Ephesians 4:14-32

Jimmy Draper introduces the topic of Christian maturity and discusses the importance of unity, equipping, and spiritual gifts in the church. He emphasizes the need for the church to function properly in order to reflect the reality of Christ to the world. He mentions the importance of speaking the truth in love and concludes by discussing the vulnerability of immature believers and the need for growth and maturity in the faith. Well, it's happened to me again, everywhere I go, anywhere I go, the first question I get is, Carol Ann's not with me, where's Carol Ann? So she is not well. She had an infection, we went to the doctor, put her on a high-powered antibiotic, and in her language, she said, I just don't feel good. She never complains. In Dallas, when she got the fever, no, we actually were out here, but our doctor was still in Dallas, and she said, she complained about hurting, so I called the doctor, and he didn't ask any questions, he said, just bring her to the hospital. So he put her in the hospital without even examining her, because she doesn't ever complain. So when she told me, I just don't feel good, I realized that the infection or whatever it is, was more than she needed to bear on Sunday with, you know, if we get, from the time she gets up on Sunday until we get home after church, it's been eight hours. And so she wasn't able to go through that today. So anyway, I just talked to her, she's finding a better preacher than me, on television. She was trying to choose between David Jeremiah and Charles Stanley and Ed Young when I left. So anyway, but she'd want me to know that she misses this. Now, about our director, I want to tell you, Eddie, a story. Are you paying attention to me back there? Okay, okay, all right. Dr. Criswell, most of you would know Dr. W.A. Criswell, who pastored First Church Dallas for over 50 years, and Herschel Hobbs. Herschel Hobbs, First Baptist church in Oklahoma City for forever. Incidentally, wrote more for Sunday School Board than anybody in history. So he and I were good friends, had been a long time. And when I was in Dell City, which is in Oklahoma City, the highlight of my year was to have a chance to talk to Hobbs and just listen to him. He knew more stories, more things. But after he retired and Dr. Criswell retired, he decided that he would tell preachers they ought to just preach 15 minutes. Well, someone asked Dr. Criswell about that. He said, well, it just depends whether you have anything to say or not. So I haven't mastered the art of being brief, brevity. My dad did. My dad could tell more in 15 minutes than most preachers could in an hour, but I haven't done that. But this lesson today, we're going to look at verses 14 to 32, Ephesians chapter 4. And we may or may not get through it. And so we'll just see, and Brother Jack will pick up chapter 5 next week. I hope I finish. If I don't, maybe you can drop back and pick up a little bit of chapter 4. Oh, not next week. Two weeks. Two weeks. Yeah. Two weeks. But chapter 4 is a tremendous chapter. There's several elements in Christian maturity, and that's what he's talking about in this chapter. You have the idea of unity, which runs through everything that the Apostle Paul wrote in the New Testament, which is about half of the New Testament, but his focus was on grace and on unity. We have the equipping and the training of the saints, and then we have the ministering together by the church, and you have spiritual gifts and Christlikeness and help of gifted leaders and, of course, the Holy Spirit. All that's been the focus of the Apostle Paul. Now then, he is speaking of growing into a solid and stable effectiveness. He's talking about focusing more completely on what you believe ought to impact how you live, and then we're back to that again, and we'll look at these verses. It's interesting that the word riches is used in Ephesians five times, grace is used twelve times, glory is used eight times, fullness, or being filled, is used six times, and in Christ, or in him, is used fifteen times. So all of this is a focus on grace and upon our relationship with Christ, and he's going to get very specific here. He's going to talk here in a moment about speak the truth in love, and it's interesting that he dealt with some, in this passage, the beginning of verse fourteen, he deals with some pretty serious stuff. I mean, he warns them of how they ought to behave, but they understood that and they knew he loved them, so he spoke the truth, but he spoke the truth in love, and so the church is the focus. It is described as Christ's body in this chapter. It is not an organization, it is an organism. Christ is seen as the head of the body, and the Holy Spirit is the lifeblood of the body, and so the truth is when the church functions properly, the reality of Christ is seen in a compelling way. When the church does not function properly, the world's view of Christ is distorted. The church is weakened and Christ is dishonored, and that's the thing that he is trying to deal with. So, he concluded in verse thirteen, which is kind of an awkward place to stop last week, but he concluded by saying that our maturity is going to be measured by the maturity of Christ. In other words, Christ in us, and you know, we kind of like to compare ourselves with other people. Well, I'm