Sunday, July 7, 2024 Summer Session 6

About the idea of renewal, and of course we hear about renewal in our passage, being renewed. When we look at verse 17 as a first step, as a first step, what seems to be that first step? What did your group say in general?

Would you all think verse 17 is about? Is it about comparison, contrast, improvement, or repentance? Definitely a contrast going on in there. What else? Repentance? Yeah. See, the contrast is certainly there, but as we are reminded again, there is a dynamic movement, there's a growth, there's a progression going on in the passage.

So, in terms of a contrast, there is this igneous rock, and there's this metamorphic rock, and look at the differences. But we're not talking about rocks, we're talking about the metaphors in the text are all organic, and living, and growing, and dynamic.

And so there's the contrast we see is to establish the need to move, to turn away from point A and to go to point B. So you see the contrast is definitely there, it's there for the purpose of repentance.

And repentance is different from improvement. In what way is repentance different than improvement, do you think? More opposite, more opposing, more diametrically opposed to one another? Yes, Joe? Yes.

So there's a humility in repentance that's not there in improvement, correct? There's a confession of sin that is inherent in repentance that's not there when it comes to improvement. And so that's important to identify right there at the beginning.

Repentance Versus Improvement in Ephesians 4

There are some pretty devastating descriptions in verses 18 and 19, the nature or condition of those who are without Christ, those who are in the darkness of sin, and those are pretty strong. But what did your group discuss?

What do you see as the root cause of the iniquity surveyed in verses 18 through 19? Do you see the root cause somewhere else in the text itself? Some of us are going to instantly grab for our systematic theologies to explain it, which is fine, but what what's in the text that explains the root cause of all of this iniquity in verses 18 and 19?

A hardness of heart, yeah. We have the blindness of the heart in verse 18, we have the futility of the mind in verse 17, we have the terms understanding, ignorance, feeling. There's a lot of attention, a lot of light being shown on the inner man.

Remember Jesus talking about how if the light of a man is darkness, how great is the darkness? That out of the heart the mouth speaks, that Jesus would often draw the attention away from the external ritual cleansings to point at the heart, what goes on in the inner man.

This is what Jesus was primarily concerned with, very compassionate, healing people, helping people, but he was always talking about what goes on in the inner man. When we see the Gentiles being mentioned in verse 17, what is our understanding of that based on how Paul's already been using the term Gentiles in chapters 2 and 3?

What is he talking about here? Is he saying Gentiles are bad in and of themselves? If you're a Gentile, you're hopeless. What is he saying about the Gentiles here? So there are some Gentiles who are turning to Christ, who no longer live like the Gentiles do.

They have a reputation. How very Gentile-ish of you. Kind of like being a Cretan, you're known to be a Cretan, you have a reputation. But Gentiles, when the nations, when the ethnoi, when they come to Christ, they're no longer defined by the way that they used to be.

They don't walk around and say, well the reason why I lie so often and I'm so sexually immoral and I very often visit pagan temples is because I'm a Gentile Christian. I'm a Gentile, I have affections for Gentile things, I'm that kind of Christian.

So all these Gentile affections are cool, I'm just a Christian with all these Gentile-ish ways. That's not repentance. That would be under the heading of improvement, right? I'm gonna slightly improve my Gentile ways by adding Jesus into the mix.

But repentance is no longer defined by that. You're not going to be labeling yourself in that way. Now, so this kind of leads us to our discussion question, where Paul is bringing these exhortations in verses 17 through 19, but he sees them connected to what came just before.

We know that because he uses the word therefore. There's I that say therefore and testify in the Lord that you should no longer walk this way but walk that way. So the natural progression, the connection is what?

What did Paul just talk about in verses 11 through 16? What was he on about? What was he assuring them of? What's the plan in verses 11 through 16? Growing up, maturing in Christ, there are certain servants who take the lead in this, but all the parts of the body are involved in investing in one another, speaking the Word of God to one another.

All the members of the body helping the body to grow. Everybody's a vine grower. Everybody's a vine grower. And so, this I say therefore. Now, remember that the maturity, the growing up and maturing, is a logical progression of the call to unity.

