Robert Jeffress - How to Dress for Success
Hi, I'm Robert Jeffress, and welcome again to "Pathway to Victory". Have you ever noticed how a change of clothes can transform not just your appearance but your entire demeanor? In the spiritual realm, God calls us to a dramatic wardrobe change that goes far beyond our physical clothing. In the book of Ephesians, the apostle Paul gives us a divine fashion guide for living a life that honors God, and today we'll explore what it means to clothe ourselves in righteousness. My message is titled, "How to Dress for Success," on today's edition of "Pathway to Victory".
Are your clothes important to God? Does God really care what you wear? Before you answer, "No," too quickly, it may interest you to know that it was the Christian Philosopher Erasmus who in the 1500s coined the phrase "Clothes make the man," and then he added, "Clothe yourself as best as you can". The apostle Paul would have heartily agreed with that assessment. Paul said our clothes are very important to God. Not our material clothes, but the spiritual clothes we wear, the behavior that we put on and display every day of our lives. In fact, our spiritual clothes are so important that Paul spends the last half of Ephesians 4 talking about how to dress for spiritual success. And that's what we're gonna talk about today.
If you have your Bibles, turn to Ephesians chapter 4. You know by now that the letter to the Christians in Ephesus can be divided into two parts. The first half, chapters 1 to 3 is an inventory, if you will, of your spiritual wealth you've inherited from Jesus Christ. He's ordained you, he's predestined you, he's chosen you, he saved you, he adopted you into his family. Our wealth from Christ, chapters 1 to 3. But the pivot verse in this letter is chapter 4, verse 1 when Paul begins to talk about the practical implication. "Therefore I urge you to walk in a way equal to the calling with what you've been called". Paul said, "All of this spiritual wealth we have ought to impact the way we live our lives every day".
And specifically, starting in chapter 4, Paul is going to describe four different areas of our life that our faith ought to impact radically. First of all, he talks about our relationship to other Christians in the church. He says, "When it comes to other Christians, walk in unity". But beginning with verse 17, he's going to say, "Now, when it comes to your own personal conduct, walk in purity". And that's what we see today beginning in chapter 4, verse 17. First of all, there's a mandate for purity. Notice the command. "So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord," in other words, "I'm preaching what Jesus preached. We're in agreement on this," "That you walk no longer just as the gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind".
Don't live your life like the gentiles. Now, to contrast what he means living like a gentile from living like a child of God, notice how he describes that contrast in verses 18 and 19, "Being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart, and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity and greediness". You know, this letter wasn't written in a vacuum. It had a situation behind it. Paul was writing to Christians who were trying to live a godly life in Ephesus.
Now, Ephesus would correspond today to Los Angeles or New York or even Dallas, Texas. It was not only a leading center for commercialism and business, but it was also a center of immorality. And part of that immorality could be traced to the presence of the temple of Artemis, the temple of Diana, that was the center point of that city. It was one of the seven wonders of the world and it had, at its centerpiece, the practice of immorality.
Pastor John MacArthur describes the temple's role in Ephesus's immorality this way. He said, "The temple of Artemis was the center of much of the wickedness. Like those in most pagan religions, its rituals and practices were but extensions of the vilest and most perverted sins. Male and female roles were interchanged, perversion of every kind was common. A quarter mile perimeter served as an asylum for criminals, who were safe from apprehension and punishment as long as they remained within the temple confines".
Kind of sounds like sanctuary cities today, doesn't it? "For obvious reasons, the presence of hundreds of hardened criminals added still further to Ephesus's corruption and vice. The Greek Philosopher Heraclitus, himself a pagan, referred to Ephesus as 'the darkness of vileness. The morals were lower than animals and the inhabitants of Ephesus,'" quote, "'were fit only to be drowned'". Now, there is a pagan saying, "These people were so bad, they didn't deserve anything except to be drowned".
Now, that's what Paul has in mind when he said, "Don't walk like the gentiles walk". Now, back to Ephesians 4, verses 18 to 19. Paul again reiterates the downward spiral, this time, of impurity. Look at verses 18 and 19 again. "Being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart, and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness".
I want you to write down three words. First of all, "Darkness". They are darkened in their understanding. When people replace God's truth with a lie, it's darkness that they think it's light. People think I can deconstruct my faith so that I can be free from the shackles of Christianity. I'm enlightened. No, people who reject the truth are not enlightened, they are darkened in their understanding. Secondly, the ignorance that is in them, "Ignorance".
