With the Lord’s authority I say this: Live no longer as the Gentiles do, for they are hopelessly confused. Their
minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and
hardened their hearts against him. They have no sense of shame. They live for lustful pleasure and eagerly practice
every kind of impurity.
But that isn’t what you learned about Christ. Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes
from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception.
Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly
righteous and holy. Ephesians 4:17-24
In the previous devotion, we looked at walking together in unity with one another. That is
the foundation. Now we look as how not to “walk” (“live no longer,” v. 17, translates “walk no
longer”). To walk as the lost world walks is to walk with a wrong understanding of what the
walk is about. They are deceived. They think that life is about acquisition – getting. They think
that if they just get everything they want, and ever more and more of it, they will be satisfied.
But it is not true – they are not satisfied.
Most of the world, not having very much, is still believing the deception, still reaching for the
soap bubble. But we Americans, having gotten it all and not being satisfied, know the futility of
the hunt. So what is happening? We are turning to perverse desires, believing that feelings are an
end in themselves, and that the creation of stranger and stranger feelings will somehow fill the
void.
But the new nature, Christ’s, says a very strange thing. It says that we do not walk to get, but to
give. How bizarre! Why have children? To give yourself to bring them genuine maturity. Why
work? So as to have something to give to a lost world. This is the right way, the holy way, to
walk. Don’t walk in the way you were delivered from! Walk in the way the Spirit has delivered
you to! Walk on!
Called To Be Transformed 