Let me know if you get a little claustrophobic watching this video.
Man, I’m glad ol’ Matt McAllister didn’t have a heart attack in the middle of that. Can you imagine trying to do CPR through 155 layers of cotton and polyester? Glad you made it, Matt. Congratulations on your Guinness Book World Record!
What you don’t see in the time lapse is Matt’s team of helpers. You don’t think he put on all those shirts by himself, do you? And just think how much he had to trust his team, since he wouldn’t be able to take them off by himself, either? What if they had just walked away; left him in that 100 lb. strait-jacket? (I’m feeling that claustrophobic feeling again.)
Spiritually speaking, we are born bundled like Matt McAllister. We don’t need a team to put us in a sin-nature strait-jacket; we come that way by nature. I never taught my children to be selfish, disobedient, or sneaky. They showed out with those attitudes and actions all by themselves. Paul calls that state of natural unrighteousness “your former way of life” and “the old self.” Once people have experienced the new birth, through confession of their unrighteousness and acceptance of Christ’s forgiveness, they begin a new way of life with a new self. In the former way of life, we had no power to remove any of the layers that bound us. In the new way of life, we are divinely enabled to strip the old layers away and become more like holy God. We have a team of helpers now – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and our “new self” brothers and sisters.
It’s divine enablement because it’s a super-human task to put off the old self and put on the new. Ignorance, hardness of heart, insensitivity, impurity, lust, deception … this is just the beginning of Paul’s description of the layers we must strip off. God begins the good work of putting these things off, but His plan is that we participate and cooperate with the renewal. We must show God that we appreciate His calling of us, out of the old self, by a disciplined pursuit of holiness. We’ve got to rein in the lies, the anger, the larceny. We’ve got to clean up our language. (I don’t think putting asterisks between the “F” and the “K” on our f******k page really qualifies as wholesome talk.)
Today’s text tells us that being lax about our foul mouth, our bitterness, slander and malice, grieves the Holy Spirit. Deep idea – grieving the Holy. Grief comes from loss. When we are careless about stripping off the layers of the old self, we remain bound to our unholiness. So there is a loss of kinship with God’s Spirit, because holiness and unholiness are strangers. That’s heavy. Heavier than 100 lbs. of cotton and polyester. When I sin, God loses. When I ignore the call to strip off the former ways, I insulate myself from the Lord.
I’m getting that claustrophobic feeling, again…
Pray: Holy God, get it off of me! Enable me to remove all the old ways of my old self. Help me keep my discipline and my appreciation for the value of Your calling. Keep me moving toward my new self, created to be like You in true righteousness.
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