as good as he is, or I'm, you know, I can do that, you know, but we're not comparing ourselves with each other, we're being compared to Christ, and we're not going to do very good on our own, but in Christ, we're able to accomplish everything that he set out for us to do. So, let me read, starting in verse fourteen, for just a few verses. If we reach the maturity of the stature measured by Christ's fullness, then we will no longer be little children. Now, pause. Who is we? Us. He's not talking about pagans here. And so, he said, we in the church, if we match up the maturity of Christ, we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ. From him, the whole body fitted and knit together, another elbow nudging about unity, all fits together by every supporting ligament, all working properly, and knit together with every supporting ligament promotes the growth of the body for the building of itself in love by the proper working of each individual part. Well, first, in chapter fourteen, verse fourteen of this chapter, we are just introduced to the opposition to maturity. Well, what is it that keeps us from maturity? Well, the ultimate answer we'll see in the conclusion is, if we get our eyes off of Christ and begin to behave like children, we're not going to do very well. He says the vulnerability, little children, that's a Greek word which means a small infant unable to care for themselves or speak for themselves. Now, when our oldest son, Randy, had had his new first child, Kyle, when they got him home from the hospital, he called Carol Ann every morning for about three weeks. And he called and said, Mom, I just wanted to thank you. I didn't know I was so much trouble when I was so little. So, you know, the point is, you know, children, when they're first born, they need a lot of attention. Even as they grow, children are gullible. They're fickle. They'll believe whatever you tell them. They'll be wishy-washy. They'll be back and forth. That's why the transgender emphasis that believes kindergarten children can determine what gender they are is foolish. Six-year-olds have no way of knowing what happens whenever they get into transgender changes, because it impacts their adult life and what they can get and will get and how they will live their lives. Children are just not capable of doing that. That's why we don't baptize infants. Baptism is a believer's act. It's someone who has had an experience with Christ. And they're baptized because of that experience with Christ. But little children are gullible, fickle, unpredictable. They have to be taught and trained. Oh, one thing you don't have to train them to say is, mine. That's mine. You don't have to train them. They'll come up with that on their own. But the interesting thing is that the vulnerability of little children as it applies to the church is not determined by how long you have been saved. There are a lot of people who, a lot of believers who have been saved a long time who still act like children. And so it's not a matter of how long you've been saved. In fact, in Hebrews 5, verses 12 and following, it says, by this time you ought to be teachers. You need someone to teach you. He's talking to the church. The basic principles of God's revelation, again, you need milk, not solid food. Now everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced with the message about righteousness because he's an infant. But solid food is for the mature. This is what Paul is getting at. We don't know who wrote Hebrews, by the way. Dr. Terry probably has one idea. I don't know whether we'd agree with that or not. I remember when I first came to Dallas, you have to understand, I'm pretty impulsive. By that, I usually say, oops, a lot of times, you know, I'd say something, I'd say, why did I say that? I'm preaching. I've been there a couple of months in Dallas, and I told Caroline, if I'm going to stay here at all, I need to preach expository, I need to just preach through a book. So to show you God has a sense of humor, he really convinced me that I needed to preach through Hebrews. And not a more difficult book for a young preacher to preach in. But I'm introducing Hebrews on a Sunday night in First Baptist Dallas, and I don't know why I did it, but I turned around to Dr. Criswell. I'm on the radio, there's a packed house. I said, Dr. Criswell, who wrote Hebrews? He kind of helped a couple of things. Well, I think Apollos. Well, I told him, I said, Pastor, we're going to have to make a meeting like this, you know. And he never really understood that. But anyway, Hebrews is a tough book, so I don't know who wrote it, but Paul could have written it. I'm not going to say he didn't, but he is talking about a lot of what Hebrews says in these. He says, you're like little children. You're tossed about by winds and waves. And you know, it's just incredible that believers can act like children. However, if you've been in the church very long, any church, anywhere, you've seen adults acting like children. And Paul said, don't do that. That's not the way you're supposed to act. He speaks of the, they're vulnerable because of their immaturity. There's uncertainty in them. They have their tossed by waves and every wind of teaching. It describes one whose opinions are constantly changing. No solid foundation of