At the very beginning, verse 1, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called. And here we are in verse 17, and we're back to that metaphor of walk.

He starts in verse 1, walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called, and apparently this is the same calling for everybody. So there's a oneness, there's a sevenfold exhortation followed by a sevenfold declaration of oneness in verses 1 through 6.

And then, how is there going to be unity? How is there going to be oneness in the body of Christ? Well, we have to grow up into Christ. We all have to have the same destination, the same point of orientation.

There's one standard, and we are all fixated on Him. And by His light, we see each other clearly, and we see the direction we're supposed to go. So, Christ calls us to unity. Christ calls us to maturity, which means we got a lot of growing up to do, and that's not a matter of simply improvement, but it is renewal.

There's the idea that we've already seen in the previous passage that Jesus Christ is the very measure of humanity. If we want to know the image of God, if we want to know what humanity looks like, we look at Jesus Christ.

Of course, we go to Genesis 1 and 2 and 3 and read about Adam and Eve and all the rest of that, but if we want the clearest definition of what humanity is, we look to Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, fully human and fully God.

But He gives us the full definition of what a human being is. Therefore, we have a need to be renewed, because the image of God is scarred and defiled and full of sin. Everybody who has ever been made, everybody who lives, is made in the image of God, and therefore we exist for His glory.

The image of God was made for the Word of God to live for the glory of God. That's true of everybody who has ever been made, but because of sin, Romans 3 .23, all have fallen short of, not the Mosaic law, right?

Falling short of what? Of the glory of God, right? So, Romans 3 .23 says the standard is the glory of God. That standard was established back in Genesis 1 and 2, isn't it? So, there needs to be a renewal of the image of God, and that's what we're looking at in verses 17 through 32.

There's no unity in the church unless we're growing up in Christ and being renewed into His image. There's no way to have unity. There's no way to to be at one with one another unless we're all growing up and being renewed into Christ.

Where there is godliness, meaning more and more like the image of God, godliness is just being more and more conformed to the image of God. So, where there is godliness, there will be unity and love. There will be a maturing maturity, an ongoing dynamic conformity to Christ.

So, the first in our acronym of renewal is the R there is repent from futility in verse 17. Very clearly we're called to repent from futility. Repentance is such a grace of God. It doesn't matter how you have sinned.

If one person sins in self-righteous pride and the other person sins in immoral lust, when both repent, they're repenting to the same Christ. Turning away from this sin, turning away from that sin, confessing that, saying the same thing that God says about it before the grace of God and both of them repent to the same Christ.

So, watch them come together. Repentance is such a grace of God when it comes to unity. Now, Paul says therefore and that in verse 17. This I say, therefore and testify in the Lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk.

So, he has described the calling and the character that fits a dynamic unity in Christ verses 1 through 16. Now, Paul makes the logical conclusion, therefore, that they should no longer live as Gentiles are known to live.

That should no longer be characteristic of them. They had a way of doing things. Remember that the disciples in various times were trying to say who's going to be the greatest in the kingdom and I want the right seat on your right hand, I want the seat in your left hand, I want to have authority in this kingdom that you keep on talking about, Jesus.

And then Jesus told his disciples, that's how the Gentiles do it. They grab authority to lord it over one another, but that's not how we're going to do things in my kingdom, he says to them. So, there needs to be, in light of who Christ is, there needs to be a change.

Therefore and that. He says, this I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord. So, he combines two terms, say and testify. He's repeating himself, bringing not only emphasis, but clarity. When he says testify, he's getting really serious.

One scholar by the name of Bengel said that when the Apostle Paul admonishes, he wants his readers to act freely. When he encourages, he wants his readers to act gladly. And when he testifies, he wants his readers to act reverently.

And so here, he's testifying, there's a weighty kind of authority here that he's bringing to bear. They all together should be really serious in thinking about what the will of the Lord is, which he'll bring that back up in chapter 5.

To live soberly, reverently, consider what the will of the Lord is. He's going to come back to this idea, he's bringing it up here. But what is the authority? What's the weightiness here? Notice he does so in the Lord.

He says and testifies in the Lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk. In the Lord. Now, in verses 11 through 16, he's already explained who it is who builds the church. Who it is who has authority over the church.

