…Our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might
deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God
and Father, to whom be glory forever and even. Amen.” (Gal. 1:4,5
NKJV)
As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ we have many, many blessings for
which we need to be thankful. Perhaps one of the most important is
deliverance from this present evil age. We often fail to comprehend the
depths of sin. We need to think often of where we would be were it not
for His deliverance. Before regeneration, our wicked hearts were
capable of the most hideous sins. Whether it be the drug addict, the
staggering drunkard, the prison inmate, the suicide victim in
yesterday’s paper, we can all say, “but for the grace of God, that
could be me.”
In Ephesians 4, we are exhorted to “no longer walk as the rest of the
Gentiles walk.” God is able to deliver us from such a walk. Let us
notice six tragic characteristics of the man who walks outside of
Christ.
- It is a walk of futility or vanity. “They walk in the
futility or emptiness of their minds” (Eph. 4:17 Amp.). No matter how
much of the world’s material goods they may accumulate, it is all
emptiness. We live in an age and a culture that has demonstrated this
fact very clearly. As one of the wealthiest men who ever lived could
say, “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the
labor in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for
the wind. There was no profit under the sun” (Eccl. 2:11 NKJV). - It is a walk of darkness. “Their moral understanding is
darkened and their reasoning is beclouded” (Eph. 4:18 Amp.). “Because
although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God…and their
foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools”
(Rom. 1:21, 22 NKJV). We supposedly live in an age of great
wisdom and understanding, yet educated men and women are often the most
ignorant of the ways of God and His salvation. - It is a walk of alienation from the life of God. “They are
estranged or self-banished from the life of God” (Eph. 4:18 Amp.).
Describing the unregenerate state in a previous chapter, it is stated
“at that time you were without Christ…having no hope and without God in
the world” (Eph. 2:12 NKJV). Our society is a godless society,
largely forsaking His laws and His precepts. Life is lived as if there
were no God and as if we are accountable to no one but ourselves. - It is a walk of callousness, spiritual apathy, without
any feelings of guilt. “Who, being past feeling, have given
themselves over to licentiousness, to work all uncleanness with
greediness” (Eph. 4:19). Life becomes totally uninhibited. They abandon
themselves to unbridled sensuality and every form of impurity. Life
becomes characterized by license and greed. Even so today,men want
everything they can get and they cannot get enough of it. - It is a walk that becomes increasingly corrupt as time goes
by. “Put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which
grows corrupt” (Eph. 4:22 NKJV). Writing about the corruption of our
evil nature, Samuel Ridout states, “I tell you, dear brethren, it would
make the heart leap with praise and with joy as we thought of the grace
that had snatched us from a corruption which is worse than the
punishment for that corruption could possibly be.” Left to
himself, man becomes worse and worse until his life becomes so full of
sin and corruption that life becomes an existence of untold misery. - It is a walk of deception. “He becomes corrupt through lusts
and desires that spring from delusion” (Eph. 4:22 Amp.). In 2
Timothy 3:13, we are told that wicked men and imposters will go on from
bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. They reach a point where
they tell so many lies about themselves that they begin to believe them.
Those living in this evil age, of which we were a part until God in
Christ delivered us, are described in the following manner: They are
without excuse. They know God, but they do not glorify Him as God. They
are not thankful. They change the glory of the incorruptible God into
an image made like corruptible man. They are given up by God to
uncleanness to dishonor their bodies among themselves. They have
exchanged the truth of God for the lie. They worship and serve the
creature rather than the Creator. This is a partial list of man without
God from Romans, chapter one. The list goes on and on in this same
chapter. “You have there in Romans one a catalogue of crime which
brings the tinge of shame to the cheek even to read it, and it is
given, not as some exceptional result of man’s sin, but as the
legitimate fruit of his departure from God. It is given in a way that
includes every unsaved person.” (Samuel Ridout)
Dear believer, may God help you to fully understand the marvelous
deliverance that Christ wrought on your behalf when He delivered you
from this evil age. We thank Him and thank Him over and over again. We
shall thank Him for all eternity. Except for His deliverance, we would
be walking the same path, headed in the same direction, with absolutely
no hope for the future. Though we fully deserved His total abandonment,
His grace has forgiven us and drawn us to Himself. May we ever walk in
this light, walking as children of light, having no fellowship with the
unfruitful works of darkness, “for it is shameful even to speak of
those things which are done by them in secret” (Eph. 5:11,12 NKJV).