In 1962 the "Australian Social Studies" magazine, distributed to school children had as one of its first articles "The Christian Way of Life". To quote from the top of the article: "This is a picture of Christ through whose teachings we began a new age - the Christian era. Two thousand years ago, a little babe was born in a stable at Bethlehem ..." and on it goes. Indeed the first five articles focus on Jesus or contain references to Christianity.
I also have here the 1998 "Get a Life: Your Free Survival Guide" also distributed to school kids. No where is there even a mention of religion, let alone Christianity. Indeed for the purposes of comparison, the first five articles of this magazine focus on getting a job, getting more education, getting more money and keeping it, getting a house, and an article titled "I live therefore I shop". Getting "stuff". To quote one article: "More than ever, young women like you want to have it all. In fact, like most of the guys out there, you’re now demanding, and expecting, that you will have it all!" Because if stuff makes you happy, we need all the stuff we can get our hands on ... don’t we?
Now this is not to say that in 1962 the planet was on a par with the New Jerusalem, but we can see from this small example the philosophical shift of society away from biblical truths to the new religion of consumerism and of self absorption. We haven’t squeezed God to the edges of society, we’ve actually replaced Him.
We have to recognise we’re being engulfed by a society that’s living a lie. A lie that states that you are defined by what you do, that happiness is found in whatever feels right for you, that spiritual bliss is found in any aisle of the spiritual supermarket, that satisfaction is found in the abundance of stuff, and that truth is relative. Friends, the Truth is Jesus.
Paul was writing to a group of Christians in Ephesus who, just like us, were struggling with similar problems. As we can see in verse 19, their decaying culture was one of greed for stuff and of sexual "freedom". As a major trading centre, many different social, spiritual, and religious ideas would have been floating around - there were many beautiful temples dedicated to a wide range of gods. But it was the temple dedicated to Artemis that dominated the city. In fact this temple has been classified as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The people of Ephesus regarded the city’s relationship to Artemis in terms of a divinely directed covenant relationship, and it had strong ties to the practice of magic arts and the occult.
Paul tells this group of Christians there that the Truth is not found in the lie that that their culture was perpetrating. Indeed most of the readers of this letter would have been involved in this sort of lifestyle before they became Christians. They had seen the futility of this way of living. They had recognised that this culture didn’t provide the answers, and had repented of their past lives and followed the one true God. The Truth was not found in stuff or within themselves: it is only found in Jesus. Paul warns his readers not to replace Him with their old habits, the habits of those around them.
Why do we so concern ourselves with material possessions when the Truth is in Jesus?
To live in the Truth is not to just tack on the church thing, just as some Ephesians were adding Jesus to their collection of gods, but it requires a revolution. Paul reminds the Christian church there how they came to be Christians. He tells us in verse 22 to put away your former way of life. In "The Message" Eugene Peterson puts it like this: "Everything - and I do mean everything - connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it!". Paul is not referring to a gentle "Christianisation" here but to a complete removal. You don’t get rid of the problem of a toxic waste dump by laying a fresh layer of dirt: you have to dig up the whole thing and remove it. It is a decisive act.
However it is only when you decide to make this complete break from the past and give God the driver’s seat and allow Him to access all areas of you that He can begin the work of renewing your mind. How can we have this renewing of the mind? Spending more time with God is a good place to start.
Back at High School I used to play in the school footy team. A friend of mine who also played for the team had really smelly feet. Now he thought that if he changed his socks often enough then he would be able to get rid of the smell. But when we went into the change rooms after the match we all knew to stay away from Fletch: there was something toxic about those feet of his.
Just as it was useless for Fletcher to change his socks but do nothing about the real cause of the problem, it is useless for us to try and not do those things that "Christians don’t do" - if we are still hanging on to our old self with its corrupt and deluded lusts we will only run ourselves into the ground. Spiritual maturity does not come about by what we do. It is by faith that we do the scary thing of letting go, and allowing God to transform us from the inside - to make us new again. Of course we must remember that this is only possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul wrote to the church in Rome that "if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him." (Romans 6: 8) We just need to accept that. It is this renewal and spiritual growth that will take a lifetime to live out, as we grow closer to our Father.
