Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] What you wear reveals who you are.
[00:00:05] What you wear reveals who you are. It tells us a lot about you.
[00:00:09] I'm not wearing my typical outfit, which is typically a North Face shirt or a Patagonia shirt. That tells you a lot about me. I'll take the cheap shot here and say I didn't see Nick wearing orange pants, which tells us he's a Tennessee fan and also tells us a lot about his character, because he's a Tennessee fan.
[00:00:27] But how you present yourself tells us a lot about who you are. It tells us your tastes. It can often tell us your personality, favorite colors, even. It can tell us your social status, where you come from, who you are, what you love.
[00:00:41] The list goes on and on.
[00:00:43] And tonight the question I want to ask you is what are you wearing?
[00:00:48] What are you wearing tonight?
[00:00:49] The Apostle Paul is going to challenge us to consider what we're wearing tonight in Colossians chapter 3, verses 5 through 11. If you have your copy of God's Word, I'd invite you to open up to Colossians 3, verses 5 to 11. And before we read, if you were to take away a main idea from tonight, a primary claim from these six verses, it's this.
[00:01:14] Take off the old self because you're wearing the new self.
[00:01:19] Take off the old self because you're wearing the new self.
[00:01:24] And in verses five to seven, well, we'll explore that in two points. In verses five to seven, we're going to see who you were, and then in verses 8 to 11, who you are.
[00:01:36] So verses 5 to 7, who you were, in verses 8 to 11, who YOU are.
[00:01:42] So let's read Colossians 3, verses 5 through 11, and see why we are to take off the old self because we're in the new self. This is what God's Word says.
[00:01:51] It says, 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.
[00:02:13] Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and and obscene talk from your mouth.
[00:02:19] 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.
[00:02:29] Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian slave, or free, but Christ is all and in all that's what God's word has to tell us about who we are before we jump into verses five to seven and discover who we were.
[00:02:47] Just some helpful review. It's been a few Sunday evenings that we've been a few Sunday evenings in between our last time in Colossians 3.
[00:02:54] The Colossians have been wrestling with Jesus plus religion. We saw in the last few weeks Jesus plus this worship of angels, Jesus plus these regulations. They're confused on what following Jesus really looks like. And Paul is concerned with helping them understand what true life in Christ is. Is. And then a few weeks ago we discovered in verses one through four that if we have been raised with Christ, we are to seek the things that are above where Christ is, where our life is. He says in verse four that Christ who is your life, when he appears, you will appear with him in glory. And so he sets this high view of where we're going to be and on the tail of that then says, put therefore to death these things. And so our passage comes in on the tale of Paul correcting false ideas of Christian living and orienting our view to heaven. So with our eyes upward, we're now going to look downward to what this means for us today. Our future destination changes our present direction.
[00:03:53] And so with that being said in verses five to seven, who you were.
[00:03:58] Well, if we're headed towards glory and if we've been raised with Christ, then we're to put to death what is earthly in us. But by which he means the practices and the passions of who we were before Christ.
[00:04:11] Setting your mind on heaven, seeking the things above means killing your sin. He says put to death. Therefore he's clear, slay this, murder your sin.
[00:04:25] And for what it's worth, we see two lists of sins mentioned here, first in verse 5 and then in verse 8 as well. And the sins mentioned in verse 5 are largely having to deal with lust and with coveting, which he says is idolatry. They're largely personal vices.
[00:04:42] And he says, slay these things.
[00:04:45] Why does he say to slay these things? Well, if the Colossians were wrestling with what true Christian piety looks like, Paul here is correcting them and helping them see that true pious Christian living is not so much a matter of these outward man made customs and practices as but it's a matter of inward transformation.
[00:05:04] See, the problem starts with our sin.
[00:05:07] It's not whether or not you're worshiping angels the right with angels the right way. It's a matter of are you slaying your sin?
[00:05:14] Christian living is a matter firstly of the heart of our affections, rather than these outward customs and practices that give the appearance of righteousness but are actually dead. Paul says, no, put to death the earthly things in you. Here, Christian living includes killing your sin. If you've died with Christ, then you need to guarantee or you need to make sure that your old self is dead.
