Put Off, Put On | Ephesians 4:17-24
Introduction
Do you ever wish that you had been born at a different time or in a different circumstance? Do you ever let yourself daydream—what would it be like to have been born into extreme wealth or to some royal family? I remember watching a documentary in elementary school about the White House, and I found out that not only did it have a home movie theatre in it, it also had a bowling alley in the basement! And I would sit and wonder…why can’t my dad be president?! Or watching the movie “Richie Rich”, and see his home (the Biltmore Estate) also had a McDonald’s in the house! Are you kidding me?!
I think we’re all tempted to dream that things were different—to look around at our various circumstances and long for things to be something else. Wouldn’t it be great if my life were like this or that? Or what would it be like to be born 100 years ago, back when there were no phones and or less cultural craziness—back when life was “simple”. But in God’s providence, we recognize that we have been placed exactly where and when we are, and that then has a limiting and clarifying effect.
In the end, the answer isn’t changing circumstances, but in the nature of our character in the midst of our various circumstances. Like Gandalf’s poignant response to Frodo’s desire that the Ring had never come to him or that none of it would have happened in his time…
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
—J.R.R. Tolkien
I think Tolkien is on to something there—as he’s wont to do. There are things that are outside of your control. The way that God created the world, the way God governs the world is not within your power to know, control, or grasp. We do not choose the time, the place, the family, the nation, the social-economic situation that we are born into—but we are called to live a certain way in the circumstance that we find ourselves in, and it can really nag at us that we don’t know it.
Moses warns the Israelites of this in his farewell address to the nation in Deuteronomy 29…
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
—Deuteronomy 29:29
So, we find ourselves in the circumstance we’re in. And my guess is that for a lot of us, we may bemoan our circumstances, even though we are relatively-speaking TREMENDOUSLY blessed—we were born into a free country, where we can gather in gospel community and sit under the preached word without persecution, we have a plethora of Bibles in our language, and we’re able to live in a standard of living unknown to most of human history (how great is it to have heat and AC?!). We have cause to be tremendously grateful.
So in a lot of ways, our circumstances are what they are. The question before us is what does God call us and empower us to be and do now, today, in the circumstances God places us in? What has he revealed in his word to us, not the secret things that are hidden only to him? What through his holy word, what does he demand of the people who belong to him?
If you have been made alive in Christ, if your circumstance is that you have been united to Christ by faith and have been seated with him in the heavenly places, then what God’s word reveals to you is that you are to be holy as he is holy.
Theologian Joel Beeke says this about holiness…
Holiness is the lifeblood of Christianity. When holiness declines, believers are left anemic and weak. Without holiness, professing Christians are no better than corpses. With holiness comes spiritual vitality, warmth, energy, and God-pleasing activity. For this reason, the Scriptures place an absolute premium on the holiness of God’s people.
Holiness is often misunderstood and caricatured. For some, the word holy implies outdated backwardness. For others, holiness smacks of moralistic legalism with a long list of good things a person is not allowed to do. Still others associate holiness with an ugly pride that says, “I am better than you.” However, in the Bible, holiness is a beautiful word; in fact, the Bible speaks of the beauty of holiness. Jonathan Edwards said, “Holiness is a most beautiful, lovely thing. Men are apt to drink in strange notions of holiness from their childhood, as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour, and unpleasant thing; but there is nothing in it but what is sweet and ravishingly lovely.
—Joel Beeke
Throughout all of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, and throughout all of human history, God has demanded of his people to be set apart, to love him and to trust him and to obey him. The result is the beautiful reality of holiness. And that is what we see in our text this morning. So let’s go to that word to see what the Lord has revealed to us, that we may do all the words in this book.
Of the many themes that Paul is discussing in his letter to the Ephesians, the idea of the need for a distinctly Christian and holy identity is chief among them. In Ephesians 4:17-24, this is clearly the point. But this point in the letter flows from all that Paul said before.
Remember where we’ve been—Paul began his letter with his traditional salutation that flowed to his glorious sentence about the redeeming work of God in creation and in the church. In chapter 2, Paul reminded the church of that work God did in our sinful hearts and the new life that has been given to us. None of that is from our own working, but through God’s work and to the praise of his glorious grace.
Throughout the letter, Paul has used distinction categories to describe those apart from Christ and those in Christ. Themes like “dead/alive”, “Jew/Gentile”, “circumcision/uncircumcision” are ways Paul uses to draw contrast. He does this in chapter 2:1-10 for those who are dead to being made alive in Christ, and continues this contrast in 2:11-22 to show the vastness of reconciliatory work that is in Christ. We were once far off and have now been brought near. We are not only reconciled to God as individuals, but also reconciled to each other and to his body. Therefore, we can be united because we belong to the same household of God, despite our racial and cultural differences.
