Introduction

In his book The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis describes a young man who is tormented by a red lizard that sits on his shoulder and mocks him. For Lewis, the lizard represents the indwelling sin all of us struggle with. An angel comes and promises to get rid of the red lizard, and the man, for the moment, takes great joy in that. He's thrilled. I can be rid of this thing. And then he realizes the way the angel will get rid of it, as the angel begins to glow with a fiery heat. He will kill the lizard. Beginning to recognize the implications, the young man says, "Maybe you don't have to kill it. Maybe you don't have to get rid of it entirely. Can't we just do this another time?" The angel says, "In this moment are all moments. Either you want the red lizard to live or you do not." The lizard, recognizing the hesitation of the young man, begins to mock and plead at the same time.

Be careful. He can do what he says. He can kill me. One fatal word from you and he will. Then you'll be without me forever and ever. It's not natural. How could you live? You'll only be a sort of a ghost, not a real man as you are now. He doesn't understand. He's only a cold, bloodless, abstract thing. It may be natural for him, but it's not natural for us. I know there are no real pleasures, only dreams, but aren't they better than nothing? I'll be so good. I admit I've gone too far in the past, but I promise I won't do it again. I'll give you nothing but really nice dreams, all sweet and fresh and almost innocent.

For C. S. Lewis, these words typify for all of us the way in which we compromise and allow indwelling sin in our lives. It's almost innocent. I don't want to be a legalist. God will forgive me. I won't let it go too far … again. And with such words we allow the lizards to live that torment us.

It is imperative that we deal with indwelling sin

The apostle Paul tells us in this passage what it would really mean to kill the lizards, the indwelling sin in our lives. He begins with an authority that is quite striking, almost hurtful to us. "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," (Ephesians 4:17). These are strong words. That word insist is martereo: I testify. "I testify in such a way that it costs me something to tell you this." It always costs a minister of the gospel to say, you must not live as the rest of the world. The apostle knows he must say it: Listen, if you are really in Christ Jesus, you are walking a different path. And if your life seems too much like the rest of the world, then you must recognize that all the gifts of grace do not annul a calling to piety. I tell you this. I insist on it. You must not live like everybody else. There must be something different.

It's said with the authority of Christ Jesus. Not the apostle's words alone, but uniting his apostolic authority to the authority of Christ as Lord, he says: You guys listen to me. You must be different.

And he says why: because the Gentiles are walking in the futility of their thinking—a word indicating they think there will be a fulfillment in the way they are going. But the fact of the matter is, it is futile. There will be no happiness there. There will be no fulfillment. What is almost innocent is, in fact, deadly to the joy God intends.

He begins to describe the way of the lizards, as it were. "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," (Ephesians 4:18). That unrewarding life is characterized by a darkened mind. They don't see or understand what they should. They are, in fact, ignorant in their thinking. This is going to be in stark contrast to what he is going to say about the life of those who are in the Lord in verses 20-21. We're in union with him who is life. But there are those who are darkened in their minds, darkened in their understanding.

The apostle is saying: I want you to look at those who walk in the way of the world. They don't have any understanding of real life. Their experience is limited only to their instincts, to the urges of their bodies. They don't have any knowledge of the eternal beyond themselves. They don't know the beauty Christ intends. Sadly this is not addressed to the Gentiles. It's addressed to the Ephesian believers.

Repeated disobedience results in the hardening of our hearts

He says what causes that dark understanding. It's at the end of verse 18. This ignorance is due to the hardening of their hearts. It's not just a hard heart; it's a hardened heart. The word indicates stubbornness, a resistance to the things of God. There had been opportunities to change, and they didn't change. There were repeated choices that were not of God. They may have seemed innocent, but they have rubbed against the heart in such a way that it is calloused. And in that callousness of the heart, that sclerosis of the heart, there is no spiritual blood going to the brain, so it is beginning to darken and harden.

These are scary words, particularly for those who would be ministers of the gospel. If we allow those almost innocent things repeatedly into our lives, they are hardening our hearts, and so we who would be sharing the truths of the gospel are getting darkened in our understanding. There is not sufficient flow of the spiritual juices to the brain. That's scary to me. If I continue to allow into my life the things that harden my heart, I cannot share with God's people the riches, the depths of the truths of God's Word. I'm darkened in my own understanding by the hardening of my heart.

