So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.20 That, however, is not the way of life you learned 21 when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22 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; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Eph. 4:17-24
If God is so great, if the gospel is good news, if we get the opportunity to live forever in Heaven, why doesn't everyone accept that offer? Paul gets at that here. To surrender to Christ means to give up control of their lives and autonomy or control or freedom to make one's own choices is built in all of us in our nature. I was going to say sin nature but didn't the serpent appeal to that in Eve, even before sin?
I'm unashamedly pro-life. I'd like to say that it's a rational decision based on the fact that I saw 20 babies a day for 37 years in my office with an ultrasound, moving punching stretching making breathing movements with a beating heart, and I know they were alive. Being a former fetus, they were me. To me, ending those pregnancies would be taking a life. That's why I vote Republican, even when the choices aren't good, because I have yet to meet a pro-life democrat candidate. I recently posted on Facebook a response to why anyone would vote for Trump the racist (even though I didn't but wrote in a truly pro-life candidate), and stated why I would. A person responded that she too is pro-life, but she sees women's rights as paramount. I didn't respond because I'm not going to hijack someone's post to get in an argument that no one will win on Facebook, but can you see what Paul is saying here? The desire for freedom or autonomy makes someone think that's more important than the life of a helpless, innocent baby. That is the definition of "futility of thinking." And people's hearts are so hardened you can't even reason with them. You can't tell them, but half those babies are women - what about their rights. You can't show them a video of a baby being sucked out of the mom's womb. Nothing will change their minds. They have lost all sensitivity.
Likewise with the gospel. Leading a youth group, when one teen started drifting away in both their attendance and their orthodox beliefs like the Bible is the word of God and as true today as it was 2000 years ago, the reason for the drifting was sensuality. They desired to go against God's authority in areas of sexuality and do what their flesh and "freedom" (Eph.2 tells us that the unsaved aren't free but controlled by Satan) tells them to do.
Bob Dylan, who once claimed to be a Christian but was a fraud, wrote "You gotta' serve someone. It might be the Devil, it might be the Lord but you gotta' serve someone." I've been watching Game of Thrones (fast forwarding through the nudity and sex scenes and there are a lot) and the Dragon Queen, in her path to obtaining the Iron throne, is going through city by city freeing enslaved people by killing off the tyrannical leaders that are enslaving them and saying, "You are now free, you can go, do, be whoever and whatever and wherever you want to be." What do the throngs do? They all bow down to her and pledge to serve and follow her. You see, Hollywood knows Bob Dylan's song is true. What she is doing is a picture of what God has done except He is good and I sense she is just as evil as all the ones she deposed. God has defeated the Devil who has us enslaved and made us free. Out of gratitude for that, our natural response is, "I want to serve You." The problem is that Satan has put us in chains that appeal to what's inside of us - desires and lusts, and mankind can't see the chains but think they are free. This is why Salvation requires the Holy Spirit intervening and opening their eyes to see the chains and futility of their thinking.
Let's pray for revival, a move of the Holy spirit to open mankind's eyes to the beauty of following and serving Christ and the reality of their enslavement by Satan.
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