Off with the Old, On with the New, Part 2 B

Your lifestyle is to be different.

As a Christian, there are differences. You have been created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath foreordained that you should walk in them. That's to be a difference from the old world, from the old walking, from the old man. What is it that gives life a true meaning, real purpose? You'll find the answer on this edition of Grace To You as John MacArthur brings into focus what he calls the portrait of a new life. That's the title of this series from Ephesians chapter 4. Now, just before we get to the lesson, this is a significant date. November 11th, this is the day that World War I ended in 1918, and it's a date that many nations still commemorate as a day of remembrance.

In the United States, of course, we call this Veterans Day. And I mention all of that simply to ask you, John, as we remember those who have served their country, what biblical principles, if any, should come to our minds? Well, I think what we have to remember is that God has ordained government. God has designed government. In fact, in Romans 13, he goes so far as to reveal to us that the agents of government that protect those who do good and punish those who do evil are called ministers of God.

That's a very high calling. They minister in a divine sense order in society, and that is necessary because of the fall. The default position of every human being is sinful. If left to themselves and not controlled, there would be absolute deadly chaos going on in the world. So God has ordained conscience, and that's the first restraint on sin, family, and the use of the rod to discipline, and that's the second restraint. And thirdly, government.

And they carry a sword. I mean, literally, they have the threat of death and the punishment of death as a way to restrain evil. So we can't underestimate the importance of government, and therefore those who defended us, those who defended those who did good, and those who were protecting us from those who did evil were acting in consistency with God's divine order. We know even in the Old Testament, God used armies to defend his people and to punish evil nations, and that is still the case.

So any war of defense, any action that defends people who are innocent, being assaulted and threatened and killed by evil aggressors, is an act within the framework of God's design for government. And so we need to honor those men who served in that way, in that purposeful way in which God designed government to protect its people. That's right, and thank you, John.

Thank you, friend, if you have served. So let's get to today's lesson. John is going to show you how Christ transforms your old ways of thinking into a new perspective and a new set of goals.

Here's John continuing his study on The Portrait of a New Life. Ephesians chapter 4 and verses 17 to 24 will be our text. I'm going to read it to you so it will set it in your mind and you follow as I read and then we'll share concerning what it teaches. This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the hardness of their heart, who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ, if so be that ye have heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, that ye put off concerning the former manner of life, the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind and that ye put on the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. And so as Christians we have risen above the evil age. We have risen above the system of Satan. Our citizenship is heavenly and we are consequently to live as heavenly citizens. We are to live as overcomers.

Paul even goes further than that and calls us not only nikē, but overcomers, but hūper nikē, hyper-overcomers, super-overcomers, and your authorized version translates that word more than conquerors. So it is basic then to salvation that it is an overcoming transformation, that it lifts us out of the mundane, that we die to the old and we rise to the new and we are risen with Christ to seek the things that are above. We are the possessors of a newness of life, the possessors of a new nature. We have the potential to live out a new man, a new lifestyle, a new walk.

That's what Paul is after. And by giving us a contrast, Paul really approaches this theme, the contrast in verses 17 to 24 between the old and the new, the old man or the old lifestyle and the new lifestyle, the old walk and the new walk. You'll notice in verse 17 he says, This I say therefore and testify in the Lord that ye henceforth walk, not as other Gentiles walk. Your lifestyle is to be different. As a Christian there are differences. You have been, according to chapter 2, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath foreordained that you should walk in them. That's to be a difference from the old way, from the old walk, from the old man. God saved you unto newness of life. He saved you to be different, to be transformed if any man be in Christ. He is a new creation.

Old things have passed away, behold all things have become new. In 1 John chapter 5 it tells us that we have overcome. On the contrary, in chapter 5 of 1 John in verse 19 it says, The whole world lies in the lap of the wicked one.

There's a big difference. The world as we know it is coddled by Satan. We have risen above to the very presence of God. We aren't like the Gentiles. Paul describes the heathen or the ethne here in 1 Thessalonians 4, 5 in this way. He says, The Gentiles who know not God.

We are not numbered among those who know not God. When we come to Jesus Christ, we're different. We are changed and our lifestyle is to match that new nature, that transformation.

Let me show you what he's saying. He describes an old way of life and a new way of life and says, This is the way you are to live in the new way of life. You start out with doing your thing your way.

You think your own thoughts and determine your own destiny. You've cut yourself off from God. As a result you're going to live in ignorance.

That's verse 18. Your heart's going to be blind, your head's going to be blind. As a result of that blindness you don't know any morality and without a morality you will become shameless and indecent. And you live in shamelessness and indecency long enough and it burns out any thinking process you had left until you come to the place where you totally give yourself over to lasciviousness and you work uncleanness with greediness. In other words, you can't get enough vileness in your life. You can't dig up enough filth. That's the way the Gentiles live.

