New Clothes (Ephesians 4:17-24)
5 billion.
100 thousand.
Every year, in Singapore, $5 billion dollars is spent on fashion. 100 thousand fashion purchases are made every day. Which comes out to 1 purchase every second.
Click. Click. Swipe. Swipe.
5 billion.
100 thousand.
There is a reason why the fashion industry is a $5 billion dollar industry. These companies do not just sell clothes. They sell promises. They promise that outward change leads to inward change. One CEO said, “We don’t just sell clothes... We sell empowerment, confidence, and a sense of community.” Another said, “Fashion is about confidence, joy, and inclusivity.”
One denim company has a slogan for its jeans saying, “For successful living.” Could you imagine if they changed that slogan to simply say, “For your legs...” ? It would not have quite the same ring, would it?
Across the fashion industry, their promise is clear: Change what you wear, and you can change who you are.
Does It? But is that true? Does it work? Does it last?
Can new clothes make someone new?
Oh, friends, fashion trends change quickly, don’t they? Just pull up some family videos from half a generation ago and you are bound to have a good laugh.
But as quickly as fashion changes. Our feelings change even faster. Which is why 1 click, or 1 swipe later, we are buying something new. Outside-to-inside change is no real change at all. It is a costume—threaded with false promises that will unravel soon.
If we want true change, real change, deep and lasting change, e’re going to need more than a new outfit. We are going to need a new heart.
We have been working our way through the book of Ephesians — section by section, week by week — over the last few months now, and we have just crossed into the second half.
As most of us are familiar with by now, Ephesians is structured in two halves. Chapters 1 to 3 unpack gospel doctrine — how God saves His people and unites us together in Christ. And Chapters 4 to 6 unpack gospel living — how we display the gospel by our new lives together in Christ.
With a strong and timely word last week, Eugene brought us through the midpoint into the second half of the book. And today we will continue to follow Paul’s argument here in Chapter 4.
And here is the good news. Paul is not trying to sell the Ephesians on some change they need to make. That is not what’s going on here. Read chapters 1–3 — God has changed them by His grace!
No, now Paul asserts that because God has changed them, it is time to walk it out. They have been made new with new hearts and new lives. After all, “If anyone is in Christ, the old is gone. Behold, the new has come.” There are no costumes on this side of the cross.
Gospel people are changed people.
Our text has one argument, in two halves. Here’s the argument: You cannot believe this gospel and stay the same. If you have been saved by the gospel, then you have been changed by the gospel.
Or, to put it very simply: Gospel people are changed people.
As we walk through the passage, I pray we would be filled with awe at the grace of God in the gospel — that in Christ, we are not only forgiven but we are made new.
Leave Your Old Life (Eph 4:17-19)
This is a bleak scene. As Paul exhorts the Ephesians to leave their old lives, he reminds them of what their old lives used to look like. These verses are not easy to swallow. They are full of misery and ruin. But let us not think lightly of God’s Word or of sin.
You can think of it like a pendulum on a clock. Make light of sin and you will make light of God’s grace. Be serious about sin, serious the way the Bible is and you will marvel all the more that God would ever be so gracious to save you or me.
Let us take it one phrase at a time. First Paul says, “Now I say and testify in the Lord... (Eph 4:17a)” He could have just said, “Now I say,” or even, “Now I testify”—turning up the heat a bit.
But he slows down to say both. “Now I say... and testify”... I insist on this, he says, because this is of grave importance. In fact this is so significant for Paul, that he invokes the Lord’s name. He testifies, “in the Lord.” This is a phrase Paul uses about 40 times throughout his epistles. When he uses it, it does not make the next sentence any more inspired than the one that came before.
This is all God’s Word.
But when Paul uses this phrase, “in the Lord” it does two things. Firstly, it elevates the serious and urgent tone, as we’ve just discussed. Secondly, it connects the testimony directly to the Lord Jesus Himself. Paul asserts that this is not just what he thinks, or what he got second-hand. But that the Risen Lord Jesus is the one who is authorizing this testimony.
For us, it is like a cup of cold water to the face. Just in case we are starting to get a little sleepy, halfway through this book. Paul says it is time to sit up and it is time to lean in because what Paul’s about to say, he really wants us to hear.
That is what he wants us to hear. That is the first half of his argument: If you have been saved by the gospel, then you have been changed by the gospel. So you have to leave your old life.
You used to live like those who do not know the gospel. But that is not who you are! Not anymore! So you cannot live like that anymore! “You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do.”
As we continue through this letter, that is going to be a key image Paul returns to as he describes the Christian life. It is not a sprint. It is not a nap. It is a walk.
He used it at the pivot of the book back in Ephesians 4:1. As he urged them toward unity. And now, he picks it again in Ephesians 4:17 as he’s urging them toward purity.
