Introduction
It’s been 11 years to the day since I was ordained and brought on staff as a pastor here at Cornerstone. And while it has been one of the great privileges and joys of my life to serve Christ and you all over the last 11 years, over the years there has been a lot of heartache as well. Some of that heartache has come because of things out of our control, but a lot of it has come because of sin. It’s been said that being a pastor, in part, means getting paid to watch people make bad decisions. And while there’s plenty of truth to that, it’s also true that we pastors make plenty of bad decisions too. We all sin. And our sin typically leads to pain and heartache. However, if we confront our sin biblically, with that sin comes the joy of repentance and reconciliation.
As you all know, the church is not a perfect people, or a holier than thou kind of people. We are those who know we are sinners. As I often point out, the number one requirement for being a member of the church is recognizing that you are a sinner in need of grace. We are all a mess in progress as it were. But, we are not a people who sit and sour in our sin, or who ignore it and rejoice in it. Rather, we are a people who make war on our sin. We are a people who walk out repentance. And this brings great joy.
No doubt, repentance is not a joyful thing in an of itself. As Lewis said, “Repentance is a type of death.” It’s a dying to self, a forsaking of sin, and a clinging to Christ. But that’s also what makes it a joyous thing. As Jesus said in Luke 15:7, there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. And that joy is not only a reality in heaven, but here on earth as well. And it has been a true joy to see sinners come to repentance again and again. To see sinners forsake their sin and cling to Christ again and again. And that’s exactly what our passage is going to call us to do today.
As we have seen in our journey through Ephesians, the church is a covenantal community bound together in Christ, gifted with leaders who minster the Word of God to the people of God in order to equip them to do the work God has called them to. We are to be a people bound together in love, who walk in a manner worthy of our calling in Christ and for Christ, giving ourselves to speaking the truth in love, which means that we are to be a people of the Truth and love.
The church, as God’s family, as God’s nation, as God’s city, as citizens of God’s Kingdom, are to set the pattern for the world. We are salt and light, meant to stand out and shine out with the Truth and the Love of Christ. And this doesn’t mean that we act like we are better than we are, but that we embrace and live out the truth that we are redeemed sinners in need of Christ all day every day. Which means walking out repentance, and walking in a manner worthy of our calling in Christ and for Christ. And that’s what we’re going to see in God’s Word today. So look with me at Ephesians 4:17-24.
Sermon
Paul is an apostle with authority to rightly proclaim God’s Word. And he is so dedicated to Christ and the ministry that He has called him to that he has joyfully counted the cost and embraced even going to prison for the cause of Christ. Paul is indeed a true leader and preacher in God’s church; his whole life testifies to that fact. And now he is testifying in the Lord, or on His behalf, reminding the Ephesian church, and us, that none of us should walk as the Gentiles walk. No doubt, like us the church in Ephesus was primarily a Gentile church, but they had been saved and converted out of their Gentile ways.
The Gentiles, or the nations of the world outside of Israel were known for being heathen sinners. They were known for their godless and worldly ways, marked by sin, by hate, by greed and selfishness. The Gentile way was a way of immorality and gross sin. As Paul says here the Gentile way is a way marked by futility of the mind, with darkened understanding, because they are alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. The Gentiles are those who have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
In verse 17 Paul says that Christians are not to walk this way. As Paul has already said, we are to walk in a manner that is worthy of our calling—our calling to Christ and in Christ… Our calling to know Christ, love Christ, live for Christ, and to therefore love like Christ. We are to be a people who speak the truth in love, which means we are to be people who are marked by the truth and love. When Paul says walk, he means our way of life. How we live day in and day out. And our way of life is to be marked by the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
We are no longer to walk in the ways of the world but the Way of Christ. Christ Jesus, who is the second person of the Trinity, God in the flesh who loved us so much that He lived the perfect righteous life we have failed to live, died the wrath absorbing death we deserve to die for our sin, and rose from the grave in a death-defeating justifying resurrection, so that all who look to Him by faith would be saved. This righteousness, this sacrifice, this truth, and this love of Christ is what marks out our calling and the Way of Christ that is to mark out the whole of our lives.
