Colossians 3:5-11 – death of the old man

I apologize that these notes are very much “notes” and are not written out an usual. My schedule was very busy and I didn’t have time this week to write them out long form.

Last week we looked at the philosophy of the Christian life, as opposed to the gnostic philosophy Paul has been teaching against. This week we’re looking at the outworking of this new philosophy. This is the application part of the letter.

There are three things we’re told to do in this passage.

• Put to death
• Put them all away
• Do not lie

We’re going to see that this amounts to a total change in lifestyle. A change from worldliness to holiness.

Scripture tells us here to “put to death” our old nature. Now our old nature has already been put to death at our conversion, so what is Paul talking about? Positionally we are joined with Christ and seated in heavenly places, but practically speaking, we’re still walking around wearing flesh. Our flesh has some bad habits from our former life, and God is telling us to kill those habits.

When it says to “put to death” it means it. This isn’t regulating sin, this is digging the roots out and destroying it. The word literally means to “slay utterly” or “make a corpse of”. Now that’s serious. John MacArthur calls this “spiritual suicide”.

Scripture gives us two lists as examples. There’s a progression to this list. The first list is here in verse 5.

“Sexual immorality” comes from the Greek word porneia. This is the junk drawer of sexual sin. This includes anything and everything that isn’t sex with your spouse. Elsewhere Scripture speaks of adultery (a married person having sex with someone other than their spouse), fornication (a single person having sex with another single person), and homosexuality (or sodomy). But here, this word includes it all. Anything that isn’t married sex, is included under this heading. So there is no wiggle room. No loopholes.

And this term is referring to an action.

Now Paul takes it backward a step. “Impurity” here is about unclean thoughts. Perverted thoughts lead to perverted actions. If you can control your thought life, your actions will follow naturally.

Is it any wonder that the world is full of sinful sexual deeds? NO! It’s full of sinful sexual thoughts and the actions just follow. It shouldn’t surprise us.

Next on the list is “passion” and then “evil desire”. These two are close to the same thing. Passion is just uncontrolled desire, desire out of control. These are about the heart, your motives. Where do your desires lie? The desires of your heart bubble up into thoughts in your head that cause your hands to carry out the evil deed. Evil passions and desires create evil thoughts, which result in evil actions.

But behind those evil desires lies something even nastier, covetousness. Covetousness is greed run rampant. It’s a consuming desire for more. A desire to possess something that belongs to another. And this lies at the core of our old nature.

This covetousness is nothing more than idolatry. It is placing ourselves above God. We can either worship God, or worship ourselves. We can be concerned with pleasing God, or pleasing ourselves. Every sin boils down to this, you have chosen yourself over God as being worthy of worship, glory, and honor.

This is the root problem! It’s the first commandment. Luther is famous for having said that if you break any of the commands, it’s because you’ve already broken the first one and committed idolatry.

All sexual sin is idolatry. All gluttony is idolatry. All selfishness is idolatry. Pick a sin, it’s root is idolatry.

Scripture tells us to kill the root! Not just the branches. You kill covetousness with trust in God, and contentment with all he has given. When Christ is your all, and you are satisfied with Christ, you’ve killed covetousness. This is something we have to do every day.

Verses 6 and 7 give us two reason for committing spiritual suicide.

The first is to avoid God’s wrath. People will be judged and damned for doing these things (2 Thessalonians 1:7-8). Why, as a Christian, would you pursue and continue to practice, temporary earthly things that result in everlasting punishment? And as a Christian, be aware that you will not be “judged” in the sense of being damned to hell for your sin, but you will be disciplined. God is our Father, he loves us, and he will discipline us (Revelation 3:19, Hebrews 12:7-9)

The second reason to kill our old nature is that it just doesn’t make any sense to keep it around. That kind of behavior belongs to our old life, before we were set free. Why would we want to be in captivity again? (Romans 6)

Difference between walked and living?

Walk = outward conduct
Lived = attitudes from which conduct flows

V8 “but now” things are different as a member of Christ’s household. You are no longer to live that way. We are immigrants to the kingdom (Col 1:13), we must learn the culture and leave behind that of our old country

“put them all away” = putting off clothes, stripping off a filthy garment, taking off your muddy boots before you come in the house

Wicked hate

Anger = deep seated feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility
Wrath = rage, sudden and passionate outburst of that feeling
Malice = general term for badness, a vicious disposition, intention or desire to do evil
Slander = make false and damaging statements about someone (stupid head)
Obscene talk = filthy, abusive, speech; sexually offensive, indecent speech, dirty jokes

V9 “do not lie” – be truthful, don’t deceive, don’t mislead by telling a half truth

Why?

Because we have taken off the garment of our old nature, the old ratty t-shirt with holes in it and stains from our overindulgence, and have put on a new suit of clothes.

The problem, of course, is that we keep trying to put on that old t-shirt. It’s comfortable, we know it. It feels good. But it’s disgusting. It’s not something we should be wearing.

Our new self is constantly becoming more like Jesus, through knowledge of Scripture (John 17:17, Col 1:9).

V11 “greek and jew” = national privilege
“circumcised and uncircumcised” = ceremonial standing
“barbarian, Scythian” = cultural standing (Scythian was the worst of the barbarians)
“slave, free” = social caste

None of these matter in the new kingdom. Our loyalty is to Christ alone. All are equal in him, and he should be our most important and valuable allegiance.