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)
Well, now that it’s been a good, long while since I last actually updated this series, I figured I may as well work on another part! I hope you stick around for the rest of the series (and maybe look back at old posts if you need to catch up), because there’s still so much to work through!
In my last post, we started on verses 9-11: “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.” We spoke about the lifelong process of being renewed, how this renewal is in knowledge of God’s will and how that is revealed in the Bible, and how we are being made into images of Christ. This is what it truly means to put on the new self, and like I said in the last post, we’ll see more of what that looks like in the rest of this series.
But this verse also shows that the whole idea of the new self is not purely an individual thing. Sure, we are supposed to follow these commands ourselves, and that’s a demonstration of our growing spiritual maturity, but also with our relationships with other believers and how we all affect one another. That’s partially what all the things of the old self dealt with, and that still applies here.
This verse specifically tells us to “not lie to one another.” Well that’s pretty obvious. There’s a commandment on that that literally everyone knows. That’s pretty simple, right?
Well, since I’m writing about this, you’ve probably already realized there’s more to it. Or rather, there’s a couple of reasons not to lie to each other besides the fact that it’s not nice (which it isn’t).
First off, let’s go to the one that sounds dark and scary. Lying is another practice of the old self, and the Bible calls Satan “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). So if we’re lying, we’re following the practices of Satan. That’s enough reason not to lie by itself, isn’t it? No Christian should
be following the practices of Satan.
But there’s another reason not to lie. Let’s go to Ephesians 4:25. “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” So obviously this verse says we should “put away falsehood.” Again, that’s pretty simple. But then the verse gives us the reason: “for we are members of one another.” The reason we aren’t supposed to lie to one another is because we are all one body!
Well, what’s the big deal about that? Let’s go back to Ephesians 4:15-16. “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” That’s a lot of words, so I’ll give you the basic idea here. As one body, we are all one structure with a mission: to bring the Gospel to the world. The church is supposed to “build itself up in love” so that it can be effective in this mission. This building up is done “when each part is working properly.” And this body is “joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped,” that is to say, every believer in the church. So if we’re lying to each other all the time, we aren’t working properly. We have defective joints. The structure is weak, it can’t build itself up properly. As a result, we are ineffective in our mission to bring the Gospel into the world! We need to be truthful to one another, even when it hurts, because when we are truthful, we can all grow together.
There’s one last part to this whole “being one body” thing. Our being one body is not by anything we do. It’s because Christ has saved us. “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” Back in those days (and in our days) regular life was full of racism. Jews hated Gentiles, Greeks hated everything and everyone not Greek, etc. But in Christ, we’re all one body. Those racial, physical aspects don’t mean anything anymore, at least when it comes to how we treat one another! I mean sure, maybe someone who’s big and strong is more able to help lift heavy things than someone who isn’t, but that doesn’t mean we treat the one who can’t any better or worse than the one who can. I knew a guy in a wheelchair who was convinced that everyone, including people at the church, was condescending to him because of his disability. The unfortunate thing is that in some cases it was probably true. And that shouldn’t be, especially in the church. We are all one body, we are all part of each other, united in Christ. And it’s only when we are united that we can be fully effective in our mission.
Read the rest of this series:
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