doctrine, unstable, uncertain. That's a little child. Deception. He says, human cunning. The Greek word is a word which refers to the throwing of the dice. It describes Satan and his workers playing tricks with the truth, taking Scripture out of context. That's deception. He talks about treachery. The word cleverness there is implied there. It's a calculated deception, techniques, strategies, methods of deception. It's the same word used in 2 Corinthians 11, verse 3, in describing Satan's tactics in deceiving Eve when he deceived her as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning. That's the word that is used. He tricked her. She doubted God's word and mankind failed. She should have stood on the word of God, but she didn't. She was tricked. Same word is used in Luke 20, verse 23, where the enemies tried to trick Jesus about whether you ought to pay tribute to Caesar. It says, Luke says that he detected their craftiness. That's the word. Never flirt with temptation. Stand firm on the word of God. No wonder they needed apostles and prophets. Bear in mind, this church didn't have any Scripture. In fact, the Scripture is being written and spoken to them. So they lacked all the things that we have that we can rely on in the word of God. They did not have the New Testament at all. And so we need to just stand firm on the word of God. And so that's the reason little children will just misbehave, but they also can be tricked into almost anything. So then beginning in verse 15, he speaks of the spirit of maturity, he says, speak the truth in love. Literally there is a language that says truthing, making a verb out of the noun, truthing. In fact, that's what John 3.21 says in the King James. It says doing the truth. And it's the same idea here. The truth is not something you believe, it's something you do. You can't believe truth without putting feet to what you know, practicing what you know. And so there are two things that he mentions here. We're to speak the truth, but in love. Truth that is spoken without love is offensive. It alienates people. Speaking in love but not being truthful is unfaithfulness on the part of the believer. It suppresses the truth. We're afraid of hurting someone's feelings or remaining silent about the truth. True love always speaks the truth at the right time. Truth without love is brutality, but love without truth is hypocrisy. And so these two go together, speaking the truth in love. Little children don't know how to make that, how to blend truth and love. They haven't reached a time where they can do that. And maturity allows us to speak the truth, but always in love. And this is what Paul is doing. Just quickly let me review what we're going to see. He speaks about lying, and now he's talking to the church. Lying, anger, stealing, foul language, and marriage relationships. No one took offense because they knew he loved them. The wounds of a friend are trustworthy, Proverbs 27 and 6 says. So these two things, speaking the truth in love. Now the body matures in love. It matures in love. Paul immediately moves from that statement to talking about how the body grows. It grows in love. By the way, Celsus, an early critic of the church, said these Christians love each other before they know each other. Well that's kind of what Paul's talking about. We speak the truth with each other. We minister together, always in love. John 15, Jesus said, remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love. This is my command. Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends. This is what I command you, to love one another. We may have time, we may not, to get into what that really means. If we love like Christ loved, we'd forgive, we'd be restored, we'd be in unity. All kinds of things happen. So these are the descriptions of the maturity. Now verses 15 and 16 also go into the growing into maturity. Growth is like a body, and he speaks here of mutual maturity, as an individual and as a body. So we all have a responsibility as individuals to mature, but the church also has a responsibility to be united and to grow in maturity as a church. And I like to think our church has done that. The church is a whole lot different than it was when I came here in 1975. Wow, that's been nearly 50 years. It's a different church now. I could tell you some reasons for that. So I have watched it over the years. We have grown individually, the church also has grown as a body. So many illustrations I could give you of that, but I won't do that. But growth is like a body, that speaks of mutual maturity. It's wonderful the way the body grows, and it's tragic when the body doesn't grow properly. There's a great little book, and I'll try to remember to bring it, but the pastor of the Satellite Church at Prestonwood, the church is out in Plano, I think, North Plano, has two daughters that are grown, but have the mentality of about a four-year-old. They have not grown normally. Well, that's always sad. But he wrote a wonderful book that the title was Worthy to Suffer, and it's the journey he and his wife went on taking care of those two kids. They got all the love, everything that they needed, but it's always a tragedy when growth does not recur naturally. We have a lot of people who claim to know Christ, but they have not grown in their faith like it was intended, because