TO BE NEW OUTWARDLY, START WITH HOW WE THINK INWARDLY
by Tim Thomas
May 14, 2006
Ephesians 4:17-24
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17So 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. 18They 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. 19Having 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.
20You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. 21Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (NIV)
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This passage highlights the amazing transformation that took place in us when we put our faith in Jesus. It is perhaps spelled out more directly in Galatians 2:20 where it says that we were crucified in Christ, and we no longer live, but instead Christ lives in us. Or in 2 Corinthians 5 where it proclaims that we are new creations. The point here is that while we have experienced a real change of identity, it isn't always reflected in outward changes of behavior, or even inward ways of thinking. This takes some doing on our part, and that is exactly what the Apostle Paul is exhorting us to do: make changes in how we think and act.
Certainly God will help us, but we are not robots, and therefore we have real choices to make and actions to take. Perhaps failure to put these verses into practice is the reason for the rampant carnality among Christians today. Many pastors and teachers and Christian leaders decry the results of survey after survey: the morality of Christians is not very different, if at all, from non-believers. While I have spent much more energy in arguing against a legalistic righteousness which has combatted the ungodly ways in which many Christians live, I must agree with the Apostle Paul that being a Christian ought to cause us to think and behave differently than unbelievers. The difference between what Paul advocates and what legalists advocate is that Paul emphasizes the need to change the way we view ourselves and the world, and that from these changes in thinking and understanding we see outward, behavioral changes; while the legalists focus on outward performance and standards. The latter leads only to spiritual death and inward unhappiness.
Verses 17 to 19 give us some idea of at least one area the Apostle Paul tells us we need to change our thinking in. It seems to me that he is saying that we need to stop thinking that what we can see and touch is all there is, and that our days on earth are all that we can expect to live. Isn't that what the Apostle Paul is saying when he talks about the way unbelievers give themselves over to sensuality? For a Christian, we know that there is a God who sees and knows our needs even better than we know them. While He is aware that we all have physical needs, He understands that our greatest needs are buried in our hearts. God loves and has a great plan for our lives. He can fulfill us beyond our wildest expectations, but we often look with our eyes for what God has for us, while forgetting to look with our spirits and our hearts. We often miss God's best because we lose faith in God's intervention and instead rush ahead to take care of ourselves, missing God's provision.
Life is not a game in which whoever dies with the most toys wins. It is not a game in which whoever has the most exciting experiences wins. Life is mostly about things that are deep and hidden to the casual observer. It is about love. Love that is expressed in relationship, first to God, but almost as important, to people around us. I'm not making this up. Recall Jesus's statement about the greatest commandment being to love God fully and completely, and the second, trailing closely behind the first, is to love others as we love ourselves.
Jesus tells a parable of a pearl of great price, that when it was found, the finder sold all he had to get the pearl. Jesus is our pearl of great price. Yet the pull of the world toward materialism and the cares of this world is strong, so even if we change our thinking to truly believe and see Jesus as worth sacrificing everything for, it may be that a day, week, month, or year later, the pull of this world has caused us to forget our earlier true spiritual insight, and once again acting as if all we have is what we can see or touch. While Paul does not emphasize it here, this renewal of our minds is an ongoing operation. There is a war for our souls. The Holy Spirit woos our hearts, but Satan deceives our minds. We choose. Choose the real over the imitation!
Verse 24 concludes this passage by making a subtle point following on the heels of verse 23, that righteousness and holiness spring from a change in our minds and in our attitudes, not from mere outward behavior. And the second point here is that we were created by God to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. John Eldredge drives this point home in "Waking the Dead", but we are not sinners, and our hearts are not bad -- not if we have received Jesus as our Savior and made Him Lord or king in our lives. Sure, we used to be sinners trapped in a life of sin, and even now from time to time we continue to sin, but God is transforming us, and our identity is as saints, as God's dearly loved children, as people that God gladly and willingly suffered death for. We are of great value! Let's not act like we are not.
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