LIVE THE LIFE OF GOD

Ephesians 4:18

Paul has said we may no longer live like the rest of the world around us. In verse 18 he gives us another reason for this. He says they are “separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” Don’t live like the world around you because they are separated from the life of God! What does Paul mean? Again, it is a result of sin and the fall. Man was created with the life of God. Genesis 2:7 says, “The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” God breathed his own life into the man he created! But God’s warning to him was that if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would surely die. They ate and they died. They did not immediately die physically but they were separated from the life of God. All human beings are born separated from the life of God. They have physical life but they are spiritually lifeless. What the world calls life is not life at all! It is physical existence without the life of God. They think they are alive and safe but they have no idea of the very real danger they live in every moment!

Do you ever watch horror movies? I used to watch them but I can’t stand them now. The tension is too much for me. But in those movies I did see there were people who were constantly going into rooms where the killer was hiding. Or they were walking down shady paths where the killer waited. Or they were hiding under beds or climbing stairs or going into garages where certain death awaited them. I just couldn’t stand it! I would literally ruin the movie for people by saying much too loudly, “No! Don’t go there! You’ll die!” That’s how the world lives. They think they are safe but they are walking into certain death and destruction.

There is another illustration that comes to mind from the cartoons when I was a kid. It may have been a Popeye cartoon. He was sleepwalking through all kinds of danger. He would walk across the edge of a narrow wall and at the end of the wall there was a board swinging from a crane and he would walk onto the board which would spin around and deposit him high onto a skyscraper under construction. He would walk across the beams of this skyscraper and step into an elevator which would lift him higher into the building. Then he would walk off the edge of the skyscraper onto something else and it would just go on and on. The sleepwalker was completely unaware of the constant danger around him.

The people of the world live their lives like that 24/7. They live like they are completely safe from any danger. They say there is no God. There is no judgment. There is no punishment. It is like a nightmare for me. I keep screaming for them to be careful but they can’t hear me! Wake up! Watch out!

The people of the world think they are alive but they are really the living dead. There can be no real life until they are reunited with the life of God. This is exactly what God did for us through Jesus Christ. Peter wrote, “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires” (2 Peter 1:3, 4). The only escape from the corruption and death of the world is found in the life of God. Paul told us how that happens in Ephesians 2:4, 5, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” God took us from being the living dead and made us alive in Christ. He gave us his Holy Spirit to come into us and reunite us with his life.

We should not envy the lives that the people around us are living. What they have is not life. They are separated from the life of God. We are different. We have the life of God. We have been saved by God’s grace to live the life God has prepared for us. We are fully alive and we need to live the life of God!