Now notice how Paul describes the ways of the world. He roots what the Gentiles do, and what we do when we live in line with our old ways, as being rooted in the futility of the mind. Those outside of Christ live the way they do, in part, because of the futility of their minds. By futility Paul means an emptiness and vanity, not because they aren’t intelligent in some ways, but because their mind is not focused on, grounded in, and tethered to the truth of God’s Word, especially the fundamental truth of God’s gospel in God’s Son. Christ is not the cornerstone of their thinking and their life, and therefore all of their thinking and all of their life is ultimately futile; it’s empty; it’s vanity, because come what may it is all for naught.
We often speak this way still today. If we do something stupid or careless we say things like, “I just wasn’t thinking.” And by that we don’t mean that we truly weren’t thinking, but that we weren’t thinking with the proper clarity of thought, or with the full picture in view, understanding what may or may not happen as a result of our actions. And friends, this is how it always is with sin. Sin is ultimately irrational. If we were thinking clearly we would always choose to do the right thing because Christ is always worth it, and sin never is. Every time we choose sin we are acting like atheists in that moment, because we aren’t thinking properly or believing properly about God, His Word, and His Son. And that’s true even when we do the right things for the wrong reasons.
As you all know, Romans 3:23 tells us that sin is ultimately falling short of the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10:31 tells us that we are to do everything for God’s glory, that is by faith in Him and faithfulness to Him, seeking to magnify His worth and beauty in all things, and every time we don’t, every time we eat or drink or do whatever we do for any other purpose than God’s glory we are entering into sin. If we do the right thing out of pride instead of gratitude or faithfulness we are doing that right thing in a sinful way. And if our minds aren’t right this is inevitable. If we do not have a fundamental presupposition that is focused on God and being faithful to Him we will inevitably be unfaithful to Him. If we are not focused on honoring Him in all things we will dishonor Him in all things.
Romans 8:7-8 says, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” And this is what the futile mind is set on—the flesh and its desires, not on God and His desires. The missionary C. T. Studd said it well when he said, “Only one life, ’twill soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” Everything else is futility, it’s empty vanity. As we have already seen throughout Ephesians, each one of us have been saved by grace and given grace by God in order to enable us and gift us to do the works of ministry He’s called us to. And that doesn’t mean that each one of us are called to be actual ministers, but it means that in whatever we do, be it a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker… a daughter, a wife, a mother, a son, a husband, a father, a student, an employee, or an employer, a public servant, a family member, a friend, a church member, or a fellow citizen… in every area of life we are to do all that we do for the glory of Christ. We are to bring every area of life into joyful submission to His Lordship for His glory. And anything not done that way will ultimately prove to be vanity.
Paul starts here, calling the Ephesians and us, to forsake the Gentile and futile mind, because this is where the Christian life starts, with repentance and faith. Repentance is fundamentally a change of mind. It’s thinking so differently about Christ and our sin that it leads to living differently—living for Christ and forsaking sin. A true Christian doesn’t merely repent of their sins to become a Christian but lives in a posture of repentance. A posture of repentance is an ongoing process of recognizing sin, confessing sin, repenting of sin, and seeking reconciliation, restoration, and forgiveness with all the parties that may have been effected by our sin. This is not easy, and it is often messy; but this process is fueled by a hatred for sin, and greater still, an ever-increasing love for Jesus. So, in a sense Paul is calling us back to the fundamentals of the Christian life. He’s calling us back to what we have done since our conversion to Christ… To deliberately change our thinking about ourselves, about sin, and about Jesus, so that we would willingly die to self, forsake sin, and live for Jesus. For all else is futile.
Verse 18 says that the nations outside of Christ, and all in their sin, “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.” So here we see that though this futility of mind is indeed tied to ignorance, this is not some form of neutrality or innocent ignorance. This futile mind is marked by darkness in its understanding, and darkness here is stressing more than just ignorance, it’s stressing evil rebellion. Paul is saying that those who remain in their sin, those who choose sin over Christ, in their futile and ignorant minds are becoming darkened. They, and we if we go this route, are embracing the darkness rather than the light.
While darkness is certainly intellectual darkness, it is also moral darkness. It is an evil and rebellious mind and thus an evil and rebellious life. In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Paul says, “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…” Notice how our thoughts and our obedience go hand in hand. If we are going to live an obedient life we must start with obedient thoughts. We must take our thoughts captive for Christ so that we can take our life captive for Christ. We must bring every thought under the Lordship of Christ and thus in line with His Word so that every area of our lives will be under the Lordship of Christ and in line with His Word. We must bring our minds and thus our lives into the light of the world, or else the darkness will overtake us in every way.
