Sunday message · What Difference Does God series
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Message Summary
In the first message of a series on what difference God makes, Pastor Phillip Santillan takes up a question people far from God often ask: if Christianity just turns bad people into good people, why become a Christian when a kind Buddhist, Hindu or atheist already lives that way? Before Paul’s practical commands, Ephesians 4:17–24 lays a foundation showing that they come from a fundamentally different place than other religions or philosophies.
Paul urges believers no longer to walk as the Gentiles do. Phil explains that Paul means anyone disconnected from God, not a race: people darkened in understanding and alienated from God’s life through ignorance and hardness of heart (Ephesians 4:17–18). God often feels distant, Phil says, not because he is far but because we are ignorant of him, and then we cannot see his beauty or trust his kindness.
A hard heart, one commentator explains, is willful resistance to God and his truth. Phil says neglecting to keep learning who God is can harden a heart, and he cites C. S. Lewis’s warning in Mere Christianity that ignoring theology does not leave us with no ideas about God, only wrong ones. Hebrews 3:15 warns against hardening our hearts as Israel did. Paul says such hearts become callous and give themselves to sensuality, which Phil explains means pursuing desires in excess without fear or shame. He hears the cry of a hardened heart in John Mayer’s song “Something’s Missing.”
Phil names escapes such as addictions, but hearts also harden through the greedy pursuit of anything we feel we must have for life to be good, such as financial security, success, romance or perfect family harmony. None of these is bad in itself. To find our cravings, he suggests asking what one thing we feel we must have for life to be good.
But that is not the way you learned Christ, Paul says (Ephesians 4:20–22). Phil insists that “God exists to change us from the inside out,” not just our morality. First, God gives us a newer and clearer knowledge of himself through Jesus, whose story of life, death and resurrection is what Paul’s rare use of the name Jesus points to. The Bible is a story, not a reference book, and being swept up into it changes us: temptations lose their power because we have seen greater beauty, and the love shown in Jesus makes us people who love and forgive.
Second, God gives us a renewed spiritual mindset, renewing the spirit of our minds so we can put on the new self. Paul tells Titus that God saved us by his mercy through the renewal of the Holy Spirit. So what difference does God make? A big one: he turns death into life and changes our desires and hearts, giving us a new heart in place of a heart of stone (Ezekiel 36:26). Phil closes by asking what difference God has made in our lives, whether he is making one now, and when we last felt it, assuring listeners that he can.