Brothers and sisters, I hope we understand that Christianity is not just a set of ideas. It is not just a label to be registered by the MOM. Christianity is a walk.
It is about actually following Jesus. It is going to change the way we live.
Paul used this term “walk” two times in Ephesians 2, if you remember. He said that once, we were dead in the trespasses and sins, “in which we once walked.” That is what our way of life was characterized by — following sin.
But God, who is rich in mercy, changed us from the inside out! He made us alive, even when we were dead in our sins. By grace, through faith, he created us anew in Christ Jesus for good works “that we should walk in them.”
So how’s your walk going? How was it last week? Following Jesus? Or Sin? Were you following Jesus — and getting tripped up by sin? Or were you following sin — and getting tripped up by Jesus? A guilty conscience will not do you any good if you just persist in following sin.
Gospel people do not walk like that. We do not walk like we used to. Yeah, we get tripped up. Yeah, we got so many bruises, we need lots of help and we are walking with a limp. But gospel people follow Jesus. That is where we are walking! We are walking with Him!
One last note on Ephesians 4:17. Did you catch how Paul summarizes the walk of the Gentiles? He says that they walk, “in the futility of their minds.” Now, to be clear, Paul loves Gentiles. He is in prison on their behalf (Eph 3:1). In no way is this a statement of prejudice. He is just summarizing what it is like to have life without truth. It is “futile,” he says.
God made our minds to know truth.
For all of us, God made our minds to know truth. That is what He gave us minds for! And apart from Christ, the mind fails to achieve that very purpose. We might know some specific truths — like 2 + 2 = 4. But we cannot trace those truths back to God, or even more fundamentally, we cannot understand the supreme and eternal truths He has made our minds to know — namely, the truths of the gospel. The natural mind cannot discern these truths. They are folly to him. They are spiritual truths, and they must be spiritually discerned. So the natural mind, in its fallen state, is rendered futile.
So here is what this means. If you are in Christ, you cannot think like you used to. You have to put off those old patterns of thought. After all, repentance, most simply, is a change of mind. So as we follow Jesus, we have to leave behind our old lives and our old minds.
That is Paul’s exhortation — the first half of his argument — it is what they are not to do. But before he reminds them what they are to do. He wants to make sure they understand that they are not who they used to be! They have been changed!
He is pushing their pendulums to help them marvel at the gift of salvation and dread the gruesome realities of sin. Do not go back to this.
Keep in mind that these verses describe sin from God’s perspective. So yes, the language is intense but it is accurate. God is holy. This is sin for what sin really is. God’s sight is always clearer than ours.
In Ephesians 4:18, Paul describes their desperate state — “They are...”. And in Ephesians 4:19, Paul describes their downward spiral — “They have become...”. State to spiral. Ephesians 4:18 is true of all sinners, apart from Christ. Ephesians 4:19 is where sin goes — when it is taken off the leash.
Let us start with Ephesians 4:18 — “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.” One verse before, he summarized their state as futility of the mind. And unpacking that further he says that “they are darkened in their understanding.” Their minds cannot grasp the truth because their minds cannot perceive the truth — they are mentally blind and without understanding.
This leads to their being “alienated from the life of God” — he says it is “because of the ignorance that is in them.” — that’s the mental blindness again. In their sin, they are blind and dead and alienated from the only One who can give them life. And if this sounds cruel, or mean — notice what it is due to. It is “due to their hardness of heart.”
God is never the direct cause of sin. God never makes anyone sin or tempts anyone to sin. No, God hates sin. He hates how it mars His image in us. He hates the pain it causes. Make no mistake. Their darkness and their deadness is due to their hardness of heart.
O, church. Let us not grow hard-hearted. Let us be on guard against this — especially in hard times. As Hebrews exhorts us let us not be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Let us leave hardness and darkness and deadness behind us. Beloved, we are people of the gospel! That is not who we are.
So that is their state. Now for their spiral — “They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. (Eph 4:19)”
Oh, this is just heartbreaking. Gut-wrenching. Horrifying.
Sin never satisfies. It always takes more than it gives. It will lure you and entice you, just a little bit at a time, but it will not stop until it has devoured you.
This is what our text describes as becoming “callous.” Numb. Beyond pain. This is the equivalent of what Scripture also describes as a “seared conscience.”
These verses share much in common with Romans 1. And between the two, these are some of the most awful descriptions of sin in the Bible. In Romans 1, it says that when this spiral hits rock bottom, God gives them up to their desires. And here, describing the same tragedy from the other angle, it says they have “given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” They are insatiable in their quest for sin.
This is what Screwtape calls: “An ever-increasing craving … for an ever-diminishing pleasure.” And at this point of “becoming calloused” — it is all craving, no pleasure — they cannot even enjoy their old sins anymore! They are greedy to find anything, just to make them feel something.