I was with a group of pastors, and one talked about an elder in his church. The pastor said, "Even now I can hardly believe the way he talks to me. He has taken up living with another woman than his wife. She's younger. She's prettier." And the pastor said, "I sat across a lunch table from that elder, a man who was just recently talking about his desire to pursue professional ministry. He looked at me with unblinking eyes and said, 'I have never felt more alive.'"

There's an element of truth in what he's saying. His instincts and urges are at full throttle. But the heart is hard toward God, by choices probably made over and over again, a little movement from almost innocent to almost innocent to almost innocent. His mind cannot even perceive, not only the abhorrence of what he is doing, but the pain to his own life. It is futile to think this is going to lead to happiness. But you're now dark to understanding because of the hardness of your heart.

The apostle says what will happen to those with hardened hearts. "Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more," Ephesians 4:19. It's almost a biology lesson here. The heart ceases to pump the spiritual blood it should. It has been hardened by its choices and deceitful desires. And so now the mind is cloudy. It does not function well enough, so that the senses even become numb. But you can't live that way. So the senses begin to call out for more and more and more and more. There's a continual lust for more, because we can't live in numbness. Sin keeps numbing us more and more. In the compulsion of our sin we think, I won't let it go too far … again. But it always goes too far again because of the need to have the senses fulfilled.

Some of you have sat with loved ones when they have been dying. When the heart ceases to work well and the mind begins to lose its ability to hear and receive signals from the senses, some will say, "Take my hand. Squeeze it. I need to feel you. I need to be connected. Harder. Harder. I can't feel you." I sat with a family one time where the man got tired of saying, "Squeeze my hand. Hold me. Harder." He was a man who had a tear in his heart. The family picked him up to embrace him, not realizing that would complete the tear in his heart. And as they held him tightly, the life went out of him.

The Bible is saying, the heart that is damaged, that continues to need more and more, should be recognized for what it is doing. The pursuit of sensuality will so harden the heart that it will kill the joys God intends for us. The continual pursuit and lust will not die. If the lizard is not killed, it will demand more and more and more. It's not simply the old hedonist dilemma that pleasures fulfilled ultimately are unfulfilled. It is the spiritual pathology of sin's disease. What I take a little of will deaden me to that pleasure, and I will need more. I will need more, and it will pursue me. The apostle says this with stark words so we will recognize what sin does to us.

I can't talk in these terms without thinking about issues that are even epidemic among us—the allurements of the Internet. That which is almost innocent is accepted into our lives, into our minds and eyes. It begins to harden the heart and darken the mind, and then numb us to what we've already received, so that I need more and more and more. We all know exactly what the apostle was talking about.

But it's not just the sensuality of the Internet. It's the allure of money. It's the allure of power. The world itself has its squeeze on us over the needs of prestige, comfort, and security. I want to serve. But the great inhibition is our need for security, the satisfaction of self, the desire for the comforts that don't let us sacrifice too much.

My retirement account has lost so much money in the stock market it's made me more generous. That may sound strange. My son asked me for 50 dollars. I said, "I've already lost $10,000, what's $50 more?" It's actually the loss of what had its squeeze on me, and I didn't even recognize it, that makes me more generous, that frees me. I recognize what is pushing me is the prestige of certain positions, the power of certain pursuits, and the comforts and money of certain places in the world. If I'm able to be free of those things, I find true freedom to do what God wants, to find the actual joys and fulfillment of life God desires for me.

True freedom comes when we kill the sin that mastered us

The angel in C. S. Lewis's story does grasp the lizard and with fiery hands begins to choke it so that it finally dies and falls to the ground. But when it hits the ground, it becomes a stallion, and the young man gets on it and rides. What had been the ruler is now ruled. What had been his master, he now masters. What had ridden him, he now rides. It's C. S. Lewis's great expression that when we actually kill the sin, the things that were so hard actually become good and freeing and wonderful to us. Secular surveys of the sexuality in our culture say that those with monogamous, faithful marriages claim greater sexual fulfillment than those who are promiscuous. How can that be? Because God is saying that to honor him is to actually find the greatest fulfillment, the greatest riches that we were made to find.

