Finding One's Identity

I want to pick up then this morning where we left off last week finding one's identity,
part four, reading together this morning from Ephesians chapter four.
The scripture reading runs from verse 17 to 5.2, but we're only going to read the first
24 verses and then refer to the others as time goes on.
There is a bulletin insert with the verses printed out.
And I did that because in the course of the message I want you to notice a couple of things
of how things are worded there.
So feel free to take that out, if you have a pen and pencil, feel free to mark that up.
Almost all of Paul's letters, at least his general epistles, follow an identical structure.
He always begins with what is true about us in Christ and then halfway through he switches
into the practical implications of what that means for living.
He never starts by telling us how to live, he starts by telling us who we are, and out
of that comes the life that we are intended to live.
So Ephesians four begins the transition where he begins to talk about the practical implications
of what he has been teaching earlier.
We drop down to verse 17, "So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, you must no
longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking.
They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of
the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge
in every kind of impurity with a continued lust for more.
You however, speaking to the believers now, did not come to know Christ that way.
Surely you heard of him and you were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is
in Jesus.
You were taught with regard to your former manner of life to put off your old self which
is being corrupted by its deceitful desires to be made new in the attitude of your minds
and to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness."
And then he continues in that chapter as we'll see in a little bit working out the practical
applications of that in your life and mine.
And so we're going to reflect on this passage in a moment or two before we do that.
Please join me in prayer.
Father, we're so grateful that we stand on the shoulders of those who have gone on before
and that you not only love us, that you've not only given us your son, but that you've
also given us your Holy Spirit so that he can make real in our lives what in Christ
we are.
So I pray this morning, give me the words to clearly express the burden that is on your
heart for your people and Lord may that word find fertile soil in each of our hearts and
may we increasingly live out what in Christ we are so that the world may know that he
is indeed the Savior of all mankind.
So bless us in these moments together, Father.
We pray it in Jesus' name, amen.
Last week we looked together at the first of two things that the Holy Spirit does to
make real in our lives the blessings that we have in Christ Jesus.
We saw last week that he helps us know and experience our riches in Christ.
Ephesians 1 verse 3 tells us that we have been blessed in Christ Jesus with every spiritual
blessing in heavenly places.
All that God has given to Jesus is yours and mine through faith in him.
And then we saw last week that in very rapid succession in Ephesians chapter 1, Paul rattles
off three things that are true of us in Christ.
He says, first of all, we are chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, blows
one's mind.
God knew us before the world was even created.
Then Paul says we have been destined in Christ to be sons of God, that is to say, sharers
of his nature and entrusted with his kingdom.
We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.
And then Paul says we have been redeemed, that is to say, our sins have been forgiven,
God is no longer angry with us, he gives us his grace so that in every way we can experience
the fullness of his blessings.
And the job of the Holy Spirit is to help us both know and experience that reality.
He helps us know it by opening our understanding so that we can see into that spiritual realm
that that's the real world that's going to last forever.
And then he does that by coming into our hearts by the Holy Spirit and making God and his
relationship with us real.
In Romans chapter 8 you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear,
but you receive the spirit of sonship.
And by him we cry Abba or daddy father.
The spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.
And in Romans 5.5 God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who he
has given to us.
And I put it out last week, this isn't for just the super saintly Christian who somehow
has a different genetic structure from all the rest of us, no no, this is true for everyone
who abides in Christ.
And while there are moments of spiritual dryness and moments of spiritual drought and moments
of spiritual despair, there ought to be in your life and there ought to be in my life
at least moments where we know that we know that we know that God loves us, that we know
that we know that we belong to him, that our sins have been forgiven and that we are eligible
for every blessing that God can possibly pour out upon his children.
That then brings us this morning to a second major thing that we can trust the Holy Spirit
to do in our lives and that is to help us live out what in Christ we already are.
He helps us live out what in Christ we already are.
Ephesians 4, 1 begins with this verse, as a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to
live a life worthy of the calling you have received.
