Okay. Well, good afternoon, everybody. It's good to see you. Welcome to, what did we figure, about 33rd, 34th? Every year. Since 34 years ago, we've had off and on the Robbie Dean Bible Conference. We always enjoy Robbie coming. There's a love offering plate in the back for Robbie. We are going to have a reception for Robbie tomorrow if you want to bring a a little something to snack on and to share with somebody, that would be great. We'll do that, I don't know, do that during class, after class, probably after class would be better. So we'll do that after class. And so I'm just going to introduce Robbie. We've had a good week. We're tired today. Had to run around getting our COVID shots because I had not had my booster in several, three days. They work. And boosters work about as well as the vote tabulators in Maricopa County. And I try to get a booster each week from a different company, and so that I would be boosted. And so there we go. So I'm just going to ask Robbie to come up and get us started in prayer and get us going. And do you remember that you're teaching tonight? Yes. It's my turn. You know, I got my notes right here. And so without further ado, here's my friend, Dr. Dean. Well, I'm just glad I'm not on yet. When he was talking about the fact that y'all enjoyed having me here, I was thinking about the fact that we all have guest speakers, every church does, and all of our guest speakers bring us joy, some by coming, some by going. So I was glad he didn't bring that up. So before we get started tonight, let's just make sure that we're in right relationship with the Lord. Scripture says that we worship by means of the Spirit and by means of truth. And Galatians 5.16 says we walk by the Spirit. But if we sin, we're no longer walking according to the Spirit, we're walking according to the sin nature. So we have to restore our fellowship, which as I pointed out last night, isn't a state. It is a partnership with God in terms of walking in the same direction. So it is an active concept, not a static concept. So we'll begin with a few moments of silent prayer. So you'd make sure that you're in right relationship with the Lord, then I'll open in prayer. Let's pray. Our Father, what a privilege it is that we can come together before your throne of grace because the Lord Jesus Christ opened the way and the veil was torn and we have direct access to you on the basis of our priesthood as members of the body of Christ and the bride of Christ and the unique way in which you have positioned us as church age believers. And so little is taught about this, and so little is understood. We're just thankful that we have the opportunity to delve into these things in Paul's epistle to the Ephesians. Father, we pray for Jim Myers. Jim sent out his letter today, and just pray for, thankful for all the things he was able to do, and the financial resources for helping out so many in Ukraine and dealing with power outages dealing with food shortages in some areas and Dealing with a lack of water also problems with lack of water down in Zambia and the need to read dig some wells and just thankful that he has you've given him the financial resources to help out in all these areas and and pray for his safe return and ability to recover. And Father, we just pray that we might all be mindful of those who are serving on the mission field away from their primary culture and their need to be taken care of logistically, and that that's part of our responsibility. Now, Father, as we study tonight, we pray that you would just challenge us with your word. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. All right, does it sound good back there? All right. Okay, well tonight I'm gonna do things a little differently. I'm going to try to just focus on using this one screen, okay? So I don't have to try to manipulate two screens. So we're gonna be looking at the old man in Ephesians 4, 17 through 21, but I wanna start with a little review. Now, I don't have a way to darken this, do I? What do you hit? Okay. There, I did it. There I did it. Okay. All right. Now, last night, and I talked to John a little bit, so I know he's taught the basic conclusions that I came to last night. But I wanted you all to understand how we get to those conclusions of what the baptism by the Holy Spirit is. And I always try to use that phraseology to indicate means, that we're baptized by means of the Holy Spirit. We're to walk by means of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is that should be instrumental. He's the means or the instrument God gives us to enable us to walk, and he's the instrument that Christ used to baptize us. And in looking at some of these things in grammar, we often get kind of in the weeds, at least as far as a lot of people think. And I do that so you know that you may not be able to regurgitate or rearticulate what I have stated, but you've heard it, you've understood the conclusions, and you know what it means. And I often think back on a situation back in the early, early 80s, I was pastoring my first church down near Lamarck, which is the last town before you cross over the causeway to Galveston. And during that time, somebody told me that a man by the name of A.E. Wilder Smith was going to be speaking, sponsored by a creationist society in Houston, and he was speaking at the Cullen Auditorium at U of H. I don't know that that would happen today, but he spoke then, and he had three PhDs. and he was, I don't have a strong science background at all, but I have enough to be able to at least follow what was going on, and I had read at least one of his books up to that point, and he went through a number of lines of scientific evidence demonstrating the virtual impossibility of any kind of evolution taking place. Now, we all believe that there is evolution and change within a species or within a biblical kind, but not crossing those kind barriers. And so, most of the time I could grasp what he was doing at a very, very rudimentary level, but I could clearly understand his conclusions. And when things have come up since then, I know where I can go back to look at his books in order to look at those arguments again. And the same is true in many, many other areas. I may not be able to come up with something off the top of my head, But I have heard it. I know I've heard it. And I know that the case that was made for it was better than the case that I've heard against it. And that's where a lot of people are that are in the pew. I think that we learn it better because we teach it. And whenever you teach something, you