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Audio of More Sermons by Pastor Marjorie Palmer

Ephesians 4:23b-24

Changing Clothes©

‘…be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.’

            Whenever I begin to make plans for some event I can always hear my mother asking me, ‘What will you wear?’  I think I was conditioned from my very earliest life to think about clothes—the right clothes to wear.  There are places in this world in which a person, a woman, can be flogged or even killed for wearing the wrong clothes.  There are places in the Middle East where women are forced to wear a shroud that covers their entire bodies, even their faces, leaving only slits for the eyes.

            Our scripture today, coming from the Fourth Chapter in Ephesians speaks about a new kind of clothing that we Christians should wear.

            Can you imagine Christian clothes? –clothes that we would wear that would signify to others that we are Christian?  We certainly see people wearing Christian jewelry: crosses and those little bracelets with the WWJD on them.

            Have you ever wondered if the person you have just met, who is wearing one of those items, is really a Christian?  Do clothes, hats, or jewelry make a person Christian?  Does wearing some other piece of clothing or accessory make a person NOT a Christian?

            I call this sermon ‘Changing Clothes’, because the letter to the Ephesians tells us there is clothing we need to ‘put off’ [or take off] and what sort clothes we need to ‘put on’, hence changing clothes.  

            Even in the story of the First Couple, Adam and Eve, there was concern over clothes.  They discovered that they were naked, and they needed to do something about it.  Do you remember how their first efforts at style and assembly of apparel weren’t terribly successful?  [According to Genesis Chapter Three they tried to fashion little skirts out of fig leaves.]  But before they left the garden God prepared a new suit of clothes, garments made of lamb skins.  As they departed the garden and headed into the wilderness outside the garden, they were covered in new outfits. You could say that God has ordained and provided that clothing is appropriate for us to wear in this world.

            Remember, God made humans in God’s image.  They were friends with God and were close to God.  But the fall damaged their imago dei, the image of God.  People were no longer naturally friends with God; they were now enemies of God.

            Paul paints a picture of what ‘fallen people’ were like as he reminds the Ephesians what state they were in before he met them, before they came to faith in Christ.

·        Their thinking was darkened

·        They had no hope

·        Their hearts were hard and unforgiving

·        They had no sensitivity to others

·        They had no moral restraint

·        They were greedy

·        They practiced every sort of impurity

             And then they came to faith in Christ.  They trusted the LORD Jesus to save them. They began growing and living new lives as believers in the Way.

            So, after enumerating all the troubles that made up their lives before they believed in Christ, Paul tells the Ephesians that they are called

·        To be renewed in the spirit of [their] minds

·        To clothe [themselves] anew in Christ

·        To be created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

            The Ephesians were called to put on clothes, or change their clothes, to fit their new persons.  As believers in Christ, we, too, are called to change our clothes to fit our new selves.

             Before we put on new clothes, however, we have to put off the old clothes. The scripture has a number of examples of ‘old clothes, to put off as well as the ‘new clothes’ to put on,

             Dr. Jay Adams, a Christian pastor and counselor, wrote and spoke about this part of Ephesians, and I am indebted to him for many of his ideas about it.

            We’ll begin with a riddle.  It is a really simple riddle, which will show us the basic concept of ‘putting off’ and ‘putting on’ something .  This is not meant to be funny; it’s simply a paradigm for us.

            The riddle is:  ‘When is a door not a door?’  Answer:  ‘When it’s a jar.  [ajar] That is to say, when it is something else.

            That riddle can help us to understand how we need to change when we are Christians.  As Christians we have become different people from the way we were before coming to faith.   

            Paul lists a number of areas where we fail: lying, thieving; ill-used anger; evil speaking; and so on.  For each of these failings, there is old clothing to take off and new clothing to put on. For example:

            The paradigm says:  when is something not something [When is it not itself]?

            Answer:  When it is something else.

            So, when is a liar not a liar?

            Answer:  When that person is a truth teller.  When the person takes great care to always speak the truth.

