The Resurrection Life is a Different Life
October 30, 2015
In this passage the apostle Paul contrasts two distinctly different ways of life, and why we should have nothing to do with the one, while being continually renewed by the other:
1. The Empty Way of Life (Ephesians 4:17-19)
Why we should have nothing to do with the empty way of life:
a. It’s a life that goes nowhere
When Paul says that “you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking,” he is basically saying that the guiding philosophy of life behind their culture was devoid of meaning. It had no purpose. It had no substance. It was simply going nowhere.
It was a culture built on satisfying the whims of the individual. And so materialism, sexual immorality and violence were an everyday part of life. If you didn’t have what you wanted, you did whatever you could to get it, and often that meant using people to get what you want.
b. It’s a life that leaves us in the dark
Paul tells us why their thinking is futile. He says, 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. This is quite a statement. When you live like you are your own authority, you close your mind to God. That’s how the Ephesians lived. They were intellectually blacked out.
Living self-centered lives had a petrifying effect on their hearts. Their hardness closed their minds to God and made it so that God did not exist. Therefore they lived as aliens to God. God was just not part of the Ephesian conscious.
Sound familiar? As living for self, for individual rights and practices grows in this country, people believe more and more that they are their own authority, and close their minds to God.
c. It’s a way of life with devastating results
Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed. This is what happens when moral restraint is cast off, and sin does its work to harden us. It makes us callous to right and wrong. It makes us insensitive. We end up caring only for ourselves. And the results are devastating. We become less than human. When sin has its way with us in this way, we loose all sense of shame. We don’t care what others think. We use people for our own ends. And we daringly pursue more and more sensual and outrageous acts of sin.
2. The Alternative Life (Ephesians 4:20-24)
That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. Whenever anyone hears the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, they are not only hearing a message of salvation that is entered into by faith, but they hear a message of good news that reveals an alternative way of life other than the way of life the world offers us.
a. It’s the way of a disciple
It’s the way of a learner. This is a picture of becoming a disciple, an apprentice of Jesus and His way of life. Paul’s point is that Jesus embodies and encompasses the truth. Find Jesus and you find truth. Find truth and you find Jesus. Truth does not exist apart from Him. Jesus himself said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12
b. It’s the way of denial
Putting off your former way of life, and putting on your new self.
c. It’s the way daily renewal
No longer being conformed to the way of the world, but now daily being made new in the attitude of your minds.