What to Do with the Old Sinful Habits? For Dr. Jay E. Adams
In Efesios 4:22 Apostle Pablo does a clear reference to our old sinful habits. The difficulty is in that almost nobody speaks today about the habits acquired before becoming Christians and that to do with them. The life style of the gentiles was consisting of sinful bosses of life in which they were born and became accustomed in thought and conduct. Because when you turn you bring these sinful habits with you, you have to be taught to what you must do with them.
The habits are part of the life. We are customs beings. We do things repeatedly automatically, unconsciously, skillfully and comfortably. These are four characteristics of a habit. This is a God's blessing. This is what allows us to do more than one thing simultaneously. We can guide and speak. That's why you put brake when it changes the semaphore to red, and that you listen to radio while you do other things. To do things for habit is like the “second nature”.
But, in a sin world, every blessing can return in curse. For example, we have to learn not to be sick badly for evil as we are accustomed but to be sick well for evil. That's why Pablo says than as for our past way of living: "you undress the old man” and “that you are renewed in the spirit of your mind.” This education consists of a fundamental dynamics that finds in the versículos 22 and 24: "deprive you of the old man” (to come out) and “dress of the new man” (to put itself).
The old person that one was before the conversion, like a piece of clothes that is rejected, she has to be removed of our life. Your “old person” is not another thing than your old man I with his sinful life boss. He is an important intransigent being with the old conduct bosses to be able to be deshabituados. But, allow me to wonder a little: When is it that a thief stops being a thief? When is it that a liar it stops being? If you think that when of to steal or of lying, you are wrong. Only they are taking a rest in what they have opportunity to do it again.
According to the Word of God, the thief stops being a thief when instead of stealing it begins to work to gain him the money, and the liar, it it stops being when only he speaks the truth. In other words, when the new habits of the Christian life substitute those of the old creature. It is not a question of breaking simply with an old habit but of replacing it by the new one that is in accordance with the new creation in Christ.
He remembers that the God's Word denounces that your old sinful habits come from your old man (sinful nature) that is corrupted by deceitful desires. There are things in your life which change will be like breaking vice. But you have to take your decisions and act, on the base what are the thoughts, words, actions and attitudes that please God.
Fortunately, you are not alone to change. God is with you. It has done to you a new creature capable of conquering your sinful desires, and has given you the victory of Jesus Christ on the sin and the temptation, and the power of the Holy Spirit to achieve it, and that you have no excuse to live as God is in charge.
(Taken of The Christian Counselor's Commentary (Ephesians) for Jay E. Adams. Translated and adapted by Milton Villanueva).



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