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Living the God Life is not a matter of mere remodeling. Christ insists on rebuilding every aspect of our thinking, choosing, working, and relating to others. While this work is entirely powered by God, our will must be fully engaged. We must relentlessly swap out every pattern and habit that dishonors God, and "put on" the new self that he is giving to us as a gift.

 

 

No More Excuses
Extreme Makeover: Life Edition
August 29, 2010

Glenn McDonald

Ephesians 4:17-24

Early last century missionary Frank Laubach brought the good news of Jesus to a tribe in the Philippines that had had a long history of violence. The chief was deeply moved by his presentation. He immediately received Christ. Brimming with gratitude, the chief turned to Laubach and said, “This is wonderful! Who do you want me to kill for you?”

Do you ever notice that there’s inevitably a gap between the faith we profess and the life we actually lead? Becoming a follower of Jesus isn’t the end of our spiritual journey. It’s just the start. God not only calls us to belong to him; he also wants us to experience the lifelong process of becoming just like him.  

That’s abundantly clear in our text this morning – Ephesians 4:17-24. Even though our Bible translations suggest that we’re looking here at eight separate verses, the original Greek features just two very long sentences. Each one of them has been turned into an entire paragraph in English. The first paragraph includes some of the Bible’s strongest statements about human sin, while the second paragraph is one of the New Testament’s most important summaries of what it means to be transformed by God.

The first paragraph says No – “Don’t live this way.” The second paragraph says Yes – “Live this way instead.” The first paragraph is a call to repentance. The second paragraph is a call to follow Christ. Let’s stand – and whether you’re reading from your own copy of Scripture, looking up here at the screens, or reciting from memory – let’s speak these words together:

So 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. They 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. Having 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.

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

Imagine a bride and a groom who have the joy of marrying their “true love.” On their wedding day they publicly make extraordinary promises to each other. They vow to stay with each other in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want, as long as they both shall live. But after the ceremony and the reception, instead of moving in with each other, they each decide to return to their old apartments. They come and go when they wish. They even go out on dates with other people. Every chance they get, they show off their wedding rings and talk about the wonderful spouse they were privileged to marry. But essentially they continue to live like single people.

Would you say that this is a bold new take on what it means to be married? This is in fact not a marriage at all. The promises these two made weren’t mean-spirited “rules” designed to tie them down. They were merely accurate descriptions of what it would mean to share life with their “true love.”

In this morning’s text the apostle Paul takes us to a crucial place in his letter to the Ephesians. It’s time for a DTR. We have to “define the relationship” that we have with God. Are we going to fish or cut bait? Are we going to paint or get off the ladder? We cannot make lifelong promises to God but then go back to living as if we had never met him.

Notice the first word in verse 17 – “so.” It could just as easily have been translated “therefore.” Do you remember the old rule in Bible study? Whenever you see a “therefore,” find out what it’s there for. Altogether there are nine “therefores” in the book of Ephesians. Every one of them serves as a bridge between an important statement about what God has done or is doing, and something important that we need to do to respond. Between now and Thanksgiving we’re going to be living and breathing nothing but “therefores” in the book of Ephesians.

Paul says, “Therefore – since you as Gentiles have been loved, chosen, forgiven, blessed, predestined, and adopted by God the Father – you must no longer live like Gentiles.” Isn’t this a bit comedic? Paul is telling Gentile or non-Jewish readers not to live like Gentiles. Bible scholar Klyne Snodgrass suggests that all we have to do to get the drift of this passage is to substitute the word “Americans.” We, as citizens of the kingdom of God, who also happen to be citizens of the United States, must no longer live like everybody else in America.

Let’s compare the world of the Ephesians with our own. Sexual immorality and violence were part and parcel of religious life for most Gentiles in the first century. Ephesus itself was a prime example. Artemis, the reigning goddess or patron deity of the city, was a glorified fertility figure. For many people, the practice of “religion” quite simply meant sexual depravity. If Gentiles heard stories about great religious heroes while they were growing up, they were certainly not stories about David or Moses. They were mythological tales about Zeus, Aphrodite, Hermes, and all their rowdy friends on Mt. Olympus.

Look at the unapologetically strong language that Paul uses in verses 17-19 to describe what it’s like to live apart from God. The very thinking of unsaved Gentiles (and Jews, for that matter) is futile. Their understanding is darkened. They are separated from God because of ignorance and the hardness of their hearts. They have lost all sensitivity and abandoned themselves to sensuality. What connects all these dots is the malfunction of the mind. People who do not know God have minds that are wittingly or unwittingly set against God and his ways. Paul has painted a very dark picture.