In Chapter 3, Paul made the case that these realities have come about through the gospel proclamation, and that the unified church is a light to the “Gentile/dead” world. He prayed for spiritual strength for himself and for the church and then closed chapter 3 with a doxology, emphasizing his desire for understanding.
Chapter 4 is where Paul makes a turn in his argument. It begins with an urgent command from Paul to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called”, which Ryan preached a few weeks ago. Paul begins getting into the details, and starts applying and exhorting the church to act as though the glorious truths spelled out in chapters 1-3 are actually true. This daily obedience to Christ is what strengthens the church and that binds the unity of believers together.
It is from all of this that Paul says in 4:17, “now”. This is an inferential conjunction, showing that what follows is the result of all that came before. If any of what he is about to say is true, it is only because all that he has already said is true. They are connected. What Paul says in Ephesians 4:17-24 is not from a vacuum, but comes from all that he has said previously: namely, that because of the cosmic and glorious redeeming work of God in the life of Christains through Christ, we must act like those who have been redeemed. “Because of everything I just said…” says Paul, now listen up!
This is a return to Paul’s original call in Ephesians 4:1 where he says…
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,
—Ephesians 4:1
Paul is adamant to see the glorious doctrines of the finished work of Christ lived out and applied and enfleshed in the everyday life of the Christian. And he begins this section with an emphatic statement.
Now (he says) this I say and testify in the Lord…
—Ephesians 4:17
You can hear him slowing down, his voice dropping, as he musters up all the authority he can to get across the seriousness of the situation. He’s not just speaking off the cuff, he’s not just spit-balling some practical applications for your consideration, he’s testifying, witnessing to the truth, so help him God. And his testimony is not just from his own musing, but it is “in the Lord”. That’s the source of his authority. That is who he is a prisoner of, and it is who he and his message is “in”. So pay attention, Pauls says.
And this is what I think is Paul’s main burden in this passage to every Christian regardless of your circumstances… The Christian life is a life-long process of turning away from our sinful past self and living and rejoicing in our glorious new life in Jesus.
That’s what I think he’s up to in this pivotal point in the letter. I believe his aim is to convince you that you need not fear, you need not lose hope, because if you are in Christ, God has done a great work in you. And because he has done that great work in you, he calls you to act like it, to live like it, and to rest in the finished work of Christ and the ongoing work of the Spirit in your life to make you more and more holy.
To prove that point, Paul compares and contrasts 2 ways of living—the way of the Gentiles and the way of Christ. He boils that down to 2 commands: to put off and to put on. And we’ll at those in turn as Paul lays it out—out with the old, and in with the new.
Out with the old.
After grabbing their attention and ours, Paul declares the first command, what the Christian audience must stop doing—namely, that they must no longer walk in the futility of their minds, like the Gentile world around them. Now, to be clear, Paul’s audience is primarily Gentile—these are Gentile Christians who have been made alive in Christ through the preaching of the gospel by the local churches planted by Paul, and who have been brought near to God in Christ the Lord over all. They are racially Gentiles, but their identity has changed, their allegiance has changed, their family has changed—although they don’t belong to the bloodline of Abraham, these believers belong to the faith of Abraham.
And because they have been brought near, they are no longer to walk as they used to. And that word used here, “to walk”, conveys the idea not of physical steps, but of an entire way of life, an entire worldview, an entire system of life. Paul used this same idea back in Ephesians 2:1–3 as he described the miracle of conversion…
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked….what does that mean, and what does that look like?…following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
—Ephesians 2:1–3
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
—Ephesians 2:10
So this concept of walking is a favorite metaphor for Paul for what life is like. And isn’t that so true? Life does feel like a long walk—sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it’s slow, sometimes uphill and sometimes downhill, sometimes through mud and bog, and sometimes through green pastures besides still waters, but we are always walking. And this is true for all people—all people are walking, but the key difference is the direction. Is it the way of the Gentiles, or is it the way of Christ? The way of death, or the way of life?
Recall Paul’s famous passage in Galatians, where he wrote to Gentiles living in another part of the Roman Empire…
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
—Galatians 5:16–17
And what does this way of the flesh, the way of Gentiles look like? Paul gives us evidence—this actually looks like something. There are real consequences to being apart from Christ. And so Paul proceeds to give a barrage of evidence of the dark reality that is the Gentile state, the state of those who are separated from God and from his covental people.
