Colossians 3:5-10 –
5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
Introduction
It is relatively common in the OT for God to command His people to put things to death. Animals as sacrifices (Exodus 29:38-39), disobedient children (Leviticus 21:18-21), blasphemers (Leviticus 24:15-16), adulterers (Leviticus 22:22-23), and entire nations (Joshua 6:21) are among them. In the NT we’re told that God has granted death-penalty authority to the governing authorities (Romans 13:4).
Killing is not something most people want to be around, which means all of that probably sounds at least somewhat disturbing (or at least strange). But it probably also seems at least somewhat tolerable since all of that God-ordained death is a considerable distance away from most of us, most of the time.
But what if God commanded you to kill? What would you do then? We’re about to find out because the first verse in our passage brings killing up close and personal for all of us. In it, Paul demands that Christians actively and continually take part in killing, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you.” Kill sin.
The heart of this sermon is asking and answering four questions about what it means in concept and practice to put to death what is earthly in us. The four questions are: (1) What is Paul’s main charge (and who is it for)? (2) What are earthly things? (3) Why does it matter? (4) How do we do what Paul commands?
In addressing these questions, we’ll find ourselves familiar territory. Paul’s line of thinking is essentially this: You have a new nature in Christ, so live like it by faith; in part, by killing whatever remains of your old nature. Or, negatively, you are dead to earthly things so put to death any appetite for them; stop living as if you’re still alive to them. Or, as those redeemed by Jesus, by the powerful working of God, pursue knowledge of Christlikeness, and gladly conform to it by embracing your new self and killing what’s left of your old self and its practices.
Grace, if your hope is in Jesus, you are a new creation and you have a new nature. However, it takes time to understand all that means. It takes time to learn what’s new about the new you. It takes even more time to learn to love what’s new about you and live in light of it. But as you grow in the knowledge of God and His will, with the Spirit’s help, work to renew the new you. With the Spirit’s help, put to death all that was a part of your non-Christian (earthly) self. That’s Paul’s charge and mine. Let’s pray.
Put to Death What Is Earthly In You
For Paul, there are two (and only two) ways to live. Either we live for the world and the things of the world or we live for God and the things of God. The first way of life is ours by nature, from birth. Adam’s sin ensured that. The second way of life is a gift from God, to be received by faith. Jesus’ death and resurrection ensured that.
In that way, to become a Christian is to begin to see (by the grace of God) the disordered and deadly nature of the world and to forsake it. It is also to begin to see the goodness and glory of God and seek it.
Once again, this passage and the four questions of this sermon are primarily a reminder that we have already chosen to live for God, a charge to do so with increasing fullness, and a God-given means of help to obey the charge.
With that, the first of the four questions: What is Paul’s main charge (and who is it for)?
What’s Paul’s Main Charge (and Who Is it For) (5a, 7, 10)?
Once again, we find it right at the beginning of our passage.
5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you…
There’s a parallel version in v.8 as well.
8 But now you must put them [that is, earthly things] all away…
Before we examine the charge itself, let’s make sure we understand who it’s for. Who was Paul addressing? Who is meant to put to death what is earthly in them in this way?
As you know, the whole letter is addressed to the church in Colossae. In v.7 he describes his intended audience as those who “once walked” in sin and as people who “were living in them [in the sins he specifically names]”. And in v. 10, he says of the people he charged to kill sin, that they have already “put off the old self with its practices.”
In other words, Paul’s charge is to Christians. There are times to worry about the sins of non-Christians, but this isn’t one of them. In that way, as we make our way through this passage, our minds aren’t meant to go to the frustrating sins “out there,” but to those “in here;” in our own hearts and church.
That’s a big deal for a number of reasons, but chief among them is the fact that (as I hope you remember) Paul’s imperatives flow from his indicatives. His charges to us comes out of his declaration of what’s already true of us. That’s why he can at the same time command his readers to “put to death what is earthly in” them and declare that they have already “put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self.”