[00:05:40] So if you're going to go live with Christ forever, kill the present self, kill the old man.
[00:05:47] Killing sin is necessary and he says, because God's wrath is coming on account of it.
[00:05:53] So in case you needed any incentive to go home and start slaying your sin. He says, by the way, the storm clouds of God's wrath and judgment are coming because of these sins. You want to distance yourself from them as much as you can, so slay them. You know, the famous old dead John Owen once said, be killing sin or sin will be killing you.
[00:06:15] It is a kill or be killed world. When it comes to sin, you can't play with it, you can't coddle it.
[00:06:24] That little lion cub that's so cute now is going to turn into a voracious beast that will claw you to death later.
[00:06:32] As one pastor once said, quit playing around with Boo Boo. Take him out back and shoot him in the face.
[00:06:37] Slay your sin. Don't play with your sin. It is not worth keeping around.
[00:06:43] You can't keep it on the side in your pocket.
[00:06:47] Kill your sin.
[00:06:48] And the good news, Christian, is that you can kill your sin. It may seem insurmountable, persistent, unyielding, but verse seven reminds you, you used to walk in this sin when you were living in them.
[00:07:03] But sin is not something you have to do. Sin is not something that you are walking in now. If you have died with Christ, you have died to the sinful fashions and styles of this world.
[00:07:13] So in effect, to be a little comical, take off the parachute pants of impurity. It's not your style anymore. Throw it away this week. When temptation strikes you, remember, that's not who I am anymore. That's not the way I'm walking.
[00:07:28] You are alive by the grace of God, and so you can slay your sin by the grace of God. Take off the old self. You don't have to wear it anymore.
[00:07:38] So when you're discouraged by sin, look in the mirror, as it were, at what you're wearing now.
[00:07:45] Notice he's speaking in the past tense that you once walked.
[00:07:50] That tense is immensely comforting.
[00:07:54] Christians may struggle with sin, it may be brutal to kill, but you no longer presently Live in it. You once walked in them, you can slay lust, covetousness, and so on, because you are alive in Christ and you have been raised spiritually with Christ.
[00:08:12] To quote another old dead John, John Newton once said, I am not what I ought to be, and I am not what I want to be. I am not yet what I will be, but I am not who I once used to be. And by God's grace, I am what I am.
[00:08:27] So Christian, when you're discouraged by sin and you're beating yourself up, remember, I'm not who I once was. I am who I am, and I will soon be who I'm not. Yet, if you wouldn't identify as a Christian, and perhaps you do love your sin, or you hear Christians talk about sin and you think, what's the big deal? Like, it's not that big a deal. Maybe you're not the most moral person, but what's the matter with that?
[00:08:54] Paul warns you, wrath is coming, judgment is coming for your sin.
[00:09:02] But the good news for you is that hell is avoidable.
[00:09:07] God's wrath against you is avoidable if you repent and trust in Christ.
[00:09:14] The one who bore the wrath of God for our sin on the cross died the death that we should have died, stayed dead for a few days, and then resurrected that first Easter morning. And who is now living and reigning from heaven over all things. And if you trust in him and turn from your sins, you can be raised to new life and you no longer have to walk in the present lifestyle that you're walking in. You can be saved and you can be born again. Even this day. You can walk out of these doors wearing new clothes tonight.
[00:09:44] Will you trust in Christ?
[00:09:47] Sin can be in the past tense for you, and you can happily say, that's who I was when you walk out later.
[00:09:54] But with that being said, we should look at verses 8 to 11 and see who we are. Now, you know, in verse eight, Paul says, but now we have this beautiful phrase, but now, before Paul was saying, kill sin because that's not who you are. Now he's going to give us a list and say, kill these sins because of who you are. It's like Paul saying, you used to dress this way, but now you should dress this way. So you can kind of see the switch that he's doing there. He's this set of sins here. Now we'll notice it's a little bit different. It leans a little bit more communal how we relate to one another, but we'll get to that in Just a moment.
[00:10:31] Let me illustrate what Paul's doing here for a moment.
