Colossians 3:5-11 - Put on Christ

Having established that believers are in union with Christ, Paul continued to deal with the practical implications that status had for the believers’ earthly living. He was showing us believers how to practically live out our heavenly citizenship here on earth. Like changing clothes, dirty ones would be taken off and new and clean ones put on, so also it must be for a believer. We must take off the old sinful behavior and put on new behaviors of a regenerated person made in Christ. Here we are told what must be discarded and what must be developed.   

Those that must be discarded are again placed in two broad groups. The first group is the sinful indulgences such as immorality, impurity or lust, passion or evil desires, and idolatrous greed. Paul’s words here suggested that one should literally slain or put to death these indulgences. He considered greed an idolatry because it makes a person devote his or her soul to something else other than God. The reason they should be scrupulously dealt with is because they are offensive to God. They were the very things that those unbelievers and people who don’t believe in God would indulge in. These were the practices of an unbeliever with dead moral conscience.

The second group would be the sinful intolerances such as anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive speech and lies. The first three have to do with attitude and the last two with words. From verse 9, we roughly can tell that the habit of lying was peculiar to the old lifestyle of the Colossians. So Paul exhorted them that in Christ, lying should no longer be a feature in one’s life. Being truthful must in fact be the characteristic of every believer in Christ. Why? It’s because as believers we have set aside our old nature and display the new one that’s being renewed in Christ.

How do we display the new nature but by putting on those we need to develop. In our oneness with Christ, our knowledge and experience of Him would allow us to develop sanctified spirituality. This was not an immediate thing. It would be a day to day yielding to the work of the Holy Spirit. As we discard our past nature, and adopt the new one made in Christ, we are being changed. As believers in the Lord, there are no dividing barriers whether racially, religiously, culturally or socially. These barriers are removed in Christ. Believers in Christ only have one focus – Christ Jesus. He is our all and is in us all.  

What’s our focus today? Let us put on the Lord Jesus Christ and give no room for the flesh to display its lust!