Embodying A New Life
Series: The Liberated Life (Colossians)
Brad Bailey – May 24, 2009
Intro
An edition of Sports Illustrated a few years ago noted a tragic but telling story... It was the story of Rico Leroy Marshall, an eighteen-year-old senior at Forestville High School in Glenarden, Maryland. It seems that Rico had everything going his way -- a scholarship to the University of South Carolina, a first place award in the school’s talent contest, popularity among his peers. Rico was driving home from a school basketball game one Friday night when he was stopped by a county patrol car. On the seat beside him lay a bag containing several chunks of crack, a highly concentrated form of cocaine. To avoid arrest, he swallowed the drugs. Later that night he went into convulsions and his parents rushed him to the hospital. Early Saturday morning Rico Marshall died.
It was found that on the wall of Rico’s bedroom was a poster of his hero -- a basketball star named Len Bias. Len was the star of the University of Maryland basketball team who was drafted #1 in the NBA draft by the Boston Celtics. The night he was drafted, Len died of an overdose of cocaine. Rico’s model was Len Bias. He looked at that poster every day. In fact, if Rico was like most teenagers, that poster was the first thing he saw in the morning and the last thing he saw at night.
This morning… I believe God wants to ask us… ‘Whose on your wall?’ Who has your heart and mind? Because what we worship we become.
As we continue in our series entitled The Liberated Life, based on the New Testament letter we call the Book of Colossians… we continue with the apostle Paul declaring Christ as the liberating new presence that reclaims and restores who we were meant to be. He has been expounding upon how Christ is above and beyond all other powers… he is the supreme revealer of God… the supreme ruler of Creation… and redeemer of life. Now he brings this great truth to bear upon our own lives and liberation.
TEXT:
Colossians 3:1-11 (NIV) 1 Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. 5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.
(Note: Scythian - a member of an ancient nomadic people inhabiting Scythia… considered the most uncivilized.)
Paul is declaring the great truth about Christ-centered spiritual formation.
It’s very important to grasp what is and is not being said. I think it has become common to hear these words in a way that gets skewed. Many of us may hear something of the following…
‘Change your behavior and you can be accepted. If you’re really a good religious person, get rid of every negative desire and drive within you… to prove you really are different.
After all…it’s as simple as changing clothes.’
As was engaged last week from previous section, Paul had just been challenging our need to guard against the emptiness of religious rules and regulations… so it’s vital we hear that which is dynamically different.
The church at Colossae had been visited by false teachers who tried to convince them that religious rules and regulations could change them. They tried to convince them that a strict life style would make them moral. But Paul wrote and explained that “such regulations … lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence." (Colossians 2:23) In other words, rules and regulations couldn’t change you. Rules and regulations can’t make you a better person.
Lets try something… ask each of us to take a moment and NOT think of a pink elephant….
> Not very effective. I think religion of morality can tend to work that way… we have desires that we are somehow simply to ignore. Being told that a desire is bad doesn’t do much to remove it.
Let me ask you to try something else… take a moment and think of a orange tiger.
I would venture to say that there were fewer pink elephants in mind.
Paul understands that. So now he begins to explain that God is calling us to change… to become truly good… BUT – God knows there is a better way to change us than by asking us to keep a list of do’s and don’ts.
1. Developing our true self does not begin with our will… but with a new life we now share in Christ.
This comes out particularly strong in his first statements… verses 1-4
‘Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.’
Here he describes that what is at hand is the opportunity to embody a new life
“Since…" declares what already is… a reality that already exists… that we can share in the death and resurrected life of Christ. We can receive his death as our own… and partake of his resurrected life. The phrase ‘raised with Christ’ is a verb whose literal meaning is "to be co-resurrected."
> He is the first representative of a new humanity… made possible to all who receive it.
As Paul said in Galatians…
Galatians 2:20
‘I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.’
Here in Colossians this reality is declared in several ways…
1. We’ve died (3a). This looks back to the cross where we died positionally in Christ. As a result, we have no obligation to live like we used to live. Because we’ve died with Christ, we should have as little desire for improper worldly pleasures as a dead person would have. We don’t just receive a cosmetic makeover or simply add a Christian veneer that only laminates our life. Our old nature is not renewed or even reformed; instead, it is put to death. 2. Our life is hidden with Christ (3b). “Hidden” implies both concealment and safety; both invisibility and security. Christ said He was going where “the world will not see Me anymore” (John 14:19).- BKC
> To have our lives hidden with the One who is seated at the right hand of God gives us both security and satisfaction. The image here is treasure that is stored away in a secure place. Like a seed buried in the earth, our real lives are reflected already in the eternal realm. We are not yet glorified, not yet fully redeemed in our nature…but what we ultimately are is secure and safe in Christ. In fact…
3. Christ is our life (4a). In a very real sense… Christ bears our new life.
John 14:6, Jesus said about himself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life…”
I think it may be helpful to recognize that this isn’t a total loss of one’s personhood… but rather describes a new nature of personhood.
