INTRODUCTION
Please turn in your Bibles to Colossians 3:11 as we continue our way through this letter.
The question we’ll address today is how do we make progress in godliness? Growing in godliness involves two things: putting away sin and putting on righteousness; not doing the things God forbids, and doing the things God commands. This morning’s passage deals with putting away sin, so that is going to be our focus. The passage after this one deals with putting on righteousness, and we’ll address that later. So today we are answering the question, how do we put away sin from our lives? Whether or not you came in this morning with that question on your mind, it is a question we need to answer, because the pursuit of godliness is not an option for a believer.
The apostle Peter said in 1 Peter 1:15-16 …as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy." Because God is holy—sinless and set apart—he calls his people to reflect that. And that means turning away from sin, from all wrongdoing, from what Paul called at the end of chapter 2 the indulgence of the flesh.
But how do we stop the indulgence of the flesh? How do we stop the sin? Well, we know from last week what doesn’t work. What doesn’t work is the ‘just say no’ mentality. What doesn’t work is relying on regulations to control our behavior like “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch.” That has an appearance of wisdom according to verse 23, but is of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
All that does is lead to external morality but it does nothing to address the heart from which sin flows, like the Pharisees whom Jesus called white-washed tombs, beautiful on the outside but inside full of uncleanness.
So what is of value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh? What can really lead to holiness, to putting away sin?
Let’s read Colossians 3:1-11 to find out and then please pray with me as we ask God to open our hearts and minds to the truth of his word.
READ COLOSSIANS 3:1-11
PRAY
Paul’s message in this passage could be summed up this way: Put away sin by fixing your thoughts on Christ. (2x)
What I hope to show from the text is that all disobedience to God—all sin—can only be successfully put away if it becomes an ugly thing to us, and Christ becomes our greatest satisfaction. And that is what happens when we fix our thoughts on Christ and on the heavenly, happy realities that belong to us in Christ.
We’re going to walk through this text by first reviewing our present condition as believers in Jesus Christ—what is true of us though it is invisible to us. Then we’ll see two commands that make total sense for us to follow given who we are in Christ, commands that lead to putting away sin and growing in holiness. So let’s start with our identity in Christ.
1. OUR PRESENT CONDITION IN CHRIST
Woven throughout this passage are multiple reminders of the miracle that God has done to you if you have trusted Christ as Savior. Your fundamental state of affairs has radically changed from when you were an unbeliever.
Verse 3 says. “You have died…”
This is a recap of the teaching we went through in Colossians 2:11. We learned there that the “you” who died is the unregenerate you, the person without the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit, the person who was dead in trespasses and sins, unresponsive to God, unable to please God, and a slave to sin.
According to Colossians 2:11, that person was circumcised …in the circumcision of Christ, meaning the sin-enslaved person you were was cut away and died in Christ’s death on the cross. God condemned and killed that person for his sins when he condemned and killed his Son on the cross. In union with Christ through faith, God considers Christ’s death for sin to be our death for our sins. The old sin-enslaved self is dead.
That’s what verse 3 is talking about when it says “you have died.”
And the other side of it is verse 1, which says, “you have been raised with Christ.”
That is a recap of the teaching we went through in Colossians 2:13. We learned there that the new self is the regenerate you, the person with the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit, the person who is living with the very life that flows from Christ, able to obey God rather than sin, responsive to God, able to please God, no longer a slave to sin.
According to Colossians 2:13, that person was made alive together with Christ. When God approved of and raised to life his Son, he also approved of and raised us to life as well. In union with Christ through faith, God considers us to share the perfect holiness of Christ, and gives us a share in his heavenly rewards.
So we died with Christ and we were raised to life with Christ. Both of those things were applied to us and became our reality the moment we placed trust in Christ for salvation.
And that has ushered in a galaxy of amazing blessings for us. There’s forgiveness of sin, friendship with God, transfer from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of Christ, and a heavenly inheritance of pleasures forevermore in the presence of Christ.
That’s the reality for every believer. That’s the current state of things. In fact, that’s the permanent state of things. It will never be reversed.
But even though all those things are true, those realities are not something we can see. We don’t bump into them on our way to work or our CHU. They are invisible to us.
And that’s what verse 3 tells us. You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
In other words, this new life you have, this empowerment by the Spirit, this ability and desire to love and serve God, and all these wonderful blessings that belong to us – they’re all hidden. We can’t see them. They are hidden with Christ, and Christ is hidden from us.
We do know that Christ is with us. He said “I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.” But we can’t see him right now, and so these things remain out of view.
