As is the case with all of the New Testament epistles, following the doctrinal truths about Jesus Christ and His glorious gospel, we now plunge into where the proverbial ‘rubber meets the road’ part of the book. Having been told that we are seated in heavenly place in Christ Jesus, we are now told how to walk with Christ in a way that honors and glorifies The Father.
Here is the bottom line. Now that we are in Christ Jesus, we are called to walk in newness of life. Paul does not hesitate to tell those who have believed in Jesus that they can no longer live the way they used to live before they were saved. Now that we are in Christ, we can no longer look back at the ‘good old days’ of our unredeemed past.
No longer can we live under the management of our ‘old man’ which is corrupt according to its deceitful lusts. It is a call to walk in newness of thinking that puts us on the path of holiness. It’s a walk that begets a new kind of way of living with other people within the community of the saints and in the world at large. It’s a walk that calls us to make the words that we speak full of grace and edifying. It’s a walk where we are told to put off those old, fleshly attitudes that grieve God’s Spirit and are causes of division and strife. It’s a walk that where the forgiveness that we have been given by grace through faith in Christ Jesus is to be extended to one another.
May The Spirit of God enable us to see this clearly, and empower us to live in such a way for the glory of God.