First we see that their minds are futile, purposeless. Rather than having a clear direction or course, they are meandering in the wilderness, aimless. It conveys the idea of meaninglessness, the very same word used throughout the book of Ecclesiastes to describe life apart from the fear of God. There is a hopelessness here that is intentional. Their thinking has been corrupted, so that they can not rely on their Greek philosophies or equations—they require something else.
They are darkened in their understanding. The Gentile state apart from Christ, the sinful state, extends not just to what they do or their information processing, but also to their understanding. Light and dark throughout the Scripture regularly refer to illumination and clarity, or confusion. Information or data is not what is needed most. What is needed is for the lights to come on. Darkness is the state of mind for those who are apart from Christ.
They are alienated from the life of God. The way of the cross is foolishness to them. They are distant, foreign, and hostile to the way of Christ and to his people. Again, Paul is drawing distinctions. This, not that. There is separation and difference between their old way of life and the new—like night/day, dead/alive. It is stark, and impossible to be both at the same time—like walking in two different directions.
Finally, they have become callous. Anyone who has done any work with their hands or played guitar for a length of time, at first your fingers and hands are soft and sensitive, often forcing you to slow down, or even stop. Like a built-in safety system. But it’s the repeated motion that over time kills and deadens the skin, creating these callouses, which make feeling impossible. There is no sensitivity to guard when someone should stop.
I was once on a mission trip to Wasilla, AK and we were at a camp outside of the town. While we waited for supper, there was an old man tending to the large fire. This man was exactly what you’d expect from an Alaskan mountain man—grizzled, as if he’d faced many a long winter. But most of all, I remember his hands. They were so calloused that when he would put a log in the fire, it was almost like he was immune to the heat. His hands were so weathered, he couldn’t feel the dangerous heat that would cause the rest of us to pull away instantly. That is the danger of calluses—you become so used to not feeling, that you don’t feel the danger of the fire.
And why? What’s caused all this (v. 18)? Because of their ignorance and their hardness of heart, they have given themselves over to their various lusts. Notice who it is Paul emphasizes is to blame for this reality—it is man. It is us! While maintaining and making clear the sovereignty of God in all things, of the predestining work of God from eternity past in Ephesians 1, and the incredible grace of God in salvation so that no man may boast as we saw in Ephesians 2—here in this passage, the emphasis and accent is on the responsibility of sinful man. We are not ignorant, but sinfully suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
What a terrible, dark, and sad state of affairs laid out before us here in God’s word. Before moving on too quickly, we must stop and linger here at the reality of sinful man, and what it means to be apart from God and from Christ. Because of our sin, this is who we are in our natural state. And this is meant to arrest us, and cause us to feel the weight of it.
There is a warning here from Paul. We are so prone to return to our old habits, our old way of life. Like well worn grooves, our sins are constantly calling us to fall back into them. But it has such a dangerous and callusing effect. John Owen warned of the dangers of not proactively fighting your sin when he says…
Every unmortified sin will certainly do two things; first, it will weaken the soul, and deprive it of its vigour; secondly, it will darken the soul, and deprive it of its comfort and peace.
—John Owen
And this is the state of many people today, right now. It begins with us first, but it ought to also cause us to look up and out. All that is listed here is meant to give you eyes to see rightly the thousands and thousands of lost people in our city. The people you work with, the people who serve you your meal, or who check you out at Costco, or maybe your family members or closest friends—apart from Christ, this is their plight. Do you feel a burden for the lost? Do you feel the pressing need to tell them the truth about themselves?
This passage is meant to do just that! To heighten our urgency to say, “do not walk that way! Do not keep living that way! It doesn’t work, it doesn’t satisfy, it will only lead to death!” The most loving thing we can do for the lost around us, and the most loving thing someone can do for you if you are caught in sin is to speak the truth in love to you. Faithful really are the wounds of a friend.
This is why, again, that we so value community. Regardless of the various social and relational speed bumps we might experience by doing life with other sinners, this is the true glory of community—to know each other’s stories in such a way that we know where people are prone to return to their old self, where they are prone to walk in darkness. That is hard, but that is love that brings unity and builds trust and community.
A true friend says to a wandering saint, “Brother, there is a better way.” And what is that better way? The way of Christ. Out with the old, and…
In with the new.
Once again, Paul makes a dramatic turn. Everything hinges on v. 20…
But that is not the way you learned Christ!—
—Ephesians 4:20
Like a loving father who has addressed his disobedient and forgetful son, he looks us in the eye and reminds us, “that is not you anymore.” This is not the way you learned Christ—or more literally, “you did not learn Christ in this way!” And he brings us into the classroom, where the lesson for the day is Christ and his gracious work.
