We Are New, 9 March 2014
Big Idea: We are made new in Christ.
Ephesians 4:17-24
Do you like you? Do you like what you see when you look in the mirror? I meet a lot of people who are not satisfied with who they are. They want to be someone else. They want to be different. They want to change. They want to become someone new.
Several weeks ago we talked about the contrast between Adam and the new Adam, Jesus Christ. Adam and Eve’s sin blew it for all of us, ushering an array of consequences so great we have little memory of the Garden of Eden.
Do you want to become someone new? If we’re honest, there’s plenty of junk in all of our lives that we want to change—habits, insecurities, addictions, fears…
This morning I want to encourage you to be painfully honest with yourself and with God about where you are—about who you are.
Paul pens from prison words that may or may not describe your present reality.
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. (17-19)
Here’s the text from The Message.
And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They’ve refused for so long to deal with God that they’ve lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can’t think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion. (Ephesians 4:17-19, The Message)
This is the life of an unbeliever. Tragically, this also describes many believers who have wandered from the faith.
Somewhere in recent history a myth spread that if you pray and prayer and believe the historical events of holy week—Jesus’ death and resurrection—that you have a free ticket to heaven and then you can live like everyone else until you die. That’s part of it.
The founder of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, A.B. Simpson, described Jesus in the Fourfold Gospel.
We all like the idea of Jesus as our Healer, providing divine life and physical healing (Isaiah 53:4-5).
We are grateful for Jesus being our Savior. He died on the cross for our sins and to make us right with God (John 3:16).
We want Jesus to be our Sanctifier, cleansing us from sin by the power of the Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).
We are generally ok with the idea of Jesus as a Coming King. We look forward to His return to fix the world we have broken (Acts 1:11).
However, He wants to be Lord and King now, which means we surrender everything to Him.
Friends, it’s not that God is on a power trip. It’s that you wand I were meant to live for so much more than destroying ourselves and our world with sin. Here’s why: Your Daddy loves you! Yes, I’m saying it again because it’s so essential to living the life God wants for us. He wants to do life with us. He wants to be with us, encourage us, guide us, and love us. Because He loves us, He wants us to experience abundant life, joy, peace, contentment, purpose, and meaning. When our lives are filled with sin, it’s impossible to experience all He desires since sin ultimately leads to death.
Many want Jesus to be Savior, but He also wants to be LORD. Mike Breen calls this “Invitation and Challenge.” He invited people into relationship with Him, but He also challenged them to pick up their cross daily and follow Him. It is wonderful that we have been adopted as children of God, but we must live into our true identity and sons and daughters of the King.
The truth is, none of us has truly made Jesus LORD. Every day we battle with our ego, our will, our reputation, our comfort, our security, and our pleasure. As we will see in the coming weeks we are in the midst of a war between good and evil. Like all relationships, we cannot simply rest on past investments, telling God how obedient we were years ago, how righteous we acted in the past, how we sacrificed in days gone by.
If you feel exempt from this discussion because you have lived a flawless life, you’re guilty of pride and self-righteousness. BAM!
Paul was religious. He was devout. He had perfect attendance in Sunday—er, Saturday—School! Outwardly, he was as religious as they come. What did he later call his righteousness?
Rubbish, filth, trash, …literally dog dung! That was Paul’s old religious life.
I want to invite you to join me in a time of confession. Many church traditions make confession a part of each worship gathering, and perhaps we should, too. Before we spend any more time in worship or study or fellowship, let’s have a time of confession.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
If!
Pause now to confess your sins.
How did that feel? Sometimes there’s nothing like a good bath, rinsing off the dirt and being cleansed. That’s what Jesus does, He cleanses us, forgives us, and loves us.
He makes all things new!
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Revelation 21:5)
That’s what we have to look forward to in the future, but as the Kingdom of God crashes into our world now, we can experience newness now, here, today!
This issue of identity really matters. Your identity may be divorcee, failure, geek, athlete, winner, loser, engineer, mom, alcoholic, victim, artist, or sinner. Paul tells us that whatever is in your past can stay there. You are now in Christ, and that identity trumps all others.
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. (20-24)
Paul gives us three commands:
- put off your old self, your former manner of life
- be made new in the attitude of your minds
- put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness
Confession is essential, but more is required—repentance. Repentance means to turn away, to change directions, to do a U-turn. In Paul’s language, it is to put off the old self and be made new. Baptism is a beautiful picture of this, entering a water grave, dying to our old self, and resurrecting with Christ, possessing a new attitude, a new self.
The NIV uses this phrase “new self,” but the more accurate translation would be “new man,” not to be sexist, but to recognize how we are born with a sin nature from Adam that must be put to death so we can live for the new Adam, Jesus.
You can use whatever metaphor you wish:
- taking off old clothes and putting on new garments
- caterpillar to a butterfly
- ugly duckling to a beautiful swan
- frog and prince
The question is, can people change? Yes, but it requires more than just the kiss of a princess. We must daily choose to make Jesus our LORD. We must accept HIs challenge to pick up our cross daily and follow Him. We must live into our identity as children of the King. It begins by surrendering to God, dying to ourselves, and being made alive in Christ.
Where do you need to more fully surrender to God? Finances? Time with Him? Relationships? Future plans?
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Hallelujah!
Credits:
Some ideas from
J.I. Packer, Ephesians (sermon series audio)
Mark Driscoll, Who Do You Think You Are (book and podcast series)
GLO Bible
Louie Giglio, Passion City Church sermon series
J. Vernon McGee, Thru The Bible, http://thruthebible.ca
You can listen to this message and others at the Scio podcast here. You can also subscribe to our podcast here.
