This remaking of our minds, we don’t do that in a day, we begin that journey of following Jesus with a moment of conviction, with a prayer, it is a very long process, but Paul saying, this is about a perpetual renewal of our mind, a new way of thinking, adopting this new identity. Letting our mind, our patterns of thinking, our sense of identity be reshaped by the gospel, the version of you that’s created to perfectly reflect the image of God and 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 this is really powerful. For Paul, this is an act of faith and trust, that in Jesus, Jesus has become the version of me that I cannot become for myself. The courage to trust that I perpetually fail to become the kind of person that even I would want to be, much less God’s standard, but the good news of the new humanity is that by faith, I get to put on a version of me that I could only dream of becoming.
Paul’s declaring that if we are grabbing on to Jesus, what’s true of him is now true of us, patterns of thinking, we remind ourself every single day, we got to put on and put off, we have to do something and Jesus partners with us in the reshaping of our character. Ephesians 4:25, Paul addresses this old humanity practice of lying, and he encounters it with a new humanity practice of truth-telling, let our minds be made new about what’s happening when we lie, what are we doing when we lie? We are projecting a false version of ourselves, projecting a false identity. This inability to own up to a truth and we would much rather have a false view of ourselves floating out there in front of people, so people don’t actually know who we really are, it’s about a false representation of who we are. It’s about perception management, lying to excuse or to cover over who we really are inside, but Paul says, just tell the truth, we are members of one body together. We are a community of people that acknowledges that Jesus had to die for us, because we are so messed up, but presenting a false view of ourselves, we’re covering over who we really are.
A community of truth, we expose the old humanity inside of us and we put it off, letting the spotlight shine on it. Ephesians 4:26-27, Paul addresses this thing of relational conflict, does the new humanity get angry, if we’re living in close community with other people sharing about our lives, we’re gonna eventually at some point say something or do something and we’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings. How do we deal with that, we have a choice in that moment, because our anger is just energy aroused to protect something, usually ourself, but anger might be energy that gets stirred up to protect another person. The question is, what do we do with this emotional energy in the new humanity and Paul says, we use it to go address the person in the situation in the relationship and we talk it out and we work towards forgiveness, otherwise evil spiritual powers can begin to create riffs in the community of God’s family.
Ephesians 4:28-30, the old humanity that we’ve taken off, puts ourselves at the center and will do whatever it takes to satisfy our wants and our needs, but the new humanity, Jesus is at the center and then right close to him are other people and that’s our mode of living, Jesus, love God and love other people. It’s about remaking our mind, what is it that wants us to perpetually put ourselves at the center and do whatever it takes to get stuff that we say, we want or we need, we have to remake our mind and we have to think it through, put on this new identity. Pauls also saying, don’t talk in ways that introduce rot into other people’s lives, the new humanity practice, whatever it is that we say to other people, have it be something so that they walk away feeling like they’ve been given a gift after being with us. Speech that builds people up, that seeks to encourage people, and whatever rotten speech is, it’s speech that introduces rottenness into the community of God’s people. We are a community that’s built around the story of God’s grace that’s restoring and forgiving and transforming human beings.
Ephesians 4:31-5:2, love is a call, this is the basic core ethic of a community of Jesus and Paul doesn’t appeal to a principle or some abstract ideal, he appeals to the story of the cross, Jesus’ life and his death and Paul calls that story, an act of love. This is a part of the way that the New Testament completely redefines our concept of love, this is one area our minds need to be made new, because we think of love as an emotion, but in the scriptures, love refers to an action, it refers to acting for the well-being of another person, regardless of how they respond to us. Paul says this is the basic core ethic of our whole of the new humanity, walk in the way of love just as Jesus loved us and gave himself for us, we run every decision, we run every word that we speak, we run every way that we relate to somebody, we run every conflict that we’re in and how we’re going to resolve that conflict, we run it all through this story, how do we love this person in this circumstance as a part, as an expression of our identity of being a new kind human. What’s the core motivation for loving, because we are loved, so walk in the way of love, do we grasp the significance of that and it’s not some abstract ideal. Jesus did something that was the ultimate act of love for us and for the rest of our life, we can point to that, that was an act of God seeking our well-being before we even existed, God decided to commit himself to love us through Jesus’ action on the cross, that’s the defining story of this new humanity.