And what is it they have learned from this Christ? What is the new and better way? To put off the old man, and to put on the new. Put off, and put on. That, according to Paul, is the normal and regular rhythm of the Christian life.
He spells this out with 3 separate commands…
To put off your old self (v. 22)
To be renewed in the spirit of your minds (v. 23)
To put on the new self (v. 24)
Now all three of these commands are not strict imperatives as in other places—although they are meant to be taken as commands. The reason the syntax matters here (and bear with me), is because if they were strict imperatives, the sense of the commands would be evangelisitc—to be taken as a call to be converted and to become a part of the body of Christ. And to be sure, they certainly do communicate that to anyone who hears them and are apart from Christ.
But that is not the main thrust here. Remember, Paul is assuming that they have learned Christ and are already saved. So, what does he mean? Rather than a call for conversion, this is a call for holiness. Paul is calling the church in the region of Ephesus to remember the realities of being united to Christ, to put away, or literally take off their former habits when they were dead to sin which are like filthy clothes, and to put on Christ and his robes of righteousness.
And even in these commands, we can see the paradox of the activity and responsibility of man, and the sovereignty of God. Notice 2 of the commands are active—put off and put on, meaning we are called to do it. But one of the commands is passive—be renewed, meaning it is done to us.
Recall how Paul puts it elsewhere in Romans 12…
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
—Romans 12:2
You will take the shape of something—either to this world or to Christ. It really is Christ or chaos. So Paul implores you to let yourself be renewed in Christ. And what does that look like? Putting off the old man, and putting on the new. It is both/and. We must either get busy living, or get busy dying, all by the grace of the Lord. And this is a life-long process—it is both a renewal and a renewing. It has happened decisively at your conversion, but must show its fruit in your renewing and holy life.
And the way forward is not by just trying harder and harder to discipline yourself…no, the way forward is God’s way: repentance and faith, confession and forgiveness. It is the process of putting to death the sins that will crop up in your life, often exasperated by life’s circumstances, and trusting that God’s ways are better. It is confessing, agreeing with God that the sin in your life is wrong, and then receiving the forgiveness that is promised. That, my friends, is the great hope of the gospel life. You can actually change, and can actually be free from the sin that so easily entangles, and actually produce the holiness that God calls you to walk in. That’s when the gospel actually begins to function, when it is applied into your everyday life.
Throughout the church’s history, there has always been a skeptical eye towards application. It’s one thing to talk doctrine and theology, but once that doctrine is applied and enfleshed, the rub begins. We don’t like being told what we’re doing is wrong. Paul could be accused here by the Ephesians as being legalistic! What do you mean I have to do this or have to do that?! Isn’t it all from grace? We want to be saved without having to change. But that is not the way you learned Christ! There can be no separation between believing the word of Christ, and obeying the word of Christ. They must always be connected.
You will know a tree by its fruit, Jesus says. You do not get figs from thorn bushes, nor grapes from the bramble bush. What you do reveals who you are. So put off the old man, and put on the new!
Commentator F.F. Bruce puts it this way…
The knowledge of God is never divorced from walking in his ways: to know him is to be like him, righteous as he is righteous, holy as he is holy.
—F. F. Bruce
And what this means is that change is possible! If you are caught in some sin that you just can’t seem to shake, there is hope for you. You do not need to be defined or oppressed by your circumstances, but rather, by God’s training and sustaining grace, you can right now be free from that sin and walk in a manner worthy of him who called you!
And notice v. 21—Paul names who it is that we have learned and who it is that has called us—Jesus. This is the only place in the entire letter where Paul uses the name of Jesus apart from any other title words like “Christ” or “Lord”. Why? I think he is trying to show that this different way, this way of life, this righteousness that we are called to put on is not some Greek philosophy, nor just some gnostic ideal, but it is found in a person, it is a man.
And this Jesus is a man—a perfect man, a god-man—who put on that which was not natural to him. He took on a human nature. But that’s not all he took on. Not only did he take on humanity, the Lord himself put on him the corrupted, sinful nature of us all. All our lusts, all of our desires, all of our sins God placed on his shoulders, so that he could take that nature, take that old man, that old self, and put it to death on the cross, and bury it in the ground.
But, my friends, he did not stay there. In rising from the grave, our Lord Jesus inaugurated a new age, a new man, that is right now transforming hearts, turning them from stone to flesh, and pouring his Spirit into each of us, empowering us to put off the old man, and to put on the new. And that new man comes only from Christ, who is true righteousness and true holiness.