Our faith is best seen in our deeds. The Lord Jesus said, "Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adultery..." (Matthew 15:19). And, our new life literally is Christ, Himself. If we do not have Christ we do not have new life.
Now, the Apostle is not actually telling us to literally put off our old self. He is saying to deny the urges to fulfill our God-given desires in a non God-defined way. There are those who have the idea we are to go about crucifying ourselves, putting the old self to death. But we are not told to put the old man to death, we are to appropriate what Christ accomplished in His cross and in His resurrection.
Denying the old life, and putting on the new life is done whenever we face temptation. Paul writes, "having put away falsehood", that is don't feed the flesh or don't do it the world's way. The he writes, "let each one of you speak the truth." He is saying be defined by God's definition of things.
In Galatians 6, Paul wrote, "If we sow to the flesh, we will reap corruption." Lying brings with it corruption and subsequent death to relationships. Lying, along with all other sin, was judged at the cross, so we should be defined by truth. We should tell the truth because that is God's culture, this is what is right.
In Galatians 6, Paul wrote, "If we sow to the flesh, we will reap corruption." Lying brings with it corruption and subsequent death to relationships. Lying, along with all other sin, was judged at the cross, so we should be defined by truth. We should tell the truth because that is God's culture, this is what is right.
Paul then writes, "for we are members one of another." This means, as members of Christ's life, we do not live on an island. And, if we lie, we not only hurt ourselves, but we hurt others as well.
Next Paul writes, "Be angry and do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the Devil."
Next Paul writes, "Be angry and do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the Devil."
Our capacity for anger is part of the image of God in man. God gets angry, but He does not sin. We can be angry and not sin. We sin when our anger is self-motivated. Sinful anger is anger that comes when our feelings have been hurt, or our pride has been injured, or we have been mistreated in some way.
God-like anger is that which is concerned with others' wrongs. When people are unjustly treated and it bothers us, even to the point of standing up to it, this is righteous anger.
God-like anger is that which is concerned with others' wrongs. When people are unjustly treated and it bothers us, even to the point of standing up to it, this is righteous anger.
We should not let the sun go down on our anger because anger has a tendency to simmer and fester. When this happens, the Evil one is given an opportunity to make the situation worse.
When I was a kid, I deliberately annoyed my sisters. What younger brother doesn't? Well, when they had had enough, they would come after me. There were three doors that locks on them in our house, the front door, the back door and the bathroom. Guess where I would run to flee my angry sisters? Yep, the bathroom. If I could get the door locked, I was safe. If any one of them could get their foot wedged between the door and the doorframe, I was toast. This is the idea, when we hold on to anger and do not solve the issue, the Devil gets a foothold.
