EPHESIANS 4:17

This part of Ephesians chapter four has a lot to do with Christians learning all the things that they need to learn. Following Christ is a lifetime of learning: learning more about Jesus our great Savior and our God, learning more about being a Christian in this world, learning more about living by faith and being both a lover of God and of mankind. What do you know and what have you learned about the Truth? Whatever you have learned, there is more yet to learn and to know. Unfortunately there are a great number of people still in the world who have not yet learned the very first thing concerning the truth. They are in a terrible circumstance because of what they do not know. There should be a great difference in the lives of those who do not know and those who do know. That is exactly the point that Paul is making starting in Ephesians 4:17 and going for most of the rest of the letter to the Ephesians.

The Bible says in Ephesians 4:17, “This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.” Paul wrote, “I say,” and then he wrote, “I testify.” The Holy Spirit wanted Paul to emphasize the importance and the seriousness of what he was about to say. Paul testified in the Lord. His testimony was connected directly to the Lord Jesus Christ. There is a very close connection to what Jesus is all about and to what Paul was getting ready to say. Jesus is the difference: the difference between heaven and hell, the difference between light and darkness, the difference between good and evil. Obviously, there should be a difference between those who believe in Christ and those who do not believe in Him.

Paul said in Ephesians 4:17, “that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.” The implication is that there are some believers who are walking just the same way as the unbelievers. Notice the relationship between the walk and the mind. The walk speaks of actions, what a person does in certain situations, their life-style. But the mind speaks of what a person thinks: the ideas that someone has. It appears that the Bible is saying that there is a close relationship between behavior and the thought process. Of course, there is. Thoughts result in actions. If someone has the wrong actions, it is because first of all they had the wrong thoughts. That certainly explains things in regards to those who do not know Christ in a personal way. It is what they do not know that is the problem. As we shall see later on in this chapter, for the believers, it is not necessarily what they know or do not know, but what they choose.

Concerning the mind of the unbeliever, Ephesians 4:18 says, “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” What is the problem in this world, the biggest problem of all? The problem is that some people have their understanding darkened. If only they understood the truth that is in Christ. Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world,” but if you do not have the light of Christ within you, then that explains why you walk a dark path. Perhaps in order to emphasize what the problem is, the last phrase of this verse says, “because of the blindness of their heart.” There are people in this world who are in real trouble. Their understanding is dark, their heart is blind, and they are alienated from God. Christ is the only hope for those in such an empty spiritual condition. As a matter of fact anyone who is not in that condition is in it only because Christ delivered them from the darkness and from the alienation. Ephesians 2:12 says, “That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.”

Concerning those who are in spiritual darkness, there are results that will naturally manifest themselves in the lives and in the lifestyles of those who do not know Christ. Those results are given in Ephesians 4:19 that says, “Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” One of the many negative consequences of not being rightly related to God through Christ is that no one is standing still. You are heading in a certain direction, and if you are not heading in the right direction, then you will become worse as time goes by. You will become hardened against that which is true. Paul wrote here by the Holy Spirit that unbelievers eventually become past feeling. There is something that they no longer feel. Based upon what the rest of this verse has to say, that something is evidently their conscience and their normal sense of guilt about doing wrong.

There are three things that unbelievers do without a conscience: lasciviousness, uncleanness, and greediness. Lasciviousness refers to the total absence of morality. That was often seen in the first century in the Roman Empire and it is also not uncommon today. The reason for it is unbelief. The holy Christ gives holy impulses to those who believe in Him. Those who do not believe are often guided by the darker impulses of human nature. The word “uncleanness” is found ten times in the New Testament. Jesus used the word in Matthew 23:27, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisee, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” Why do many religious leaders turn out to be immoral people? Because according to Jesus, they are already immoral within their heart. No fixing up of the outside of the body will ever be enough. Only Jesus can clean the heart. And so they who do not believe in Jesus will be known for moral uncleanness. The point that Paul is going to make about this is that these are the things that unbelievers do. Therefore, believers should never do them. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:3, “But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you.”

Notice what God says about the word “uncleanness” in Romans 1:24. The Bible says, “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves.” The idea here is the same as that expressed in Ephesians chapter four: without God and His Son Jesus Christ, you are heading down a path that will turn out in terrible ways in this life as well as in the next. Paul wrote in Romans 6:19 that before becoming believers we were “servants to uncleanness.” In Second Corinthians 12:21 Paul wrote of the terrible fact that some of the Christians in Corinth had committed terrible immoral sins of uncleanness. He wrote, “and that I shall bewail many who have sinned already, and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed.” How would you like to be a member of that church? Paul started the church, and then Paul dealt with the problems they were having: even with the uncleanness.

