The Walk Of The New Man

“This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus: that ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” —Ephesians 4:17–24

“This I say therefore”—we may well ask “Wherefore?” In view of all that has come before us in the earlier part of this epistle, in view of the fact that we have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before Him, in view of the fact that in love He has predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Christ Jesus unto Himself, in view of the fact that we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sin, according to the riches of His grace, in view of the fact that we have been made members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones and are by the Spirit united to a risen Christ in glory—because of all these things, the apostle says, “I testify in the Lord, that ye walk not as other Gentiles walk.” The Christian is called out from the world. His life is not to be as the lives of those about him. A very common saying is, “When you are in Rome, do as the Romans do,” but that does not apply to the Christian. No matter where you find him, he is to walk as a heavenly man, as one whose interests are really in another scene, as a stranger and a pilgrim here. He is called upon to refrain from everything that would in any way tarnish his pilgrim character.

“Walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.” The word translated “vanity” here does not mean what it does ordinarily. We usually think of it as meaning “pride.” But the word here is not pride, the original word rather means something like a mirage, an illusion, that which is imagined but not actually true. Unsaved men have illusions of their own minds, they see mirages of all kinds and imagine them to be real but they are not. They believe all sorts of theories, scholastic ideas, and such like, and would even bring this blessed Book to the bar of their theories instead of bringing their theories to the test of the Word of God. The Christian ought to be concerned about these things and not walk in the delusions of the fleshly mind, for these poor Christless men, whatever their talents, whatever their culture, whatever their education, have the understanding darkened, have never been born of God, and are incapable of taking in divine things.

“The natural man understandeth not the things of God.” I wish our Christian young people would realize that. I wish the Christian young men and women thronging our colleges (in many instances, unhappily, placed under the instruction of brilliant but unconverted professors, many of whom use their high office as an occasion to seek to undermine faith in the Word of God), could realize that the natural man, no matter what his intellectual qualifications, understands not the things of God; they are foolishness to him because they are spiritually discerned. Without a new life and a new nature, there can be no real apprehension of divine things, and so the greatest of this world’s sages is but as an ignoramus when it comes to the things of God, until he has been regenerated.

“Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” In other words, there is no divine life. Some say there is a divine spark in every man but that is not true. “He that hath the Son hath life but he that hath not the Son hath not life.” Until Christ is received by faith, until people have accepted Him as their own Saviour and Lord there is no life whatever except, of course, this material, this natural life. “Being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them.” They are wise as to the things of this world but utterly ignorant as to the things of God. “Because of the blindness of their heart.” The word “blindness” is really “hardness” and yet that does not give the thought sufficiently. It means a heart that is under the influence of an anesthetic. A person may be alive and quivering with pain but when he is put under the influence of an anesthetic, he is not awake to the true condition of things. Men and women have come under the influence of the awful deadening power of sin and their hearts are hardened, they are blinded, and they do not understand the real state of affairs, they do not understand their own condition, the condition of their country or of the world around them. Sin has a terrible, hardening, blinding, deadening effect upon the people. The apostle describes the condition of the Gentile world in his day. Anyone who is at all familiar with Greek and Roman literature, the literature of the great poets of the ancients, particularly the Comic poets, knows how very true is the description given here. How characteristic of society, too, in the days in which we live. Is it not true that the same fearful things that the ancients told of without a blush are practiced in the world today in public and in secret. But Christians are called out from all this.

Notice the awfully graphic picture of the ancient world and the world today. “Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” “Being past feeling”—it might be translated, “Being beyond pain.” Do you remember how pained you were the first time you committed some sin against which your conscience rebelled? The hour of temptation came and you hesitated and said, “Shall I commit this sin or not?” Conscience was roused and you did not see how you could go on and indulge in that evil, unholy thing; but perhaps lured on by Godless companions, who mocked at your conscientious scruples, you said, “Oh, I will try anything once,” and you took the fatal step, you committed that sin and polluted your soul by it. But you remember the pain that came afterward, you remember as you walked home, or possibly it was in your own home, you could not bear the thought of facing those nearest and dearest to you. Perhaps you were not so much concerned about the fact that the eye of God was upon you as you ought to have been but you were concerned about what others might think of you. The second time the temptation came and again you plunged into the sin more recklessly this time and afterward the pain was less. And so, on and on and on and now you can go right on in that sin, in that evil course and there is scarcely ever the least evidence of an exercised conscience. We read of people whose conscience is seared as with a hot iron. Here you have the description of an unsaved man going contrary to every divine direction until he is beyond pain. That is what sin does for people. Oh what a mercy when the Spirit of God comes in and awakens one like that to see something of the terribleness of sin in the sight of a holy God and leads him at last to Christ, and out of the depths of an anguished heart to cry, “What must I do to be saved? God look in mercy upon me, the sinner.” There had been such crises in the lives of these Ephesians. Many of us have known what this means, and now these words of instruction come to us as to them regarding the walk that should characterize us.

