when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 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 4:21-22 (NIV)
Taught It Already
A man quits smoking and his hand goes to the shirt pocket anyway, usually after a meal or in the first minute of a hard phone call. There’s nothing in it and hasn’t been for a long while. The body gets there before he has any opinion about it.
Every line of it had already been taught to them once. You heard, Paul says. You were taught. He is telling them what they were told at the start, the way you do for people who know a thing perfectly well and go back to it anyway. I have gone back to something I was done with, on a day when nothing in particular was wrong.
The picture he uses is clothing. Put off your old self, the way you get out of your work clothes and leave the boots by the door at the end of a shift, and then put on the new self. The old clothes are being corrupted by deceitful desires. The corruption hasn’t finished its work, and the desires lie about what they’re offering. You know exactly what the first ten minutes will be like. Nothing tells you about the rest of the night in advance.
To be made new in the attitude of your minds. They are the ones being made new, and Paul asks them for one small thing alongside it, to put off falsehood and speak truthfully to a neighbor. One true sentence, said to one person.
By the end of that phone call the pocket has been checked twice, and the man says the true thing to the person on the other end anyway. Paul asked for exactly that much and no more.
A Prayer to Remember
Lord, the hand gets to the pocket before we do. We’ve tried to get underneath that and we can’t, and we were told what to do about it a long time ago. Make us new in the part that decides before we’re awake enough to argue. Give us the one true sentence today, said to the one person.
In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
