Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost: Epistle, Ephesians 4:17-5:2

Ephesians 4:17-5:2

How different do you want to be? How different from your neighbors and friends? Here’s one for Christians to really chew on: how different do you want to be than those in your own congregation? What does different mean? Does it mean better, smarter, or more skilled? More skilled at what? Okay. That’s enough questions for the moment.

Please understand that I am not arguing for creating separate “classes” of people in general or of Christians in particular. But the Scripture reading for the week from the apostle Paul highlights that Christians walk, talk, and live differently than those around them who do not know Christ. Or better, who are not known by Christ. Hear this: that does not mark Christians out as better than their neighbors, just different. That is why the question above was asked the way it was.

If you are a careful Bible reader you will realize that all the changes called for by the great apostle in this passage are the result of God working in, and for us first. Even the charges to “put off” and “put on” exist because we can. We have been enabled. We have “learned Christ” (v. 20) and in that learning have received His very life. Now life should be different. It’s not overnight. It’s not all at once. But there is to be change in the life of one who receives the powerful and pulsing life of the resurrected Jesus. The program is to “be imitators of God.” And that not to gain his love and devotion. We already have that. Delivered from the living death of those without the Savior, we live His life that those still dead might find everlasting life in Him. 

We have been changed to glorify our God and to lead others that they may also. God be praised!