Christianity is not a way of learning certain things. It's a relationship with the Lord. It's not, you know, Paul talks to us about our relationship with the Lord in this. He doesn't talk to them about what they believe, about any of that, or what kind of, it's all what you're going to grow and mature in Christ. That's the way that it happens. And we grow up in him. We're members of his body. We're interrelated. We're dependent upon each other. It's an incredible privilege to be a part of the body of Christ. We belong to each other. We need each other. We impact each other. The body grows as the individual members grow, and the church grows as the members serve the Lord together and feed on the Word of God. That is why we are grateful that we have an opportunity here to hear the Word of God expounded week by week from our pastor, and we also have the privilege of studying it here. And I will just warn you of one thing. You are responsible for whatever you have heard. The teaching of the Word is not just information. It doesn't matter how many scriptures and verses you memorize. It doesn't matter how much church history you know, or what you know about the early church. Those things are important, but the important thing is that you grow in your faith, that you take the information. The Bible is not given to us as suggestions. More often than not, it is given to us as commands. And the emphasis throughout Scripture, especially in this book of Ephesians, which is all about the church. The book of Ephesians tells us what the church is and how it functions. That's what the whole purpose of the church is. And as we've said, the first three chapters was telling us what to believe, and the last three chapters are trying to tell us, now what does that mean in the way you live? Now, anytime you read Scripture, you need to apply it to your life. Now, Carol Ann does it this way. She reads Scripture and anytime it's addressed to you or somebody, she puts their name there. So she doesn't read, you do this and you do that. She reads Carol Ann, you do this and you do that. Scripture without application is almost meaningless. If it doesn't affect how you live, Paul's just warning against this. You're just like a little child. You can't seem to put truth and love and commitment together. But it's in him that the body grows, and the supremacy is love. Speaking the truth in love, let it grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ, for from him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building up of itself in love by the proper working of each individual part. Love is important. Love is the most important ingredient in the spiritual life and in the church. And again, the church at Jerusalem soon became an outlaw faith. For many years, Christians were forbidden to worship together, to express their faith. Illegal to worship. What you could promise new believers in the first century was they would probably be crucified or beheaded or something. Death or severe persecution. The persecution was real. The lions in the arena in Rome were fed Christians to tear them apart. That'd be kind of hard to put in a promotion for church, wouldn't it? And yet, in spite of that, it grew. The Roman Empire tried to kill it, but the church refused to die. The Roman Empire couldn't kill it. So finally, in 380 AD, the church that was officially named the official religion of the Roman Empire, which, by the way, was the worst thing that ever happened to it, because the first 350 years or so of the church was characterized by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Even secular historians would remark about the inner dynamic of the believers and how they treated, how they didn't retaliate. They never fought back. Tried to attack their enemies. Unable to explain that. And yet, within 400 years, that little outlaw band that was considered a cult survived and not only survived, it conquered the Roman Empire. But what happened in 380 was that they became, instead of depending on the Holy Spirit, they made a league with the government. And it's been downhill ever since. Still is today. Our hope is not in Air Force One. Our hope is not in who's elected president. Hey, I have good news for you. It doesn't matter who is elected president this year. You're still going to be alive and praising the Lord four years later. But the hope and the help that our nation needs is not going to arrive in the halls of Congress or in the White House. That decision was made in the fourth century after Christ and has cost the church incredible compromise and failure ever since. In the name of Christ, the Crusades were carried out. Horrible campaigns of brutality and violence and death. Muslim versus Christian Crusades fighting for their faith. That's the very thing Jesus refused to let Peter do. Remember in the garden when they came to arrest Jesus, Peter was ready. He popped out that short sword of his and whacked the ear of the high priest's servant off. And Jesus said, no, no, my kingdom is not going to be like that. So he picked up the ear and put it back on. And the very thing that Christ refused to do, the church did. But when they followed the Holy Spirit, they moved like a prairie fire through the Roman empire. So that's kind of what Paul is getting at. You need to act like what you believe. You