And you know where it all comes from? You say, Well, not everybody's gone that far. Yes, but nobody in human society has any resources to restrain themselves from going that far. It is only by the grace of God that falls on the just and the unjust in general in society and the preserving influence of the Holy Spirit and the preserving influence of the church in the world that keeps anybody from not ending up at the pits at that level.

Because that's where it all goes. You start out with a self-centered mind, think your own thoughts, you cut yourself off from God which means you're ignorant and in your ignorance you've got no morality and so you begin to live like an animal and once you get into lust, lust is the most damning thing there is because it knows no limits and it has a decreasing sense of satisfaction. And that's the way it is.

Shameless, vile, violent, illicit, ambitious, greedy lust. Listen, people, that's the old life and that's what it will go to and that's what it's gone to and you see it and I see it. But that's the old thing. The apostle Paul says, hey listen, you, verse 17, walk not as the other Gentiles walk. That's not our life. That's not our lifestyle.

That's not where we're coming from. And I'll tell you something, if when you came to Jesus Christ, you didn't recognize that that stuff had to be cut off, then I don't know whether you were really saved. If you're still hanging on to that thing as a way of life, I question your salvation because James chapter 4 and verse 4 says, friendship with the world is enmity with God. You adulterers and dulleresses, don't you know that if you're a friend of the world, you're the enemy of God. If when you came to Jesus Christ, you didn't make a conscious cut from the system of this world, I question whether your salvation was genuine.

I question it. If you didn't have an overwhelming sense of your sinfulness so that you cried out to God for mercy and the evil that was in your life, you wanted it washed away, I question whether you're a Christian. 1 John 2 says, Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loved the things of the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Right? It's not there. Now when you became a Christian, you, if you really were saved, then you consciously cut the cord with the world. Now it keeps coming back and waltzing you from time to time and that's what Paul's talking about here.

Don't let it do that. But when you were a Christian, you had to realize you were a sinner and you were taking a break from the world and you were making a cleavage with the system. You can't be a immoral, ungodly person and just come along and accept Jesus and never change your lifestyle and tell me it's real salvation. It isn't.

I heard a guy the other night and he said, It's so wonderful. He said, It's so wonderful you don't have to change anything on the inside and you don't have to change anything on the outside when you come to Jesus. That's a lie right out of hell. That's going to send more people on the broad road of destruction than will ever get on the narrow way to salvation.

There better be a change. The world has its whole lifestyle and it's not ours. This is the way they live. They live with their own minds telling them what to do. They live in ignorance.

They live without a sense of decency and they live in a greedy quest to fulfill their lust, not us. And when you came to Jesus Christ, that was what you recognized. Your life is going to be different. Oh, it's not always easy. That's why Paul says, We can't live that way. We can't walk that way. We're different.

That's not our lifestyle. Look with me for a minute at Acts 2.37. Acts 2.37, Peter preached a sermon.

I mean, he really preached a great sermon on the day of Pentecost and it had a tremendous effect. The people were just really shaken. And it says in verse 37, When they heard this, they were pricked in their heart. They were under tremendous conviction. And they said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?

In other words, how do we get out of this mess we're in? They realized they had to do something different than they were doing, right? Nobody ever got saved who didn't realize he had to do something different than what he was doing. He said, The first thing you do is repent. Listen, I believe with all my heart that nobody can come to Jesus Christ unless he repents. First thing Jesus came when he came into the world, he said, Repent, for the kingdom is at hand.

You start there. Paul says in Acts 20 that he preached repentance toward God and then faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Repentance. He says, Repent. You've got to make a conscious turn from the world, from your sin, from the evil things.

Well, look at now what he went on to say. Be baptized, every one of you in the name of Christ, for the remission of sins. You see, sins all involved. You've got to recognize that. And then you say, That was the end.

Just repent of the past and go. Oh, verse 40. Did you miss it? And with many other words did he testify and exhort? You say, What did he say? I'll tell you what I think he said.

He said, I'll tell you something else. You've got to cut yourself off from this world. You've got to see a change in the life you're living. You've got to turn your back on your sinfulness.

You've got to walk a holy walk. But he kept on exhorting and he kept on testifying. He gave us some more instruction.

It wasn't just that little quickie thing. To sum it up, he said this, You better save yourselves from this crooked generation. Listen, nobody gets saved who doesn't realize he is repenting of personal sin and making a cleavage between himself and the present generation. You get the point?

That's basic. And you can't come to Christ on any other terms. If you came to Jesus Christ thinking all you had to do was believe and didn't have to confess your sin and realize what it was and didn't have to cut off from this evil world, you missed the point. You know, there are some people whose lives haven't changed one bit since they supposedly believed in Christ. They were living with somebody they weren't married to and they're still living with them. They were acting immorally and they're still acting immorally. They're committing adultery and they're still committing adultery. They're committing fornication and they're still committing fornication. And my Bible tells me in 1 Corinthians that fornicators and adulterers do not inherit the kingdom of heaven, period. If that's still your lifestyle, I question your salvation.

