4. A New Humanity - All Things New [Ephesians] Tim Mackie (The Bible Project)

once you grab your Bibles and I invite you to turn with me to the New Testament to Paul's letter to the Ephesians Ephesians chapter 4 so we're last week we as we move through Paul's letter to the Ephesians we are crossing something of like a boundary line in the book and I've used this metaphor before but I think it's a really helpful one for thinking about the letters in the New Testament most of the letters in the New Testament have some point where you're kind of reading through the first few chapters and there's a turning moment where it turns from talking about the story of Jesus and what he's all about and what he did to how we're supposed to live in response to that and so think of Ephesians like a big door think about like if you have like a big front door you've ever seen if your neighbor has a big front door or something this massive door and the whole heavy saying just swings on these little hinges and these hinges are if you turn to chapter 4 with me the beginning of chapter 4 is this hinge moment in the book of Ephesians so look how he began to chapter 4 right here he says as a prisoner for the Lord therefore I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling so that you have received and so this is Paul the Apostle he's begun a number of churches specifically there's a number of churches he's writing to that he personally was connected to these people coming to face and forming a church he spent the first three chapters which is really what is that there's two pages two and a quarter pages in my Bible at least he spent two and a quarter pages telling the story of the good news about Jesus and unpacking its significance and of his life and his death and his resurrection of how Jesus is forming a new multi-ethnic family of people who have placed their faith in him whose identity is grounded in him and that's what chapters one through three is about and so now he moves did you see it he just swung the door right here and on the hinges and he says therefore in light of this calling to be a follower of Jesus to respond to his grace I urge you to live in a way that's worthy of this calling and of the story that you've been invited into and so chapters 4 through 6 it's like the backside of the door and it's not it's like a series of unrelated topics or something he's really pressing this issue what does it mean to live out in day to day life and circumstances the reality of this gospel that's called us together into the family of people called the church or the new the new humanity and so this is a part of the letter where Paul is really going to like get specific he's going to he's going to leave no stone unturned he's going to address all these different areas of just daily life life relationships and circumstances and he's just going to resync it in light of the good news about Jesus he's gonna he's going to talk about anger he's going to talk about sex he's going to talk about marriage and parenting he's going to talk about money and what you do with your money he's going to talk about lying and truth-telling he's going to talk about kindness he's talking about your work ethic and by I mean he can talk about everything in life and he's thinking about all every aspect of life in light of what he's explored in chapters 1 through 3 now here's the catch for some of us these next three chapters and therefore the next like whatever month and a half leading up till Christmas are the parts of the letter were Paul he gets really challenging he gives these challenging like moral challenges moral directives moral commands and some of us we kind of glaze over this part of the Bible because it's the it's the thou shalt and thou shalt not part you know and it's like oh yeah Paul some of us we think yeah that's great it's really challenging I love it others of us and many you know contemporaries in our culture think this is Paul it is worst in these parts of the letters because they think of him as like a helicopter parent you know who's just like hovering as the moral police over the lives of these Christians and he's just overbearing just telling them what to do because he likes that kind of thing you know and I'm character doing that but I think many of us can kind of get that feel when we read Paul's letters it's like dang I really liked that other stuff but now he's like getting in my business yeah and telling me what to do and I don't like that I'm going to skip and go read the Gospel of John or something like that and that's how some of us react and so we're going to go right into this section and just get into the nitty-gritty of what he's doing but here's what's what's most important it's easy to read this section of Paul's letter to the Ephesians and just think like Paul's utmost concern just people's behavior and telling people what to do and that's not true that's not true you might get that idea if you just what if you just did a surface reading but if you pay close attention like we're going to do Paul's Paul's them the thing he's most concerned about is actually not just people's behavior what he's really concerned about is about addressing the core sources and motivations of our behavior and Paul has a core conviction and the moment you it you see it it just pops up everywhere in his writings especially in Ephesians Paul has a conviction that our behavior it's it's just like surface phenomenon right the way that we observe each other behaving and treating each other and talking that's just that's just the surface what generates all that surface activity our deep deep issues deep character issues inside of us and particularly Paul as he makes clear you want to address our source of identity Paul believes that the way that we behave is generated and flows out of who you think you are your identity the kind of person you think you are the kind of Worth and value that you believe that you have or don't have your sense of who you what makes you who you are your identity and that's what he's going right after in these chapters in light of the gospel who are you and if who you are is changing then holy