Ephesians 4:17-24

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.  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.  They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.  But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

The Christian walk is and expression that describes the type o life a follow of Christ should have.  In other words, our relationship with Christ through the Gospel should impact the way we live.  Faith in Christ is not only an intellectual exercise by which we accept certain facts to be true.  Faith is a life transforming work of God in the hearts of desperately wicked people.  Paul tells us about the things we need to abandon and then describes God’s path of transformation.

 

HOW YOU SHOULD NOT WALK: The call of Christ on our lives is for us to be different.  No longer walking as the Gentiles is to turn from the old pagan ways of living that sought to fulfill the desires of our sinful flesh.  The mind of an unbeliever is always striving after futility.  We think about and desire that which is temporary passing and leads to futility.  The understanding of unbelievers is darkened in that it cannot understand the eternal truth and light that shines forth from the Gospel.  We are not to walk in the ignorance of the past that did not know of the life available in Christ.  Believers should not have hardened hearts that are no longer sensitive to the work of conscience and the work of the Holy Spirit that convicts of sin.  Immorality, the love of money, and dishonesty are all marks of a life without Christ.  These things are all natural to mankind but should not be a part of the walk of a believer. 

 

HOW TO CHANGE YOUR WALK: Too often, we understand that we should walk differently as believers, but we don’t know how to do it.  When we place our faith in Christ and His Spirit indwells us, we gain a new way of thinking and living.  The first step to change is to “put off” the old self that comes so naturally to us.  Until we recognize the fact that our unbelieving disobedient live is wrong there is now hope for change.  We must come to the place that we simply admit the reality of our own corruption, stop defending or justifying it and reject those desires and actions as sinful and harmful.  We must recognize that our natural desires are deceitful; turn away from them and do all we can to take them out of our lives like we strip down out of a soiled and sweety shirt.  The next step is to “be renewed in the spirit of you minds.”  It is not enough simply put off evil habits; we must begin to think in a completely different way.  The Spirit of God is to be given free rein to change the way we think and the things that we love.  This is God’s supernatural work in our hearts.  The final step to change is to “put on the new self” this involves putting this new way of thinking into action.  We walk in purity before the Lord seeking to be conformed to the image of Christ.  The old, wicked habits are replaced by new holy habits.  It is helpful to think of the process like coming home from a physically taxing and filthy job.  You take of the old work clothes, jump in the shower and wash the day away, and then you put on fresh clean clothes. 

 

APPLICATION: Evaluate the areas of our lives that we have been excusing and justifying instead of repenting and turning from them.  Every time we come home with dirty clothes from a hard day’s work and go through the showering process; compare if we have done that in our spiritual walk as well.