No Longer Gentiles (Ephesians 4:17-24)

How many friends do you have that aren't Christians? Do you resemble your friends? Do you act like them, talk like them, think like them, and do all the things they do?

Paul has been telling us about how we might be able to glorify God in our lives. The Ephesians letter tells us that God has saved us from our sins so that we might be joined to the body of Christ and praise God as Jesus did. We studied last week and learned that those who are in Christ are given gifts to build up the body. This morning we saw the need to grow out of childhood to maturity. At this point, Paul starts to explain what maturity looks like.

No Longer Gentiles

Ephesians 4:17 (ESV) --- 17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds.

The first thing that Paul says is, "I say and testify in the Lord." So if you want to shut him off and stop listening at this point, he is trying to testify. We testify when we go to court and swear on a Bible. We give our testimony, and that is intended to be a solemn occasion worthy of attention. He is stating that he is a witness to this truth. What is the truth? He says, "That you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do."

Who are the Gentiles? Ephesians are Gentiles. Everyone around them is Gentile. Their friends, family, coworkers, and every person they know who is not a Jew. There were some Jews in Ephesus. Even they knew very well what the Gentiles do. This term represents a majority of the people who were all lost. When Paul says, "No longer walk as the Gentiles do," he indicates that Christians can't act like the world around them. They do all kinds of things that we cannot do! This is like someone telling us to stop living like Americans. This is a profound declaration that requires some explanation.

We live in a world that tells us to be true to ourselves. They say, "Be true to yourself." Paul tells us to stop that!

Ephesians 4:17--19 (ESV) --- 17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

Futility

The minds of everyone else are focused on futility. That means that they are thinking about useless things. People around us spend all of their time thinking about useless, meaningless, and pointless things. So Paul says, don't walk as they walk. People who are focused on the wrong things don't walk in the right direction. They walk toward whatever they see that interests them. This reminds me of Ecclesiastes. Solomon looks and looks for something of meaning, and he goes from one thing to another to another. He tries to find a scheme that will give him satisfaction, and he concludes that it's like grasping for the wind. Have you ever caught the wind in your hand? That's impossible. If we saw someone outside trying to catch the wind, we wouldn't join them unless we were crazy. But Paul is telling the Ephesians that's what happens when they walk after the Gentiles. They start trying to grab things that aren't substance, just like the Gentiles do.

Darkness

Notice that he says they are darkened in their understanding. People who are not aware of the spiritual realm and fail to acknowledge the truths about God will not understand the reason for the call of Christians. When they look at us, we don't make sense to them. It seems like we are talking another language and seeing things that they cannot see. They have no idea that our mission is to show them God's glory by being humble, gentle, patient, and full of love. So when something terrible happens to us, we don't blow up and lose our minds. When we lose something that they hold dear, they expect us to lose our minds. They expect us to get angry and yell and fight until we get what we want back. But instead, they see us getting run over and suffering to serve others. That makes absolutely no sense in their minds. Their eyes can't see what's happening because they don't understand what we understand.

They say that we have a martyr complex or that we are weak and stupid. They think we are fools for letting go of money instead of trying to accumulate as much as we can. When I left engineering, my brother attributed it to my personality. He thought I was just the type of person that doesn't need much. I'm not that type of person. The truth is that I saw the futility of it all. The book of Ecclesiastes revealed that reaching for more will never get me the satisfaction I want.

Alienated

The next thing Paul says is that the Gentiles have been "alienated from the life of God." This doesn't sound very nice, but it's true. They are complete aliens when it comes to the life we enjoy in Christ. Paul spoke about that life in Chapter 2, saying that God saved us from death and brought us into spiritual life. They don't know what that is like. They don't know what it would be like to have a relationship with God. Why not? Is it because they aren't good enough to receive that relationship? No! Is it because they don't know about that relationship? Maybe they don't. Have we told them? But it's more likely that they know about it. The problem is that they aren't willing to accept that life for themselves. They aren't willing to come over to the side of life and light because "they love the darkness."

John 3:20 (ESV) --- 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

When we love darkness, we have no access to the life of God. It's available if we give up the darkness, but we cannot have the light of life until we do. When we accept the life that God is offering, we have to confess our sins and change. Then, we must no longer walk as the Gentiles do because we are not aliens, darkened in our understanding, and focused on futility.

Have you ever felt alienated? It's not a good feeling, and we don't encourage alienation. Many of us, if we stop walking the way the Gentiles walk, will experience alienation. They won't want to hang out with us because we don't do what they do. If we stop hanging out with them, they might even accuse us of alienating them. But the truth is that they have alienated themselves from God, and I choose God over them. We would rather them choose God too, but if they force us to make a decision, we must choose God. Why should we lose the life offered to us on their behalf?

Callous

The final illustration Paul gives us to describe those around us is Callousness. He says that those who are futile in their thinking, darkened in their understanding, and alienated from the life of God have become hard of heart and callous to their sin.

