Wardrobe Change
Read
Ephesians 4:20-25 (NKJV) But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, putting away lying, “Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor,” for we are members of one another.
What it is saying to me
We change clothes a lot. At a minimum, you change out of sleep clothes and into clothes for the day. Then maybe you change into work clothes, and back into evening clothes. Today I had bed clothes, gym clothes, work clothes, other gym clothes, home clothes, and then bed clothes again. That was six changes in one day.
Changing clothes isn’t particularly hard work. It is certainly not like the real work of changing our mental habits, our former sin habits, and everything else in our lives that needs to be conformed to the image of Christ. That work can be so daunting at times that we feel we can never achieve it.
The thing is, Paul is writing about this very thing to the church in Ephesus in simple terms, as if it were easy. In one sense, it is. The easy part is the part we don’t do. When Paul talks about our salvation, we don’t do the changing. When we put our faith in Jesus, we “take off” the old man of sin, and we “put on” the new man of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit does that at the moment of our salvation.
But after salvation, there is a sense in which we do the putting on and taking off. The last verse uses the example of putting off lying and putting on speaking truth to one another. That kind of changing happens often, sometimes even more often than I changed clothes today. But that doesn’t mean it has to be any harder than that.
In a therapeutic culture, we are trained to think that changing our mental patterns is long, hard work, and it can become a mental Goliath. All that means to me is that we should be like the shepherd boy who knew the Spirit of God was behind him. Maybe Goliath gets taken out with one shot, or maybe a bit every day, by simply deciding to put him off in a little way, a little at a time. That isn’t hard. It’s as easy as changing clothes.
What is it saying to you?
What old way of thinking do you need to take off?
What new garment of thinking do you need to put on?
What are we going to do about it?
Every time you change clothes today, whether you take off or put on a shoe, coat, etc., pray: “Lord, help me put off ___ and put on ___.”
