The Place to Be #17

 Ephesians 4:17 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. 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.

Paul now takes his challenge to the next step.  Having painted this picture of the Body of Christ as a well-functioning entity of helping one another grow in our relationship with God, He confronts those things which would detract us from doing so individually and side-track us from building up the body as a whole. We might picture these sins as mental, physical, and spiritual venereal diseases that affect the way we think, act, and interact withing the body. They have a corrupting effect on the health of both the individual body parts and the body as a whole, and need to be put off and replaced with new, clean, healthy thinking patterns and lifestyles.  They do not just infect and affect the individual; they harm the whole body.