisdom, to follow in their practices.

I’ve talked about this before: Who do you spend most of your time listening to? Who informs your thinking? If it’s the big three networks, you’re under the influence of unbelieving Gentiles! If it’s Netflix or Max or Disney or any other streaming service, you’re regularly being discipled in godless, worldly thinking! What radio station do you regularly have playing in the background, at home, at work, in the car? What are they teaching? What are they promoting? If it’s not the Christian station, then they’re promoting and affirming fleshly thinking and ways.

Do you want to get free from that? Do you want to get free from the empty, destructive thinking of unbelievers? Christian radio and Christian movies and Christian TV are not really the best the way.

There is only one surefire way, and it’s actually given in the next chapter, where Paul talks about the duty of husband to wife (Ephesians 5:25-27, NIV):

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. (Emphasis added)

Did you catch that? Jesus has given the Word of God for the cleansing of His Church. We need to steep our minds in the words of this book, the Bible. You can listen to recordings of it. You can stop and read it whenever you have the chance. But you need to let it—all of it!—flow over and through your mind more than you let the world and its philosophies flood your brain.

The world loves to talk about brain-washing—in a negative way! That’s because they’re busy washing their own brains in the pleasurable teachings of the prince of the power of the air—and the airwaves! The devil himself. They think they’re the normal ones and anyone who allows the Word of God to transform their thinking are the crazy ones, the cult-deceived morons.

At the end of this age, we will see clearly who was deceived and who was not. Are you willing to jump ship and plunge yourself into the sea of Truth that is the Word of God?

For all you who have begun or continued to habit of daily Bible reading, I applaud you. But have you gone far enough? Are you cutting off the sludge that piles on and over your heart and mind, dulling it to the wisdom of God’s Word? If more mud is flowing in than water that cleanses, you’re not making much headway in being transformed in thinking and believing.

We need our brains washed clean of the lies and foolish, empty thinking of this wicked and depraved generation.

And folks, that’s on us. God has given us everything we need for life and godliness, but we need to take hold of it and use it as He intends! We need to do what He says. We need to put a stop to all the ways we’re living in and learning the futile ways of unbelievers!

Hard Hearts

¹⁸ They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.

Paul goes on in verse 18 to reveal a very sad truth. Unbelievers cannot understand God or His ways. They are cut off from true life, the life of God, eternal life—because of their ignorance. But they are ignorant not simply because they have never heard about God, not because they have known nothing about God, but because they have hardened their hearts against the truth. They refuse to accept and believe that God is and that He is a rewarder of all who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).

We so want to believe that people have just never heard, and that’s why they don’t know God or walk in His ways. How I wish that was the truth!

But men did know God. From the beginning, they had access to Him at the Garden of Eden, even after Adam and Eve were cast out! Did you notice that God spoke with Cain before he killed Abel? God was so near and available to all men, but most men choose to walk away from Him. Some called on His name, some sought Him out. Enoch walked with God so closely, that God took him straight to heaven without dying! Enoch belonged to the seventh generation after Adam!

But most of the men of that age deliberately abandoned God and went against everything He stood for. The righteous eventually died out and only Noah and his family were left. God saved them and destroyed all the rest.

A reset. All of us today descend from Noah and his sons. All those who exited the Ark knew of God and could continue to seek to know Him. But as men multiplied, men abandoned God. A few remained faithful, most turned away. Our ancestors sold us out! They condemned us to destruction by their rejection of the God who had just destroyed their forefathers!

We’re different, right? We’re better, yes?

Well, some of us are willing to humble ourselves, admit we were wrong to walk in ways that were not God’s. Some of us are willing to come back to God and learn His ways, to do them. Yes.

But how many people today, when brought the knowledge of God, still refuse to believe in Him. And not only do they refuse to believe, they gladly condemn their children and grandchildren to the same destruction our forefathers doomed us to!

Am I being too harsh? Paul, in Romans 1, is even more blunt. I’m sorry, I have to read the whole thing to you, Romans 1:18-32 (NIV):

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Tell me that doesn’t describe our day and this generation. People have sold themselves to do evil. They are fully in. They are not being deceived, they are deliberately flying in the face of all God teaches. When He says, “Do this,” they say, “No way!” When He says, “Don’t do this,” they say, “Oh, we’re going to set a new record in doing that!”

Their hearts are impossibly hard. There is no way you or I can bring them to repentance. But all is not lost. Remember that what is impossible for you and me is possible with God (Matthew 19:26)!

Desperate for Feeling

¹⁹ Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

You heard the progression in Romans 1. Paul tells us here in verse 19 why greater immorality follows rejection of God. When your heart is hard, you lose sensitivity to the things that matter, to the things that are real. You cannot feel the heart-break of God over the rejection of His creation. You cannot feel the pain of others who suffer under your sin. You cannot admit that any harm comes to anyone when all you do is “between consenting adults.” You cannot feel compassion or joy or sadness or pains of the heart.

