Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practise every kind of impurity. That is not the way you learned Christ! For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
 
Reflection

in 2024 my sister and I visited Ephesus, where our enthusiastic guide pointed out the corner of the agora where Paul had preached. I visualised him (always Patrick Troughton in Saul of Tarsus) exhorting his hearers and, hopefully, converts, with words which he later, from another destination, wrote to them to affirm their faith. We know now, of course, that Ephesians was not written by Paul, and in fact dates from as much as fifty to a hundred years later. This does not in any way reduce the power and influence of the writing, but reflects that with the passage of time, the message has faded, been watered down, or indeed forgotten and that these words are meant as a reminder and reinforcement. The readers are exhorted to ‘no longer’ walk as the Gentiles, with undiscerning minds, given over to frivolity and licentiousness and above all ‘alienated from the life of God’, indicating, that this is exactly what they have done. What they must do is reclothe themselves in the teaching of Christ and become new men in the spirit and likeness of God.
 
We’ve all been there; shown how to do CPR, taught the basics of a skill, attended an inspiring lecture and come away feeling enriched and motivated BUT, unless those skills and learning are practiced and reinforced, we forget and either give up or start all over again. This is what has happened in Ephesus; Paul’s initial inspiration gathered converts to Christ but over the years with the successive handing on of the message and the deaths of the original hearers, the enthusiasm and impetus has been lost, and the next generation seem to have decided it is easier to ‘go with the flow’, until a new voice tells them to buck up and get back to where they should be. We too should be careful of ‘going with the flow; and taking the easy option in life; being followers of Christ isn’t easy, but we’ve been given the skills; we just need to practice.
 
Prayer

O Lord, be with me in my daily life and encourage me each day to renew and reclothe myself as someone determined to live your teachings, and act as a follower of God in all my actions.
Amen