You know, a non-believer may have a graduate degree in comparative religion or Philosophy, but he is ignorant of the truth if he's rejected Jesus Christ. Paul describes that kind of person in 2 Timothy 3:7, who is always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Do you know of people who are just learning all the time, reading this book, following this Philosophy? They're trying to find the truth, they say, but they never can seem to find the truth for the reason we just talked about earlier. There is ignorance that is in them. And thirdly, because of the hardness of their heart, the bottom line reason people are ignorant and darkened in their understanding is because of the hardness, "Pórósis" in Greek. It literally refers to the calcification that occurs around a broken bone. You could translate it "Petrified".
The reason people are ignorant and dark in their understanding of the gospel is they've developed a hardness of their heart. They have said no to God for so long and so many times that they get to a point they can no longer respond to the truth. That's true of many unbelievers. There is a time, maybe you're watching right now, you've said no to God over and over again. There is a time coming, I don't know when it is, when you will not be able to respond to the truth because your heart is so hardened. But there's a sense in which this is true of Christians as well. You can so resist the Holy Spirit of God's conviction in your life that you sear your conscience. You can't feel anything any longer.
I think about something I read one time that pictured it so well. Imagine you're placed in a room. There's nothing in the room except a trapdoor, and against your better inclination you know you shouldn't open that trapdoor but you can't help yourself, and you open it and you fall to a second level. There's no stairway, no way out of it, but there's another trapdoor. And again, against your better judgment, you open that trapdoor and you fall to another level. That's what happens even to Christians who go through barriers that the Holy Spirit, sometimes referred to as conscience, erects these barriers that are to protect us. When you crash through those barriers, it leads you to a lower and lower and lower level.
I remember years ago when I would talk with people who had an addiction to pornography, and all the times I talked to people with a pornography addiction, I never heard anyone say, "I've been addicted to Playboy magazine for 20 years". I never heard it once because it never stopped with "Playboy" magazine. That was just the first door to go through and it descended into lower and lower depths. But there are a whole group of you don't even know what I'm talking about when I talk about "Playboy" magazine. If you're under 40, you've probably never heard of it because it's gone out of business. The magazine version has gone out of business and the only place you can get it is online, my deacons tell me. No, just a little joke there.
But you know the reason it went out of business? It was too soft. People's appetite for pornography, and it's no laughing matter, their appetite has increased and it's destroyed them and their family. That's what sin is. It is addictive. Somebody has said, "Sin will always take you farther than you want to go, it keeps you longer than you want to stay, and it costs you more than you're willing to pay". That's the downward spiral of sin. Well, then is there any hope? Yes, whether you're a non-Christian or a Christian, there is hope. There is a means of purity that Paul talks about in this passage and it begins with our salvation.
Look at Ephesians 4, verse 20, "But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed," verse 21, "You have heard him and have been taught in him just as truth is in Jesus". Our climb out of sin begins with salvation. And remember I said, there's no ladder in that room we fall into, there is no ladder except the one God provides and puts in that room for us. That ladder, that go-between between God and man is the man Christ Jesus. Our purity, our walk toward purity, begins with our salvation. And notice the two words he uses to describe salvation. He said we learn Christ. Not we learn about Christ. Christianity is, first of all, a relationship with a person. But secondly, he said we heard Christ. Our salvation began when we heard Christ.
Now remember, Ephesians was written in about 60 ad. Jesus had ascended into heaven in 33 ad. So, when did these Ephesians hear Jesus? Well, they heard Jesus when they heard the apostle Paul. It was his preaching that revealed Jesus to them, and it's the same today. You know, today, preaching has kind of gone out of style. People say, "I don't wanna hear preaching. Don't preach to me. I don't wanna be preached to". But 1 Corinthians 1:21 says, "It is through the foolishness of preaching that the lost are saved".
Ladies and gentlemen, any time a man of God stands in the pulpit and opens the Word of God and preaches in the Spirit of God, people hear the voice of God. That's the way people are saved, through preaching. And it's always the proclamation of the Word of God that leads to our salvation. The Bible says when we are saved, something dramatic happens. Not only are we forgiven of our sins, but our old nature, that part of us that is opposed to the plan and purpose of God, it is crucified, it is done away with. That doesn't mean it disappears. It means that our old nature, our sinful nature, is crucified, it is mortally wounded. That is, it has no more power over our life than we choose to allow it to have.
That's why we baptize people to show what has happened when they put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. They died to their old way of living. That's the burial, putting down in the water, and they've been raised to a newness of life. You know, every Christmas we talk about the fact that Jesus's entry into the world was such a historic event that today we Mark our calendars by his arrival on planet earth. We talk about the years before Christ and then the years since Christ. Ain't that an amazing thing, that we, as secular as we are, still count time in terms of Jesus Christ? Well, that's how our lives ought to be. There should be a dramatic difference in the way we were before we came to Christ and the years since we've come to Christ. But salvation isn't just a one-time event.