Ephesians 4:17-24
Do you like you? Do you like what you see when you look in the mirror? I meet a lot of people who are not satisfied with who they are. They want to be someone else. They want to be different. They want to change. They want to become someone new.
Several weeks ago we talked about the contrast between Adam and the new Adam, Jesus Christ. Adam and Eve’s sin blew it for all of us, ushering an array of consequences so great we have little memory of the Garden of Eden.
Do you want to become someone new? If we’re honest, there’s plenty of junk in all of our lives that we want to change—habits, insecurities, addictions, fears…
This morning I want to encourage you to be painfully honest with yourself and with God about where you are—about who you are.
Paul pens from prison words that may or may not describe your present reality.
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. (17-19)
Here’s the text from The Message.
And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They’ve refused for so long to deal with God that they’ve lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can’t think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion. (Ephesians 4:17-19, The Message)
This is the life of an unbeliever. Tragically, this also describes many believers who have wandered from the faith.
Somewhere in recent history a myth spread that if you pray and prayer and believe the historical events of holy week—Jesus’ death and resurrection—that you have a free ticket to heaven and then you can live like everyone else until you die. That’s part of it.
The founder of the Christian & Missionary Alliance, A.B. Simpson, described Jesus in the Fourfold Gospel.
We all like the idea of Jesus as our Healer, providing divine life and physical healing (Isaiah 53:4-5).
We are grateful for Jesus being our Savior. He died on the cross for our sins and to make us right with God (John 3:16).
We want Jesus to be our Sanctifier, cleansing us from sin by the power of the Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24).
We are generally ok with the idea of Jesus as a Coming King. We look forward to His return to fix the world we have broken (Acts 1:11).
However, He wants to be Lord and King now, which means we surrender everything to Him.
Friends, it’s not that God is on a power trip. It’s that you wand I were meant to live for so much more than destroying ourselves and our world with sin. Here’s why: Your Daddy loves you! Yes, I’m saying it again because it’s so essential to living the life God wants for us. He wants to do life with us. He wants to be with us, encourage us, guide us, and love us. Because He loves us, He wants us to experience abundant life, joy, peace, contentment, purpose, and meaning. When our lives are filled with sin, it’s impossible to experience all He desires since sin ultimately leads to death.
Many want Jesus to be Savior, but He also wants to be LORD. Mike Breen calls this “Invitation and Challenge.” He invited people into relationship with Him, but He also challenged them to pick up their cross daily and follow Him. It is wonderful that we have been adopted as children of God, but we must live into our true identity and sons and daughters of the King.
The truth is, none of us has truly made Jesus LORD. Every day we battle with our ego, our will, our reputation, our comfort, our security, and our pleasure. As we will see in the coming weeks we are in the midst of a war between good and evil. Like all relationships, we cannot simply rest on past investments, telling God how obedient we were years ago, how righteous we acted in the past, how we sacrificed in days gone by.
If you feel exempt from this discussion because you have lived a flawless life, you’re guilty of pride and self-righteousness. BAM!
Paul was religious. He was devout. He had perfect attendance in Sunday—er, Saturday—School! Outwardly, he was as religious as they come. What did he later call his righteousness?
Rubbish, filth, trash, …literally dog dung! That was Paul’s old religious life.
I want to invite you to join me in a time of confession. Many church traditions make confession a part of each worship gathering, and perhaps we should, too. Before we spend any more time in worship or study or fellowship, let’s have a time of confession.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
If!
Pause now to confess your sins.
How did that feel? Sometimes there’s nothing like a good bath, rinsing off the dirt and being cleansed. That’s what Jesus does, He cleanses us, forgives us, and loves us.
He makes all things new!
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Revelation 21:5)
That’s what we have to look forward to in the future, but as the Kingdom of God crashes into our world now, we can experience newness now, here, today!
This issue of identity really matters. Your identity may be divorcee, failure, geek, athlete, winner, loser, engineer, mom, alcoholic, victim, artist, or sinner. Paul tells us that whatever is in your past can stay there. You are now in Christ, and that identity trumps all others.
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. (20-24)
Paul gives us three commands:
- put off your old self, your former manner of life
- be made new in the attitude of your minds
- put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness
Confession is essential, but more is required—repentance. Repentance means to turn away, to change directions, to do a U-turn. In Paul’s language, it is to put off the old self and be made new. Baptism is a beautiful picture of this, entering a water grave, dying to our old self, and resurrecting with Christ, possessing a new attitude, a new self.
The NIV uses this phrase “new self,” but the more accurate translation would be “new man,” not to be sexist, but to recognize how we are born with a sin nature from Adam that must be put to death so we can live for the new Adam, Jesus.
You can use whatever metaphor you wish:
- taking off old clothes and putting on new garments
- caterpillar to a butterfly
- ugly duckling to a beautiful swan
- frog and prince
The question is, can people change? Yes, but it requires more than just the kiss of a princess. We must daily choose to make Jesus our LORD. We must accept HIs challenge to pick up our cross daily and follow Him. We must live into our identity as children of the King. It begins by surrendering to God, dying to ourselves, and being made alive in Christ.
Where do you need to more fully surrender to God? Finances? Time with Him? Relationships? Future plans?
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Hallelujah!
Credits:
Some ideas from
J.I. Packer, Ephesians (sermon series audio)
Mark Driscoll, Who Do You Think You Are (book and podcast series)
GLO Bible
Louie Giglio, Passion City Church sermon series
J. Vernon McGee, Thru The Bible, http://thruthebible.ca
You can listen to this message and others at the Scio podcast here. You can also subscribe to our podcast here.