Deliverance From Our Old Way of Living

Ephesians 4:22

Sermon transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

It’s verse 22 really that we’re studying and it’s Ephesians 4:22 and it is important for us to
understand the heart of it. We dealt with it last Sunday to some extent. Ephesians 4:22 reads like
this, “Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through
deceitful lusts.” The good that I would I cannot do, I mean you’ve lied, that’s the very thing I
do, that’s what we are talking about and we’re talking about the victorious life. It’s what Wesley
said that a justified person who is not yet sanctified, is free from outward sin but he still feels
sin within. That is he still can feel anger rising within him at times or he can feel irritability
rising within. He keeps it down through the power of the Holy Spirit, he withstands the temptation
to express it but he still feels it within him. He feels the fluttering of envy or jealousy in the
light of somebody else being praised and him being ignored.

So Wesley would have said that’s one of the signs that you still need the sanctifying cleansing work
of the Holy Spirit in your heart. If you’re free from outward sin but you still feel sin within and
we all know that that is what we talk about as the battle of Romans 7 where we cry out “Who shall
deliver me from this body of death. The good that I would I cannot do and the evil that I hate is
the very thing I do.” So we have I think all experienced that and known that in our lives and we
reply to anyone who says, “That’s a normal Christian life.” We say, “No, no” because you see how
Paul follows it up by saying, “Who shall deliver me from this body of death?” and then he says “I
thank God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” So there is deliverance but he makes it very clear that
the situation itself is perilous and that’s why he says “Who shall deliver me from this body of
death?”

I think we’ve all heard of the elaboration of that illustration because it refers to what they did
you remember to murderers in the old days. They would take the murdered person’s dead body and they
would hang it around the person who did the murder and that was the body of death and they would be
made to walk around with that body deteriorating around them month after month as long as it took
for the body to fall apart. That is the body of death and many of us know the reality of that in
our lives. We think who will deliver me this thing that clings around me that encloses me and
forces me to breathe in this foul stench and odor and it fills my life. Who shall deliver me from
this body of death? Of course that’s when you begin to come into some realization that something
has been done about this, that God himself has made a change. He has taken that and put it into his
Son and destroyed it and that that is our old self or our old man and that is what was crucified
with Christ so that the body of sin, the body that has been used to living independent of God might
be destroyed.

I’d press you a little on sin because I think many of us in a way take in some ways too light an
attitude to sin and in strange other ways too dark an attitude to sin. Sin is very much what it’s
middle letter says, “SIN”. Sin is “I”, really a little of what I mentioned at the table earlier at
brunch. It is living as if you are on your own, it’s an attitude that you are on your own and this
is your life, you’re totally responsible for it and you can do what you want with it. And you look
at everything from that viewpoint. You live as if there is no god so sin is actually living as if
there is no god. I think often we get around that because we say, “Oh I’m glad I don’t live as if
there is no God. I know there is a God. I believe the Bible and I believe that there is a God.”

But notice that sin is not quite that because even the devils believe and tremble.

So there are many people that believe but they still live as if there is no God. What many of us
have found of course who have been down and become aware of defeat in our lives is that there are
times when we seem to forget that God is there. There are times when we seem to live as if there is
no God, as if there is just us, as if we’re on our own. And indeed we probably all say, “Yeah that
must be what happens when I worry because who would worry if the Lord Christ is Lord of heaven and
earth, how can I keep from singing? If God is Lord of heaven and earth there is not a need for any
worry or anxiety, so yes I suppose that’s right.”

When I am anxious or I’m worried or I’m fretting about something it is because I am living as if
there is no God and that’s what we are really talking about when we talk about sin. It’s not so
much killing people, you don’t kill people. It’s not so much stealing, we don’t steal. It’s not
what we call most terrible immorality is; sin itself is just living as if your heavenly Father has
not got you in his arms, as if his Son is not inside you. It’s living as if those things are not
true. It’s being delivered from that that we are discussing when we talk about our old self being
crucified with Christ.

Now the heart of course of the miracle is that we suddenly begin to suspect does this mean that God
himself has done something with this thing within me that I cannot control? Does this omnipotent
God actually in some way neutralize this or in someway as the Bible says in one of the verses, “left
it unemployed” is there something that God has done in Christ that has actually negated this and
neutralized it? Many of us take a long time before we glimpse that and we spend a lot of time
trying to destroy it ourselves and we keep on and on trying to destroy it, trying to end it, trying
to stop ourselves being angry, trying to stop being impatient, trying to stop being irritable, we
try and try and try. And we keep coming up with, “The good that I would I cannot do and the evil I
hate that’s the very thing I do.”

It gradually begins to slip into our consciousness, maybe, maybe that’s what this means. Our old
self was crucified with Christ, maybe in some way God has affected this. That’s of course what has
actually happened. What we are really facing and why he has to do something is what is mentioned
here in Ephesians 4:22. “Put off your nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is
corrupt through deceitful lusts.” I think of course that we are always tempted to say, “Oh lust
that’s sex, that’s sex.” Well no, it’s desires that deceive us and that has corrupted our whole
being.