Listen to it again carefully, as a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life
worthy of the calling that you have received.
Three times Paul in the New Testament uses the phrase, "Live a life worthy of the calling
that you have received."
And what he means by that is that God wants us to live out what in Christ we already are.
And here is a crucial thing that God's people need to understand.
You don't become a better person, you aren't a Christian because you are changing your
life by moving from here to here.
That's what a lot of people think, Christians ought to just behave better.
That's behavior modification.
No, you become a Christian by faith in Jesus and when by faith in Jesus you are joined
to Him, God becomes your Father, the Holy Spirit becomes your companion, you are justified,
you are as if you had never seen, you are a new creation in Christ.
Now that you are a new creation in Christ, is Paul's argument, now then you need to live
a life worthy of that calling.
In other words, you need to realize in the real world what in Christ you already are.
This is your new identity, now learn what that new identity looks like.
Theologically that's known as sanctification.
If justification means I am declared righteous in Christ before God, then sanctification
means living that out.
You might well recall from previous studies that we've done on this, even the scripture
passage that we've read together, sanctification consists fundamentally of two things.
The first is putting off the old and the second is putting on the new.
Paul talks about that in the passage that we have just read together here, where he
says put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt
through deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your minds.
Put on the new nature created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
A couple of things there that I really want to underscore.
The first is that we have two natures, we have an old nature and we have a new nature.
The old nature is what we are in Adam, it's who you are as the product of your first birth
and the practices that you've cultivated in the course of your life.
But when you come to Christ, you become a new creation because Christ comes to live
in you now by the Holy Spirit and now there is another life force that is at work in your
life and in my life to change us from the inside out.
And the emphasis here is on putting off the old nature which belongs to your former manner
of life and put on the new nature created after the likeness of God.
And that's the job of the Holy Spirit.
The job of the Holy Spirit is to help us put off the old and to put on the new.
If you're in Christ and have been in Christ for some season, then your life ought to be
changing from the old to the new.
And the Holy Spirit's job is to help make that real in our life and in our experience.
That's why Paul in all his letters, as I said, starts off by telling us what in Christ we
are and then he tells us because that is who in Christ you are, now learn to live out of
the new you.
So how does the Holy Spirit do that?
Well let's see how far we can get this morning, I want to try to cover three ways in which
the Holy Spirit facilitates that process.
The first is he helps us to redefine what normal is.
He helps us to redefine what normal is, that is to say he helps change our thinking about
what is normal.
Normal refers to it in verse 23 as being renewed in the spirit of your minds.
In Romans 12 he talks about be transformed by the renewal of your mind.
I've often said normal is a relative term, normal is what you grow up with, and if you
and I were to grow up in a world where the grass was blue and the sky was green, that
would be normal.
And if somebody came along and said well that's not really the way that it's supposed to be,
the grass is supposed to be green and the sky is supposed to be blue, you know you'd
look at him quizzically and you'd say it's not true, it's not normal.
Normal is what you and I are accustomed to.
And one of the reasons, let me be very blunt about this, one of the reasons it is so hard
for many of God's people to change from the inside out is because our thinking has not
been renewed.
Our thinking has been shaped by the values of the world and our understanding of what
is normal is colored by the brokenness of sin and the deceitfulness of Satan.
Let me try to illustrate what I mean by that by taking you back to Erickson's stages of
psychosocial development because that illustrates how we get stuck in certain patterns of thinking
and in certain patterns of behavior.
I won't review all that we've covered about that previously but that has set the stage
for what I want to talk about with you today.
Let's suppose that the bulk of your life is spent on this downward spiral.
Remember I said we live in a fallen world, nobody lives a perfect life up here that leads
to blessings, most of us are back and forth.
So let's suppose now that your life was predominantly this lower tier.
