March 18, 2009

• Gotta take it off to put it on

  Re: “chains be broken” and my need for it…

  Ephesisans 4:22 tells us to “put off your old self” and “put on the new self”.  My initial question is how?  but as I look at it again, I realize that the exhortation is posed as a decision and choice.  You can choose to put off the old self and put on the new (because of Christ.  Without Christ you would have no power to do so).  But how, really?  The middle part of the verse says “to be made new in the attitude of your minds” – it starts with my mind, doesn’t it.  It’s a decision I must make, and a decision I’ll have to keep on making.  A bit of truth is revealed in that you can’t put on the new self without taking off the old self first.  I’m imagining myself trying to put on some shoes when I already have shoes on my feet or shorts over, on top, of my jeans.  That would make for fashion uglies.  It doesn’t really work. 

  V. 28 makes another point – “stop stealing!” Paul tells us, but he doesn’t stop at that.  He also tells us to do something useful with our hands instead.  I’m reminded of the simple truth that you must replace the old with new.  You can’t just tell someone to stop doing something and not give them something to do instead.  The ‘empty’ feeling will surely be a temptation that will lead you back to sin.  It reminds me of when I worked for 1800NoButts and how we’d tell a smoker who was trying to quit to list their usual times for smoking and next to it, an alternative of what they would do instead at that time.  You have to replace the old with new.

  Perhaps I have been going around in circles with the same sin-cycles because I have not chosen with undeterred resolution to take off the old self and put on the new self — forgetting the power of choice that Christ has given me.  I simply can’t ‘wear’ both at the same time.  May the image of a double layer of shoes and clothes and its impossible silliness prevent me from continuing on in the ‘old ways’ of darkness. 

  • 7:22 pm
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