Good teachers inspire us to change. They
help us to see our potential, and they encourage us to reach it. In fact, the
best teachers see who we are—and what we can be—more clearly than we see it
ourselves. What they see in us motivates us to change. That’s why it’s so crushing
when a teacher does the opposite. When a teacher tells a student that they’re
nothing, that they are worthless or useless, it reinforces an identity that
demotivates and discourages them from making any effort to change: If I am nothing,
I’ll do nothing. If I am useless, I’ll be useless. If I’m stupid, I won’t
learn. If I’m a thief, I’ll steal. If I’m a wild child, I won’t bother to
control my anger. But good teachers refuse to take this path. Good teachers
don’t simply reinforce a student’s identity based on their current behaviour
and feelings. They acknowledge the behaviour and feelings, but they also look beyond
these things, and help the student to look beyond them too. The student can
say: I’m not fundamentally a useless or stupid person. It’s just that I find
this particular area of behaviour or learning really hard. That’s a reality I
can deal with. I need to work on steps x, y, and z. It’s liberating. I can work
towards a goal: becoming who I am.

The apostle Paul is a good teacher. Of
course, that’s because he’s learnt from the best: Jesus Christ himself. In
these verses of Ephesians, Paul talks about what good teaching looks like. The particular
teaching he has in mind is the teaching about Christ and how to live for him. It
teaches us to become who we are:

I assume you were taught to take off the old humanity, according to the former way of life, which is being corrupted according to deceitful desires, and to be renewed by the Spirit of your minds and put on the new humanity, which has been created according to God in the righteousness and devotion that come from the truth.Ephesians 4:22–24

Who you are: a new humanity

Who are we? Believers in Christ are, in
fact, a new humanity! Paul speaks here about “the new humanity which has been
created according to God”. To understand what Paul means, we need to remember
what he’s already said earlier in his letter about God making us a new creation
through Jesus.

The first place to go is Ephesians 2:1–10.
There, Paul describes how we were once dead
because of our offenses and sins, and so were facing God’s
wrath. But through God’s rich
grace and mercy, we’ve been made alive with Christ: forgiven through his death,
raised with
him, and now facing the sure hope of everlasting life. We’ve been saved. And this is
all from God’s grace, through faith. There’s nothing we have done or can do
to achieve it. We haven’t been saved on the basis of our works; our good deeds
don’t earn us anything before God. But still, good works really matter! They
don’t contribute to our salvation; but they matter because they are the thing
we’ve been saved for. Our salvation makes us a new creation. As Paul says:

For we are his product, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God pre-prepared for us to walk in.Ephesians 2:10