If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
(Colossians 3:1-17 ESV)
In verse 5, we start learning about the old self, the self that we are commanded to take off. Here’s a quick reminder: taking off the old self is not something we do so that we will be saved. It is our response to being saved. Verse 5 says to “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you.” The “therefore” indicates that this is because of something previous stated. What reason has Paul already given for us to do this? “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (v. 3). Again, we are to put to death the earthly things because our lives are hidden with Christ in God, not so that they will be.
Anyway, now to verse 5: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” The Greek translated “what is earthly in you” literally means “your members that are on the earth.” These things are not just things sinful people do, they are part of who we are, part of our sinful bodies, part of our nature. These are evil things, as evidenced by verse 6: “Because of these the wrath of God is coming.” There’ll be more on that later.
So the big issue Paul starts out with is sexual immorality. That’s a very broad term. It pretty much covers every sexual sin out there, like adultery (Ex. 20:14), premarital sex (Ex. 22:16), bestiality (Deut. 27:21), incest (Lev 18:8-14), prostitution (Deut. 23:17), and homosexuality (Rom. 1:26-27). All of those are physical, but Paul’s list shows that the physical is not all the Lord is concerned about.
To see this, let’s go back to Matthew 5:27-28, where Jesus Himself addresses this issue. He said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” See that? Jesus points out specifically that it’s not enough just to physically not commit adultery. Impure thoughts and motives are just as sinful. That’s what Paul is getting at when he talks about “impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness.” Physical and mental impurity is what we are commanded to take off.
In fact, covetousness is so bad that it’s actually labeled as idolatry. Covetousness is wanting more and more of what we don’t have, or wanting something that someone else has in a greedy, jealous way. Covetousness is bad in and of itself, but in this context I think it refers to sexual covetousness. This leads to heinous things like pornography or prostitution. Paul specifically calls this idolatry, or wanting something else more than we want God, and that’s serious. That’s breaking the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). That’s also not loving “the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,” nor is it loving “your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27), since it involves exploiting someone else for your own selfish desires.
These are some of the traits of the old self. Believers were like that before God called and saved them. And unbelievers are still like that. “Because of these the wrath of God is coming.” One day, Jesus will return. He will redeem His people from the world, those who have truly confessed Him as Lord (cf. Rom. 10:9). All the unrighteous, the people actively in rebellion against God, “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 16:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21).
If these sins are active in your life, take this as a loving warning: you are in grave danger of the fire of hell. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). We all die, but those who reject Christ die a second, spiritual death by the hands of a perfect, just and holy God. But God loves you. He loves the world, and He knows our hopeless condition. So He has given us hope: Jesus Christ, God in human form, paid the death penalty of sin when He died on the cross. Colossians 1:20 says He made “peace by the blood of his cross.” Three days later, He rose from the dead, proving not only His deity, but also His full payment for sin. “In Him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:14). The condition? You need to repent of those sins and any others, turn away from them, turn to God, and genuinely declare Him to be the Lord and Savior of your life. I say genuinely because a lot of people make a one-time declaration and show absolutely no change in their lives.
This is not works salvation. There is nothing you can do to really earn it. It’s a gift! And remember the first paragraph of this post: repenting and turning your life around is a response to salvation, not a means of gaining it. But if you’ve confessed Jesus as the Lord and Savior of your life, the Master and King over you, and you truly love Him, you’ll turn from your sin and follow Him. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Times will be hard. But in the end, you will be in eternal glory, in heaven forever with Him, the perfect ruler and loving God.
Read the rest of this series:
No comments:
Post a Comment