These desires that deceive us have corrupted our whole being and what has of course happened is what
we’ve often talked about here. The mind that was meant to understand the guidance that God gave us
through the intuition of our spirits, the mind has started simply to concentrate on manipulating the
things of this world for our benefit. That corrupts. That corrupts the activity of the mind, it
corrupts our whole being, our whole personality, our whole personality gets so used to that, that it
just whips into that right away. It looks at things and it thinks out, “Now I have to manipulate
these things. Now, okay the finances aren’t right there, now I have to manipulate them over here.”

And the mind concentrates not on the security and safety that the Father gives you and the assurance
that he has already things worked out but the mind goes straight to manipulating the things. It’s
just natural and that’s why it says it’s corrupted. The whole personality is corrupted. Where it
was meant to work from God and his safety and security and love out, it works in all the time. And

it’s the same with the enjoyment. We were made to rejoice. Our emotions were meant to rejoice in
God. Instead they concentrate on enjoying certain circumstances. So the emotions just operate that
way. So the whole emotional life has become corrupted. So that it is actually twisted and so you
can hardly look out in the morning and see thunder clouds and rain without the emotions going down.
You can hardly think for a moment of the awkward customer you are going to deal with, the emotions
are drawn out by that and they go down as a result of it and they’re dominated by whatever the
circumstances are.

In the same way you can hardly look out and see bright sunshine but your emotions rise and you’re
enjoying those things. You can hardly think of a dark winter with happiness. You think, ah yes but
there is also a break at the end and then you enjoy the break. So the whole emotional life is
absolutely corrupt. I think what we often think is, yeah we are going to retrain that, we are going
to train that and discipline it. Of course what God is saying is that is so corrupt, that that all
has to be changed supernaturally and I have changed it. I have changed that so that your emotional
life has been done away with.

So that in a way a great secret to living victoriously is realizing that this can only be put to
death by faith. That’s why it says, “Put to death through the Spirit the passions that are within.”
There’s only one way to win on these things and that is by absolutely believing and accepting that
God destroyed that in his Son and that you have nothing to do with it any longer. But of course we
so often back off that idea and we think, “No, no I’ve got to do it myself.” And we try to control
it. The secret of course is by faith and that’s what the meaning of our old self was crucified with
Christ is that our whole being has been changed in Jesus. There’s been a cosmic act that God did
even before the beginning of the world of course. He did it. He remade us from before the
beginning of the world.

And that has been changed but we are reluctant to hand that over to him to be changed. We want to
keep trying it and will adjust the emotions and we will adjust the mind in this way and this way and
then it will work. Actually what we’ve to do is give it to him and accept that he has done it and
believe that and of course in the course of that the Holy Spirit says, “You know if we do this, this
will follow. Now are you willing for that?” So there is a willingness there that is required in
the momentary instantaneous experience of sanctification there is a cooperation of the will because
God has done the work but he will say, “Now you know this will mean this.” In other words God won’t
do something that you won’t let him do. He will say, “Now if we destroy this then you will no
longer be able to enjoy the praise of these people. You’ll be free from the criticism but you’ll no
longer be able to revel in their praise. Now are you willing to do without their praise?” Some of
us of course say, “Oh well life will be a little flat if I did that.” So actually we aren’t willing
to do it.

So there is a real act of the will required in the instantaneous experience of sanctification. That
of course is what we’re talking about initially, seeing that our old self was crucified with Christ
and being willing to let that take place in us, but after you do that there is a tendency for some
of us to say, “Oh good no more struggles with the will. That’s the carnal will crucified and
destroyed. No more struggles. Now all I do is just float with the spirit.” And we actually remain
with the will passive.

That’s one of the dangers of quietism. Quietism means the extreme form of crucifixion with Christ
where the person says, “No I don’t have to do anything, I just have to relax and let Christ do
everything.” So we are freed from doing evil but the ways that our nature worked before are still

there. The ways are still there. We used the mind to manipulate things, we stop using it to
manipulate things but we still allow it to be guided primarily by the things outside. In the
emotions we are freed from being jealous or being angry but we still think there’s no harm in
enjoying the sunshine of a nice day rather than Christ.

So the ways that our mind and emotions operated are still there. They still operate that way. They
aren’t under the power of the outside world as they used to be but they still operate that way.
That’s why some of us, some of the verses of the Bible imply that God may guide you differently to
the way he guides someone else because you have a special personality that is different from
everybody else’s and God may have some things that he advises or guides you not to do that he will
allow someone else to do. Some of us fail to see that and we keep on operating more or less the way
we did before because the thing is not obviously sinful. So we do not allow the Holy Spirit to
retrain our whole personality.

This is what this verse is. Ephesians 4:22 “Put off your old nature which belongs to your former
manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts.” Put it off. God has destroyed it but you
have to will it. You have to exercise your will in the light of that, in accordance with that. So
God has delivered you from your only joy being the joy you get out of present circumstances. He has
delivered you from the only sense of significance you have coming from people’s opinion. Now he
says he has delivered you from that, now you live according to that. Put off those things.

