Learning Christ | A Sermon on Ephesians 4: 20-24

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Christ Alone Brings Salvation and Divine Judgment

The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Ephesians 4:20-24 and Learning Christ

Well, good morning. If you do have a Bible, turn to Ephesians 4 .20 -24, and we're going to be reading this passage and then we'll get started. Ephesians 4 .20. But that is not the way you learn Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus.

To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Sanctification Is More Than Justification

Now, one of the things that people most frequently say if you try to encourage them to put off some destructive attitude, action, mood, or even behavior at times is that they will frequently look at you and if you're encouraging them to put away this practice, they'll say that you're encouraging them to pray the gay away, if you're going to talk about that as it relates to same-sex desire.

You're encouraging them to simply pray the anxiety away, pray the depression away, pray the anger away. And they may even follow that up with an accusation that if you're encouraging them to get rid of these vices, these sinful attitudes, actions, moods, that that's somehow some form of prosperity gospel, that you just think that Christians are going to be perfect and that they're not going to be characterized by any of these things and then you're just encouraging them to magically get rid of these things.

And what that reveals when people have this kind of reaction where they look down on prayer, they look down on the power of God to help them change to be a transformed life, what that reveals is that the church really hasn't done a good job teaching people about how to be sanctified.

The church, I think if we've done anything well, one of the things that we've done is we've taught people how to be justified, meaning we've taught them how to be reconciled with their Maker by putting their faith and trust in Jesus Christ as the once and for all sacrifice for our sins.

If anything, we've helped people to realize how to be saved, but then we haven't done a really good job teaching people how to be sanctified, how to be holy, how to be like Christ. And so for many people, you can imagine a person who's characterized by anger, like a husband who's characterized by anger, who's characterized by frustration, and if you look at the husband and you say, hey, you have to repent of that anger, you have to repent of that frustration, you have to learn to put that off, he may look at you and do exactly what I'm talking about.

He may look at you and say, hey, you know, I tried that. I tried to ask God to take it away and He hasn't. It must be that I have some sort of brain problem. And a lot of what we do is we lean on these psychological labels to blame all of our attitudes and actions on.

But the same thing with the wife who's just constantly stressed out. You look at a wife who's constantly stressed out, constantly anxious, and you say, hey, you have to repent of that. You have to deal with that.

You have to turn from that. And she's going to look at you and say, hey, I tried. I tried to pray it away. It didn't work. And so this is just, there must be something wrong with me. It must be something in my brain.

It must be chemical imbalance. It must be something like that. And so what we need to do as a church is we need to do a better job helping people to deal with just the basic issues of life in a fallen world.

So all of us as Christians, we all have the same struggles. Like you're living in a world that is dominated by sin. You're living in a world filled with sinners. Under the curse of sin itself, we're living in a fallen creation.

And not only that, we're fallible. We don't even know how to predict what's going to happen in the next few minutes. We are creatures who are fundamentally limited, but then we're also bound and enslaved, apart from Christ, to this sin problem.

And when God comes and declares us not guilty, He obviously doesn't just magically take away all the sins we have in our life. But what we need to do as a church is we need to put a lot more thought into what it actually means to turn from sin, whether it comes in the form of sinful behaviors, sinful attitudes, or sinful actions.

Learning Christ Versus Learning About Christ

Now what we're going to be doing today as we talk about this passage in Ephesians is we're going to talk about how learning Christ is a solution to sanctification. It's a solution to help us to deal with these basic problems of life.

And we may not naturally, intuitively think about learning Christ as being an answer to these things, but that's exactly what this passage is talking about. So you notice how Ephesians 4 .20 starts. Ephesians 4 .20 starts with these words, but that is not the way you learned Christ.

But that's not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you've heard about Him and were taught in Him as the truth is in Jesus. And so what we want to say when we're thinking about this passage in general is that fundamentally there's a difference between what this passage is describing when it talks about learning Christ.

So fundamentally there's a difference between learning Christ and learning about Christ. And often what the church has done is when we teach about Jesus, we're teaching certain facts about Jesus that we're hoping that people will absorb, but we're not teaching them to learn Christ Himself.

