Out With The Old, In With The New

God's children shouldn't look like the rest of the world.

Ephesians 4:21-24  Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from Him,  22  throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception.   

23  Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.  24  Put on your new nature, created to be like God--truly righteous and holy.

Ephesians 5:6-7 Don't be fooled by those who try to excuse these sins, for the anger of God will fall on all who disobey Him.  7  Don't participate in the things these people do.

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The new church in Ephesus needed instruction on what their new life in Jesus should look like. The new Greek converts came from a different religious background that included many different gods. Paul told the new church that it is the responsibility of the leader of this new church to instruct them on this new way of life.

As a child of God in this sinful world, you don't have any choice, you have to live among the people that you probably used to be like. You thought like them and partied like them but once you came to Jesus things should be different. That old life-style is not compatible with someone who has seen the truth about Jesus. The worldly way is ignorant about God and his desire for their life, they are busy taking care of their own passions, their happiness is all that matters.

Colossians 3:10 Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like Him.

That's my goal, to become more like God, putting off the old man and putting on the new man. There should be a dramatic difference in my life-style when I come to know Christ, I now have a foundation for truth and for moral values, I should have new desires.

As a child of God we have the mind of Christ, we understand that the world's promise of pleasure and happiness is an empty lie, our enlightened minds require us to live different, we must throw off our old sin nature and be renewed by the Holy Spirit. My thoughts and attitudes cannot be the same as they used to be.

Ephesians 4:30  And do not bring sorrow to God's Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, He has identified you as His own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is not to be taken lightly and it is very dangerous to continue chasing after the desires of the old man and ignoring the prompting of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God in us attempting to lead us to be dead to the world; yet we go on with our plans of financial gain. We continue to pursue the folly of fashion and vanity and deck ourselves out in the best apparel. We continue to chase after the next thrill and indulge ourselves when this isn't the appropriate life-style for God's children.

The Holy Spirit is there to help me know right from wrong and help me to become more like God. When I yield to his control I will become more like my heavenly father which is what I am supposed to become.

Lord help me to keep my eyes on what is really important. I want to protect the new man and help him to continue to grow. Keep me from the deception of my sin nature.

Perfecting The Saints

The body of Christ cannot grow without some assistance.

Ephesians 4:11-16 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

14 Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. 16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

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Before Jesus left earth he provided the leadership that the new organization called the church would need so that the church would be sustainable throughout the ages. The church leaders included apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers.

The two main purposes of these leaders is to help the believers grow and to help them get along and work together in unity. Don't fall for the lie that these are the "professional" Christians that are employed to do all of the work of the church.

Ideally, if the leadership is successful then the work of the church will get done efficiently and the people in the church will be very happy doing their part. We don't usually take it very seriously but our maturity in the body of Christ is very important for two reasons:

1. Without maturity in our faith we will fall for the devils lies, he will send people that will try and trick us into believing something that is almost the truth, something similar to the deception that he used on Adam and Eve.

2. The world needs to see the body in a mature condition because a lack of maturity will result in behavior that will not be appealing. We must be mature so that we can be attractive to the world, if they see fighting and childish behavior and an absence of love then they will be repelled from us, love and unity are the best reasons for them to notice us.

Becoming like Jesus.
1 John 3:2  Dear friends, we are already God's children, but He has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we do know that we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He really is.

The work of perfecting the saints is a job that will not be finished until Jesus returns and takes us home to heaven. Until then the leaders of the church are here to equip us and help us grow to maturity. They will work along with the Holy Spirit and the Bible to help us grow more like Jesus. (Galatians 5:16, 2 Timothy 3:16-17, Hebrews 13:17)

Thank you Lord for the men of the Bible that show me how to live, thank you for the guidance of pastors and church leaders that help me know you better and help me apply your teaching to my life.

Christian vs Christian

You shouldn't have to wear boxing gloves to church.

Romans 14:4, 10-13  Who are you to condemn someone else's servants? Their own master will judge whether they stand or fall. And with the Lord’s help, they will stand and receive his approval.

10 So why do you condemn another believer? Why do you look down on another believer?

Remember, we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.  11  For the Scriptures say, "'As surely as I live,' says the LORD, 'every knee will bend to Me, and every tongue will confess and give praise to God. '"  12  Yes, each of us will give a personal account to God.  13  So let's stop condemning each other.

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Every organization has it's share of division and strife among the people that are in the group. Whether it is in the military, a social group or a workplace, there is going to be conflict.

That shouldn't be true of the church but unfortunately it is not any better inside the body of Christ. There have always been divisions and fighting despite the fact that Jesus prayed for us to get along with each other and serve each other and to be united together just the same as he is united with God the Father. (John 17:21)

I have never slowed down and allowed this verse to sink in. It is stuck in the middle of a bunch of verses about whether the Gentile believers should stick to the dietary restrictions that the Jews observed under the law. The verse is Romans 14:4 "Who are you to condemn someone else's servants?"

The first thought that came to mind is that I am a servant of God. I am just a slave, I do not have any rights, my life has been redeemed by Jesus and therefore it belongs to him. Since he has purchased me he has all rights to me and my life should be spent making sure that I am pleasing my master.