There's another means to purity after our salvation and that's our sanctification, the process by which we become more and more like Christ every day. Somebody said, "Justification, or salvation, is the work of the moment. Sanctification is the work of the lifetime". When you become a Christian, God puts his Holy Spirit into your life and, over a period of time, you become more and more like Jesus Christ.
I think that's what Paul has in mind in verses 22 to 24. He said, "In reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and you be renewed in your spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth". There's a grammatical case to be made for, this is a participle, laying aside, not a once for all action, but a process. Laying aside the old, being renewed in the spirit, and putting on the new.
Now, this is where we get the imagery of dressing. The laying aside the old clothes, putting on the new clothes. You find that image in John chapter 20. Remember when Peter and John finally got to the empty tomb? They realized it was empty, but they noticed something. Jesus had left behind the grave clothes he had been wearing. Why? Because they weren't suitable for his new resurrection body. They were okay for the old body and the dying body but not for the new body. Paul said, "In the same way, there's certain clothing, behavior, that you need to leave behind once you are raised to a new way of living".
Sometimes we struggle with that, don't we? It's a lot easier, sometimes, to put on the old clothes, the old behavior, than the new behavior. Ladies, you can probably identify with this. I imagine you've discovered by now that there's something about males, or something about our DNA, that produces a natural attraction to old clothes. Have you ever seen that happen? We like clothes that are old. You'll be going out someplace nice and your husband's getting dressed and what does he do? He reaches way back in the closet and picks out something that would have been suitable 20 years ago, but not appropriate right now.
And of course, how do you respond? "You're gonna wear that"? And what do men always say? "What's wrong with that"? "It's old"! And then men always say, "But it's so comfortable". That's why we like old clothes, they're comfortable, we're used to them. It may be okay in material clothing, but in spiritual clothing it can be deadly. No, don't reach back in the closet of your old way of living to do that which is comfortable. Put on new clothes. What's the motivation for putting on new clothes? It's this phrase in verse 23, "Being renewed in your mind".
In the mornings after I run, I take my sweaty t-shirt and shorts and socks and I hang them on the hook on the back of our bathroom door. Actually, I do that Monday through Wednesday. By Thursday, they can stand up on their own and I don't have to do anything with them. But after I take off those old sweaty clothes, I jump in the shower, the water washes away the grime and the grit from running, and after my shower, never once have I been tempted to reach for those sweaty clothes and put them back on.
There is no temptation to do that whatsoever. Why? Because I've been refreshed. That water has washed away that old grit and grime and any desire to live that way for the next 24 hours. That's the same way it is with renewing our mind in Christ. The key to not going back to your old way of life is to renew your mind every day by reading God's word. When you read God's word, it exposes the dirt in your life. It makes you have no desire whatsoever for your old way of life. The Word of God has a way of reminding you of what God's standard for living is and why it's really the best way to live.
That's the key to say no to the old and putting on the new. Taking off the old self and renewed in the spirit of your mind, put on the new self. The reason we are to live differently, conduct ourselves in purity, is because we serve a Savior who has called us to a life of purity. This week, I was reading from one commentator the story of missionary Martin Burnham who, along with his wife, gracia, were kidnapped by a militant terrorist group in the Philippines in 2001. While he was captive for over a year, the Philippine government tried a rescue attempt. It freed gracia, his wife, but Martin lost his life in an ensuing gunfight.
Less than a week before Martin and gracia were kidnapped in the Philippines and held by terrorists, just a week before that, they had been in the United States speaking at a Wednesday night prayer service at the rose hill Bible church in Wichita, Kansas. Some of his last words in that sermon before he went to the Philippines where he would be kidnapped, some of his last words were the words of Jesus recorded in the gospel of John, "Follow thou me".
At Martin's funeral service his brother said, "Martin not only spoke of following Christ, but he took on that responsibility. Of course, at that time, neither he nor any of us expected how far he was going to be required to go. But he was willing to go". His brother recounted at the funeral service that just before the failed rescue attempt that would take Martin's life, he and his wife, gracia, huddled together under a makeshift tent. They had been thinking that maybe there would be a chance they wouldn't make it out alive, so Martin said to his wife, gracia, "You know, the Bible says to serve the Lord with gladness. Let's go out all the way in. Let's serve God all the way with gladness".
And so, the couple prayed together, they recited some scripture verses to one another, they sang, and then they laid down to rest. Then, the rescue assault began. The bullets began to fly. Gracia followed the rescue team to safety while Martin followed his Savior to heaven. We as Christians are to live and die differently than unbelievers. Why? Because we have a leader who has called us to a life of purity, and that same leader will usher us home to heaven one day.