Let's suppose that your legacy is that of parents who didn't want you, maybe tried to
abort you, didn't look after you, your birth was difficult, you were unwanted by your mom,
you didn't learn how to trust anybody and your life began going down this path, you
closed your heart off to authority figures in your life, nobody's ever going to tell
you what to do, you live the life of shame feeling secretly that you don't have a right
to be here, who do I think I am and all the brokenness that comes out of that, you never
feel good about trying to do something because there's somebody in your life who's always
trying to tell you who do you think you are anyway, there's nobody to encourage you, your
inferiority begins to show up, you go through life thinking you're not good for anything,
you become promiscuous perhaps, you take the road towards drugs and you end up being a
very confused person and you end up living in isolation and all the rest that ultimately
leads to a life of despair.
Now sets the stage perfectly for the gospel because the church is full of broken people
who have recognized their brokenness and who have come to Jesus, isn't that true?
So now you come to Jesus and you acquire a new nature and you're filled with a life of
God and at least for a season, it feels like the old falls away and you feel like you're
walking on water because you've encountered a whole new experience, isn't that true?
When time goes on what happens?
Almost inevitably the glory leaves and when the glory leaves what happens?
All the old stuff comes back with a vengeance.
That's where a lot of people think well I must not be a Christian after all, maybe I
just made this all up and maybe Jesus isn't real maybe and a lot of people backslide in
that place but that's why understanding this is so important.
In Christ, if we can put that back up, in Christ you are here but just because you are
here doesn't mean that you're automatically rid of the old nature and when push comes
to shove though in Christ you are entitled to all the good things of the kingdom of God,
the reality is your miserable old self is going to surface and if you're a person who
suffers with rejection it won't take you very long living in Christian community before
somebody steps on your toes and you say what a bunch of jerks, isn't that true?
And if you live a life of shame it doesn't happen very long before somebody shames you
and you say to yourself I thought these Christians were supposed to welcome me and love me and
community becomes a real issue because in your life and in my life the old patterns
are very much there and you know what makes that so difficult?
We normalize those places, we justify our sin.
Normal is what you grow up with, if you grow up feeling rejected, if you grow up feeling
less than, if you feel that you don't belong then that to you is normal and you expect
the whole world to bow to what you consider normal, isn't that true?
True for all of us, so how are we going to change?
Well the Holy Spirit has to come along and he has to redefine for us what is normal.
What I feel, what I think, what I experience may be normal from a worldly point of view,
it's no longer normal in the kingdom of God and God wants me to put off the old behavior
and he wants me to put on the new behavior but it's never going to happen unless I am
renewed in the spirit of my mind.
I have to learn what is normal from God's perspective as opposed to what is normal by
my experience.
You see how difficult that is?
And that's difficult for every one of us because this is who we are and that is why it is so
incredibly difficult for our lives to change.
So the first job of the Holy Spirit is to come along and redefine what is normal.
How does he do that?
Well he does that by opening our minds first of all to the pages of scripture.
Why does Paul write the way that he does to Christian community?
He writes to redefine normalcy.
He says this is what you used to be, this is how you used to live, this is what was
normal to you but now this is normal.
Notice how he puts it here in the passage and it's not on the screen but it's really
relevant.
I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord, this is not an option, he says, you must no
longer live like the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking, do you get that?
In the futility of their thinking.
What's wrong with the Gentiles?
Why do the Gentiles do what they do?
Because they think that what they're doing is normal, it's futile thinking.
He says you used to be like that, they're darkened in their understanding, separated
from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their
heart.
Let me make a side note here, you have to work at keeping out the light.
The reason the world is under judgment is not because they haven't had the opportunity
to discover the truth but because people love the lie rather than the truth.
I'd rather feel good about myself and doing what I want to do than submit to God and to
the authority figures that have got places in my life.
It's really that simple, isn't it?
So don't live that way any longer.
And then he goes on to say, "You, however, did not come to know Christ that way, surely
you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus."
How does our mind get renewed?
It gets renewed by submitting to the truth, first of all, the truth of scripture.
The truth of scripture will always point us to Jesus.
He is the way, the truth, and the life.
So if you want to see what is normal from God's perspective as a human being, look at
Jesus and say, "Oh my goodness, this is what God is calling me to be like conformed to
the image of Christ."