What does it mean to bow before the idol of sensuality? It means that my feelings are my ultimate compass. And this is where first century Gentiles and twenty-first century Americans find themselves on exactly the same page. Sensuality is the god of our culture. How many movies have we seen where “what I truly feel in my heart” is portrayed as my infallible guide? How often have we gotten to that scene where the Jedi master, or the guru at the top of the mountain, or the lifelong best friend counsels the hero or heroine, “You must courageously follow your own feelings, and you must find within yourself the strength that you have always had”? In our culture such advice is portrayed as immense wisdom.

But such “wisdom” has generated the havoc of untold broken marriages, deep personal disappointments, and the restlessness of having everything materially but nothing spiritually. Actors, rock stars, and talk show hosts have become celebrated moral guides. But they fail to address the malfunction of the mind that is front and center for Paul. What is the origin of the word “amusement”? A-muse literally means “not to think.” Our national fixation on sports, trivia, sitcoms, and Entertainment Tonight dulls our motivation to think clearly about matters of spiritual life and death. Hollywood is generating stories that rival the most violent and immoral tales of the ancient world – and our children are growing up watching them. If Paul were writing to Christians today he would certainly say, “Don’t live like Americans!”  

Why is it important to understand sin? If we don’t grasp the Bible’s bad news, we will never make sense of the Bible’s good news. The death of Jesus on the cross will mean next to nothing to me if I don’t realize that God’s Son had to go to extreme measures in order to address my extreme distance from God.  Only in facing the painful truth about ourselves will we ever be open to God’s hope for our healing. Keep in mind that Paul isn’t saying to his readers, “Man, there sure are some broken people out there, and it must stink to be them.” He is saying, “This is who all of us are apart from Christ – and we must never go back to such futile and bankrupt ways of thinking and living.”  

So what is the remedy for a malfunctioning mind? It is not a list of rules. Rules do not motivate people to live differently or to live well. But a spiritually transformed mind does. One of the saddest realities of contemporary American Christianity is that we have lent the impression that the Good Life for which Jesus lived and died and rose again is nothing more than a list of do’s and don’ts – the supernaturally-enforced regulations of a grumpy God who wants to make sure that people here on earth toe the line.

But our life with God is not defined by Paul’s first paragraph. That is our No. That is the old apartment – the place we used to live – that we must leave behind forever. Following Jesus is actually bound up in Paul’s second paragraph. This is the Yes that shows us what it’s really like to live with our “true love,” and how we can do so every day.

The remedy for a malfunctioning mind is a renewed mind – a mind made new by the Holy Spirit. The key provisions for this are found in verses 22-24: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Paul is particularly fond of this metaphor of changing clothes as a picture of what it means to grow up in Christ. We take off the dirty clothes of our old life and keep on dressing ourselves in our new wardrobe, the one that God himself has fashioned for us. In Romans 14 he describes Christians as being “clothed with Christ,” and in Colossians 3 we are commanded to dress ourselves with “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”

This change of clothes signifies a major change of mind. We trade identities. We take off what we thought was real life and put on Christ instead. As one commentator describes it, “Conversion is the restructuring of a person’s identity by the Holy Spirit as a result of a direct encounter with the love of God in the person of Christ… Salvation is totally the work of God in which we are totally involved.” (Klyne Snodgrass)

How and when do we become like Christ? God transforms us in the past, the present, and the future. He has already called, chosen, and forgiven us – that’s what we saw in Ephesians chapter one. That is God’s gift to us, and it can never be taken back. But God is also changing us in the present moment as we keep on taking off our old life and putting on the new. That is our ongoing gift of obedience to God. Our transformation will finally be complete at the end of time when God finishes what he started in us so long ago.

When you think about it, the way God transforms people is a bit like crowning this year’s NFL champion even before the season begins. Go ahead and promise the Colts the Lombardi Trophy. Assure them that it will be placed into their hands next February, and they can get their fingers fitted for championship rings right now. But two weeks from today the Colts will still need to come out and play football with all they’ve got. Every member of the team will need to do his part. The difference is that no one will need to play with fear. No one will have to freak out if the team falls behind the Patriots, because the Colts already know they are going to win it all.

God commands us to live with just such confidence. We do not need to fear. We can go ahead and imagine wearing the crown of eternal life because God has promised to give it to us. In the meantime, there’s work to do. God is growing his kingdom in us and through us, and as the author of the book of Hebrews puts it, we need to “throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,” so we can “run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”  

Author and pastor Richard Blackaby recently found himself in the Denver airport trying to make a connecting flight. As he approached the gate, an announcement blared that a change had been made: The gate was now at the opposite end of the terminal. He and his fellow travelers began their slow migration down the corridor.

Things got worse when the airlines announced that yet another gate change would be necessary. Feeling like the Israelites wandering in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years, the passengers shuffled toward their third destination. When they arrived, there were no seats available in the waiting area. Blackaby stood against the wall. Then came yet another announcement – this time for him: “Would a Richard Black-Baby please see the ticket agent?”