And notice that being in or united to, or being out or disconnected from the light of the world is the fundamental issue here. Paul says that the futile and ignorant people who dwell in darkness do so because they are alienated from the life of God. Well, as Jesus says in John 14:6, He is the life of God. He is the Truth, the Life, and the Way. And our only hope of being brought into the Truth, the Life, and the Way, and getting to God and being in right relationship with Him is through union with Christ.
To be alienated from the life of God here is to be separated, excluded, or cut off covenantally. As Paul already said in Ephesians 2:12, all outside of God’s grace are “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” So to be alienated is to be outside of God’s Covenant of Grace, and outside of the life and love of God in Christ Jesus, with no hope. Earlier Paul said that we have been brought in covenantally. We are a part of the body of Christ, the covenantal bond of peace, bound together by the person and work of God the Son and the gracious application of God the Holy Spirit. If we are Christians in right standing we are bound together with God and His people through the one true faith and the one true baptism, in the one true triune God.
If we are in Christ we are salt and light, we are that city set on a hill that stands out and shines out for God’s glory, our good, and the life of the world. We are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ of all things. We know God and know Christ and therefore have true eternal life through our union with Christ. But all in their sin are alienated from all of this, and are thus without God and without hope.
And of course all of this ties back to the futility of the mind in ignorance and darkness. For no matter how intelligent one may be, if they do not know God they don’t truly know much at all. For how can we be sure of anything if we are not truly sure of everything (for you unbelievers in the room, or those who us who act like we are from time to time, this is an argument that I’m laying out that you have to deal with). No matter how intelligent we may be, because we are mere finite creatures we have to admit that even the most intelligent among us know very little. As I’ve said before, if I tell you that dogs can’t look up, and I base that thesis on me never seeing a dog look up, it only takes one dog looking up to prove my thesis wrong. And of course, the trouble with my thesis is that it’s only based on what I’ve seen, not on the reality of what any and all dogs can do. So if I have some weird dog that can’t look up that doesn’t prove that all dogs can’t look up. It just proves I have a weird dog. But it would be foolish of me to impute my limited knowledge on the whole of existence. Yet this is what we do in our foolishness.
Friends, no matter how smart we may be, when it comes to all the knowledge in existence, we are truly fools. For we know basically nothing. Therefore, the only way for us to truly be sure of anything is to know Someone who knows everything. Someone who is not just some finite creature like us. And that Someone is God, who created all things and knows all things. And if we know Him we can not only have true understanding and the light of knowledge, but we can have true hope because the God who created all things, knows all things, and controls all things has promised that He will work all things together for the good of those who know Him and love Him.
I remember when I first became a Christian, one of my friends back home in Georgia asked me if I had given up on intelligent thought. And I told him, on the contrary, I finally entered into it. It wasn’t until I came to know Jesus that I really came to know anything. It wasn’t until I came to know Jesus that the world and all of life began to make sense. And it was in Christ that I came to know what true love is and what true hope is. But outside of Christ all of these things are out of reach.
It’s no wonder that the person who is marked by all of this—by a futile mind, ignorance, darkness, and covenant alienation—is ultimately marked by a hardness of heart. Paul breaks down this idea of a hard heart in verse 19 saying, “They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” Because they don’t know Christ rightly they don’t know anything rightly… their heart is hard. Paul has been focusing on the mind, but now he ties the mind to the heart, pointing out that the issue is that the person who has given themself over to sin has become hard and callous in the core of their being.
We are all called to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength… that is, with everything we are and everything we have, deep down to the core of our being. And here Paul is saying that those who aren’t doing this are given over to sin deep down in the core of their being. But it’s interesting that the heart given over to sin is hard and callous because what they are giving themselves over to is sensuality. Sensuality is the pursuit of physical, especially sexually, pleasure. It’s the idea behind the phrase, if it feels good do it. The trouble is the more you give yourself over to this the less you’ll find pleasure in it because you’ll become more and more calloused.
To be calloused is not only to be hard but to be numb. And the hard and calloused heart given over to sin will begin to find that the feeling of pleasure that made that sin feel worth it will quickly begin to fade, and will slowly but surely vanish away completely. Like a nostalgic memory of joy, the pleasure will grow more and more distant until it totally fades away. It’s only in Christ that true pleasure and joy are found and do not fade. With Christ, His mercy and joy are new every morning. He is infinitely satisfying because He is infinite in all of His attributes. And, as Saint Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Christ.