And of course, God uses other people in that context because as we see modeled in other
people's lives, a life of prayer, the fruit of the Spirit, a life of love, a life of surrender,
a life of trust, then we look at our own lives and we say, "I don't have that.
I want it."
A lot of you have heard Dave's story of how his life got changed at Willow Creek many
years ago.
One of the reasons it got changed at Willow Creek is because he saw there among the people
a love for the lost that wasn't part of his own life, and he said, "I don't have it,
but I want it.
What do I need to do to get it?"
That's how lives change.
As an aside, let me say that in this broken generation of broken families and broken marriages,
one of the most powerful testimonies that you and I can give to the world is just to
live life as ordinary Christians who love each other and who love their kids and who
have family together.
You can't believe the power of that in bearing witness to Jesus.
So what does the Holy Spirit do?
He helps us redefine what normal is.
It starts with the renewing of our mind.
Then, having renewed our thinking, then he helps us change our behavior.
Two weeks ago, you may recall, I quoted this rather difficult passage from 1 Corinthians
6, the verses 9, 10, and 11, very controversial in this day and age of changing sexual morality.
"Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived.
Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual
offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit
the kingdom of God."
Paul loves making lists and he does that because he knows the human propensity to say this
does not apply to me because that is not my sin.
It's very easy in the church to point out people's sexual sins and to look down our
noses at them and say, "Well, there are such sinners," but in the gospels, most of Jesus's
anger was not directed at sexual sinners.
It was directed towards the hypocrisy and the pride of God's people in the covenant.
Sin is seen from God's perspective.
None of it passes his muster, but notice again how the passage goes on, and that is what
some of you were.
I love that verse.
Some of you were thieves, some of you were murderers, some of you were whatever you could
be described as, as a sinner in biblical language.
Such were some of you.
But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God.
In Christ, your new creation, by the Holy Spirit, your life begins to change.
The Holy Spirit, having opened our eyes and changed our thinking, now begins to work in
our hearts and in our lives to make us hate what we used to love and to love what we used
to hate.
I mean, you know, if you were converted as an adult before you came to Christ, you didn't
think that sitting in church on a Sunday morning was a particularly attractive thing to do.
Now you may still not think that, but that's why you need a little work.
Because if you're going to spend eternity in the presence of God, you might want to
practice what that looks like.
And if you're going to spend eternity praising God, you might want to learn what that looks
like in the here and now, but that's an aside and I'll talk about that, Lord willing, some
other day.
But here's the point, now that I see what God wants me to be and my eyes have been opened
to what I am not, now God is at work both to will and to work for his good pleasure
in my life.
He changes me from the inside out to enable me to become a new creation in actual practice.
In other words, he helps me to put off the old and to put on the new.
And that is why Paul now in this passage goes on in rapid succession to give us four practical
examples of what that looks like.
Nothing terribly profound other than that it's very real in the places where we live.
Let me talk you through that as quickly as you can.
You can follow along in your sheets because I want you to understand how he structures
his epistles.
The first area then that he goes to talk about is the area of truthfulness.
And so he goes on, verse 25, "Each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully
to his neighbor, for we are all members one of another."
What's the contrast?
What's the old life there?
Put away falsehood.
What's the new life?
Speak truthfully.
Why by nature am I inclined to speak lies or fudge the truth?
And we're talking here not just about outright lies but all the fudging that we do in order
to not be found out or to make ourselves look good.
That's all part of the old life.
And I can tell you just because you're a Christian doesn't mean that you've stopped lying because
I've known an awful lot of Christians who are very good liars and who bear false witness
brazenly.
But that's not you anymore.
So don't do it.
Stop it.
God's not going to do it for you.
You have got to do it.
He will help you do it, but he's going to hold you accountable.
Speak truthfully.
The Bible's emphasis is always speaking the truth in love.
You don't have to say everything that you think, but you must speak, as we'll see later,
for the well-being of other people around you.
So there you have the old, there you have the new, he says, take care of it.
