Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and
from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Ephesians
4:22-28)
Put on
the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and
holiness.
Prayer: Let
the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O
Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Our epistle reading today talks about the old self and the new self. It says for us to put off the old self and to put on the new
self.
In English, it’s very difficult to translate the Greek, if
people want to sound politically correct and not sexist. The Greek, there are
two words for man, whereas English only has one: the first word (aner) means “a
man” “a male person” or “a husband”, and the second word (anthropos) means
“man” or “a member of the human race”. So the Greek in our reading says, “put
off the old man” and “put on the new man”, but it’s not talking about a man, as
in a male person or a husband, but it’s talking about a member of the human
race, whether you are a man or a woman. Unfortunately, when we say “old self”
and “new self”, it can sound a bit abstract. But the Greek says, “put off the
old man” and “put on the new man.”
This sort of talk has a special place in Luther’s Small
Catechism, where it says:
What does such baptising
with water indicate?
It indicates that the Old
Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with
all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise
before God in righteousness and purity forever.
So what is this “old man”, this “old Adam”, this “old
self”?
Many people have this feeling in their life where they
feel that they disgust themselves. They would like to do something good, but
they always disappoint themselves. They try hard to get themselves out of a bad
situation in life, but they just can’t seem to get themselves out of it. St
Paul says: “I do not do the good I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate…
There is nothing good dwelling in my flesh.”
People who suffer depression especially feel like this.
Also, people who suffer from mental illnesses and such like also feel that they
are completely helpless, completely trapped and stuck in their own bodies,
desperately and fundamentally sick and completely unable to fix themselves.
So what’s the problem, and where does the problem come
from?
Many people today think that the problem is with these
negative thoughts themselves, and want to tell people that they are simply
wrong in their thinking. Instead, these people say, people who are depressed and
mentally ill, should be told that they are not “sick”, “trapped”, “helpless”,
“fundamentally bad”, but that they are in actual fact “fundamentally good” and
have the capacity to do all sorts of good things in life. So many people think
that the answer to helping people who are depressed is to preach to them about
self-esteem. Some people even want to say, “You’re not sick”, “You’re not a bad
person”, -- instead, “you’re a good person”, “things will turn out all right
for you if only you put your mind to it.”
What do you think about this? Some people will often
criticise the Lutheran Church for making its people say oppressive and
destructive words each week like, “I, a poor helpless sinner” and “I have
deeply displeased you” and “I deserve your punishment in time and in eternity”,
and say that this sort of talk just adds to people’s feelings of worthlessness.
What do you think? Are these people right?
Our problem is not out thoughts—God created us in such a
way that we are able to think. The ability to think is God’s creation and God’s
gift.
Our problem is not our reason and our free-will—God
created us in such a way that we are able to think things through and make
decisions. The ability to think rationally, use our reason and use our free-will
is God’s creation and God’s gift.
Our problem is not our body, or our flesh. Our bodies are
not created evil, and our flesh is not an evil thing. Our physical bodies are
God’s creation and God’s good gift.
The problem is this: Because of the fall into sin, every
single part of us, our bodies, our souls, our spirits, our minds, our hearts,
our reason, our strength, our thinking, our free-will is completely and totally
corrupted by sin. There is not one single part of us that isn’t completely
corrupted by this virus, this disease, this cancer. The only time we will be
completely free from sin is when we die, and not a moment before. And so, as
Lutherans, we say that our whole nature is totally corrupted by sin, and that
we have a sinful nature. Many Christians don’t believe this fundamental fact of
human existence, and so end of spreading a lot of confusion.
This sinful nature is something that we are wrestling with
day after day. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Genesis 8:21 says, “The intention
of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” Romans 8:7 says, “The mind that is set
on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it
cannot.” Ephesians 2:8 also says, “We were dead in our trespasses.”
We are capable of making decisions, we are capable of
using our reason, but because of the corruption of sin, we only make decisions
that serve ourselves and not the glory of God. We can’t “make decision for
Jesus”, because it’s just not possible. When it comes to spiritual matters, and
converting to Christianity, it’s impossible to be argued into the faith,
because our reason always wants to serve itself.