learn it a lot better than if you just sit and listen. Even if you go home and you take your notes and you study and you look everything up, you learn it better if you have to teach it to someone. And if you have to teach it to someone about 20 times, you learn it even better. But when you hear it, you know you've heard it. And I go back even to some times back when I was in high school. And I would go to a high school camp at Camp Peniel, and John was one of the counselors involved at that time. And David Whitelock had just graduated from seminary, and he would bring guys in that he knew who were seminary students or were in the doctoral program at Dallas Seminary, and they would talk about things related to prophecy and other areas creation evolution other areas and you know when you're 15 16 years old you're not following a lot of the details but you I've always known I've heard those conclusions and that the case was made and that's so important for us so so you don't have to understand every little jot and tittle of what I am saying, but you can understand the conclusions and how that helps us understand what is going on in some of these key passages that relate to our spiritual life. So last night what we did was we started in Romans 6. And there I pointed out that Romans 6, 7, and 8 is sort of Paul's greatest and lengthiest explanation of the spiritual life. And he starts off by asking some rhetorical questions. And the third one emphasizes, he's really asking them something that they should know. He says, do you not know? that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death. And I pointed out that the main idea of baptism, literally it means to wash, dip, plunge, but figuratively it has the idea of identification of one thing with something else. And so when we look at this, the baptism that he's talking about, he's talking about an identification with Christ, an identification with his death. Verse four brings in his burial and his resurrection. And I've often pointed this out, that it's the resurrection, because he is raised to new life, the resurrection to new life is the focal point for our spiritual life. His death, it relates to our salvation. We trust in Christ's work on the cross and the result of that is that we are born again or we are regenerated. So we become a new creature in Christ. And the resurrection is for Christ, was to new life. And that's the foundation for our new life. And so he's shifting gears from talking about the impact of Christ's substitutionary death on the cross in Romans 3, 4, and 5. He deals with justification by faith alone and reconciliation. And now he is shifting to talk about this newness of life that we have. This is technically called our sanctification, our spiritual life, our experiential sanctification. And so he's talking about the basis for understanding our new spiritual life is going to go back to this a non-experiential event that occurred at the instant of our faith in Christ, which is the baptism by means of the Holy Spirit. So it's not only connects to our walk in newness of life or our new spiritual life. And remember, he's talking about our new walk. We're going to go from here to Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4 starts with the command. Ephesians 1-3 lays the groundwork. Ephesians 4 starts the application where Paul says that he commands us to walk worthy of that calling with which we have been called. And so Ephesians 4, 5, up to 6, 9 is talking about the Christian walk, the Christian life, which is the newness of life. So that's where we are seeing our connection here is with that word walk and the phrase walking in newness of life. And then Paul goes on to say something or to restate this baptism principle with a different phrase in verse five. He says, for if we have been united together in the likeness of his death. United in the likeness of his death equals being baptized or identified with his death. So He is saying, if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection. Resurrection is a picture of His new life, our new spiritual life. And then he says, in the English translation, usually translators will simply translate a participle with an ing verb, but there's about eight or nine different nuances to a participle in the Greek. And this is, and it's up to, as, has been pointed out by Robert Thomas in his book on hermeneutics. It should be translated as basic as possible because it's the responsibility of the pastor and the pulpit to interpret and explain it. So this is interpreted as a causal participle. So Paul is saying we should also be united together in the likeness of his resurrection because we know this. Okay, so he's reminding them of something. They have been taught something that they have learned, that our old man was crucified with him. Now the interesting thing is, in Romans, this is the first time Paul uses that phrase chronologically. When you think about Paul's life, what stands out? His missionary journeys. How many missionary journeys were there? Three, unless you count his fourth trip to Rome as a missionary journey, which I do, because Paul was always a missionary, so there's technically four trips. So how many epistles did he write after the first trip? Dan, you don't know? He wrote one. He wrote Galatians. How many did he write after the second trip? After the second trip, he wrote two. He wrote 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. After the third trip he wrote, you're catching on, he wrote three. He wrote 1st and 2nd Corinthians and Romans. So Romans is early. After the fourth trip, which is his trip to Rome where he is under guard and under house arrest, he wrote four, those are called the prison epistles. And those are Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, and Philemon. Those are the four. And then the pastorals are written after that first imprisonment. So that's an easy way to remember them. First trip, one epistle. Second trip, two epistles. Third trip, three epistles. Fourth trip, four epistles. So now you've got it. See, you can take that to Africa. Okay, so what's interesting here, the reason I said that is Paul mentions old man here, but this is the first time he mentions that. Only Paul uses this old man, new man vocabulary. He doesn't really explain it until his prison epistles, and he uses that language twice. He uses it in Ephesians, and he uses it in Colossians, and that's it. That's all we have. And it's interesting that, so as we look at this, he is talking about the fact that our old man was crucified, and so many people