Peter Barnes: Put Off The Old Evil, Put on The New Righteousness, Ephesians 4:22-24 (Sunday 26 April 2020)
You can only do this if you are actually in Christ. ‘Let us all be good Americans’ assumes we must be Americans in the first place.
1. Put off the old man. – 4:22. Martyn Lloyd-Jones criticised Frances Ridley Havergal’s hymn: Take my life and let it be, because it speaks of taking my hands, my feet, my voice, my lips, my wealth, my intellect, will, heart, and love, before finishing: Take myself, and I will be Ever, only, all for Thee! The hymn actually begins Take my life, and let it be / Consecrated, Lord, to Thee. So it begins with the general, deals with some particulars, then finishes on the general. But ML-J’s point is clear. – Col.3:9-10; Rom.6:6. Hence, for example, 1 Cor.15:33.
2. Be continually renewed in the spirit of your mind. – 4:23. Thomas Chalmers: ‘The best way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one; and by the love of what is good to expel the love of what is evil.’ – Charles Hodge called the mind ‘the interior principle of life’; Heinrich Bullinger called it ‘the fount and origin of our actions’. – Rom.12:2. What will you think about during the week?
3. Put on the new man in true righteousness and holiness. – 4:24. See 1 Cor.6:9-11. A Scots woman was staring at Hill for some time, and Hill finally asked: ‘What are you looking at?’ She replied: ‘I was looking at the lines on your face.’ Hill asked: ‘Well, what do you make of them?’ Her answer was blunt: ‘I was thinking what an awful rascal you would have been if you were not converted.’
Watch the service below.