cow your behavior is just it's just going to change that's just it just follows and so let's have that up as we go into this part of Paul's letter and you'll just kind of see it I'm putting the idea out there and then we'll flesh it out in a million different ways you guys ready to dive in okay Ephesians chapter four verse verse 17 he says so so I tell you this and I insist on it in the Lord that you mean he's writing to these Christians who are living in the region of Ephesus that you all must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their sinking now I got us all riled up and now we're going to stop for a bunch of minutes here think about this so let's stop here there's something there's something that you could just read right over and and see because it's so subtle what he's doing here this is so brilliant and powerful and profound what he just did in that sentence right there look at it again he says all right here we go we're going to live a life worthy of this calling of the good news about Jesus I insist on it you must no longer live as the Gentiles do now Gentile who use that word in conversation this last week so it's just not really part of our English vocabulary what's the meaning of the word it's an ethnic category and it just means non-jewish person and specifically it's it's a word that originated in the Jewish communities to refer to people who are not us so there are Jewish people and then there are non-jewish people Gentiles it's a way to refer to every ethnic group that it's not it's not Jewish in other words most of humanity right so so don't live as the Gentiles do now this stop and sync this through who's Paul writing to flip the page back to like the previous chapter for example look at chapter 3 look at the first sentence of chapter 3 look at how he starts chapter 3 he says for this reason I Paul I'm a prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles look back further one chapter look at chapter 2 verse 11 he says therefore remember that you all you all formerly who are what if they said Gentiles by birth your you're not Jewish by ethnicity and I'm writing to you because I'm in prison on the count of you Gentiles but then all of a sudden in Chapter four he's like yeah don't live like the Gentiles anymore you're like what I am one but you don't have to say it would be like Paul writing a letter to the America of us living in America and saying don't live like the Americans anymore you're like well I do live in America so what if I do but okay so that's just obvious he's either like mindlessly contradicting himself which he's not can you see what he's doing he's doing something very very subtle here or maybe it's not so subtle what's his pointed out to you in other words so Paul would you know an Ephesian would say back like Paul I am the Gentile I don't what do you mean are you talking about the Gentiles as if there's somebody other than me in polity exactly exactly so yes of course technically you are Gentiles by birth and ethnicity but Paul saying everything of what chapter 1 through 3 was about is that your identity is no longer if you're a Christian your identity is no longer primarily your ethnic or nationality background that's not who you are anymore your primary identity is something it's some other category and so for Paul you're not Jewish but you're not a Gentile anymore you're something else and that's something else in just a few sentences he's is going to call it the new humanity you're a part of this new humanity begun with the new human that is Jesus who lived and died and was raised for us and we'll get into that but but he's what he's doing for right for her i from the first sentences is he's challenging their sense of identity the whole thing is going to be very specific commands about like not lying and not getting not like moving towards anger and forgiveness and not stealing and having a good work ethic like he's going to get really practical but it begins with this he says your primary identity is not what it used to be you have a new identity you are a Christian who just happens to be a Greek or a Rome and you are a Christian who just happens to live in America but please mistake your nationality for who you actually are that's that's relative who you are is a new human in Jesus you guys with me here now I want to drill down on this just because this is such a foundational piece of how how Paul thinks about the Christian lives many certainly you know people observing Christians living or observing religious communities you know they think it's it's like we're like a the moral police or we're all a community is all about behavior change and just do this and be good religious people and Paul would just say wow that's just misunderstanding everything I'm such a fundamental level so the whole point of this thing is that it's a change in who we are and that that out flows in a in a change and transformed behavior that kind of goes in fits and starts as we grow as we grow in Christ but that's that's how Paul always challenges people to become who you actually are now did you give us just kind of a fresh angle on this from another person who did something like this and then we'll come back into the fusions chapter four here but this is so worth exploring and I think wrapping wrapping our minds around as I normally do I'm going to show you a picture of a stranger and then tell their story because he has a really an amazing story this is a picture of a young woman named crystal Jones and I've actually never met crystal Jones she is alive so that's I got that going for this story normally I show you pictures of dead people but crystals alive where's alive she lives she lives in Atlanta and I came across her her story in the book that was all about the psychology of behavior change super interesting but I was so fascinated by her story I just was like well I want to find more about that story so I just looked her up online and contacted her and then we had this great exchange and she was like feel free to share my story and so I've shared it in a couple contexts and I'm about to share it with all of you so crystal Jones started volunteering