Colleen and Nikki discuss the first part of chapter three of Colossians. Did you know that every believer gets a complete makeover? How can you be ready? Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Colleen: Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: We’re so glad you’ve joined us for another study in the Book of Colossians. Today we’re going to be looking at the first 11 verses of chapter 3. But before we do that, I just want to remind you that if you have questions or comments, you can write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. You can also go to proclamationmagazine.com and sign up for our weekly Proclamation! emails, with new materials every Friday. You can see our online articles and magazine, and don’t forget to follow the podcast on Facebook and Instagram. But today, as we look at chapter 3, I want to ask you, Nikki, how did you think about this passage as an Adventist when you would read, “Put to death the deeds of the flesh,” and then it listed things like impurity, passion, evil desires, and greed? How did you understand that, and what did it make you think?
Nikki: Well, I approached Christianity from the “What must I do to be saved?” perspective. So when I would read things like this, combined with my worldview given to me by Ellen White, it was like my marching orders in order to be worthy of belonging to the Lord. I would read these things, particularly a little bit further in the passage, where it talks about not being angry or wrathful or slanderous, having obscene talk, not lying. On the surface I totally agreed. They were wrong; I could see that. They were things I felt like I needed in order to survive in this world that I was in, both in the secular world and in just my home life. I didn’t know how to navigate without the ability to lie to protect myself when I needed to or without feeling justified in being angry about things or I think I even felt self-justified in my slander, when I was angry and I felt like I needed to talk about people. For me it was more like stuff I had to give up, stuff I wanted, like giving up chocolate or going on a diet. Now, as a believer, I look at this, and it’s stuff I want to be freed from. I don’t want to participate in these things at all. So it’s really a difference of my relationship to sin.
Colleen: I think I had a similar reaction to you. I would feel like this just must be metaphorical because, yeah, I didn’t want to be a sinner, I didn’t want to have these internal feelings and attitudes that were negative and vindictive, and I could clean up pretty well in public. And yet I knew that in private, even if I was by myself, my thoughts would condemn me often, and I didn’t know how to stop that. So I always assumed that I just wasn’t accessing the power of God strongly enough. I just wasn’t trying enough. I’d pray to be good, but I just wouldn’t become good, and I didn’t know what to do with it. As we look at this chapter, why don’t we just start by reading through these 11 verses – they all go together – and then we’ll look at them individually, more or less, as we go through it after you read it. Would you mind reading it, Nikki?
Nikki: “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.”
Colleen: So at the beginning of this passage we start with one of the classic indicatives, and we can’t even understand this passage if we don’t understand the indicative that Paul is telling us, “Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ.” All the commands, to seek what is above, to set your mind on things above, all those things are irrelevant if we have not become raised up with Christ. And it’s important to understand that the word “if” – “If you have been raised up with Christ” – is a word that means the same thing as “since.” So like if I say to you, Nikki, “If you’re going to the store, could you please pick me up a half gallon of ice cream?” it doesn’t mean you’re not going to the store, it’s like, “Since you’re going to the store, would you do this at the same time?” Paul is making a statement of the condition of his readers: “Since you have been raised up with Christ.” But before this indicative is this amazing and important transitional word: “therefore.” At least in the NASB it’s “therefore.” There’s a phrase that’s similar in the ESV. How did yours begin, Nikki?
Nikki: It just said, “If then you have been raised with Christ.”
Colleen: So it’s the same idea, but the transitional word, “Therefore if you have been raised with Christ,” or in the ESV, the meaning is the same, we’re connecting this new passage in chapter 3 with what came before. And what came before in the Book of Colossians, Nikki?
Nikki: Well, he’s correcting false teaching, and so in the first chapter, he clarified who Christ is, because this false teaching diminished Christ. And so he made much of Christ, and then he explained who he is and the authority that he’s been given by God. And then in chapter 2 he began to correct the false teachers and the false teachings and gave a beautiful description of the gospel and being buried with Christ and raised with Him, and just all of these wonderful indicatives, and shared that the Old Covenant had been nailed to the cross. And then at the beginning of 2:16 he started to kind of detail some of the false teachings that were going on that they were being burdened with. They were being told, “Okay, if you’re a Christ follower, now you’re supposed to be doing these things.” Now, beginning in chapter 3, Paul is going to tell them, “No, these are the things that we do as Christ followers,” and it’s all on the basis of the indicatives.
