That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
Ephesians 4:20-24 NIV
The Old Self
Archeological and Indigenous genetic evidence indicate that North and South America were the last continents into which humans migrated. During the Wisconsin glaciation, falling sea levels allowed people to move gradually across the Bering land bridge, from Siberia into northwest North America. At that point, they were blocked by the Laurentide Ice Sheet that covered most of Canada, confining them to Alaska and the Yukon for thousands of years. The exact dates and routes of the peopling of the Americas are the subject of an ongoing debate.
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Followers of Jesus are different. It’s not that we are weird, although some might call us that. We commit our lives to following One we cannot see and walk by faith, not sight. But that isn’t the kind of different I mean. What I mean is that we have been transformed. We aren’t what we used to be. We used to be children of darkness, now we are children of light. We used to follow our own selfish desires, now we follow Christ. One of the key themes of Scripture is how we have been totally changed when we put our faith in Jesus. Paul writes about this in Ephesians 4:20-24: “That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
These have been words from the heart.
Bob Beasley