So we can all agree that the old man needs to be put off.
We can all agree, as Luther says, that the
Old Adam in us should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die
with all sins and evil desires.
But now what? How are we going to live when our old self
is drowned? Of course, if we don’t believe that we are sinners, and that
everything we do is tainted by sin, then we don’t believe that the Old Adam
exists. Many people believe that there’s no need for baptism, no need for the
Old Adam to drown. But the bible teaches the opposite.
Our reading today says:
Put off your old self,
which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful
desires.
But then our reading also says:
And be renewed in the
spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created after the likeness of
God in true righteousness and holiness.
Not only are we called to put off something old, but we
are called to put on something new. We are called to take off our pyjamas and
put on our clothes for work. Putting off the Old Adam isn’t simply taking off a
jacket when we feel hot. We need to put on a completely new set of clothes.
So, we can see from our reading, that this new self is created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
This means that the likeness of God is something that we didn’t have before—we
didn’t live in true righteousness and holiness before. There is a fundamental
difference between a true Christian and a hypocrite. They might look the same
for a while, but after a while, the Old Adam will show its ugly head, and the
truth will be revealed. Being forgiven doesn’t mean that you can just go around
and do whatever you feel like. You are called to put off the old self.
So where does this new self come from? How do we put it
on? Does it come from inside of you? No—everything inside of you is corrupt and
sinful. So where does it come from?
It comes from hearing the word of God. You see, when we
hear the word of God, we hear Jesus himself, because he is the Word of God.
John says at the beginning of his gospel: In
the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
And later it says: The Word became flesh
and dwelt among us.
And so now, when we hear the word of God, we also receive
the Holy Spirit, and this word of God becomes flesh in us, and it becomes a new
self in us.
We often pray in church: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit
within me. This clean heart is created by God through his word. And even
though we are still living with sin and wrestling with it, we have been given
the new self.
But it isn’t just any old Word of God that we need to
hear. God sometimes speaks a word of law and of judgment. The law of God
doesn’t create a new heart in us, it only condemns our hearts even more. But
God creates a new heart in you when he preaches the Gospel to you, the free
forgiveness of all your sins. Because when the Gospel is preached to you, then
you hear the words, “Your sin is still with you, but you are no longer judged
by it. You are still living with sin in every breath, but every breath is
forgiven through Jesus’ blood. You are a sinner, but Jesus promises to come and
live with you, and make his home within you together with his Father and the
Holy Spirit, right in the centre of your heart—right in the middle of that same
heart which vomits out all kinds of evil desires, one after the other, minute
by minute. Jesus rules right in the midst of his enemies. Even while we were
still sinners, Christ died for us.”
And so the Gospel is something completely new. It’s
completely against our reason, because it’s completely and totally free. It’s
completely against our minds, because it comes from the mind of God. It’s
completely against our bodies, because it comes from the body and the blood of
Christ.
So this is the new self that you are called to put on: the
forgiveness of sins, given to you completely freely in baptism. And so Luther’s
small catechism says: Baptism indicates that the Old Adam in us should by daily
contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires,
and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness
and purity forever.
It’s good to despair of yourself. But it’s bad to despair
of God. It’s good to say that you are a sinner, but it’s bad to say that God
can’t save you. He knows how to work through sinners: he’s been doing it for
centuries. Look at the bible: it’s not a book full of people who are to be our
moral examples. It’s a book full of sinners. The only people who gives us any
example at all is Jesus.
Everything that Jesus is is for us, and everything that
Jesus did, he did for us. And through baptism, he has given us everything not
just in history all the way back then, but he gives himself to us to put on as
a new person, a fresh new self. And so we are clothed not in our own
righteousness, our own works, our own rational decisions and free will, but we
are clothed with his decisions, his righteousness, his good will towards us,
and his forgiveness.
St Paul says: You
have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put
off the old self…and to put on the new self.
Amen.
Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, you took human flesh in
the womb of the Virgin Mary, and by your death on the cross you took on all our
sin and carried all our burdens. But in baptism you have given us your divine
nature to put on, and have raised us up to new life. We thank you, Jesus, for
this great gift! Amen.
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