The sinner in his sin is caught in a cycle of vanity, without God, without hope, and ultimately without joy and satisfaction. But this is not all Paul means by a hard and callous heart. The sinner in his sin is not only hardened and callous to the false pleasure of sin, but the true horrors of sin. Like a sociopath who seems to have no conscience, a hardhearted and calloused sinner can give themselves up to sensuality, and be greedy to practice every kind of impurity, seemingly, without any sense of remorse, shame, or guilt. And this is something that we all do; which is why Paul is giving us this warning and call to action here.
Every single one of us have blindspots and sins in our lives that we don’t recognize and don’t feel bad about because we are hardened and calloused to those sins. We’ve thought something, felt something, said something, done something, read something, watched something, or engaged in something that we shouldn’t have, that likely started as a small compromise that we may not even have noticed that eventually desensitized us to the extent that we were willing to go a little further, watch a little more, do a little more, or whatever, until we were engaged in a far greater act of sin, and yet without conviction or guilt. Think of what television and movies have done to us. They have actors say things or do things in such a way that they begin to normalize them, and we become so used to hearing and seeing them on a screen that soon enough it doesn’t shock us to see or hear them in real life, which tends to so desensitize us that we begin to say and do them as well. And lest you think I’m lying, just go look at what was allowed in a PG 13 movie in the 80s versus now. Or look back at when the first cuss word was allowed in a movie back in 1939, to where we are today where it’s strange to see a movie without such words.
Friends, this is how sin works. Just as wear and tear on your hands leads to a blister that can then lead to a callous, that then leads to tuff skin that’s hard to penetrate and numb, so too does one compromise lead to another, and to another, until our hearts grow hard and calloused, numb to the shame and horror of sin and hard to penetrate with the glories of the gospel. That seemingly small sin, that white lie, that inappropriate screen time, that small bit of gossip, slander, or bitterness, that small but inappropriate conversation or relationship… it’s all leading somewhere. And as the old saying goes, “Sin will take you further than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.” As we’ve all seen over the last few weeks, even seemingly great men of God are capable of great falls into sin. But you can be sure that those great sins they committed were preceded by a number of seemingly small sins. Every great fall is preceded by a number of small bad decisions.
So what are we to do to keep ourselves from falling into all of this.?Or as John Piper has pointed out, none of us actually fall into sin. We jump into it. So what do we do to keep ourselves from jumping into sin this way? How do we keep from walking as the Gentiles do? Well, that’s what we see in the rest of our passage. Starting in verse 20 Paul says, “But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
Paul is again taking us back to the fundamentals of the Christian life. Just as the Christian life starts with repentance and faith, but then continues on in a posture of repentance and faith, so too did we, when we first learned Christ—when we first truly heard the gospel and were taught in Him by God’s grace through the Holy Spirit, and became true Christians—put off the old self and put on the new. As 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” This is a reality that happens the moment we are grafted into Christ and His Covenant of Grace. By God’s grace, in and through conversion, in and through union with Christ by faith, in and through our baptism, we have put off the old and put on the new. We are new creations in Christ, but we must continue to walk in and live out this reality.
In the book of Romans Paul says that Christ’s church is united to Christ and have therefore died to sin and been raised to newness of life in Christ. But then he says in Romans 6:11, we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Martyn Lloyd-Jones explains this well through an illustration, saying, “Imagine two fields separated by a road between them. The field on the left is the domain of Satan; it’s where sin reigns; it’s where sin rules and dominates all who are in that field, and we were born into that field on the left. That’s where we all began life and we lived in that field until the moment of our salvation. But at the moment of salvation, we were transferred from the field on the left, across the road, to the field on the right as a result of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ for us and the application of that work to us by the Holy Spirit, we have been transferred, as Paul puts it in Colossians 1, from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His beloved Son. We’ve had a change in location, if you will, a change in realms to which we belong. A change in fields, from the field into which we were born to the field now on the right side of the road where grace reigns, where Christ reigns, where righteousness is at home. That’s now where we reside.”
But as Lloyd-Jones points out, those fields are only separated by a road. And many of us lived for many years in that field on the left side of the road. We lived under the voice of Satan and sin, telling us what to do. We no longer live under their reign. However, they shout at us from across the road. We can still hear their voice, and they still try to give us orders; they still try to tell us what to do. And even though we’re not under their dominion anymore, it’s easy for us because it’s such a pattern and habit of our lives before, when we lived in that field, to think that we still have to obey them, that we still have to do what they say. But that’s not true.
