Put Off

6 · The pastor exposits the structure of Colossians, noting that Paul's theological indicatives (descriptions of Christ and salvation) precede and ground his ethical imperatives (commands to holiness)

If we look back on our series, Paul spent the better part of 2 chapters just painting this beautiful mosaic of the glories of Christ, right? It's one of the great things about the letter of Colossians. You see Christ and you see Him in His glory. Remember we said there's not a single imperative in the entire opening section of the letter. There are no commands. It's all indicative. It's all descriptions of who Christ is and what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. But then the letter turns, and in light of all that, Paul starts bringing imperative after imperative, command after command. The reason is simple. The reality of our union with Christ, Christ in us, the hope of glory, the reality of that is we are called to pursue holiness.

7 · The pastor exposits the opening phrase of Colossians 3:5, 'Put to death, therefore,' showing that the 'therefore' connects the command to holiness back to the preceding verses about union with Christ

And we see here we're called to a ruthless pursuit. In the pursuit of holiness. In verse 5, Paul says, 'Put to death what is earthly in you.' Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you. There's two things to note. The first, the command is clearly tied to what Paul has just said. Put to death, therefore. Look back at what I just said in verses 1-4. There's a reason we read that section this morning. He calls us to set our gaze on Christ, to fix our minds on the reality of our union with the risen Son of God. The reason is because our union with Christ and our pursuit of holiness are not separate issues. They're connected. The latter grows out of the former.

8 · The pastor makes a theological claim about the proper relationship between indicatives and imperatives in Scripture

Wherever imperatives and commands pop up in Scripture, there is potential to distort them, to create legalism. Paul knows that. He's aware of that. So he connects his commands to the reality of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. Because when we grasp the sovereign way God has regenerated us, the sovereign way He's renewed our hearts, how the Spirit has initiated God's renovation project, we see that these commands are simply the logical implication. They're the logical next steps. Logically, hearts that have been born again will now have an inner delight in living for Christ Jesus. I've been united to Him. I now want to live in a way that reflects Him. Paul commands us to obey and he expects we will because the Spirit has done its initializing work. Furthermore, those who've been united to Christ, They have a new nature. There's a new inclination towards holiness. The motivation here in Colossians isn't to be holy so you can get saved. That's never the biblical motivation. It wouldn't work. We can't do it. The motivation is a response to the Spirit's past and ongoing work. There are all sorts of motivations for holiness. In the New Testament and in Scripture. There's not just one way God motivates holiness in our lives. One motivation is that we've already been saved. Healthy biblical obedience, pursuit of holiness is always— Paul shows us— grounded in grace. It grows out of grace. It's empowered by the grace of God.

9 · The pastor exposits the violent language of 'put to death,' emphasizing that Paul calls for ruthless, uncompromising warfare against sin

The other thing we notice is not just that this is connected to what's gone ahead, this description of our union with Christ, We notice that Paul calls us to a ruthless pursuit of holiness. How does he start out? Put to death. I mean, it's this stark transition. Set your minds on Christ. Set your minds on the things that are above. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly among you. Wherever earthly desires remain, seek them out. Root them out. Kill them. Take no half measures. Snuff them out. Take no prisoners. Accept no quarter. There's no Geneva Convention to consider when you are rooting out your sin. Whatever you encounter, wherever you encounter sinful inclinations, sinful behaviors, sinful desires, Paul would tell you wherever you see them and find them, wherever you see a hint of them, get radical with them, and get ruthless with them. Now that mentality, it doesn't jive well with modern attitudes about sin. We're afraid to even use the word sometimes, fearful that using that word even is going to offend someone. The result of that is we don't take sin seriously. Not seriously enough. And if you don't take sin seriously, I guarantee that you are also soft on the call to holiness. They go hand in hand.