Colleen: It’s interesting that this letter, like all of Paul’s other epistles, follows a similar pattern. He initially sets out the doctrine of what is true about salvation, and then he transitions into how we live because we have been raised up with Christ. So the word “therefore” or the phrase that introduces this new section is connecting all of the doctrine and all of the truth of the gospel with this new part of the book, which is going to outline how we are now to live. He’s saying, “If then you have been raised up with Christ.” What’s his first imperative? The indicative is “Since you have been raised” or “If you have been raised with Christ.” The first imperative is what, Nikki?
Nikki: “Seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” And that word “seek” has the idea of desire and effort. There’s desire inherent in that Greek word.
Colleen: You know, as an Adventist, I felt very guilty when I would read this phrase. I mean, I remember reading this and feeling like, “I just don’t do this right. I don’t do this enough.” And I remembered that Ellen White had said, “It would be well to spend a thoughtful hour” — now, count that, 60 minutes – “each day contemplating the life and death of Christ.” That’s not what Paul is talking about here. He’s not talking about just remembering all the agony of Jesus. He’s talking about thinking of what’s true, thinking about the gospel, thinking about what we know is our inheritance in Christ, and we’re with Him. So instead of mulling along in this world below, he’s asking us to remember that we have a different position than an unbeliever. We have a position that gives us the wisdom and the mind of Christ, and we can see our daily routines from a new perspective, and that’s what he’s asking us to do. He’s asking us to live in truth and reality and to allow Jesus to keep us understanding what’s real instead of making our emotions what’s real. How do you see this, Nikki? What do you think about when you think of seeking Christ and the things above?
Nikki: This makes me think about the fact that believers really are supposed to understand that the indicatives of who God is and who they are and the things that matter to God, that’s the lens that we’re supposed to see all of the rest of life through. When we seek first the things that are above, Christ, His kingdom, and we’re anchored there, that filters down into everything else that Paul’s about to write about. And it affects how we approach every situation we face.
Colleen: Like in verse 2, where he said, “Set your mind on the things above, not on things that are on the earth.” We can’t escape the events in our lives. We will suffer. We will have pleasure and joy, and we will have sorrow and discouragement. We can’t escape the life that we live on this earth. But our perspective is different because we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us, because we have the life of Jesus. And because His Spirit makes His word come alive in our lives and gives us perspective, we can now, because we’re born again and transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son, as Paul said in Colossians 1:13, now we can leave our anxiety at His feet and know that He is bringing His will to pass, and He’ll walk with us. Our suffering, our trial, our feeling of being at a dead end, isn’t the last word. The last word is our Savior, who has us hidden with Him in God. We have an eternal perspective on things that happen to us now.
Nikki: And I think it’s a good reminder that we never grow out of the gospel. We never grow out of the story of what Christ did for us and what that means about us, and then say, “Okay, now what do I have to do?” Everything that we have to do is rooted in the gospel and who Christ is and who we are in Him.
Colleen: So, Nikki, now when you read, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God,” what do you think about? What does that mean to you now?
Nikki: Well, understanding that that’s connected to the new birth and reflecting on what Paul said earlier, when he said, “All things were made through Him and by Him and for Him,” I read that and I see that we live our life from and for Christ. Everything that drove my lifestyle and my thought patterns before have to come under submission to the lordship of Christ and to the word of God. That’s what Jesus prayed in His high priestly prayer in John 17. He prayed that we would be sanctified in truth. He went on to talk about how He wanted us to be one, just as the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in the Father, that we may be in them so that the world would believe that He sent Him. Our life is hidden with Christ in God, and it’s just this really incredible mystery. I think it’s the same mystery Paul’s talking about in chapter 1.
