Now Hear This!

Ephesians 4:17-24

 ¹⁷Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. ¹⁸They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. ¹⁹They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. ²⁰But that is not the way you learned Christ!— ²¹assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, ²²to put off your old self,^[ which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, ²³and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, ²⁴and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

There is a lot of weighty stuff in these verses. But the one theme that seems to permeate them is the idea of change. When one becomes a Christian, it involves a change. So we are no longer walking in darkness, no longer alienated from God because our our hard hearts. When we come to Christ, we put off the old self, and are renewed in hte spirit of our minds.

I just wonder, how does that match up with what Christianity looks like today? We hear that we can go to heaven, but do we even understand that a change must take place? Do we understand that without Christ, we are corrupt and have hard hearts? Or do we just believe that we can say a prayer or come forward to be baptized and all is well? Do we even encourage people to read their Bibles and seek these things out?

Yeah, this is kind of a rant today. But I believe it is an important rant, one that people need to hear. One that, unfortunately, many won't.