The Old Self and the New Self
Introduction
For most of Colossians 2 Paul taught the Colossians how they should consider themselves as those who are united to Christ’s death, resurrection, ascension, and current reign.
Last week our text was Col 3:1-4 where Paul condenses his teaching into a short statement of the Christian’s status in Christ and how, because of this, Christian’s should set their minds on “things above”.
Col 3:5 starts the beginning of the longest section in Colossians that goes through Col 4:6. One scholar (O’Brien) points out that this long section is divided into four parts that are highlighted by their use of four catchwords of “early Christian catechesis”.
In Col 3:5 Paul tells the Colossians to “put to death” (Νεκρώσατε). In Col 3:12 Paul writes for the Colossians to “put on” (Ἐνδύσασθε). In Col 3:18 they are to “be subject” (ὑποτάσσεσθε). And in Col 4:2 the Colossians are told to “watch and pray” (γρηγοροῦντες & προσευχῂ).
In this section of Colossians it is as if Paul is stating the four catchwords of a well known Christian catechism and then offering commentary. “Colossians you must ‘put to death’, ‘put on’, ‘be subject’, and ‘watch and pray’.” Now let me explain to you what it looks like to “put to death”, to “put on”, to “be subject”, and to “watch and pray”.
This morning our passage looks a the first of these catchwords. Paul is explaining to the Colossians what it looks like to “put to death” those things that are earthly in them.”
The passage breaks down into two parts:
1. In verses 5-9a Paul tells the Colossians what they are to put to death and set aside.
2. In verses 9b-11 presents the new man in Christ
Put to Death and Set Aside (vv. 5-9a)
Colossians 3:5-9 “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,
Doug Wilson once wrote that “sins are like grapes, and come in bunches.” This is evident when one reads the catalogs of sins that show up from time to time in Paul’s letters. Paul does not list off sins in this way because he, as Wilson would say, has an affinity for categorization. No, the reason why Paul lists sins is because there is a certain pattern to the old sinful life that Christians should be aware of.
In verses 5-9 there are two lists of sins and two commands that accompany them. The first list is found in verses 5 and these sins are associated with sexual sin. Paul commands the Colossians to “put to death” these “earthly” things.
The second list is found in verse 8 and the sins there are closely tied to the tongue. Paul commands the Colossians to “put them all away.”
Christians are called to the task of putting to death and setting aside those things that still remain of the “old man” in us but we are to do this knowing that we are secure in our union with Christ.
Alastair Roberts uses the illustration of God sculpting an unhewn block as he sanctifies his people of their sins. Roberts notes that we should “see ourselves as the final product sculpted by God and not by the various parts of our lives that are going to be chipped away.”
But not only are we to see ourselves as the final product, you are called to actively pattern your life after that final product in the present life (Wright). The language Paul employs here is very active and very intense. He speaks of “putting these sins to death.”
Just as Jesus uses the language of cutting out and eye or off a limb that causes one to sin (Matt 5:29-30; 18:8-9) Paul here uses similarly drastic language to make a point: These sins have no place in the new life of Christians.
It is because these things are so deadly that they must be put to death. To follow after them leads only to destruction. In verse 6 Paul states that it is “on account of these the wrath of God is coming.” Elsewhere in his letters where he catalogues sins in this way, Paul states that those who live in such ways do not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor 6:9-10; Gal 5:21& cf. Eph 5:5-6).
There is a logic behind Paul drawing specific attention to these sexual sins and sins of the tongue for the Colossian Christians.
The logic stems largely from the fact that many of them were coming from a pagan background. In verse 7 Paul states that “In these you too once walked”. Many of the Colossians Christians were not coming from a Jewish background where such sins would have already been scorned. Their sexual ethic would have been very different from that of Scripture.
The word Paul uses for “sexual immorality” (πορνείαν) in verse 5 speaks against any sexual activity outside of the marriage bed. In the pagan indulging in such sexual practices would have been a fairly normal thing.
Of course we live in a hyper sexualized time. Sexually illicit images are so prevalent in our society it is difficult to fathom just how desensitized our culture is to it.
But there are two things worth pointing out here. First, Paul begins with the sinful action and then moves down to the underlying attitudes and motives behind the action. Underneath the sexually immoral act is impure passions and evil desires. Paul even goes so far as to place covetousness and idolatry at the very root of sexually immoral actions.
The reason for this is because sexually immoral activities are an attempt to take something that God has not given to you. The fornicator, the adulterer, or the sodomite all covet and grasp after something that God has forbidden them. This is idolatry and the worship of the creation rather than the Creator (Rom. 1:18-32).
The second thing is related to this. NT Wright puts it this way, “To put something to death you must cut off its lines of supply: it is futile and self-deceiving to bemoan one’s inability to resist the last stage of temptation when earlier stages have gone by unnoticed, or even eagerly welcomed.”
