A Renewed Mind

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS

A RENEWED MIND

Eph 4:20-24

20 You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. 21 Surely you heard of him 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.

NIV

We just had a look at the way or lifestyle and hardened heart of the wicked, which is one way the non-believers are described throughout scripture. We have been instructed not to live as they do and now we are told exactly how that process of changing from being like them to being like Christ occurs. Of course, it is Jesus who saves us. We do not and cannot save ourselves. There is nothing we can do in order to save ourselves, however, after accepting the salvation that comes through faith in Christ, in his work on the cross for the forgiveness of our sin, there is something we are required to do. Having become aware of this truth of the Gospel and being among the saved, and knowing our former way of life, that sinful life with the hardened heart living in the darkness, we are told to put it off. This darkened heart is being corrupted by its deceitful desires. What we have to know is that we are not just robots that Jesus miraculously controls all our desires and we are changed into this pure innocent being without any corrupt deceitful desires. We are changed in the sense that being in Christ our destination is changed, but we have to have a hand in the changing of our lifestyle and the condition of our heart and the attitude of our mind. We have to make up our minds that we are going to live like Christ. It is first an attitude and our mind controls our heart. We want to be like Jesus, although we will not be able to be completely free of sin, we are not to live sinfully as we once did. It is a decision of our will to stop living as we once did and to live as the Lord desires us to live. We also have to know this is not about lists that we can check off or laws or rules we need to set up for ourselves to follow. This is about loving the Lord our God with all our heart, our mind, our spirit and our strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves. We might think that we are supposed to be righteous and holy, but if we read this right we were created to be that way, that is how our new self is restored in the eyes of God. Because we are in Christ, God sees us through his righteousness and holiness. Of course, this does not give us the authority to return to our former way of living, we are still in need of putting that old self off, always putting it off as the Greek word is passive presence tense. It is not something we do once and it is done, it must be a constant action of putting it off. Although it can be used as to talking off old clothes, a one-time action, it is also applied to habits, and those, if we are real with ourselves, are a little more difficult to put off just once. Yet, we can do this because of the indwelling Spirit of God who gives us strength. So we put that old self off and we put in our new self by the renewing of our mind, a mind that wants to follow Jesus. So we now live with a renewed mind.