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A narrated teaching walk through Ephesians 4:17–24 — about 42 minutes. Press Begin the lesson and the slides advance with the narration; or explore silently with the arrow buttons.
Ephesians 4:17–24 · A Teaching Walk Through the Passage
Put Off the Old, Put On the New
Those who have learned Christ walk no longer in Gentile futility but put off the old self and put on the new, created like God.
Opening Prayer
Clothe us as what we are
Lord Jesus Christ, our Teacher and our truth, we come as those enrolled in your school. Show us both what we were and what your grace has made us. Search us, and expose every place where the old walk still marks our steps. Remind us of what we learned when we learned you: that the old self was crucified with you, and a new self has been created after the likeness of God. Teach us the great exchange — to put off what belongs to the former life, to be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and to put on the new self in true righteousness and holiness. Convict, cleanse, renew, and clothe us, until we walk out of this study dressed as what we are. In your name we pray. Amen.
Timeline Context
From the body to the walk
- The letter’s second “walk” — and its first sustained negative: the body built in love (4:16) cannot be built of members walking the old futility.
- The paragraph divides into darkness and light: the anatomy of the pagan walk (vv. 17–19), then conversion described as education (vv. 20–24).
- Everything through 5:21 flows from here: truth-telling, anger, work, speech, forgiveness — all instances of this exchange.
- “Old self” and “new self” pick up the one new man of 2:15: what Christ created corporately, each believer now puts on personally.
- Verse 18’s “alienated” is the very word of 2:12 — a warning against walking back into the condition grace carried you out of.
Ephesians 4:17–19 (ESV)
The walk to leave behind
17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
Ephesians 4:20–24 (ESV)
The school and the exchange
20 But that is not the way you learned Christ! — 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Ephesians 4:20–24
The curriculum of the school
Expanded Outline
Five movements
- The Solemn Charge: No Longer Walk as the Gentiles (v. 17)
- Anatomy of the Old Walk (vv. 18–19)
- But You Learned Christ (vv. 20–21)
- Put Off the Old Self (v. 22)
- Renewed to Put On the New Self (vv. 23–24)
Section 1 — Key Insight · Ephesians 4:17
No longer walk as the Gentiles
- Martyromai — “I testify in the Lord”: courtroom register; the break with the old life carries Christ’s authority (1 Thessalonians 4:1–2).
- Gentile readers told not to walk “as the Gentiles”: in Christ they belong to the one new man — a third people (2:15; 1 Peter 4:3).
- The command runs along the grain of identity: stop walking as what you no longer are.
- The diagnosis begins with mataiotēs — futility: Ecclesiastes’ “vanity”; the God-less mind is aimless before it is wicked (Romans 8:20).
- The futility lives in the mind — which is why the remedy will be renewal there (v. 23).
Section 1 — Application · Ephesians 4:17
Settle the break; aim the mind
- Nonconformity is obedience to sworn testimony, not eccentricity — settle the negotiable areas once (Daniel 1:8; Romans 12:2).
- Audit the mind for futility before the vices: what does your thinking feed on when it runs free?
- Replace, don’t merely remove: aim the mind at what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely (Philippians 4:8).
- A warning: the charge is about the walk, not contempt for the walkers — “we all once lived” there (2:3; Colossians 4:5–6).
Ask yourself: If you logged a week of your mind’s free time — what it feeds on, drifts to, and aims at — how much would qualify as futility — and what will you aim it at instead?
Section 2 — Key Insight · Ephesians 4:18–19
The spiral runs inward-out
- Paul’s two “because” phrases reverse the English order: darkness and alienation exist because of ignorance, due to hardness of heart.
- Pōrōsis is petrification: the heart calluses by repeated friction met with repeated refusal (Mark 3:5).
- From the hard heart: willed ignorance (Romans 1:28) → darkened understanding (Romans 1:21) → alienation from the very life of God.
- “Past feeling” (apēlgēkotes): conscience’s pain receptors dead — then self-surrender: “they gave themselves up.”
