The New Life

So we're going to be in Ephesians 4 again.

That's where we were last week, so we're going to pick up there.

So if you use your pew Bibles, that's page 1008.

And we'll look there in just a moment in Ephesians, chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

So as I was looking through this text, it brought something to mind.

You know, in our world today and if I say our world and I'm going to talk about our world a little bit I mean the secular world around us, the place in which we live and the people that occupy it, in the culture that makes it up, and there are things in our culture that are good and things in our culture that are not so good, and things that maybe we could be indifferent about and things that contain a mixture of those things.

One of those areas is an area of entertainment, and probably the most.

When you think about the area of entertainment, I didn't look up the stats on this, but in my opinion, it seems to me that the most popular area of entertainment, particularly in movies and in books and fiction in general, is perhaps the superhero genre.

And as we live in this world where superheroes are, we spend millions of dollars and make movies about them and people go and they spend their time and their resources to watch these stories.

We apparently like them, but we apparently don't like so much the most popular or the most well-known superhero, because we don't make as many movies about them, about him, and they don't sell as well when they do.

But in case you're not aware, the most popular or sorry popular is not the right word maybe the most well-known superhero is Superman and Superman.

If you're familiar with our culture broadly and I say Superman, you know who I'm talking about.

But if you're less familiar with the specifics, if I say Clark Kent, you may not know who I'm talking about.

Clark Kent is the alter ego of Superman.

It's him as a reporter with glasses and he comes across as this mild mannered guy who you know.

He couldn't save the world, he couldn't do any of these great and grand things, and that's who he is, that's how the world knows him.

But then, when something happens, when there's an event, when there's a crisis, clark Kent will duck out.

He doesn't stick around, he disappears.

And if you've watched perhaps old Superman cartoons even, or read the old comics, he often disappears into a phone booth.

And what does he do when he goes into the phone booth or ducks into the alley or whatever it may be.

Well, he begins to change his clothes.

He pulls the shirt open and reveals what appears to be an S.

For those of you who are more aware, you may know it's not actually an S, but we'll leave that for another time.

You see this S which represents Superman, and then he emerges with Cape and in red and blue and gold, and he is immovable, he is indestructible.

He is fast and strong and powerful.

You see, he changes clothes and with his new clothes he is now a new person, if you will.

Well, we're going to look any fusions here and, yeah, we don't get those kinds of powers and that's okay.

But what we are going to look at is what Paul goes to next after we finish what we did last week.

Last week, we ended in verses 14 through 16.

That was kind of our last point.

We're going to move on from there, but in that text in verse 14, it says that then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.

Paul is writing to the Ephesians and he is saying hey, you have weaknesses, but I am going to teach you how to put on a different set of clothes.

I am going to tell you that Christ has given you clothes that make you strong and immovable and powerful.

He says you're not going to be confused, you're not going to be tossed about.

But verse 15, instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is ahead, that is, christ.

From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

You see, paul wrote and this is what we talked about last week.

He wrote to a church that certainly had its potential struggles, but he wrote to them to tell them where to find their strength.

And their strength is found in Christ and in each other, as they bond together as a church, as they build each other up, as they're joined together and held together.

And so what I want you to see as we get into today's text, starting in verse 17, is I want you to see that in Christ, you are called to live a new life.

You're called to live a new life.

Now we're going to talk about this new life, but before we get into it, I want to emphasize to you who he's talking to.

So Paul is writing to a group in Ephesus who claims to be Christian.

They say we are Jesus's disciples and so we are his.

Well, what does that mean?

Well, that means that this is a group of people who has come from somewhere else and is now following Jesus.

So I'm talking to you, and some of you may have been raised in Christian backgrounds and raised in a Christian home.

That's not who he's writing to.

He's writing to a group of believers who were in paganism and are now Christian.

They've renounced one thing and they have adopted a new life.

I recognize that there are some people here that I'm talking to.

That that resonates with you.

You lived a life apart from God, visibly and regularly, and that life that you lived apart from God visibly and regularly looked very clearly not Christian.

And then there was a time in your life when the gospel was made plain to you, the good news that Jesus has made a way to know the Father, to be able to call him Father and to be able to call yourself a child of God.

And your life is different, and so that resonates with you.

But I think sometimes those who and I, as a pastor, I deal with this a lot I deal with people who were raised in Christian homes and the kids that are raised in Christian homes.

They're raised with Christian values, they're expected to live like a believer from birth, basically, and they grow up and they look back and yeah, they can say, yeah, I know, I'm a child of God, I was baptized at a certain point to publicly profess that.

But I don't see that old life and that new life as clearly because of the way I was raised.

