September 22, 2024
Atonement Lutheran Church
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 20 B
Sermon on
Ephesians 4:17-5:2
In the name of the Father and on the ☩ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
When I was in high school, I was part of the baseball team. To be part of our baseball team you needed to meet three criteria. One, you needed to know how to play baseball. Two, you had to have a good GPA – something like 2.5 or higher. And third, you needed to show good behaver in class and out of class. And it was inevitable that someone would join the baseball team that did not meet one of these criteria. And that was okay because if he did not know how to play, we would teach him. If he had a poor GPA, we would get him a tutor. And if he was known to have poor behave, he was encouraged to behave better, or he would not get to play. In each case, the person needed to change so he could play baseball.
And when you became a Christian, you became a new person in Christ. And as a new person in Christ, you need change, and through Christ redeeming work on the cross, are you able to change the way you think, the way you live your life, and the way you behave.
How can we live as this new person in Christ. Alone you cannot. But as a new person in Christ, Christ is with us and through Him are we able to shed the old us and put on Christ. The Apostle Paul put it like this in Ephesians 4:17–24. “ 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. ” What God is telling the Ephesians and to us today, through words of the Apostle Paul, is this. That through Christ, we are able to change our old way of thinking and living to a new way of thinking and living in Christ.
What of our thinking and living that needs to change? When you and I lived outside of Christ, before we allowed Him into our heart, our thoughts and desire were set against God and his message of salvation in Christ. We were separated from God because of our lack of understanding of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. The World wants you to rely on your own sinful understand of God, separated from the truth of God word. When we do that, our hearts become hard, empty, and unfeeling. We began to seek out all kinds of ideas and lifestyles to fill our heart, only for it to remain empty and unfeeling, or worse filled with hate and malice.
Take for example a man who was given a brand-new sports car that only take premium gas. The man does not know what kind of gas he should put into his car. He looks online at “reputable” website and talks to his friends that “know about cars” and decide to use regular gas for his car. Not knowing that using regular gas in a premium gas only tank will give his new car all sorts of problems and continued use will ruin the engine. If only the man would have read and trusted the owner’s manual, instead of relying on his own understanding, would he have avoided the damage to his car and the expensive repair bill.
When you allow Christ into your heart and are taught about His saving grace through His death and resurrection, it is like getting a brand-new sports car from our analogy. And seeking out and relying on the World to understand how to be this new person in Christ, is the same as relying on “people who know about cars”. The World will encourage us to keep our old way of thinking and living, just like continuing to us regular gas in the premium only gas tank. Living and thinking the way the World tells us to, will keep on damaging our relationship with God, just like the regular gas will damage the engine in our car analogy. Instead of going to the World about how to live as a new person in Christ, let us read the owner’s manual, the Bible.
Now, how can we act as this new person in Christ? Like thinking and living as a new person in Christ. We cannot do this alone. The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 4:25–32 “ Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. ” Simply put, because we have been forgiven through Christ are we able to forgive and treat everyone with love and kindness.
Being a new person in Christ is more than just forgiving and treating everyone with love and kindness. We need to behave differently too. How we behave is a reflection on what we value and hold true in our heart. If we say that we are a new person in Christ and still willfully give into our passions, our greed, and our devious talk then we are no better off than we were outside of Christ.
Going back to our car analogy, image that the owner of that brand new sport car did read the car’s owner manual. He now finally understands that what he was doing by putting in regular gas into his premium only gas tank, is damaging his car engine. The man now needs to be mindful of his behavior, his habit, of putting in regular gas. It is only with the knowledge that was given to him, through the own manual, that the man is able to change his behavior form using regular gas to using premium gas, or else he will be in the same situation he was in before when using regular gas.
You too, after receiving the forgiveness of sins through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ (the brand-new sports car from our analogy) need to read the Bible (our owner’s manual). And through the reading the Bible, you have the knowledge and understand that it is through Christ Jesus that we can give up our old ways of behaving that leads us into sinning against God and create new behaviors that bring you closer to God – like reading your Bible, praying to God, going to Church regularly, and attending Bible study.
And how are we to act, to behave as this new person in Christ. The Apostle Paul tells us the best way to behave as a new person in Christ. In Ephesians 5:1–2 the Apostle Paul writes, “ Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. ”
Much like how little children know how to be an adult is by looking up to and imitating their parents, so are we to look up to and imitate Christ and His love. It is through Christ and His love for us that took Him to the cross. His love for us allowed Him to take on our sins (all the wrong thing we have done toward God and others) and paid the ultimate price (the price that we so rightly deserve to pay) to forgive us of our sins. And out of His love for us, He rose from the death, to declare that our sins are forgiven and to give us eternal life in His name.
Christ is our example of how to think, live and behave in this sin filled world of ours. And Christ will give us opportunities for us to show this kind of love, Christ love of sacrificial giving. Give freely of your time, talent and treasure to your fellow believers and to those in need.
Rember, Christ so loves you that he willingly went to the cross and paid the price for your sins and rose from the dead, to give you a new life in Him. Go now in your new life in Christ with the true knowledge of God and imitating the love of Christ to all around you.
Amen.