As has been the case for the past few weeks, understanding how both of those things can be true at the same time is critical to grasping Paul’s point and to getting all the help we’re meant to have from it.
Remember, then, as a Christian, you have a new nature in Christ (indicatively). You are dead to earthly things (indicatively). Therefore, you can heed Paul’s charge to conform to your new nature and put to death all that’s left of your old (imperatively).
Paul’s main charge, then, is for you and me (and all professing faith in Jesus) to kill the sinful appetites and practices that remain in us. In His death, Jesus decisively atoned for our sins and freed us from their enslavement. And by His resurrection from the dead, He guaranteed our sanctification. But God’s good design is that our lives, from the moment we first trust in Jesus until we go to be with Him, are meant to be gradually sanctified (made holy; renewed; transformed).
As we’ll see throughout chapter 3, there are two main aspects of our gradual sanctification: (1) Putting off the old self (killing sin) and (2) Putting on the new self (seeking the renewal of our minds, that we might be continually transformed into Christ’s likeness).
Again, this sermon is primarily about the first aspect (putting off the old self).
Paul’s language in Romans (8:13) gets us quickly to the heart of the matter, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”
Our charge, then, Grace Church, is not merely to stiff-arm sin. It’s not merely to suppress it. It’s not merely to hold it back with self-control. It’s not merely to internalize it. It’s not merely to stop acting sinfully.
We do those things whenever we simply cut off access to a sin. This is like canceling our internet to deal with the sin of pornography, or getting a brick phone to help with our sin of wasting time, or changing jobs to get away from a temptation toward greed, or giving up our credit card to remove the possibility of gambling online, or just keeping our mouths shut instead of gossiping, or gouging out our eyes because we struggle with lust.
Almost certainly we should do all of those things, but absolutely certainly we shouldn’t stop there. All those things do is push our earthly things further down in our heart, when what we really need is to put them to death and be “renewed in knowledge after the image of [our] Creator.”
And for that, we need to (kill, mortify,) put to death (the sin, the deeds of the body,) the earthly things that remain in us. Jesus already paid for them all. They are no longer credited against our account. We do not put them to death because we must earn God’s favor, but because we already have it with the new natures He’s given us in Christ.
The main point is that the main charge is for every follower of Jesus to kill “what is earthly in” us, not simply suppress it. That leads to the next question. What, exactly does Paul mean by “earthly” things?
What Are Earthly Things (5b, 8-9a)?
I hope it goes without saying that if we are going to kill something, it’s absolutely critical we understand it. Killing is an irreversible act. Therefore, it’s clearly critical to make sure we kill the right thing.
Hunters, you know this on some level, right? You need to know what zone you’re hunting and its specific regulations. Bucks only? 4 point and up? Harvest tags available? Rifles allowed or shotgun only? You don’t want to get it wrong or a DNR helicopter might track you down and confiscate your dear, your firearm, and your license (as happened to our former pastor).
And more importantly still is making sure you’re shooting at the right animal. Every year it seems like someone accidently shoots a doe, thinking they saw spikes. Or, worse yet, uncle Jerry because they mistook him for a deer.
In other words, if it’s important to know what you’re after in hunting, how much more important is it to know what you’re after when it comes to putting to death spiritual things?
To that end, let me warn you of two ditches often associated with sin-killing.
The ditch on the right is the ditch that works really hard at putting things to death that God’s Word never explicitly prohibits—playing cards, watching movies, dancing, and consuming alcohol, for instance. The Bible does say there are sinful ways to engage in each of those things, but they are not inherently sinful and should not, therefore, be put to death by themselves (indeed, two of them are required for godliness in a very real sense). We can’t honor God, live consistently with our new selves, or benefit anyone when we’re in this ditch.
The left ditch is just as futile and dangerous. It ignores or minimizes or explains away or outright denies sinful things the Bible explicitly prohibits. There are many examples, but the one that seems to be the most prominent today is the sin of homosexuality. It seems almost more likely than not today to see a non-Noah rainbow flag as the most prominent design-feature of the churches we drive by. But we cannot honor God, live consistently with our new selves, or benefit anyone when we are in this ditch either.