10 · The pastor uses the historical contrast between Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler and Churchill's ruthless resolve to illustrate the two postures believers can take toward sin

And so whenever we hear quotes from the Puritans, one of my favorites, the quote from John Owen, 'Be killing sin or it will be killing you.' In our culture, there's a tendency to hear a quote like that and think, Eh, what kind of crazy dude was he? That seems a little overboard. Be killing sin or it's going to be killing you? Chill out, Johnny. That's how we're trained to think about it in our culture. Not Paul. No one loves or emphasizes grace more than Paul. Nobody outdoes Paul. At pointing the spotlight on God's grace. Guarantee it. No one loves grace more than Paul, but he never, ever pits grace against holiness. He never does that. It's never one or the other. They're not against each other. They don't need to be reconciled, as Charles Spurgeon would say. They're already friends. A right understanding of how we've been saved creates all sorts of motivations to get ruthless with the sin that remains. Here's how you can think of it. You will either be like Chamberlain or you will be like Churchill when it comes to the sin in your life. Here's what I mean. Neville Chamberlain was the Prime Minister of Great Britain leading up to and into the 8 months of World War II. So in the late '30s, he was the man in Great Britain. Churchill was one of his great rivals. As Hitler was coming to power and Nazism was spreading across Germany, as Hitler began disobeying the previous treaties and arming the nation and building slews of tanks and mortars and airplanes and calling up the reservists and building this massive army, putting them on the borders, Chamberlain's position as Prime Minister of Great Britain was appeasement. Just be really nice to the bully, and then he won't hit you with the stick. Do you want my lunch? Do you want Susie's lunch too? That was the strategy of Chamberlain. He tried to sweet-talk Hitler, to compromise with the rising evil of Nazism. He tried to reason with Hitler. He tried to make deals with the devil. Used all sorts of political concessions. Oh, it's okay, you can annex that part of Czechoslovakia. That's just fine, no biggie. I'm sure they won't mind. Deal after deal, thinking that it would stave off war. Well, history tells us it was a terrible blunder. It was tragically wrong, and Hitler used the weak half-measures of Neville Chamberlain to his full advantage. Churchill, Chamberlain's rival, for years had cried out against the strategy of appeasement. 'You can't deal with a bully in that way.' Churchill knew there was no compromise with an enemy like that, and so he railed against appeasement from the start. To beat a savage enemy, You have to get ruthless. He called Britain to exactly that. When Chamberlain finally resigned and realized the error of his ways, Germany had already overrun Poland, and so he stepped down, and they called upon Churchill to take his place. Unfortunately, because of Chamberlain's lack of leadership, Britain wasn't prepared for war. For a decade, Germany had been arming up and Britain had been decreasing their military strength. One of the things that happened early in Churchill's reign as Prime Minister was the entire nation of France, or most of it, fell to the Nazis. And he had to go before Parliament and make a speech. On the heels of Paris, France falling under German rule, he had to speak to Parliament. He had to acknowledge there had been a massive defeat. It wasn't just the French soldiers. It was French soldiers fighting alongside their British allies that were defeated as the Blitzkrieg swept across the country. And so he had to come before Parliament, and he had to acknowledge, we just lost all of France. In fact, we barely got our surviving soldiers off the coast and kept them from being taken prisoner. Not only that, there's a real possibility Britain might get invaded. He had to come before Parliament and admit those realities, and yet he had to sound the tone that we will not be beaten back. We will get ruthless with this enemy. The speech he delivered is famous. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo, and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France. We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the field and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender. You get ruthless with an enemy like Hitler if you hope to survive.

11 · The pastor applies the Churchill/Chamberlain illustration directly to the listener, calling them to ruthless warfare against sin

Paul's question to us, if he were alive today, would be: Will you treat indwelling sin like Chamberlain, with reckless half-measures and appeasement? Or will you get ruthless like Churchill? If you are united to Christ, you must seek with all the Spirit's power to kill sin, to crush it, to eradicate it. You give sin no quarter, you accept no ceasefire, you put it to death. Titus 2:1 puts it well. Listen to how he acknowledges the grace of God and then points right to holiness. For the grace of God has appeared. Grace has come, grace reigns, bringing salvation for all people, training us, the grace of God training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, to live self-controlled and upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness, in His grace to purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works. The grace of God has appeared to create a people zealous, motivated by grace, for good works. Get ruthless. In the pursuit of holiness.

12 · The pastor signals a shift to the first vice list in Colossians 3:5—the list of sexual sins

The next thing Paul shows us is a list of vices, a list of sins, and he calls us to put to death specifically sexual impurity.

