Isaiah - Verse By Verse | Walking through Ephesians

Walking through Ephesians - Day 83

versebyverse | February 03, 2008 17:28

Thought: To me, any thoughts of mine that entertain an "anti-Christian" approach to life must be stopped--nipped in the bud!

Question: Has my reasoning process been revolutionized by Chist?

Scripture: Ephesians 4:17 (NIV): "So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking."

Paul has just finished speaking at length about the unity of the body of Christ and the overall goal of growth into maturity. To have a need for growth implies immaturity that must be dealt with and put aside. The immaturity that apposes God's ways is here described as the lifestyle of the gentiles, not that gentiles are more evil than Jews, but that any person left to his own devices turns away from God and in so doing, aims himself toward death and disaster. The gentiles needed saving from this directionless, Creator-less, lawless lifestyle that left them trapped in the hands of Satan. And Paul now urges new believers to "no longer live as the gentiles do." He emphasizes this personal word of advice by adding that he insists "on it in the Lord." Christianity as a way of life must characterize itself in a show of separation from worldly ways and philosophies. Actually the separation should come automatically. If we receive God inside by receiving Christ, He will begin to change us from the inside out. We shouldn't be able to help being changed! (Unless we resist His change and fight against the Holy Spirit.) So Paul is right to urge us to work at living a different lifestyle because a new believer can remain in old ways and grieve The Holy Spirit within. We have to exercise an effort to cooperate with The Holy Spirit.

The first practical area Paul addresses is that new believers should think differently. When we accept that God created everything and owns it all still, it dramatically alters our thinking. "Gentile thinking" is futile because it strikes out independently of God and will obviously end in disaster if it fails to see Who's in charge of all things! The human effort begun in "futile gentile thinking" will dissolve, be cut off, die and abruptly end when God, Who owns every soul, no longer tolerates being ignored. The "futile thinking" has produced a "vain life." So Paul commands that we recognize the futile way of thinking and give it up. Think like a Christian now! Christ-like thinking is not futile!

Prayer: Lord, make Jesus the respected "Captain" of all my thinking. In Your power I pray! Amen.