But it won’t always be that way. Verse 4 says When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
He will appear, and then the hidden heavenly realities of forgiveness, acceptance, friendship, and an inheritance in the new heavens and earth with him—all of that will become visible. But until then, this life is hidden with Christ.
And that leads to the first of the two commands in our passage. There’s something that makes total sense to do if we have all these riches in Christ, but we can’t see them. Here it is:
2. SEEK THE THINGS THAT ARE ABOVE, WHERE CHRIST IS. (VERSE 1)
Seek means to aim at, to make a diligent inquiry into. Or as verse 2 says it, “Set your mind on the things that are above…” That means fix your thoughts there. Go after it. Make Christ and the life that we have in Christ the regular focus of your meditation. Think about the person of Christ and think about the glory that is ours in Christ—all the galaxy of blessings that he purchased for us by his life and death.
And why should we do that? Because this life in Christ is hidden, and the only way to bring it into view and experience right now the benefit of it is by becoming more and more convinced of it. That’s how this hidden life becomes real to us. By meditating on it, fixing our thoughts on it, and letting that knowledge change the way we live.
We must do for ourselves what Paul said he did for the Galatians in Galatians 3:1. About his preaching, he said that It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. The Galatians weren’t there when Jesus was crucified on the cross. They didn’t see it with their physical eyes. The cross was hidden from them.
And yet Paul says it was before their eyes that his death was publicly portrayed. They could see it in their mind’s eye. The cross became visible and real to them because Paul explained it through words, words that they could fix their thoughts on and seek to understand more fully. And they responded to that with faith and their lives were changed.
That’s what Paul says we must do with the glories we have in Christ. We have words here in this Bible; words that God himself had written for us to portray the hidden life we have in Christ. Words about realities that will comfort us in affliction, challenge us in apathy, give us courage to persevere in trials, and give strength and motivation to resist temptation and sin.
Here in this book we see what we have in Christ. Here is where we see Christ who is our life. We see him hanging on the cross and saying, “Father, forgive them” interceding for us with his blood and with his prayers. Here we see his loving heart that says, “I desire that they, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am.” Here we see the risen Christ comforting his sinful, sad and scared disciples by saying, “Peace be with you.” Here in this book we have described for us friendship and acceptance with God in Christ, counted righteous and blameless in Christ, and granted pleasures forevermore in the presence of Christ.
And so God calls to us from these pages and through his Spirit. He says “Fix your thoughts on these things, on the things that are above. They are real! They belong to you! So experience the comfort, correction, strength, hope and satisfaction that I mean for you to have by thinking about these things.” And when we do that, we’re going to want to do the second command in the passage and we’re going to be equipped to carry out this command. Here’s that command from verse 5.
3. PUT TO DEATH THEREFORE WHAT IS EARTHLY IN YOU.
In other words, put to death your sin. Put way or eliminate those things that are consistent with an earthly and worldly mindset. Do not live as if this world is your home. Or in other words, stop the indulgence of your flesh. Putting away sin naturally flows from setting our mind on the things above. It’s the reasonable and appropriate course of action for someone who is a lover of Christ. Let’s see how that works.
Remember, we began this passage with Paul’s statement that sheer willpower in keeping regulations has no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. And taken by itself, this command to put to death what is earthly in you can sound like we just have to muster up the willpower to do it. So what makes him think we’re going to be able to do this? How is this different from saying “Do not handle. Do not taste. Do not touch.”?
What’s different is that Paul doesn’t appeal to our self-determination and willpower to carry this out. He said Put to death therefore what is earthly in you. Therefore means, on the basis of what I just said, you must put to death your sin. He appeals to the reality of verses 1-4 to give us the ability to do this.
The power for change and the motivation for it is found in setting our minds on the things above where Christ is. It is found in knowing Christ and all the blessings of salvation that we have in him. When we are doing that, the appeal of sin is weakened because we see that the real pleasure is in knowing and serving Christ, and sin is exposed for what it really is: a promise of pleasure that doesn’t fulfill, and an evil that requires no less than the crucifixion of the Son of God to atone for it.
]In verse 6, after listing the sins of the heart, Paul says “On account of these the wrath of God is coming.” On account of things like covetousness, including coveting your neighbor’s house or iPhone or vacation plans, God’s wrath is coming. On account of impurity like viewing internet pornography, God’s wrath is coming. Or on account of sinful anger with your spouse or the insurance company, God’s wrath is coming.
Sin is the occasion for the wrath of God to come. That’s the penalty for it. If you’re a believer in Christ, you won’t experience that penalty for your sin. But that is the penalty and it will be paid, either by us or by Jesus on the cross. God hates evil and he will bring justice to all evil.