need to do the right thing, be the right kind of person. And you do it in love. And later, Jesus is going to write a letter to the church at Ephesus in Revelation chapter two, verses two to four, and describe them of having abandoned their first love. So the church at Ephesus failed to do what Paul told them to do, because in a few short years, they actually had left their first love. Well, without the love for Christ and the love of Christ, everything else is lost. It doesn't matter how successful we may appear to be if we're not doing what we do in love. Love for the Lord, that's a no brainer. Love for each other, now that's a little harder. A lot of us are awful hard to love, which is shouldn't be. Hostility and chaos is not spiritual gift. We ought to serve in love, serve to better in love. And maturity involves living out the truth and doing it always in love. Two things, speaking the truth, but in love. Jesus said, commanded us, I told you there in John about, I command you to love one another. Greatest thing that you could do. And I'm hurrying through this because the clock's moving faster than I am. And I want to get through this. But in verse 16, spiritual strength and unity is not something we can produce. It's something that exists in Christ. We have to protect it and maintain it. Truth unites us, but lies divide us. Love unites us, but selfishness divides us. So we speak the truth in love and we edify one another as we will all grow up to be more like Christ. Now his warning in verse 17, for about six verses, seven verses, don't fall back into your old habits. No longer walk as the Gentiles walk, Paul says, in the futility of their thoughts. They're darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of Christ because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. And the point he's making is that believers ought to be radically different from unbelievers. Radically different. Unbelievers are ignorant of the things of God and they're excluded from the life of God. And because of the ignorance that is in them and the hardness of their hearts, they're separated from God. So the church ought to be a beacon that demonstrates by their lives, by our lives, what the gospel is all about. That's why in the Apostle Paul's writings, 15 times he uses a little phrase, therefore, wherefore. Therefore, because this is true, wherefore you ought to act like it. Therefore, wherefore, 15 times in his writings. Here's how we were before Christ, he says. Here's how we are now. We can no longer live as the Gentiles live in the futility of their thoughts. Now this is a determined disobedience, the futility of their thoughts. They've rationalized this. They thought they knew it all, but they knew nothing. Blind to moral and spiritual dimensions of life. Futility means vanity, without benefit, useless. It's found only twice in the New Testament. And it describes the misery of the world system in Romans 8, 20, where it says that creation was subject to futility. And 2 Peter 2 uses it to describe the efforts of false teachers. He says, they are springs without water, mist driven by the whirlwind. The gloom of darkness has been received for them, for by uttering boastful, empty words, they seduce with fleshly desires and debauchery people who can barely escape from those who live in error. They promised them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption, since people are enslaved to whatever defeats them. Such an attitude has excluded many from the life of God. Now, the opposite of life is death. Apart from God, man is spiritually dead. No wonder they cannot think correctly about faith or morality or truth. Only the Holy Spirit can give understanding and enhance our emotions and energize our wills. It is reported that Mahatma Gandhi, the renowned leader of India, was educated in the East Coast of the United States. And in one of his interviews, perhaps recorded in a book, he said, I would be a Christian today if it were not for Christians. That is, what a terrible thing that is to say about the church. I preach down, my mother was born in Coolidge, Texas. I don't know, some of you may know where Coolidge is. It's a hole in the road now. There's not even a filling station there. But it's just a little bit this side of Mahia. She was born in Coolidge. Well, I was preaching four or five years ago or more, maybe six or eight years ago. You know, when you get retired after a while, years just kind of run together. It's been a while back. But I preached at Mahia for an associational meeting. And after the service, the pastor of Coolidge Church came up and asked me to come and preach at Coolidge First Baptist Church, Coolidge, Texas. So my granddad pastored that church when he was in seminary about 100 years or so ago, and actually a little over 100 years, 110 years. So Carol Ann and I did go back down there and preached at that little church and enjoyed that. But I'll never forget that trip because the pastor of the church in Mahia where I preached pulled me aside when I got there. And he pointed out this lady who was there. And he said, we had a business meeting Wednesday night. And she shouted and opposed me and attacked me in every possible way in that business meeting last Wednesday night. Now, let me just pause a minute. It does not matter what they were