We are not to be as we once were and as those still are who having got beyond pain have given themselves over to lasciviousness and all kinds of unholy thoughts resulting in unclean works. What a mercy that this is in the past for many of us. Am I speaking to any who are still living in these things? Does your heart sometimes cry out with a desire for purity, for holiness, for goodness? Do you sometimes say:

“Tell me what to do to be pure
In the sight of all-seeing eyes.
Tell me, is there no thorough cure,
No escape from the sins I despise?
Will the Saviour only pass by,
Only show me how faulty I’ve been;
Will he not attend to my cry;
May I not this moment be clean?”

Oh yes, there is cleansing for you. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18). They tell me that two of our Chicago professors have gotten out a new Bible in which they have turned those two wonderful statements into questions but I challenge any man who knows a word of Hebrew to look them up and see if they do not stand exactly as written in our Bible. It is the unbelief of the natural heart that would put a question mark here where God has made everything so clear. There is heart purity for the sinner, there is a possibility that the dark red stains of sin may all be washed away for it is written “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin,” and one thus cleansed should be characterized by an altogether different walk to that which is common to the unsaved.

The apostle goes on to say, “But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard Him, and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus.” I want you to notice particularly the way he uses the divine titles. We know that Jesus is Christ and Christ is Jesus. We do not for one moment consent to the wretched theory that a good many hold today, the one that has been popularized by Mrs. Mary Baker Patterson Glover Eddy in her false religion in which she tries to draw a distinction between Jesus and Christ. According to that system, Jesus was simply a man, the natural born son of Mary but Christ was a divine Spirit that came and took possession of Jesus at His baptism in the Jordan. That is an old gnostic heresy condemned by every right-minded Christian. Jesus is the Christ. “Whosoever confesseth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” But although that is true, this is also true, Jesus was His human name here on Earth, He never had that name until He came to Earth. Scripture says, “Thou shalt call His name Jesus because He shall save His people from their sins.” But He was Christ from all eternity. In the eighth chapter of Proverbs, wisdom is personified and we read, “I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning of his way, before his works of old.” The Hebrew term, “set up” is the same word for “Messiah” or “anointed.” “I was the anointed, I was Messiah from everlasting, I was anointed from the past eternity.” Then, when the Spirit of God came upon Him after His baptism in the Jordan, He was the anointed, the Christ, in a new sense. And when God raised Him from the dead, we read He made that same Jesus to be both Lord and Christ! He is the anointed now as the risen and glorified One.

And now Paul says, “Ye have not so learned Christ;” and he is thinking of Him as the resurrected One, the risen One, Christ sitting at the right had of God and we learn of Him as we take time to behold Him. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18). “But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus.” What does he mean by that? He means this, that when He trod this earth as the lowly man, Jesus, in His life He was the manifestation of the truth. That is why he could say, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Suppose I want to know the truth about man, what God’s thought about man is, where do I find it? In Adam? Oh no. In Adam I see a man who listened to his wife, after she listened to the devil, and did what she told him to do, a man without a backbone, a man utterly untrustworthy. God down all through human history and every other man is just a reproduction of that first man. But if I want the truth concerning man, I find that it is written, “There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,” and so we see in Him as man here on Earth all that man should be for God. It is the full standard of humanity as God reveals it in His Word.

If I want to know the truth about God, where do I find it? Do I go to the universities of this world? No, they do not know anything about God. They cannot tell me anything about him. But where shall I go? To a lot of modernistic churches, with their unconverted preachers? They do not know anything more about God than unconverted college professors. Well, then, where shall I go? To creation? Out in the woods, out playing golf on Sunday? No, you will not find out about God there. You will get some evidences of His power and wisdom but you will not find anything about His love and holiness there. Where do you learn about Him? In Christ. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.”