I was Teach for America to teach yes I get that right yeah Teach for America yes are thinking AmeriCorps is very similar to AmeriCorps which is called Teach for America which essentially it provides volunteer opportunities for for young people whether before during after college whatever in their 20s just to go into low income neighborhoods and communities in the US and serve and volunteer and so she ended up being assigned and going into an under-resourced Elementary School in a low-income neighborhood in Atlanta and so she was assigned over a first grade classroom and so like she didn't have her teaching certificate yet like she's just thrown baptism by fire and so she's got this whole crew of first graders and in in this class in the school there there was no kindergarten and so this is first grade and this is the first time many of these kids are ever ever sitting sitting in a classroom and just want to read her description of the kids to you and just think about how you would feel if you were responsible for this crew day day one she says at the beginning of the year I had two or three students who could recognize kindergarten sight words like dog or ball I imagine I also had some that didn't even know how to hold a pencil or even a book the right way up the ones who had never been to school their behavior just wasn't where it needed to be for them to be in the classroom now for that long a period of time I had students who didn't know their alphabet or their numbers they were all on different levels and no one was where they needed to be for the first grade what would you do what would you do and so here's here's what she did and this is what really captured me about her story she she thought about the psychology of first graders how do first graders think about the world who do they think they are and who do they wish they could be and she observed some kids she said playing on the playground and it struck her she said you know when like the 1st through 3rd graders are all out there during recess what did the first graders want to be more than anything else I want to be 3rd graders and if you hung out her and little kids you just you know this and it starts very early actually so I have it I have a 2 year old son and I I think he's seen he gives all the indications of enjoying playing with me and I've enjoyed playing with him a lot we have a great time together and so we round in the yard whatever and we're having a good time the moment the neighbor kids come out like the 5 year old and the six-year-old I am I'm yesterday's news like you just there's something it's just this radar for other kids who were slightly older than him and he's just mesmerised you know and if you think about it that just kind of makes sense like he looks at me and I'm I'm like an alien him or something I don't know what I am like I'm like way taller than he is and I speak a different language most of the time you know and he's like but I like that kid over there he's like me he's just faster and he has a few more words than I do and so he just gloms on to these five year-olds and so that's what that's what crystal observed and so the idea hit on her about how how to motivate change in these kids she was from day one she cut the code from the classroom and she made this declaration she said I'm crystal Jones I'm your teacher this year and I thought before June comes I am going to turn all of you into third graders that's what we're gonna do here you're gonna become third graders like it or not and they're all like mmm and so and so she said everything we're gonna do here you know third graders they can run faster oh well no they could yeah well kid they can't okay well you know they can read better oh sure they can do math better but not for long because I'm gonna make you into third graders and so obviously she did all this she shaped all her curriculum around becoming a third grader and all that everything around around tests and exams and so on and so she'd have all the O's the other thing she does this is so brilliant so she instituted this system about how they were to refer to each other in the classroom and so she began to refer to every student as scholar and then by their last name so nobody called each other by their first names in her classroom there's always Scholar Smith or scholar Johnson with this whenever anybody came in visited the class she would introduce the class as her group of budding third-grade scholars and then every morning she would have the students recites the definition of a scholar and they would all say out loud a scholar is someone who lives to learn and is really good at it and they would say this every day and she was just this mantra this mantra of it and and if she just real by this time here in November she said it begin to work it began to work like people were bummed to miss out like if someone had a doctor's appointment they would be really disappointed because like I don't become a third-grader you know I was going to happen yes and she just said she had them she had them my halloween she knew she absolutely had them and so here's this really amazing story so by March come spring break and she did a reading comprehension exam six months into the school year and every single student passed first grade reading comprehension and for some of them you know that's like great progress for some of them they were learning ABC six months ago and just this amazing if this struck me the what she was what choose what she did she created an invite she created a community an environment where she had made a decision about them you all are becoming third graders that's what you all are doing she didn't she didn't reckon about their past circumstances she didn't base their identity on their skill level she made a decision about them you all are becoming third graders high and we're going to live to learn and we're going to love it this year and she created a community where people addressed each other according to their new identity not whatever poor kid from down the street but you're a scholar and you live to learn and you sit right next to me so you're paying attention because I'm