So we're not teaching them to learn what it means to put on Christ. We're teaching them to learn certain disconnected facts about Christ. And so when you think about how this works in general, a lot of the church's teaching at this point is really devoted to teaching people certain basic facts about who Jesus is.

And so as we're trying to evangelize people, as we're trying to witness to people, typically you try to run them through a checklist of things about Jesus that you want them to absorb. So typically it starts with you want them to know that Jesus is God, right?

So Jesus is God. He came to earth. He took on a human nature. He came to dwell among us. He lived according to the law, right? So He fulfilled the law in and of Himself. And then a lot of what these facts are geared to do is they climax naturally because the Gospels come to us as the story of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection.

They climax around Jesus' cross ministry, His Passion Week. So Jesus, He was God, so we want people to know Jesus. We want them to know that Jesus was God. He came to earth. He took on flesh. He dwelt among us.

He lived a perfect life. He fulfilled the law. He did for us what we couldn't do. He put the death on the cross. He died. He buried. He rose again on the third day. So the bulk of what we're actually trying to do at that point is we're trying to teach people to know these basic facts.

And if you can know these basic facts, then you'll respond to them in justification by repenting of your sins, by believing the good news, and then you can be declared, and this is the message of Gospel, you can be declared not guilty of anything that you've ever done.

All the sin that you've ever committed in your life, it can be forgiven, past, present, and future. Now that's all true. I'm not disagreeing with any of that. But I'm trying to say that there's much more to the Bible than the message you can be forgiven of your sins and declared not guilty.

There's a lot to the Bible of knowing what it means to actually live the Christian life, to actually be like Christ. And that message of what Jesus did on the cross has implications not simply for getting you out of hell and forgiving you of your sins, but also radically transforming your life.

So when you think about the way that people live the Christian life, I mean, you can look at your own life and you can think about the sins that you commit. And I'm sure that everyone, like if I talk about, hey, what are some sins that you're committing right now?

There might be things that come to your mind, like right now, like areas of your life that are not submitted to the obedience of Christ, that are not very Christ-like. You can probably think of that.

I mean, if I say, hey, what are some areas like that? You might think first about areas in your spouse's life, okay? Or your kid's life. But then eventually maybe you'll get around to yourself. But then when you do, here's the issue.

When you're thinking about these things, I mean, most of us have probably given up. If you're honest, you're not allowed to lie. Most of you have probably just accepted that you are basically who you are, and the things you struggle with are going to be the same things that you struggle with for the rest of your life until you die.

And if you can look at your marriage or relationship with your kids, we live in a world that's just absolutely hopeless. And I'm sure that you feel a little bit of that hopelessness yourself at times, if you're honest and you're allowed to admit it, to say that, you know what, me and my wife, we fight about the same things over and over and over again.

We have the same conversations over and over and over again. We deal with the same issues over and over and over and over again. It's the same thing. It's every day. Same problems. We are who we are, right?

We have the same struggles that we're always going to have, and that's just going to be the rest of my life, probably forever, if I'm honest about it. And that's what you think, you know? And I know you're not allowed to say it quite like that, because that seems pretty hopeless, and that seems to deny the power of God in your life.

But I do think if you're honest and you look around the world, one of the things that's very obvious is that people rarely change, right? So think about it. People rarely change. Do you see much evidence of radical transformation in people around you?

I mean, like, you can make jokes. One of the jokes that people make about, like, how do you pick a marriage partner is to ask them to look at, like, if you're a man going to pick a marriage partner, well, look at the mother-in-law, because that's what the woman you're going to marry is going to be like in about 20 years, right?

So you guys are nodding your head. You understand what I'm saying. But the same thing is true of the guy. So, like, the woman, you want to know what this guy is going to be like. Look at the father-in-law.

That's what he's going to be like. Because, like, the issue is the assumption that undergirds that is that people don't change. They are who they are, who they're trained to be. Like, that's going to be who they are.

So you're running a path. And, like, the issue is this is the way we think, regardless of whether or not we're allowed to say it. You're running on a path. You're running on a trajectory. And whatever comes natural to you, you're going to do, right?