Colleen: It’s so interesting and so amazing that we’re literally made alive by His resurrection life. This is not a metaphor, this is not a maybe, this is not a picturesque phrase to describe what will one day be true. This is now. When we trust Jesus, we’re literally made alive, spiritually alive, and hidden with Christ in God. Our spirit, Jesus’ Spirit, we’re hidden and one with God, as you said Jesus said in His high priestly prayer, that we would be one with Him and one with the Father. So then he continues this idea in verse 4, and he says, “When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.” How do you understand this, Nikki?
Nikki: Doesn’t it take you back to the beginning of the Gospel of John, “In Him was the life, and the life was the light of men.”
Colleen: Yes, it does.
Nikki: So if we’re born again, then we’re alive by the life of Christ, by the resurrection life of Christ. That’s 1 Peter 1:3. And so we know that all of these things that Christ has and has inherited and is will one day be ours. And we don’t see that fully yet, but we’re promised that.
Colleen: You know, it strikes me that when Paul says, “When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory,” somehow that just made me think of 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17. When is Christ going to be revealed, as in made visible?
Nikki: When He comes back for His church.
Colleen: And Paul is saying here that when Jesus is revealed, when He comes back, that’s when we, His Body, will be revealed also. As it is now, we work and live in this world, where there are dead people, spiritually dead, working and living side by side with spiritually living ones, and we don’t always know which person is in what condition, but when He comes, we as His Body will be revealed. And it makes me think of what Paul says. This was so obscure to me. I didn’t even understand or see it as an Adventist. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:14-17, “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep.” I never saw that text as an Adventist. Did you, Nikki?
Nikki: No, no. Well, I mean, I saw it, but I never saw the truth of it. It was reinterpreted in my head.
Colleen: Yeah, me too. And he goes on, “For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” I did not understand that those who have fallen asleep in Jesus will come back with Him. The spirits of the living dead, if you want to say that, those who are dead in Christ, their spirits are with Him, He brings them, and then as He comes, in that twinkling of an eye, He creates their new resurrection bodies and reunites spirit and body, catches them up with Him, and then catches up those who are alive, with new glorified bodies. It’s a really amazing thing that the church, the bride of Christ, will be revealed in a physical and visible way. We will be glorified with the glorified Christ, and when He returns, we will be revealed as He is revealed. In sharing His baptism of death, His resurrection life, ultimately we will also share His glorification and be revealed with Him to the world and the universe.
Nikki: And I think it’s important to point out that this passage does not give a qualifier. It doesn’t say, “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory if you can pull this off,” and then give you a checklist. We see in these verses that the position is secure. “Since you have been raised,” “For you have died,” “Your life is hidden with Christ,” and “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” There is no wiggle room here. It makes me think of verses 29 and 30 in Romans chapter 8, “For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified.” This is a done deal. Not only is our salvation and our glorification – which hasn’t happened yet – a done deal, but He predestined us to be conformed into the image of His Son. He’s at work in us. And so this is a very secure position, and the next steps are the fruit of that. They’re not the cause of it.
Colleen: Absolutely. That is such an important point. Because verse 5 says, “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.” Nikki, you did a little background study into the Greek underlying that “Therefore consider the members of your body dead.” Do you want to talk about that?
Nikki: Yeah. So the ESV and I believe the NIV say “put to death therefore,” and as an Adventist, I would read that, and like I said, it made me feel like this was something that I had to give up, something I had to do, and even as a Christian newly out, it was a trigger. It was, like, wait a minute. What happens if I don’t put it to death, and the idea of something being put to death, it gave me the impression that I had to now be perfect. And it doesn’t mean to become sinlessly perfect, sharing in the divine character, like Ellen G. White likes to promote. But I wanted to look a little bit closer at that idea of putting something to death, and I’m not a Greek scholar, but I really appreciate the Bible Hub app, and I looked in there, and it means “put to death,” but it also means “render weak or impotent.” It really made me think about Hebrews 12:1, where it says – it starts with “Therefore,” but then it says, “Let us lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely,” and it goes on to say, “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” It’s the idea of setting something aside, laying aside the sin, laying aside the weight, and in this context, consider it dead, let it go, put it off, because now that we’re born again, now that we actually have the Holy Spirit indwelling us and Christ has defeated Satan and given us a new nature – in Ezekiel He tells us that He’ll give us a new heart and a new spirit and He’ll put His Spirit in us and cause us to walk in His ways. So now we have the ability to consider it dead, to put it aside, and to be free from it.