Now Blackaby was annoyed. Couldn’t the airline employees pronounce a simple English name? He marched up to the desk. “I’m Richard Blackaby,” he said. “That’s ‘Bee” as in bumble,” he added pointedly. The agent asked for his ticket. Without batting an eye the agent tore it in half. “We need your seat,” he explained matter-of-factly. Then he handed Blackaby a new ticket. “I hope you don’t mind if we upgrade you to first class,” he said with a smile.

Blackaby recalls, “Suddenly the sun came out and I could hear birds singing. Everything was going to be OK. ‘Richard Black-Baby at your service,’ I said, ‘and God bless us, everyone!’”

Some of us may have come to the conclusion that life is little more than the futility and emptiness portrayed in Paul’s first paragraph – the equivalent of seventy-plus years of waiting for connecting fights. But then we start to grasp the reality of Paul’s second paragraph: Through Jesus Christ, we’ve been offered the ultimate upgrade. We were headed for a disastrous destination. But God is able and willing to reroute us to his own amazing kingdom of fullness and joy – an experience that begins right here and right now.

What is a pastor’s greatest fear? It is that his church is filled with people who don’t get it. They do not know that they must be converted. They live in the illusion that attending services and praying a few prayers and being just a little bit nicer than the neighbors is what it means to know God.  But knowing God actually entails surrender. We surrender right now all that we know of ourselves to as much as we know of God. We do so trusting that God, through Jesus, is able and willing to give us everything. But he also asks for everything. And the result of saying yes to him is the abundant life that Jesus himself promises.

It’s a joy to watch a work of renovation. Have you ever seen the TV show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition? For the last seven years host Ty Pennington and an enormous supporting cast have been building or rebuilding houses for families who have experienced unique hardships. While the family is away on a prearranged vacation, expert builders, craftsmen, and artists work their way through the house, room by room, and create a masterpiece. When at the end Pennington shouts his trademark, “Bus driver, move that bus!” there are inevitably gasps and tears and applause as the family becomes joyfully acquainted with their completely refashioned house.  

Now let’s imagine a work of renovation that is all about us. We can call it Extreme Makeover: Life Edition. God is the craftsman and artist who has long intended to come into our lives and remake everything. The difference is that we don’t get to go away on a vacation. We must actually live in our old house – in our old life, that is – even while God is making everything new. He may add a coat of paint here or cut a new window there. But God may also knock down a wall or even start from the ground up. It is a process that takes a lifetime, and Jesus did not promise that it would be simple or easy.

During the next few minutes, take a walk in your imagination through your own house or apartment. Let its rooms and corridors represent your life. It’s a wonderful thing to give God entry to your house. We unlock the door and let him in. That’s the beginning of real spiritual life. We may even set aside a chair or a couch where we sit every day and spend time with God. But he is a guest like no other. Even though he will gratefully occupy the space that we offer him, he always wants more. As a matter of fact, he wants everything.

So let’s go room from room and imagine how God might remake our lives. Begin in the study. Are you learning what you need to be learning? What books would God put on your shelves? Step into the kitchen. Are you famished to know who God really is, or have you settled for spiritual junk food? Will you let God himself do the cooking and nourish you? Walk into the family room. What does God want you to be watching on your screens? How serious are you about filling your mind with truth instead of mindless garbage?

If you have a game room or a play room, go there in your mind. Have you given God lordship over your free time? Look into your basement or furnace room. What is your source of power? Are you trying to live life on your own, or have you discovered the power of the Holy Spirit? Imagine your bathroom. Are you staying clean with God and with others, or pretending just enough so you can get by? Walk into your bedroom. How are your needs for intimacy being met? Are you trusting God right now for this crucial part of your life?

If you have kids’ rooms, go there. In your mind, give your children back to God, no matter how old they are right now. Look into your garage. Have your travel, your work, and your vacationing brought glory to God, or have they only been about you? Stand in your backyard or on your porch or deck. Have you cultivated relationships with your neighbors so that God might use your life as a light shining in the darkness?  

This week I’d like to encourage you to take a pair of real walks through your house. Let the first be a walk of confession. Go slowly, room by room. Let God speak to you. Don’t rush. What will you discover and what will you remember when you approach your computer, or look at your wedding pictures, or stand by your child’s bed? Ask God to show you where you have resisted his lordship – and to open your eyes to what might have been but never was. Confess your sins and brokenness to God. We need to acknowledge our self-centeredness as specifically as we can so we can actually own it. Until we do, it will surely own us.

But don’t be afraid on that walk. The God of grace will go with you every step of the way.

Let a day or two go by and then take a second walk. This time walk in the strength and assurance of God’s hope. Go room by room. Don’t rush. The mercies of God are new every morning. Don’t be afraid. Through faith in Jesus Christ, you are a child of the God who raises the dead. Ask God for the power to change – to take off your old life and to put on the new. Ask him to renew your mind.

Change is the willingness to give up what we are in order to become what God intends. Will you ask God for the grace to enter that new life more fully right now?