Then as Paul continues in the letter to the Ephesians we read in verse 24 that we need to clothe ourselves with the new self: a deliberate action reflecting the inner change that God has brought about. This act, in a similar sense to the putting away of the old self is also a decisive act.
In one sense we are called to put on a new self, but in another sense we’re returning to what we were created to be in the first place. We were created to be in Christ - in a relationship with God from the start. Because of the Fall, humanity has become skewed and has sought to fill the God shaped vacuum with just about anything. It is only when we fill this vacuum with God that we can even start to return to the way He intended for things to operate.
So to recap, first we must get rid of our old way of life, second, we must let God change and renew us, and thirdly we must put on the new self which reflects on the outside what God is doing on the inside.
So what a challenge! We are called to clothe ourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
"The most important person in the world is you" goes the ad. This is the foundation of the lie. The concept of sin is going our way, not God’s way, because we know better, we’re more important. The world says "me first": get what ever you can. Jesus said "you first" when he had strips of flesh ripped off his back, a crown of thorns pushed into his head, nails driven into his wrists and ankles, and before he died asked his Father to forgive his murderers.
In chapter five verse one and two, we can see that it is Jesus who provides the standard. He is the one true example of righteousness and holiness.
This is what love is all about. It is this other person centred love that is the basis of the unity of believers in the body of Christ. Selfishness has no place in the Christian worldview.
So now in verse 25 Paul gets specific. He tells us not to speak falsely to each other. If we are in Christ, living together as one body, the church, with Christ as the head, then we’ll only be lying to ourselves.
When was the last time you twisted something around to make it sound a little bit better in order to cover yourself? Don’t do it!
"Be angry, but do not sin". How many times have you held onto and pushed down a resentment against someone, only to see yourself either do something stupid when it rushes back out, or feel miserable because that’s all you think about? Satan must really be sitting back and enjoying the show to see the body of Christ trying to self-destruct.
When can anger not be a sin? Having an other person focused love as a starting point is a key element.
Society tells us that we get in order to keep, but Paul tells us that giving is the motive for getting. It is this other person centred love that is the basis for community.
When Paul says in verse 29 "let no evil talk should come out of your mouths", he’s not just talking about saying "naughty words" around the back of the shelter shed. No what he’s talking about is gossip, rumours and backbiting. These are the things that are most likely to rip a church apart.
But when was the last time you came across a juicy bit of gossip that you just had to pass on. Did it need to be passed on? Did it benefit the recipient? Did it build up the other person? Did it build up the church? If it doesn’t achieve these things keep it to yourself.
All of these things grieve the Holy Spirit. When you become a Christian you receive the Holy Spirit, and your body becomes His temple. The seal represents ownership, a guarantee of salvation, a trademark. As a Christian you have the privilege and the responsibility of representing God everywhere you go. Do you wake up in the morning and say to yourself: "God is living in me and today I am His ambassador on the planet"? Can we stand together with followers of Jesus around the world and say "we are representing God"? Can we stand together as the members of the one body here at St. Theodore’s and say to Wattle Park "together we are representing God"?
Our calling, indeed our new nature, is to be righteous and holy: together we are to be imitators of God.
Forgiveness is the means by which we can come to God and to each other, love is what keeps us together and it is our striving to become more like God that draws us closer to what we are created to be - to live righteous and holy lives in unity with other believers in the body, with Christ as the head.
Be who you were created to be. My friends, we were created to live in the Truth - to be in Christ. As we live in this decaying world, let’s together fix our gaze on our Father. Let’s imitate God and allow Him to transform us to become more like Himself. Together let’s take Jesus as our model as we strive to live sacrificially for one another. That is our challenge, and it will take more than the rest of your life to live out that calling.
Doug Allison
