Facing Prometheus — Week 12 | “Matters of the Mind” | Pastor Jason Parrish
Every generation looks back at the decade that shaped it and sees the disruption clearly in hindsight. The chaos, the cultural earthquakes, the moments that changed everything. And every generation asks the same question: what went wrong, and where do we go from here?
In Week 12 of Facing Prometheus: A Letter to the Ephesians and the Future Church Dilemma, Pastor Jason Parrish launches a new mini-series — Sacred Lives in a Secular World — with a message that reframes the question entirely. The problem, Paul argues in Ephesians 4, is never simply out there in the culture. It is always deeper and more personal than that. And the solution is not better behavior. It is a renewed mind.
The Text — Ephesians 4:17–24
“Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more. But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.”
— Ephesians 4:17–24 (CSB)
A Decade of Disruption — And a Deeper Problem
The 1990s were full of what historians call “moments of disruption.” In one decade, the world shifted in ways that are still being felt today.
Political & Global Disruptions: The Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed (1990–1991), fundamentally reshaping global power. The Persian Gulf War showcased new military technology on a world stage. The Rwandan Genocide (1994) killed between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people, triggering a massive international humanitarian crisis. And the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing shocked the American public with the reality of homegrown terrorism.
Social & Cultural Disruptions: Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web revolutionized how human beings communicate and do commerce. The 1992 Los Angeles riots exposed deep and unresolved racial tensions. CNN’s 24-hour news cycle changed how information was consumed forever. Columbine (1999) became a defining trauma for an entire generation — one that still marks us today. And high-profile cultural moments — the O.J. Simpson trial, the death of Princess Diana, Magic Johnson’s HIV announcement — captured global attention in ways that had never happened before.
Technological Changes: The founding of Amazon (1994) and Google shifted retail and information access across the entire global economy. The world was simply never the same.
These are events that shaped a decade — and shaped the people who lived through it. But the question worth asking is: does the decade produce the problem, or does the problem produce the decade?
In 1997, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn addressed an audience in his homeland as part of a series of public lectures following the collapse of the Soviet Union. His talk, titled “The Depletion of Culture,” contained this observation:
★★ “The fundamental, intrinsic reason for culture’s ongoing decline, its petering out, is its secularization.” — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Carl Trueman, in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, pushes even further:
★★ “I would only add that this imminent cultural indigence has been fueled by the active destruction of the sacred, not merely its fading away.” — Carl R. Trueman
If Solzhenitsyn and Trueman are right — and they are —
★★ The issue is not the date, decade, or even century. The problem is deeper and more personal. It is the human who occupies the date, decade, or century.
This is precisely what Paul argues in Ephesians 4:17–24. He doesn’t say to look out there to find the problem. He says to look within. His injunction is clear:
★★ Do not live like the world you have been saved from. We are to occupy and embody sacred lives in the midst of a secular world.
Theologian Max Turner captures the weight of this call in the New Bible Commentary:
“We are responsible to live out with all seriousness and energy what God is doing in us (cf. Phil. 2:12–13). Failure to do so would precisely be to live in the ‘deceit’ of the old creation rather than in ‘the truth’ of the new.”
— Max Turner, New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition
The Framework for What Comes Next
Before pressing into the text, it is important to understand the why behind the teaching that will come in this mini-series — especially for those who are newer to The Well. Paul lays the pastoral mandate out just a few verses earlier:
“And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness. Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head — Christ.”
— Ephesians 4:11–15 (CSB)
This is the mandate: to teach in a way that presents truth in love, matures the body, and protects the church from ideologies, human cunning, and teaching that leads astray. As we address marriage, singleness, sexuality, money, parenting, and work in the weeks ahead, that is the spirit in which every message will be delivered. We do not test God’s word against pop culture, politics, or ideology. We take all of life and hold it up to God’s word.
Two Truths Paul Presents
Truth #1 — You Cannot Out-Behave Unsaved Thinking
“Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.”
— Ephesians 4:17–19 (CSB)
Paul uses a progression of terms to define the broken — or unsaved — mind. They form a vicious downward cycle that no amount of behavior modification can break:
a. Futile Thinking — God and his Spirit have no place in one’s mind, leaving it void of his truth and morality. This creates a vacuum quickly filled by other gods: worldly pleasures, possessions, power, position, religions, ideas, and honor.
b. Darkened Understanding — Without God’s light, life seems dark, chaotic, and random. Nothing is bright. Everything feels confusing and out of control.
c. Excluded from the Life of God — A growing distance from God sets in. The vitality found in him begins to feel inaccessible, and doubt about his existence and work creeps in.
d. Ignorance — The basic truths of the world — those displayed through the work of God’s hand — begin to slip away. Common sense, a general north for life, disappears. Thoughts, priorities, and objectives become chaotic and nonsensical.
e. Hardening of the Heart — Due to all of this, the heart begins to calcify. The softness of compassion and love fades. Nothing gets through. A person becomes empty and numb to all things.
f. Loss of Sensitivity — The numbness that comes from a hardened heart sets in fully. In order to feel anything — even for a moment — a person begins to outsource to all kinds of things, desperately grasping for the feeling of being alive.
g. Indulgence in Every Kind of Impurity — These are the things people typically turn to for feeling: substances, unhealthy relationships, pornography, money, leisure, success, social status. You fill in the blank.
