Don’t Let the Old Man In!
17 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. 18 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. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
20 That, however, is not the way of life you learned 21 when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
Ephesians 4:17-24 (NIV)
The Ephesian recipients of Paul’s letter probably came from a variety of backgrounds, but as residents of Ephesus they would have been immersed in a deeply religious and polytheistic society. Their understanding of religion may have involved public observances in the Temple of Artemis, or professed loyalty to Rome. What they heard in Paul’s words was a call to a different kind of life, a life that was to be lived according to a different set of ethical and moral standards. Paul told them they needed to change the attitude of their minds; they needed to think differently about how they lived their lives because they now knew about true righteousness.
Jesus said of himself, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) At the heart of Paul’s words is the idea that people must change when they become convinced of the truth of the gospel. A rational person will act in accordance with objective truth – truth that is based in the properties of reality rather than personal beliefs and observances. Jesus said, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46).
We are in desperate need of absolute truth in our world today. We have taken the idea of relative truth to be a sort of absolute truth of its own. While not many would claim that the laws of physics are a matter of personal belief, virtually every other kind of truth is seen to be a socially-constructed personal choice.
The truth of God is not a matter of personal belief. It’s an objective reality. Being convinced of this, we need to change the attitude of our minds.