…you have heard about Him [Christ] 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…
Ephesians 4:17-32
Eternal punishment awaits all those who refuse to bow the knee to Jesus, so we understandably think of hell when we consider the wrath of God. In His earthly ministry, Jesus preached more on Hell than He did on Heaven. Hell is the ultimate of the Lord’s judgment on the unrepentant; but, sinners begin to feel the Creator’s wrath before their deaths. Though God takes no pleasure in the final judgment of sinners, it pleases God to give people over to their sin as Paul writes in Romans 1:18-32. Unless God sovereignly intervenes to rescue a sinner, that sinner pursues his wicked ends with abandon. Sinners who have been given over to their desires are in the worst place of all in this world, for sin debases the mind, making it easy to deny the conscience and continue in willful ignorance of God’s law. Ignorance does not excuse sin, for humanity chose blindness in Adam, and all his descendants continue to choose it each time they deny Jesus. Ignorance gives way to callousness toward the things of God, an insatiable appetite for impurity. Christ breaks the power of this lust for evil in His followers, allowing them to walk in the ways of His lordship. Paul makes the very point, if we have learned Christ, we understand that we cannot return to life as we lived it in Adam. We understand that we have discarded Adam for Jesus, who gives us a love for the Creator’s holy will. Learning Jesus means that we turn to Him as our living Lord in order that His teaching might shape us. Ultimately, it is nothing less than submission to Christ’s righteous rule. Learning Christ is a lifelong process of denying the self and taking up His cross in humble repentance, faith, and obedience. Our verses today emphasize both the decisive change when we submit to Jesus the first time in faith and continued obedience in the Christian life. Discipleship, then, is a lifelong process of relying on the grace of God to enable us to put our sin to death by the power of the Holy Spirit. A well-known theologian has written, “He whose life differs not from that of unbelievers, has learned nothing of Christ; for the knowledge of Christ cannot be separated from the mortification of the flesh.” Scripture never asserts that sinless perfection is attainable before we are glorified, but it is also clear that those who have no desire for holiness have not been converted. As we hate our sin, repent, and strive to put it to death, we prove that we belong to Jesus.
Source: S C Ball February 3, 2024
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