Who We Listen to is Who We Are

Christ is Risen! Truly, He is Risen.

“Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma” (Ephesians 5:1-2).

I may be seen as a zealot for this, but God has given us so much, anything we do for Him seems like a pittance in comparison. God has given us the Way to become like Him. Why would we waste our lives running in circles, chasing the fleeting pleasures of this world when there is so much to do and so much to give up to Him as well as everyone we meet? Putting off the old man Toast, though, does not mean we are better than anyone—having tasted God, knowing that feeling of unworthiness to behold even a drop of His grace should carry us forward with humility and a deliberate choice to separate ourselves from those Gentiles who walk in darkness, not out of distaste or hatred for them, but out of love for God, the yearning for Him.

Not to mention our self-assessment considering our weakness when confronted by the passions. The man does not fall into sin as easily as when the man is around sin, like a fish in water. The fool who does not know he has fallen.

So far from God, we find ourselves in this blackness, the outer darkness. We can liken this darkness to the cold wind and crunching sand outside the cities, in the boundaryless deserts. The desert offers no relief from the penetrating heat of the sun—that is the love and grace of God that, to a sinner, feels as eternal fire when not returning their gaze up to His ineffable glory.

Sort of like being in a toaster too long.

The desert offers no relief in the night, the darkness encompasses with a chill that we find as our inner and outer state, frozen in habit, blind and idle, “For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them” (Ephesians 5:5-7).

This is it right here. This is the Way. This is the choice.

The old man is deceived by the empty words of the sons of disobedience, because he wants to be deceived. The old man Toast wants to be deceived because it is easier to follow a “God” that demands nothing from us than one who calls us to become perfect, to become like Him. Toast, if he believes in God at all, wants God to be like him; Toast needs God to fall so there is no standard, there is no good or acceptable way to be, then there is no Truth, and the old man can act however he or she wishes to act.

The fool would want to have God and eat Him, too. Thus, the covetous man is an idolater, that is–one who cannot give up their own will; he who worships a God that meets their standards is giving in to self-worship.

It is pride.

And a prideful soul will not listen, but rather will become a son of disobedience. This is not walking as Christ however, putting off the old man with contrition will lead the new man, seeking Wisdom, created in accordance to God, renewed in righteousness and holiness to humbly state, “Afterward, I repented; I observed that I might choose instruction.”

This instruction one seeks is an acknowledgement of their faults, an examination of where they are spiritually, a meekness regarding God, and a willingness to be taught. Therefore be imitators of God as dear children, that is, entering into a relationship with God as His children: obedient, “Honor your father and mother in the manner the Lord your God commanded you, that it may be well with you, and you may be a long time in the land the Lord your God is giving you” (Deuteronomy 5:16). The Father of the Holy Trinity is Who we honor by obedience. Obedience comes from the Greek “ὑπακούω,” pronounced hoop-ak-oo’-o, which means to listening attentively; it is a submission of one’s will for that of another’s, even for a time as we attend to their words.

The old man Toast is put off so we might become children, renewed and obedient to the Word of God. This old state of being is crucified in order for us to put on the mind of Christ, because–and I can certainly be wrong about this–but it does not make much sense that in our fallen state we would be able to heed the Word of God without a sacrifice like His own, for us. The mind of Christ, the new man, is, necessarily, a literal new mind. We are not walking with the Gentiles in their blindness, we are walking in love, our perception purified by the cleansing of the νοῦς–we do not walk toward God, we have no hope of “being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18) without dying to ourselves.

Without dying to the world. 

Furthermore, we cannot strive toward theosis, man’s ultimate purpose on earth, the very reason we even begin to put off the old man, if we are content to pick up our cross as a status symbol. The Christian struggles, the Christian is nonjudgmental, just as the sober man knows how easy it is to slip back into a six-pack, so the Christian knows how easy it is to march, once again, with the Gentiles, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them” (Ephesians 5:8-11).

A Christian with true faith will see this as only directed at themselves for it is the nature of the old man to point out the faults of others—covetousness in action, as if to say, “What I do is much better than what they do, therefore they should be more like me,” the hubris of the self-exaltation! Let it be anathema!

It is akin to trying to put off the old man Toast of others, too, the compulsion to “save the world,” such is vainglorious, prideful endeavors: this is trying to live someone else’s life for them, in effect taking their agency. This is, in respect to how God treats us, incredibly antichrist. The man who seeks to put others down, to condemn others who have fallen, or tries to make the world conform to him does not know the value of their time here on earth. They commit a most erroneous sin, which is falling into disobedience—speaking rather than listening, idling on the bridge of self-righteousness. They sit at basecamp and point others at how narrow the Way is and how wide the gates to perdition are without taking a chance, making a choice, and taking that step toward an inevitable fall.