Theologian John Stott connects these steps into one sobering trajectory:
“If we put Paul’s expressions together, noting carefully their logical connections, he seems to be depicting the terrible downward path of evil, which begins with an obstinate rejection of God’s known truth. First comes their hardness of heart, then their ignorance, being darkened in their understanding, next and consequently they are alienated from the life of God, since he turns away from them, until finally they have become callous and have given themselves up to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of uncleanness… Thus hardness of heart leads first to darkness of mind, then to deadness of soul under the judgment of God, and finally to recklessness of life. Having lost all sensitivity, people lose all self-control.”
— John R.W. Stott, God’s New Society: The Message of Ephesians
You cannot read Ephesians 4:17–20 without Romans 1 coming to mind. Most theologians would say you must read these texts together — Paul is making the same argument, using the same verbiage and structure:
“For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man… Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity… They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator… And because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a corrupt mind so that they do what is not right.”
— Romans 1:18–28 (CSB)
Truth #2 — Saved Thinking Produces a New Life
“But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.”
— Ephesians 4:20–24 (CSB)
Last week, Pastor Howie talked about transformation beginning with an encounter with God. Paul now goes further — from that encounter, an eternal reformation begins in the mind, which produces practical, lasting change in our lives.
Doctrinally, there is a term for this:
★★ Repentance.
Repentance is one of the most significant topics within soteriology — the study of salvation — and one of the most widely ignored and diminished in the preaching of the modern church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “the preaching of forgiveness without repentance” cheap grace — because without recognizing one’s sin, its effects, and its implications, one cannot fully understand the gift of salvation.
Thomas Aquinas put it simply:
★★ “Repentance is the gateway to healing; it is the medicine for the soul’s wounds.” — Thomas Aquinas
It is important to distinguish repentance from sanctification. Sanctification is the process of continued change across the life of one who follows Jesus — the ongoing transformation of desires, tastes, proclivities, and affections. Repentance is the necessary act of acknowledging one’s sin and breaking course from it — the recognition that I need forgiveness for the desires and affections that are not aligned with God’s heart and design for my life.
Oswald Chambers writes:
★★ “Repentance always brings a person to the point of saying, ‘I have sinned.’ The surest sign that God is at work in his life is when he says that and means it.” — Oswald Chambers
The primary Greek term rendered “repentance” in the New Testament is metanoia, found 24 times, with its verbal form metanoeō used another 34 times. The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology identifies the core idea of these words as a “change of mind” — though the related term metamelomai also carries the nuance of regret or remorse.
Theologian William Shedd captures the direction of that change:
★★ “Repentance is turning to God as the chief end of existence, and away from the creature as the chief end.” — William Shedd
Repentance is, at its core, a change of mind. Paul makes this explicit in Romans 12:
“Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.”
— Romans 12:1–2 (CSB)
Notice: upon the transformation of the mind, we are able to discern the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. The Bible places enormous emphasis on how we think — and the truth is that for many of us, our lives have been shaped more by how we think than by any external circumstance.
17th-century theologian John Owen, in The Mortification of Sin, describes how sin actively works against this:
“There are numerous ways sin uses to divert the mind away from understanding the true severity of the guilt of it. Sin’s evil breath fogs up the mind so that it can’t make proper judgments about it. Rationalizations, extenuating circumstances, mixed-up desires, promises to reform later, and hope of future forgiveness all play a role in keeping the mind from truly understanding the magnitude of what we are doing.”
— John Owen, The Mortification of Sin
The point is plain: you can’t outperform a bad mind. Warren Wiersbe writes:
★★ “Salvation begins with repentance, which is a change of mind. The whole outlook of a person changes when he trusts Christ, including his values, goals, and interpretation of life.” — Warren Wiersbe
H.A. Ironside adds a sharp observation from his commentary on Ephesians:
“Unsaved men have illusions of their own minds, they see mirages of all kinds and imagine them to be real, but they are not. They believe all sorts of theories, scholastic ideas, and such like, and would even bring this blessed Book to the bar of their theories instead of bringing their theories to the test of the Word of God.”
— H.A. Ironside, In the Heavenlies
And then, with equal directness:
★★ “The Christian ought to be concerned about these things, and not walk in the delusions of the fleshly mind, for these poor Christless men, whatever their talents, whatever their culture, whatever their education, have the understanding darkened, have never been born of God, and are incapable of taking in divine things.” — H.A. Ironside
What This Mini-Series Is Asking of You
This mini-series — Sacred Lives in a Secular World — is going to ask you to bring your life, your ideas, and your beliefs to be tested by the Word of God. Not the other way around. We do not test God’s word against pop culture, politics, or contemporary ideology. We take all of life — marriages, singleness, sexuality, desires, money, parenting, work, all of it — and hold it up against what God says.
That will be uncomfortable at times. But Paul’s call is clear: put off the old self. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Put on the new self — the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.
You cannot out-behave unsaved thinking. But saved thinking? That changes everything.
References
- Cairns, Alan. Dictionary of Theological Terms. Belfast; Greenville, SC: Ambassador Emerald International, 2002.
- Brown, Colin, ed. New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. 3 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1975–1978.
- Ironside, H. A. In the Heavenlies: Practical Expository Addresses on the Epistle to the Ephesians. Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1937.
- Owen, John. The Mortification of Sin. In The Works of John Owen, Vol. 6. Edited by William H. Goold. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1967.
- Stott, John R. W. God’s New Society: The Message of Ephesians. The Bible Speaks Today. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1979.
- Tikkanen, Amy. “Timeline of the 1990s.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. June 23, 2025. https://www.britannica.com/story/timeline-of-the-1990s
- Trueman, Carl R. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020.
- Turner, Max. “Ephesians.” In New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition, 4th ed. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994.
- Wiersbe, Warren W. The Bible Exposition Commentary. Vol. 2. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996.