So every attitude, every practice, every habit that comes natural to you, we assume that you're just going to do it because that's who you are, right? So then when we talk about the message of the gospel, one of our minds is a message that just says, hey, you know what?

You're messed up. You're broken. You're sinful. Jesus has come to forgive you and declare you not guilty. But you're going to be what you are, essentially. Like, you're basically going to be who you are.

And what you need is you need Jesus to come and to forgive you for all that because, you know, no one's perfect and we're never going to be enough. And all of that's true. We do need Jesus to forgive us.

And we do need Him to do for us what we can't do, which is to come and to live a perfect life and to cancel all of our sins past, present, and future. But the issue is that when we're talking about this passage, we're talking about Ephesians, there's a lot more to Ephesians than simply, hey, you know what?

You're just going to end up just like your father-in-law and your mother-in-law because people don't change. And you know what? The attitudes, the actions, the struggles that you have, you're just stuck with them.

And that's who you're going to be for the rest of your life. And you know what? You and your wife, you're going to have the same fights that you're going to have and you're just going to have to learn to get over it and learn to be forgiving because people are who they are and you can't change anyone and you just got to love everyone unconditionally.

I mean, that's just not what we're even talking about in this book at all, right? So, I mean, look at what's happening. Look at what happens before Ephesians 4 .17. Paul says, Now this I testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.

They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart. What are unbelievers characterized by? What does it say?

We're supposed to no longer walk as they're walking. What are they characterized by? They're darkened in their understanding. They're alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is.

I mean, that sounds rude, doesn't it? Are you allowed to say that unbelievers are ignorant? Ignorance is in them due to the hardness of heart. They've become callous. They've put themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

But notice what he says. This is not the way you've learned in Christ. What we're going to be talking about today is how to not be characterized by all the things that the pagans are characterized by.

You understand? And the way that we're not going to be characterized by all these things is to learn about the difference between learning certain facts about Christ and actually putting on Christ Himself.

Put Off the Old Self

Now to do this, to learn Christ, we're going to talk about three things today. So a very simple outline. Three points that we're going to talk about which just flow naturally out of the text that you should be able to see without much work.

So the first one is going to be to put off your old self. The second one is going to be to be renewed in the spirit of your mind. And the third is going to be to put on the new self. So threefold plan.

How are we going to no longer walk as the Gentiles walk? Well, we're going to learn to put on Christ. What does it mean to do that? Well, it means to put off the old self, be renewed in the spirit of your mind, put on the new self.

Got it? So first point, put off the old self. Now as you think about what it means to put off the old self, what I want you to understand here is just to think about it this way. Like the old self is not who you are.

Okay? So these things that we're talking about up here, they're darkened in their understanding, ailing in from the life of God, become callous, give themselves over to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

The old self is not who you are. You're not your old self. Now it's very easy to say that. It's very easy for me to stand here and say, Hey, your old self is not who you are. But the problem is that you've been brainwashed your whole life by a pseudoscience called psychology to think that every single vice that you can practice is some sort of mental illness.

That's what you think. If you look at the DSM, one of the things you're going to realize is that every single sin that the Bible mentions has a label for it. If your kids are disrespectful, what's their problem?

Are they stubborn and rebellious as the Bible says? No. What does psychology tell you? Psychology tells you that they're suffering from oppositional defiant disorder. Okay? So that's their problem. They're suffering from oppositional defiant disorder.

Hey, if you're mad, like if you get mad a lot, and then you get really depressed, is that because you have an anger problem? The Bible says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor be put away with you along with all malice.

If you get really mad all the time and then you get depressed, is that because you have a anger problem? And then you give yourself over to despair and hopelessness afterwards. And then you go back to your anger again.

No. What is your problem? You're suffering from bipolar disorder, right? If you get sad all the time and you give yourself over to despair and hopelessness and are weighed down by guilt and shame and condemnation, are those spiritual issues that you have to fight?