God alone defines the things that He commands us to kill.
What, then, are the things Paul commands us to put to death? Collectively, he refers to them as “earthly” (v.5) and “the old self with its practices” (v.9). Individually, he names eleven things: Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, and lying (5, 8, 9).
Those are not, of course, all the earthly things we need to put to death, but they are a good start and a clear example of what he has in mind.
On one hand, I don’t love the idea of rattling off a list of words and definitions, but on the other hand Paul does list them and, more importantly, it seems increasingly critical that we not only use the same words, but mean what God means by them.
Sexual immorality. This is a broad category that encompasses anything outside of God’s design. Sex is designed and given by God to be exclusively within the context of a covenant union (marriage) between one man and one woman. It’s given for procreation, protection, and pleasure within marriage. It is to be mutual, beneficial, and edifying. Everything else is sexual immorality.
One pastor (Tommy Nelson, in his series on the Song of Solomon), likens this to having a fire in your living room. There’s exactly one place in which it is good to do so. Every other place brings destruction and death.
Grace, because you are a new creature in Christ, put whatever sexually immoral appetites and practices to death.
Impurity. This is probably an extension of the last one (sexual immorality) in that they (impurity and sexual immorality) are closely connected in passages like Romans 1:24. But impurity also broadens the scope, referring to anything that veers from the practice of moral uprightness.
Where you find any impure desires, kill them, Paul demands.
Passion. This refers to especially strong emotional/internal desires. When our passions are appropriately set on the things of God, they are good (even necessary). We ought to be passionate about worshiping God and bringing the gospel to the lost and fighting for the cause of the oppressed. But in this context, clearly, it refers to unsanctified passions. It refers to intense desire, untethered from the nature and Word of God.
Kill it, Grace. By grace, kill sin!
Evil desire. Where impurity is the practice of evil, “evil desire” refers to the desires that led to the impure actions. It is a less-intense desire than passion. In Matthew 5:28, Jesus speaks of a man with an unacted-upon evil desire for sexual immorality. In 2 Samuel 13, we read of Amnon who was so filled with the passionate evil desire for sexual immorality that he is described as “tormented” and making “himself ill” because of it. Evil desire is bad. Passionate evil desire is worse. But we are to put them both to death equally. Kill them wherever and whenever you find them in yourself.
Covetousness (which is idolatry). This refers to the insatiable desire for more and more stuff. Covetousness, unlike jealousy, is not even about something that belongs to us, but something we want to belong to us and feel like we can’t live without. It is never good. And the worst form of it is when the thing we covet takes a place in our lives that belongs to God alone, which is idolatry.
Again, Paul’s main charge is to put those things to death. To forsake them, down to the appetite level.
As you can see in your Bibles, there’s a bit of a break in the list at this point (after v.5). In fact, it’s probably more accurate to say that Paul has two lists in this passage. We just looked at the first list, the first five earthly things. The second is found in vs.8-9.
Before we come to the second, I’d like you to consider the connection between the two lists. The first list is related to the wrong things we want and do, while the second list focuses on the ways we often feel/react when we don’t get what we want.
I’d like you to consider that for a minute. I know that all of you (all of us) deal with the things Paul names in v.5 (sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness). Ask yourself, then, what happens when the desire for any of those things is particularly strong in you, but you can’t act on them?
What happens when you are filled with unfulfilled lust? What happens when you really, really want something of your neighbors but they won’t let you have it? What happens when you long to be rich, but remain poor? What happens whenever an earthly desire builds in you, but remains unsatisfied?
Chances are, as long as your desires escape your grasp, you’ll progress in some way through the dispositions Paul names in his second list. Test this in yourself.