have taken the old man to be the sin nature. And as I said, it's not the sin nature because that would be redundant, that the sin nature, we used to call it the old sin nature, but it's really just the sin nature. Using the term old sin nature confuses it. So, knowing this, that our old man, if we said, if that was our old sin nature, we said our old sin nature was crucified with him, that the body of sin, see that's the sin nature, that the sin nature might be done away with. Well, wait a minute, that just doesn't make sense. So, that really is not a good understanding. of this passage, but it introduces the concept that the old man is crucified, so we're separated from the old man. So, we have to ask that question, what is the old man? And so, I went from there to Colossians 3, 9, 10, and 11. This is the clearest. Ephesians 4 gets muddied because of the way they handle the grammar, the infinitives. But it's clear, this is the, take it to the bank, clearest explanation of it. Where Paul says, do not lie to one another since you have, it's an aorist tense verb, past tense, you have put off the old man with his deeds and you have put on. Now, nobody translates these as imperatives, which is the mistake they make in Ephesians 4. You have already, and it's already, they're past tense, this is something that's done. You have already put on the new man who is being renewed, that's where you get into what's happening in the present, who is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. where, that is, that where refers back to the new man. This is what shows us that the new man cannot be talking about individuals, what we have individual. So for many years, the way I would teach this was that the old man is everything that we were before we were saved, and the new man is who we are after we're saved. But see, that's taking it individually. But when you come to verse 11 where it says where, What is the reference to that? What's the antecedent to where? the where is referring to the new man. You've put on the new man where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free. And so what I was pointing out there is that the description of this location in the new man uses vocabulary that is identical to what we find in Galatians 3.27. Galatians 3, 27, 28, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Okay, not put on the new man, but here it's put on Christ. Same verb though. If we go back, how do we go back? That darkened it? How do I back up? Do you know how I can back up? What? Okay, that goes forward. Oh, that goes back, okay. So, if you notice in Colossians 3.11, 3.10 and 3.11 never mention baptism. But obviously the language of 3.11, a place where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, enslaved, nor free, is used in other passages that do talk about baptism. So in Galatians 3.27, for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, There's neither slave nor free. There's neither male nor female for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So the key phrase to pay attention to here is we have put on Christ. And the last phrase we are in Christ. So putting on Christ is takes place through the baptism by means of the Holy Spirit. And where are we? We are placed in Christ. So we are in him. We are in Christ. Now, the key passage that we went to on baptism by the Spirit that I spent a lot of time on was 1 Corinthians 12, 13, where I was simply pointing out that in English, when you have a passive verb, we were all baptized, it's an aorist passive indicative, as the dark blue cutout says. A passive verb in English, we designate the one who performs the action by the English preposition by. But this preposition, by, is translating the Greek preposition in, e-in, which can mean by, with, or in. The trouble is, in Greek, the one who performs the action of a passive verb is always indicated by the preposition hoopa, not the preposition in. So when it says by one spirit, it's using the same language that is used in the six other passages dealing with the baptism by the spirit, where they're all relating to John the Baptist statement, that I baptize you by means of water and for the repentance of sin. But the one who comes after me, he, So, He will baptize you. The verb is an active voice. The one who does the baptizing is Jesus in those six other passages. He will baptize you in pneumati by means of the Spirit. So, in all the passages, the Holy Spirit is mentioned in an end clause. And they should all be translated the exact same way, that this is indicating the means or the instrument, just as John the Baptist used water, to identify the repentant Israelite with the coming kingdom. So, Jesus is using the Holy Spirit to identify the new believer with his death, burial, and resurrection, and placing the believer in his body, in Christ. Okay? If you don't do that, you end up doing what the Pentecostal Charismatics did and you say, well you have a baptism here by the Spirit, so the Spirit performs it, and the other six are a different baptism where Jesus is doing it. And so they get into two baptisms, one when you're saved and one afterward. So to basically remind us of where this takes us, We have our eternal realities. The light is our position in Christ. We are all sons of light. And so at the instant of salvation, we are baptized by means of the Spirit and placed in Christ. where that is our new position. We are in Christ. We're in the body of Christ. We are the bride of Christ. Then we have our temporal realities where we are filled by means of the Holy Spirit. What we're filled with is the Word of God. But when we're not walking by the Spirit, then we're walking according to the sin nature. And to recover, we need to confess sin. And instantly we're forgiven of those sins and cleansed of all unrighteousness. So the conclusion last night was the purpose for the baptism of the Holy Spirit is to break the tyranny of the sin nature by identifying us with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Then something new I added, the baptism of the Holy Spirit places us into Christ and makes us part of a new body, a new organism, a new entity, which is the new man. We're not in a new organization. The church is not an organization. The church is an organism. It's a living, breathing, dynamic organism. It is not an organization. We are the body of Christ, and that's very important. So we ended last night by just giving a little sort of preview of what was going on. The passages on the left are the three key passages that talk about the old man. The old man, our old man was