Colleen: That is such a great point. It also helps me to remember what Paul says in Romans 7. Romans 7 has helped me so much to understand what appears to be the dichotomy of my life so often. And even as an Adventist I heard – you know, I heard the quote that Paul would say, “Oh, that which I don’t want to do, I do; that which I want to do, I don’t do,” and it was kind of like an excuse for the fact that, “Oh, yeah, I just seem to have this besetting sin I can’t get rid of.” This passage about putting off all these bad attitudes and deeds really caused me angst as an Adventist, for all the reasons you said, Nikki. I just couldn’t be good. I just couldn’t get rid of them. But when I understood that Romans 7 is explaining that even as born-again believers we still have mortal bodies that have what he calls a “law of sin in the flesh” – it’s in verse 22 of Romans 7 that he talks about that, 22 and 23 – that helped me understand what’s really going on. When we have been born again, we don’t automatically lose all of our habituated, physical neurological responses to temptation and to the weaknesses of our flesh. We still are tempted to sin, and we still sin. But we’re born again, so we’re spiritually alive and already reconciled to God, already seated with Christ in God in heavenly places. Our mortal flesh is not limiting our salvation at this point, but what’s going on is that we now have a living self that understands that our flesh is still like the old nature in our physical brains and bodies, but because we are now spiritually alive, we have the ability to trust Jesus when these temptations come. We aren’t just stuck fighting in hand-to-hand combat with sin with ourselves. Instead of facing the sin head-on and going, “I’m going to beat you into submission, I’m going to get the victory over my flesh,” we can now say, “Lord Jesus, show me what to do in this moment. I’m submitting this moment; I’m submitting this temptation to you.” All that immorality and impurity and passion that we’re supposed to put to death, it doesn’t define us anymore. We submit those things to the Lord instead of giving in to them. That doesn’t mean we won’t sin. It doesn’t mean it won’t happen and maybe over and over. But now, as believers, we have the ability to submit and to trust God. We allow Him to direct our responses now. We aren’t absolutely slaves and victims of our own flesh. As born-again believers, we can appeal to the Lord and put off what hinders us and ask Him to show us how to proceed.
Nikki: One of the things that I really appreciate about Romans 7 is that you can see the angst that Paul has. He’s clearly born again, because his sin bothers him. Before you’re born again, it doesn’t actually bother you that much. And he says in verse 24, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” It’s interesting, the believer longs to be delivered from their sin.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: The unbeliever is overwhelmed by a to-do list, and I’ve really seen that as I’ve reflected on these passages. And the call here is not – again, it’s not to perfection. It’s like what Gary has often said, it’s a long walk – or putting one foot in front of the other in the direction of obedience. It’s a slow, progressing sanctification, and it’s driven by love for the God who’s working in us to complete what He started.
Colleen: I think the biggest shift is that, as a born-again believer who has trusted Jesus and knows the atonement is finished and knows that his sins are forgiven, one of the biggest shifts in my own head is knowing that Jesus’ love is bigger than my sins and that the sins that I’m still committing are not my definition. He is my definition. And He does give me a desire to behave in truth and reality instead of in self-protection and maliciousness, to try to keep my head above water when I feel overwhelmed by the people around me.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Well, what about verse 6, “For it is because of these things” – all those things we’re supposed to put off – “that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience.” How do you understand that now, Nikki?
Nikki: First of all, I want to point out that God does have wrath. And that may not need to be said for everybody, but being in Southern California, I encountered a lot of professors at the university I attended who said God had no wrath and would refer to Him as a cosmic child abuser, so no.
Colleen: Horrifying.
