“Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” Ephesians 4:17-18 

About 10 years ago, we bought an old house on a piece of property.

We knew it needed a lot of work, but we were hopeful most of the work would be cosmetic – new paint, new floors, new surfaces. When you renovate a home, especially an older one, you have no idea what you might find. As the contractor worked on the master bathroom shower, he called me in to see what he found. Under the shower, the foundation beams were so rotten they were like putty. You could literally pull the foundation beams apart with your hands. He said it was just a matter of time until one of us would have fallen into the dark crawl space while taking a shower.

There are a lot of places I don’t want to find myself, but somewhere near the top of the list is naked in a crawl space under a house! Talk about “Naked and Afraid!” 

Ephesians 4 asks us to pull up the flooring of our hearts and examine what’s under the surface. Often our focus is on the external, cosmetic things that people see, but God wants to work in us beneath the surface and he wants to invite us to pull back the layers so that we can see where we truly need the gospel to create something new in us. 

In today’s scripture reference, Paul is trying to tell us something very important. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, your life should look different than the rest of the world. It is a call to be distinct.  

When we consider living differently, our minds naturally gravitate to the things we do that other people see, as the external aspects of life. We start to form lists of the things that good Christians do or don’t do. 

But Paul is concerned with deeper matters. If you only pay attention to the outside you miss the point. 

Self-righteousness focuses on the outward appearance. Gospel-driven righteousness focuses on what is going on under the surface and behind the scenes. The issues that must be dealt with are issues of the heart.

The things that need to be redeemed, reconciled, and cleansed are not things that we can clean only through good behavior and self-discipline, they are the hidden thoughts and intentions of the heart which are underneath the surface. 

We must ask ourselves, “Am I allowing the Lord to do His work down in my heart? Am I allowing Him to renovate me from the inside out, making me more like Christ?”

Taken from a sermon by George Wright, Senior Pastor, Shades Mountain Baptist Church, Birmingham, AL

WANT ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE?

Read “What’s On the Inside?” by Bryant Wright