Then he brings up the area of anger.
In your anger do not sin, notice it's in quotation marks, it's a quotation from the Old Testament.
Be angry but sin not is another translation of it.
Do not the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold.
What's the old?
The old is unrighteous anger.
What's the new?
It is righteous anger.
Don't ever think that Christians ought not to be angry.
In fact, we ought to be a lot more angry about a lot of things that we're not angry about
because we love comfort in ourselves too much.
But our anger must be a righteous anger.
God gets angry, Jesus got angry, you and I are allowed to be angry about injustice and
unrighteousness.
When is anger wrong?
When it's about me and when it's just about my hurt feelings and I want to get even with
you when I, I want to take vengeance.
How do I know when I have moved from a righteous anger to an unrighteous anger?
If I wake up next morning and I'm still ticked off, then you can be pretty sure it's not
the anger of God, it is your own unrighteous anger.
I know a lot of people over the years who have done incredible damage to their families
and to their children and to the communities that they're part of because they haven't
been able to distinguish between unrighteous and righteous anger.
And the job of the Holy Spirit is to help you know the difference and to kick your behind
until you learn to not let the sun go down on your anger.
So third area that he brings up, get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger.
Well actually this is still the same area but he elaborates on this a little bit further
down in the passage when he says get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and
slander along with every form of malice.
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God
forgave you.
That's just an elaboration of be angry but sin not.
And he brings up a third area and that is in the area of possessions.
Notice how he puts it, he who has been stealing must steal no longer but must work doing something
useful with his own hands that he may have something to share with those in need.
Again notice the contrast, in the natural what do we do?
Well what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too if I can get it and get away with
it.
That's how the natural man thinks all the time.
What's the contrast?
The contrast is you work with your own hands.
Why are you working with your own hands?
Just to get rich?
To get ahead?
To be more comfortable?
Not just that, why?
So that you can share with those who are in need.
See the tremendous transformation that takes place from being a consumer where it's all
about me and being a producer who pours out his or her life for the benefit of other people
and that isn't just in areas of finances of course, it's a whole way of life.
It's no longer about self exaltation, it's a life of service like Jesus gave his life
in service for his people.
Then he brings up still a fourth area and that is the area of speech.
Do not let unwholesome talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building
others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen.
Notice the contrast.
The contrast is between using my mouth to carve out my own space, to build myself up,
to make you feel bad or to put you in your place as opposed to speaking a word that will
build you up.
Doesn't mean that I might have to speak to you harshly, doesn't mean that I might not
have to challenge you but the motivation is entirely different.
It isn't to unload my frustrations on you, it is to help you become everything that God
wants you to be.
Later on in 5-4 he says the same thing, there should be nor should there be obscenity, foolish
talk or coarse joking which are out of place but rather thanks giving.
There again you have the contrast.
My mouth is not to be used to make something out of me or to establish my place in the
world because my place is already established by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He will take care of me and because He is going to take care of me I can take what He
gives me and blesses you with it.
So what does the Holy Spirit do?
The Holy Spirit helps us experience the love of God.
The Holy Spirit helps change our lives first by renewing our understanding of what is normal.
Then by helping us to actually put to death the old and bringing about the near.
Then I want to underscore how serious a business this is from God's perspective.
Because God is building a kingdom and He is inviting you and me to share in His holiness
and Jesus has done everything that He can possibly do to make this transformation take
root in our hearts and in our lives.
Sometimes these changes will happen almost on the fly.
You won't even be aware that it's happening and you wake up one day and you say, "I haven't
sworn in a long time.
I haven't taken the name of the Lord in vain in a long time.
I haven't had that same urge for my addiction in a long, long time."
And you say, "I don't even know how that happened."
But sometimes it's hard work and sometimes the tiger keeps coming back and it keeps coming
back and it keeps coming back and when it does it's only because it is more deeply rooted
in the surface sins that we commit and it's like building a house or repairing a house.
The shingle blows off your roof, you get a ladder and you climb up there and you put
the shingle back on and your roof is fixed.
