Being a Pure Path to the Path of God
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!
Ephesians 4:17–20 ESV Read More
As much as we try to be ‘like’ people outside of the church and ‘relevant’ to the culture around us, there are some very strong words in the bible about being different. This part isn’t so much as looking down on the Ephesians that aren’t Christians as much as it’s looking down on the lifestyle the church has come out of.
”No longer walk” implies that the reader used to be one way, but in light of all of the stuff we’ve just read, it’s time to stop and live differently. While we were once darkened in our understanding and alienated from the life of God, now we see and understand things. Prayer, worship, selfless care for others, and being led by God all make sense now, so quit living like they don’t! The life of God that makes it more enjoyable to visit a sick person in the hospital than stay home and watch a movie is now reigning in your life. The joy of buying a poor family a month of electricity is more satisfying than a newer bigger hotter grill that you are only going to use 3 times a summer. That is the life of God coming to life in you.
Hardness of heart is a way of describing how open someone is. If I don’t want to hear anything you have to say about something, I’ve become ‘hardened’ to it. If I’m hardened, I’m not going to learn any more about it and I’ll continue in my ignorance of that topic. Callous has the same meaning, but with a little bit more aggression.
When Paul tells us to “no longer walk as the Gentiles do,” there is part of that that says don’t be callused. If every time I talk to someone about Jesus I do it in a hard, sensual, or greedy way, I’m helping them to get more hardened and callused too.
Watch out for sensuality, greed, or impurity. If we lean towards those in the way we live our Christian lives, we aren’t showing a way out of that life into the life of God, but only a different form of hard-hearted resistance to God.
Walking in purity and sincerity is a way of life that softens hearts. Lovingkindness towards people, even though you don’t live like them, helps us all become open to listen and to hear what each other have to say.
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