This is what the true meaning of the term ‘Christian’ really refers to… literally means ‘little Christ’…not as clones but in the character of being sons and daughters of God.
> He becomes our centralizing identity
Notice the last verse…
Colossians 3:11 (New Living Translation) –
“In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.”
This list doesn’t include references to our personhood… or basic personal existence. Rather it includes those things that we identify with… that define us.
4. Christ will be manifest again as he brings heaven to fully bear upon earth… and we will appear with Him in Glory (4c).
Ray Stedman - When Christ manifests himself again all that we have been learning of how to share his life will become visibly manifest. God is moving toward a new age. That is why the New Age Movement is close to the truth, but it is not the truth. There is a new age coming. God is already at work producing it… moving toward a certain accomplishment that shall be fulfilled when Christ returns.
The verb, “appear” means “to make visible what is invisible.” When Christ returns, our truest selves will be made known. When Jesus is revealed in His glory, we shall be totally transformed according to …
1 John 3:2
“…But we know that when he appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” In all of this, Paul is urging us to discover the new life that is already at hand..
It’s helpful to think clearly about the distinction between ‘heavenly’ and ‘earthly.’
I believe we may separate earth and heaven in a false way… as present and future… or bad and good. It’s a little more dynamic than that. They are two realms… the eternal spiritual realm and the created order… and originally the created operated under the heavenly… and one day they will be fully reintegrated and reunited as one.
Our truest design and dignity is held in the heavenly nature. It is the realm of all that we long for… justice, peace, love, and beauty. The tragedy is that many of us have come to think that the reality of the eternal God centered realm will kind of mess up how we experience this realm. I might suggest we haven’t begun to realize how out of sync we are. From the perspective of the eternal order and intent… we probably look more like the strangeness of chickens with their heads cut off… or a world of those who woke from amnesia… wandering around trying to find out who we are.
It’s important stay clear that this is not simply about focusing literally up rather than down… it is about Christ becoming the mediator of the eternal realm with the earthly realm.
The eternal realm has reclaimed the created and will redeem it all one day… they will merge and heaven and earth will unite. Until then Jesus has come as the one and only mediator… to set us free from our false state and false selves… and makes us representatives of his mediating of heaven upon earth. He teaches us that at the very heart of prayer lies the interceding ‘for thy will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.’
So how do we enter this mediation… embody this new life?
2. Developing our true self does involve a process that requires our will and work to embody (live out of) the new life.
The analogy with clothes is NOT about the simplicity or expediency of the process.
I think it is safe to say that Paul’s uses this because it recognizes that change involves taking off and putting on. That is the main way he is using this to help us understand what is at hand.
Anything you would like to change about your heart?
Well… The simple truth presented is that change involves… change.
Any oversimplifying here can lead to a lot of defeat or denial. Again, we may read this and think wow… simple enough I guess. It only takes me a few minutes of focused effort to change my clothes. I guess a few moments of focused effort is all that’s needed to change my nature. If we carry that assumption… and then experience some of the old nature still at work… we will have to accept defeat… or just deny it.
So it’s important to recognize that Paul is clearly describing a process… Paul is describing the process of ‘being renewed.
Verse 10 – ‘…put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.’… It’s an ongoing process. Jesus understood this and we need to as well.
However, it is not a passive process.
‘Take off… put on.’
‘Set your hearts… set your minds…’ –
“Set” (zçteite) means “to seek or strive for earnestly” (cf - Rev. 9:6; 1 Cor. 7:27). - BKC
A continuing process of cultivating our inner disposition.
2 Corinthians 4:18 (NIV) ‘…we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’
• Hearts and Minds - This is not merely affirming what we might here in our English as the academic and the emotional.
The heart is the governing center… most similar to the way we more commonly refer to the soul.
Proverbs 4:23 (NIV) “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”
The heart is the central place out of which we process life… formed by what we give ourselves to…and in turn governs our behavior. It is shaped by our choice of what we give our greatest affections to… which we internalize… and out of which our actions flow.