But if the rafter is sagging because the rafter is crooked or broken, well then it's more
work because you've got to open up the roof and you've got to fix the rafter and you've
got to resurface, re-roof the roof.
It's a job but it can be done.
But now let's suppose the wall is bulging and the house is beginning to sag, it's a
lot bigger job because now you've got to take the roof off and you've got to fix the wall.
But now let's suppose it goes all the way back to the foundation and the foundation
is crooked.
Now for your life to change, God has to take you back to the very foundation and heal the
foundation so that he can rebuild your life for his glory.
And that's why sometimes healing seems quick and simple and easy and for other people it
seems to take forever because it all depends on what went crooked where.
But here's the good news of the gospel.
Whether it's just a shingle that's come off the roof, or a rafter that needs to be fixed,
or a wall that needs to be pulled back together, or a foundation that needs to be dug up and
replaced, God in Christ has done it all.
And by the power of his Holy Spirit there is nothing but nothing to stop him from presenting
us before the throne of his glory with rejoicing.
So let me end this morning with this quotation then from Ephesians 5, 25, 26, and 27.
It occurs in the context of marriage but applies here Christ loved the church and gave himself
up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word
and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other
blemish but holy and blameless.
We have been destined in Christ to be holy and blameless and if we will but surrender
ourselves to him and to the processes that he uses in Christian community to change us
from the inside out, we will more and more look like Jesus.
And all of that will be preparation for the wedding feast of the Lamb when we are presented
to him collectively as a bride, beautifully adorned for her husband so that we can enter
into the glorious inheritance that God has for his people.
And my prayer is that God makes that so real by his word and spirit that like the apostle
Paul we can say I haven't arrived yet because nobody ever arrives there fully in this age.
But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, I push forward for the prize of the upward
call of God in Christ Jesus my Lord and what a joy it will be to God the Father when he
can hold up the church to all the principalities and powers in the universe.
Those that have wondered how God's love and God's mercy could ever get together and those
who have wondered how God could ever take the sons and the daughters of Adam and conform
them to the image of Christ and God is going to say look what my love has accomplished,
I have transformed a people to whom I can give my eternal kingdom because they love
me the way that I have loved them.
Amen.
Let's pray together, stand.
Father, here's our prayer this morning.
Our prayer is first that we may be transformed by the renewal of our minds.
Our definition of normal is so determined by who we are, by how we were brought up,
by what we have experienced, and by the pressures of society all around us.
And Lord we're so much a part of that whole system that we can't see the forest for the
trees.
We need you to show us the truth in Jesus.
So help us to lay aside our conceit.
Help us to lay aside our preconceived notions.
Help us to lay aside thinking that we are God's answer to every question in the universe.
Help us to know Lord that the best of the best of the best of us have but a vague understanding
of what you consider righteousness and holiness and beauty and truth.
As we humble ourselves before you, may you speak into the deep places of our hearts and
minds and give us revelation about who you are, what you've done, and what you want.
Help us to learn a new normal.
And then Lord having learned a new normal in very specific areas of life, convict us
of those places where our behavior needs to change.
Show us those places where we love falsehood more than truth.
Those places where we justify and rationalize our anger and the damage that that does to
others around us.
Help us to distinguish between righteous and unrighteous anger.
And then Lord, help us to sanctify our speech so that it may lead to a building rather than
tearing down.
May our mouths be given over to you in praise and thanksgiving and as a tool to bless the
people around us.
And Lord, any other area where sin dominates, break its power.
And help us to believe that you love us regardless because in Christ we are already made perfect.
But because we are already made perfect in Christ, we can afford to let you do the deep
work in our hearts to transform us from the inside out.
So give us hope, give us encouragement, give us patience and generosity with each other
knowing that you who began a good work in us will bring it to completion in the day
of Jesus Christ.
So Lord, help us afresh to put everything on the altar.
Take our lives and let them be consecrated Lord to thee.
For your glory in the name of Jesus, amen.