            We wear falsehood when we speak or write or project untruth.  The bearer of false things can’t be trusted.  He/she says whatever seems to satisfy the situation at the moment.  A person who has been a bearer of false speaking must put false speech off and put on the opposite—put on truthfulness.  A false-speaking person will have a reputation for not speaking truth, for being a liar.  It may be some time before someone with such a reputation can ever be known otherwise.   A person with the reputation for being a liar won’t be thought of differently until that person becomes known as a truth-teller.   

            When is a thief not a thief?

            When he or she is something else:  When he or she gets a job; works hard; earns money; and begins giving to others. 

            In other words, a thief who is not currently stealing is still a thief; he is just a thief who is between jobs!

            A person is no longer a thief when he or she has put on the clothing of honesty.

            So the “put off” is to stop stealing, and the “put on” is to begin giving to others:  to become generous. 

            When is an evil-speaking person not an evil-speaking person?

            Answer: 

·        When he or she uses words to build others up

·        When he/she uses words that encourage

·        Uses words that give hope and new possibilities

            I think you can get the idea.  When we recognize that we have bad habits, the antidote to them is not simply stopping the habit, but becoming the opposite of the case.  [Instead of stealing; giving.  Instead of gossiping; NEVER speaking ill of anyone.]

            Paul wanted us to know that being Christian involves some important changes in our lives.  We can’t continue on in the same old manner of living that we were before we trusted Jesus.  We have to see changes in our lives.  The changes that start in our hearts as we believe and trust Jesus move to our daily lives and how we walk our walk of faith.

            Jesus told two parables that speak to this same point about the changes we need to make as we follow him.  

            The first parable is one we’ve looked at before:  the parable of the little fig tree.  Seems there was a landowner who came to his property to inspect it, and he found a fig tree there that he had seen on other occasions, and he noticed that this fig tree had not yet put out any fruit.  [Mind you, trees aren’t expected to produce fruit immediately. There is a period of development that fruit trees must accomplish before fruit can be expected.]  The landowner was aware of this timing requirement, and he knew it was time for the tree to show fruit.  The landowner called the gardener to him and told him to hack down the tree. The fig tree was using up ground where another tree, one that would grow fruit, could stand.  The gardener, however, pleaded for the fig tree.  The gardener promised to water the tree and nourish the tree and dig around the roots, to help encourage the tree to begin to fruit.  The gardener agreed that if after a year of this special work the tree still hadn’t produced any fruit then he would cut the tree down. 

            The second parable that Jesus taught on this line was about a king who was giving a wedding banquet for his son.  The king had invited many people to come to the banquet, but at the time of the actual banquet the invited guests couldn’t be bothered to come.  The king was angry, but he sent out messengers to go to the streets of the city and invite whoever will come to the great banquet for his son.  The messengers went, and soon the hall was filled with guests for the wedding.  But the king went to the banquet hall, looked around at the many guests, and sited a guest who stuck out among the many attendees.  The man was wearing the rags he had worn when he first heard the invitation to come to the banquet.  The king asked the guest how come it was that he didn’t have a wedding robe on for the celebration.  The man could not answer, and the king had the man thrown into the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth!

            There is something expected from the wedding guest.  The king expected the guest to have come properly attired in a wedding robe.  If he was going to attend the banquet for the king’s son, he must be properly attired.

            When I was young I heard that parable and thought the king was not fair in judging the man according to his wearing or not wearing a wedding robe.  After all, he didn’t have the money to buy an expensive garment for the occasion; he was just a poor man.  But I was taking the story too literally.  Jesus was talking about the need for those who come to the wedding banquet to be properly attired in clothes fit for the feast.  The banquet in this story is heaven.  We are expected to have a proper wedding robe when we come to the heavenly banquet. That robe will be woven together by our faith and our works.

            [Of course I am not saying that we have to earn our way to heaven!  That happens by grace through our faith in Christ.  What Jesus did for us on the cross provides us with the invitation to the banquet.  We are freely admitted to the banquet hall by Christ’s invitation.]

Copyright © 2009 Marjorie Palmer. All Rights Reserved. No portion of this writing may be reproduced in any form without specific, written permission of the author.

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