Nikki: Scripture, the inspired word of God, says that God does have wrath. Here’s kind of where a couple of false ideas intersect in my head from Adventism. God has wrath, and it will be poured out on the earth, and it will be poured out on those who are not His. But when I would read this, this would kind of trigger that anxiety. Here again, if I didn’t put off all these things, then God’s going to pour out His wrath on me, even though it just said I belong to Him. But when these kinds of things come up, I’ve learned that you look in other places of Scripture. What does the Bible teach about God? And then you let that inform what this is saying, and we know from 1 Thessalonians 5, it says, “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” We know that God’s wrath is not for His people, but His wrath is coming, and so I look at this now, and I see, I am not supposed to behave like the people that God is coming to pour out His wrath on –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – the reason He’s coming to punish the earth. I’m His child, and I’m not to behave in those ways. It’s not reflective of my identity and who I am in Him. What I meant by a couple ideas intersecting is, as an Adventist, I understood grieving the Holy Spirit to mean He leaves you, He abandons you, He forsakes you, every time you sin. This actually clears that up for me. Ephesians 4:30 talks about not grieving the Holy Spirit. We’re commanded to not grieve the Holy Spirit, and that’s couched kind of in a section that looks a lot like this, telling us to put off all of these ways, all of this behavior that’s reflective of the kingdom of darkness that we once walked in. When we do that, as believers who are sealed with the Holy Spirit, who will never leave us, we’re bringing Him along in our sin, and it grieves Him. And the word “grief” there means “grief.” The definition doesn’t change. We would never use the word “grief” in a sentence to say somebody abandons you. The word “grief” means deep sorrow. The call here is to not behave like those who God is coming to punish, because we’re His children.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: We’re not to grieve the Holy Spirit. This is not saying that God’s going to pour His wrath on us if we don’t get it right.
Colleen: That is such an important point. It’s also interesting that in Romans 1 Paul identifies who God’s wrath is going to be poured on, and between the verses of Romans 1:18-32 Paul develops this whole idea that already God’s wrath is being poured out upon those who are disobedient to Him. As this passage progresses in Romans 1, Paul describes three cycles of God giving over people to their sin. Those who are unrepentant, who refuse to acknowledge Him as God, who refuse to give Him thanks, He turns them over to their first cycle of sin, which is giving them over to their passions. And then, if they’re still unrepentant, He turns them over not only to their passions, but to their perversions, and he describes those things in Romans 1. And finally, when people are entrenched in their self-love and self-indulgence and refuse to repent, He turns them over in a third cycle of sin to their own depravity, to their depraved minds, which not only indulge themselves but encourage others to do negative, bad, sinful, depraved things. And in these processes, Paul says, God is already pouring His wrath out on the disobedient. They are receiving inside their own bodies, inside their own lives, the consequences of their refusal to acknowledge God. Their lives are futile. Their minds have no understanding, and their lives just degenerate into more and more chaos. In addition to the final end, when His wrath will be poured out on evil, those who are resistant to Him now, experience His wrath personally in their lives in progressive ways. It’s kind of a horrifying thought, but here in Colossians that’s not what he’s saying about believers. He’s saying those who persist in these behaviors will have wrath, but you are alive in Christ, and you have the ability to trust Jesus when these temptations come, and these sins no longer are your identity. They’re what God is doing in you to show you His power and His love as He helps you identify them in your life and give them over to Him. And then we come to verses 7 and 8, Nikki, where Paul completes this thought about the people that are pursuing these sins as opposed to the believers who are turning them over to God. Would you read those two verses again, please? Just to refresh our minds in what he says about it.
Nikki: “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.”
Colleen: Paul is now saying, believers also once walked in these sins. And it reminds me of Ephesians 2:1-3, where Paul says, we were all dead in sins and subject to the prince of the power of the air, who is in charge of those children of disobedience and the sons of disobedience. We were all part of them at one time. But when we’re born again, he’s now saying and explaining in this chapter, we don’t have to live that way. When we’re born again, God convicts us of our sin, but He doesn’t send us cringing in guilt. And this has been one of the things that has been so helpful for me to understand. I grew up believing that pretty much everything I did was some form of guilt, and I could be manipulated easily with guilt. But God doesn’t treat His children that way. As a believer, Nikki, how does God convict you of your sin?
