P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

NEEDING A COMPLETE MAKEOVER

The story goes that a little, henpecked man named Jackie Schwartz spent his entire life being beat up by a mean, shrewish wife. She controlled the purse strings, she made his life miserable, she wouldn’t let him play even a round of golf on Sunday afternoon or buy himself a new pair of socks. He led a pretty drab, sorry life.

And then one day his wife died. To be perfectly honest, little Jackie Schwartz wasn’t that horribly heartbroken, but they had the dinner, then the funeral, and then the settling up of trust funds, because mean Mrs. Schwartz had carried quite an insurance policy, and henpecked Jackie was the beneficiary.

So, as soon as it was appropriate, while some of the funeral flowers were still in full bloom, Jackie went out and got himself a Florida condo right by the golf course. He got a whole bunch of new clothes. He played golf four times a week and soon had a beautiful tan. He went down to the Bosley Medical Clinic and had ten thousand dollars of hair transplant plugs installed in his head and new spark plugs for his golf cart. He got his teeth capped and his love handles liposuctioned.

Then, about two weeks after his new hair grew in, and before he could even shave his golfing handicap down from 25 to 22, he was struck by lightning and instantly killed. And before he could blink — bear with me now; this is a preacher’s parable and not Bible truth — he found himself up in Paradise, in the front lobby of Heaven’s Hotel, face to face with God. And out of the corner of his eye, he could see Mrs. Schwartz, his battle-ax wife, coming up the driveway to welcome him to the New Jerusalem.

And poor Jackie Schwartz was very unhappy with God. “Why?” he moaned. “God, after so many years, I finally had a little freedom. I finally was having a little fun. I finally got myself a little bit of happiness and a little bit of hair. Why’d You have to call me home so soon?”

And the Lord leaned forward to take a closer look. “What?” He asked. “Jackie? Little Jackie Schwartz? Is that you? Man, I guess it was a mistake. With your new clothes and new hair, I didn’t even recognize you!”

Well, friend, maybe we feel that this is all the reward we’re going to get if we accept the Bible’s invitation to become “new men” and “new women”: an eternity with Mrs. Jackie Schwartz. Of course, here in Ephesians 4, Paul is writing more about new hearts than new hair. But we have two Friday questions to think about today. First of all, what does it really mean to “put on” a new self, as it reads in verse 24. And then secondly, how specifically is this done? What steps do we take to accomplish it? Is it as simple as changing a suit of clothes?

I want to share with you, in a moment, probably THE classic essay on what a wonderful thing it is to be one of these special people. It’s from C. S. Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity, right at the close, and it always gives me a blessing to read it. But first, let’s go to the Bible itself and study the passage directly:

“You were taught,” Paul writes, “with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; and to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put ON the NEW self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

The Message paraphrase is a bit more blunt. Brace yourself for this:

“Everything — and I do mean everything — connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it!”

Right in the next passage, the concluding part of Ephesians 4, Paul gives us a list of the dirty laundry: anger, lying, stealing, laziness, unwholesome talk, bitterness, rage, brawling and slander, malice. And we say to ourselves: “Yes, that’s me. I’m tired of that ‘old man,’ but how do I get rid of him when he’s ME? Every time I tell him to leave town and then go to prayer meeting, somehow he’s back by sundown.”

We’ve been getting some good material from two commentaries for Ephesians: the Tyndale series and also the Volume #7 set used in my own church. It points out the reality that, first of all, we have to get tired of the old man. Step one is to realize that he’s dragging us down, that he’s a loser not worth keeping around. Listen to this:

“If men sensed the bondage and corruption that sin brings to them,” the scholars write, “it would appear as it is, a frightful thing. However, its real character is concealed until it has enslaved its victims. The lusts of the flesh are deceitful because they promise happiness but give sorrow, promise freedom but give slavery, promise immunity from the results of wrongdoing, only to bring destruction.”

Many of you, I’m sure, have read the great Christian classic, The Cross and the Switchblade, which describes Pastor David Wilkerson’s work with teen gangs in New York City back in the late ‘50s. It’s stunning that drug addiction is a scourge that never ends; here almost half a century later, it was on the front of the Los Angeles Times the day this program was getting put together that Afghan farmers simply can’t give up the best cash crop they’ve ever had: opium. They can make more money growing opium poppies than anything else. Why? Because heroin is, and always has been, a deadly addiction. Pushers — back to Wilkerson’s book now — offer a kid a free joint. Then another. After a week or two, as they hang around with kids in this new gang, they give them a free sample of heroin. “No big deal,” the pusher casually says. “It’s worth the couple of bucks it costs.” And after just two or three tries, the kid is hooked for life. All through the book, heroin or “horse” or “H” is described as the “monkey on your back” or the “vulture in your veins.” It’s the most scary thing you can imagine, and people just don’t see what kind of a corpse the “old man” is destined to become.

The Tyndale commentary, then, comes along with a pretty tough cold-turkey cure. Notice:

“What is to be put off is described as the old man. As past sins are dealt with by the grace of forgiveness, and as repentance determines to abandon them completely, all that belongs to the old way of life, the way of the heathen that has been described in verses 17-19 is to be SET ASIDE DECISIVELY.”

So friend, going from “old man” to “new man” isn’t a miracle moment. It doesn’t happen with a magic pill or a wave of Jesus’ wand. You’ve got to see the deadliness of the old way, and then, turning your face toward Calvary, decide: no more. That turning around is what we call “conversion.”

The good news is that our loving Father helps us: in two ways. We’ve been studying “adoption” in recent weeks and months, and it’s wonderful good news that God wants us to be these new men and women . . . or we could say “new children.” So friend, He’s definitely going to do two things for us: share with us the divine image, His dream for each of us. And then, make it happen in our lives as we cooperate with Him. The Message paraphrase for verse 24 reads:

“A life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces Himself in you.”

The NIV study guides point out that this happens “positionally at conversion,” and “experientially as a Christian.” “God is the active power in the recreation,” says the Adventist commentary, “but the change is not effected without man’s consent and cooperation.”

Now to the C. S. Lewis essay, and we’ll close with this:

“Already the new men,” he writes, “are dotted here and there all over the earth. Some . . . are still hardly recognizable: but others can be recognized. Every now and then one meets them. Their very voices and faces are different from ours; stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off. They are, I say, recognizable; but you must know what to look for. They will not be very like the idea of ‘religious people’ which you have formed from your general reading. They do not draw attention to themselves. You tend to think that you are being kind to them when they are really being kind to you. . . . They will usually seem to have a lot of time: you will wonder where it comes from. When you have recognized one of them, you will recognize the next one much more easily. And I strongly suspect (but how should I know?) that they recognize one another immediately and infallibly, across every barrier of color, sex, class, age, and even of creeds. In that way, to become holy is rather like joining a secret society. To put it at the very lowest, it must be great fun.”

Isn’t that beautiful? Lord, I want to be in that number. And I give You permission to make it happen.