13 · The pastor exposits 'porneia' (sexual immorality), defining it as any sexual activity outside God's design for marriage between a man and a woman

Paul drops into two separate lists that we'll see. The first is that list of sexual sins. In verse 5, he says, put to death therefore what is earthly in you, namely sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. That first term is a familiar one. It's translated sexual immorality. It's the Greek word porneia. Sounds familiar because it's where we get— it's a cognate of our English word pornography. It's a broad sweeping category for any and every kind of illegitimate sexual activity. That's what porneia is. That's what sexual immorality is. Any sort of sexual activity outside of the way God has designed sex to be celebrated and enjoyed. And He has designed it to be celebrated and enjoyed in the right context. Now admittedly, it's a bit unheard of today to refer to illegitimate sexual activity. We live in an age where sexual intercourse of all kinds with any consenting adults who may choose is not just acceptable, It's celebrated. That's no news to anyone in this room if you've been conscious at all since the '60s. Our culture celebrates it. To view it differently, to view it like Paul is, to quote this verse of Paul in a public setting, you're gonna get viewed as a prude, you're gonna get viewed like you're out of touch, and those are the best categories. At worst, they'll look at you as intolerant, as a judgmental xenophobe, someone who's just afraid of those who are different. But the New Testament, echoing the Old Testament, speaks with one voice: any sexual activity outside the confines of God-ordained marriage between a man and a woman is sexual immorality. Anything out of those confines that God has designed— he created man and woman, male and female. He ordained marriage to be the context where you celebrate sexual intimacy. And any sort of celebration of sexual intimacy outside of that definition falls into the category of porneia, of sexual immorality, which means it's wrong. Which means it's destructive to the soul. Which means it corrupts God's good design. And that means it's forbidden.

14 · The pastor exposits the remaining terms in the first vice list—impurity, passion, evil desire—culminating in covetousness

The terms go on. Paul includes impurity. This is any sort of sexual uncleanliness that defiles the soul. That's actually where something like pornography would fall. We get our word from the word for sexual impurity, but in terms of a category, it would fall under impurity. It's something that corrupts and perverts normal sexuality into selfish action that dehumanizes others. Paul then says it includes passions, it includes evil desires. He's doubling down on his point that sexual impurity is deadly stuff that has an addictive power. It gets its hooks into you. We can't trifle with any sin without getting burned. And by starting with sexual impurity, the reason for Paul's urgency becomes obvious, doesn't it? But he ends the list in a surprising way. All these things, you can see really clearly how they're connected. Sexual immorality, impurity, passions, evil desires, covetousness. Wait, what? Covetousness? Well, there is a reason behind Paul's method. That word can also get translated as greed. The idea he's giving us is of an inappropriate, inordinate desire for more. Now, just as an aside, If I was going to pick the two sins that our culture is most prone to, I don't think I would pick anything but those two. If you had to pick two, I think sexual sins and greed are the two that our culture— every culture has its own cultural pieces that we're unfortunately drawn to. Those are two for our culture. Well, the reason he puts greed in with the sexual sins is because it fits the context. It's a fitting summary of what sexual sins are. Their uncontrolled, unrestrained desires for more and newer and stranger sexual experiences. Paul's point seems to be that at the root of sexual brokenness is a greed and a covetousness. It's idolatry, he says. Where's the idol? The idol is in its greed, we begin to worship the sexual thing. We worship it with desires out of control. And the worshiping of the sexual thing reveals a lack of contentment in Christ. Listen to the logic of Jude. Jude 4, it's a really short letter. It looks weird because there's not chapter designations, it's just the verse designation. Jude 4, he says, certain people have crept in unnoticed, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God. Sound like our passage a little bit. They pervert the grace of our God. They pervert it into sensuality, and they deny our Master and Lord Jesus Christ. When we pervert grace into sensuality, whether it's sexual or another sort, it's a greedy expression of idolatry. And it's idolatry because at its core, it denies the Lordship of Christ. That's what Jude says. When you see that sensuality going on, it's a rejection of Christ as Master and Lord. It says that what Christ has called off-limits, It doesn't matter. It says that what Christ has ordained and set in place, that can be disregarded and set aside. It reveals a lack of contentment in Christ's sufficiency. I can't get all the joy I need in life solely from Christ and the good gifts that come from Him. So I have to go out of bounds. And in going out of bounds, I show the greed of my heart. And going out of bounds in the greed of my heart, I start to worship those things as ultimate, as the source of joy. And you forget the place of living water. You see the danger. I hope you see the danger.