Or is that because you have major depressive disorder? You know what? Like if you feel sad, if you feel hopeless and despair for a two week period of time all day long, nearly every day, and it's sudden unexplained sadness, you don't know where it's coming from, two week period of time, all day long, every day.

And you know what? Like you're so sad, you're so given over to helplessness, despair, and guilt that you have like this excessive guilt, you eat too much, you eat too little. Maybe you start to slow down as you walk because you're just, you don't know what to do.

You know what? People are going to tell you, this is not a spiritual problem in the minds of many people. It's because you're suffering from major depressive disorder and you need to get on some kind of antidepressant in order to deal with the basic issues of life.

So we have all these labels, OCD, PTSD, ADHD. We have labels for every single thing the Bible says that Christians should not be characterized by. We have labels for them. And then when you put those labels on people, those labels become their identity.

Do you understand? They become their identity. I see people online and they will, you know, whether they're on Twitter or something like that, they will list all of their mental disorders in their profile, almost as if it's like a badge of honor.

Like, this is who I am. You know, I'm just neurodivergent, suffering from ADHD, you know, depressed person. It's like, okay, I guess that's who you are then, you know? But then the problem is that that person who puts that label on themself, you could take any one of these DSM labels, you can put it on yourself and you've been trained to think that they're an illness.

And I think that many people today actually, most Christians today probably think that these are actual medical illnesses and you have no idea why you think that. Just ask yourself, why do I think that this is a medical illness?

You have no idea why you think that. Because somewhere along the line, someone said that depression was caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain. Do you know that that's a laughingstock in the scientific community right now?

And just because, like, that's what's been advertised by these drug companies who want to make a bunch of money off of you, like they told you that this is somehow resulted in a chemical imbalance series.

So you think that every time you hear a psychological label, it must be some kind of chemical imbalance and you don't even ask basic questions about what's actually going on anymore. You've just been brainwashed by a bunch of pagans to say, like, here's what you've been brainwashed to think.

Whatever comes natural to me is who I am. Every thought and every feeling and every behavior that comes natural to me, that must be who I am. That must be my identity. And I can't do anything about it other than get put on some kind of tranquilizer that's going to numb all my thoughts because I got to get rid of the bad thoughts somehow.

That's what we're trained to think. We're trained to think that anytime you see one of those labels, it must be an illness and it must be just like cancer. And you don't blame someone for getting cancer.

Why would you shame someone or blame someone or expect them to be able to overcome something that the pagans are constantly telling you is called an illness, right? So you have this illness. You can't do anything about it.

Listen, like you suffer from major depressive disorder. That sounds like you're suffering from cancer, doesn't it? If you suffer from general anxiety disorder, that sounds like you're suffering from cancer.

But then the problem is there's no evidence that these are actual physical problems that you're suffering from. In fact, the Bible can tell Christians over and over again, why do you worry about your life?

What you're going to eat, what you're going to drink, what you're going to wear, the clothes you're going to put on. Doesn't God feed the birds of the air? Doesn't He clothe the grass of the field? So the Bible can come and tell you, why are you worrying about your life?

Paul can tell you, be anxious for nothing with everything, with prayer, with supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. The Bible can say, why are you anxious about your life?

Don't be anxious for anything. And you can have Christians who will hear those words and then they will also hear, they will go to a doctor because they're constantly worried and the doctor is going to tell them they have general anxiety disorder without running any medical test on them to determine that there's anything wrong with them whatsoever.

And then whatever the Bible says right there is going to go out their brain and they're not going to listen to anything. The Bible is going to say, they're going to say, I'm suffering from an illness.

This is who I am. This is my identity, right? This is who I am. I can't help it because you know what? Worry comes natural to me. Therefore I can't do anything about it. And as Christians, we say, well, I guess you, you know, you suffering from general anxiety disorder.

I guess you can't help it. I guess we don't have anything to say to you because all we have is a message that Jesus came to forgive you of your sins, but we don't know how to take the Bible and help people to actually turn from these simple life problems.

Like anxiety is a part of life. Depression is a part of life. What do you think is going to happen when you live in a fallen world? Do you think that everything's going to be easy? You think that you're not going to struggle with like worry?