crucified with him in Romans 6.6. Ephesians 4.10 Paul says, accurately translated because it's an aorist infinitive. Aorist is past tense. We don't have an aorist tense in English. In Greek it is one of two past tenses. The imperfect talks about continual action in the past. Actually it's one of three past tenses. The imperfect is continual action in the past. The aorist just sort of summarizes it as if it were one event. The And the perfect tense talks about it as a completed action in past time. Pluperfect is a little bit more than that. Completed action with consequences in the past. So, I've actually translated that infinitive as you have already put off concerning your former conduct, the old man. So the old man has a way of life. He has a code of conduct. He has norms and standards. He has a way of life. And so what Paul is saying here is you put that off. It's gone. It was in the past. You took that that robe off, or the way I put it is, is you used to be on Team Gentile, and when you trusted in Christ, you took off that jersey and you put on Team Church. And now you have that jersey, you're on a different team. Now the coach on the former team is a coach that had one way of looking at life and standards for living. And the coach on the new team has a different set of standards, a different code of conduct. You look at Colossians 3.9, it accurately translates the aorist there, it says, do not lie to one another since you have already put off the old man with his deeds. So we've put off, that's a past action. We are not to put off, that's how it's, we'll see that in Ephesians in a minute, but we have already put off the old man. In Ephesians 2.15, we get the definition of the new man. having, we're going to deal with this in detail in a minute, that having abolished in His flesh Christ on the cross, abolished in His flesh in the past at the cross, the enmity, that is the hostility between Jew and Gentile that was grounded in the law of Moses in the ordinances of the law, Jew and Gentile were to be kept separate. If you look at the Orthodox Jews at the time of Christ, they wouldn't go to a Gentile's house, they wouldn't go into a Gentile's house, they wouldn't eat with a Gentile. That's why in Acts 10, when Peter is staying at the home of Simon the Tanner, that he has this vision, and three times God lowers a big tablecloth from the sky that has all of, it's a seafood meal of lobster and shrimp, and there's ham and pork ribs and all kinds of food on there that would be considered treif by any Orthodox Jew. Treif is the opposite of kosher. Okay, so no Jew would go into a Gentile's home at all, and they would certainly never partake of any kind of unclean food. And a lot of people get confused on that, and they think that this had some dietary significance. No, it didn't. It never had a dietary significance in terms of health. Why do I say that? Because in Acts 10, God said, what I have made clean is no longer unclean. That means God, and God didn't give him a new guidebook teaching him that you better cook pork at a certain temperature for a certain length of time and don't eat raw bacon. You have to cook it a certain amount. There's no change in any kind of style of cooking or degree of cooking, no pun intended. God just instantly said, it's clean now. And what he was talking about was the fact that in just a few minutes, while Peter was still on the roof, there was going to be a knock on the door, and there were going to be some Gentiles there from the Roman centurion Cornelius saying, we need you to come. and come and teach us and talk to us because Cornelius had received a message to send us to get you. And so Peter knew that they were now clean. He could go to the home of a Gentile. And so when he does that, he's beginning to realize that this new entity, the church, was a little bit more than just for Jews only. Okay, so that's the background. There's a change that is taking place. And so God has created, Christ rather, created in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace. So I want you to pay attention. I'm testing your observation. Okay, other than the word new man, I want you to identify another word in these three verses that's always there when there's a talk about the new man. So Ephesians 4.24 says, and that you have already put on the new man, which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. So the new man is created according to God. and we have already put on that new man. And the parallel in Colossians 3.10, which follows 3.9 on the other side of the slide, 3.9 said you have already put off the old man and have put on, have, past tense, have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. So what's the word that is found in all three verses other than new man? Create. Isn't that interesting? You see, God created this new man. When was that new man created? It was created after the cross. So there's no such thing like that, anything like this in the Old Testament under the Mosaic law. What this emphasizes is that we as members of the church, the body of Christ, are in this new man which God created. This is profound. We're gonna look at a couple of more things on that in just a minute, but I wanted to preview it with those verses. So this is what we're gonna look at tonight. In Ephesians 4, 17, Paul says, this I say therefore and testify in the Lord that you should no longer walk, or in other words, no longer live your life as the rest of the Gentiles walk. You're not gonna live like Gentiles lived like you did before. That was your norms and standards. You came out of a Gentile culture, and that's what determined right and wrong, and how you lived, and how you talked, and how you thought. But now, you're no longer going to walk as the Gentiles walk, and it's specifically a mental attitude, in the emptiness, or the vanity, or the futility of their thinking. Without God, they can't think. I don't care how smart they are. Romans 1.22 said, So all these environmentalists that are running around, all the little greenies are worshiping the creature, rather than the Creator, and they're not paying attention. So they are not smart. They are not intelligent. They are, they profess to be wise, but God says they are fools. So we are no longer to walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God. This is one of the main aspects of spiritual death. Spiritual death doesn't mean you're like a corpse. As Calvinists say, they can't think, can't react, can't have positive volition, can't do anything. You're alienated from the life of God, so spiritual death is