Before we move ahead: two quick words. One for the believer, one for the unbeliever.
If you are here today and you are a believer, I would imagine this kind of section could bring about two different responses.
Some of you would be reading this, nodding your head, thinking “Yep, I remember what that was like. That was my life. I do not want that anymore. I am not turning back.”
And then for others of you, it may have felt difficult for you to map your story onto these dark and intense verses —especially if you came to faith as a child. I pray these verses would help us all have a clearer understanding of the doctrine of conversion.
Theologically, Ephesians 4:18 is where we were before Christ. That was our condition. That was our state. For all of us —whether we grew up going to Sunday school, or whether we had a rough life before Christ.
If you grew up believing in Jesus from the time you were young, praise God for that testimony! It is the testimony I pray my young boys would have. God was merciful to spare you from that spiral of Ephesians 4:19.
But for you, or for the drug-dealing, bank-robbing, murderer—all of us were born in Ephesians 4:18. Theologically, that was your state and this is your testimony. This is your old life that God saved you from.
So for all the gospel people in the room, I pray that passages like this would help us see how all our testimonies share this same root.
We were hard in our hearts, dark in our minds, and dead in our sins. But God gave us grace in Jesus.
The narratives are wonderfully different. But the theology is the same.
And if you are here today and you are not yet a Christian, we are delighted you are here. You are welcome to any of our public services anytime. And we want to be clear. We are not a marketing agency. We are not trying to package something nicely so that you will buy it. We want to treat you like adults — with honesty and clarity — and to open up this same book that we open together with you.
This is what the Bible says about you. You are in a dangerous and desperate state.
We are not here because we are any better than you. We are here because we are desperate. Because we know what that was like and because in Jesus, we have been forgiven and changed by grace.
You were made to know the truth. But you — like all of us — have rejected it.
And because, in your futility, you could never ascertain your way to the truth. Truth came down to you. Not just in a set of ideas, but in a Person.
Leave your old life, believe in Him and live your new life today.
Jesus Christ lived the perfect life without sin. He died on a cross to pay for the sins of all who would turn and trust in Him. He rose from the grave, proving that payment was paid in full. He ascended to heaven. He is coming back soon. And now He commands all people, everywhere to turn away from sin — to leave their old lives behind, and to come to him with empty hands of faith. Only He can forgive you. Only He can save you. Only He can change you.
Leave your old life, believe in Him and live your new life today.
If you want to talk more about that, talk to me after the service, or talk to the person next to you. We would love to get to know you and to help you follow Jesus.
Live your new life (Eph 4:20-24)
Praise God the gospel changes people, amen?!
Praise God that we are not who we used to be! Praise God that we have new life now — and that even more is yet to come.
Let us start with Ephesians 4:20 — “But that is not the way you learned Christ!” “But” shows the contrast. We cannot live our old lives. Not anymore. Because gospel people are changed people. And notice the first thing he says that has changed. It is that we have “learned Christ!”
It is a bit of an odd phrase, isn’t it? Not to learn about Christ or to learn teachings from Christ, but to “learn Christ!”
Brothers and sisters, let us not forget that the Christ we sing about and talk about and gather around is the Risen Christ! He’s a living Person! So we have learned Him! Because He’s alive! And we have a real relationship with Him!
Remember how Paul summed up the old life? He described it as the “futility of [the] mind.” This is what the mind was made for! To learn Christ!
The picture here is of a school — or of a university — where Christ is the center and subject of all instruction. This is what the new walk looks like. Sin was our old master but now we are mastered by Christ!
He is the subject of the teaching. And He is the substance of it too. Ephesians 4:21a says, “... assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him...”.
This is not a question in Paul’s mind. That is not what he means by “assuming” here. He is asserting that he knows that they have “learned Christ” — so He knows they have “heard about him and were taught in Him.”
Do you notice all the mind-oriented language here? “To learn”... “to hear”... “to be taught.” It is a deliberate contrast from the “futility” and “ignorance” and “darkness of understanding” before.
This is the new life. This is life with truth. And notice where the truth is — “as the truth is in Jesus” (Eph 4:21b).
So yes, we can say with Spurgeon, that “Christ is both the sum and substance of the gospel.” We can say with Paul, that “Christ is all and in all.”
In this university, Christ is the top of every syllabus and at the bottom of every footnote. And because His riches are unsearchable (Eph 3:8), we are going to be studying for all eternity, forever mining the depths of Christ and His gospel. No diploma is no problem when you have Christ, amen?
Interestingly, Ephesians 4:21 is the only place in Ephesians where Paul simply mentions Jesus’s name without a title. No Christ Jesus or Lord Jesus. Just... Jesus.
It seems this is deliberate. Because he does not want us to forget that this Jesus, who is “the way, and the truth, and the life” is a real, historical Jesus. He lived, and died, and rose again in space and time. These events really happened.
