A Walk through Ephesians - Pt 17

 

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. 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, to 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. (Ephesians 4:17–24 ESV).

 

I have often heard people exhort believers to “let go and let God.” There is a great danger in this advice. It can lead to an entirely passive belief for their sanctification (growth in holiness). The best intentions lie behind this advice. After all, we know that our works contribute nothing to our righteous standing before the Lord (cf. Galatians 2:15–16; Ephesians 2:8–9); thus, many people think that giving ourselves a role in sanctification comes perilously close to denying grace.

 

Certainly, it is easy to confuse the process of sanctification with the once-for-all declaration of justification. Even Protestants might believe, implicitly, that our works secure our place in heaven or make God love us more than believers who are “further behind” in their sanctification. To avoid this problem, we simply need to maintain the biblical distinction between justification and sanctification. It is unnecessary to deny our role in sanctification altogether. God’s justification of a person, the starting point of Christian living, relies solely on the work of Christ (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:21). Sanctification, as our reading explains, requires cooperation between the Lord and individual believers.

 

God’s “job” is to renew our minds. Note the passive voice (v. 23): we are to “be renewed [by the Lord].” He performs the work of inward transformation, renewing our affection for Him and giving us an ever-deepening understanding of His ways. The Lord works through the circumstances of life and the path of our journey to accomplish this, but only He can perform the work of transformation. The Apostle Paul encouraged the Philippians to be grateful for the Lord’s work, for His power guarantees that we will fulfill our role and advance in holiness (Philippians 2:12–13).

 

Our job is to live out God’s transforming work and “put on the new self,” which means putting His ways into practice. In other words, it is to live in conformity to Christ. Gregory of Nyssa was one of the fourth-century Cappadocian Fathers who helped codify the language of orthodox Trinitarianism. He comments on Ephesians 4:24: “There is but one garment of salvation, namely, Christ. Hence the “new man” created in God’s likeness is none other than Christ. One who has put on Christ has thus put on the new person created in God’s likeness”. That is how we achieve balance in our sanctification!