Sermon on Ephesians 4:17-5:2, 11th Sunday after Pentecost 2021 (B), "New Clothes for our new walk"

 

 

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Last week in Ephesians 4 we talked about the worthy walk vs. the unworthy walk. God made us for new life in Christ Jesus. We walk together as the body of Christ, not isolated individuals. Today, Paul exposes the harm of the unworthy walk, the old walk, or the walk of the unbelieving Gentiles. It’s bad for your health. Paul urges us to shed the old self like a dirty old clothes and put on clean, new clothes in Christ Jesus. New clothes for our new walk!

When a doctor sees a sick patient with a chronic but correctible health condition, they can’t accept the status quo and let the patient continue to suffer while they can help. If heavy drinking is destroying your liver, you’ve got to cut it out! If your diet is causing your diabetes, we’ve got to work on changing that! If you’re accustomed to old, unhealthy habits, we have to address that! Paul adds, if you’ve been a liar, you’ve got to stop lying and start speaking the truth to your neighbor (live not by lies!). If you’ve got a temper and anger issues, don’t let the sun go down on your anger. If you were a thief and got used to stealing, you’ve got to give it up. Learn to work for your own living and do good! Like a good doctor, Paul names our sins and calls us to strip them away by repentance. Off with old dirty clothes! Put on new clothes for our new walk!

He continues: if you’ve got a dirty mouth, full of “corrupting talk…” well what is that? It could be a lot of things…whatever is foul and tears people down, whatever is dirty-minded, etc. I remember the first and maybe only time I ever walked out of a movie theater. I was watching a comedy with my college buddies, and the crude humor and story was SO demeaning to women that I felt sick. It was totally insulting to women, and I had to walk out. Paul contrasts old corrupting talk to new clothes and good speech that encourages and builds people up. That kind of speech is always welcome. As the Proverb (25:11) says, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” Good words that fit the occasion are beautiful and welcome! We can’t control what other people say, but we do ask the Spirit’s power to tame our tongue and fill it with blessings, encouragement, and truth.

It’s all old walk vs. new walk, old clothes vs. new clothes. Deeply formed habits of sin, are hard to ditch. They’re the comfortable old clothes we must shed in repentance. Strip off the dirty rags and corruption of sin, and put on the new self, the new clothes in Jesus Christ. Paul names other old dirty clothes that cling to us: bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, and malice. These are all toxic. We need to ditch these vices if they are present in our lives. It’s spiritually unhealthy to be consumed by bitterness, wrath, and hatred. Shed the vices and embrace the new clothes, the new self that you are given in Christ Jesus.

New clothes for our new walk reminds me of the Marvel superhero movies popular in the last ten years or so. Paul says “put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Put off, put on. A renewing power, a new creation in these new clothes we put on. It’s like Iron Man, the superhero, who steps into this high-powered rocket suit that transforms a man of ordinary strength into superhuman. What he “puts on” transforms him and gives him abilities his normal human body didn’t have.

Similarly, the new clothes Jesus transform us into a new creation in Christ Jesus. The new clothes are made for our new worthy walk in Him. Clothed in Christ Himself, He lives and moves in us! We are united with Him in baptism, so it’s truly to His credit and His new creation, that we’re newly clothed and newly walking. Wearing these new clothes, we are transformed with new abilities to walk in true righteousness and holiness, that we didn’t have before. The big difference from the fictional Marvel movies, is that the superheroes become less human (non-human??) or superhuman by the suits they wear. They do things humans aren’t built for or made to do. But for Christians, the new clothes we wear in Christ Jesus make us more human, or fully human in the best sense. The life of Christ brings us closer and closer our true humanity designed by God. What we are made to do. This new clothes-new life in Christ Jesus, creates the best kind of human. He calls it “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

God clothing us with Christ, is restoration work. God first made Adam and Eve in His image and likeness. Sin ruined and corrupted that image and likeness in us. But now in Christ Jesus we are created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. These transformative clothes, this “active wear” or Spirit-powered suit, is our daily wear in Christ Jesus. It’s the new clothing of our new walk. Not to “strut our stuff” like a runway model, but to model the righteousness and holiness of God in all humility, gentleness, patience, and love. God’s new work in us emerges as we live these qualities. We don’t take credit, but to God be all the glory! This new life is to be fully human in the best way. To embrace the goodness, wholeness, health, and action God intended for us.