just an analogy of separation. You're separated from the life of God, and you're no longer capable of walking with God because of that separation. That's part of spiritual death. Having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them. So having, I take it this way, having their understanding darkened because of the ignorance that is within them. Being alienated from the life of God is an appositional phrase. So then we have verse 19, who, Being past feeling, that is, these Gentiles, their past feeling, having given themselves over to lewdness to work all uncleanness with greediness. Decisions about God impact a person's morality. And Gentiles reject God, and what it does is it leads them into antinomianism, and we live in a culture that is getting increasingly more antinomianist. A study came out last week, published by Summit Ministries, that as a result of a survey that they took, that 40% of those who are under the age of about 40 no longer believe in absolute truth. They believe everybody creates their own truth, creates their own reality. The problem with that is if there is no such thing as absolute truth, then the principle that there is no such thing as absolute truth contradicts its own principle. It's self-contradictory. It is irrationality. But see, rationality was the hallmark of modernism. Irrationality is the hallmark of post-modernism. And so what happens under irrationality is people lose the ability to think, analyze, and think critically. And so we have a culture today that cannot think critically because there's no such, there's no standards anymore. Because you've rejected all standards. When you accept a standard that all standards are relative, that would include that, then you have gone into, you can't think anymore. And the more you plunge into the depths of that cesspool, the more irrational you become. And that is why people think they can make up whatever sex they are. It doesn't matter what biology says. The only thing that matters is feeling. Because once you get rid of reason, the only thing that's left as a criterion is how it makes you feel. And so they're going to go to the polls based on the feelings that are generated. And trust me, Democrats understand that very well. So they're always appealing to not the intellect, but to feelings. And it seems that the younger generation, Generation Z, from some of the initial findings after this election, was that Generation Z is what kept there from being a red tsunami. Because they believed what the president said, that what was on the line was democracy. And so, which is typical of what has come out of the left over the last 30 years, is they project what they're doing on the Republicans, and the greatest danger in this world are the Democrats. Look at what Democrat rule did in California, New York, and other places in handling COVID. They went to pure tyranny. They destroyed personal liberties, left and right. And that is because of their worldview. That showed that they are anti-democracy. And so this just leads us to that, but I'm not doing a political dissertation here. So anyway, this is what Ephesians 4.19 says there, who being past feeling have given themselves over to lewdness to work all uncleanness. And then Paul says, but you have not learned Christ in such a way. What way? The way of lewdness, sexual immorality, licentiousness, with uncleanness and greediness, which Paul calls idolatry in Colossians 3. He says, but you, big contrast, you have not learned Christ in such a way. if indeed you have heard of Him, and that's a first-class condition, and you have, and have been taught by Him as what? The truth is in Jesus. Not a truth, not your truth, not our truth, but the truth, an objective truth that exists outside of space and time in the eternal mind of God. That truth is embodied in Jesus who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Nobody can come to the Father except by me. So then Paul says, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught by him, and the way it's translated in the New King James, it's pretty typical, that you put off. You have heard him and have been taught by him that you put off concerning your, and it comes, and the way this is interpreted by many is that this is something you are to do, that you are to put off concerning your former conduct, the old man, which grows corrupt, because the old man is taken to be your corrupt, fallen nature. which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lust, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man, as if this is something you are to do now in the present. which was created according to God, and the new man is taken individually to be your regenerate nature by some, and others just, this is talking about spiritual growth. Now the way this should be translated is the way, well, not everything is here. I wanna talk about this idea, you were taught by him that this is the content of what you were taught. that you put off. Now you have these three infinitives here, put off, be renewed, and put on. How are we supposed to understand that? And putting off and putting on are both aorist infinitives, that's past tense. Now one of the things you learn in first year Greek is that an aorist tense in an infinitive or participle precedes the action of a present tense. Now I learned that back when I was in teen Bible class at Baraka Church as a 16, 15, 16, 17 year old. And that's just basic, basic grief. And so what that tells us is that it shouldn't be translated as something that's a present idea, but a past idea. And what has been put off is the old man, and what has been put on is the new man. Now let's look at the context in Ephesians. In Ephesians, as you go through the first part of Ephesians, we've seen that a major theme is on corporate reality. One of the most important hermeneutical observations you can make is that when Paul talks about we, When you get into chapter 2, it's very clear the we either refers to we Jews, and later it refers to we Jew and Gentiles in Christ. doesn't change that from the beginning. But what happens with a lot of interpreters is they interpret the we in chapter 1 as we the Apostles are we Christians, and then he changes the meaning. But nobody can tell me where does he change the meaning? Well, they say, oh, well he changes it in chapter 2. Well, there's nothing there that indicates that he's been saying we, we, we, we, we all the way home just like the little pigs. And There's nothing contextual that shows that it changed. So it's always talking about this corporate reality. He talks about