Living A Christian Life

Theme: Christian Living

Text: Col. 3:1-4

Prop: Every Christian needs to maintain Christian living daily.

Trans: How do we go about daily Christian living?

Intro: Last week and only one other time since I have been here have I preached on the subject of baptism. And the reason I preached on that subject last week was because I knew there would be the baptism of Brittany, so I thought it a appropriate time to do so again. But I don’t really feel that I have preached on that subject too much as of yet. And there could be more to be said about it, matter of fact there could be a lot more said about it.

But now since I’ve got you thinking that I’m going to preach this morning on the subject of baptism again, I’m not. Why, because I know who is out there sitting in the pews and I know that a majority in this church are Christians and that the majority of you decided to follow Jesus and be baptized into Him many years ago. This morning I want to talk about living a Christian life. How every Christian needs to maintain daily Christian living and how we should go about that everyday. With that said read with me in Colossians chapter 3 verse 1ff.

Now Paul tells us in those verses about living a Christian life and some things to do in living a Christian life and he gives us some reasons why we should do that. But first I’d like to take notice of one word in this passage.

There is in those verses one of the biggest words in the English language. You might be saying or asking yourself what is he talking about there are no big words in this passage, but there is. We have lots of big word in the English language, don’t we? Most of the big words are words that are hard to pronounce and are very long words like Antidisestablishmentarianism, which by the way when I was sub teaching this week was a word that the students were going to have to spell for a spelling test. The word has 28 letters. And then there’s Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, which has 34 letters. And then there is another word that I heard about this week from Mr. Pelfrey, it’s a medical term and that has 100 letters in it. A word that would take more that one line of text when typed out. He read about the word in a magazine article he was reading, however, he said, they didn’t print the word.

So you might say that those are some pretty big words, but the biggest word in all of those verses is only 9 letters long, at least in the NASB, and that word is only “therefore”. You see the biggest word in there has noting to with the amount of letters because it’s only 2 letters long, and that word is “if”. Paul says, “Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ.” And Paul said that, knowing that they have been.

Now what does raised up in Christ mean? It means baptized in Christ. That they have put their old self to death and have been raised up to a new life in Chirst. Paul knew that they had been, Paul knew that they were Christians. He was saying this knowing who they were in Christ. It would be like me saying. If you are from Leonard Christian Church. If you are from Shelby county. If you are a Christian, and most here are. You see I know that you are all those things, and he said that knowing they had been raised up in Christ. He knew they were already Christians and so he addresses them in that way.

You see the word if is a big word especially if you take in context with 1 Cor. 15:12 & 13 it says; (read the verses in the Bible) “if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised.” Paul said that in 1 Cor., knowing that Christ was raised from the dead. For he saw Christ Himself and he knew the testimony of the other apostles that saw Him to, after He was raised from the dead. If is a big word because if Christ wasn’t raised from the dead, we have no purpose in being here and we would have no purpose in this life. If Christ were not raised from the dead all would be hopeless, wouldn’t it.

But we do have purpose in this life however; because we know just as Paul knew that Christ was raised. Paul says to the Colossians, I know you are Christians, I know you have been raised in the likeness of Christ’s resurrection. And now because of that you have some things to do.