going to become a third grader dangit yeah and those she just created this environment you guys see what she did here this is you can you guys see where I'm going yeah this is exactly what Paul will Paul is up to in his letters Paul's core conviction is that fundamental change happens to us when our very sense of who we are is completely revolutionized behavior follows our sense of identity it's what Paul is doing right here as he says I insist on it don't live like the Gentiles what what do you mean I'm not a Gentile no you're not you're something new you're something new and he's going to go on to explain what that something new is we're going to work through the rest of chapter four now but asking and looking at it through this lens of the classroom of you are all new kinds of humans now if you didn't know that did you know that you're new humans if you don't feel like it you need to remind yourself of it every single day because that's who you really are let's watch Paul at work here let's dive back in here at verse 17 so I tell you this I insist on it in the Lord you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking their 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 or some of your translations have having become calloused they've given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity and they're full full of greed so this is Paul's this is the bleak portrait that Paul paints of who these Christians are not anymore right this is his picture of who they are no longer and it's a bleak it's a really bleak portrait there's lots of connections to chapter 2 Paul's kind of diagnosis of not kind of pulse diagnosis of the human condition and josh garrels just totally rocked that passage and that was great and so go listen to that if you if you weren't here but here's look at verse 19 I think this is what Paul's getting at here was this description he says he's describing a state of human beings who've lost sensitivity to evil when he says like futility and thinking or uses like darkened and understanding or ignorant he's not saying that oh if you're not a Christian then that means you're stupid you can't think straight that's obviously not true that's what he's not not what he's saying he's talking about moral formation moral knowledge moral sensitivity and because in verse 19 he's describing the story of someone who's become calloused morally and so he's asking us to entertain this this description you entertain this idea how how does the person and he's saying in prison so I imagine you have some pretty hardened figures in the cells around him how does how does the human being get to a place where something that's clearly morally wrong or clearly just destructive to their body or to themselves or to other people and so on how does the person get to a place where they actually are fine with that and they think it's okay and Paul uses this word of becoming calloused calloused and you know I did the try and be like jars of clay who ever play the guitar in college that didn't really work out for me but you know I did for him some calluses so that I just indicted myself by saying jars of clay it did not really about that anyway so Simon sorry you're like jars of clay what does that and so whatever whatever anyway there's a wonderful human beings I did actually had a chance to meet those guys in last year they're really great guys anyway I didn't mean to say any of that so well I want to talk about this calluses how do you fingers so if you play the guitar regularly you know you if you haven't played for a while you start playing it hurts dude it hurts really bad because you have these sensitive little soft nubby is here right these little pads on your on your fingers the more that you play right your fingers clearly we're not designed to do that necessarily because it hurts I hurt the hurts you got to really get these calloused pads going for you for it not to hurt anymore that's what he said is it how does that happen to a person morally how does that strip it someone gets to a place where they become so hardened to the well-being of other people or themselves that they make decisions like that what Paul says he says it starts in your mind right he says it starts in your thinking and your mindset there's some there's some darkening the lights turned off and your ability to make connections anymore and this is part of Paul's greater portrait of human beings with estranged themselves from God by declaring themselves to be God and by declaring ourselves to be the ultimate judges of right and wrong for me and I'm not really interested in your input thinking on that thank you very much you know and I'm just captain of my own ship here we go or I'm captain of the ship that my little subculture defines for me and we're finding our own way what's right for me is right for me what it might be different than what's right for you that says is diagnosis and it says it leads to ruin for human beings because slowly as we we begin to redefine good and evil in ways that conveniently conveniently excuse my own flaws and failures right and create room for that but highlighting the hypocrisy and everybody else that just conveniently how the lines of good and evil happen to fall listen that can be nyet for all of us right and so that's just what happens to us and so switches begin to turn off things we begin to make compromises to our own advantage we find ourselves down a road of decisions at a place where we never imagined where we'd be three years ago or something it's this moral callousness and we all form these calluses in different in different ways and Paul says it begins with your thinking it begins by mistaking yourself for God and so he goes on and he says she begins to talk about their new identity look at verse 20 he says that however is not it's not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ or some of your translations have that that is that description up above that's not how you learned Christ if indeed you heard about him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus instead a really dense little description here but actually it's really is really accurate I think