you. He either talks about you as you unsaved Gentiles, or he talks about you as now they are saved, and then the context, it's talking about what they have become part of the we. So what we understand is at the instant of our salvation, we're baptized by means of the Holy Spirit and identified with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. We're in Christ. It's not experiential, it's not repeated, and it's not lost. It happens permanently at the instant of salvation. The second thing is that this new corporate identity is identified as the church. this is distinct from Israel. And that's so clear here because when you get down into 215 and 216 where Paul says Christ abolished the enmity that was in the law, then it's clear that It's a totally new situation now that Jew and Gentile are now part of this new entity. So we're going to look at Ephesians 2.10, 2.15, 2.16, 2.21, and 2.21b. Paul uses four metaphors to help us understand the dynamics of this new entity. We are a new man. This is where he defines what a new man is. This is the only place of all the passages that use new man, which is about four, that defines it. In Ephesians 2.16, we're called a new body, the body of Christ. In Ephesians 2.21, we're called a new building. And in Ephesians 2.21b, we're a new temple. So we're a new man, a new body, a new building, and a new temple. So first of all, in Ephesians 2.10, this emphasizes that God is creating something new. The we is now we Jew and Gentile together. for we, Jew and Gentile believers, are His." King James translates it workmanship. That's an antiquated term, but it indicates that workmanship isn't just something that someone has produced out in the workshop. It indicates something that is someone has taken pains over, has worked diligently on and produced a masterpiece. So we are God's masterpiece. We, Jew and Gentile together, we are his masterpiece created in Christ Jesus. That tells us it's something new. It wasn't before the church started in the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. We, Jew and Gentile together in the body of Christ are his masterpiece. And it is this masterpiece that God prepared beforehand, or that were created in Christ Jesus for the purpose of good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Not that we should be saved by them, because just two verses before in Ephesians 2, 8, 9, we're saved not by works. but by grace through faith in Christ Jesus, by faith in him. Okay, Ephesians, then we go to, come on. Ephesians 2.14, for Christ himself is our peace, our, Jew and Gentile. He's already talked in the intervening verses about how they were separated. Christ himself is our peace who has made both Jew and Gentile one. Before there were two, now there are one. Jew and Gentile are one. He's broken down the middle wall of separation. Well, what was that? See, there's two barriers. I don't have time to go through all this. There's a barrier between Jew and Gentile, and there's a barrier between Jew and Gentile and God. This is the first barrier that was created by the law. He destroyed that middle wall of separation, which is physically represented by a small wall that was on the temple grounds called the sorok, and that no Gentile was allowed to go beyond it. And there's a sign there that penalty of death for a Gentile to go beyond it. So they're separated physically. And he broke down the middle wall of separation by abolishing, or it could be when he abolished, in his flesh, the enmity. So on the cross, he abolishes the enmity, which is further explained as the law of commandments contained in ordinances. That's the Mosaic law. So now he has created, here's that word create again, he has created something new. He created in himself one new man from the two. Here he defines what the new man is. It's the joining of Jew and Gentile together in one new entity created at the cross. And it is verse 16, for the purpose that he might then reconcile them both, who's the both? Jew and Gentile, unsaved Jew and Gentile, reconcile them both to God through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. So here we have it. On the left, we have team Gentile, there's their jersey. And on the right, we have team Jew. and then down below we have Team Church. What happens is Team Gentile in Adam and Team Jew in Adam, I changed that but it disappeared in the slide, Team Jew who is in Adam are now united together as Team Church in Christ. The old man is our position in Adam. The new man is our position in Christ. Now, according to the New Testament, there's only three ethnic distinctions or three distinctions among human beings. It's not black, white, Asian, Pacific Islander, or any of those other human created terms. It's clear. 1 Corinthians 10, 32. give no offense either to the Jews, those would be unsaved Jews, or to the Gentiles, unsaved Gentiles, or to the church of God, which is made up of saved Jews and Gentiles. So Paul goes on to say in Ephesians 2.21, in whom, that is in Christ, the whole building being fitted together grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. That is the dwelling place for the Holy Spirit in the body of Christ. But He also indwells every single individual. So it's a corporate infilling as well as an individual infilling. So the third thing we see in the context is this metaphor of walking, Ephesians 4.1, walk in a manner, King James translated or New King James translated, walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called. What's a calling? A calling is your position. A calling is your career, your job, your talents. And really what this is saying is our new exalted position in Christ, that's our calling. is we are now in the royal family of God. We are a royal priesthood. That's our calling and to be ambassadors for Christ. We are to walk in a manner worthy of the exalted position to which we have been appointed. That's who we are. That's our new identity in Christ. So Paul says, therefore, I, the prisoner of the Lord, strongly urge you to conduct your life in a manner worthy of the exalted position to which you were summoned. That's who we are. I always remember dealing with some passages in 1 John that talk about that the one who's born again doesn't sin. And one of the illustrations of that is the illustration that when you're in a family, If you were in a good family, your parents taught you how you are to live. And you might come home and say, well, so-and-so does it, and so-and-so does something else and everything. Why can't I do that? And say, because you're in this family. And