‘Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now 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, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.’
What would it take to get you to change your behaviour? I don’t mean just one aspect of our behaviour – like how many points on my driving licence would it take before I learn to keep to the speed limit. I mean the totality of our behaviour, so we begin to live in a completely different way: the way we ought to live, but find it so hard to live. What do we need if we are going to live a new life? I was thinking of what happened to Ebenezer Scrooge at the end of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol: when he awakes that Christmas morning and everything is new and different. His attitude to everything is changed.
Well, here in this letter to the Colossians, Paul has just been arguing that religion will not have that effect on human life. That is what he was on about at the end of the previous chapter: ‘Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence’ (Colossians 2:23). Religion won’t change our behaviour – nor even can the unaided human will (turning over a new leaf). Many of us here will have tried by our own efforts to live as better people. (We might add, on Remembrance Sunday, that wars won’t do it, for all the gallant lives that were shed in the great wars of our history. They may have allowed us to go on living on this planet, but they haven’t taught us how to live differently on this planet. Conflict remains the history of the human race.)
No, if we are going to change, radically and permanently, we need, according to this letter before us now, a whole new context for life.
1) A New Past, Present and Future
‘Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ (Colossians 3:1-4). These four verses are a hinge passage: they summarise the first two chapters of the letter (which concern doctrine: the truths of the Christian faith) and they launch us into the second two chapters of the letter (which concern ethics: how to live the Christian life). If we are going to understand the letter, these are four important verses for us. So I am going to spend most of our time on them.
(a) The Christian believer has a new Past according to Paul: ‘ . . . you died . . . ’ (v. 3a). In what sense has the believer died? As you listen to me you must be aware (if you are someone who is interested in the Christian faith, but wouldn’t yet call yourself a believer) that I may be talking about an experience into which you personally have not yet entered. But please be prepared to listen about it, as it were from a distance. In what sense can it be true that those of us who are Christian believers have died? I am going to get Paul to explain to us in his own words, from the first two chapters of the letter: ‘Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death . . . ’ (1:21, 22a); ‘Since you died with Christ . . . ’ (2:20a); ‘For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins’ (1:13, 14). Sins cut human beings off from God and they make the relationship between us and God one of death, i.e. total separation.
But Jesus, who had no sin, died in my place. He paid off the death penalty for me, so that I am now free from it and able to relate to God. So Paul wrote in chapter 2, verses 13 and 14: ‘When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the written code that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.’ We were in a state of death which was brought to an end by death. But not your and my death – the death of Jesus. We died because another died in our place so that we might live: that we might pass out of the state of death into a state of life. Back to chapter 3 verse 1: ‘Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.’ This relationship that the believer now has with God (because of what Jesus did in dying in our place) is the one thing that matters now about our present. A new past and a new present.
(b) The Christian believer has a new Present: ‘Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things’ (vv. 1, 2). What matters now, for the Christian, is that we have come to know God, permanently and for ever: ‘Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God’ (vv. 2, 3). If I am a Christian, I now have a living relation with God. Oh, it is hidden (notice that at the end of verse 3). You cannot see it of the Christian physically. As you walk around Cambridge and pass people on the pavement, you can’t possibly tell if he or she is a Christian or not. They don’t have halos, they’re not sprouting wings; because that life is now hidden with Christ in God. Now that is the experience that begins the Christian life. It is not what ends it. A living relationship with God is not the result of a good life on earth: it is the cause of a good life on earth. We cannot merit the forgiveness of our sins. We can only receive the forgiveness of our sins from a gracious, loving God. And it is what starts the Christian life off.
And I am bound to say at this point, have you started the Christian life that way? While it is a matter of doing something for God, trying a little harder, it is not the Christian life. It’s religion. You needn’t be a Christian, you could belong to any religion under the sun: lots of religions will tell you to try to be better. The Christian life begins in a different way. It is to do with receiving something I do not deserve, from God. The Christian life is like trying to get into a really crowded railway carriage in the rush-hour, carrying in your hand a seat reservation. Why is it worth battling through the crowd with your heavy suitcase? Because there’s a seat reserved for me in the carriage. Someone may say, “Oh, it’s not worth going in there.” We reply, “But I’ve got a reserved seat”. We won’t get a better seat by fighting extra hard to get in there. There is one seat which already has our name on it: and it is worth persevering. We persevere in our daily struggle with sin because our hearts are set on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God – which in itself wouldn’t be much comfort: but it is also where our own life is now hidden with Christ in God. It’s where I belong; it’s where I already have a place reserved for me.
And that hidden reality will one day appear, so we have a new future.
(c) The Christian believer has a new future: ‘When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ (v. 4). Christ is the Christian’s life, but nevertheless it is a hidden life at the moment: ‘For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God’ (v. 3). We can’t recognise Christians in this world by some single, distinctive, visible, outward sign. But it will not always be hidden (v. 4). So Christians are always looking up to the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God; and Christians are always looking on to when Christ, who is our life, appears and to when also we will appear with Him in glory: to when God will complete the work that He has begun in each one of us. “Watch where you are putting your feet!” we shout to someone who is about to trip over something because they’re not looking where they’re going. Gazing into the far distance or up into the clouds is not usually the best way to get about on earth.
