Ephesians 4:17-24

Living as Children of Light

17So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18They 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. 19Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.

20You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. 21Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.



Dig Deeper

Being threatened was nothing new for me. I was the commissioner of the PAC-8, the athletic conference for inner-city schools in Milwaukee, and it was often my job to double as the head of security during many games. From time to time we had to enforce rules, which often included removing a fan from the premises. Many of them weren’t very happy, and on a couple of occasions I even had people threaten to shoot me. There was something unique about this particular threat to do me bodily harm, however. It came after I had walked on the floor during halftime and stopped the cheerleader’s show, which was incredibly provocative and inappropriate. This was another in a long line of problems with one school that included unruly fan behavior, a post-game fight, and using ineligible players. This school was a constant problem. What was a little shocking this time, however, was that the threats against me were being made by a teacher from the school who was angry that I would protest about teen-age young ladies lifting up their skirts and grinding on the floor for a cheer. I was a bit surprised by the unprofessional behavior of the teacher until I talked to principal, who was even worse. I soon realized that the problem with the players and fans from this school was never going to be fixed by our efforts because the problem came from the principal and the teachers. Until they were transformed or even replaced, all we could do was discipline problems, we had no real chance of actually preventing them or changing the overall behavior of that school.

The goal for Paul throughout this letter is to teach the young Christians how to truly live the new life in Christ into which they’ve entered. Once people make the choice to die to their old life and enter into the life of Christ’s, they are there without question, but then the work of transformation takes precedence. Often times, however, Christians think that the place where they must change is in their actions. That will have a small effect for a time, but it won’t really make the sort of permanent changes that God desires for His people. To truly change and transform our life into the life of Christ, a fundamental change must take place in our minds, in the way we think and view the world.

Paul urges and insists that those in the Lord, including the Gentiles he is primarily addressing, can no longer live as the Gentiles do. Living the life of Christ and living as people of the world who are in Adam is no more possible than it would be to live on two different planets at the same time. Paul points out five aspects that negatively impact the minds of those not in Christ. They are futile in their thinking, they are darkened in their understanding, they are separated from God because of their ignorance, and they have hardened hearts that increases their ignorance. Their thinking is so darkened and ungodly that they have lost all sensitivity and given themselves over to unspeakable impurities with an insatiable appetite. In the ancient world, light was a universal symbol for understanding, while in the biblical terminology, it symbolizes the life-giving relationship with God. Thus, those who are darkened in their minds have no understanding and no relationship with the God of light.

Paul follows the same line of thinking in Romans 1:18-32, when he describes a six-stage process, of sorts in the downward spiral of a sin-dominated mind. First, men cease to worship God properly (v. 21). Second, their thinking becomes futile (v. 21). Third, their hearts become darkened (v. 21). Fourth, they engage in idolatry (v. 23). Fifth, God gives them over to their evil desires (v. 24). Finally, they begin to approve of the sinful acts of others (v. 32).

The New Testament writers are consistent that sins are not the cause of the problem, but the symptoms. The real problem is in the mind and thought life of those who believe that they can exercise their will over God’s. The key to embracing the life of Christ is to transform the mind (2 Cor. 11:3; 2 Cor. 4:1-4; 2 Cor. 10:4-5; 1 Pet. 1:3; Romans 12:2; Phil. 4:8). As the old saying goes, "Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action reap a thought; sow a habit reap a character; sow a character reap a destiny; but it all begins with a thought." The great work of transforming our life into the life of Christ does not take place in the physical world of action but in the shadowy world of the mind.

If the problem is a darkened and distorted mind, then the solution is a renewing of the mind, which is precisely the result of salvation according to Paul in Romans 12:2. Paul uses three images to get this point across. The first is instruction in the life of Christ, the second is the image of changing clothes, and the third is new creation.

One of the frustrating things in reading the New Testament, as we attempt to understand the process of renewing the mind, is that Paul rarely discusses the basics of Christian teaching in the first-generation church. His letters are addressed to groups that have entered into the life of Christ and are now struggling with the realities of becoming what they already are positionally. This is one of the few places, however, where we get a brief glimpse of the original preaching and teaching that was given to converts. We can see that it had to do with Jesus himself. Verse 20, literally reads, "You did not learn the Christ this way." This doesn’t mean that they learned random facts about Jesus, but they were schooled in the life of the Messiah, both what his was and even more what theirs should be. They were taught in the way of truth that is in the life of Jesus, and as Paul stated in verse 15, that should carry over in their lives as they "truth" in love. Jesus embodied truth (John 14:6) and so should those in him.

The Greek text does not begin a new sentence in verse 22, so it seems clear that it is related to the instruction that was mentioned in verses 20-21, and the language implies that this was a sort of baptismal instruction given to new believers. Verses 22-24 are so similar to several other passages that what emerges is either an already formalized baptismal theology, or at the very least Paul’s baptismal theology that would soon become codified in the early church (see also Col. 3:9-11; Rom. 6:3-6; Rom. 13:14; 1 Cor. 12:13; Gal. 3:26-28). All of these passages, including the present one, speak of either putting on Christ or being clothed with the new being, making it obvious that the new person being formed in us is Christ himself. There is constant tension, then between our old identity in Adam (Rom. 5:12-21) that is constantly being corrupted by its deceitful desires and the new life in Christ.

The only way to counteract the corroding influence of our old life is to renew the way we think; to have the mind of Christ. We must, in that way, put on the new self. What the NIV has as "in the attitudes of your minds" is literally "in the spirit of your mind." The issue at hand, then, is whether our human spirit is to be animated by our own will or the will of God and His Holy Spirit (see Rom. 8 which talks of this in more detail and 1 Cor. 15:42-49 in which Paul says that being fully animated by the Spirit is what characterizes its resurrected body).

In putting on this new self, we become like God in true righteousness and holiness. In one sense this is new creation; in another sense, however, it is a restoration back to the original state of human beings as the image-bearers of God (Gen. 1:26-27). It is the image of God that was lost in Eden due to the exaltation of man’s will over God’s which can now be restored in Christ by the transformation of our minds and will. This all means that in Christ, we can be restored into the image of God as we were designed to be. It is only in Christ that we can fulfill our destiny and truly reflect the righteousness and holiness of God.



Devotional Thought

Early Christians saw themselves as literally a third race of human being, separate from Jews and Gentiles. Do you view your new life in Christ as being that drastic of a change from your old identity? In what areas do you still need to drastically transform the way you think and your life?