We already know that Christ is the head of the church from Ephesians chapter 1. And Jesus is the one who builds his church in the way that he does. He breaks down the wall of separation and he takes up the living stones.

He is quarried from the nations and he builds the new covenant temple. And so we know that it is the Lord who is building the church. And it is the Lord's authority, it's the Lord's grace, it's the Lord's power that are in view here.

It's for the Lord's name that the church is being built. And so Paul is saying in the Lord I am calling upon you to no longer walk as the Gentiles walk. Give up that old identity. Give up those old loyalties.

Give up those old habits and ways. When he says in the Lord he means in his name, in his grace, in his authority, in his truth, in his interests. Paul says this. The truth of the matter is that they did walk as the Gentiles walked.

They would they would take those paths from their house to the temple to the market to the baths back to their house. They did things the way the Gentiles did things. They were accustomed to it. It was the way everybody lived.

They had patterns in their thinking. They would go from point A to point B to point C in their thinking. And they would think about the body being worthless and the need to escape the constrainments of the flesh and to be nothing but ethereal spirits.

And they would frown upon taking care of things in the real world because they were Greek in their thinking. There were all sorts of ways of them being Gentiles walking not only in terms of their thought processes but also their behaviors and their affections.

And Paul is saying no longer should you walk in those ways. That's not the standard of humanity. This is not the height of human society. That would be Jesus Christ. So no longer walk in this way. Rather the idea is to walk as Christ walks.

Now remember that Jacob, old heel grabber, supplanter Jacob, had a way of doing things. And that was clear from early on. He came out grabbing his brother's heel. He tripped him up in tricking him out of his birthright for a bowl of stew.

He supplanted his brother's blessing by conspiring with his mother to take the blessing away from him. He ran off and tried to make deals with Laban. And he ended up with all of Laban's flock basically.

Tripped Laban up, got them all away from him. And he was in the process of figuring out how to trip up Esau to keep Esau from killing him. And he had made all these arrangements, sent all these flocks ahead of him to bribe Esau and try to calm the strong man down.

And he had hid his family one way and then Jacob went another way and he's hiding out. He's got all of his plans ready to go. He's just doing what Jacob does every single time. And then Jesus just jumps him in the middle of the night.

BAM! Second person of the Godhead comes down in bodily form and just assaults Jacob. And they wrestle, wrestle, wrestle until he puts his hip out of joint. As you know that Jacob never walked the same again day in his life.

He walked differently from that day on. And that's the idea. When you get, when Jesus jumps you, like Saul of Tarsus, right, Saul didn't make an appointment, right, to meet with the Lord of the universe who was his dire enemy.

I think we need to have a peace talk and try to work some things out. I think there's a lot of hostility between us. Jesus Christ jumps Saul of Tarsus as much as he jumped Jacob. Boom! He goes down. And you know Saul of Tarsus never walked the same again.

Praise God. In the same way we should no longer walk as we once walked. To put it a different way, the disciples called Jesus their rabbi and they rightly did so. That was the manner in which they had this relationship.

But when you had a rabbi, when you were learning from your rabbi, you did everything and learned everything and said everything just the way your rabbi did. If he said something a certain way with a certain prepositional phrase in a certain order, you said it that way and you didn't change it up.

If you were a good disciple, if you were a good follower, a good learner. And if he ate his food in a certain way, you ate your food that way. If he had a habit of bending down a certain way as he passed under a branch, that's what you did.

Everything was defined by your rabbi. You learned everything about him and that's the idea of us learning Jesus. Notice there in verse 20 of chapter 4 of Ephesians, but you have not so learned Christ in contrast to the ways the Gentiles walk.

You see, we are learning Christ. That's who we're learning. We're learning to walk as he walks, being brought up into maturity into him. Now in this passage it says you should no longer walk. Now New King James and King James will say as the rest of the Gentiles walk.

In modern translations, critical text leaves that out. I think it's in the majority text. But it's a clarifying thing. It's not that the people he's talking to didn't grow up as Gentiles. They certainly did.

