September 26

The description that Paul gives, of a life without God, is truly awful (4:17-19). There are many people who only want to satisfy their own selfish desires. They choose on purpose to do evil things. They are completely unwilling to change their attitudes or their behaviour. They are like people who have decided on purpose to leave a safe path, in order to follow a dangerous one. In the end, they may even become unable to recognise what is right or good. Their life is nothing like the kind of life that God gives.

Isaiah 48:12-50:11
Ephesians 4:17-32
Psalm 69:1-18
Proverbs 24:5-6

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New Testament: Ephesians 4:17-32

Summary: The New Life

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. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!—
~ Ephesians 4:17-20

The right and the wrong way for people to live

Paul tells the Christians in Ephesus, and all his readers: ‘you must not live like that.’ Perhaps formerly, before they became Christians, some of them did live like that. However, when a person becomes a Christian, his life changes completely (2 Corinthians 5:17). Christ even described it as a new birth (John 3:3-6). Christians are the children of God (John 1:12-13). Therefore, they must be very careful about how they live (Matthew 5:43-48). Their desire should be to please God in everything that they do (2 Corinthians 5:9). Therefore, their actions, words and even their thoughts must be different (4:22-32).

Of course some people who are not yet Christians behave in a moral and right manner (Romans 2:14-15). Their actions and attitudes prove that there truly is a right and proper way for people to behave. Christians should always remember, with grateful hearts, how kind God has been to them. So, they should study carefully the right way to live (Psalm 1:1-3); and they should choose gladly to live in that manner.

From: usefulbible.com – by Keith Simons

Overview: Ephesians – Click Here

What’s Wrong with Everybody?

Ephesians 4:17-24

In the Old Testament, we find a wonderful passage in the very last book of the Old Testament that leads us to this same understanding—the book of Malachi, the final book in the Old Testament. And judgment has been proclaimed, and there’s a response among the people who are faithful to God. And we see that response in verse 16 of Malachi 3, “Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another”—they were talking about, “What’s going to happen to us? This judgment is going to come”—“and the Lord gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who esteem His name. ‘They will be Mine,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘on the day that I prepare [My jewels,] My own possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.’ So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him.” That’s always the dividing line in human history; that is the dividing line in all of humanity. History is the story of judgment and salvation, wrath and reward, condemnation and forgiveness.

Mark it: There’s only one race. There’s only one race: the human race. Only one humanity. But there are two families: There is the family of God, and there is the family of Satan. The apostle John makes this very clear in 1 John 3:9 and 10, where he says this, and it’s unmistakable: “No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who doesn’t practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who doesn’t love his brother.” There are marks of the children of God: love and righteous, love and righteousness. That’s what distinguishes the children of God from the children of the devil.

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