Putting Christ First: Changing Clothes, part 1: Taking of the Old Colossians 3:5-11

Putting Christ First: Changing Clothes, part 1: Taking off the Old

Colossian 3:5-11

Putting the Old Man Down (v. 5-7)

• Paul calls us to put to death everything in us that is at odds with the new life that Christ is building in us
  • Because we have died to our old lives (v. 3)
• This includes:
  • Sexual immorality (porneia): refers to any kind of sexual sin
  • Impurity: refers more generally to any kind of moral corruption
  • Passion: refers to sinful sexual thoughts; lust
  • Evil desire: Refers to the human sinful impulse
    • Our default mode apart from Christ is to sin
  • Covetousness: Greed; an inappropriate desire for more
    • This can mean money, power, pleasure, etc.
    • Which Paul equates with idolatry
      • Because it is placing a love for things over our love for God
    • This way of living is what leads to death
      • But it also led Jesus to the Cross to remove the wrath that our sinful life deserves (see John 3:36; Rom. 1:18; 2:5, 8; 3:5-6; 5:9; 1 Thess. 1:10; 5:9)
    • But, notice Paul’s use of the past tense in v. 7
      • Something has changed

 

Taking off the Old Self (v. 8-11)

• We are called to change
  • Starting with how we think
    • Anger, Wrath, & Malice: negative, vengeful thoughts towards other
  • Moving to how we speak
    • Slander: Tearing other down
    • Obscene talk: Blasphemy; speaking wrongly about God
  • Which results in lying to one another
• This change comes about as we put off the old self
  • And take up our new identity in Christ
    • When we seek Jesus, we begin to look more and more like Him
    • And this includes no longer seeing ourselves or others by ethnicity or social standing (v. 11)

So What?

• If Jesus has made us new, our we putting the old us to death?
  • And are we ready for Him to conform us to look like He does?
• Next week: Putting on the New

 

Meditation Verse: Col. 3:10