The Old Self vs. The New Self

SERMON INTRO:

“There's kind of a battle going on. And if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have a battle within the old self, which you still carry around, and the new self, the new spiritual self, which has been created by God himself through the gospel of Jesus Christ. So there's this battle of old and new, which we experience every day if you are a believer.

“I know that I do, and I know that I need to continue to come and be reminded of the things of God, to behold God and these things have been speaking life into me even this morning as I've prepared and as I've listened to them sing this morning when they were practicing. These things speak life to us. God's word does that and we need that. So I just want to go back and review where we've been just a little bit.

“So after laying the strong foundation of the gospel, chapters one through three of the book of Ephesians, the gospel of grace. Paul turned to how the gospel works out in real life. And we saw this hinge point in chapter four, verse one, to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. Now this means much, as we've seen, for the way that we function within the body of Christ.

“We are called as a people to actively maintain unity and peace as we all work together to build up the body of Christ. Last week we were reminded that the gospel changes us. It changes sinners into new spiritual people. The old has been put off and there's been a new life that has been created within us by God through the gospel. The battle is not yet complete. There's a renewal process that is ongoing in our lives.

“In this passage today, there are specific ways that this inward renewal works out in a practical way. So what we're going to see in a primary claim today is that in the community of Christ, we experience a practical foretaste of the eternal kingdom.

“It is a beautiful picture of what the gospel of Jesus Christ, the power of Jesus produces in a community like ours. It's a little taste of heaven in that sense.”

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