And they did not have, they didn't know Aramaic and they didn't know the Jewish customs. They didn't have catchphrases from the Hebrew. They were Gentiles. But they're not supposed to live as the Gentiles.

They're not supposed to keep that as their identity any more than the Jews were to keep Israel as their identity. Because Christ is all. Christ is all. So don't walk as the rest of them walk. It's interesting though in the New Testament in various places like 1st Peter chapters 1 2 and 1st John chapters 2 3 that those who are identified in Christ, Jew and Gentile, are identified as located in Israel.

And everybody outside, no matter where they came from, are called the Gentiles. It's very interesting the way in which the idea of what it means to be the people of God gets identified in terms of who Christ is.

In the Old Covenant the question is, are you in Israel or outside of Israel? In the New Covenant, the satisfying fulfillment of the Old, the question is, are you in Christ or outside of Christ? That's the critical question.

Yes Joe? It's a mindset. Yeah. So the philosophers that Paul encountered in Athens may have thought that they had many minds, right? And they would disagree with each other. You had the Epicureans and the Stoics and you would have people who would describe to this Greek philosopher, this is that Greek philosopher, and so on.

But they were all of one mind, right? They had one particular mindset of looking at everything and that's where all their variety was within that, and that was being contrasted to the good news of Jesus.

Yes, in the futility of their mind, the term futility is not like the silly pride of vanity, but is like the emptiness and worthlessness of Ecclesiastes' fame. Vanity, vanity, always vanity. Solomon, in the persona of Koheleth, was not saying that silly pride, silly pride.

No, he was saying empty, worthless, worthless. That's what he was saying. And that's the word, that's the idea of the word here. So the futility of the mind, are we willing to confess the futility of the mind outside of Christ?

Very often we absorb a lot of futile ways of thinking. We allow a futile mindset to begin to inform us about who men are and who women are, right? What families ought to be and what they're good for. We let futile mindsets inform us about how God should look at us, rather than no longer walking, either in behavior or in mindset, the way that the Gentiles walk.

We're basically being encouraged to not reset to default. Don't go back to that. And we're also reminded, in this context of unity, that futile thinking is fractious thinking. Futile thinking is fractious thinking, wherein that's where a lot of division comes from.

Now, verses 18 through 19, we are to... Paul is just saying how things are. He's exposing that which is foul, that which is unfitting, should no longer be known among the saints. And he pulls no punches here.

Unity is not found in tolerance and acceptance of this list of folly, right? There is no unity in saying that those who are apart from God and who are ignorant of God, who have given themselves over to lewdness and greediness and so on, oh, you know, well, we don't talk about those things because we want to be unified.

Well, that's neither maturity nor unity. But these things are being exposed because there is a need for repentance. The idea of the understanding being darkened reminds us of Psalm 115 about those who are worshiping the idols, eyes but cannot see, ears that cannot hear, mouth that cannot speak, and those who make them and worship them are like them.

The man in Isaiah who fells a tree, half of it he burns over the fire, half of it he turns into a god, and he can't tell. He can't even discern the fact that what he's doing is ludicrous. That kind of dark understanding.

And that's a sad place to be. We have an extended description of that in Romans 1, 18 through 24. But their understanding is darkened. They are alienated from the life of God. This is in direct contrast to Ephesians 2 where there's a description of what it was like before these Gentiles became Christians.

Well, these Gentiles who are in the futility of their mind and have their understanding darkened, they're still alienated from the life of God. They don't have the life of God. Why don't they have the life of God?

Because of the ignorance that is in them. Because of ignorance. This is eternal life, that they know God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. What is eternal life? That you know God. To know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.

And Jesus reveals God to us. There is eternal life, knowing God. And if there's ignorance, this isn't an excuse, this isn't amnesty, this is death. And in fact, because we're made in the image of God, Romans 1 leaves us without excuse.

Romans 3 19 through 20 leaves us without excuse. There are no excuses. God doesn't believe in atheists. The Bible tells us very clearly he's given a lot of evidence to prove that he exists. And when people say, I don't think he exists, it's because that they are a fool.

The fool says in his heart there is no God. A simpleton and a naive person are people without information and without wisdom. A fool knows better and does it anyway. Okay, so they know, but they deny it.