Second thought that comes to mind is that I am surrounded by other servants of God that he has also redeemed and none of those other servants around me are answerable to me. I don't have any rights and I don't have any authority. As a fellow slave, I have no power or any right to have another slave give an account for his actions.

What if the other servants are doing what God has told them to do? Why am I putting them down? So what if they are not pleasing me when it comes to stuff that isn't an essential part of the gospel. There is one Lord, one Holy Spirit and one God and I am not any of them.

James 4:12  God alone, who gave the law, is the Judge. He alone has the power to save or to destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor?

Jesus had the right to walk around this planet and point his finger at everybody that he saw that was wrong and condemn all of them but instead the main characteristic of his life was love. It was love that drew people to him. Without love the gospel doesn't have any power and instead of drawing people in to Jesus we will drive them away.

Help me Lord to be less like the devil with his judging personality and help me to grow more like my loving redeemer.

One

The number one should be your favorite number.

Ephesians 4:3-6  Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.  4  For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.  5  There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism,  6  and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all.

1 Corinthians 8:6  But we know that there is only one God, the Father, who created everything, and we live for Him. And there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom God made everything and through whom we have been given life.

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People in the church come from every racial, cultural and social background. There are people that have been involved in sin that leads to prison time and there are others that have been involved in more socially acceptable sin. There are some that have been in the church since they were in the womb. God's family is full of variety.

All of these differences can make a lot of trouble in the body of Christ but we must not allow these differences to spoil the unity that God desires in the church. We see our differences as a really big deal but God isn't looking at all of that, why would he? He only sees people that are his children and people that need to be his children. The only reason we get so busy checking out the differences between us is so that we can compare and judge one another.

We get distracted and forget to look at what we have in common:
✔ Body ✔ Spirit ✔ Hope ✔ Faith				✔ Baptism ✔ Lord ✔ God ✔ Father

The things that we have in common are far greater than our differences and they are also far more important than our differences. Despite our religious differences, there is one body of Christ which all have the same hope for our eternal destiny. We are a bunch of ordinary people that have been chosen by the one Father, the one Son and the one Holy Spirit to be a part of the one body of believers.

Romans 15:5-7 May God, who gives this patience and encouragement, help you live in complete harmony with each other, as is fitting for followers of Christ Jesus. 6 Then all of you can join together with one voice, giving praise and glory to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 7 Therefore, accept each other just as Christ has accepted you so that God will be given glory.

We all know what it looks like when our physical body doesn't work right, life is a challenge for people that have body parts that do not work properly, unfortunately we all have seen the body of Christ work in much the same way. There are a lot of mischievous body parts that are not working for the common good. Some parts want more attention that they should have and some parts are a lot more maintenance than they should be.

We should all be working for the same goal of glorifying God and leading others to him. The world should look at us with wonder and amazement because we are one. They should be drawn to us because of the unity and love that we have for each other. They should look at Christ followers and think "I want to experience that."

Someday we will be one and we will join together with one voice to sing praises to God, too bad that isn't a reality on earth today, the events of world history would be so much different if God's people had put unity into practice.

Character Of The Worthy Walk

What does it look like to live a life that is worthy of the call?

Ephesians 4:1-3  Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.  2  Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other's faults because of your love.  3  Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.

John 17:21  I pray that they will all be one, just as You and I are one--as You are in Me, Father, and I am in You. And may they be in Us so that the world will believe You sent Me.

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In the previous post we learned that we have a responsibility to live up to the position that we have in Christ, there needs to be perfect harmony between who I am and how I live, if I do not walk worthy of the position that I have in Christ then God is not being glorified in my life.

My conduct needs to bring glory to God but what does that look like in practical application? Contrary to popular opinion it isn't about keeping a checklist of things that you are allowed or not allowed to do. We tend to tell people that they need to pray for this much time or read your Bible for this much time or don't do these things but the things that Paul told the Ephesian church to be concerned about are all inner attitudes or characteristics of their heart.

The attitudes that we need to cultivate in our heart include:

✔  Humility
✔ Gentleness or Meekness
✔ Patience or Long-suffering
✔ Forgiving Spirit
✔ Peaceful Spirit

That's what the world needs to see in God's people, we have been called by God to live a very peculiar life-style, but instead we look just about the same as the world. Our divorce rate is the same, the number of God's people that are dealing with anger and pride is not radically different from the rest of the world. The devil has a lot of nice, friendly, caring people that have better hearts than some of God's people.

Remember that it isn't about checking off a list of good things to do and determining in our head that we will live with filters and stay away from doing bad things. It is about heart modification, the Holy Spirit will put these into your life, your human effort will work for awhile but permanent change comes from within.

Walking worthy is a very big issue and one that doesn't get talked about enough. Does the world see the unity that Jesus prayed for us to have? Jesus prayed that we would have the same unity as he and his Father had so that the world would believe. The church should not look like every other human organization, there should be a supernatural difference, a unity that can not be brought about by human effort.

Our evangelism methods often fail because the church has a bad reputation, the message of love, unity and oneness gets lost because God's people don't walk worthy. We cannot have an influence on our world if they cannot see any benefits in our lives. Let's make the world take notice of us and wonder why we are so different.

Thank you Lord for your forgiveness and grace, I need to extend forgiveness and grace to those around me, help me rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to show me how to be radically different from the rest of the world.