If we think about it, all of us have been through this process. Paul does not give us new information here. We were once like these Gentiles, so we know what they were going through, although some were more sheltered from the evil than others. Even those of us growing up in the very best homes have experienced the pull of the world toward futility and darkness. We have felt alienated from the life of God. Sin has entered into our lives and wreaked havoc! Our conscience has been seared and grown callous. When we are young, our conscience tells us, "No," but as we get older, the conscience gives up and justifies the sensuality, greed, and impurity we enjoy. Those we live around also have no clue that sin is so rooted in their lives. They live as though they do not sin because everyone does it, and they have done it for so long.

I remember developing callouses on my feet in Basketball. When I just started playing, my feet were tender, and I would get blisters. But those blisters would turn to callouses, and the blisters went away. Callouses were a good thing to me. The same thing would happen when I worked out. My hands would get callouses. But imagine not being able to feel something that is killing you and damaging all of your relationships. That's what is happening. We have numbed ourselves to the destructive nature of sin. It hardens our hearts so that we do all kinds of impure things. We wonder how someone could molest children, engage in pornography, adultery, theft, or murder. It's effortless. They are callous about sin. Their conscience is no longer heard. There is no sensitivity. This is the way Gentiles walk, and we are called to stop following them.

We are called to tenderize our hearts, so we feel the guilt of sin. God wants us to experience the hope of the life he offers. We need to step into the light, revealing our sins and failures. Then, we must pursue the eternal things that bring God glory.

The Old Way

Maybe it sounds harsh and judgmental to say that the friends we surround ourselves with are darkened, futile, ignorant, and hard-hearted. But Paul brings all of this up because this is the old way of life. This is the path the Gentiles were settled into before they came to Christ, and they tend to go back to that way of life. But we know that the way that they think and the way that they go is wrong!

Ephesians 4:20--21 (ESV) --- 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!--- 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus,

The truth is opposed to them. This is not something I say in ignorance. I was just like them. I tend to fall into the same patterns that they fall into, but I can't justify their evil and call it good. It's not good to harden my heart to sin. We have to bend our warped minds back to the ways of God. We cannot allow the world to pull us back in. They will try to guilt and shame us. They will try to alienate us and make us think that we are unrighteous for going against them. But they are the ones who go against what is true, against God. Don't feel obligated to defend someone who is guilty. Don't let them deceive you as they have deceived themselves. That will make us insensitive to our sins. We are moving into an area of grave danger, and we need to go back to the life Christ has given us to live for God's glory. That's not the lifestyle God showed us in Christ. Christ is not about continuing in sin! We know these things are wrong. We know we have given ourselves over to these things, and we have to get out of it before it's too late. Sin is like Lays potato chips. You can't eat just one. It only gets worse.

Ephesians 4:22 (ESV) --- 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,

Why bring up the old self and the old ways? Remembering the sins of our past hurts us. We are forgiven of those things. Can't we forget them? No, we need to go back and remember how far we have come and see that some sins are still clinging closely. He says that the former manner of life is corrupted through deceitful desires. Did you know that your desires are lying to you? Don't do whatever is in your heart. DOn't do whatever you want to do. Those desires deceive you and pull you away from God, happiness, joy, satisfaction, and life. Every one of us knows that these desires have deceived us in the past, but we are so dumb to think that it didn't work because we did it wrong. It will never work because it is foreign to the life God has created us to live!

Renewed Thinking

The last two verses are so essential for us all. God's call is not simply to stop doing this and start doing this.

Ephesians 4:23--24 (ESV) --- 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Paul tells us that God's call is to renew our minds. Sin broke our minds, and they needed to be renewed in our way of thinking. If we don't renew our minds, we become hypocrites. We have to have a change of thinking that results in totally different behavior.

How?

This renewed thinking or renewed mind sounds good, but do we struggle with that? Why? Are we deceived into pursuing the old way of life? If we see the deception, are we willing to do something now to prevent future deception? We have to stop exposing ourselves to the world. The more I allow the world to influence my mind, the more I will be drawn into the sins of the world. We have to bend our minds back into the will of God. It's not just a behavior change, but behavior change can help us with our heart change.

Don't look at the world wishing you could be a part of it. Stop thinking they have something we don't have. We don't need their sinful ways and sinful thinking. TV and music influence us, and we don't influence them back. We have to stop watching and enjoying things that exalt wickedness. God cannot renew our minds unless we have more time spent in the word.

There is no other way. We have to spend less time in the world and more time in the word. We need to be spending way more time in the things of God. The things in the world make us sick, but we watch it anyway. The influence we receive from the world is destroying our spiritual, tender hearts. Saying, "Yeah, I know I should read my Bible." We should think, "I would rather read my Bible than watch this filth." Holiness and righteousness should start being seen in us because we see the truth in Jesus, and we want to walk in the ways of Jesus, not the ways of the world.

Conclusion

We all have friends and family that are living in darkness. Are we aware of their influence in our lives? We need to be aware and make sure that we do not let the darkness spread to us. We want to be open and honest about our failures, but we also want to seek to improve through renewed minds and renewed hearts. That's what the sacrifice of Jesus is supposed to accomplish in us. God bless you, and may his glory shine through you as you walk in his ways of holiness and righteousness.