EPHESIANS 4:20-24 PUT OFF THE OLD MAN AND PUT ON THE NEW MAN

Ephesians 4:20 But you have not so learned Christ, 21 if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: 22 that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, 23 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24 and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.

1.  Eph 4:20 But you have not so learned Christ,- "If indeed"means "surely or since"

first contrast, the old, is self-centered, useless, the new, Christ centered, purposeful. – Jer 29:11

Every day to me is a fantastic adventure because I'm right in the middle of God's unfolding plan for the ages.

v21 as the truth is in Jesus

Second thing, instead of being ignorant of the truth like they are in verse 18 you know the truth,

Eph 4:22 that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,

Third And because we know the truth and because Christ thinks through us instead of being shameless, instead of having no morality, instead of having no basis for life we are sensitive to sin, verse 22, we are called to "put off concerning the former manner of life the old man, corrupt according to the deceitful lusts." Instead of not knowing what corruption is, we sense it in the smallest doses, don't we? There's nothing as miserable as a sinful Christian, wretched people to be around.

b.         Putting off the old man is needed because it is never content, but "grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts" (like addictive drugs, you always need more)

Lust means any urge or basic drive. We will get closer to the essential meaning of this word if we use the term urge. These deceitful urges are constantly coming to us as we react to various situations in which we find ourselves.

all these urges that arise out of the self life, the old man, are utterly valueless. They do not do anything for us, they are deceitful. They promise much, they deliver nothing.

Lusts are deceitful because they promise real joy but fail to deliver it.

2.  V 23 And to "be renewed in the spirit of your mind"

Fourth point. You learn Christ and when you learn Christ He fills you with His truth and when you have His truth you have a moral sensitivity, and so sin is a hated thing. And as long as you have Christ's truth and you know what is right and you know what is wrong then you're not going to have a reprobate mind but a renewed mind, verse 23, "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind." The only time in the New Testament “(renewed) ananeo” is ever used, it means to create again, to make new. When you become a Christian God gives you a new mind but you've got to fill it with new stuff.

That's why Philippians 4:8 says, "If there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things that are pure and just, holy, good report, honest." And so a renewed mind, not a reprobate mind. When you let Christ think through you you'll have a standard of truth, that standard of truth will give you a judgment on sin and it'll renew your mind to be the kind of mind that pleases God. What kind of mind? Verse 24, it will be a mind "created in righteousness and true holiness." Instead of being a reprobate, vile, lascivious, greedy, unclean mind, it'll be a mind filled with righteousness and a mind filled with holiness and when that's true in your mind that's the way you'll live. "So be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man." The new mind, the new thinking process that results in righteousness and holiness.

         a. Which is the key to true "transformation" - cf. Ro 12:1-2

Paul’s words indicate that our old nature and its deeds are not merely to be rejected, they are to be replaced

c.             V 24 and true holiness"

Now there is a word we squirm at, holiness. We usually think of some pious Joe. That is our picture of holiness. But let me use another word that is an accurate translation of this word -- wholeness. That means health of being, wholeness of personality, a whole man, as God intended man to be. Now, that results from the life of the Lord Jesus within. But the process to it is twofold: Put off, and put on. Our problem is that we are afraid to put off the old man, for fear we will be left with an empty husk of life. It never seems to dawn on us that the Holy Spirit is simply waiting for us to put these things off in order that he might rush in and fill us with the wholeness that is God's intention for man, the wholeness of Christ.

               Putting off the old man is like squeezing the water out of a half-drowned man's lungs. You do not do that because you want his lungs to be empty, you do it because you want the air to get in so that he can live. What the Scripture reveals to us is that this old egocentric life of ours, this old man, the self, has been suffocating us, killing us. It has been cutting off the breath which we were designed to breathe. The only air we were designed to breathe is God. Yet we find such difficulty believing this and therefore we do not experience it.

The implications of Paul’s teaching in our text and its implications in our practical daily living.

1.  Our pagan culture believes that the past is the key to the present. What we think and how we act, we are told, is the result of our past. It is only by understanding our past that we can live as we should in the present. In other words, the past controls the present.

The Bible reverses this. Paul teaches us that our thinking and conduct in the past was the outworking of our unregenerate thinking. Paul insists that we refuse to allow our past to control us in the present. Instead, Paul teaches us that what we now are, in Christ, is what should override and overrule our past thinking and behavior. What we now are in Christ should cause us to put away what we once thought and did as unbelievers. Our past should not be resurrected, analyzed and dwelled upon, it should be buried in an unmarked grave. It is not what we were that matters, but what we are. Let us ponder what we are, in Christ, and not what we were without Him.

2.  In our culture, what you believe seems to have taken second place to how you feel. The sensitive, intelligent, and probing thing to ask these days is, “How do you feel about that?” Paul would rather have us focus on what we believe. What we feel is often a far cry from what is true, and even from what we believe. Faith, as I understand it, calls upon men to act on the truth God has revealed in His Word, not on how we feel. Abraham did not “feel” like leaving his homeland and relatives to go to an unnamed place, but he obeyed God. Neither did he feel like offering up his son, Isaac, but he was willing to obey. Our Lord did not feel like going to the cross of Calvary, but He obeyed the will of His Father. Let us act on what we know to be the truth as revealed in the Word of God, more than on how we happen to feel. As a rule, faith acts on the facts of God’s Word and disregards our feelings.

3.  If the renewing of our minds is so vital to our Christian life, how is it done? The Bible is not a book of formulas, but I would like to focus your attention on one key element: the Word of God. When a person wants to learn a foreign language, what is the most effective way to do so? It is to enter into that culture and language and become saturated with it. This is how our children learn to talk and to think as we do. If we would desire to have our minds renewed, then we must find God’s thoughts and immerse ourselves in them. His thoughts have been incarnated in Christ, the Living Word, and recorded in the Bible, His inspired written Word.

Most Christians spend more time in front of their television sets, radios, phones, magazines, and books than they do in their Bibles