what essentially what he's saying is when you hear the story about Jesus the good news about Jesus is life is death and resurrection from you it's this message in this story that just if you haven't really heard it before or been internalize it before is just it's like this truth that invades your your reality you have this mindset this view of the world that you're just fine captain of my own ship and then the gospel comes along and just says dude you are so screwed up like the depths to which you're selfish and compromised and self focused like you don't even understand and that's not really like good news to hear that you know but it's but at the same time the gospel just does the slip on us it says at the same time that we are judged and all this stuff is exposed within us at the same time it declares about us this decision of God to love us to absolutely love us and commit himself to us in spite of our deep flaws and failures and brokenness and so he says listen he says you heard this truth about Jesus you were taught to sink through the implications of the good news about Jesus and it opened up a completely different way of living and it's this he keeps going he says you were taught with regard to your former way of life that is your former identity you were taught three things and these are so powerful three things here count them with me three things he says first you were taught to put off your old self which is being corrupted by deceitful desires here's the second thing you were taught to be made new in the attitude of your minds and then the third thing you were taught to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness and true to form Paul's mixing all these different metaphors together at once there's so many cool things are going on here let me just point out two so the words we're going to do a little Greek geek action here and so let me show you this word self you all have the word self right there take off your old self put on your new self give me knobs of affirmation here do you have the word self there in that spot no what do you have if you don't have self what do you have man okay we're getting closer we're getting closer there what's that or humans there you go yeah exactly all right so man and 21st century English means male human 100 years ago it meant humanity now we just say humanity for at least I think we should anyway so when he uses the word self they're the words that he's using is the word anthropos on three puffs which there's two words it could be connected to in English this might be kind of funny what do you think of when you see antipas anthropology now which anthropology all right so the store that my wife does cartwheels over or the or the college curriculum like you know studying human cultures and so on so so I think to really hear what Paul's saying we need to insert this word humanity here he's talking about self because he's talking about your humanity as an individual but the whole front side of the door of his visions one through three is about God forming a new humanity in Jesus and so he says this is what you were you heard this word of the good news about Jesus and it taught you to take off your old identity and take off it's the same he's just talking about taking off clothes it's a word about literally like disrobing so take off you're just like an old shirt or like the bad cardigans that aren't cool anymore something I don't know so take off that boom you take it off and we're thinking like easier said than done Paul you know what I mean like what do you mean just take it off this is all wrapped together here so you you take off this whole humanity and how do they describe it here this is so insightful he says you you just take off that old humanity that's being corrupted by deceitful desires this is so insightful so we're back to we're back to Paul's view of how humans behave and why we behaved the ways that we do and so here he gets through identity kind of another angle here he talks about desire so he manic Youmans we have all these desires and their good desires the desire to be in relationship the desires to to be known and no others the desire to have sex the desire to have my basic needs cared for the desire to be in a community of people that know me legs are good desires the desire to have meaningful work and have a job where I might get to feel good about it and contribute something to my community these are good desires but Paul says in the old humanity where we're darkened where we become the judges of what's right and what's wrong for me those desires they will trick you they're deceitful they'll trick you because those desires will make you think that they are ultimate ends in themselves and if I could just achieve that kind of career status or just have that financial stability or just be in a relationship with that person then then I'd be worth something then I might then my life would have value or meaning I'd be secure my life would be okay and Paul says dude you're buying into the illusion right this those desires if you could attain them can never give you what you're looking for which is identity and meaning and words and so he says the old humanity that you took off is just in a lifelong pursuit driven by desires that are constantly tricking you and letting you down and he says therefore those deceitful desires he says they're corrupting you they're ruining you because you just go from one desire to the next to the next it's just an endless trail of breadcrumbs and so he says dude when you heard the good news about Jesus you were taught to just take that old humanity off I ask not who you are anymore and the new you the scholar who lives to learn and is good at it is is this right here it's someone who's being made new in the attitude of your mind or some of you have in the spirit of your mind and so what what Paul you know it might surprise us for some of us Paul it doesn't say you taught to take off that old self and then say the sinner's prayer something like that you have something much bigger involved which is about the remaking of your mind so we are we are all raised or born or enculturated with patterns