We’re Christians; we’re in a new field; Satan doesn’t rule over us; sin can shout at us from across the road all it wants, but we are no longer its slave. Yet still our ears are at times tempted to listen and to give in. But we are not the people we used to be; we don’t live in the realm or the sphere in which we used to live. Therefore, we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. We must put off the old in sin and put on the new in Christ.
Now some of you were pretty much born into this life. You were raised in the church, and have been brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And though you never gave years of your life to Satan and sin the way some of us have, nevertheless you find yourself tempted by that field on the other side. You hear the shouts from that other field, from that other realm, and you have started to think that they may be right. That Christianity doesn’t really make any sense. I mean after all, you’re not even sure if you believe any of this Jesus stuff any more. And so a life of self indulgence sounds pretty good. Why should you continue on with all of those judgmental Christians who believe all of that crazy stuff anyway?
Oh, but you have forgotten who you are. You have been baptized into the name of the Triune God. You are not your own. One can forsake their roots and pretend they don’t know their family, but they are indeed pretending. That is their family whether they like it or not. And that is their roots whether they like it or not. You are simply lying to yourself about who you are and what you stand for. That’s why Paul is here reminding us to be who we already are in Christ. To put on, once again, our new self in Christ. To stop listening to the lies of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to instead embrace the truth of God’s Word. The Truth that is in Jesus. The Truth that is Jesus.
I’ve yet to meet anyone who has forsaken Christ, or who is refusing to trust in Christ because they have found something else, or embraced some other worldview or doctrines that make more sense. Christianity is the Truth (with a capital T). As C. S. Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Christianity is the Truth of all truths, because nothing truly makes sense without it. If you press an unbeliever about why they don’t believe, they may have pushback here and there about different things in the Bible, but there are answers for all of that that provide far more reason for belief than unbelief. What you will find, and what may be true of you if you are doubting or rejecting Christianity, is not that you have found a better body of beliefs and doctrines somewhere else, but that you have found some sin, some way of life that you want to chase after, and you know that Jesus forbids it, so you are actively choosing to reject Jesus so that you can embrace sin. And in so doing you are showing yourself to be a fool. You are a fool who is falling for the lies of the enemy just like Adam and Eve, and so many since. And all you are doing is hurting yourself and everyone who loves you.
Again, Paul says, “that is not the way you learned Christ!—assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires…” When we doubt the Truth in Christ, the Truth of Jesus, the Truth of God’s Word and Christianity, we do so because we are being corrupted through deceitful desires. It is not because we have truly tested and tried Christianity and found it wanting, for that is impossible. It is because we have found ourselves wanting some sort of sin. We have deceitful desires that lead us astray, and if we are not careful they will lead us to forsake Christ for sin and the ways of the world. And this truly is futility because sin and the ways of the world are ultimately worthless vanity. They only lead to destruction.
We must not give in to the flesh. We must not choose sin. We must repent and believe again and again. We must put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness, again and again. We must again and again believe and embrace the Truth of Jesus, and the Truth in Jesus, and thus be renewed in the spirit of our minds. Or as Romans 12:1-2 put it, “by the mercies of God, [we must] present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [our] spiritual worship. [We must] not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of [our] mind, that by testing [we] may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
On the one hand this means we must get into God’s Word and get God’s Word into us. We must read God’s Word, study God’s Word, meditate on God’s Word, and memorize God’s Word. And of course, we must believe and heed God’s Word. Being transformed and renewed in our mind by God’s Word means having our instincts, our thoughts, feelings, words, and deeds so influenced by God’s Word that we naturally do what is good and acceptable and perfect in God’s sight. Instead of stopping to see what God’s Word says and calls us to do in any given situation, the more we are transformed by God’s Word the more we are able to react, or put better, to respond in line with God’s Word instinctually. As was said of John Bunyan, we will begin to bleed Bibline…
But on the other hand, what’s being addressed in Romans, as well as Ephesians, is something that we can’t merely do on our own. When Paul speaks of the mercies of God, sacrifices and being holy and acceptable to God, and thus being able to rightly worship God, he’s speaking of covenant renewal worship with God’s people. As Hebrews 4:12 says, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Just as the sword of the priest was used to rightly divide the animal sacrifices to prepare them properly for worship, so the Word of God read, prayed, sung, preached, tasted, and seen in corporate worship with God’s people works on us, cutting out our sin and deceitful desires, purifying our hearts, leading us to confess our sin and our faith, and declaring forgiveness and pardon over us, bringing us once again into right communion with God, and edifying us and commissioning us out to go and to be and to do for God’s glory, the good of God’s people, and the life of God’s world. We become the sacrifice, a living sacrifice, that is able to worship God rightly with God’s people, and then able to live rightly for God’s glory. And this is at the heart of how we fight sin and pursue holiness, of how we put off the old and put on the new in Christ again and again.