Now, notice they are past feeling. Who being past feeling. So they no longer are moved by rebuke, by shame, or they're not even removed by the pain of others. So what if they get hurt? It's really, this is the Enlightenment project.

To be able to move past feeling, to completely ignore God and deny God and alienate God and remove God from every equation, from every thought process, also has to include moving past feeling. And then what's left?

What's left for the human animal in the Enlightenment project? What followed the Enlightenment in the French Revolution? What was it? They devoured themselves, bloody murder everywhere, but before that came what?

They gave themselves over to lewdness. So Paul is saying, when you alienate yourself from the life of God, when you ignore God and deny God, then you move past feeling and you're not even moved by any of this anymore, and then you give yourself over to lewdness.

This is Ephesians 4, and it's not a prophecy of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, but that's exactly what happened. Because we're made in God's image, and when you do, when the things in verse 18 are true of you, the things of verse 19 are true of you.

There's a progression that happens because we're made in God's image. In the vacuum of denying God and embracing futility, all that is left is the pursuit of the flesh, sexual gratification, which purports to be most human, but is most degrading.

And what we have today in our own Enlightenment and sexual revolution, in our own culture, is a denial of God, a denial of God, a throwing out of God, a running away from God, followed up by a sexual revolution that is still continuing and growing worse and worse and worse.

And what happened when God was denied and then sexual perversion came in in Genesis 6? Great bloodshed after that, and the flow was to stop the cycle of bloodshed. What happened in the French Revolution?

There's the Enlightenment, the denial of God, then there's sexual lewdness, and then what happened? Blood ran in the streets. I'm not making that up. It literally happened. There was blood all over the streets.

What's happening in our world? Why is it? Why is it that we have that, you know, people back in the 50s and 60s could drive to school and have their rifle on the rack of their truck, and nobody ever got shot in people?

Why? Well, what happened? We have the denial of God, we have a sexual revolution, and now there's mass murder everywhere. People dying out all the time. Now it's normal. Why is that happening? It is proof positive that we're made in the image of God, and to deny God brings on disaster.

And so in the church, Paul was saying to them, no, do not walk as the Gentiles walk. Look where it goes. Look what happens. It ends up working uncleanness with all greediness. The idea is that they are discontent with all God is and all that God does, and so covetousness completely defiles the person.

You know, there is no way that those who are walking in the ways of the Gentiles, in other words, walking in the ways of the flesh, there's no way that there can be unity in a church where there's not a renewal going on.

There has to be a renewal. There has to be some change. There has to be repentance where we're turning to Christ away from these things, because Christ is the standard to whom we're to mature, and that's how we end up having our unity.

So that's why in Ephesians 4, Paul moves from the call to unity to the standard of maturity. Thus, we've got to have renewal. There's got to be ongoing growth and change and repentance and holiness in our lives.

And this is the way we should think of holiness. It is godliness and conformity to Christ and growing up in him, not in terms of holiness codes that very often are extremely divisive. You know, when I was growing up, there was a group that was somewhat connected to our school and so on and so forth, and they were a splinter group off of a splinter group off of a splinter group.

And their thing was, if you wore ties, you were unholy. Short sleeves were okay, but ties were bad. And the group they left, long sleeves were required and ties were required. But if you wore a tie, then you were being pretentious and you're being prideful.

Right? Holiness codes end up doing what? It's like fractile developments in the church. That's not unity. Why not? Because you're looking at the man, you're looking at the practice, you're looking at these little instances rather than repenting unto Christ, who is the standard.

It was often said of Baptists that Baptists are opposed to immorality and drunkenness because it might lead to playing cards and dancing. Right? What's the concern? What's the concern? The concern is that we are being renewed into the image of Christ, repenting away from the ways of the flesh.

The Call to Walk Worthy of Christ

So next time, we'll continue our way through our acronym here in verses 17 through 32. Let's close in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this day. I thank you for the opportunity that you have given to us to to read your word and study it together.

I pray that it has been a blessing and encouragement to us all. I pray that in our unity and love for one another, according to Christ, that your name will be greatly praised. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.