For Those Who Don't Believe

Sanctification is the process of God making us holy or separating us from the values of this fallen world.

Jesus tells us in John 17:17 that we as His followers are sanctified by truth, and God’s Word is truth.

We are thus sanctified by making God’s Word the authority and basis on which we as disciples of Jesus live.

In Ephesians 4:17-19 Paul draws us a picture of what unsanctified people live like.

Ephesians 4:17a
In the Lord’s name, I tell you this. Do not continue living like those who do not believe.

We are not to do live our lives like those who do not believe. How do those who don’t believe live?

Ephesians 4:17b
In the futility of their thinking

Those who don’t believe are futile in their thinking.

We are not to be devoid of truth in our thinking.

We are not to be inappropriate in our thinking.

Since it is truth that sanctifies us, then if our thinking doesn’t have truth as its foundation, it cannot make us holy.

People who don’t believe are perverted in their thinking, meaning their thinking has been twisted. We as followers of Jesus are not be twisted in our thinking. We are to think with the truth of God which leads to true wisdom.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls  is thinking in truth, not perverseness.

Ephesians 4:18a
They are darkened in their understanding

Those that don’t believe have minds covered in darkness.

When it is dark we can’t see. Or if we can, the darkness makes what we see distorted.

When our thinking is darkened, then we have no real understanding or our understanding is distorted.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is The Light, Jesus, giving us a mind that is guided by truth and reality.

Ephesians 4:18b
And separated from the life of God

People who don’t believe have no real life; they only have existence.

The word for life is the Greek word zoe. It means full life, abundant like. It is the life of God.

People who don’t believe have physical existence, but they don’t have real life. Real only comes as we surrender our lives to Jesus.

Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is letting Jesus give us real life by living His resurrected life through us.

Ephesians 4:18c
Because of the ignorance that is in them

Those who don’t believe are ignorant.

They are not dumb or stupid or unlearned. Many people who don’t believe are intellectually very smart.

Those that don’t believe are ignorant of spiritual things.

1 Corinthians 2:14
The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

Those who don’t believe are ignorant of the truth of God because the truth is only revealed by God’s Spirit.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is understanding the truth of God and living it.

Ephesians 4:18d
Due to the hardening of their hearts

Those who don’t believe are hard, inflexible, and mean.

They care only about themselves.

In Mark 12:31 Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Those who have hard hearts can’t do that. They are self-focused people.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is loving others as we love ourselves.

Ephesians 4:19a
Having lost all sensitivity

Those who don’t believe don’t feel pain or experience grief.

They can feel physically pain.
They can grieve over a loss that directly affects them.

They don’t feel pain for others or grieve when others grieve.

Many years ago I hear a great description of the church: “The church is when one part suffers hurt, we all taste the salt of their tears.”

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is entering into the hurt and pain with others.

Ephesians 4:19a
They have given themselves over to sensuality

Those that don’t believe are sensual.

Sensual means to focus on the senses. They are focused on those things that bring pleasure to the senses.

Their motto is, “If it feels good, do it.”

Philippians 3:19
Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach and their glory is in their shame. Their minds are set on earthly things.

Their physical desires control and direct their lives.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is setting our minds on things above, not on earthly things.

Philippians 419b
So as to indulge in every kind of impurity

Those who don’t believe live by giving themselves over to things that make their thinking corrupted and thus their living morally compromised.

They may not live what would be seen as totally immoral lives, but they live with no constant moral uprightness.

At the beginning of Ephesians 4, Paul says that we are to live lives worthy of the calling we have in Jesus. This certainly means that our sense of right and wrong is to be determined by what God’s Word says.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is living a life not corrupted by impure thoughts, motives, or actions.

Ephesians 4:19c
With a continual lust for more

Those who don’t believe are obsessed with getting and having more and more and more and more.

Jesus reminds us in Luke 12:15 that we are to be on our guard against all kinds of greed because life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is focusing on being spiritually wealthy.

We are to live in a way that is different than those who don’t believe.

Jesus’ plan is for His followers to be so weird, so different from the world, that the world comes to check out why we are so different, and they find Jesus.

Living Differently by Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,
                                              Joe