they can do what they're taught to do in their family, but you're in this family, and you're not to do that. And that's not how we do things. And we have a better way. And so what this is saying is now God says you used to be on team Gentile, or you used to be on team Jew. But now you're on team the church, and we have a new way of doing things. Just like a sports player may be playing for one team and there they have certain rules and certain standards for how people on the team are to conduct their lives. And then he gets traded to a different team and they have a different set of standards. Well, we're now on a new team and we have a set of standards that are set forth in the scripture. And so we are to walk consistently with that. And in 417 to 18, which opens a section that we're looking at for the new man, Paul says, this I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk. You no longer walk like team Gentile. You're on team church now, and you have a different way of living. Now, the problem that they're having is that they are experiencing a lack of unity. This comes out in the next section where Paul is exhorting them and saying, let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you. because there were problems between Jews and Gentiles still, and it went both ways within the church. So Paul says that you've got to get rid of that kind of behavior and that kind of language, and instead you are to be kind to one another. A very important phrase that we have here throughout, many times the phrase one another is used in the New Testament for how believers are to be toward one another. We are to love one another, and there's a lot of passages that repeat that. We're to care for one another. We are to admonish one another. We are to put up with one another in love. We are to do all kinds of things toward one another because we're in a living organism. We're not in an organization. So, we are to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another. Now, it's interesting, the word here for forgiving is the word charizomai. The root is charis, which is a Greek word for grace. We're to be graciously forgiving one another, not grudgingly forgiving one another. but graciously, and even the word charizomai has the idea of eradicating a financial debt in a couple of passages. The other word for forgiveness is afiemi, and that's a banking term that was used for eradicating a debt. So it's interesting that both words are used in some context in a financial sense of eradicating a debt. And that's what Paul is saying, that be kindly gracious to one another, eradicating any sins or problems between you, even as God in Christ forgave you. Now, I don't care who you are or what your background is or what has happened to you or how somebody has done you wrong at some point. Every one of us has had people in our lives who we thought we cared deeply about, and they cared deeply about us, who betrayed us and did us wrong. But nobody did you as wrong as we did wrong to God. And God has forgiven us in Christ Jesus. So that's our standard. So I just can't forgive them. You violated God's character in a degree so much higher than what that person did to you, and you're saying that God graciously forgave you, but you can't graciously forgive somebody? That's the standard. We have to forgive. Now, that doesn't mean you're gonna be buddy-buddy and you have to invite him over for Sunday lunch every week. it means that you're not going to harbor mental attitude sins towards them. And in situations where you have to be with that person, then you're going to exercise kindness and graciousness. But it doesn't mean that you have to put yourself in a vulnerable position where you may be physically harmed or abused or emotionally abused. In contrast, Ephesians 4, 1 through 3 says, after Paul said that he strongly urged us to conduct our life in a manner worthy of the exalted position to which you were summoned, how is that conduct described? With all humility, that means it's not about you, it's about the Lord. Humility, arrogance, it's all about me. We live in one of the most arrogant generations of all time, but arrogance, it's always there because that's the orientation of the sin nature. So it's always about me. We just exhibit it more fully in our generation. But we are to deal with that, and the only way to deal with arrogance is with the Word of God and walking by the Spirit. With all humility and gentleness, with long suffering, macrothumia, long, it takes a long time to get angry. Putting up with one another in love. And that's what you do when you're in a family. You put up with one another in love. You know that the other people have faults and they're gonna do things you don't like and may hurt your feelings, but you always forgive them and you manage to move forward. Being diligent, that is exercising every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit. That was created at the instant of salvation. But if you go back here, They're not exhibiting that unity. They have bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking. It's causing divisions. But Paul had already told them, you have to be diligent to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. As we get into this, the biggest problem that we have is how we define the new man and understand when these actions, how these actions describe the infinitives, I misspelled that, infinitives. Infinitives took place. Dan Wallace in his Greek Grammar writing on this passage says, this is a difficult problem. It is pregnant with exegetical implications. As this is an important problem, some discussion of it is necessary. And so the grammar issue is this. There are two aorist infinitives, that means their past tense, to put off and to put on. and they are translated a little differently. Number one, it's common to translate these with the idea of you should put on or you should put off, but they're not imperatives, they're infinitives. The second thing is if he is not saying you should do this, then he is saying you have done this. Now on that basis, present yourselves, okay? So there are three possible views that we find. First of all, it's challenging individuals to put off or put on the old man or the new man. And I've already laid that to rest. It's not an imperative, it's an infinitive. Second, each individual believer has already put off and put on, and then each individual should renew their thinking. Now this is emphasizing the individual over against his corporate identity. Now, the second would be what I've taught many times and what