And so I want to look at this text today and I want to tell you that, whether you are the one who you can clearly see your moment of conversion and the old life and the new life, or whether that's more fuzzy for you, I believe that the principles taught in this text are helpful for both of you.

And so let's look at this new life that you are called to live.

Well, starts out, before he gets into the new life, by emphasizing the former life.

You have a former life, and so that former life is verses 17 through 19.

So let's look at that together Ephesians 4, verse 17.

Ephesians 4:17

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

And you might remember from last week that when we said Gentiles here, he's not telling them.

This isn't a racial statement, this is a religious statement that the Gentiles basically refers to those that are not believers, those who are not Christians, the world at large.

So he says don't live like the world.

And then he describes what that is and basically they used to live this way.

So he describes it in this way.

He says in the futility of their thinking, meaning, hey, they live according to what is on their mind, what they believe is right, what they believe they should do.

And Paul throws in that modifier that it is futile, that it is pointless, that it is worthless.

The thinking of the world is worthless.

This says they are darkened in their understanding.

So it doesn't mean that the world, that those around, that the broad culture doesn't have intelligence and doesn't see things and try to address problems.

The world at large does think and see things and try to address problems.

The problem is right here verse 18, that their understanding is darkened.

Have you ever had the power go out at night and you think you understand your house right, and you probably do.

If you get up in the middle of the night and you try to find your way to the bathroom without turning on the light, you're probably pretty good at it because you've done it a lot of times.

But when you're not expecting it and the power goes out and you don't remember that especially if you have kids that that blanket is on the floor over there, or that toy is on the floor over there, or this thing is on the floor over there, and you try to get around your house to find the flashlight or to find the candle, all of a sudden your understanding is darkened and as you seek to find your way across the house, you find yourself stumbling or hitting your shins on the coffee table or walking into the corner of the wall because, hey, there's no light, it is dark.

And so, though you have understanding, though you have a knowledge, it is darkened, it is not clear, and it says that they are separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.

So the picture the picture is the darkening, right, but the reality is is that their hearts are hardened, meaning that, though they look at the world, though they look out around them and they can see real problems.

They can see real suffering.

We can see this right now.

You turn on the news and what do you see?

Well, you see things about the Middle East and the war going on there.

You see things about mass shootings and things like that.

You see problems of homelessness and just general hurt in the world all around, and everybody looks out and sees these as problems.

Nobody that is right in their mind, humanly speaking.

Nobody looks at those things and says, oh, those are all good things.

Now you look at them, the world looks at them, and says they're bad.

But their hearts are hard, their understanding is darkened, and so when they go to try to address the problems in the world, they miss the mark.

They come up short.

Verse 20, having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity.

So they are full of greed.

This former life that Paul is reminding them that they are no longer a part of is very much a dangerous thing.

And I want to point something out to you.

We have different problems in our world today than they had in Ephesus, but in another, very real way, we kind of face all the same types of problems.

They lived in a lost world with a society around them that was opposed to God.

Yeah, theirs was very clearly a pagan culture.

Our culture, if I look at it and I try to address it honestly our culture around us is leaning very much atheistically, that there is no God, that spiritual truth doesn't matter.

All that really matters in the world is what feels right and that you're not infringing on other people.

The reality is that we live in a place, in a culture that has a draw on us.

It has a pole that can tempt us with a form of ethics, a form of morality, a form of purpose that can draw us away, and so I'm going to encourage you in this, or I'm going to challenge you with this.

I want to challenge you to be on guard as you live your new life, because the old life is tempting.

In modern words, there is a secular way to live and there is a Christian way to live, and it is different.

And, as I hinted at earlier, though, there is perhaps overlap between the problems that we see.

We, as Christians, can look out and identify certain problems, and the world may look out and identify those same problems.

The lens through which the world looks at them is going to arrive at solutions that are not necessarily the solutions that we would arrive at Now.

It doesn't mean that we can't find some common ground.

Yes, certainly sometimes there are, and certainly sometimes in some cases, there can be a lot of overlap as we seek to address kind of what's right and what's wrong in the world.

But the truth is that the world is not, the secular world is not all moral, but in reality we live in a world where morality is pushed, where what is right and what is wrong is not seen as neutral, and what we see is that in Scripture, we have a different lens through which we look at the world, and so it is different.

So I would just challenge you, I would encourage you, to be careful as you engage in the world.

I'm not saying don't engage in the world.

I'm not saying completely block yourself off and don't see what's going on around you.

I'm not saying put on blinders and ignore the problems around you.

We're Christians and we live in a world where we're called to be salt and light in this place.