Fiona and I went to the fireworks on Midsummer Common on Wednesday. But we had to leave before the end. We didn’t want to miss any of that fantastic fireworks display, so we found ourselves walking backwards, looking up into the sky, as we tried to leave. I have to say it wasn’t a very effective way of travelling; I don’t commend it to you. Physically we need to look where we are going, close at hand. But spiritually it is exactly the opposite. The reason, if we are believers, that we are often so impoverished in our Christian life is that we are engrossed with the here-and-now. What’s waiting on my desk for me tomorrow morning? That current burden or stress that’s in your heart and in my heart that weighs upon us at the moment; that desire or ambition that I’m so keen to fulfil in these next few days or weeks or months. But if we are to look up and look on, above the present pressure of the immediate circumstances of our life, beyond the horizon of time into eternity, not getting totally engrossed in the here-and-now, then we see Christ and understand the true context of the life of the Christian – who has died and been raised again with Christ and whose life is now hidden with Him in God.
So that is the context for the instructions about Christian behaviour which now follow in the letter; and which we are going to deal with more briefly.
2) Past Over (vv. 5-9)
A new past means that our old past is over: ‘Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices’ (vv. 5-9). We will pause there for a moment.
(a) Did you notice there are two lists there which characterise human life without God. They are horrid things, but they need to be named: ‘ . . . sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry’ (v. 5); ‘ . . . anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie . . . ’ (vv. 8b, 9a). As human beings we do ourselves no favour when we shut our eyes to the reality of evil in our own hearts; and when we blur the line between what is good and what is evil, and we try to push that line further and further down, lower and lower. Christian morality is not concerned with trying to extend the limits, for example, of what is permissible sexual behaviour for human beings. It is not for ever asking: may I masturbate? may I have sex before marriage? may I have homosexual intercourse so long as it is in a stable relationship? Christian morality has no fear of calling sin ‘sin’, because it’s looking in a completely different direction. It is not asking: What can I get away with here and now? It is asking: what will please God there and then? ‘Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ (vv. 2-4). Christian morality is concerned with what is appropriate for then: when He appears.
(b) First, we seek to please Him because what does not please Him will fall under His condemnation: ‘Because of these, the wrath of God is coming’ (v. 6) (Those four words can never be lightly on a Christian’s lips: ‘the wrath of God). And it will do so as much, if it’s a culturally condemned action (like paedophilia or rape), as if it’s a culturally condoned action (like filthy language or deceit). God doesn’t distinguish between those things. It’s we human beings who love to draw lines all the time so that we can put ourselves just above them. There’s no line for the Christian, because we’re not looking at what we can get away with: we’re looking at the One with whom we are going to spend eternity, and what will please Him.
(c) But second, and chiefly, because that sort of behaviour no longer belongs in the life of the Christian: ‘Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature . . . You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things . . . since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self . . .’ (from vv. 5–9). It’s as though there were two volumes to my life as a Christian. The first volume of my life, in which I have been living, God has closed. And He’s opened a second volume in which I am now living. And there are things which belong in Volume 1 which have no place at all in Volume 2. God shut that first volume, He closed it. He forgave those things and I am finished with them because I am now living in Volume 2. And I need to recognise those things and name them for what they are: I need to acknowledge that they incur God’s wrath and I need to leave them behind as no longer being a part of the life that I’ve entered into with Christ: ‘Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator’ (vv. 9, 10).
Next week we will be focussing much more on Volume 2 and on how our new life in Christ forces out the old sinful life – just like some of those leaves which are dying on the trees out there at the moment. Some of them are going to hang on all winter, they will still be there come Spring. But they will fall when the new growth begins and pushes them off. Next week we will be looking at that new growth which pushes the old off. But we’re going to begin to consider that process in the last two verses of today’s passage. A new past means the past is over; a new present means present renewal.
3) Present Renewal (vv. 10, 11)
‘ . . . and [you] have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all’ (vv. 10b, 11). The ‘new self’ (difficult to translate) might be better translated as the ‘new humanity’ because there is both an individual and a corporate sense to it.
Individually there is a new act of Creation going on in the Christian. As God made Adam, the first man, in His image at the very beginning, so the Christian is being remade into the perfect human being he or she was meant to be: the image of our Creator: ‘ . . . being renewed in knowledge, in the image of it’s creator’. God is fashioning the perfect Mark Ashton out of me. It is a slow and a painful and a largely hidden process. But my task is to start to let the secret out of the bag: to start to let what is hidden appear. It is to let that life now hidden with Christ in God (v. 3) keep peeping out, so that other people can see glimpses of it and can be wondering how God can be so gracious as to be doing a work like that with material as unpromising as Mark Ashton.
But it is also a corporate process. The Christian is not being renewed alone. He or she is being renewed as part of a new humanity: a new society (described there in verse 11) in which all the racial, religious, cultural, social barriers that we know so well (and that we value so much) mean nothing: ‘Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all’ (v. 11). Everything that allows us to feel a little distinct and a little special is abolished, because it is swallowed up in the only distinction that matters: knowing Christ and being known by Him. To belong to Jesus is a distinction so distinct that all other distinctions are indistinguishable in comparison. I guess the sharpest of those for us here would be education – the value we put on education. It is not a value in the eyes of God. He does not care if you get A levels. He does not care if you get a degree. He does not care if you complete your PhD. He does not care if you get a professional career. It does not matter to Him. I think if there are two things in the West that we have bought into, the two great idolatries of our age, they would probably be medicine and education. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, Oxbridge, Redbrick, or no university at all, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. That is all that matters during life on earth, in the eyes of God.
What does it take to change human behaviour? Well, it takes the action of God on our behalf: ‘Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.’ (v.1) And it requires our understanding of what God has done, is doing and will do – in us and for us. ‘Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things’ (v. 2).
It occurred to me when I was thinking of Scrooge in The Christmas Carol, that Scrooge was shown a new past, a new present and a new future, by the Spirits of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future. But you and I, if we are Christians, have been given a new past, a new present and a new future. And that is why we are to live new lives.
(All scripture quoted is from the New International Version of the Bible unless otherwise stated.)