debating. What matters is that Christians should never act like that. Never. We don't have to prove anything. We should not put ourselves in a position to have winners and losers. In Christ, we are one. And I can't tell you how many conventions in the Southern Baptist Convention I lost my vote, but I didn't run around and scream and holler and make a fool out of myself. I realized that when I vote, I gave my vote away. I gave it to the convention and it was no longer mine. And you can't have winners and losers in the church. We can disagree because the unity is not uniformity. It's not that we agree on everything. Goodness, what a dull world this would be if we all agreed on everything. We don't agree on everything, but we don't disagree disagreeably. We, back when I was a boy, I was raised, and many of you were, where there wasn't much difference between Democrats and Republicans. I mean, the famous divisions and scourge of challenges and attacks that would take place in the Congress, and then the Congress wanted to go have lunch together and move on. That's not true anymore, is it? There's distinct differences. But more than that, there is a wall of hostility that can't be crossed. And so we have basically a Congress that is in conflict, and inertia has slowed it down to non-effectiveness until just this week, the Congress finally passed something so the government wouldn't be shut down. You know, I have mixed emotions about that. In Israel, several years ago, the doctors went on strike, and the death rate among citizens rose. Fewer of them died when the doctors were on strike. You know, I want to say, well, let the government shut down. Maybe it'll make the citizens sick of it enough to do something about it. But all in all, we passed a $3 trillion emergency extension for the government to stay over $3 trillion. Unbelievable. Well, the church shouldn't be like the world. That's the point he's making. How can you, as believers, act like you used to before you got saved? Well, you have to deliver blindness. They're ignorant of truth. They can't find the light. But believers must not adopt the attitudes, the conduct, and the beliefs of a lost world. We don't act like that. Well, verse 19 says they became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity. For more and more, you have insensitive feelings. That's what a callous is. Callous is something where you can't feel what would be pain. Again, it's past feeling. There's no sense of pain. You know, pain is our friend. If you go to a doctor's office and say, I don't feel good, well, they say, where do you hurt? And if you can't tell him where you hurt, he can't help you. Pain is not something we ought to fear, but we ought to pay attention to it. And the insensitive, without pain, never knowing something's wrong, lose a sense of pain is to lose, and in the spiritual walk, it's to lose the awareness of evil. Think of what we're seeing on television now, what we saw 50 years ago. Do you remember when Clark Gable dared to use the word damn in, what was the movie? Gone with the Wind. Gone with the Wind. I mean, it was a scandal. He used damn. Oh my goodness, where is Clark Gable now? And not only what we hear, but what we see on television. Insensitive feeling, we just get used to the dark, get used to it. You know the illustration of the frog in the kettle. You drop a frog in a boiling pot of water, he'll jump right out. You put him in a cool pot of water and slowly heat it up, and he'll be cooked before he realizes it, and he'll never jump out. We've gotten used to it. We've gotten used to the dark, and that's what he's warning us. It's a depraved disposition, insensitive feeling. Incestual desires gave themselves over to promiscuity and to practice every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more. Practice simply means the way their regular occupation is. And promiscuity means no moral restraint, obsession with sexual immorality. Every kind of impurity and never satisfy because you always want more and more. I know, I'm naive about a lot of things. When I was a boy, there was one of the cigarette ads, and I don't remember which one it was, but said, it satisfies. I thought, now that's really an interesting ad. If smoking a cigarette satisfies, why would you want more? Obviously, it doesn't satisfy. It just creates a hunger for more. Well, that's what it is. That's the way the world is about things that are impure and that are evil. We just want more and more of it. Never satisfied. Never satisfied. And Galatians 5, Paul says, now the works of the flesh are obvious. Sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. He said, we can't act like that. And yet, we do often, it seems. Beginning at verse 20, we have the dramatic encounter with the truth. That is not how you learned about the Messiah, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him because the truth is in Jesus. And Christianity is not just learning theology. It's about your relationship with Christ. That's why we can't live like pagans. If we're in a living relationship with Christ, we're not going to be like we used to be. The incomparable Christ. It's inconsistent behavior. We didn't learn that kind of behavior from Christ. It's inconsistent in doctrine and belief, but it's inconsistent with Christ. It's not just being taught