Let’s review Ephesians 4:17-24 as we continue…. 

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. 18They 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. 19They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. 

Now let us notice another element in this that is most important in the twenty-first century, and in the midst of contemporary thinking.  In verse 18 it speaks of ignorance.  Ignorance is in relationship to content; it is not just a spirit of ignorance.  In verse 21 it speaks of ‘the truth in Jesus.’  Truth is content, truth has something to do with reason.  Truth has something to do with the rational creature that God has made us.  The dilemma here in the internal world is not just some sort of gray fog, it is in relationship to content.   

‘Be renewed in the spirit of your minds’ (verse 23).  This again is not simply a feeling.  It is a matter of thoughts in a rational sense, and with content.  With the objective ‘to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness’ (verse 24). (Schaeffer says “the best translation here is ‘holiness of truth’.)   

This is not just an emotional holiness but holiness in relationship to content, holiness in relationship to thought and a set of things that can be stated as true, in contrast to that which is false.  What is being dealt with here is the problem of internal ignorance in the sense of rebellion, turning from those things that are truth.  (con’t tomorrow) 

Thoughts developed or used directly from the work of Schaeffer, Francis. True Spirituality . Tyndale House Publishers, Inc