Paul’s declaring that if we are grabbing on to Jesus, what’s true of him is now true of us, patterns of thinking, we remind ourself every single day, we got to put on and put off, we have to do something and Jesus partners with us in the reshaping of our character. Ephesians 4:25, Paul addresses this old humanity practice of lying, and he encounters it with a new humanity practice of truth-telling, let our minds be made new about what’s happening when we lie, what are we doing when we lie? We are projecting a false version of ourselves, projecting a false identity. This inability to own up to a truth and we would much rather have a false view of ourselves floating out there in front of people, so people don’t actually know who we really are, it’s about a false representation of who we are. It’s about perception management, lying to excuse or to cover over who we really are inside, but Paul says, just tell the truth, we are members of one body together. We are a community of people that acknowledges that Jesus had to die for us, because we are so messed up, but presenting a false view of ourselves, we’re covering over who we really are.
A community of truth, we expose the old humanity inside of us and we put it off, letting the spotlight shine on it. Ephesians 4:26-27, Paul addresses this thing of relational conflict, does the new humanity get angry, if we’re living in close community with other people sharing about our lives, we’re gonna eventually at some point say something or do something and we’re going to hurt somebody’s feelings. How do we deal with that, we have a choice in that moment, because our anger is just energy aroused to protect something, usually ourself, but anger might be energy that gets stirred up to protect another person. The question is, what do we do with this emotional energy in the new humanity and Paul says, we use it to go address the person in the situation in the relationship and we talk it out and we work towards forgiveness, otherwise evil spiritual powers can begin to create riffs in the community of God’s family.
Ephesians 4:28-30, the old humanity that we’ve taken off, puts ourselves at the center and will do whatever it takes to satisfy our wants and our needs, but the new humanity, Jesus is at the center and then right close to him are other people and that’s our mode of living, Jesus, love God and love other people. It’s about remaking our mind, what is it that wants us to perpetually put ourselves at the center and do whatever it takes to get stuff that we say, we want or we need, we have to remake our mind and we have to think it through, put on this new identity. Pauls also saying, don’t talk in ways that introduce rot into other people’s lives, the new humanity practice, whatever it is that we say to other people, have it be something so that they walk away feeling like they’ve been given a gift after being with us. Speech that builds people up, that seeks to encourage people, and whatever rotten speech is, it’s speech that introduces rottenness into the community of God’s people. We are a community that’s built around the story of God’s grace that’s restoring and forgiving and transforming human beings.
Ephesians 4:31-5:2, love is a call, this is the basic core ethic of a community of Jesus and Paul doesn’t appeal to a principle or some abstract ideal, he appeals to the story of the cross, Jesus’ life and his death and Paul calls that story, an act of love. This is a part of the way that the New Testament completely redefines our concept of love, this is one area our minds need to be made new, because we think of love as an emotion, but in the scriptures, love refers to an action, it refers to acting for the well-being of another person, regardless of how they respond to us. Paul says this is the basic core ethic of our whole of the new humanity, walk in the way of love just as Jesus loved us and gave himself for us, we run every decision, we run every word that we speak, we run every way that we relate to somebody, we run every conflict that we’re in and how we’re going to resolve that conflict, we run it all through this story, how do we love this person in this circumstance as a part, as an expression of our identity of being a new kind human. What’s the core motivation for loving, because we are loved, so walk in the way of love, do we grasp the significance of that and it’s not some abstract ideal. Jesus did something that was the ultimate act of love for us and for the rest of our life, we can point to that, that was an act of God seeking our well-being before we even existed, God decided to commit himself to love us through Jesus’ action on the cross, that’s the defining story of this new humanity.