You're not going to struggle with anxiety because you're living in a world that you can't control. So here's the thing. You look at this passage. This is not the way you've learned in Christ. What does it mean to learn Christ?

Well, to learn Christ, to be taught in him, to put off your old self. What is that old self? I mean, isn't that old self probably going to be the self that's characterized by all the things the Bible says we shouldn't be characterized.

Aren't some of those things like anxiety and worry and excessive guilt and excessive shame, excessive condemnation and being held captive to the fear of death. You know, some of those things that the Bible says that we shouldn't be held captive by.

You think that may include social anxiety disorder, right? Obsessive compulsive disorder, all these things. So here's the thing. We've been taught to learn Christ, to be taught in him, to put off your old self.

And so what you need to understand by that is your old self is not who you are. You're not defined by any of these materialistic, hopeless labels that says that whoever you've been, that's who you're going to be in the future.

That's all you are. You're just a complicated machine. There must be some sort of glitch in the programming because you can't seem to get it together. You don't have to be who you were as a Christian.

Christ has come to set you free from the power of sin. If the Son sets you free, you'll be free indeed. You don't have to be characterized by the old self. But then notice what it also says. It says to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life.

So what does that mean? Think about how hopeful this actually is when you think about it. Your old self is not who you are. And your former manner of life as a Christian, it's not determinative of the rest of your life.

Just because for as long as you've breathed, you've trained yourself in constant anxiety, constant worry, constant sadness. Just because that's how you've responded to your life is that when things don't go your way, you get mad and you learn to get mad from an early age or you learn to worry from an early age.

Just because that's who you were, that doesn't mean that that has to be who you are. But it will be if you take one of these labels and you say, that's who I am. Instead of saying, I'm sinfully angry at everyone around me all the time because I'm an angry maniac.

If you don't want to say that, you want to say, hey, I'm suffering from intermittent explosive disorder. Which person do you think is going to actually turn from the anger? The one who says I'm suffering from intermittent explosive disorder?

Or the one who says, you know what? I'm an angry maniac and I need to repent. So here's the thing. Just because you've learned in the past to be characterized by worry, to be characterized by anxiety, to be characterized by depression, to be characterized by anger, to be characterized by a lack of self-control.

Just because you've learned these things, that doesn't mean this has to be the rest of your life, but it will be the rest of your life. If you say that the old man is who I am to my core and that's all I'm ever going to be.

Okay? So the first thing you have to say is I'm not the old man. The old man is not who I am and who I am is not determinative of who I'm always going to be. Right? So notice what it says. To put off the old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires.

So deceitful desires are able to be renewed. You know, a lot of people, when we're looking at these things, what we don't often do is, and this is why people often fail to put on new behaviors and fail to put on new attitudes and fail to put on new desires is because we don't often pay attention to the desires that are underneath the surface that are producing all of these things.

And so this kind of goes back to your original point that I'm making. Like if you have an individual who is characterized by anger, characterized by worry, characterized by fear, often what we're doing is that we're just trying to pray away these bad things and then we realize that, Hey, they're not going away.

But the problem is that these bad things are coming from certain desires that are in our heart, these deceitful desires. So it's these deceitful desires that are producing these problems of thoughts, these problems of behaviors, these problems of mood.

And we're often, what we're not doing is we're not dealing with the deceitful desires that are underneath the surface. And we're just trying to put a bandaid on problems. So like with a guy who's mad all the time, what do we tell him is, Hey, stop getting so angry.

Right. But why is he angry? Why is he mad? Why is he so frustrated? If you just tell him to stop, he may not be able to stop because he needs to actually figure out what the desire is underneath the surface is producing that anger and deal with that.

Right. In the same way, like you tell someone, Hey, stop being worried. It's like, well, why are they worried? What do they want right now that they're not getting? What is that thing that's underneath that attitude, the mood, the behavior, and we need to deal with that.

And so part of what we're going to do today is talk about what this actually looks like. So to learn Christ is to be taught in him to put off your old self, but it's also to be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

That's what verse 23 says, to be renewed in the spirit of your mind. So what we need to do is we need to actually talk about what does it mean to deal with these things in a more fundamental way and a comprehensive way and deal with these deceitful desires that are underneath the core that we're no longer to be characterized by.

