A Passage and a Prayer

For a portion of our passage last Sunday, we needed more time to explore the text from a literary side and its technical aspects. While we covered most of the material, we didn't push into what the text intentionally draws the reader into.

I want to spend a few minutes on this Friday morning doing that with you, and in some way, I am praying it serves as a kind of refreshment for your soul as it has been for mine.

Ephesians 4:17-25 stands as a literary unit or section of ideas and truths that are grouped together which collectively express a more singular truth. Put another way, a lot of seemingly independent verses actually work together to illuminate a more cohesive point. Not just a bunch of little points, but more like one point supported by a bunch of little points.

Here is the text in Eph 4:17–24:

With the Lord's authority I say this: Live no longer as the Gentiles do, for they are hopelessly confused. Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him. They have no sense of shame. They live for lustful pleasure and eagerly practice every kind of impurity. But that isn't what you learned about Christ. Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.

At the heart of these eight verses is a beautiful truth.

What we learn from Jesus produces an inner transformation performed by the Spirit, resulting in righteousness and holiness. The supporting material provides a kind of contrast and antithesis to the ultimate force of what Paul is saying.

The way of the Gentiles and what we are to throw off is the supporting material - but the central tenet is the Spirit's formation in us.

I want to repeat this for emphasis. The truth of Jesus, coming from Jesus, at work in us by the Spirit, allows us to be something we are not inherently on our own (righteous and holy).

That language is both an invitation and a warning.

It is an invitation in that it welcomes us to the work God desires to do on the inside of us. A work He does despite our sin and wandering and in the face of our failures and faults. It illuminates the reality that while we are undeserving of this kind of mercy and love, it is nonetheless available to us through God's grace.

The flip side or the warning is that it also exposes the areas where we are deformed - more shaped by the world that surrounds us than by the Spirit inside us.

Both the invitation and warning can be held in tension. Where we are most desperate to be like Jesus, and where we are most different from Him is precisely the place where He is at work.

Another way of saying it is at the moment when I feel most distant from Him is the very same place He is most intimate with me.

His action of transformation is not dependent on my performance, practices, or religious devotion (despite many objectors). But simultaneously, my participation in the work God is doing is the great joy of our daily lives, and God has not designed the wondrous Gospel heart work to exist wholly apart from us - but in concert with us.

While Christians, pastors, preachers, theologians, and scholars have wrestled with this fundamental truth for thousands of years, we might find some comfort here in Ephesians 4:17-24.

It has etched itself in my heart as a kind of prayer, and it is what I want to leave you with today.

Oh Great God and Father, that we might join you in what you have been long at work in even before the foundation of the world. That you might pardon our sins, though many, not too many for your forgiveness to redeem and wash away. We come with eager hearts to hear from you, to be shaped by you, and surrender now to whatever it is you have before us. Grant to us the privilege of repentance and in your loving embrace, may we live, move, and have our being. Amen

-Bradley