15 · The pastor refutes a cultural argument that vice lists are merely 'soft suggestions' by pointing to Paul's explicit warnings about God's wrath

But Christ's Lordship can't be disregarded in these ways without horrible consequences. I just read this week an article where someone was arguing that these vice lists, these lists and places in the New Testament where Paul lists out a string of sins and ungodly behavior, these vice lists They're not really— this article is saying they're not really lists of sins per se. That's not really what's going on. Rather, they're suggestions of things to avoid because they don't look as much like Jesus as other actions do. You see the appeasement, right? I'm not going to go all out and say they're actually good, but they're not horrible. And the Puritans and those Victorian people, they make them sound really bad. They're not really that bad. Bad. It's not a list of activities that if you practice them habitually and unrepentantly would disqualify you from the kingdom of Jesus. Not at all! How intolerant of Paul to put forward a list like that! It's just a list of things you might want to avoid. It's some soft suggestions, if you will. Lost on the person writing the article is that in almost every one of those lists in the New Testament, his argument was exactly contrary to exactly what Paul explicitly said in the passage. Look at what he says here: 'On account of these things,' on account of the things and activities I just listed, You might get a slap on the wrist. No, on account of these things, the wrath of God is coming. He expands the thought in Ephesians 5:3, but sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you. As is proper among the saints. To have a church and a body where those things are celebrated and practiced and no one says anything? Paul can't even imagine it. 'You may be sure of this,' he says in verse 5 of Ephesians 5, 'that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure and who is covetousness (that is, an idolater),' it mirrors our passage, Every one of those people unrepentantly living those ways has no inheritance in the kingdom of God. No inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. It was stunning to read the article and the hundreds of comments below celebrating the article. This is so true. God is love. He doesn't judge. Don't judge anyone. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people who are having their ears tickled. Oh, I know those lists are in the Bible, but they're not really that big a deal. Just soft suggestions.

16 · The pastor makes a theological claim about the purpose of vice lists: they warn believers that unrepentant sin leads to judgment

I don't normally comment. I put a small, gracious comment, and I just said, I think it would be good to read the passage in context. And I put it with the the final statement, no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ. I just said I think Paul would say you've misread him. These aren't lists to spark moral improvement. These aren't lists for self-help. It's not how you think of holiness as a bunch of checklists. It depicts a lifestyle of people who are at odds with god, a lifestyle of people who are enemies of a holy God. And it's given, right? Why does Paul give it to us? He gives it to us to give us a warning. He wants to warn us. Those who live this way flagrantly, with no repentance and no remorse, those sorts of people will face God's wrath. And the sense here is this is impending wrath. It's imminent wrath. There is a day coming. The day of the Lord is coming. The day when this risen Christ will return is coming. And on that day, those who are living this way and pretending like it's okay and like it's good, they will not be in a good place. Colossian Christians, hear me when I say this. Providence. Johnson County Christians, hear me when I say this: if you live like this when Christ returns, it will not be a day of blessing for you. It will be a day of judgment. The warning is there to motivate holiness. There's all sorts of ways the New Testament motivates holiness. You fall into error when you grab on only one of them and pretend like that's the only way. God motivates holiness through the inspiration of His word by calling us to gratitude. Why should you live holy lives? Because you're grateful for all that He's done for us in Christ Jesus. Gratitude should motivate holiness. The desire to look like Jesus, to be like Jesus, should motivate holiness. The desire to become what you already have been declared to be in Christ should motivate holiness. The desire to experience more joy in the things of God versus the temptations of Satan, that should motivate holiness. And here Paul says the desire to avoid eternal condemnation should motivate holiness. That's what Kevin DeYoung says in his book, The Hole in Our Holiness. Not only is holiness the goal of your redemption, it is necessary for your redemption. Now, before you sound the legalist alarm, tie me up by my own moral bootstraps and feed my carcass to the Galatians, we should see what Scripture has to say. It's the consistent and faithful frequent teaching of the Bible that those whose lives are marked by habitual ungodliness will not go to heaven. To find acquittal from God on the last day, there must be evidence flowing out of us that grace has flowed into us. What a great way to put it. To find— to stand before God on that last day when the Son returns and to find acquittal, to find open arms and not a judge's gavel, to hear Him say, 'Well done, good and faithful servant,' to see fatherly affection and not the stern face of a judge, to have that happen on the last day, there has to be evidence flowing out of your life that God's grace has flowed into you. And the evidence flowing out of your life will be the things we'll look at next week, these things Paul calls us to put on. But you start by putting to death everything that is earthly in you.