Looking at the health of our body, as individual believers and as the body of Christ, where are the injuries, the “locked joints”, sprained ankles, ulcers or other effects of sin and the old way of life clinging to us? What needs the curing ointment of God’s Word, or the healing power of Christ’s forgiveness? What needs the rebuke of the Law to drive out the stubborn old ways of our sin? What needs the healing and transformation of those new clothes in Christ?

We skipped over some of the first verses that I want to look at more closely now. So far we looked at the outer evidence in our actions and attitudes, of old clothes vs. new clothes. But Paul begins by talking about the effect on our inner life and our relationship with God. Listen: “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They 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. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” Key words jump out: futility of their minds, darkened understanding, ignorance, hardness of heart, callous, etc. And how about the relationship with God? Those who walk in the old way, old clothes are “alienated from the life of God.”

That’s frightening! He jolts them to attention: “But that is not the way you learned Christ!” He’s calling, “Wake up! Don’t slouch back into sensual, greedy, and impure living! That’s not how you were taught Christ!” This speaks to the powerful, intoxicating attraction of worldliness. Guard against your flesh! What about those words: futility, darkened understanding, ignorance, and so on? It’s saying we can’t think, reason, or even feel clearly in our hearts, when we are drugged under the influence of the world. If we’re indulging our sinful appetites, feeding greed by all the impure things we think we can stomach, we’re polluting our bodies and minds. We’re fueling an empty, futile, pointless way of life. We’re choosing the downhill stumble of the world rather than the strenuous uphill new walk of humility, gentleness, patience, and love.

Just like “new clothes” transforms us for good—the old self, the old “stinker” of our flesh, with its corrupt desires, transforms us for bad. A soiled uniform that seeps poison into our heart. Greed and dark passions of anger and bitterness seep into our flesh. And muddled dark thinking hazes our minds. These old clothes sap our strength, deplete our joy, or toxify our relationships. It might come with the heady thrill of sin and pleasure, but it wears off leaving us with the aftertaste of guilt, a stained conscience, and a heart that is thick and calloused to wrongdoing.

But 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! Then he goes back into the “put off”… “put on” part we discussed before. Baptism first “put off” your old clothes, spiritually stripping you of your old sinful flesh, and clothing you as you “put on” Christ. Ancient Christian churches used to symbolize this by literally having you undress completely before entering the water and rising up to be clothed in a clean robe to symbolize the forgiveness of sins. We keep some of that imagery without the nudity, by giving a baptismal cloth to symbolize the real gift of forgiveness in baptism, and by the pastor’s wear of the white robe, symbolizing the reality that our sins have been washed “whiter than snow.”

More than this, baptism is not a symbolic, one-time washing for beginner disciples, but it’s an ongoing daily wash of renewal that is yours as you are in Christ! It’s your gift-wrapped, personally delivered union with Christ Jesus! In the same way that a marriage is not the one time ceremony on day 1, but the continuing relationship with all its effort, till death do us part! Even more so, baptism is our continuing relationship to Jesus Christ, it’s our new walk in His new clothes. Following Him is job one! So baptism doesn’t stop washing you and stripping off old sin clothes, but as often as we return by repentance, we are renewed in that baptismal grace. We daily shed the old rags of sin and God daily clothes us with Christ for the new walk. Baptism is our “detox” to continually shed the darkening, hardening, alienating power of sin in our lives, from the inside out. From our hearts and minds to our actions.

That’s because God has not forgotten that you still daily wrestle with this reality of your old self vs. new self. He has not left you to resource yourself for your own fight, but daily He clothes you anew in Christ. Supplies you with powerfully transformative clothes, new clothes in Jesus Christ for the new walk. Delight in that walk, becoming the best kind of human, one restored in His image! All glory to Him alone, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.