What would it be like not to live the life of lizards but actually to ride the horses of heaven? The apostle wants to describe that too. He says, "You, however, did not come to know Christ that way." (An insatiable appetite for more sensuality is not the way you came to know Christ.) "Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus," (Ephesians 4:20).

What does it mean to ride with the horses of heaven? It begins in a strange place. It's by listening differently. "Surely you heard of him." It is important to recognize that the of him is not a genitive. It's an accusative. There's immediacy to the apostle's words. Surely you heard Jesus when you heard the truth about him and that it is in him.

The apostle is saying, because Jesus is in the truth and the truth is in him, when you listen to him, you're enveloped in the experience of Jesus Christ when you really pay attention to the truth.

Victory comes when we put off the old self

"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," (Ephesians 4:22). It's not just listening differently. This ride with the horses is living differently. And the first step of that living differently is to put off the old self. That's hard terminology. He doesn't tell us just to put off our old habits and follow a different custom and pattern. The apostle recognizes that the patterns of our life come out of our heart. He's not just saying, stop doing some habits or patterns. He's saying put off the old self. The apostle is saying that what you do is you. You're to get rid of those things that characterize you. It's actually as though you are killing yourself. It's why the young man resists the killing of the red lizard. If it dies, I die. What I know myself to be, what I'm accustomed to being, that itself dies. You have to put off you.

The Puritans called it mortification. You have to kill something of yourself. And that mortification comes in scary language. You have to put off your old self "which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires." You know what's so horrible about that language? The present tense. You're not to put off the old self that was being corrupted; it is being corrupted. There is something in us that is still being corrupted by its sinful desires. The heart can still be hardened. Now we begin to struggle with all the theology of this. Wait a second. I thought we were new creatures in Christ Jesus. I thought we were fundamentally made new. We have Christ's righteousness on our behalf. We're already seated in heavenly places. We are made God's own children by his grace on our behalf. God looks at us and sees us as precious to himself as his own Son with the inheritance of the riches of heaven. That's who we already are.

Yes, that is who we already are. But as new creatures in Christ Jesus what that fundamentally means is, we are able not to sin. Once we were not able not to sin. But now we are actually able to put off the old patterns. In the famous words of Luther, we are at the same moment are justified and sinners. Right now you and I justified before God, and yet we have to recognize we are still sinners being corrupted by sinful desires. The reason the apostle has to say this is because of the corruption of the message of grace. People begin to think that because I am a new creature in Christ Jesus, either I can't sin or my sin doesn't matter.

Here's the positive of this message. Even in this new nature, if you're struggling with sin, you're not strange and you're not alone. It is what we do. We struggle still, and if you're struggling you're not alone. Satan wants to come to you and weaken you by saying, You're the only one. People around you aren't struggling this way. It's just you. And that forces sin underground, and we hide it and keep it from one another. No. This is who we are. We are subject to this kind of corruption and hardening of our hearts even now. That's the positive side: to know that I'm not unlike others.

Through daily examination, we make alive the new self

The negative side is, if I am not examining my life for sin, I am terribly vulnerable to it. If I am not saying, Lord, what are the things in my life that are hardening my heart, denying my mind the light of your life? If I'm not doing that daily examination, I'm dying a little bit each day to the joys of God. If you asked me five years ago, Who are the ministers of the gospel in my own church who are most likely to fall to moral error, and have? It is those who are the most harsh and hard-hearted and judgmental, because so often those who are most harsh and controlling of others are really trying to control themselves. But if you were to ask me in the last two years who I know who has fallen to moral failure, I will tell you they are my friends. They are the ones who know the message of grace well and preached it consistently. But what it became for them was an excuse to allow what was almost innocent into their lives. And slowly there was the widening of entertainments and language, the allowances that came into their lives that ultimately hardened the heart and darkened the understanding and calloused the senses and created a continual longing for more.