[00:10:34] My dad in his garage has a drawer of old ratty T shirts that he used to wear, but whenever he determined they're no longer socially acceptable to wear, put them in there. And now it's used for changing oil painting projects, things like that. He wouldn't be caught dead wearing one of those shirts out in public for numerous reasons, one of which is some of Those shirts are 15, 20 years old. Fashion is gone. I can see the decades of Stephen Cox in that drawer.
[00:11:05] It was death row for college shirts and V necks.
[00:11:10] He doesn't wear those shirts anymore for numerous reasons.
[00:11:15] They're nasty.
[00:11:17] Maybe at one point they were stylish, but they're not anymore. They're put away.
[00:11:22] Out of sight, out of mind and Christian.
[00:11:26] Because sin is no longer your fashion, so to speak. It's time to put it away.
[00:11:30] Don't be angry, don't slander, don't speak obscenely.
[00:11:35] Do not lie to one another.
[00:11:38] That is not the way that we walk as Christians.
[00:11:41] We don't go throwing on those old ratty oil T shirts anymore. No, we walk in different attire.
[00:11:48] See, your conduct as a Christian ought to be starkly different from your life before knowing Christ versus your life after knowing Christ. We have put off the old with its practices and we've put on the new. As Paul says, Adam in the garden after he sinned and fell short, he wore goatskins after eating of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
[00:12:10] But now we wear the robes of Christ and his righteousness after coming to know God through Jesus.
[00:12:16] How we look as Christians now no longer correlates to our ruin, but it correlates to our restoration that Jesus has given us.
[00:12:25] And so we don't sin.
[00:12:27] Don't take off that Brooks Brothers shirt and start changing oil with it.
[00:12:32] Don't go looking back for the old clothes from the 80s that you wore when you were in seventh grade. They don't fit you. They're old. They're decaying.
[00:12:40] That's not what you wear anymore. Wear the robe. Righteousness of Christ. Wear righteousness because of who you are. And more than that, it even gets better. He says that this new self is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator. So what Paul is saying here is, on the one hand, you're supposed to look less and less like the world. But as you're looking less and less like the world, on the other hand, you're looking more and more like God.
[00:13:04] By knowing God, you You will come to look more like God in your fight against sin. Christian sound theology is your companion.
[00:13:16] The more you know who God is, the more beautiful he becomes, the uglier sin will become to you.
[00:13:25] Putting away sin comes with knowing more of who God is. And so read the word, seek, discipling, savor Sundays. Because sin is not killed or put away by mere exertion of the will, but by a full and hearty view of God as revealed in the gospel in Christ.
[00:13:46] 2nd Corinthians 3:18 says that we are transformed the more that we behold him, from one degree of glory to the next.
[00:13:55] If you Notice in verse 10 he says, this new self is being renewed.
[00:14:00] That is a present active tense.
[00:14:03] So if you're not perfect yet, it's okay, you're being renewed, but you're being renewed with a purpose. And what are you being renewed for? You're being renewed for the new creation ahead.
[00:14:15] Believers who have begun to be identified with Christ's resurrection are those who have begun to be identified with the new creation in Christ.
[00:14:24] And the first fruits of that new creation are sitting in the seats right next to you. We know from verse 11 that there is all kinds of people who are in this new creation who are newly created. Verse 11 says, it doesn't matter who you are in Christ. We all have the same standing. God renews us to look more and more like his family.
[00:14:44] And that's going to be revealed, yes, in how we look spiritually, but also in how we look in our conduct.
[00:14:50] That must affect how we live and relate to other believers. And that means certainly that we should not sin against one another. We put away these sins because how can we sin against one another?
[00:15:02] And we ought to also help one another put off the old man.
[00:15:06] And he concludes by reminding us that we are all under Christ because Christ is all and in all.
[00:15:13] He alone is the reason any of us are alive, new, and have a future to look forward to. In the first place, he is of supreme worthiness, and he lives in each of us who are in Christ through His Spirit and which unites us to one another, because we are united in our destination and our conduct.
[00:15:30] Well, we are united in our destination conduct because we are united under one Savior, Jesus Christ. He is the sum total of all of life.
[00:15:38] So put off the old man, because Christ is all.
[00:15:45] I asked you at the beginning, what are you wearing?
[00:15:48] Are you wearing Christ or are you wearing something else? Let's pray.