The only thing you have left is this physical vessel we dwell in. The only thing left to you are the physical senses: sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. So you double-down on those. Maybe you find delight in food, or the visual arts. Maybe it’s music, plays or movies. Maybe it’s fragrances! Who doesn’t love the smell of a good barbecue? Or as Paul indicated in Romans 1, we invariably seek sexual pleasure.

But what happens when we watch the same movie over and over again? Or eat the same meal day in and day out? What happens when you live next to a BBQ restaurant? We grow used to the sensations and they fade into the background.

I hate to confess this, but when we walked in the door of our home after being in Bosnia for a week, there was this strong odor of cat urine! It stank! Did we find what was causing it? No, we were too busy unpacking, settling back in, falling asleep with jetlag. You know what happened? Within 24 hours we didn’t smell it anymore. And so we forgot about it.

That’s the problem with our five senses. You smell something long enough, and our brain blocks it out. You eat the same thing long enough, and it no longer fires off the pleasure sensors in our brain. The things you do with your spouse for fun...grow tedious.

So what do we do? We have to find new things, new ways, new flavors to excite our senses. That’s what Paul is talking about here. That’s why things go from bad to worse where Christ does not reign in hearts and minds. That’s why godless societies find new ways to do evil. That’s why the Canaanites were condemned to destruction. That’s why there are all those commands against weird sexual activity in the Old Testament—because those were things the Canaanites were doing! And God detested it!

That’s what Paul is talking about here, and that’s what he was describing in Romans 1. We’re seeing the same thing played out right before our eyes.

Unbelievers are not the people we want to be learning from or whose ways we want to follow!

What Gospel?

²⁰ You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. ²¹ Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.

Paul then turns to remind the Ephesians of how they came to know Christ. This may not make sense to you.

How were you taught about Christ when you came to know Him? I was just told to pray a prayer, believe in Jesus, and I’d have eternal life. It was understood that you’d keep coming to church. But why?

By the time I hit high school, I was asking myself what it was all about? Was salvation nothing more than praying a prayer, “believing” some stuff about Jesus? Was it no different than buying life insurance? What did it mean to “believe” in Jesus anyway? Just acknowledge in my head that Jesus is God, without any understanding of the implications? I didn’t recognize what it meant that Jesus died for my sins. What were sins anyway?

I ended up walking away, because I couldn’t answer those questions. And it seemed no one could.

Being a Christian just meant praying that prayer and going to church...regularly? Occasionally? Once in a while? Birth, marriage and death? It was meaningless.

We didn’t come to know Christ correctly! We did not hear of Him and receive teaching in Him according to the truth that is in Jesus!

The church today has lost something in our day and age. Something hugely important!

Remember what Jesus first preached? And John the Baptist, who was to prepare a people for the Lord? Or what Jesus’ apostles preached after Jesus returned to Heaven?

Repent. “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.” Matthew 3:2. Mark 1:15. Acts 2:38.

Paul described his own ministry this way: “So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds” (Acts 26:19-20, NIV).

More than seven hundred years before Paul, Isaiah was commanded by God to teach this: “Wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow” (Isaiah 1:16-17, NIV).

The Word of God is consistent from beginning to end. We are called to turn away from our old way of living, our sinful ways, and to walk in God’s righteous, people-caring ways.

Jesus came to pay the debt of death that we owed because we did not know or desire to know God’s ways. Jesus came to pay our penalty of death we owed because we refused to come to know God and learn to walk in His ways. He died to set us free from the wrath of God we justly deserved. Because God loved us and chose to do the work we were unwilling to do ourselves. Jesus rose again to make us new creations, people who desire to know God and live in His ways; people who desire to be and do what is good and right.

This is what no one could explain to me or help me understand: Jesus didn’t just come to cover all my sinfulness so that God wouldn’t cast me into eternal torment—such that whether I changed my ways or not didn’t really matter! He came to change me so that not only were all the crimes I’d committed against God and men expunged from my record, but more, that I would be an entirely different person who would never want to do those wicked things again!

The change in nature comes in a moment, the moment I truly believe who Jesus is and what He did for me! The change in practice? Well, that takes some effort—on my part! And that brings us back to our own worst enemy.

True Gospel

²² You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; ²³ to be made new in the attitude of your minds; ²⁴ and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Look at our last few verses: Here is the Gospel Paul preached.

The Gospel is not merely some judicial facts about Jesus’ death and my getting off the hook! It is about the inheritance of a new nature and my obligation to live by it.