It can be guarded because it does flow in relationship to our will… our inner directive.
Notice the way the Psalmist declares his inner life…
Psalms 62:5 (NIV) Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. Psalms 103:1 (NIV) Praise the LORD, O my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
> He is directing his soul towards what he deems good. He has to do it because it is not necessarily his natural disposition or direction of thought and heart. But he CAN do it because he has that level of choice. He cannot make himself good…. but he can choose to direct himself and connect himself to that which is good.
Ultimately spiritual formation… the development of our truest self… is the development of our AFFECTIONS.
Affection refers to more than knowing about something… it is about giving one’s self to something or someone.
Jesus put it this way in …
Matthew 6:20-21 (NIV) “…store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
If our focus is on things that will ultimately be corroded and consumed… our hearts face nothing but futility. If we seek out Christ and allow Him to become our ultimate treasure, our hearts will follow.
This involves our relationship to the old nature. It is no doubt familiar.. but it is false and futile…. a vain attempt to find ourselves.
Verse 5 he begins to note examples of the nature that reflects the false and futile self.
Lets take a quick look at that list…
Sexual Immorality – Often strikes us with the cliché sense that God is embarrassed about sex… that it is shameful. The real truth is that God is the only one who isn’t ashamed of sex. The very power of passion and pleasure… was created by God… designed to serve the loving relationship of lifelong union.
The shame we read into this is our own. We know something has gone wrong… that love is corrupted by lust and lust can become pretty destructive.
Needless to say…
God saw David… immersed in sexual pleasure… have lust for more… which led to killing an innocent man and more. The issue wasn’t sex itself… but the power of lust feeding on emptiness and leading to what degrades and destroys. The truth is that God knows David’s story is simply a reflection of what we all face. God has watched more destruction of home, family, and dignity than any. So when you read the words ‘sexual immorality’… don’t equate it with sexual intimacy… probably better to read as ‘sexual pursuits that are relationally destructive.’
That is precisely what is being described…
• Sexual immorality – sexual pursuits that are relationally destructive
• Impurity – that which does not honor human dignity
• Lust – that which flows from a separation of our body and our being…
• Evil desires - obviously a broad term… but one that should clarify that what is being described as destructive is not desire itself… but evil desires.. that which is corrupted and not serving and satisfying our deepest nature.
• ‘Greed, which is idolatry’ – the selfish possessiveness of either another person or material wealth above God
He goes on to refer to another set of desires that reflect our fallen and false self…
• Anger - a continuous attitude of hatred
• Rage – uncontrolled assaults of anger
• Malice – the root attitude of ill will; hidden hatred of the heart that takes revenge in secret Slander – speaking that which degrades another
• Filthy language – speaking that which is generally degrading
• Lying to one another – breaking the trust of honesty
Quite a couple lists…
An interesting thing about these two sets of desires… we can see them as both shameful… tragically destructive… harmful to our humanity… yet also the very stuff we can so easily be given to. None of us escape them.
> They are the very desires that we try to find ourselves in…or hide behind.
But the simple truth is that these desires are the stuff that implodes entire civilizations… such as Rome… and they implode lives as well… like Rico Marshall.
Christ has come to liberate us with a new life we can begin to embody.
So as Paul proclaims, we’re not just to put them aside. We’re not to wound them or even ask them to leave. We’re not to experiment or play around with them, rationalize them or even explain them away. Instead, we’re to seek their death (AMP version – to deaden or deprive of power).
But this is not the death of desire itself… as we noted… we don’t become good people by just trying to follow rules and regulations.
That simply leads to living somewhere between denial and despair.
The old must be replaced by the new. We will pick up further in that next week… but as we already have heard… the good news is that our true nature has been made known and relationally available in Christ.
Conclusion -
If you have begun to explore who Christ is… I want to encourage you… he is the life you have been looking for.
Many of us may have been sparked at some point with a real love for God… but if we’re honest… we know that at some point the initial rush didn’t mature as it should. Just like any husband or wife who enters a commitment… we haven’t really cultivated the affections of our heart.
So I invite you to consider this morning… who is on your wall? Where do our affections lie?
Resources:
Bible Background Commentary
Bible Exposition Commentary
Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard
N.T. Wright, Tyndale New Testament Commentary (Colossians and Philemon)
Ray Stedman sermon ‘Title: True Human Potential’ (February 1, 1987)
Sermons on this text by Brian Bill and Jeff Strite (From Sermon Central)
Rico Marshall story noted as submission by Toby Slough