- Romans 1 says three times “God gave them up” — judgment and self-abandonment are two sides of one event.
Section 2 — Ephesians 4:18–19
The spiral
Section 2 — Application · Ephesians 4:18–19
Watch the heart; pray for light
- Hardness forms like a callus — so practice softness: respond to conviction the day it comes (Hebrews 3:7–8, 13).
- Treat the sin that has stopped bothering you as a fire alarm, not a milestone of maturity (1 Timothy 4:2).
- Expect the gospel, not shared premises, to relight darkened minds — witness like the formerly blind praying for the blind (2 Corinthians 4:4–6).
- A warning: this anatomy describes the settled unregenerate walk — the believer grieved by sin is displaying the feeling the callous have lost.
Ask yourself: Which sin has most recently stopped bothering you — and what does this passage’s anatomy say that deadening means, and requires, this week?
Section 3 — Key Insight · Ephesians 4:20–21
But you learned Christ
- Five words against the whole spiral: the same grace-adversative as 2:4’s “But God.”
- “Learned Christ” has no parallel in Greek literature: one learns facts and skills — Paul says they learned a person.
- “You heard him” — not “about him”: through his heralds, Christ’s own voice (2:17; Luke 10:16).
- “Taught in him“: the classroom is union with Christ; and the standard — “the truth is in Jesus,” the real, historical man.
- The curriculum carries ethics inside it: “you were taught” runs straight into put off, be renewed, put on.
Section 3 — Ephesians 4:20–21
Teacher, classroom, curriculum
Section 3 — Application · Ephesians 4:20–21
Enroll deliberately
- Treat Sunday’s sermon as this week’s lesson from Christ himself (Luke 10:16) — and keep a fixed appointment with the Gospels.
- Ask of every doctrine: learned as information, or learned in him — with the life-change it carries?
- Test all teachers by the school’s standard: the character, cross, and commands of the actual Jesus (1 John 4:2–3).
- A warning: “learned Christ” is not theological attainment — the demons’ theology is orthodox (James 2:19); the test is the wardrobe actually changing.
Ask yourself: What does your actual weekly “coursework” in Christ’s school look like — word heard, word read, Teacher pondered, cohort engaged — and what one fixture will you restore this week?
Section 4 — Key Insight · Ephesians 4:22
Put off the old self
- Apothesthai — clothing language, aorist: a decisive divestiture, not an endless tugging.
- The “old self” is the whole person you were in Adam — and Romans 6:6 says he “was crucified with him”: we stop wearing what Christ has killed.
- The garment is dated: it “belongs to your former manner of life” — wearing it now is walking in costume as a person who no longer exists.
- Its engine: “deceitful desires” — desires that lie; every temptation is a fraudulent promise (Genesis 3:4–5; James 1:14–15).
- The fight is fought from identity: you strip off what you are not, because of what in Christ you are (Colossians 3:9–10).
Section 4 — Application · Ephesians 4:22
Interrogate the advertisement
- Fight the deceit and the desire loses power: what does your persistent temptation promise — and what has it actually delivered (Proverbs 23:31–32)?
- Answer the lie aloud with truth, as the Lord did: “It is written” (Matthew 4:4, 7, 10) — and with the true promise the counterfeit mimics (Psalm 16:11).
- Make the break structural, not hourly: cancel, delete, reroute — “make no provision for the flesh” (Romans 13:14).
- A warning: putting off is never commanded alone — mere removal leaves a swept, empty house (Matthew 12:43–45).
Ask yourself: Where are you still “making provision” for the old self — supply lines, situations, or conveniences kept within reach — and what decisive break does the aorist “put off” call for?
Section 5 — Key Insight · Ephesians 4:23–24
Renewed to put on the new
- Between two aorists, a present passive: renewal is continuous and done to us — the Spirit, through the word, “day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).
- The site is “the spirit of your minds” — not the mind’s surface but its spring (Romans 12:2).
- The new self is “created” — God’s finished workmanship: we put on an identity already fashioned (2:10).
- Created “after the likeness of God“: the image defaced in the fall, restored in Christ — in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness (Colossians 3:10).