Conclusion
Beloved, there’s so much more I could say, but let me bring this to a close with some practical application. God’s Word is full of warnings of apostasy. Each one of us are capable of the worst of sins and falling away, outside of God’s grace. Each one of us are capable of forsaking Christ for the world, the flesh, and the devil; and every time we sin we show that to be true, because in one way or another that’s exactly what we are doing. So what do we do to keep ourselves from walking as the Gentiles do, and instead continually putting off the old and putting on the new?
1) Whether for the first time or for the thousandth time, repent and believe in the gospel. Trust and obey Jesus. Get your mind right about Christ and His Word. Pray, and ask God to change your mind about your sin, self, Jesus, and God’s Word. Ask God to save you from a futile mind, a hard and calloused heart, and a dark and alienated life. And trust in Christ as the only Way for that salvation.
2) Commit to gather with God’s people each week in Covenant Renewal Worship, where you can participate in and sit under the reading, praying, singing, preaching, teaching, tasting, and seeing of God’s Word. Come together with God’s people in Christ and answer God’s call to worship Him by confessing your sin, confessing your faith, receiving pardon in Christ, being consecrated by the preaching and ministry of the pastor (God’s minister in and of Christ), communion with God and His people at His table, and then receiving God’s blessing and being commissioned out to live for Him. This simple act of faithfulness—coming together with God’s people and engaging in the ordinary means of grace—is central and crucial for a life of faithfulness.
3) Give yourself to reading God’s Word, studying God’s Word, meditating on God’s Word, and memorizing God’s Word. And of course, give yourself to believing and heeding God’s Word. This is key. So many seemingly mighty men of God who powerfully preached God’s Word ultimately showed that they didn’t really believe God’s Word because they didn’t finally heed God’s Word. It is not enough to know it, we must believe it. It is not enough to master God’s Word, we must be mastered by it. As Romans 8:13 says, “if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” And we put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit by believing and heeding God’s Word, the Sword of the Spirit.
4) Let God’s Word and the truth of Jesus, the Truth in Jesus remind you of who you are. You are a baptized disciple of Christ. The name of the Triune God is upon you. You are not your own. You’ve been bought with a price, therefore you are to glorify God, come what may. The old self, the flesh, sin, Satan, the world… That’s who you were outside of Christ. But that’s not who you are anymore. Your identity is in Christ. So consider self dead to sin and alive to Christ, because that is what and who you are.
5) Seek to hate sin and make no compromises. Thomas Watson said, “Till sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.” We must see sin for what it is, rebellion against our great God, and what, in part, nailed our Lord and Savior to the cross. The smallest sins might not seem like a big deal to us, but they are infinite offenses against our infinitely holy God. And not only that, they are the doorway to the sin that will totally wreck our lives. So instead of compromising and growing calloused, let us commit ourselves to see the bitterness of all sin, that we might enjoy all the sweetness of Christ. Let us hate sin all the more that we might love Christ all the more.
6) When we fail, when we sin (and we will), we must own it. We must seek to keep short accounts, living in a posture of repentance, recognizing sin, confessing sin, repenting of sin, and seeking reconciliation, restoration, and forgiveness with all the parties that may have been effected by our sin. Let us wage war on bitterness by confessing and addressing sin swiftly, in Truth and love.
7) Do the same for others. As 1 John 4:19 says, “We love because He first loves us.” So likewise we forgive because God in Christ has forgiven us. And if we refuse to forgive, if we harbor bitterness, anger, and hate, we cannot and should not expect to be forgiven by God for our own sin.
May the Lord grant us the mercy and grace to do all of these things and more. For without Jesus we cannot do any of them. We desperately need Jesus. For He is the ultimate way that we walk in righteousness and holiness. So may we give ourselves, by His help, to do just that, every hour of every day. Amen.