of thinking about ourselves ways of thinking about who you are your identity how you get by in the world the worst of the value that your life has right we're all raised with this and essentially what he's saying is that the gospel enters your life the story about what Jesus did for you and it just messes with all of that in fact it just reshaped all of it you need to start from Ground Zero again and just rebuild your whole view of yourself and of the world and of God and of other people and so it's about this renewing of your mind and specifically if again if we're reading chapters 1 2 3 it's just owning up to the fact that I thought I was perfectly fine getting by in this world following my desires where they were taking me and some of us have a bigger trail of wreckage behind us than others but we all we all have those those secrets that we don't want other people to know we all have the compromises the ways that we fudge the rules or done something for our own self advantage because we declared it to be right and conveniently kind of excuse my flaws my failures and so Paul he just says if we can come to a place to just own that just owned it dude you're messed up it's like it's no secret to anybody else insulted this on it and recognize that whatever humanity is going to have going for it it has to be from outside ourselves something other than just my ability to become a good person and that's the good news about Jesus is God's commitment to screwed up people like us is so is so permanent and so motivated by his love and care that he came among us as Jesus to live as the kind of human being he calls us to be but we perpetually failed to be and on the cross he absorbs into himself just the collective results of our old humanity right just the train wreck of art many of our lives and of human history the guilt and the sin and the pain he just takes it all on the cross to its bitter end to death but because his love and His grace and His mercy towards people like you and me is so permanent it's so committed to us he he raised Jesus from the dead showing that our sin that our guilt and even the death itself that's been created in our world does not have power over his love and his grace for us the resurrection of Jesus means that your sin doesn't get the last word it means that your old humanity that you thought is just doing you in and that is just going to sink your life that God's power his resurrection power through Jesus to to address you in your sin to love you to forgive you and to remake your mind it's real it's real and we're a community of people that are discovering that and experiencing that and trying to understand what it means to live a life worthy of the calling that we've received amen that's this remaking of our minds you don't do that in a day okay so like you you begin that journey some some of us begin our journey of following Jesus with a moment with a prayer with a moment of conviction and a conversation for others of us it was a very long long process but however you there Paul saying this is about a perpetual renewal of your mind a new way of thinking adopting this new identity which he refers to in the last and the third thing here so you've taken off your old humanity you're letting your mind your patterns of thinking your a sense of identity be reshaped by the gospel home look at verse 24 he says then you just put on this new this new humanity you put it on and it what is that new humanity it's it's the variant of you that's created to perfectly reflect the image of God it's the version of you that's meant to be an accurate reflection of God's holiness and his righteousness and His goodness and his character and so this is really powerful you know I thought you may I don't know how you're feeling about yourself today you know if you are feeling crappy about yourself today this is exactly what what you need to hear how how is it you just put on the new self and for Paul this is an act of faith and trust and it's an act of faith and trust that in Jesus Jesus has become the version of me that I cannot become for myself that's Josh quoted Carl Bart saying a few weeks ago it's it's it's the courage to trust that I can I am I just so perpetually fails to become the kind of person that even I would want to a be I mean I you know much less god standard I fail my own standards most of the time you know and so do you and so the good news of the the new self is that by faith I get to put on a version of me that I could only dream of becoming and that Jesus was on my behalf and he's present with me every day to reshape my thinking and help me and help me go there do you see what Paul is doing here he's declaring that you all are becoming third-graders by the Hindus here and he's declaring that you're a scholar and that you live to learn you're a new human if you're grabbing on to Jesus what's true of him is now true of you you may not feel like it you might not feel like it for a while but why it's best right you're grabbing on and you just you just watch you hang around people who are affirming that identity with you and you just watch what all of a sudden patterns of thinking you remind yourself every single day whatever your weak spot is and he's going to go we're going to blitz Craig through a number of them whether it's anger or having integrity or the way you talk to people or whatever he's like just watch just wake up wake up every day for three months and pray these words aloud to yourself and declare who you are because of what Jesus does done for you and like set your alarm for noontime prayer get out your Bible again you don't have saying like get gnarly right get really intense and just see if something doesn't happen I just might will submit to you that something might happen if you actually took this seriously if you took it seriously which doesn't mean wait for Jesus just bonk you on the head and make you a new person right you got a work but you got to take on and put off you have to do something and Jesus partners with us in the reshaping of our and the reshaping of our character is this a great passage I think it's so well maybe you don't think it's practical