In Ephesians chapter 4, Paul used the term “walk” to describe the lifestyle that one adopts. In verses 1-16, his call was for believers to adopt a lifestyle of unity.
In verse 17 and the following verses, he was calling for believers to walk in
purity. Unity would help to galvanize inter-personal
relationship between the believers. Purity would help one to maintain a
witnessing life in the believers’ relationship with an unbelieving world. So
here he warned believers the kind of lifestyle they ought to shun.
Paul started
with a forceful exhortation. When he said, “This I say therefore, and affirm
with the Lord …,” he was claiming divine revelation. This is not just a piece
of apostolic advice or sound reasoning. It is something that the Lord Himself
would require. What was it that the apostle affirmed with the Lord? He was
urging that the believers should no longer walk like the Gentiles. He was
calling on them to shun the lifestyle, which they once lived, when they were pagans.
The word “Gentiles” is sometimes used to describe the world as well. Here Paul used
this word not to differentiate between Jews and Gentiles. He was telling the believers
not to live as if they were people of the world.
Why
shouldn’t they live like the Gentiles? It is because Gentiles live in the
futility of their mind. It’s interesting to note that Paul deal first with mindset.
Why? It is because Christians must recognize that the
place to start living is to recognize that they must think differently
from the people of the world. The word “futility” means void of purpose.
Therefore, in asking them not to walk in the futility of their mind, was to
ensure that their lives were not void of purpose or appropriateness.
In verse 18,
the apostle starts a series of cause and effect. The reason that the people of
the world have a futile mind is because they were darkened in their
understanding. As light is truth, darkness is ignorance. Man is ignorant
because his spirit is darkened and malfunctioned. Hence, he cannot recognize
truth and is alienated from God. Man, outside of Christ, remained alienated
from God because of the hardness of his heart.
What Paul stated
in verse 19 would be the inevitable result of the hardness of the heart. They
would become callous and indulge in sensuality and pander to all kinds of
impurities. It was such a lifestyle that Paul said the believers in Christ should
shun.
Every one of
us needs to stop, examine and re-calibrate our life every now and then. Many of
our wrong thoughts are adopted unconsciously in our unguarded moments. We
assimilate the value of the world through various media. If we do not call time
out to align our thoughts and lives with God’s Word, we will find ourselves
drifting farther and farther from God in thoughts and then in deeds. We need to
set our minds and thoughts towards the way of truth, for as King David said of
God in Psalm 51:6, “Behold You desire truth in the innermost being!”
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