Renewed in the Spirit of Your Mind

So let me give you a case study here. So John, John's frustrated all the time, works all day long, comes home to a wife who is perpetually unhappy and constantly complains about him and to a home that's a mess because she won't clean it.

So when he asked her what she's done all day, she will gaslight him by pretending that her day was so hard and the caring for the kids is just so much work, but he knows that she's lazy and easily stressed out.

And you know what? He's had enough of it. He wants to escape. He's tired of all the fighting. So he buries his head in his phone. He tries to keep his distance in order to keep from having another fight.

Right? So, but then let's talk about her, Sarah, she's stressed out. She's obviously overwhelmed. Kids are constantly fighting with each other. Never listen. She just feels so overwhelmed. Her husband's constantly criticizing her.

I mean, that's literally all he does is he comes home and he criticizes her. And then when it goes bad, he just goes away, right? Looks at his phone. Guys today, they'll either play on their phone or play on video games.

But then guys in the past generation, they'd probably tinker around in the garage or maybe sit around and watch sports all day long or something like that. But it's the same basic thing. It's just being channeled in different directions.

You guys know what I'm talking about, but husband's constantly criticizing her. He just comes home from work, ignores her or starts to fight with her. There's nothing she can do that will ever be good enough for him.

She knows she should be a better homemaker and not let everything get out of control, but it's all just so much. Why can't things be easier? So what's happening here? Like what's happening in this scenario?

The issue is they're going to run out the script over and over and over again. That's going to be their life. They're going to run out the script. She's going to be lazy at home, stressed out, overwhelmed.

He's going to come home. He's going to fuss at her. She's going to look at him and say, all you ever do is fuss at me, right? Like you're not encouraging. You don't do anything nice to me. You just fuss at me, right?

She's going to keep on doing the same thing. And then he's going to say, Hey, yeah, you don't want to listen to me when I'm fussing at you. Right? All we do is fight when I start fussing at you. So I'm just going to ignore you.

And then she's going to look at him and say, you're not here. You're off in your own la la land doing your own stuff. Right? I need some help. He's like, well, you don't need my help. You just start learning to do stuff.

Right? And they're stuck. That's going to be their life. And that's going to be their life all day long. And they're just going to get frustrated at each other. Probably just wait till the kids get out.

I mean, like, they're just going to learn to quit talking to each other, do their own separate thing, wait till the kids get out of the home, and then wonder, like, what are we even doing? Married to each other.

Like, that's kind of how it's going to go. But what do they need to do to fix this? So what we do, here's what we do. You see certain problems. What would you tell the lady? Hey, you probably need to start cleaning the house some.

Right? So maybe you'll tell her, fix her behavior. Right? So it's just stop, just fix the behavior. So that's what we do. All right. So we tell the guy, Hey, stop being so lazy. Quit getting mad all the time.

Start being encouraging. We tell the lady, Hey, quit being so lazy. Stop being so stressed out all the time. Right? So that's what we do. We just tell people, stop. Just stop it. Stop the bad stuff. Right?

And that's typically where we end. Like, that's what we say. We just say, just stop doing that. Stop doing that. Stop doing that. Stop doing that. That's it. But what does this say? It says, be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

What would that mean in this kind of scenario? What would it mean to be renewed in the spirit of your mind? What it means is that the old man has become corrupt through deceitful desires. Right? And what you need to figure out is what are these desires that are underneath the surface that are producing all this bad behavior, all these bad attitudes, all these bad actions, all this bad behavior.

And I mean, a simple question you ask at this point is just to say, Hey, what do you want that you're not getting? Like, what would a husband want? Like, think about this. What does a husband want? He probably wants to come home and think, Hey, I work 10 hours and I want the house to look like you work 10 hours too.

Right? Like, I don't want the house to look like you spent all day long on Netflix and it's all falling apart. Is that a good desire? It seems fair. I don't see anything wrong with that. That seems reasonable.