yet it's about to get very practical so now he's just kind of flesh this out what does it mean to put on the new humanity and he's just going to just go through all these different scenarios and all these scenarios are all about our relationships what it means to be in community and that the health of my personal relationships is one of the clearest indicators of whether or not I understand and appropriate my new identity so logo verse 25 he says therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor for we are all members of one body so he addresses this old humanity practice of lying encounters it was a new humanity practice of truth of truth-telling and again just think it through let your minds be made new about what's happening when I lie what am i doing when I lie I'm I'm projecting a false version of myself right I'm projecting a false identity did did you really say that about her I did I mean I heard that you said did you say that no no I didn't say that right what's going on in that moment right if this is this inability to own up to a truth about what I've done and I would much rather have a false view of myself floating out there in front of people so that people don't actually know who I really am and that I am apparently right now the kind of person who says those those kinds of things it's about a false representation of who of who I am it's about perception management I'm lying to excuse or to cover over who I really am inside and Paul says dude just tell the truth I mean you're members of one body together we're a community of people that acknowledges that Jesus had to die for us we're so screwed up you know saying like that's about the worst thing you could say about anybody you know really and so what you're doing in that moment is you're presenting this false view of yourself and is like yeah I'm screwed up but I'm not that screwed up yeah you're covering over who you really are and as a community of truth we expose the old man inside of us and we put it off and it has to have to let the spotlight shine on not look as on talk about another relational circumstance he says in your anger do not sin don't let the Sun go down while you're still angry don't give the devil a foothold so I talked about this a couple weeks ago so we addresses this thing of relational conflict which I'm guessing one or two of us in the room have had before with another person so you have this relational conflict and notice does he say does he say don't get angry and don't sin does that what he says that's not what he says does the new humanity get angry totally when you get angry if you're if you're living in close community with other people sharing about your lives did you're gonna eventually at some point say something or do something and you're going to hurt somebody's feelings it's going to happen so what do you how are you going to do how are you going to deal with that and so Paul says you have a choice in that moment because your anger is just energy aroused to protect something usually yourself but it's not always bad enter anger might be energy that gets stirred up to protect another person and that's really good that's a positive thing and so the question is what am i what do you do with this emotion energy in the new humanity and Paul says you use it to go address the person in the situation in the relationship and you talk it out you talk it out and you work towards forgiveness otherwise evil spiritual powers can begin to create risk in the community of God's family that's how we roll as the new humanity we move towards conflict resolution that's what we do let's keep going verse 28 anyone who's been stealing must steal no longer but needs to get to work doing something useful with their own hands so that they can have something to share with those in need and so the old humanity that I've taken off puts myself at the center and will do whatever it takes to you know like satisfy my wants and my needs right and so the new humanity is just like no dude Jesus it's at the center and then right close to him or other people and that's that's my like mode of living Jesus love God and love other people that's just how how we roll here in the new humanity and so what I whatever I need to do it's a really it's about remaking your mind what it why do I think I want or need zap what is it that wants me to perpetually put myself at the center and just do whatever it takes to get stuff that I say I want or I need you have to go there and you have to remake your mind and you have to sync it through which means see a therapist or something right but you need to go there you need to remake your mind so that you can put on this new this new identity let's keep going he says don't let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths only what's helpful for building others up according to their needs so that it can give grace to those who are listening and don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption how many of you up in verse 29 for unwholesome talk come any of you have rotten word rot or rotten anybody unwholesome other translations corrupt corrupt the word literally is rotten like referring to a piece of soggy mushy rotten fruit sitting on your counter rotten so he's saying don't talk in ways that introduce rot into other people's lives and I don't think these I mean you might be talking about like dirty jokes or something like that but what he recommends is the new humanity practice in its place is whatever it is that you say to other people have it be something so that they walk away feeling like they've been given a gift after being with you speech speech that builds them up that seeks to encourage them and so I think whatever rotten speech is it's it's it's speech that introduces rottenness into the community of God's people like why would you do that dude as your old humanity creepin right check that just check it that's not how we do it here this is a community of people that's built around the story of God's grace that's restoring and forgiving and transforming human beings why would you do that here that doesn't make any sense at all that's not that's not what a third