When we first heard about Jesus, we should have been taught to put away our old ways and learn God’s ways, ways that would be, sadly, entirely new to us. Before Jesus came, it was entirely up to the individual to make this happen. Some actually received commendation from God—because they diligently lived in obedience to God’s Word by faith in Him and in hope of His true provision for their sin.

Now, when we accept Christ as Savior and recognize Him as Lord and God, God comes to dwell in us and changes our very nature, from sinner to saint, from slaves to sin to people who can and should be slaves to righteousness.

Paul talks of “putting off” and “putting on,” as if our old and new natures are like clothes. The problem is, Jesus didn’t take away our old nature—which is this body we’re still dwelling in. Jesus didn’t put us physically to death and grant us our new body right then and there. If only God had completely removed our old self! But it is bound up in this fleshly case we live in, and until Christ returns, we will continue to drag this old thing around.

Until Jesus returns, we need to make every effort to lay aside the old sinful self and make every effort to put on the new, righteous self, given us through Jesus Christ. We have access to the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, and a new nature, “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” that those before Christ didn’t!

Did you catch that? Our new nature, our new self, the “saint” we’ve been talking about, is absolutely correct in it’s application to we who believe in Jesus Christ for salvation! In our old self, we are still “sinners” and slaves to sin. But in the new self, we are made to live like God in true righteousness and holiness.

So there is no longer anything that can keep us from walking in God’s righteousness and holiness...except we ourselves.

We can choose to continue to walk around in our old, stinking, dead “sinner” selves. Or we can take that off and put on the new “saint” self that is engineered to walk in righteousness and holiness.

Consider this: If you call yourself “sinner” after having believed in Christ, what are you telling yourself and the world? That you’re still dwelling in your old self. That’s not God’s will and it’s not God’s fault. That’s entirely on you.

If you go around walking in your old “sinner” self, but tell everyone you’re now a “saint,” well, everyone can see you’re not walking in the new nature God gave you in Christ, and they’ll rightly call you “hypocrite.”

But if you claim your new nature, take ownership of it, accept that you are a saint and recognize that you need to put off the old and put on the new, and you do so, then people should begin to see something very different about you, especially as you grow in your understanding of what that new “saint” nature wants to be and do!

Paul uses this very same illustration over in Romans 13, and I think it bring this point home more clearly. In verse 14 (NIV), Paul write: “Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”

Our new nature is the nature of Jesus Christ—remember? Created to be like God! In true righteousness and holiness. When we clothe ourselves with our new nature, we’re in effect, clothing ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and in so doing, Paul points out that we should therefore no longer think about how to gratify the desires of our old self, the sinful self.

That brings up a very important thing that happens in the midst of this changing of “clothes:” We need to be made new in the attitude of our minds.

Our minds need to be retrained. Our attitudes need to be retrained. Our perspective needs to be remade.

Putting off the old self and putting on the new self is a continual process of identifying old ways of thinking and doing, recognizing their wrongness, and discovering God’s way of thinking and doing, and continually retraining ourselves to think and do as He does.

We work with God to wash ourselves new by the Truth of God’s Word, by the teaching and example of God’s appointed leaders, and by the testimony and example of God Himself and His only Son, Jesus Christ. With that comes a change in values and perspective and goals—and behavior.

Conclusion

I hope you have been uncomfortable every time I talk about we who believe in Jesus being “saints.” We are so accustomed to thinking (correctly) about ourselves as “sinners,” that we don’t think we can live according to our new nature. We defeat ourselves before we even get started. We look at ourselves and correctly analyze that we are incapable—and even more, unwilling to change our ways. We fail to look at God and how mighty He is, that whatever He wants He can do. And if He made us new in Christ so that we can live in righteousness and holiness, then He can help us do it! We are the only real thing holding us back from walking in righteousness.

Up next in this letter are a series of specific instructions that describe God, His righteousness and holiness, and so also inform us in how we are to live. If you choose to remain in your old “sinner” self, you will not want to attempt these commands. They’re too hard. They’re no fun.

But if you’re ready to work with God and by His power and grace, if you’re ready to accept the new “saint” nature He has given you in Christ, then buckle up, because there’s a lot of retraining ahead.

I fully understand that the old “sinner” self is well-known, comfortable, even feels safe, but the end of it is death. You do not want to remain there. The new self is scary, unfamiliar, strange, and yes, it means death. Death to that old self, but life to the new. Paul didn’t suggest or encourage us to make the change, he insisted on it. We must put off the old and put on the new. It is the very purpose for which Christ died and rose again. Don’t ignore God’s grace. Don’t resist His will. Instead, let us submit ourselves to Him, to His Word and to one another, and let us work together to grow each other up in God’s righteous ways—and attain true unity in Christ.