a doctrine or a precept, but it's entering into a relationship with him, which means that Christianity is really not a religion. It's a relationship. Now, we broadly call ourselves, and accept the term, we're one of the major religions in the world, but in reality, we are a relationship. Look again at verses 18 and 19 of this chapter. It's an incredible contrast. How could a believer do that? Only in Christ do we have victory over the darkness and depravity that is around us. It's the Holy Spirit that clears our minds and cleanses our lives and lives in our hearts and makes our consciences sensitive and gives us strength to face the day. It's inconsistent to live the way we used to live. And it continues. Speaking of the incomparable Christ, he says, our translation that we did at LiveWay says, assuming, yours may say, if indeed. The if is not questioned. When you have the mood, you have the form of that Greek word. It literally means that's exactly what's true. And our translation says, assuming that you have known Christ. It's a Greek word. The indicative mood does not suggest doubt, but assures that this is a fact. Even an elementary knowledge of Christ is sufficiency enough to know the lifestyle of the world will never be approved by Jesus Christ. Truth equals Christ. He's talking about the historical Christ. He lived, died, rose from the dead. Find him, you'll find life. That's the dramatic encounter that every believer should have. If you're in a relationship with Christ, what has he said to you lately? What if I had told Carol Ann before I married her, I love you, but I don't want to live with you. Really love you, but I just don't want to live with you. Well, obviously, I wouldn't be married to her now. But if you love someone, you spend time with them. The Bible is not just a bunch of rules and things for us to read and then try to apply. It's a relationship. And we cannot understand the Bible without a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit. Remember the Godhead, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three persons, one God. We can't understand the Bible without God's help. That's why the Holy Spirit's put in us. Jesus said when he, the Holy Spirit, comes, he's going to tell you all about me. He'll tell you everything I remember. He's going to magnify me. You find somewhere that magnifies the Holy Spirit to the exclusion of magnifying Jesus, you'll find somewhere it's not quite right. The Holy Spirit will be the invisible factor. He'll magnify Jesus. If you want to know if the Holy Spirit's active, just see how much Jesus is honored. Uh, we, we have a relationship with him and that's, that is where our truth comes from. Now, I'm going to quit with this, not near through. Brother Jack, I'm going to stop with verse 24. Here's what he says in verse 22 to 24. You took off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires. You are being renewed by, in your spirit of your minds, you put on the new self, the one created according to God's likeness and righteousness and purity and truth. He's saying the old man has been removed. The new man has been put on and we're being renewed. I couldn't help but think of how, I want to go back and kind of study the New Testament, see how many times the, the New Testament speaks of our renewal. I have an idea it's pretty often because Paul mentions it frequently, but our minds need to be renewed, renewed. Satan always attacks the mind. One of the books I learned to read as I read as a younger pastor was Tim LaHaye's book, The Battle for the Mind. Satan can get us thinking a certain way. Paul said in Romans 12, don't be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing and perfect will of God. And in Galatians 5, he says, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control against such things. There is no law. Now, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with his passions and desires. Since we live with the spirit, we must also follow the spirit. And then Philippians 4, we'll close wit h this. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any moral excellence, if there's any praise, dwell on these things. Titus speaks of the renewal of the Holy Spirit. Being renewed is present tense, which means continually happening. We need to have our identity with Christ renewed and refreshed every single day. We're to embrace the new. It's not new in the sense of time. It is new in the sense of kind. It is a new kind of person. We put on a new man. We're not the old man. In Adam, we inherited a fallen nature when we were born. When we were born again, we inherit Christ's nature. So put on the new nature. Become like Christ daily. Display his life and attractiveness, not the vestiges of the old man. And the power to do that only comes from Christ. Well, that's as far as we can go today. It's too long. So Brother Jack, you can pick up right there if you want to, or you can ignore it and let them do it themselves. All right. Thank you, Father, for reminding us who we are and who we ought to be. Lord, forgive us for ever acting like what we used to be and not what we are. So I pray that what we believe will be borne out in what we do, that we will know the truth, that we'll do the truth. And we just thank you for the privilege of being part of your kingdom. In Jesus' name. Amen.