Anger. “The emotion of instant displeasures on account of something evil that presents itself”. Like passion, this is not necessarily bad. God is an angry God (2 Kings 17:18). There’s a good kind of anger that we don’t want to kill (Ephesians 4:26). It should make us angry when we, or people around us, fail to honor God as God. But anger is bad when it’s not truly aimed at evil, when it is out of proportion, and when it is primarily shaped by the inconvenience some evil causes us rather than by its distorting of God’s glory.
When we aren’t free to act on our earthly desires, we tend to become angry. And when we aren’t free to act on them over time, we tend to move past anger to rage.
Rage (I think “rage” is probably a better translation than “wrath”). Rage is to anger like passion is to desire. Rage is a more intense anger. And like anger, rage is not always wrong. God is a God of rage/wrath (v.6). When our rage is good and bad, it’s good and bad for all the same reasons that anger is good and bad.
But put to death the bad anger and rage, Grace. Paul urges us not to tolerate it even in seed form, lest it bear much wicked fruit in us.
I know a man who was abused as a child. He is right to b angry about that. But for the last 60+ years, it has festered into hot rage to the point that it has consumed him. It has been so hard to watch it eat him away for decades. Without a doubt, it progressed in him to the next item on the list as well, malice.
Malice. As sinful rage builds in us, it often becomes increasingly aimed at a person (or people). And when that happens, untethered from the fruit of the Spirit, it quickly turns to malice. To have malice is to sinfully desire harm to befall someone. Jesus brought together malice and hatred when He taught that to have hatred toward someone is to be a murderer (1 John 3:15) and it doesn’t get more malicious than that.
Put malice to death, Grace. It is earthly. It is not of the Lord. Kill it.
Slander. To slander someone is to maliciously speak negatively of them with the intent of doing them harm. All kinds of things might keep us from giving full vent to our malice. Often, one aspect of our lesser-venting is slander. Rather than doing the physical harm we desire to the person who keeps us from our earthly lusts, we might simply talk about them in ways intended to wound them (even if we disguise our attempts; as a payer request, perhaps?). That is slander. Don’t tolerate it. Don’t accommodate it. Kill it, Paul demands.
Obscene talk. Slander probably falls under the larger umbrella of “obscene talk,” but even beyond being a more general concept, obscene talk is different in that it isn’t disguised at all and in that it need not be directed against a particular person. Another distinction is that slander might be true, even if it’s shared for ungodly purposes, but obscene talk has nothing to do with truth. Its aim is simply to give vent to filth. In fact, “Filthy language” is another way to say it. We usually call it “trash talk” in our house. In Ephesians 5:4 Paul says something similar, “Let there be no filthiness or foolish talk or crude joking, which are out of place.”
Again, when we allow our earthly lusts to flow freely in us and that’s combined with them being unfulfilled, our hearts will overflow and that often takes the form of obscene, filthy, trash talk and, finally, of lying.
Lying. Lying, of course, is purposefully communicating untrue information to someone. It is explicitly prohibited by the ninth Commandment (Exodus 20:16). When we allow what is earthly to live in us, we’ll eventually do whatever we need to do to satisfy it, including lying to others.
Every item on that second list, as well as every item on the first one, Paul commands his readers to put off and to put to death. Grace, don’t try to foster, justify, deny or excuse them. Don’t even try to tame them or domesticate them. Don’t try to merely try to stuff them down or hold them at bay. Kill them. By the Spirit that dwells richly in you, determine to bring about their death in you.
Why Does it Matter (6)?
That leads to a critical question: Why? Why does this matter? Why does Paul insist on such violence of action?
He gives two reasons. The first we’ve considered at some length already: Because we must live consistently with who we are in Christ; with who God says we are; with what God designed us for. We were earthly, but now we are not. It matters, then, because by continuing to live in earthly ways we are living inconsistent and disordered lives. Even more significant, though, is the fact that when we live in earthly ways, we are calling God a liar. All of that is serious, of course, and the first reason all of this is deadly serious.
In v.6 we see a second reason why it matters as well: Because “On account of these the wrath of God is coming.”