17 · The pastor signals a shift to the second vice list in Colossians 3:8-9—the list of relational/social sins

And then he says, the second list, put away, new image, put away social sins. Not social media sins, although some social media sins would be included in the social sins. Put away social sins.

18 · The pastor exposits the transition in verse 7, noting that Paul addresses believers with the assumption that they once walked in these sins but no longer do habitually

Verse 7, it says, 'In these too you once walked, when you were living in them.' Notice the past tense. He's talking to believers. He says, 'In these too you once walked, when you lived in them.' Implication being, you're united to Christ. You no longer walk in them. Now, it doesn't mean you never slip up and commit something that's on this upcoming list. It means you don't live in them. Your life isn't marked and defined by them. Verse 8: Now you must put them all away— what? Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another.

19 · The pastor exposits the common thread in the second vice list: these sins are toxic to relationships and destroy Christian community (koinonia)

The common theme isn't as readily obvious as the first list, is it? The first list, you quickly see how they tie together. What ties together anger, and slander and lying. Some of them are unchecked emotions. Some of them are sins of the tongue. But each of them is something that is toxic to relationships. Something that eats away at the unity of the body of Christ. Something that kills koinonia, that word for fellowship and community. Think about it for a second. Who enjoys being around a slanderer? Especially if you're the person being slandered. Not enjoyable. Please, please don't slander me, right? You feel like you're walking on eggshells when you're in the presence of the wrathful, explosively angry person. And just constantly worried I'm gonna say something that's just gonna tee them off. That's not an— no one wants to be around that person. We've all had the awkward experience of being in the company of someone who's prone to using crude, profane, explicit language. It's just awkward, you know, they tell the super off-color joke and it's just— I don't know how to respond to that. You're sitting there at a party and there's that one bombastic off-color guy just spouting off at the mouth and you just kind of stand there and everyone in the circle is just kind of looking for an excuse to bolt. Oh, I need more appetizers. Don't mind me, I'm just gonna head over here. You don't want to be around them. All of these things in their own way makes it almost impossible to enjoy community.

20 · The pastor exposits the climax of the second vice list: lying

The list builds to a climax just like the other one. The first one builds to that climax of idolatry shown through greed. This one shows the communal poison of lying. Nothing makes it more impossible to live in unity than with people who are prone to lie. Slander only happens with the foundation of lying, right? That's what slander is. You're spreading untruths about someone. Where lying and slander fester, you can't trust anyone. In a community like that, I have no idea if what's being said is true. There's no trust. There's no selflessness. There's no deference to one another, no bearing the burdens of one another, no sacrificial love for one another. How do you carry out the one anothers of Scripture in a context and community defined by that? It can destroy a church. As quickly as it destroys a marriage. Think of a marriage you might know of that fell apart because one of the spouses just lied all the time. The same thing can happen in the body of Christ.

21 · The pastor makes a theological claim about the deceptive danger of the second list of sins

The deception is— here's the deception, and sin is sneaky, it's deceptive. The deception is the sins in the second list, they seem less deadly, don't they? They don't seem quite as bad and quite as vile as the sexual sins in the first list. Anger is not good, but really it's not that bad. So I tell some off-color jokes and I'm rude and abrupt in my speech. There are worse sins I could commit habitually. Be the limp-wristed Neville Chamberlain when it comes to your sin. They're listed there because all of those sins have the malignant potential to spread. They don't rightly express your individual union with Christ. People who do those things don't look like Jesus. Jesus He never slandered anyone. When slander was happening, he never stood by and continued to listen. And when left unaddressed, they're serious sins because they kill the corporate expression of the union of the body of Christ.