Nikki: Through His Spirit.
Colleen: And how does that intersect with His word?
Nikki: It almost seems like a mystery that’s kind of hard to explain, but as I read Scripture, He reveals to me my struggles and what He thinks about them and what He wants me to do with them, and it reminds me again of David’s prayer, “Search my heart and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting,” and He is so faithful to do that through His word. And again, Jesus’ prayer in John 17:17, “Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth.”
Colleen: And you’re right, it is kind of a mystery. I don’t know how to explain it, but I know it’s true. God takes His word, through His Spirit, applies the truths of Scripture, and convicts me in my own life. Now, I have to say here, when I talk to former Adventists, this is a subject that’s really hard to talk about sometimes because, first of all, we were taught that we had to, by sheer willpower, overcome our sin and bad desires, and that’s just not scriptural. But second of all, coming from a false religion, where reality was defined falsely, led to all kinds of abuse and trauma. Not always intentionally, but because reality was twisted. When I’ve dealt with former Adventists over the years, it has become an almost universal fact that we all have some form of spiritual or physical or emotional trauma that’s related to having grown up Adventist in an Adventist family, in an Adventist milieu, including perhaps Adventist schools and Adventist pastors and Adventist jobs. And here’s what I want to say, as we are born again and begin to grow in Christ, God graciously begins to show us our sin, and sometimes that sin ends up being things that we have done all our lives as forms of self-protection. It might be lashing out if someone speaks to us with a certain tone of voice. It might be numbing ourselves emotionally so we just kind of escape a situation when it becomes unpleasant. It might be ignoring what’s going on around us so we don’t have to deal with it. All of these are self-protective things that are not scriptural; they’re not the way the Lord Jesus tells a believer to live. And God is gracious and uses His word to convict us that we have to trust Him, even in those situations, and give up our right to self-protect when He is the one in charge of us, and we’re really not in those old forms of danger anymore. And it has been a really interesting thing to discover that we often have to face the fact that we sin against others inadvertently because we are practicing old habits of self-protection, but they actually end up being sins against others, and we have to actually admit that those are sins and ask God to forgive us. Now, it’s hard to do sometimes, and I remember one time having a conversation in our living room, where we were talking about these things, and I said, “You know, we ultimately have to admit the sins we commit against others that are the consequence of our own trauma,” and that idea so upset someone in our living room that they became angry and never returned.
Nikki: You know, I was thinking a lot about what you just described, Colleen, some of these sins that we’re told to put off that are used as self-protection, and I saw that in verse 9, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices,” and I got to thinking about lying, because there’s a lot of lying that goes on. Whether you’re born again or not, whether you’re in a false religion or not, lying seems to come very easily to the human nature, and we’re told here not to lie to one another. That means living vulnerably together. And I started thinking about some of the reasons that people lie and just looked into that a little bit, and one of them is that people seek to avoid deserved punishment or they’ll lie to exercise power over others, to win admiration from others, or to get out of awkward situations. And when we’re in those situation and we choose to lie rather than to live truthfully and vulnerably, we actually choose to forfeit some of the benefits of being in Christ and in the family of God, and I don’t know if this is the right phrase, but kind of under the government of God and the ways of God. When we avoid being honest about an uncomfortable situation, we’re giving up the gift of fellowship, of iron sharpening iron. When we choose to lie about something that may have hurt someone, we are giving up the blessing and the gift of the ministry of reconciliation that’s been given to us, the unity in the Body of Christ. It’s almost as if we can choose to go in the way of flesh and feel self-protected or we can choose to obey the word of God and reap the benefits of living in the Body of Christ and all the blessing that comes from that. But you can’t really have both at the same time. And so it really does seem like fellowship is impacted by our sin, not just with God, but with each other.
Colleen: It makes me think of Hebrews 4:11-13 where the author of Hebrews makes it really clear that God’s word cannot be separated from Him and His Spirit, and he says, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. No creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.” What’s interesting to me about this is that when we are born again, the Holy Spirit does apply God’s word to our life in this way. God’s word actually exposes ourselves to us when we allow His word to enter our minds and to allow His Holy Spirit to teach us what it actually means. So we finally come to the last two verses of this section, where Paul concludes this thought by saying, after he says, “Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and 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 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.” When you read that, Nikki, what do you understand Paul to be saying here?
