Get Your Pretense On!

82 • Get Your Pretense On!

And, as we learn to live in this three-step obedience to Paul’s teaching we will notice a marked change in both how we perceive ourselves, and how we act in response to circumstances, others, and opportunities that come our way. Step One Teach the Eagle That He’s Not and Never Was a Chicken : Put Off Your Old Self with Its Evil Desires But that is not the way you learned Christ! – [21] assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, [22] to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires. Paul has just described in Ephesians 1-3 the incredible status and position of the believer in Christ. We are blessed with all spiritual blessings, united to Christ in his resurrection, and saved from our past as children of disobedience and children of wrath. Christ has broken down the wall of division between Jew and Gentile, and the Holy Spirit has placed all believers into fundamental relationship as God’s temple, with Jesus Christ being the cornerstone and the prophets and the apostles as the foundation. We have been brought, as Gentiles, into the mystery of God in Christ, who now unites us with the entire family of God, able to do abundantly beyond everything that we ask or think through the power that works within us. This idea is glorious, majestic, and incredible. Perhaps no other place in Scripture is the believer’s position in grace so thoroughly and eloquently described as by Paul to the believers in these three truth-packed chapters of affirmation and truth. ~ Ephesians 4.20-22

According to Paul in Ephesians 4.20-22, we who believe have heard the truth of this majestic position of grace, and we have been