22 · The pastor illustrates the deadly seriousness of unchecked anger by telling the story of an acquaintance—a seemingly upstanding Christian woman—who killed a 3-year-old girl in a moment of rage

Let me give you an illustration of why they're serious. Anger doesn't seem like it's the biggest and baddest sin in the room, but if you don't address it, it can destroy your life. A few months back, I was looking online and I was shocked. I was on Facebook to see an acquaintance of mine. She was the best friend of one of my best friend's wives. I don't know how you categorize that relationship category. When I went out to my buddy's wedding in California, it was actually on Laguna Beach, which was kind of cool, we were on the beach, it was all 30 of us, it was a small wedding, she was one of the people there standing up for my buddy's bride. She seemed like a nice young woman. By all appearances, she had it all together. The little town that I'm from, she went to the right church. She went to the Christian school, she went to the Christian college, She played volleyball and then she became an assistant volleyball coach at the college, which in this community, sports are really, really important. So it's like to be one of the assistant coaches at the really good volleyball team was a big deal. She and her husband still went to church. They were pillars in the community. They looked so good from the outside. She started a daycare in her home. He was a banker or some sort of thing. Investments, and she was caring for kids. Another, another family they knew that went to another church— two Christian families. The one Christian family says, oh, you can watch our kids, and she would watch the kids. Well, what I saw on Facebook was shocking. This woman, my age, good friend of my good friend, had been arrested. She had taken a little 3-year-old girl because the girl wouldn't take her coat off, had thrown her to the floor, and she fractured her skull. And initially the police came over and the ambulance came and they airlifted her an hour away to Sioux Falls trying to save her life. And initially she said the girl fell down the stairs, and they came back and they said, this is not consistent with a girl falling down the stairs. So they came back to her house and she admitted and said, I got angry, I picked her up, and I threw her down. And the little 3.5-year-old girl died.

23 · The pastor exposits Matthew 15:18-19 to explain the mechanism of sin: sin flows from the heart, and unchecked heart sins (like anger or lust) can lead to external sins (like murder or adultery)

No one started that day out thinking that this woman was going to commit murder. Under the laws of the state of Iowa, that's what she committed. That's what she's been charged with. That's what it looks like, for all intents and purposes, she'll be convicted of. Why? How does that happen? Listen to Matthew 15:18. What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart, out of the heart, out of your heart come evil thoughts and murder and adultery and sexual immorality, and theft, and false witness, and slander. A woman is capable of throwing a 3-year-old child to the floor. Why? Because unchecked anger in her heart was capable of murder. A man cheats on his wife because the unchecked lust and longing glances are capable of adultery.

24 · The pastor articulates the cultural objection to Paul's vice lists: modern psychology and identity politics say people are slaves to their desires and cannot change

Now that can seem overwhelming, especially since the culture, the same culture that minimizes so many of these sins, doesn't it also tell us you can't control your desires? Your desires are what they are. Modern psychology popularizes the idea you're Slaves to your impulses. These things are hardwired into you. A lot of the things on these lists now, the culture would say, that's just who a person is. Part of why it's intolerant to speak against those things and call them what Paul calls them is because that's somebody's identity you're attacking. They can't change that about themselves. It's not possible to stop. In some cases, our culture would say it's unhealthy. To ask them to stop.

25 · The pastor exposits Colossians 3:9-10 to show that believers have the power to say no to sin because they have been crucified with Christ

Listen to how Paul regards it. In these you too once walked. There are people in the Colossian church who used to do these things. When you were living in them, this was habitual practice for some of you. But now you must put them all away, seeing you have put off the old self with its practices and put on the new self. Translation: You have the power to say no to sin. Why? Because you've already been crucified in Christ. Put to death what is earthly in you. How do I do that, Paul? Good news of the gospel. You're in Christ. You've been crucified in Christ. The old self, the old man, the sinful nature that used to dominate you has been put to death in Christ. Those who've been buried with Christ have been raised with Christ. Buried with Christ, old self put off. Raised with Christ, new self, new identity, Spirit's empowerment put on. Sin's enslaving power is broken.