So it’s kind of dangerous, unwise when somebody praises you. Now I don’t depend on this but it’s a
nice feeling. I kind of think that’s not bad, I mean it’s nice to be praised. Well maybe it was
but if you keep on and keep on that’s the way the old nature worked before. If you keep on taking a
little self congratulation you’ll find that you’re falling a victim to the one weapon that Satan is
able to use against someone who is sanctified or is crucified with Christ and that is deception.
That’s the one weapon he has and he can deceive you totally back into caring about what people think
of you. And it’s the same with circumstances and you know this way so well. Well there’s no harm
in one chocolate mousse. Well there’s no harm in just a little enjoyment here. And those old
saints were extremely big in the body and well that’s right as that’s obviously wrong. And do you
not think they were a little extreme in enduring hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ in
bearing things that were uncomfortable and unpleasant, and oughten we to make things as pleasant as
we can?

I mean you could say yes to all those things, it’s just that you need to listen carefully to the
Holy Spirit to see when you’re slipping into the old ways. Even though the old ways initially do
not produce the old sinful attitudes within you yet they are old ways that were attached to your
former way of life. So one needs to listen to the Holy Spirit in regard to the whole situation of
circumstances, of course it’s especially true here. Could you get a more comfortable room, could
you get a lovelier library, could you get nicer bedrooms, maybe somewhere but not to many places.
Yet it’s very important that we do not allow Satan to deceive us at any time, again being governed
by our outward circumstances, again depending for our happiness on things that happen to us.

So that’s part of what this verse means. Put off your old nature, not in a sense that you have to
overcome the anger and overcome the envy. That has been crucified with Christ; the old self that
produced those things has been crucified with Christ. It’s as if God has unzipped the overcoat but
you do have to take it off. So you can often have the overcoat unzipped but it’s still on and
you’re still enjoying a lot of the benefits of it. That’s why he says put off your old nature which
is corrupt and can deceive you back in to the old ways if you let it. So that’s part of what this

means. Often would you if you would say to me, “You mean at times not doing things that maybe are
not necessarily forbidden in Scriptures? Yeah that’s right. You have to be careful in case you get
up a whole lot of strange little things that almost create your own way of salvation or your own
religion and it is wise to continue to confirm them by scripture but yes, the Holy Spirit in his
wisdom will take good care of you and protect you and keep you safe if you keep listening to him and
do not fear when he asks you to walk about in ways the others don’t necessarily walk but they are
the ways that he is showing you.

In other words that you exercise your will, there is a will to be exercised. It isn’t the struggle
that the old will tried to bring off where you had to involve the carnal will in getting rid of it’s
own carnality, that has been taken care of by what God did in Jesus but you do have to act in the
light of it and exercise your will in a new way with the mind understanding God’s plan rather than
manipulating it. You do need to exercise the mind to understand what God is saying to you and what
he is showing you. You do need to exercise the emotions to rejoice in God, to actually rejoice in
him and that’s why the verse is so good, “Rejoice and again I say rejoice.” And you do need to do
that until death. Otherwise the emotions fall back into depending for some enjoyment from
circumstances. And you do need to exercise the will so that it obeys what God is giving you through
your conscience otherwise the will becomes passive and everything slides back into what it used to
be.

So you might give it some thought and ask God’s spirit to give you light on that because I used to
be baffled by the verse. I thought ‘put off the old nature?’ well wait a minute that’s what we
weren’t able to do. We weren’t able to get rid of the old nature and that’s what was crucified with
Christ. It’s plain that you do have to put off the old nature and it’s ways. You have to put off
the ways in which the old nature used to work. In other words it’s not just a neutral thing that
the mind started to manipulate instead of understand. It’s not just a neutral thing, it’s a wrong
thing, it’s a wrong way for the mind to operate. It’s not just a neutral thing that the emotions,
oh they enjoy circumstances a little on the side and most of the time we enjoy God but a little of
the…… It’s not just a neutral thing, it’s a wrong way to operate and the more you will it to do
that the more you drift back into the old ways.

So there is a definite putting off of the old nature. If you say to me, “What do you think, through
the day? Oh yeah I think all the time through the day, all the time.” Without any doubt we used to
say, oh rejection my problem was rejection. No sales person would have problems with rejection
except all of us have had problems with rejection. Well rejection is downright dependence on other
people’s opinion whether it’s my opinion or the buyer’s opinion or even your opinion of yourself.
Rejection is just that. It’s not accepting that your Father loves you just as much as ever and that
he is showering upon you all the same care as he always gave to you.

So there are things like that that are very plain and obvious every time we get offended because
they say something bad about our jewelry, every time they get offended because they say something
derogatory about us or our presentation. Every time we do that of course we’re sliding back towards
the way instead of living in the fullness of the reality. That’s what I think, I don’t advocate
some of the wildness of the Pentecostals but I think often that’s what they are fighting for, they
are fighting for a definite positive belief and faith in God and they are rejoicing and I agree that
they are often doing it emotionally. But they are trying to fight for a definite positive response
to things and of course that’s the only way. That’s the only way to live in joyful and positive
trust in the Father every moment of the day. Let us pray.