Lately I’ve been reading through Ephesians, and chapter four has been ministering to me a lot. As part of my faith journey this year, I feel that God is challenging me to live a life of complete faith. It’s scary, but my hope is that it might inspire others too. Part of that means sharing God’s word with the world, and I thought this might be a fun and easy way to do that. By sharing bite-sized verses and my interpretations or the things that I’ve learned, I pray that others might be encouraged and ministered to as well. Wihtout further ado, here are the verses I wanted to write about today.

Ephesians 4: 22 throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. 23 Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. 24 Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy. (New Living Translation)

So, these few verses are talking about giving up our sinful pasts and stepping into the new Christian life that God has gifted to us.

First, it instructs us to throw off our old, sinful nature and former way of life. This certainly means the life we had before knowing Christ, but it is also a daily task. We must continually cast off sin and disobedience to God. Additionally, it is interesting that this verse instructs us to give it away. Many times I’ve found myself praying to God to take away sin or distractions or my own struggles. Unfortunately, these aren’t the sorts of things God gives us in the first place.

In many instances, they stick around because we were the ones to invite them in. As a result, it is up to us to give them up, rather than God to take away. For example, I tend to get addicted to TV shows and find myself wanting to watch them all the time, to the detriment of my university work or household chores. Or, I try and rationalise watching it at the same time, though I know it isn’t helping me focus.

What is your burden that you need to throw off each day? (music, gossip, social media, daydreaming, porn, doom scrolling, judgement of others)

How can you put systems in place to do so? For me, I had to allow myself very limited times to watch the shows, and to do it without anything else so I gave it my full attention. If I started to get bored, I could move on. Ask God for help, but be prepared to do the work too.

The verses warn that the old sinful nature is corrupted by lust and deception. Lust is a strong desire for something, usually to the detriment of yourself or someone else. It is often used in a sexual context, but lust can be felt for a range of things, such as power, money, success, or even material items. In the Bible, it is also known as the desires of the flesh, and is condemned numerous times. God instructs us to flee these desires (1 Cor 6:18, Col 3:5) and warns that they destroy us from the inside. Of course, we see this every day from stories of addiction, overdoses, sexual and gender based violence, and the truth that wealth does not bring happiness.

However I also believe that deception is causing just as many problems in our world today. Deceit is about being dishonest, hiding the truth, or wilfully accepting something that is false as truth. You might think this isn’t that big of a deal, but every day we hear so many hidden truths coming to light. As of writing this the P. Diddy case is unfolding, the US election campaigns are in full swing, news of the horrific conditions in warzones across the world is unfolding, misinformation is being spread to protect corrupt nations, and in my country of Australia, politicians are literally lying to our faces about what they are doing to help the environment and the people. Its atrocious.

Then on a different scale, the waves of deception around influencing, trends, and societal standards are reaching an all-time-high. Young people and old are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate what they are seeing, whether it be questions of AI, credibility, representativeness or more. Media literacy is at an all-time low, and anti-intellectualism is sky rocketing. Body image issues are still huge, with many still struggling with body dysmorphia and eating disorders, but now it has grown to include life-image issues. People are comparing their lives to thirty-second highlight reels or ten-minute curated YouTube videos and becoming discouraged because their life doesn’t look the same. As monetary pressures increase, mental health decreases and the already huge levels of anxiety and depression are rising.

Deception hurts everyone, which we are seeing as celebrities face backlash for their use of ozempic, Kylie Jenner struggles with maintaining the beauty image she helped create, men are realising that shoving aside all their emotions and being brutally awful to women isn’t helping them pull any girlfriends and we face dire political challenges. Deception is everywhere, and it is hurting us just as badly.

“Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes” invites us to allow the Holy Spirit to work in our lives. It is said that the fruit, that is the product or result of the Holy Spirit in our lives is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control and that there is no law against these things (Galatians 5:22-23 ESV). I for one think we could use a whole lot more of this stuff in our lives and our world, and its true that there is no law or rule against being loving, gentle or forgiving in this world.

This verse specifically talks about renewing our thoughts and attitudes, so let’s talk about what each of those words means.

To renew something is to make it new or like new again. In other words, you restore the freshness, vigor, or perfection, to replace or replenish.

Our thoughts are anything and everything we think about in our day-to-day life. We need to beware about them, and be constantly on guard because these are shaped by the people we know, the experiences we have, and the beliefs we are exposed to. Additionally, everything we consume online or through entertainment can have its own impact, big or small. We need to be on guard because we can’t always control the first thought we have about something, but we can control the second ones, and how we respond.

Attitudes however, are how we express and present ourselves to the world, based on our thoughts. If you dislike people who talk slowly, you will probably have a frustrated attitude when dealing with them. In contrast, if you love talking with people who have a certain accent, you’ll probably have a more friendly or positive attitude while conversing with them.

To have our thoughts and attitudes renewed is to have them transformed by God’s Holy Spirit, to be loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and controlled in all situations. Think of what happens in a stressful situation, would you rather have someone who is focused but kind, or someone who is screaming their head off at you and abusing you. Yeah. As Christians we are called to be loving, gentle, and controlled all the time. This isn’t always easy, and it certainly takes practise, but it can be done. It is also one of the greatest and quickest ways for us to show God’s love to those around us.

Finally, verse 24 tells us to “put on” our new nature like clothing, as this is created to be like God, making it “righteous and holy”. God desires for all of us to live good lives with him, so it makes sense that we would become more like him to do so.

The best definition I’ve heard so far for ‘righteousness’ is ‘right-standing with God’, which means living in accordance with his will. As for holiness, that is the word we use to describe how God is ‘set apart’ from the world as holy and perfect.

Put together, for our new selves to be uncorrupted, they are informed by the Holy Spirit which gives us a new ‘self’ that is set apart from the world, enabling us to be right with God. I hope that this will help you in the future as you learn to live more faithfully with God and less focused on the world around you.