26 · The pastor makes a theological claim that distinguishes regenerate and unregenerate humanity

Modern psychology isn't totally wrong. For the unregenerate, outside of the Spirit's power, it is impossible to resist the sinful desires of the flesh. Flesh. Sin still has a grip on them. But in Christ, what once ruled over us doesn't rule any longer. The imagery he gives of the put off and put on, it's the imagery of changing clothes, of changing garments. Take off the old garments, put on the new garments. It's an image, it's an allusion to a change in life situation. Here's an imagery the commentators think might be at play. In the early church, when you would get baptized, you would walk into the water and you would take off your old clothes. They would baptize you, and as you came up and stepped out of the water, you would put on new white linen robes, symbolizing the fact that now in Christ, the old self is gone. It's been put off. You've put on the pure white robes of Christ with all of its power. That's what's at play.

27 · The pastor makes a theological claim that believers have the power to confront even the most emotionally driven sins (like anger)

There's power now to put away sins from any and every category, from the addictions of pornography to the impulses of anger, wrath, and malice. Paul's point is that even sins that don't seem like conscious choices at first blush, the passionate ones, right? The passionate ones that seem more emotionally driven than volitional. There's people in my hometown who are defending what happened to that little girl, just saying it was the heat of the moment. It was the heat of the moment. And in the heat of the moment, her heart was exposed. There were a thousand little choices of unchecked anger that in the heat of the moment became a horribly tragic situation. A family has lost their 3-year-old girl forever. And this family with 2 little ones is likely going to have mom sent to prison for 25 years to life. Not because of passions, but because of unchecked choices.

28 · The pastor exposits Ezekiel 36:25-27 as the Old Testament promise of the Spirit's work in the new covenant

But the good news that Paul gives us is we can and we must confront and conquer the inner impulse. That's the good news of the gospel is you have power to do just that. Remember we went back to Colossians 1-4. It's touching on all this stuff on our union with Christ that comes before this. In the Old Testament, Ezekiel prophesies, 'This is what will happen to you when you receive the Spirit.' God says, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanliness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk Walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

29 · The pastor applies the gospel promise to the congregation, using a DeYoung quotation to encourage them that the fight against sin is winnable because the Spirit empowers them

When the Messiah comes, when the Spirit comes with the Messiah, when the Spirit works in your hearts, it gives you the power to fight with new weapons. Conclude with this quote by Kevin DeYoung in the same book we referenced earlier: The Bible is realistic about holiness. Don't think that all this glorious talk about dying to sin and living to God in Romans 6 means there's no struggle anymore, or that sin will never show up in a believer's life. The Christian life still entails obedience. It still entails a fight, but it's a fight we can win. It's a fight we will win. You have the Spirit of Christ in your corner, rubbing your shoulders. It's a boxing metaphor. Rubbing your shoulders, holding the bucket, putting His arm around you and saying before the next round with sin, 'You're going to knock him out, kid.' Sin may get in some good jabs, it may clean your clock once in a while, it may bring you to your knees, but if you are in Christ, if you are as Colossians 1 and 2 has described Believers, if you are in Christ, sin will never knock you out. You are no longer a slave, but free. Sin has no dominion over you. It can't. It won't. A new king sits on the throne. You serve a different master. You salute a different lord. As Paul concludes our passage, 'Because Christ is all and in all.'

30 · The pastor closes with a prayer asking God to help the congregation pursue holiness without corrupting grace, empowered by the Spirit and motivated by the gospel promises

Would you bow your heads? Lord, we don't want to be soft on sin and soft on holiness, and we don't want to corrupt your grace. We want to walk a biblically balanced line We want to celebrate grace the way Paul celebrated grace, and we want to pursue holiness the way he calls us to here. We want to work and fight and strive to look like your Son Jesus. So Father, we ask that you would gird us up in the promises of the gospel, that sin's power is dead, Lord, that we have a new master. And we ask now, we pull on the cords of the promise that you would fill us with your Spirit and empower us for the fight of holiness. Help us to do this so that our joy would be deeper and that Christ would be glorified. In his name, amen.