Suppose I want to find out about sin, where will I go? To some of our modern humanistic philosophies, to some of these teacher who talk about behaviorism and actually try to make men and women believe that every tendency within is perfectly lawful and perfectly right? No, not there. But where? In the cross of Jesus. There, as I behold Him, my blessed Saviour, taking the sinner’s place, I see what sin deserved. The truth is in Jesus, and Christ in glory points me back to Jesus on Earth and says, “If you want to know how you should walk as you go through this world, there is where you will find it.” “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps” (1 Peter 2:21).

But how will I be able to walk like this? I have an old nature, I once had a corrupt sinful life, how am I going to walk aright? Here is what Jesus teaches. “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” What do I mean when I speak of the old man? Some people confound the old man with the old nature. You see the old man is more than the old nature. The old man is the man of old, what you once were before you were converted. Now you are through with the man of old. If you are a Christian, you are not to live like that man any longer but you are now to live in accordance with the truth of the new man. And who is the new man? The new man is the man of whom the apostle Paul speaks in the twelfth chapter of Second Corinthians. “I knew a man in Christ...of such a one will I glory.” A man in Christ—that is the man that I now am through infinite grace. But I am through with the old man, the man after the flesh. I have put him off, his tastes, his appetites, all that he once delighted in and I am learning the truth as it is in Jesus.

The old man was corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and in these we once walked in our unconverted days. But now a great change has taken place, we have been born again. That does not mean we have attained perfection. The apostle Paul said, “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

“And be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” A better rendering is, “Being renewed in the spirit of your mind.” In what sense am I being renewed in the spirit of my mind? How am I being renewed in my physical strength? As I am careful to eat those foods that are nourishing and that will help me to build a strong body. Then how am I renewed in the spirit of my mind? As I feed upon His Word, as I enjoy communion with Him, enjoy fellowship with His beloved people. In all these ways we are being renewed in the spirit of our minds. You never saw a strong Christian who was not a Bible-loving Christian. You never saw a strong Christian who was not one who delighted in communion with fellow believers. Where you find people who cannot have anything to do with other Christians, who go about with the “I am holier than thou” attitude, you will never discern much real holiness in their lives.

Years ago, I knew an old Scotchman of the most Pharisaic type. He had been a Presbyterian until he got too good for them and then he came and united with a little company of believers with which I was associated until he got too good for them, and then he found a group that were a little narrower than we were until he got too good for them. He then found another group a little narrower than they and went with them. I met him one day and said, “Well, Mr.——, where do you have your Christian fellowship now?” “Oh,” he said, “just between myself and the Lord. There is nobody left on Earth I can have fellowship with. I will have to wait until I get to heaven.” This reminds one of Elijah who said, “I only am left.” But the Lord said, “Elijah, you are all wrong. I have seven thousand just as good as you are who have not bowed their knees to Baal." The Christian who is going on with God is the one that delights in fellowship with other Christians even though they do not see eye to eye in everything.

“Being renewed in the spirit of your mind; and putting on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Righteousness is my behavior manward. I am to be righteous in my dealings with my fellow man. It does not mean that I can be careful about my devotion to Christ and careless in regard to my life among others. A man got up in a meeting one day and said, “I want to tell you that I am standing in Christ on redemption ground.” Another man arose and said, “I want to call that man down. He says he is standing in Christ on redemption ground. I do not believe a word of it. He is standing in a pair of shoes he bought from me months ago and he has not paid for them yet.” Righteousness is right dealing between men. The person who professes to be a Christian and is not careful about that which is right is a disgrace to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Holiness has to do with my attitude toward God. It is of the heart, it is the inward life, holiness of thought, a heart separated to God in accordance with the truth of His holy Word. This is practical Christianity, and this is how you and I are called to manifest the new life, to manifest the fact that we belong to a new creation.

Have I been setting the standard too high? I have not been setting it at all. I have been giving it to you from the Word of God.

Unsaved one, are you saying, “I should like to reach this standard but I do not see how I ever could”? You cannot. With all your trying you will never be able to reach it. Come to God as a poor, lost sinner, give up your trying, put your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and He will give you a new heart, a new nature, and will enable you to live to His glory.