And so, as you live life, yeah, look at problems and seek to make a better place in what you live, and seek to live out the gospel and represent Jesus in all of your areas of life.

But be careful as you do engage, because the world's morality can become tempting.

What is called right and what is called wrong?

You can feel a pressure to agree, to affirm things that the Bible clearly says no, we don't affirm those things, and so I call on you to be careful.

Be careful to be on guard as we seek to put away our former life and instead turn our attempt attention to our new life, and that's what Paul is going to talk about here in the next few verses verses 20 through 24.

He is going to talk about what your new life looks like.

He just told you what your former life looked like, but now he turns his attention to your new life.

He says verse 20,.

That, however, is not that everything, the former life, that, however, is not the way of life you learned.

He's saying hey, when you became a Christian, you learned something new.

You learned a different way of life.

He says verse 21,.

When you heard about Christ and were taught in Him in accordance with the truth, that is, in Jesus, 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.

That word corrupted is about to be contrasted in the next verse with the word that, in this translation, is translated verse 23 made new.

It's also translated other translations as renewed.

But the idea is that these are progressive.

So if you have a car that is rusty, that's been sitting out and the paint has weathered, the rust is beginning to corrupt the body panels and eventually that rust penetrates deeper and starts to get into the frame and over time, eventually rust will completely corrupt that car.

But similarly, we have a progressive way of being made new or of renewal that we see in verse 23 that we're called to so again.

Verse 22, you were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off the old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires.

The old self is being corrupted because it wants wrong.

Verse 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

You see, we are called to radical transformation.

We are called to have and live a new life.

And, in case you missed it, the key to that new life in verses 20 through 24 is that the new life is possible because you are a new creation.

Look R Our flesh, our body, our self Is thoroughly sinful.

Daniel reminded us of Romans 7 this morning, where we're Paul, the apostle Paul, basically just, he calls himself wretched, he mourns over who he is in the flesh.

He says, oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

Then he goes on to talk about a war inside of him, of wanting to do right, but, but, but this, this old self is dragging him down.

But then in Romans, chapter 8, you have what is Probably my favorite passage or chapter in Scripture.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

But you have a chapter, a teaching, that is, that that emphasizes that we have have been Delivered, that we have been made free in the gospel and in Christ and that even our shortcomings are our Overcome by the, by the Holy Spirit.

We are told that we are given new life because we are a new creature.

Now, our old creature, so to speak, is still around, apparently, and though we the Bible talks about us having been crucified with Christ, we still tend to return to this old self.

But we have been made new and so we do not have to, we don't have to be tied To who we used to be.

And so as you, as you look at your life, recognize that you have been given, in Christ, the ability to have victory.

As you have struggles that you look back on, you have been given victory.

And he goes on To talk about this new life lived out in the, in the verses 25 through 32, and so we're gonna look at these verses in just a moment.

Now, before we look at the verses, as we think about this new life lived out, I Want to point out that that I don't think that these are an exhaustive list.

In fact, I'm quite sure that they're not an exhaustive list because other very similar passages have other things in them.

Paul is gonna give some examples here in the text that show us what what the new life lived out looks like, but before we get into them, I want to point out some, some commonalities between Between these, these examples that Paul is gonna give.

First of all, I want to point out that that they are all going to be Relational.

They have to do with how we live with other people.

So the new life, the new life that we're called to live Significantly impacts the way we relate to others, and so so what we want to draw from these three examples that Paul is gonna give is we're going to want to draw from them Principles related to how we relate to each other within the church and how we relate to the world around us more broadly, so they all have a relational element.

I Also want to point out that each one of them involves some kind of a replacement.

There there's a, there's a negative thing to be put off and a positive thing to be put on, and and and though it doesn't mean that every everything that you do has a has a one-for-one moral equivalent.

I'm gonna stop doing this and I'm going to do this, but it has to do Rather with, principally, that that, as we seek to put off, we're not just trying to not do things.

Sometimes we can.

We can Think about the Christian life as a list of rules, of things we don't do.

Well, it's not there.

There are things we don't do, sure, but it's actually of what we do do, that that that Lives out this new life, this Christian life, and so there there's a relational aspect, there's a replacement aspect, and then, finally, each one of them Involves some kind of of truth or theological truth.

They will, they will teach a they will, they will give a reason why you ought to do these things.

And the reality is is that, as Christians, as we seek to be more and more like Christ, as we seek to live out this new life, we need to dig deeper and deeper into the word so that we can know these truths and then live them out so they can Impact the way we live.

So let's look together at these last few verses verses 25 through 32 and See.

