When your neighbors or your co-workers observe you from day to day, do they see anything different about you from others in the neighborhood or the office? If they were to find out that you are a Christian, would that be a real surprise to them, or would they say that they could tell by the way that you lived your life? Today’s Scripture from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church gives us an admonition and encouragement to live our lives patterned after the Lord Jesus.
In our Scripture passage, Paul describes the way believers should walk. The term “walk” refers to our daily conduct (vs. 17). We are not to live like the rest of the world lives. Their life is empty, vain, and without meaning. Unbelievers do not live their lives the way the Lord desires. The Gospel seems foolish to those who have never turned to Jesus in faith, and instead they rely on their own understanding. However, to believers who have trusted in the Lord Jesus as our Savior, we must walk by faith, trusting Jesus to teach us His will, and how to serve Him. God has promised to reveal Himself to us when we seek Him (Jeremiah 29:11-13).
Unbelievers are spiritually separated from God, with spiritual darkness and moral blindness (vs 18). They are alienated from God, but that is not because God desires to exclude people. Instead, people exclude themselves from salvation. They do this because they choose to, because their hearts are hard and stubborn.
Unbelievers are morally insensitive (vs. 19). They sin, and then rather than turning to Jesus, they turn away from Him. They are behaviorally depraved, willingly succumbing to sensuality and licentiousness. They have lost all moral restraint. This is something we are seeing more and more of in today’s world. Things we wouldn’t even dream of happening, are now blatantly in our face in the world today. Many of the movies, books, TV shows, and social media that we choose to see have desensitized us to sin, and we begin to lose our conscience. The first step into sin is growing comfortable with things that should make us ashamed.
As Christians, our lifestyle and behavior should contrast to the insensitive, passion-dominated unsaved folk who desire to only satisfy their lower nature. Others should be able to see a difference between Christians and non-Christians. Unbelievers are in darkness, and are children of the Evil One, Satan. We are children of God, and are to live lives that reflect the Light of the Lord Jesus.
When you come inside, after working outside in your yard, or following cleaning up a basement or garage, your clothes are going to be dirty. To be presentable we need to change clothes into something clean. Paul makes the analogy of putting off the “old man”, and putting on the “new man”, to the changing out of dirty clothes and putting new, clean clothes on (vs. 22-23). The “old man” is the behavior we had when unsaved, the worn out, useless, unconverted sinful nature. The “new man” is the completely new spiritual and moral nature the Lord gives believers. When we are saved, our new self is created in the very likeness of God. We need to take the worldly, sinful behavior off, just as we would take off the old, filthy clothes. We should repent from sin, and submit to God.
Paul then specifies one particular behavior that is quite common among people, unfortunately including Christians, and that is lying (vs. 25). Lying is more than just not telling the truth. It includes exaggerations, or adding to a true story something that is not correct. It also includes cheating, making foolish promises, betraying confidence, and making false excuses. These are also a form of lying. Christians should have no part in any of that behavior.
We have to make a conscious, moment by moment choice to depend upon the Holy Spirit’s power to transform us into the likeness of Jesus Christ. If we want to be God’s servants, we must decide whether we will base our life on His priorities or on the world’s. The two are incompatible together. Spend time in the Bible learning what is important to God, and then follow His way so that our walk is a good witness to the world of our life in Christ.
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