That's what he's saying. If you really were saved, hey, you made a conscious break. If you really were saved, you cut it off from the world.

Now, you're not going to go back and do it again. That's the way they live, not the way we live. We don't walk that way. Now, let's look at that second part, the new walk.

And this is just going to take a minute because we've set it up so you'll see the contrast. Paul saw the pagan system. He saw men's hearts petrified so they were unable to know sin. He saw them so dominated by sin that shame and decency were lost. He saw men so much at the mercy of their desires that they didn't care who they destroyed as long as they were gratified.

He saw reprobate minds that were useless, shameless, truthless, graceless. That was the old walk. He says, let me contrast it with the new walk. Again, I say we're different, people. We've got to be different. We've got a different kind of mind. See, we don't have that old kind of mind. We've got a different kind of mind.

We think different now. Peter calls it in 2 Peter 3, we want a pure mind. Great term, pure mind. A renewed mind. A transformed mind, Romans 12. Now, what are the characteristics of this in contrast to the old?

Well, the old, first contrast, self-centered, useless. The new, Christ-centered, purposeful. Look at verse 20. But you have not so learned Christ, if so be that you have heard him. Listen, the one thing that a Christian knows from the very beginning is that he doesn't do what his own mind tells him. He learns Christ. Christ acts through me. Christ loves through me. Christ serves through me. The life that I live is not mine, but Christ lives in me. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, Philippians 2.5.

As I have done unto you, so you do to one another. Love as Christ has loved us. If any man say he abide in Christ, he ought so to walk even as he walk. We walk like Christ, think like Christ, love like Christ, and serve like Christ.

Get all my impulses from him. I didn't learn Christ to walk in the vanity of my own mind. When I learned Christ and heard him and was taught by him, it was to follow him. So the first great difference is the unsaved person walks in the vanity of his own mind, and the saved person walks according to the mind of Christ.

Big difference. I really can say to you from the depths of my heart that I want more than anything in my life to do the thing that Christ wants me to do. Do you feel that way? I just want him to work through me. Jesus said that one day, and to those that were around him in the gospels, he said, learn of me. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And because of that, it's not useless. It's purposeful. God has a plan of destiny for the universe, and as long as Christ is working in me, he's working out a part of the reality of that plan. It's purposeful. And so that my life counts. I'm able to do exceeding abundantly above all. I can ask or think according to the power that works in me. That's purposeful, isn't it?

Not useless. Every day to me is a fantastic adventure because I'm right in the middle of God's unfolding plan for the ages. I have purpose in life. So he says the first thing is you have a Christ-centered purpose, not a self-centered emptiness. Second thing, instead of being ignorant of the truth like they are in verse 18, you know the truth.

Look at verse 21. You have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus. You know, when you give your life to Christ and you say, Christ, you rule, and you are the Lord. And by the way, you can't become a Christian until you recognize that.

I think there's no way to become a Christian without acknowledging that Christ is the Lord. And so when you give him your life and you say, rule my life, then you fall under the truth. And rather than being ignorant, you know the truth. Oh, the quest for truth. Men are after... That's, you know, that's the most traveled road in human history, trying to find the truth.

People get cynical. Pilate says, what is truth? I saw a lady had a T-shirt on that said, I have abandoned my search for the truth. Must be a lot of people in that category if somebody's making T-shirts like that.

Must be somebody to sell them to. But when you became a Christian and Christ acts through you and Christ loves and serves through you, then you're going to know the truth. The truth is in Jesus. 2 Corinthians 11, 10 says that. It says, as the truth of Christ is in me.

Oh, what a great thought. Paul says, the truth of Christ is in me. Chapter 5 of 1 John again in verse 20 closes out with a great word. And we know that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true and we are in Him that is true. Even in His Son, Jesus Christ, this is the true God and eternal life. And if all of that truth is in Him, little children, for goodness sakes, keep yourselves from idols.

There's certainly no information to be had there. It's all in Him. So, first of all, we learn Christ and then we know the truth, secondly. Truth about God, truth about man, truth about sin, Christ, creation, death, life, forever, history, relationships, salvation, happiness, purpose, meaning, heaven, hell, faith, grace, we know the truth about all that. And because we know the truth and because Christ thinks through us, instead of being shameless, instead of having no morality, instead of having no basis for life, we are sensitive to sin. Verse 22, we are called to put off concerning the former manner of life, the old man, corrupt according to the deceitful lust. Instead of not knowing what corruption is, boy, we sense it in the smallest doses, don't we?