grader does scholars don't act like that all right finish it up verses 31 and then through the four sentences of five he says get rid of bitterness and rage these intense negative emotions that burst out into what into anger brawling and slander along with every form of malice that's your old humanity be kind and compassionate to one another forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you it's very at the end of this kind of barrage of moral commands it's very easy to feel like man I'm I'm lame whatever I gets really hard or you might feel like dang dude could tell me what to do so I'm here to lie for the anti-authoritarian Cena and so he wraps it around he does exactly at the end here what he did at the beginning he exactly what crystal did look at the first sentences of chapter 5 he says follow God's example or become imitators of God therefore as dearly loved children walk in the way of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering in a sacrifice to God did you catch the repeated word there three times here three times what did the repeat three times some of you are awake I know it the word love did you see if their love now this is a call this is the basic core ethic of a community of Jesus and he doesn't appeal to a principle or some abstract ideal he appeals to a story he appeals to the story of the Cross Jesus's life and his death and he calls that story an act of love and this is a part of the way that the New Testament completely redefines our concept of love this is one area where our minds need to need to be made new is because in the Bible in the New Testament the word loves it's the word agape and we think of love in English as an emotion in scriptures love refers to an action it refers to acting for the well-being of another person regardless of how they respond to me and Paul says this is the basic core ethic of our whole of the new humanity its agape love and so he says listen walk in the way of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself for us we run every decision we run every word that I speak you run every way that you relate to somebody you run every conflict that you're in and how you're going to resolve that contract you run it all through this story how do I love this person in this circumstance as a part as an expression of my identity of being a new kind a new kind of human and notice he says how do you I have what's the core motivation for loving it he says because you yourselves are left look at what he says here you are loved so walk in the way of love he doesn't say like you know like chin up pull up your bootstraps and just love people for going to sakes know is like dude you are loved do you you grasp the significance of that and it's not some abstract ideal like 2,000 years ago Jesus did something that was the ultimate act of love for you and for the rest of your life you can point to that and say dude that was for me that was an act of God seeking my well-being before I even existed before I ever like rejected him renew about him in the first place he's decided to commit himself to love me through Jesus's action on the cross that's the defining story of this new humanity and so it's this tension that Paul invites us advise us into and it's what I want us to reflect on as we move into our time of worship and and the bread and the cup and some of you I don't know where you're at in your journey of growth and following Jesus some of you who knows we're just all over the map it's Dourif Oh trust me I know this weird is all over the map and so you might be feeling horrible about yourself right now because you're like if you actually like follow me around with a camera you deceive old humanity everywhere right and there might be some of you who are really experiencing growth for the first season of your life ever and you're like dude like the new humanities like popping out it surprises me even sometimes and that's really exciting when that does happen and this is not abstract this has to do with anger and lying and your work ethic and your the health of your relationships and what you do with your money I mean this is where the old and new humanities is at war in our lives and so I do not know how any of the mirages things that Paul said connects and speaks God's Word to you and what you need to hear tonight but I trust that it does because that's what is so what the Scriptures do they mess with us the good news messes with us and so there's some of us here tonight where you just need to hear a reminder of that word of good news if you place your faith in Jesus you may not feel like it you may not have lived like it in the last week but did you're a new human because of what Jesus did for you in his life and his death in his resurrection you don't have to live like that anymore you're actually living out of sync with your true identity as one who has been loved and forgiven by Jesus and there might be some of us who are here tonight and we wouldn't self-identify as Christians or we're just trying to figure out what that even means in the first place and it's just very is this very simple beautiful statement of what Paul's saying would you would you allow Jesus to become the version of you to become for you what you could never become for yourself which first means that you have to acknowledge the the mess and the selfishness that's inside of you and let that die with him on the cross and whatever a new lie healed self-giving love version of you is going to come out the other side it will simply be an activist grace and it's love at work in your lives are you willing to turn to Jesus and face and let him begin to mess with you and do stuff with you and I would just encourage you to take that seriously tonight that's something you need you need to think about and maybe even pray about so I'm going to close us in prayer and just allow us to do some heart searching as we as we sing and as we go as we go to the bread and the cup let me close and word of Prayer you

Channel: Tim Mackie Archives

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Length: 52min 2sec (3122 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 21 2017