Do we have a picture of sin like that? Do we think it’s really that bad? Or have we made peace with our sin? Rather than hate it, do we justify it?
We won’t make much progress on putting to death lust or anger or covetousness or laziness or any other sin if we think it’s not that bad. It could be that if you have been in a pattern of sin for a long time, this could be the root cause. You like it too much. You don’t hate it. It isn’t really that offensive. You don’t share God’s opinion of your sin. You might hate the consequences of the sin, but you don’t hate the sin itself, and so you continue in it.
But the good news is that we don’t have to continue in our sin. Paul tells us the way. It’s to go deep with Jesus in your devotions and ask God to show you the beauty of Christ. Ask him to show you the horror of your sin that took his suffering and death to atone for. Ask him to break your heart over the sin, not just over the consequences. And you’ll be on the way to putting it to death.
The power to put to death sin doesn’t come from our willpower. It will never lose its appeal only by erecting regulations to stop us from doing it. That doesn’t affect the heart. Sin can only be put to death if it becomes an ugly thing to us as our hearts are saturated with and drawn to the pure goodness of God to us in Christ.
We put away (or put to death) sin by fixing our thoughts on Christ.
That’s how we access the power for change. That is what is of great value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
And if you look at the list of things that Paul is confident can change, you might see in there some things that you’ve been battling for months and years and feel like you’ll never see change. He gives us two lists. The first list includes sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness, which is idolatry. These are sins at the level of basic desires. It’s about craving something you aren’t supposed to have—whether that’s a person or money or an experience. And Paul knows that cravings and evil desires can be put to death. He knows that we don’t have to be slaves to lust or to getting noticed or to getting ahead or to envying what other people have. He knows that change is possible because no desire is so entrenched that it cannot lose its appeal in the surpassing beauty and joy of knowing Christ.
And he gives us another list. In verses 8 and 9 he says we must put away anger, wrath, malice, slander and obscene talk from your mouth, and not lie to one another. This list emphasizes sins of the tongue. It’s about using our words to destroy and tear down and cast suspicion on others. But this list too, Paul believes can be put to death. A person does not need to keep being angry and yelling at their kids or their coworkers. A person does not need to be critical and resentful or deceitful.
We put away wrath, malice, slander obscene talk, deception and every other sin by fixing our thoughts on Christ.
That’s of great value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
Now, with the remaining time, I want to walk through some general directions for putting away sin. These are not original with me. I learned them from our good friend Jerry Bridges in his book Respectable Sins. There are seven of them so I’ll have to be brief on each point. But if we sincerely want to put away sin and grow in godliness, then I think you will find much help here. So here we go. Direction number 1 is…
1. Apply the gospel.
In other words, we must always address our sin in the context of the gospel. When we look at our sin, it is ugly. It reminds us of our guilt. But looking at our sin alone doesn’t lead to change, it only leads to condemnation. We must look at sin and then immediately at Christ who bore our sin on the cross. We must look at our sin in the knowledge that God canceled the record of our sin debt with its legal demands for justice. He nailed it to the cross and he completely removed it as a witness against us. We stand forgiven, justified, accepted and adopted as sons and daughters of God.
One of the older writers, one William Romaine wrote, “No sin can be crucified either in heart or life unless it be first pardoned in conscience; because there will be want of faith to receive the strength of Jesus, by whom alone it can be crucified.”
Applying the gospel means we begin our battle with sin by remembering that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). Without that our pursuit of putting away sin can quickly become a way to get rid of feelings of guilt and condemnation, and only the cross of Christ deals with guilt and condemnation, not our practice of putting away sin. Even if we are 100% successful in putting to death every sin we can think of, we have not done a single thing to remove our guilt before God, we have only not added to our existing guilt, which is already enormous for our many sins.
Guilt is atoned for on the cross, and if you have trusted Christ for salvation, no sin will be counted against you in God’s court of law. God has forgiven and accepted you in Christ. So we start there, and we remain there throughout the process of putting away sin. That’s the first direction. Here’s the second one.
2. Depend on the Holy Spirit.
Verse 10 says you have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Being renewed means we are being transformed more and more into the likeness of our creator; we are on a process of putting away sin and putting on righteousness. But notice that being renewed is a passive verb, which means that it’s something that’s being done to us, not by us. And the person who is doing it to us is God the Holy Spirit.
That’s the message of 2 Corinthians 3:18. …we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
We are being transformed. We are being renewed. God is at work in us. We are not doing this by ourselves and we are not to do this in our own strength. God calls us to depend on the Holy Spirit for change, for putting away sin.
