Colossians 3:5-11

Colossians 3:1-11
1Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
2Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
3For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
4When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

5Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
6For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience,
7and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.
8But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.
9Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices,
10and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him--
11a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.

The passage we shall be looking at is following directly on from what Paul has been speaking on in verses 1-4. He first points us to Christ and then turns the focus to the response of the believer, and begins what has been described as one of the most wonderful passages in Scripture regarding sanctification which continues through to the end of the chapter.

5Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
Here appears a paradox – we have died (verse 3) and we are raised up with Christ (verse 1), yet Paul exhorts these believers to ‘consider the members of your earthly body as dead’, or rather ‘put to death’ as other translations render this section. How can this be that we are both dead and raised, yet required to put something to death? This can be understood when we see that believers are at once perfect and wholly justified before the Lord yet simultaneously undergoing sanctification as we grow in holiness (2 Corinthians 3:18, Phil 3:12-13). Paul elsewhere shows that it is precisely because we have died in Christ that we can put to death sinful practices. Take note specifically of verse 11 below (and sorry but I thought that this whole chapter deserved repeating here).

Romans 6 [NASB]
1What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
2May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?
3Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
4Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
5For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
6knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;
7for he who has died is freed from sin.
8Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
9knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.
10For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
11Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,
13and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!
16Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
17But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed,
18and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
19I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.
20For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
21Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death.
22But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.
23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And what is it that we are meant to put to death, or consider as dead? Paul begins with ‘immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed’. These five sins refer to the inward sins, whereas the five listed in verse 8 refer to sins against the neighbour. The list begins with sexual sins in their outward expression, namely fornication, and continues with impurity or uncleanness. Hendriksen in his commentary on Colossians states that the first can be understood as evil deeds and the second as evil thoughts and intents. Henderiksen continues; “But though by mentioning passion and evil desire the apostle has, as it were, reached the very bottom of every sin, he adds one more vice, one in which all the others are summarized, namely self-seeking or greed”. The seriousness of sexual sin can be seen as Paul addresses this area immediately following his exhortations of verse 1-4 to seek Christ. These sins can so mar our relationship with the Lord because, Paul states, they “amount to idolatry” as we seek our own desires above the Lord.

6For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience, 7and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.

In accordance with Old Testament prophecies we understand that the day of judgement is coming quickly. All through time it has been understood to be close, how much more now – two thousand years after Paul wrote these words.

Zephaniah 1 [NASB]
14Near is the great day of the LORD,
Near and coming very quickly;
Listen, the day of the LORD!
In it the warrior cries out bitterly.
15A day of wrath is that day,
A day of trouble and distress,
A day of destruction and desolation,
A day of darkness and gloom,
A day of clouds and thick darkness,
16A day of trumpet and battle cry
Against the fortified cities
And the high corner towers.
17I will bring distress on men
So that they will walk like the blind,
Because they have sinned against the LORD;
And their blood will be poured out like dust
And their flesh like dung.
18Neither their silver nor their gold
Will be able to deliver them
On the day of the LORD'S wrath;
And all the earth will be devoured
In the fire of His jealousy,
For He will make a complete end,
Indeed a terrifying one,
Of all the inhabitants of the earth.

What encouragement to live holy lives! It is because of these sins that God’s wrath is coming, but Paul states that they are the sins which the believers once walked in. These are serious sins. These sins damn people to hell, so what are we as Christians doing if we are sinning in the same manner?
Peter deals with the same point in his first letter:

1 Peter [NASB]
14As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance,
15but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior;
16because it is written, "YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY."
17If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth;
18knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers,
19but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

So Paul teaches that the sins which were once ours and which deserve God’s wrath are sins which we should consider the members of our earthly body as dead to. We need to deal with these sins and as Peter writes, be obedient children who are holy and ‘conduct [ourselves] in fear’. How are we to put them to death? Paul continues:

8But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. 9Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices,
We are to consider the members of our earthly body as dead to these sins by putting them aside. The language of ‘putting on and off’ like clothing is used here, in verse 10 and also later in verse 12 which we will look at next time. These sins are to be discarded as part of our old self for they are inconsistent with our new lives in Christ. These sins progress from inward anger at others to outward slander and abusive speech, however all of these sins affect our relationships with others. I cannot truly love a fellow Christian if I have anger towards them in my heart. Christ himself showed the evil of inward sins in Matthew 5 where he declared that those who hate others have committed murder and are guilty before God’s judgement throne. To these sins Paul adds lying. It is incredible that Paul needed to tell the believers to put these things aside and yet I know in my life I continually struggle with these sins. As believers we should be growing in godliness, and with that comes an increased awareness of our sins. Believers should not however be characterised by these sins, because they have laid aside the old self.

10and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him—
A helpful note from the ESV Study Bible: “A qualitative change of identity has already occurred in the lives of believers. It now only remains for them to bring their behaviour into line with their new identity. Being renewed (present tense) indicates that the transformation of Christians is an ongoing process.”

We lay aside these sins because we have new clothing, as it were. We put on the new self and so deal with the old. When I read this verse I got ahead of myself and finished the sentence with what I expected to see. I thought it would say that we are being renewed to the image of the One who created him, but that isn’t what it says. The new self is being renewed to a TRUE KNOWLEDGE according to the image of the One who created him.

John 17 [NASB]
3"This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

The goal of our renewal is that we may know the Lord more, and in knowing Him more we may be conformed more to His image. We have been created again in a new image when we are born again and God continues this work in us. It is because of this new image that Paul can continue:

11a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.
Before God all men are equal because those who have been born again in the image of Christ are in Christ and are sons and heirs with Him. They are equal because all have sinned (Romans 3:23) and there is one Lord over all who believe (Romans 10:11-13). Paul covers all realms of relations in society, as Hendriksen summarises in (a) racial-religious (Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised); (b) cultural (barbarian, Scythian); (c) social (slave and freeman). Once again Paul points to Christ as the all-sufficient Saviour, and Lord over all.

What joy there would be in fellowship among believers if we all put off these old practices, and put on the new self! If we saw one another as new creatures in Christ. What incredible witness there would be to the world.

I pray that this week you may grow in your knowledge of Him and that in so doing you would be putting off the old and putting on the new. God bless.