“Old Clothes, New Clothes”
Colossians 3:8-17
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego recently came out with a study showing that, supposedly, people and their dogs often look alike.
In the study, a panel of judges was able to match 16 out of 25 pure bread dogs with their owners.
The reason for this, researchers say, is because dog owners tend to choose a pet that bears their resemblance in some way.
The study identified similarities between pets and people such as physical characteristics or personality traits or both.
According to the study, happy, outgoing, and affectionate dogs tend to be owned by warm and friendly people.
Grumpy, snarly, pop-eyed, pug-nosed pooches tend to…well you get the idea.
When the Chicago Sun-Times ran this story, they included pictures of several people and their dogs.
It’s said that Actress Fran Drescher’s dog, Chester, has a similar hair-do as its owner.
And a picture of J. Edgar Hoover with his boxer were eerily similar.
In any case, in our Scripture Lesson for this morning, the Apostle Paul is writing to a new church—a group of Christians.
He’s writing to folks who have accepted Christ as Lord and Savior—people who are already saved.
And he instructs them to “Take off the old human nature with its practices and put on the new nature, which is renewed in knowledge by conforming to the image of the one who created it.”
In other words, those of us who have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are kind of caught in something we could refer to as an “already” and a “not yet.”
In Colossians Chapter 2 Paul tells this congregation, “You were buried with [Christ] and raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead,” and “you died with Christ to the way the world thinks and acts….”
But, obviously, even though we have died with Christ, and our lives are now hidden in Him, the journey is not yet over—it has just begun.
The “already” is where we are now in Christ—the “not yet” is where we will someday be…
…when Christ comes again, and there is a new heaven and a new earth; a completely transformed reality.
In the meantime, we are to learn be conformed more and more into the image of our Owner, the One Who has purchased us with His Blood!!!
Way back in Genesis 1:27 we are told that “God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them.”
But of course, that image has been blurred and distorted due to sin.
We have a flawed relationship with our Creator, but through Christ we are being restored in the image of the Creator which makes it possible to live life as it was originally intended to be lived.
Imagine that, you and I, all of us were created in “God’s own…divine image”!!!
And that image is being restored through our daily walk with God as we “take off the old human nature,” like an old filthy rotten set of clothes and “put on the new nature” which is like being dressed in a new wardrobe where everything is custom made by our Creator, with God’s label on it.
As Eugene Peterson’s The Message puts it: “for this new life of love, dress in the clothes God has picked out for you.”
What could be more exciting?
And as we see in our Scripture Lesson, Paul writes that in the image of God which is the focus of our renewal, “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all things in all people.”
That means that the old way of categorizing people into classes and labeling people is being thrown out the window!!!
When this letter was written, Jews divided humanity into the categories of Jews and Greeks or Gentiles.
The Greeks divided people into Greeks and barbarians.
The barbarians were people who didn’t speak Greek.
And if you didn’t speak Greek you were considered to be uncultured and uncivilized.
And then there were the Scythians.
The Scythian tribes that lived around the Black Sea were thought to be the lowest kind of barbarian…
…they were considered to be just a “little better than wild beasts.”
What kind of categorizations of human beings are there today?
If Paul were writing this letter to us in 2012, what kinds of classifications would he mention?
What kind of categories?
Here, it is made clear, that categorizing and putting one group of people over and above another is sin—it is something that is done by the “old nature,” the part of our humanity that has lost its way…
…the part of our humanity or nature which we are called to “take off” like an old, raggedy, filthy, good for nothing set of clothing!!!
In his book, All Over but the Shoutin, Rick Bragg shares the following story:
“Once when I was little, I watched one of the birds attack its own reflection in the side mirror of a truck.
It hurled its body again and again against that unyielding image, until it pecked a crack in the glass, until the whole mirror was smeared with blood. It was as if the bird hated what it saw there, and discovered too late that all it was seeing was itself.”
And when we classify and categorize other human beings…
…when we dislike some folks…
…is this not a form of self-hatred?