Nikki: “Having put on the new self which is being renewed,” that’s an act being done to the person, “in the true knowledge.” There’s no room for cults. There’s no room for pontificating –
Colleen: Right!
Nikki: – it’s the true knowledge.
Colleen: No visions. [Laughter.]
Nikki: Right. [Laughter.] With special information. “After the image of its Creator.” Actually, that makes me think of 2 Corinthians 3:18, “And we all” – believers – “with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” This is done by the Lord, and it’s one degree after another.
Colleen: That’s an amazing text, and it’s so clear that we are being transformed. We don’t transform ourselves.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That’s a passive verb. We are being acted on by the Holy Spirit. We don’t transform ourselves. And here in Colossians it’s the same idea. We have put on the new self, but the new self is the born-again self that comes from trusting in Jesus, and we’ve allowed Him to give us His robes for ours, His life in exchange for our dead spirits. He has taken us into Himself. And now we are being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of one who created him. So we get this true knowledge, as that text in 2 Corinthians said, by being born again, by being indwelt by His Spirit. We know Jesus intimately, not as a mental exercise of analyzing His characteristics. We know Him because He indwells us and we are in Him. And this knowing Him is what transforms us. It kind of makes me think of Matthew 7, where Jesus said, when Jesus comes He will say to some, even though they say I cast out demons in your name, I healed the sick, He will say, “Depart from me. I never knew you.” I can’t think of anything sadder. These are people who did not believe and were not born again and infilled with the Holy Spirit. But when we are, we’re transformed and renewed by that intimate knowledge of Him.
Nikki: It says beholding, by beholding the glory of the Lord we are being transformed, so in the knowing, we actively are to be beholding the glory of the Lord, and that requires that we are in the word where the glory of the Lord is on display.
Colleen: And then, in verse 11, this renewal, this change that occurs in us, who are those who are the recipients of this change?
Nikki: All who are in Christ, no matter their people group or their kinsmen. Imagine all of these first century believers sitting together in the church. They’re no longer defined by their kinsmen, they’re no longer defined by the history or the grudges between their people groups. All records are canceled in Christ.
Colleen: Wow.
Nikki: And they’re a new man, a new family, a new people, created under a new kingdom and Lord and law of love. These are really different groups of people that he’s listing off here, and I don’t know that we can really see that right away, looking at it. We do understand the Greek and the Jew, but the barbarian and the Scythian and the slave and the free, that’s all social politics.
Colleen: That’s so true.
Nikki: And he’s saying that all of that’s gone.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: All of the divisions are gone.
Colleen: We’re all one new man in Christ. And that’s why there can never be solutions to our human problems by human devisings and redefinitions. We have to be in Christ in order to understand who we really are, and there all of these divisions are gone. So if you’re listening to this and following along in this chapter of Colossians with us and you realize that you have not been transformed by believing in Jesus and being indwelt by His Spirit, hidden with Christ in God. If you haven’t experienced that intimate knowledge of Jesus, knowing that He has taken your sins and nailed them to the cross in His body, if you haven’t participated in His death and burial and the resurrection of your new birth through His resurrection life, we just ask that you ask Him to show you the truth, that you submit to Him, and that you confess that you need a Savior and you need Him to be your Lord, and He will never turn anyone away who comes to Him and asks to be saved. So if you have any questions or comments for us, write to us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Go to proclamationmagazine.com, and you can subscribe to our weekly email magazine, to Proclamation! magazine, to our online articles, and find our magazines online. Do follow our podcast on Facebook and Instagram, and wherever you listen to podcasts, please write us a review. Join us again next week as we talk about the next few verses from Colossians 3 and look at what else Paul says about those of us who’ve been born again and what it means to put on our new self in Christ. Thank you for joining us today, and we’ll see you again.
Nikki: Bye for now.
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