- Its fabric is “righteousness and holiness of the truth” — the exact antithesis of the old man’s “desires of deceit.”
Section 5 — Application · Ephesians 4:23–24
Feed the renewal; wear the garment
- Put verse 23 on a schedule: Scripture pondered slowly, the word preached, prayer — “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16).
- Audit the rival curriculum: whatever daily forms your thinking is functioning as your mind’s diet (Romans 12:2).
- Dress deliberately for known occasions: name the situation and the garment — honesty, gentleness, purity — before the weather hits (Romans 13:14).
- A warning: putting on without renewal is costume, not clothing — and “created after God’s likeness” is no license for perfectionism: dress daily; despair never (1 John 3:2).
Ask yourself: What is actually renewing — or de-renewing — your mind each day, and what one change to your intake would put verse 23 on a schedule this week?
The Throughline
The Christ we learned is the Christ we wear
- The exit from the spiral is not a step on it — it is enrollment: “you learned Christ” (v. 20)
- The voice in the school is his: “you heard him… taught in him” (v. 21)
- The truth that re-creates is embodied: “the truth is in Jesus” (v. 21)
- The old man goes off because he was crucified with Christ (v. 22; Romans 6:6)
- The new man put on is, at bottom, Christ himself worn: “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 24; Romans 13:14)
From the futile walk to the restored image, every step of this passage is Christ: the Teacher who interrupts the spiral, the truth that unmasks the lie, the death that killed the old man, and the likeness of God in which the new man is made.
Application Questions for Discussion
Questions to take into the week
- Where has your break with the surrounding culture’s way of life quietly become negotiable — and what would it mean to treat verse 17 as sworn testimony rather than advice?
- If you logged a week of your mind’s free time — what it feeds on, drifts to, and aims at — how much would qualify as mataiotēs, futility — and what will you aim it at instead?
- Which sin has most recently stopped bothering you — and what does this passage’s anatomy say that deadening means, and requires, this week?
- Where do you rely on argument alone to do what only light can do — with an unbelieving friend, family member, or culture — and how do verses 18–19 redirect your approach?
Application Questions for Discussion
Questions to take into the week
- What does your actual weekly “coursework” in Christ’s school look like — word heard, word read, Teacher pondered, cohort engaged — and what one fixture will you restore this week?
- Which teaching or teacher currently shaping you would pass — or fail — the “truth is in Jesus” test, and how will you apply that standard this month?
- Take your most persistent temptation: what exactly does it promise, what has it actually delivered, and what specific truth will you answer its lie with this week?
Application Questions for Discussion
Questions to take into the week
- Where are you still “making provision” for the old self — supply lines, situations, or conveniences kept within reach — and what decisive break does the aorist “put off” call for?
- What is actually renewing — or de-renewing — your mind each day, and what one change to your intake would put verse 23 on a schedule this week?
- For which recurring situation this week will you deliberately “dress” in advance — naming the specific piece of the new self it requires — and how will you make the putting-on concrete?
Closing Prayer
Dress us for who we are
Father of glory, we thank you that the walk we were rescued from was not freedom but futility; that we did not merely learn about Christ but learned Christ himself; and that in him the old self is put off, the mind is being renewed, and a new self stands created after your own likeness. We confess steps taken back down the old road, minds fed on futility, hearts allowed to harden, and old garments reached for in weak hours. Forgive us for Christ’s sake. Thank you that the decisive change is made and the new self is real. Grant us grace this week to dress for who we are — truth for deceit, righteousness for corruption, holiness for impurity — until we see our Teacher face to face. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Ephesians 4:17–24
Created after the likeness of God
The Christ we learned is the Christ we wear: the old self crucified and put off, the mind renewed by his Spirit through his word, and the new self put on daily — until we see him and the likeness is complete.
The full study, the summary handout, and more passages are at thebereantable.com — examine the Scriptures daily (Acts 17:11).
Keyboard: ← → slides · space play/pause · T transcript. Scripture quotations are from the ESV®.