Are we not all born with the old nature, and reborn into the new nature?
And as Jesus says, “In this image there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all things in all people.”
Our relationship to Christ is all that matters.
Our relationship with Christ transcends these and all categories!!!
Jesus permeates and pervades the new humanity.
Jesus is our new set of clothing!!!
And what does this new set of clothing look like, or with what is it made?
We are told that as “holy and loved” people we are to “put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”
We are to “be tolerant with each other and…” we are to “forgive each other.”
Paul writes, “As the Lord forgave you, so also forgive each other.”
“And over all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.”
That’s the kind of world I want to live in.
Those are the kind of people I want to be surrounded by.
How about you?
And that is the way I want to be!!!
So how does it happen?
Again, in verse 10 Paul instructs us to “Take off the old human nature with its practices and put on the new nature, which is renewed in knowledge by conforming to the image of the one who created it.”
Notice that we are to be “renewed in knowledge.”
As Christians, we should expect to experience a constant development our knowledge of God, which will enable us to live lives that coincide with the New Creation which God is molding.
In Romans 12:2, Paul writes, “Don’t be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you can figure out what God’s will is—what is good and pleasing and mature.”
The renewing of our minds occurs as we learn more and more how to follow Jesus Christ.
And the way to learn how to follow Christ is to follow Him.
What do I mean by that?
I mean try and follow Jesus.
And when we do this, we will trip up and make all kinds of mistakes.
But if we persevere, we will learn from our mistakes, and thus learn what God’s good and perfect will is.
As we follow Christ we will learn what it means to love…really love other human beings.
We will find ourselves feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the lonely, the sick and those in prison.
We will find ourselves clothing the naked.
We will find ourselves in a huge vast array of places and in all kinds of situations that we never thought nor imagined we would ever be.
People sometimes suggest that living a Christian life is guided not by thinking things through for ourselves, but by trying to keep a bunch of rules and regulations.
But this isn’t Paul’s definition of Christian living.
At the center of genuine Christianity are minds that are awake, alert, and not content to take a few guidelines, unthinkingly, off a coat hanger or out of a clothes hamper to put on.
Instead, Christians are to allow their minds to be transformed and engaged so that we can understand why our lives are meant to be lived one way rather than another way.
And we are to not only learn the “why” but the “how.”
And as Paul writes in Philippians, “God is the one who enables you to both want and to actually live out his good purposes.”
So, if you are having a hard time of it, even though you are trying to follow Christ, even though you are putting on the new set of clothing only to find that you forgot to take off the old…
…don’t be discouraged, but be glad!!!
You are part of God’s New Creation!!!
You are on the journey.
You are in the dressing room of God’s Kingdom and God isn’t finished with you yet!!!
Have you ever seriously tried to forgive someone who has wronged you?
Have you ever seriously tried to let Christ’s peace, Christ’s Word, Christ’s name be the reality around which you order your life?
If you have, you’ll know it is not easy.
It takes serious prayer and study.
And it also takes perseverance and fortitude as we willingly die to self and live for God and neighbor.
Christian behavior, in other words, makes us more human.
And within the community of faith, our shared Christian faith and journey toward the New Creation should bring honesty with one another, and create a bond of shared experience, empathy, forgiveness and love.
For we are all on the same mission and “Christ is all things in all” of us.
I don’t know if that study showing that people and their dogs often look alike has any merit.
A colleague who pointed this article out to me wrote, “A quick evaluation of my border collie brought mixed results.
She’s good looking, obedient, and in shape.
This momentarily boosted my self-esteem, but there were other troubling signs.
It wasn’t the hairiness, shameless begging, or doggie odors that bothered me.
It was the realization that my dog tends to be grumpy and snarly when what she’s told to do doesn’t match what she wants to do.”
But he adds, “Then I remembered that technically, the dog still belongs to my daughter.”
In any event, this story and especially our Scripture passage for this morning should make us wonder something else.
If we stood in a group of people would a panel of judges be able to match us up with Jesus as our Owner?
I pray they would.
Amen.