See these examples that Paul gives us of what the new life lived out looks like.

Verse 25 Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak.

Speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

So he's saying, hey, don't lie and speak truth.

We're part of the same body.

So this is talking about within the church, he says.

Then he goes on to say, in your anger, do not sin, do not let the Sun go down while you are still angry and Do not give the devil a foothold, basically saying, hey, resolve your conflicts.

These, these have to do with how you relate within the body of Christ.

Right.

We, we don't lie to each other and and when we, when we do sin against each other, we resolve it.

We don't put it off, but we address these things.

I've heard verse 26 applied kind of in a legalistic way as, like, you absolutely have to resolve everything before you go to sleep at night.

But you know what?

It's not really a bad policy to just say I am gonna always resolve my issues before I go to bed at night.

It doesn't mean that it's a hard and fast command that everything can be put that simply.

There are things that are difficult, that that take time.

But the truth is is we ought to not be the kind of people who let these things Fester and go on.

Verse 28, anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work doing something useful with their own hands that they may have something to share with those in need.

Notice the theological truth there.

He gives us this whole principle, but he gives a reason.

First of all, he's saying, hey, you have to have something, you have to earn money, you need not just to make a living.

But the theological truth there is that we ought to be giving people.

There are going to be people in need.

And if you don't have something, how can you give to someone in need?

You have to work hard and actually earn a living, so to speak, so that you are able to fulfill that command to share with those in need.

He says don't steal.

Apparently, stealing was very common.

I actually think stealing is very common.

I was reading a commentary.

It's like saying how common stealing was in that world.

In our world stealing is not that common.

I don't know.

I've seen a lot of car break-ins lately and I feel like there's plenty of theft going around in our world today too.

But the idea here is that perhaps stealing was more kind of socially acceptable or viewed as less bad in that world.

But he's saying, hey, that can't be who we are.

We have to be honest, hardworking people.

He says don't let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Basically, I read two there, going back to verse 29, that unwholesome talk.

Basically, we need to speak in a way that doesn't hurt, that doesn't tear down.

We need to speak kindly and build each other up and speak in a way that's a benefit.

And then verse 30 is very much a very general thing about not grieving.

The Holy Spirit Basically recognize that, hey, we need to live our lives in a way that is turning from sin, is doing right.

It says verse 31, get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as Christ, just as in Christ, god forgave you.

You see, the new life lived out is one of everyday repentance and growth.

The new life lived out is one of everyday repentance and growth.

It means that we are called to constantly be looking at our life, recognizing where it is that we have failed, confessing that, turning from that and then adding, growing, being more and more transformed to be like Jesus.

You see, you are called, and I am called, to live a new life.

Your life should be different.

I want to challenge you to think about your own life, and I set up at the beginning of this sermon two categories of people those who were raised in a Christian house and those who came to faith at a later time, and so I'm going to ask you to think through this, and it's going to be a little different for those two categories of people, but I want you to think of the difference between the old you and the new you.

What has God done in your life to give you a new life?

Can you clearly see the difference between the old self and the new self?

You see, I opened with that illustration about Superman, right, I think.

Sometimes, as Christians, we see problems, we see things that need to be addressed and we want to pretend we really are Clark Kent.

We don't want to take the steps that we need to be faithful.

We get drawn back into our old lives and the things that have kept us in bondage and we give up.

That ought not to be so.

You have been given a new life.

You have been made a new creation.

If you are God's child, you are not a slave to sin, so don't live like you're a slave to sin.

If you feel like you're in bondage, get help.

What is the context of this?

What did we talk about last week?

That this comes in a situation where he is emphasizing the body of Christ.

You're not walking the life alone.

You have a body of believers around you to bear that burden with you, to lift you up, to hold you accountable, to be invested in your life.

Connect, share, pray.

Be on guard as you seek to live this new life.

Be on guard that the world around you doesn't draw you in.

Be on guard that your old self doesn't tempt you.

Seek to know Jesus more and more.

Know Him by reading His word.

Know Him by gathering with the saints.

Know Him by talking to Him, by praying to Him, by asking that the Holy Spirit would transform you and give you victory, and always be growing more and more to be more and more conformed to Christ.

Our old self is corrupting, but our new self is renewing, live life, renewed by the Holy Spirit.

Heavenly Father, thank you.

Thank you that in Christ we are a new creation.

Thank you that you have given us victory and though we sometimes don't feel victorious, though we sometimes feel defeated, though you have given us victory.

Sin and death are defeated in Christ.

He's been raised victorious.

Help us to live in the victory we have in Christ.

Help us to live not in bondage to sin.

Father.

Help us to be faithful.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.