Putting Off Sin, Putting On Christ

In Colossians 3, Paul exhorts us to put off wrath, malice, slander, lying, and sexual sin. We are not delivered from these things simply by saying, Oh God, I've sinned.

Please forgive me. We're only delivered from these things when we admit what they really are. In your battle with the flesh, where do you find encouragement when the going gets tough?

When all seems lost? This week on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson is going to focus on our union with Christ. It's the Apostle Paul's favorite phrase to describe the unbreakable bond that we have with our Savior.

And this week, Dr. Ferguson will provide us with practical ways to live in a way that truly is in Christ. As we make our way along in this great theme that we've found, especially in the teaching of the Apostle Paul, we had arrived, you may remember, at Colossians chapter 3. And I said this was one of the great passages in the New Testament, perhaps the most panoramic vision of union with Christ anywhere to be found in the New Testament. Because whereas in other passages, Paul has spoken about the fact that we're united to Christ in His death and burial and resurrection, here in chapter 3, he expands on that.

We are united to Christ, yes, in His resurrection, but also in His ascension, in His heavenly session. And then that amazingly glorious statement he makes that when Christ appears, we are so united with Him that we will appear with Him in glory. Remember, we were emphasizing that there is a sense in which our Savior has said to His Father, with His Father's total agreement, I am not going back unless they are with me. Christ, as the fathers used to say, considers Himself incomplete now without His people. And when we begin to understand that, when we see our new identity in Jesus Christ, Paul has set the foundation for some very powerful imperatives. We reflected before that there is a tendency, I think perhaps particularly a tendency today to think that when you preach the grace of God in the gospel, then you soft-pedal the exhortations. But Paul is the very reverse because he believes that this foundation gives him a place on which he can leverage the most powerful imperatives. He can command holiness of the highest order. And that's what we find here as we think about union with Christ in Colossians chapter 3. He has laid a massive foundation, and now we must be ready for the imperatives. And you'll notice that verses 5 through verse 17 fall into two sections.

They fall very neatly into two sections. The first deals with what we might call mortification. So, verse 5, because you understand who you are, responsibility number one is to put certain lifestyle features to death, what the older writers called mortification. And he deals with that from verse 5 through verse 11. And then from verse 12 through to the end of verse 17, he deals with what we might call adorning.

There needs to be a mortification, a putting off, and there needs to be an adorning, a putting on. Some scholars have thought that perhaps he's thinking about the early rituals of baptism, how someone would come to their baptism and they would take off their clothes and they would take off the old clothing. And then as they went through the liturgy of baptism, a new robe would be placed on them as a kind of symbolism of what it meant to be a Christian, that you're united to Christ, that you've died with Christ, that you've been raised with Christ. Now, I hope we may be able to return to this in a few minutes' time, but it is absolutely essential we understand these two aspects of our Christian living belong together. Sometimes we meet Christians who realize that because they're united to Christ, they need to put sin to death.

And in the long term, they fail because in a sense, they don't read to the end of the passage. Putting sin to death is not sanctification. Putting sin to death in order that you may be adorned with the graces of the Lord Jesus, that's sanctification.

Thomas Chalmers, whose name some of you will recognize, a great nineteenth-century Scotsman, preached a wonderful sermon entitled, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. And one of the points that he was making was simply this, we can do all in our power to try to mortify sin, but unless there is the expulsion of the sinful characteristics by their replacement with the fruit of the Holy Spirit, we will inevitably fail. Remember the parable Jesus told about the house swept clean of the demons?

What happens to a house unoccupied, the demons just come back in greater number? There needs to be a new furnishing of the Christian life. So, this is the rhythm that we need to grasp. If you played golf, you might grasp this. You take your stance, this would be true of baseball as well, wouldn't it? You have to have the proper stance, well-grounded, so we stand in our union with Christ. And then there is the backswing, and we put off, and then there is the downswing or the strike.

And these three things all belong together. If a golfer or a baseball star does not have a good grounding, you watch what they do with their feet. They don't just stand casually. If they're going to hit well, they need to be well-grounded, and they need this rhythm and timing. And it seems timing is everything. In baseball, it's split-second timing. Mercifully, in golf, the ball stands still. But timing is almost everything. Rhythm is almost everything.

You can't snatch at it or you'll fail. And so, Paul is here building up this marvelous picture of the Christian life in which we develop this rhythm so that we are conscious more and more, that we're united to the Lord Jesus. And therefore, the things that no longer fit us, the old clothes don't fit us the way they used to. But these new clothes, now they fit us. And even if you couldn't care for either golf or for baseball, you probably understand that. When somebody says, why are you wearing that?

