Don’t Trip: A C.R.I.P. Walk Tutorial – Part 2

Review

• Last week we continued our series on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
• We will continue with the second half of Ephesians today in a series titled: Don’t Trip: A C.R.I.P. Walk Tutorial.
• For our purposes C.R.I.P. stands for Christ In
• This lesson is about how drawing close to Jesus affects our .
• In Ephesians and much of the rest of the Bible, walking is a metaphor for life.
• Your walk refers to how you .
• The first three chapters focus of Ephesians focus on what we , but the second three chapters focus on how we .

Ephesians 4:17-24

Un-Identity

Ephesians 4:17

• If the 21^st century has taught us anything, it’s this: How you identify is a .
• How you identify is completely separate from how you feel on the inside or look on the outside.
• God says this: I don’t care how you feel or how you look. If you’re a follower of Christ, you with Christ.
• is linked to identification.
• Actors know this.
• Good acting (or action) comes from sources.
• In the Roman world, adoptees had to stop identifying with their birth families and begin identifying with their adopted families.

Spiritual Heart Disease

Ephesians 4:18

• A heart produces spiritual blindness, isolation and ignorance.
• Spiritually speaking, a hardened heart is analogous to clogged arteries.

Ephesians 4:19

• To be callous means to lose feeling.
• If your body loses feeling, it is because your nerve endings are no longer communicating with you.
• Nerve endings tell us if something is too hot, cold or sharp enough to hurt us.
• When we are spiritually callous, our spiritual nerve endings are not working.
• When we are spiritually callous, we can sin without sensing danger.

“A place for everything and everything in its place” –Benjamin Franklin

Ephesians 4:20

• Mark 12:17 

Ephesians 4:21

• The teachings of the Bible do not make sense if you do hold a few basic assumptions:
  • , goodness, beauty and truth are connected (Genesis 3:6)
    • To find one is to find the other.
    • They are all located in the same place.
    • That place is Jesus.
  • Biblical scripture is the only text with the authority and accuracy to reveal who is.
• Identification with Christ means holding these assumptions.
• Once you hold these assumptions, you are willing to disidentify with anything contrary to Christ.
• Identifying with means disidentifying with ourselves.
• Identifying with God’s truth means disidentifying with our truth.

Ephesians 4:22-23

• Identification is about renewal
• The ancient world believed the mind was in the heart, not the brain.
• You become a new person by changing your .
• Who you are in your heart is who you are.
• If your heart is changeable, changeable.
• The world says that you are what your body and mind says you are; God says you are what He says you are.
• We become like God when our heart becomes to God’s Word.

Old Testament Rules Made Simple

Ephesians 4:25-32

Ephesians 5:1-5

In Sum,

To C.R.I.P. Walk is to follow the of the Ten Commandments:

Ephesians 5:5 

• I Corinthians 6:9-11
• “The apostle Paul, in writing here about the ‘unrighteous,’ is addressing a body of believers living in a city known for its gross sexual immorality.
• He lists a catalog of sins characterizing sexual impurity and says that those who commit them will be disinherited from the Kingdom.
• Does this mean that people who engage in sexual sin will lose their salvation?
• No, Rather, what the Word of God is saying is that sex sins obliterate the confidence, authority and power and blessings of the Kingdom. . . .
• Sex sins tend to dull our souls to the God-given joy of our salvation, robbing us of the strength that joy is designed to sustain” (Jack Hayford, Fatal Attractions: Why Sex Sins Are Worse Than Others, Regal:2004, p.61)
• Psalm 51:12

© Joshua D. Smith, Ph.D., 2021