What would you think if you saw a butterfly that would only crawl around on the ground or on the small branches of a bush, and refused to spread his wings and fly? If you could talk to the butterfly you might ask him why he isn’t flying around, and remind him that he is no longer a caterpillar. When a poor person suddenly wins or inherits a lot of money, he is rich now, and shouldn’t continue to live in a run-down house or apartment, wearing patched up clothes. We expect things to act like what they are. This is a lesson that Paul wanted to teach the Ephesians, as we read in our Scripture today. He wants believers and followers of the Lord Jesus to know that they need to stop acting like what they once were, to stop acting like the world, like unbelievers, and act like the redeemed children of God that they are.
When we get saved, we are called to a complete transformation, a total conversion to a new way of life. This includes a renewing of our mind (Romans 12:2). We need to align our thinking with the truth of Jesus. Believers are to renounce their pre-conversion lifestyle and sins, and become more and more in line with God’s ways (vs. 22-24).
Paul implores the Christians in the Ephesian church, and us today, to stop living like unbelievers. Their thinking is ignorant and futile. They have suppressed the truth. Their hearts are hard and spiritually insensitive. They are given over to sensuality, self-indulgence, impurity, and greed. Paul states that they live in the “futility of their mind” (vs. 17), without proper purpose. All of their efforts to obtain happiness ends in failure.
As Paul continues, he tells how the unsaved are blind. They aren’t physically blind, but instead have blindness of their hearts (vs. 18). They have moral blindness. The more they turn away from God, the more their hearts and will have been hardened. This causes them to be separated from God. This is a willful choice of the unsaved. God does not predestine people to be condemned. They exclude themselves from salvation because they choose to, because their hearts are hard and stubborn.
Worldly, unsaved people have lost all sensitivity, all feelings of shame (vs. 19). They have also been desensitized to illicit sex, death, crime, murder, obscenity, and evil. We can see that through the movies and TV today, and what we see online. They have lost their conscience, or at the very least, completely ignore it. It is as if they are past feeling what is morally right or wrong. They are calloused, being so deep in sin.
This is what Paul is warning us of. We are not to be like that. We are believers and followers of Jesus Christ, and should not be like the world. This type of behavior, this type of thinking and acting, should not be our lifestyle. God’s priorities and the world’s are totally incompatible. Before we are saved we do whatever we desire, indulging our fleshly desires and self-gratification. Believers should put God above all else. As we draw closer to Him, we will be less attracted to the ungodly practices of the world (vs. 20-24). We are to replace ungodly habits with those that please God. As we learn more and more of God’s Word, the Bible, we won’t live like the unbelievers do.
This is not generally an instantaneous change when we choose to follow Jesus. It should, though, be a conscious choice to desire to follow His ways, and a gradual change should become evident. We have to make a conscious, moment by moment choice to depend on the Holy Spirit to form us into the likeness of Jesus Christ.
People should be able to see a difference between a Christian and a non-Christian because of the way we live. We are to live as children of the light, not as those who are in moral and spiritual darkness. We have been transformed, just like a butterfly has. Live like a butterfly, not like a caterpillar. We are children of the King, not children of Satan any longer. Live like we belong to God!
No comments:
Post a Comment