1. What is Paul highlighting with the words “futility of their thinking”? (v.17)
   What is the typical mindset of our day?
    
2. Why does Paul add the phrase “and insist on it in the Lord”? (v.17)
    
3. Paul says that the Gentiles have “lost all sensitivity…” (v.19) Sensitivity to what?  Is our society loosing sensitivity as well?
    
4. In verse 19 Paul says that the Gentiles “have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity…” In Romans 1:24 Paul says that “God gave them over…to sexual impurity.”  How should we explain this apparent contradiction?
    
5. Paul literally says in verse 21, “surely you heard [Christ]…”  What does this expression say about the preaching?
    
6. “Created to be like God” means: created to live in righteousness and holiness (v. 24). What else does it mean? (cf. Genesis 1; Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 3)
    
7. In verses 22-24 Paul instructs us to both put off the old nature (negative) and put on the new nature (positive).  Does our daily life have both a positive and negative aspect to it? 
   Can there be a danger in overstressing the negative at the expense of the positive, or vice versa?
    
8. Why should we “put off falsehood”? (v. 25)
    
9. What does it mean to “speak truthfully to [our] neighbor”? (v. 25)  Is it a matter of always telling him the facts?
    
10. Verse 26 says “in your anger do not sin.”  Is it ever right to be angry?  If so, when? (cf. Matthew 5:22)
     
11. Why would Paul say “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry”? (v.26)
     
12. How do we “give the devil a foothold”? (v.27)
     
13. Grieving the Spirit:

• What does it mean “to grieve the Holy Spirit”? (v.30)
  How do we grieve him? (cf. Isaiah 63:10) ?
   
• James writes in 4:5 of his letter that “…the Spirit [that God] caused to live in us envies intensely.”  What does that mean?
   
• What is the difference between “grieving the Spirit” and “resisting the Spirit”? (cf. Act 7:51)

14. What does it mean to forgive others as God, in Christ, forgave us? 
    Have we verbally forgiven any one or only quietly forgotten?  
     
15. Identify 6 ways how Christians are to put off their old nature and put on the new. (vv. 4:25-5:5)

For Further Discussion:⤒🔗

16.  How do we see this “continual lust for more” (v. 19) in our own society? 
     
17. Sometimes it happens that people who have lived godly lives all their life long get Alzheimer’s disease – and in that state begin use very foul language that you never heard from their mouths before.  How do we explain that?