This means we seek to live under the controlling influence of the Spirit. The two main ways to do that are by prayer and the word of God. In prayer we seek the enabling power of the Spirit to deal with our sins. And in the word of God, which is the sword of the Spirit, we are exposing our minds to the Spirit’s will for us.
We’ll have more to say about both of those shortly. But the second direction is to depend on the Holy Spirit as we are putting away sin. The third direction is…God’s activity doesn’t stop with our conversion. His plan wasn’t just to get us to believe in him and then leave the rest up to us and our strength. No he stays with us and continues to transform us into his likeness.
3. Recognize your responsibility.
That is to say, sin isn’t going to go away on its own. It requires our action. Paul says Put to death what is earthly in you and you must put them all away. Those are active verbs. They involve having the resolve to do something and then doing it. Just as nobody takes out the garbage accidentally without meaning to, nobody puts to death sin accidentally without meaning to. It takes intentionality, it takes practical steps that are planned and carried out.
It’s going to involve prayer and meditating on the word of God. And it’s going to cultivating the godly opposite of the sin you are seeking to put away. So if it’s lying, we seek to tell the truth. If it’s coveting, we may give something away instead. If it’s being critical toward others, we plan to encourage. Every time we do those things, relying on the power of the Holy Spirit and assured of the forgiveness of God, we are taking responsibility and taking action in weakening sin. We must recognize our responsibility to do this. Number 4 is…
4. Identify specific sins to address.
It’s not going to be very helpful to just acknowledge our general sinfulness. We can’t put to death general sinfulness. We can only put to death specific sins such as those Paul listed in this passage. Put to death covetousness or impurity or anger or something else.
So we identify a specific area of sin that the Holy Spirit is bringing conviction about, and seek to put that away. Don’t worry about the 300 other things that are wrong with you. If you weaken one sin, you will be weakening all sin in your life because you’re developing a pattern of obedience to God that is going to carry over into other areas. Once you’ve identified a specific sin to work on, then the fifth direction is to…
5. Memorize and apply appropriate Scriptures.
Scripture that we memorize is used by the Holy Spirit in times of temptation to help us resist sin, and it shows us the way of righteousness, the way God wants us to go. So if what you struggle with is sinful anger, you might memorize James 1:19-20, which says,
“let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.”
We meditate on that and it helps us see and hate the sinfulness of our own anger. The anger of man doesn’t achieve or accomplish God’s righteousness. If we speak angry words to another person in an attempt to get them to change, it doesn’t work, it doesn’t lead them to godliness.
Memorizing appropriate verses helps us to see the sinfulness of sin and shows us the godly way to go. The sixth direction flows directly from that, which is to…
6. Cultivate the practice of prayer.
Pray about the specific sin you are working on. This is where memorizing an appropriate verse helps because if we know what the word says about that sin, we know how to pray according to God’s will about it.
So with the example of anger, we can pray according to James 1:19-20, “Lord, you know my temptation to be quick to anger. Make me slow to speak when I’m tempted that way. And make me see that my sinful anger doesn’t bring about your righteousness or bring you glory. Thank you for forgiving me my sin and treating me better than I deserve. Help me to do the same with others.”
We cultivate the practice of prayer, which is depending on the Holy Spirit for change, and he will work through that to change us. And the final direction is to…
7. Involve other believers with you.
It’s been said that sanctification is a community project. It’s not something that God intends for us to pursue alone. That’s why he’s called us to be part of a church.
Hebrews 3:13 says, exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
The problem with sin is that it deceives us into thinking it’s not there. We don’t always see or feel conviction about our own anger or impurity or covetousness, etc. And even when we do, we need others exhort and encourage and pray about it with us to help us not to become hardened in our sin, but to make progress. That’s one of the reasons we get together in small groups during Bible Studies and have monthly men’s and women’s meetings, it’s to do that very thing. More could be said, but we’ll have to stop there.
CONCLUSION
The Lord calls us to put to death sin in our lives. But the way to do it is not by willpower or relying on rules and regulations. There is a place for rules, God gives us rules. But rules can only show us the way to go, they don’t give us the power to go there. The power to put to death sin and serve God comes from knowing Christ and all that is true for us in Christ. That will bring about change in our life.
There is a saying attributed to John Berridge who lived in the 1700’s. It sums up the power for change. “Run John run, the law commands, but gives me neither feet nor hands. Yet better news the gospel brings; it bids me fly and gives me wings.”
The gospel of salvation in Christ and life in Christ is what motivates and enables us to fly, to put to death sin and pursue obedience. May we do that in the power of the Holy Spirit, and so increasingly experience the ongoing miracle of being renewed in the image of our Creator.
PRAY