There's nothing as miserable as a sinful Christian, wretched people to be around. See, how do you know? I've been there.

Terrible. See, we know what it is to be corrupt. We know what it is to see the result of deceitful lust. We're sensitive to sin.

There's no flaunting indecency. There's a deep sense of sin, and that's why the beatitude is so clear to us. Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. You see, the real subjects of the kingdom are those that mourn over their sin.

They don't gloss it over. Look at 1 John. If we say we have no sin, we deceive what?

Ourselves. And the truth isn't in us. If we say we have no sin, we make God a liar. But if we confess our sin, then we give evidence that we are the ones who are really being forgiven, because a true Christian will acknowledge sin and be sensitive to it. Paul was never so sensitive in his life to sin as after he became a Christian.

Oh, wretched man that I am, who should deliver me from the body of this death? That wasn't one experience in his life. That was a way of life as long as he lived. He could cry, Oh, wretched man that I am, from the moment he was saved to the moment he was glorified.

That wasn't one experience. That was a way of life. So we are sensitive to sin. We face it. We deal with it.

We put it off. Now, let me go to the fourth point. You learn Christ, and when you learn Christ, He fills you with His truth, and when you have His truth, you have a moral sensitivity, and so sin is a hated thing. And as long as you have Christ's truth, and you know what is right, and you know what is wrong, then you're going to have not a reprobate mind, but a renewed mind. Verse 23, be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

The only time in the New Testament Ananet was ever used means to create again, to make new. When you become a Christian, God gives you a new mind, but you've got to fill it with new stuff. That's why Philippians 4, 8 says, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, do what?

Think on these things that are pure and just, holy, good report, honest. And so, a renewed mind, not a reprobate mind. When you let Christ think through you, you'll have a standard of truth. That standard of truth will give you a judgment on sin, and it will renew your mind to be the kind of mind that pleases God.

What kind of mind? Verse 24, it'll be a mind created in righteousness and true holiness. Instead of being a reprobate, vile, lascivious, greedy, unclean mind, it'll be a mind filled with righteousness and a mind filled with holiness, and when that's true in your mind, that's the way you'll live. So be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man, the new mind, the new thinking process that results in righteousness and holiness. And so what's Paul's message?

To sum it up, it's this. Verse 22, put off the former manner of life, the old man. Verse 24, put on the new man. Listen, when you came to Christ, you said, I'm a sinner, I forsake it. I am a member of the world, I forsake it.

And now that you've been a Christian, isn't it awful that Satan dangles the world in sin in front of you and you go back to it? He says, don't do that. Put it off. Put it off. And put on righteousness and true holiness. And by the way, can I add this as I close? This is not something you do once for all.

This is something you do every day you live. You say, where's my resource? Two things.

Simple. One is the Word. One is the Word. The Word of God, all Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable for, watch this, doctrine, reproof, correction. You want to get your life corrected, expose yourself to the Word of God. It will help you deal with your sinfulness. It will help you deal with the traces of the world. The Word of God will reprove you.

It will correct you. And the second thing is prayer. If we are the ones confessing our sins and we are the ones that are being forgiven, let the Word of God expose it and let prayer be the catharsis that cleanses it. Shall we pray? Lord, we're so thankful that you took us out of the old. You gave us the new. You made us new creations in which all things have become new. Father, thank you for the Word of the Apostle Paul that if we are new, we ought to live new. God, help us to cut the cords with the old.

We have no place with that. In fact, as we read our Bible, it's questionable if that's a habit of life, whether we're even saved. And we may be on the broad road that leadeth to destruction, thinking all the while we're Christians.

What a tragic delusion. So, Father, help us to really deal with the fact that we're different and live it that way. And, Father, as the world gets worse and worse, may we not drift with the world. May our goodness never be relative, but ever absolute. May our righteousness and holiness never be relative, but ever absolute.

For your glory in Jesus' name, amen. The MacArthur Study Bible, the MacArthur Daily Bible, or one of John's books, like The God Who Loves. The sale ends tomorrow, so place your order now. Our customer service representatives can help you place your order from 730 to 4 o'clock Pacific time. Just call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. Now is an ideal time to pick up gifts that will bless your loved ones with biblical truth this Christmas.

To order the MacArthur Study Bible, the Daily Bible, or another of our resources, call toll-free 800-55-GRACE or visit gty.org. Also, let me remind you of the impact you can have by supporting Grace To You financially. When you give, you help encourage God's people, including pastors around the world. And when you reach a pastor, you reach a church. When you reach a church, you reach a community. And the truth of the gospel continues to spread. To make a donation so important as the year winds down, mail it to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. You can also donate at gty.org, or you can call us toll-free at 800-55-GRACE. Now for John MacArthur and our entire staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for tuning in today and invite a friend to join you tomorrow for another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.