Following

Listening to: Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." (Eph 2:1-3)

Without Christ we:

• follow the world; and
• follow the devil.

As we discussed in Christianity Explored tonight, that is a fairly offensive thing to say to people. But it's not only offensive, its makes no sense to us. How can they we be following the devil if we don't even believe in him? And, it isn't true to say that I mindlessly follow everyone else when I make up my own mind about things?

We follow the world and the devil in two ways:

Firstly, we do the same thing as both of them. We live for ourselves. We carry out whatever our body and mind desire to do. That is the only rule we accept, the rule of ourselves. In our assertion of self-determination, we display our unity with the world and the devil.

But secondly, we not only do the same thing as them, we do the same thing as them because of them. We learnt sin from the devil in the Garden, and we inherited sin from the world. Sin is not original to us.

"But... we are [God's] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." (Eph 2:4-10)

We now follow Christ. This means that we walk in good works, not in trespasses and sins. We follow Christ in a mirror image of the way in which we used to follow the world and the devil.

Firstly, we do the same thing as him. We walk in love, "as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us" (5:1). Previously we lived to satisfy our own desires. Now we seek to please God, and satisfy our neighbour, just as Christ did.

Secondly, we do the same thing as him, because of him. We are God's "workmanship...in Christ Jesus". We were dead and unable to save ourselves, but we were made alive as a new person because of God's action in Christ.