There are three keys for us to grasp here. First, of all the wraths you don’t want coming, God’s wrath is in a class of its own. He is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29). Nothing can stay His hand (Daniel 4:35). In the end, rivers of blood and unending tears will flow when the full measure of the wrath of God comes upon His enemies. You don’t want that wrath upon you.
It is no small thing to say that the things on our list bring about the wrath of God. Which means they are not small things. You must take them seriously, Grace. You must kill them or they will kill you.
That leads to the second key: The wrath of God is not for Christians. Jesus absorbed every ounce of the just wrath of God for all the sins of those who trust in Him. Paul says this explicitly in 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10, “God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us…”. He says the same in Romans 5:9, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”
There is no wrath of God for the saints of God in Christ.
The third key, then, is in recognizing the significance of the fact that this warning (v.6) was written to Christians. If this is written to Christians, and there is no wrath for Christians, then why does Paul mention it here? The reason is simple, yet truly profound. While there is no wrath for Christians, as we saw throughout John’s Gospel, there are many who believe themselves to be Christians who are not; they are unbelieving believers.
Paul’s point is that true believers will, by the Spirit, increasingly hate these things and put them to death. Unbelieving believers will not. They might try, but will inevitably fail and succumb to the frustration of trying to do spiritual things apart from the indwelling Spirit.
At one point I was meeting with 6-7 young men who were not Christians and knew it. They wanted to understand Christianity. I think they had a genuine desire to consider it honestly. As we talked through the gospel and the nature of the Christian life, I encouraged them to put into practice what they read—confess and repent of sins, gather with God’s people, serve the lowly.
As time went on, two of them came to faith in Jesus (one of them is here today), but the rest were eventually crushed by their inability to do what God required of them and refused to trust in Jesus to do it for them. A couple of them professed faith for a while, but their walking away showed that the wrath of God was still on them. This is a warning for those among the Church, who are not yet truly in the Church.
That’s the heart of Paul’s warning in Ephesians 5:5-6 (and Galatians 5:19-21), “you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. 6 Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.”
As I said earlier, all of us deal with all of the things on Paul’s list on some level. God’s design is that our sanctification will not be complete until we die or Christ returns. Paul’s warning is not for those who struggle against these things, but for those who don’t struggle in faith.
Again, then, the third key is that this is a warning to us all to consider whether or not our lives line up with what God’s Word says is true, which is the proof that we really are in Christ. Heeding warnings is the proof that our faith is genuine. Failing to do so is proof that we remain under God’s wrath.
How Do We Do What Paul Commands (10)?
Finally, how do we do what Paul commands? How do we put our dead self to death? How do we renew what’s new? How do we put off what’s off? How do we put to death what is earthly in us?
For the most part, this is the sermon in two weeks. For now, though, and in conclusion, let me say one simple thing from v.10.
Putting off the old self and putting on the new is something God is already doing in us. We are “being renewed in knowledge after the image of [our] creator.” As we seek to put to death the lingering earthly appetites and practices in us, and as we seek to put on the new self and the appetites and actions that accompany it, we do so by faith in the knowledge that God is already doing them in us.
More specifically, we fight specific earthly appetites through specific promises of God—things God is doing or will do for us. Let me close with two simple examples of what I mean.
How do you put to death the earthly impurity Paul commands us to kill? You do so by remembering that you are already dead to it and by believing the promise of God in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Likewise, how do you put to death earthly, evil desire for pleasure through sexual sin? You do so by remembering that you are already dead to it and by believing the promise of God of true pleasure that is found in Him alone (Psalm 16:11), “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
Again, we’ll unpack that even more in two weeks when we consider 3:12-15.
Conclusion
As we turn now, to the Lord’s Supper, another means of God’s sanctifying grace, remember, we must put to death what is earthly in us, because we are already dead to it in Christ. And, more importantly, remember, we must live in the newness of life that is ours already in Christ. For, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”