“Uncleanness” is listed as one of the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:19 that says, “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness.” In First Thessalonians 2:3-4 Paul emphasizes to the believers in Thessalonica that he himself lived the right kind of a Christian life before them. He wrote, “For our exhortation was not of deceit, nor of uncleanness, nor in guile; But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth the hearts.”

It is interesting that in Ephesians 4:19 after the sexual sins are mentioned that the phrase “with greediness” is used. All sexual sins are at the foundation simply a type of human greed and selfishness. There is only one situation in which sex is clean and pure and good: in the marriage between a man and a woman. “The bed in marriage is undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.”

How can unbelievers do the things that they do? Aren’t they ashamed? No, sometimes they are not ashamed at all. Sometimes they take pleasure in iniquity. It says here in Ephesians chapter four that they are past feeling. The word that is translated “past feeling” comes from a word that means no grieving or no pain. Since one of the chief purposes of human life is to do the right thing, it should grieve and cause pain and sorrow to any human when they have done wrong. That is what a conscience does. The Holy Spirit uses it to convict you of sin so that you will come to Christ and find forgiveness and then end up with a clean conscience because of what Jesus has done for you. But those who do not obey their conscience, and who do not become grieved at their sin and do not turn to Jesus for forgiveness, will go on until they are past feeling and they no longer are touched by their own conscience. That, my friend, is a terrible circumstance to be in. Thank God for a conscience that compels us continually to turn to Christ.

We know what the lifestyle of the unbelievers often is. The Holy Spirit just made that very clear in Ephesians 4:17-19. The reason that this was emphasized to us was to make this point: believers in Christ should not live that way. Ephesians 4:20 says, “But ye have not so learned Christ.” Why is it that believers should not do the immoral things that unbelievers do? They should not do them because of what we learned from Christ. A person who is a true believer in Christ has been taught some things by Jesus. When you turn to Jesus, you are turning to Him not only for forgiveness, but also to start walking the straight and narrow way of life. If you did not learn that from Christ, you learned nothing at all. That was the message of John the Baptist when he pointed to the Christ. In his ministry John said, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.” In other words, “straighten up your life.”

That is the issue. You did not come to Christ, unless you turned from your sins. It just may be that some of these people who have the worldly way of living never did come to Christ in the first place. Such a person is either a carnal Christian, or someone who never became a Christian at all. That is what the Bible is saying in Ephesians 4:21, “If so be that you have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus.” Who are the ones who have heard Jesus? His sheep: the ones who are His true believers. They have heard Him. Jesus said about the Shepherd, and He was speaking of himself in John 10:3, “the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name.” If you have never heard the voice of Jesus calling you (in a spiritual way) at any time, then you do not know Him.

Jesus calls us. He called the apostles. Jesus passed by them and said, “Follow me, and I will make you to be fishers of men.” There comes a time in everyone’s life when Jesus calls them. Have you answered the call? Jesus calls us. He calls us to Himself for salvation, and He calls us to follow Him and lead a holy life. In the old hymn, “I Am Coming Lord,” the writer understood this. In the first verse he spoke of the call to salvation. He wrote, “I hear thy welcome voice, that calls me, Lord, to thee for cleansing in thy precious blood that flowed on Calvary.” The writer also understood that Jesus calls us who believe to a holy life. He wrote in the third verse of the hymn, “Tis Jesus calls me on to perfect faith and love, to perfect hope, and peace, and trust, for earth and heaven above.” It is interesting that the word “to obey” comes from the same root as the word “to hear.” Have you heard the voice of Jesus calling you, and have you obeyed His call?

That is the emphasis of Ephesians 4:21. It also says that Jesus is the teacher. It says referring to Jesus that you “have been taught by him.” Jesus is the great teacher, and no wonder since this verse also says that “the truth is in Jesus.” If you have learned anything that is true, you actually learned it from Jesus. What a privilege to be taught by Christ Himself. Hopefully you go to Jesus to be taught, and not to man. Beware of men. Know what is in man. Men will teach you the teachings of men. Only Jesus will teach you the teachings that you need to know. We saw earlier in this chapter that Jesus gave the gift to teach His Word to certain men. But some of the teachings that you hear will come from those who do not have the gift, and some of the other teachings that you hear will come from those who may have the gift but who were not properly prepared from Christ in a particular message or part of a message. You must learn from Christ, or you will not learn the things that you need to learn. It is just like Ephesians 4:21 says: “The truth is in Jesus.” Because it is in Him, it comes from Him. It is centered around Him. Pilate said, “What is truth?” Too bad that he did not realize that he had Truth standing in front of him. “The truth is in Jesus.” Jesus is the Truth.

The truth is that you need to be cleansed from your sins. Come to Jesus and you will be cleansed. Do not go on in a path of uncleanness. Learn from Jesus, and you will learn the true meaning of salvation and cleansing from sin. Learn from Jesus, and you will learn about the life that He wants you to live on this earth.

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