It doesn't suit you. You need to wear this. So this is the wonderful picture that he gives us. So let's spend a few minutes, and we'll have to spend only a few minutes looking at verses 5 through 11. First of all, we are standing in our union with Christ. Now, says Paul, there are certain things you need to put to death, you need to put off.

And you'll notice they belong to concentric circles. He begins with our private life, and he deals with the misfunction or sinful use of sexual relations, for example. Put to death what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry. He's dealing with our secret, inward, private or relatively private life. And he's saying, if you're a Christian, there are behavior patterns that no longer fit. And in union with Christ, you have been given the power to put these off. Actually, there's an old adage, isn't there, that the worst is always the corruption of the best.

And that, I think, is why Satan aims his arrows in this area. What are the best things God has given to us? He's given us life. He's made us as the image of God.

What's the next thing He does? He makes us as the image of God male and female. He makes us for family life. So, what do we see when Satan makes his inroads into the lives of people to destroy them, the things that horrify us when we see them happening to fellow believers? It's the destruction of the best, of our personal purity in relation to others, of our family life, the relationship between husband and wife, and parents and children, and children and parents. And Paul is saying, we need to understand that all of these must be presented as holy to the Lord, and so we must put off everything that would distort these, the best of our Lord's blessings. Remember the passage that I mentioned earlier on in our studies where Paul says to the Corinthians, some of you are going to prostitutes, and it's not dawning on you that if you really are a believer and you're united to Christ, you're really saying to Jesus, come on into the brothel.

That very thought should make you say, never again will this happen. So here, the knowledge of our union with Christ strengthens our resolve to put sin away when it engages us in our private life. But then you'll notice in verse 8, he speaks about our more public life.

Now you must put them all away. Now, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Now he's talking about our relationships with one another in our public life. And of course, he's indicating that what comes out of the mouth actually begins in the heart. And he's saying, for someone whose heart is joined to the Lord Jesus, this kind of language is altogether inappropriate. And you know, the language he uses here, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth, it has some very sophisticated forms.

Like one of the commentators suggests, we translate this as irritation, getting irritated. Now you and I, when we get irritated, we're always people who have righteous anger, the kind of people who don't suffer fools gladly. But Paul says, Jesus suffered fools, and He did it gladly.

He died for fools. So that, yeah, no wrath comes out of my mouth, malice, slander, you can slander someone very, very sophisticatedly. Someone's name is mentioned.

This always alarms me. Someone's name is mentioned. In the world I live in, it's often somebody who's a preacher, and the first thing that is said about them is negative, and it brings them down.

It's often a mark of jealousy, but it brings them down. It's not Jesus-like. That's what Paul is saying here. And then he goes on to speak about putting away sin in our fellowship life. So you see the circles, our private life, our inner personal life, then our public life in relationship to others, and then our fellowship life.

You'll notice he uses the expression, one another. So do not lie to one another, which includes pretending to be something that we're not. It's not just words coming out of our mouths. This has got to do with our being. Do not lie to one another because you have put off the old self with its practices. It's the same language as we saw in Romans chapter 6. You don't belong to the old order of Adam now. You have put that off. So don't wear in your life the lifestyle of the old Adam, and you are being renewed in the knowledge of the God who has created you and in His image where there is neither Greek or Jew, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all.

Now, this is an amazing thing he's saying. We've been talking about the fact that we are united to Christ as individuals, but now he's saying if you're united to Christ when you're among your fellow believers, you need to think of them as united to Christ. You need to think of yourself as belonging to a fellowship where Christ is everything, but not only is He everything, He is in everyone. Think of the person in your church if there is such a person. You see them and you have an instinct almost physically to turn away.

You do not want to spend time with them. There are such people in most churches. What would happen if your thought was, here is someone that the Lord of glory is unashamed to indwell, and I need to respond to them in those terms?

Do you think that would transform some of the most difficult relationships that there are in churches? And how does it do it? It does it because we recognize that we belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. I remember reading when I was a youngster this little article in the daily newspaper in Scotland about a murder trial in London, and it stuck with me since I was 15 or 16. It took place in a Chinese restaurant, and amazingly the chief prosecution witness was a Chinese waiter, and he had been within feet of the murder. So, the prosecuting counsel pointed to exhibit A and said, is this the knife? Yes, that looks like the knife, said the Chinese waiter witness. And he said, do you see the person who wielded the knife to kill the person who was sitting near to where you were standing? Do you recognize him and see him in the court? The man was standing in the dock, and the Chinese waiter said, I'm sorry, sir, I don't. So, the prosecuting counsel went, oh, he's there.