So we can know that He really is the truth. After all, “the truth is in Jesus.”
So given that Paul knows these Ephesians have learned Christ and are under His tutelage. To close out this section, he reminds them of lessons they would have already known. He is telling them, “Don’t turn back! Keep walking...c’mon, y’all are gospel people... you know how to do this! You know how to walk with your Lord!”
That is good for us to keep in mind as we finish out these last few verses. These are not bare commands. Paul is not giving them three steps to level up their spiritual game.
He is saying... “No no no... You have been saved by the gospel, and you have been changed by the gospel”. Remember chapters 1–3? Yeah, God did that! Now beloved, having learned Christ, let us keep walking this out!
So let us put these three in motion. But let us remember that they are already in motion, if we are really in Christ. Gospel people are changed people, amen?
There is a sequence here, of sorts. But in a walk. The lifting of the heel and raising of the foot and placing it ahead are three movements, in one motion as we might say. So yes, there is a sequence to the putting off and being renewed and putting on, but they make one recurring motion. This is the motion of the new life... the new walk...
It’s already begun. We just have to keep in motion. We have to keep walking with Jesus. Here’s how.
Let’s take each movement one at a time. Let us read Ephesians 4:22 — “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires…”
This is where he began, up in Ephesians 4:17-19. Because this is where new life begins. It begins with repentance. This is a turning away of our old lives and a tossing off of them, like an old, dirty set of clothes. Romans 6:6 says that “our old self was crucified with him.”
That has happened. Past tense. If you have been saved by the gospel, then that decisive act of repentance — called conversion — has already taken place. Your old self is dead. It does not belong to you anymore — you have been changed! You are like Lazarus. You were dead. Jesus called your name forth, and gave you life. And then He said, “Take off those grave clothes—and get rid of them—that’s not who you are anymore.” Keep those grave clothes on and they will whisper lies to you. They will try to corrupt you, with deceitful desires. Wear them long enough... and you’ll start to believe that the gospel has not changed you at all.
So, beloved, what do you need to put off? What “belongs to your former manner of life” — that you are letting linger?Put it off... The pornography. The gossip. The bitterness. The anger. Put it off. Put it off today! That is not who you are —not anymore. So live your new life and start living today.
Next, he says, Ephesians 4:23 — “and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds...”
Gospel people have learned Christ. We have heard and were taught. God has given us new minds for our new lives —and these minds are not futile. And even still, our minds still need to be renewed! We are forgetful! And easily distracted! And we are not in glory yet.
This is why we cannot be conformed to this world, but we must be transformed by the renewal of our minds. We must think God’s thoughts after Him.
And oh beloved, He has been so gracious to give us His Word. We got to soak our minds with Scripture. That is the only way we are going to be able to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
But we have to do so humbly. After all, right at the center of this motion God reminds us that He’s the one who has to do it.
The One who made us and remade us, renews us.
Do you see how the verb is passive? The One who made us and remade us, renews us. To be renewed — by definition— means we cannot do it ourselves.
Brothers and sisters, I would simply implore you, as you put this in motion to barricade your life with Scripture — where you just cannot run from it, even if you tried to! It is just everywhere you turn! Hang it on your mirror, for when you are brushing your teeth. Set it to autoplay for when you jump in your car. Make it your phone background and your computer background and your iPad background and your Zoom background, if you have to. Text church members, and ask them to remind you with Scripture. And then tell those church members that you are going to send them Scripture, so that you are on the hook too!
Barricade your life with Scripture so it is everywhere you turn.
Only God can renew the spirit of our minds by His Spirit through His Word. But we can posture ourselves not under deluge of Instagram reels but under the warm rays of God’s light. And we can ask God to do what only He can do.
Put off. Be renewed. And finally, it is time for some new clothes (Eph 4:24). Just like the other movements, this describes a reality that has already taken place. As Galatians 3:27 says, “... as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” We have died. Our lives are hidden with Christ in God. We put Him on — His righteousness — because we are in Him.
And He is in us! Making us more like Him, making us fit for His garments in true righteousness and holiness!
God changes what we wear because God has changed who we are.
This is a gospel makeover inside and outside. God changes what we wear because God has changed who we are. So put on kindness, put on meekness, put on joy, put on love. Put on Christ, for in Him all these threads of grace are perfectly woven together! And He is the finest silk!
You could not buy these clothes even if you had $5 billion dollars! Good thing, in Christ Jesus, they are yours and they are free. So leave your old life. That is not who you are — not anymore. And live your new life — created after the likeness of God.
Keep walking. Do not stop. Do not turn back. And do not drift.
After all, gospel people are changed people. You have new clothes on now. They cost you nothing, but they cost Jesus everything.
So wear them. Keep wearing them. And keep those grave clothes in their coffin.
Let us pray.