Ephesians 4:17-24
"How do I really move forward?" That's one of the big questions most of us wrestle with at various times in our lives. We want to get out of certain ruts, habits, addictions, but we fall back in. We try and try, but end up in those ruts all over again. "At least they only affect me" we say to ourselves. Or we hope they only impact us personally. Well, yes, there might be those in our families who have to deal with our crud. But that's it. Right? Oops. No, that isn't all. The whole point of Paul's "out with the old, in with the new" section of the letter to the believers in Ephesus is this: Believers are the Body of Christ, and are tied together as a Body. There is a unity; there must be a unity. And if one little cell in that Body is sick or messed up, then there's trouble in the Body. And we don't want to be the Corpse of Jesus, but the living Body of Jesus in the world. After all, there's a Kingdom to build and a corpse can't do that very well.
So in Ephesians 4, Paul tries to tackle this idea of how we move forward, getting away from that stuff in our old lives that pulls us back, holds us down, ties us up.
In writing to Gentiles who had come to a knowledge of Christ's new Kingdom and the Truth of God, Paul tries to direct them along a path away from the old worthless crud of their previous life, and onto a new path within the Kingdom. That wasn't easy, considering all the baggage they brought along from GentileVille. But if they want to live, if they want to be a part of a new Kingdom, if the world is really going to know about God's power at all, they have to get a new mind and move on a different path with Christ. Now the challenge is ours. - Curtis
GentileVille, huh? Funny! Anyway, I think it's harder to leave old habits behind once we (or I) became a Christian. It's like the saying "You want what you can't have". It's more difficult as an adult for me, because I have access to everything known to man that is sinfull. I'm of age and I have a job. I don't answer to anyone. The temptation is stronger and my will seems weaker. When I became a Christian, I was 13and didn't have access to those things. I had to answer to parents, no job, no ID. My mind frame now seems to think "I'm an adult, if I want ________, I can!" It's stubborness and I wrestle with it constantly. I have to remember that I DO have to answer to God and he's taking notes. So is my husband and my kids watch everything I do and say. I have to be a role model for them and non-believers.
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