Sermon Cloud

Ephesians 4:17-25  TRANSFORMATION:  Falsehood to Truth

INTRODUCTION:  KP and his family will be going to Dubai on long term missions.  Although he has a clear calling to do work for the kingdom, we don’t want to make the mistake of thinking that only missionaries and people in Christian ministry have a Christian calling.

ALL CHRISTIANS HAVE GOOD WORKS AND A CALLING

•    Christians have Good Work set apart:  Eph.2:10, “10 For  we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
o    This can happen in:  workplace, family, school, music field, etc.
•    Christians have a Calling:  Eph.4:1  I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called…

Why are we not living out our calling?  
•    Partial answer:  Sin.
•    However, one of the greatest promises of Christianity:  We CAN change!

BLUEPRINT FOR TRANSFORMATION

ONE:  Vs.22-ff  Because in Jesus, it has ALREADY happened.
•    Vs. 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires
•    Clothing imagery.

Tense and meaning of ‘PUT OFF’:  (Past Tense ← Col.3:9ff)
•    Two Aorist Infinitives:  A completed action.
•    Since You have ALREADY been made new…
•    THEREFORE:  Because you have been made new, take off your old self and put on the new.
o    You have the POWER and ABILITY… the means, spelled out in vs.23


TWO:  Vs.23  JESUS IS RENEWING THE SPIRIT OF YOUR MINDS
•    Vs. 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds
•    As thinking leads to behavior, we must transform the mind in order to transform behavior.

This section is Right in between of putting off and putting on.
•    Present Infinitive:  Paul is picturing this renewal as a process, it’s ongoing!
•    Passive:  Suggests that God is the one who effects the ongoing work of renewing his people.
•    But, it’s an EXHORTATION:  BE renewed!  
o    THEREFORE, an ongoing process of submission and active cooperation:  YIELD to Christ in order to be renewed in inner person.

What does the renewing of the spirit of our minds possibly look like?
From:  D.G. Peterson, Possessed By God:  A NT Theology of Sanctification and Holiness…
Motivation:  
Direction:  Hope/ Courage of Redemption→ creative initiations.
•    Charles L. Allen, “When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you are slamming the door in the face of God.”
•    Clare Luce, “There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown hopeless about them.”
Pattern:  Worldliness vs. Christian worldview
•    A sleepiness of the soul in which status, pleasures, comforts, and cares of the world appear solid, stunning, and affecting, while the truths of Scripture become abstractions, unable to grip the heart or guide our everyday activities.  
•    In US, the enemy is not in persecution but seduction.

THREE:  Vss.24-25  Gospel Re-Enactment in Speech
Eph.4:24 “and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
•    Gospel reenactment=Putting On
•    Putting off and putting on must happen simultaneously; these two are not separated and the transformation of the spirit of the mind, grammatically placed between the two, is the means.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION ONE:
•    Falsehood→ Truth
•    “Why do we lie?”  Two most common reasons:
•    Avoid Pain
•    Acquire or Gain
•    Solution:  The gospel enables the transformation of the heart because on the cross it reveals that Christ took all the shame and pain due to sin simultaneously accepting us FULLY by virtue of His love.