› You must be willing to put to death not only the action of sexual immorality, but also the roots that would give life and vitality to such actions. If you are not putting to death impure thoughts, passions and evil desires for things that God has not given to you, you are harboring sexual immorality and not putting it to death.
There is also a logic behind Paul’s emphasis on sins of the tongue in verses 8-9. This second list begins first with the roots of anger, wrath and malice before moving out to the fruits of slander, obscene talk and lying to one another.
Paul highlights these sins as ones that need to be “put away” is because they “destroy fellowship” (O’Brien). God created all things through His Word and the cosmos is upheld by the Word of His power. Words do more than merely relay information. Words shape relationships and identities. Monarchs, judges, marriages, and laws all come into being through words.
NT Wright states that words, “change situations and relationships, often irrevocably. They can wound as well as heal. Like wild plants blown by the wind, hateful words can scatter their seeds far and wide, giving birth to more anger wherever they land.” (Wright)
Paul understood these things and he points out to a young congregation the importance of putting away all patterns of speech that would lead to harm and disunity within the body of Christ.
› Jesus states that it is out of the heart that the mouth speaks. Therefore, when anger, wrath and/or malice raise their ugly heads in your heart, you must put them to death. You must “put them away”, as Paul says, before they manifest themselves in words that harm your marriages, your home and the body of Christ.
The New Man in Christ (vv. 9b-11)
Col 3:9b-11 “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.”
Our second point turns back to explanation. The commands to put to death and to put away all sinful behaviors and thought patterns is born out of the fact that the Colossians are united to Christ. In the second half of verse 9 this idea continues. Paul says that the Colossians should forsake these sinful ways because they have “put off the old self with its practices and they have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”
As is often the case in the Bible, there are layers of meaning to this passage that would take more time to unpack than we have this morning. That said, I will seek to draw a couple of these layers.
The first thing to note is that this language of putting off and putting on is the language of clothing. It is as if Paul is telling the Colossians that they have taken off one set of clothes and put on another. This language might fall dead on our modern ears because we tend to gloss over just how big a deal clothing is in the Bible and tend to think of our clothes in ways that are merely self-expressive or utilitarian. But clothes are a big deal in the Bible.
When I used to be a teacher I would often need to call students out on dress code violations. This was often met with the response of a teenager trying to argue the merits of even having a dress code at all. I would often respond by brining up the fact that the Bible spends more time talking about clothing than it does things like “justification” or “election.”
Whether it is Adam and Eve receiving new clothes from God after the Fall, the elaborate descriptions of the high priest’s clothing in Exodus, the prophet Zechariah’s vision of his filthy garments being replaced with clean ones, the dividing up of Jesus’ garments by the Roman soldiers or Paul telling the Corinthians that “we do not groan in our ‘earthly tent’ so that we might be unclothed but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”
This language of putting off and putting on new clothing is also associated with baptism. Earlier in Colossians Paul speaks of being buried and raised with Christ in baptism and this is to be understood as a removal of our old self and a putting on of our new self.
But there is also another aspect that Paul is alluding to here in his language of the old self and the new self that leads in to what he says in in verses 10-11. This new self is being renewed in the image of its creator and that in this new self there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
These “selves” that Paul is referring to are corporate selves. The old self is Adam and all of humanity that is patterned after the death that Adam introduced into the world through his sin & rebellion. The old self corporately represents one way of being human. This way of being human falls short of the true humanity that is represented in the true man Jesus Christ.
This is the new self. The new humanity in Jesus Christ that patterns its life after the life of the Spirit that has been inaugurated in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Verse 11 brings together several groups that would have been at odds with one another in the Greco-Roman world. Greeks and Jews had contempt for one another for various reasons. Jews looked down on the idolatry and immorality of the Greeks but the Greekslooked down on the barbarians who were not Roman citizens and didn’t speak Greek. They were uncivilized. They Scythians represent the worst form of barbarism. If you’re curious you can go pick up the ancient Greek historian Herodotus and he will tell you all about how crazy and perverse the Scythians were. Moreover, in the Greco-Roman world, slaves were not considered to have the quality of “personhood”. They were property.
All of this is present in Colossae. There were Greeks, Jews, barbarians, Scythians, free men and slaves. And Paul is saying to them that all of these various things that create division between us have been broken down in the new humanity that Jesus is creating in his body. You are united to him and because of this union you are united to one another. You must now learn how to live with one another in harmony and peace.
It is with this goal in mind that Paul is so urgent that the Colossians put to death these sins. They must do so, because if they don’t they will destroy the body of Christ in Colossae.
Conclusion
The same holds true for you. You must put these sins to death because they are the sins that will destroy the unity of our body here at Christ the King. By the grace of God and the power of the Spirit you must put off the old self and live in the new creation of Jesus Christ in the church.
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