Paul begins by telling us that we no longer have to live as gentiles, rather we can now be made new in Christ. People who don’t know God have a darkened understanding and reasoning. Those in Christ are called to be the light in Him and should no longer be that way. They are self-banished from the life of Christ; self-banished because God doesn’t reject them. Due to their hardened hearts they have rejected God and therefor have self-banished themselves. They have made themselves prey to sensuality, greed and an eagerness to indulge in every form of impureness. Notice they have made themselves pray, not God. God is good, He doesn’t tempt anyone but He especially doesn’t make anyone prey to these things either.
We are to strip ourselves of our former nature and put off our old ways; we then put on the new and be renewed in the Spirit of our minds. We need to allow God, and work with God to renew our minds. We have to make the choice to let Him renew us and remove things that need to be removed. We have to surrender to Him to allow Him to prune us so that way He can restore us to our original creation in Christ. We have to make the choice to reject things that we know wouldn’t honor God or make Him Happy. We need to ask Him to convict us when needed so we can be aware of our traits that need to be removed; so we can repent and ask God to renew us and remove that from us. We need to make sure we surrender it all to Him so we leave no room for a foothold.
We are to represent God in all and honor Him in all. We shouldn’t cuss, say bad or vulgar things or have bad attitudes. These acts and acts similar don’t bring God glory and it gives others a false idea of who God is. We need to bring glory to Him even in our actions. We aren’t to drive the Holy Spirit of God, we shouldn’t offend or sadden Him. By Him we are sealed and marked as His own. For this we should praise God and all that we do should show praise to Him.
Let all bitterness and anger be banished from us. We are to be peacekeepers, not the ones starting or entertaining strife. The day we surrendered to Jesus we gave away the option to be offended. If we are truly surrender, we won’t be offended and that takes away the foothold to bitterness and quarrels. If you ever find yourself offended, ask yourself if you are truly surrendered in that are to Jesus.
We need to be useful and helpful to one another. We should be showing love and compassion towards everyone. Forgiveness is a must and helping others to forgive their trespassers is important too. The love of God is powerful and we need to ask God to help us be the love to others as well. A powerful testimony I want to end this chapter with is based on Gods love and how powerful it is. A prophet had an encounter with God and He told her that He wanted to fathom what His love felt like. It was so strong and amazing that she couldn’t even stand, she fell to her legs then laid flat on the ground fully covered in His love. He told her that His love heals people and she was going to go out and spread His love to others and they would be healed by it. A few days later she saw a lady who was so saddened by her pain that she couldn’t help but feel compassion for her, the moment she embraced her and hugged her, Gods love took over and encountered them both and through that single hug and act of love God healed the woman. God is love, He is powerful and when we receive His love and choose to show love to others He can work through that love and signs and wonders happen