The apostle says in plain words, "to be made new in the attitudes of our minds," (Ephesians 4:23). We don't use grace to say, "Now I get to do the things of the world." Grace says, "I have a new orientation. I have an entirely new spirit of understanding. I don't desire to do the things of the world. I've recognized how corruptive they are. I have a totally new attitude about what is rewarding and fulfilling. I'm going a different way." What that means is "to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness," (Ephesians 4:24). Isn't that interesting? There's not only mortification—putting aside the old self, killing it in some measure—but we are to be vivifying, the Puritans would say, making alive the new self—making those choices, seeing the new path, going down the way that is actually beautiful. The apostle says: You were made for this. You were made for what is holy and righteous, and you will actually find your greatest fulfillment in that.

I think it's why C. S. Lewis chooses that wonderful image of the stallion the young man can ride with the sense of power and freedom and fulfillment. It's that ride of righteousness and holiness that is the reward God intends for us. And he wants us not to be blind to that. Grace, the freedom of the gospel, is not the freedom to live like the world. It's the freedom to live in opposition to the world, and to know the great beauty of those who are created in Christ Jesus to do good works that he prepared in advance to do. When we are simply being what God made us to be, we find the greatest joys, the greatest happiness, and it's not in the way of the world.

On July 30, 1945, the battle cruiser USS Indianapolis was returning from a mission of delivering enriched uranium to allied forces in the Pacific. It did not make it home. A Japanese torpedo hit the cruiser on its way back. It sank in minutes. In only 12 minutes, 300 of the 1,200 men died. Nine hundred went into the water, enduring four days and five nights without food, without water, the blazing sun of the Pacific. Of the 900 that went into the water, only 316 survived the lack of water and the sharks. One of those who survived was the chief medical officer who recorded his own experience. He wrote:

There was nothing I could do, nothing I could do but give advice, bury the dead at sea and save the lifejackets and try to keep the men from drinking the water. When the hot sun came out, and we were in this crystal clear ocean, we were so thirsty. You couldn't believe it wasn't good enough to drink. I had a hard time convincing the men they shouldn't drink. The real young ones … you take away their hope, you take away their water and food, they would drink the salt water and they would go fast. I can remember striking them who were drinking the salt water to try to stop them. They would get dehydrated, then become maniacal. There were mass hallucinations. I was amazed how everyone would see the same thing. One man would see something, and then everyone else would see it. Even I fought the hallucinations off and on. Something always brought me back.

The apostle is trying to bring us back with words that are striking, strident, even hurtful to us, as though he is striking us to say, Don't drink the waters of this world. It will seem crystal clear. It will seem to slake your thirst. It will taste so good. It is poison. It will harden your hearts. It will deaden your minds. You will have a continual lust for more, and it will ultimately poison your life with Jesus Christ and make you incapable of the things of the gospel. It may even have already affected others. We can't be in a community of Christians without knowing at times there are mass hallucinations. There may be people all around us who are saying, It's okay. Don't worry. It won't bother you. The apostle is saying: No, you recognize the poison and repent of it because God wants you to ride with the horses. I tell you and insist upon it, you must not live as the rest of the world lives because God created you in Christ Jesus for holiness and righteousness and true beauty. And when you ride that horse, the joys of heaven will unfold for you and be powerful in you for many others.

For Your Reflection

Personal growth: How has this sermon fed your own soul? ___________________________________________

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Exegesis and exposition: Highlight the paragraphs in this sermon that helped you better understand Scripture. How does the sermon model ways you could provide helpful biblical exposition for your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Theological Ideas: What biblical principles in this sermon would you like to develop in a sermon? How would you adapt these ideas to reflect your own understanding of Scripture, the Christian life, and the unique message that God is putting on your heart? ____________________________________________________________________________

Outline: How would you improve on this outline by changing the wording, or by adding or subtracting points? _____________________________________________________________________

Application: What is the main application of this sermon? What is the main application of the message you sense God wants you to bring to your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Illustrations: Which illustrations in this sermon would relate well with your hearers? Which cannot be used with your hearers, but they suggest illustrations that could work with your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Credit: Do you plan to use the content of this sermon to a degree that obligates you to give credit? If so, when and how will you do it?

Bryan Chapell is the senior pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria, Illinois.