you may have heard others teach, and that is that the old man is everything we were before we were saved, and the new man is everything we are after we're saved. But that's still treating it as individuals. When you treat it as corporate, that doesn't mean in contrast to individual, because it applies to the individual. But the corporate is saying, we are a family. This is how everybody in the family does this. So that is taking it as a corporate idea with individual application, not only individual application. So that's the idea. It's saying like, we're all, I remember when, I forget who the coach of the Dallas Cowboys is, but when things were going, guys were kneeling not at the national anthem, he said, we're not gonna have that on this team. See, that's it, and that applies to every individual, but it's a corporate standard, and that's the kind of idea that we're looking at here. So that brings us to understanding a little more about what these terms old man and new man describe. And I've already previewed this. There are those that have interpreted the old man as all that we were before we were saved. And that's correct as far as it goes, but it's more than that. And the new man must be understood not as a regenerate individual, but as the church, this new entity composed of Jew and Gentile united together. in Christ. It's the body of Christ. It's our new identity, our new position in Christ. So this is why Paul says, but y'all have not so learned Christ, if indeed, and he's assuming they had, you have heard him and have been taught by him as truth is in Jesus. So they were taught this truth. And what they were taught, it begins to be explained in verse 22. That you put off is how the King James puts it, which implies that you should put off the old man. But as I've translated it here, y'all took off concerning your form of conduct, the old man which is growing corrupt. See, those who are in Adam All those in Adam, that is growing more and more corrupt as each generation, as each century goes by. The fallen humanity gets more and more corrupt with each generation. So the old man is growing corrupt according to deceitful lusts. And even Darby came very close to this. In Darby's translation, he said, if you have heard him and been instructed in him as the truth is in Jesus, namely, you're having put off. See, he grabbed it. Darby, as I pointed out last night, got a first in Greek at Trinity, Dublin, in Dublin, in Ireland. You know, he was brilliant, absolutely brilliant in Greek, and he understood that these aorist infinitives had to be translated in the past tense. So he said, namely, you're having put off, according to the former conversation, the old man, which corrupts itself according to the deceitful lusts, and being renewed in the, that's present tense. So that's what we do now. We are to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, what Paul says, to be renewed in your thinking in Romans 12 too. Ephesians 4 24 and you're having put on in the past the new man so he understood that he didn't catch the corporate sense of it but that's okay he understood that this was past tense and that pat putting off the old man already happened putting on the new man already happened and now we are to be renewed in the spirit of of our mind, but that's not how you see it in many of the modern translations. So this is the ESV who translates it as you are to put off your old self, like it's as a present imperative, and you are to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self. As if each one of these are parallel, but that violates the grammar. In the Holman Christian Standard Bible, you took off your former way of life. See, that's better. You are being renewed in the spirit of your minds. You put on, past tense, the new self, the one created. So this, and then that's parallel because when it says you took off your former way of life, In verse 25, you have the same verb and the same aorist infinitive, and it's, since you put away lying, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another. We'll get to that verse a little bit. That's really badly translated. The correct translation is, as at the bottom of the screen, since you have already put off the lie, speak the truth as it is in Jesus. See, it's talking about our conversation with one another is to be built on the Word of God and the truth of the Word of God because we have put off with the old man, we put off Satan's lie. We put off the lie about reality. It changes the whole meaning of this next section. Now, in Colossians 3, 9 through 11, it's talking about an individual. It says, don't lie to one another. So it's talking about an individual principle, but it's a completely different structure and language than you have in Ephesians. So we're not to lie to one another since we have put off the old man with his deeds. And have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. We're to walk with the Lord and have our character transformed in the image of Christ, which is the image of God. And in this new man, there's neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised. So this takes us back just by review, Galatians 3.27 and 28, this is the baptism by the Holy Spirit. That's what we've seen. So when we are saved, we have two realities, our eternal legal position in Christ, in the new man, affected by the baptism by the Holy Spirit. We still struggle with our day-to-day walk. We are in the light and we are to walk in the light So that brings us to the end tonight So I hope that brings a little clarity and tomorrow night. We're gonna go a little further a little deeper into what comes up What comes up next? so Let's close in prayer. Father, thank you for this opportunity to look at these things. Understanding who we are in Christ is so important. Understanding that we are in the body of Christ. We're in your family. We're in the royal family of God. This is our new identity with a new code of conduct, a new set of standards, a new set of absolutes, and we are to live accordingly. Yet we struggle so with a sin nature, and that is the spiritual battle. of our lives, and we all struggle with it in different ways depending on. the strengths and weaknesses of our sin nature. And we have to deal with one another in love and deal with one another in kindness, forgiving one another as you in Christ forgave us. So, Father, we pray that you would drive these truths home, that the Holy Spirit would make them clear to us in our individual daily life and that you might be glorified. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.