I'm sorry, sir. Well, why don't you recognize him? Do you know what the Chinese waiter said? I don't recognize him because all you Englishmen look alike to me.

Oh, how odd, except isn't it true that you might say the same thing if you landed in China? These people look very…now, why does that happen when they are as different from each other as we are? Because what our eyes are drawn to is the similarities, and it's only when we look into the similarities that we begin to see that there are differences. And actually, that's what the gospel does to us. We are as diverse as any community you are likely to find, but what do we see if we are in Christ? What are our eyes drawn to?

Well, we're drawn to what we have in common, that we belong to the same family. So, you see, all the while that Paul is giving us these rigorous imperatives, we see that undergirding each and every one of them is this notion that as Christ's people we are united to Him. And that's why the lifestyle we lead is a lifestyle that's constantly putting behind us the old order, the worldly order, in order to establish an order that is faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, why does Paul not tell us how to do this? I often for my own amusement say, you know, we read the New Testament, we read what Paul tells us to do, and then we go to the local Christian bookstore or to Amazon or to a conference so that somebody will tell us how to do it. And there are people who will tell us how to do it. They'll say, there are six things you need to do, four things you need to do. I remember as a young girl, my daughter is saying to me, Dad, I can teach you to preach in such a way that people will take notes in your preaching. I said, I'm not sure I want people to take notes in my preaching. She said, but Dad, I can teach you how to do this. And because I love my daughter, I said, well, how do I do it? She said, I've noticed every time you say there are three things you need to do or four things you need to know, people are scratching around looking for a piece of paper and a pen because if you can tell them the three things they need to do, they have cracked it.

They've conquered it. Does Paul not do that? Well, it doesn't look as though he does it. But often if you keep your head down in the passage, you will discover that in the very process of exhorting us to do this, he tells us how to do it. For example, he tells us to admit our sin for what it really is. That's why he names things in this passage that elsewhere he says there are things that shouldn't be mentioned among us. And he breaks his own rule because we are not delivered from these things simply by saying, Oh God, I've sinned.

Please forgive me. We're only delivered from these things when we admit what they really are. And when we admit what they really are in the presence of God, we have already engaged in breaking the stranglehold that they want to have on us. He gives us another hint here in verse 6. He says, Look, these are the things that bring about the wrath of God on sin.

So you see what he's saying, you know? Do you have a tendency to say, It's okay, I'm a Christian? He says, It's not okay, you're a Christian. What this sin deserves is the wrath of God. That's what Jesus experienced on the cross. Do you want to go on trampling the blood of Christ underfoot? See, so when you understand what he's saying, then you begin to appreciate the power of what he is saying.

So there needs to be a putting off, and then there needs to be a putting on. And in the verses that follow, he tells us what we put on as the chosen ones of God. There's a long list of things there, but they can be summarized really in two words, Christ-likeness. You remember Augustine's text, Tolly, Leggae? You know those words, hearing the child's voice, saying, Tolly, Leggae, pick up the book and read it. And he picked up the New Testament that was there on the table.

You remember the words he read? Romans 13, 14, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its loss. It's actually a summary of Colossians 3, 1 through 17, isn't it?

This is what we are to do. This is why we set our affections above on the Lord Jesus because what happens when the Spirit enables us to do that is, as Paul says to the Corinthians, as we gaze upon the Lord Jesus through what we know of Him in His Word, the Spirit begins to transform us into His likeness from one degree of glory to another. And so he's saying, deliberately, consciously, depending on the Spirit, put on Christ-like graces. And you'll notice that they're very modest realities, meekness, patience, compassion, kindness.

I love that. Remember how Augustine says in his Confessions that when he was struggling spiritually and came to Milan because he wanted to be a great orator, that he went to hear the bishop, Ambrose, preach. And he says in a great passage, you know, when I came, I went to hear you preach, not because of your great teaching skills. He was really interested in Ambrose as a model of great rhetoric. And he says, actually, it really wasn't just your great teaching. It was that you were kind to me.

Isn't that interesting? It's almost as though he's saying, great preaching without kindness would never have drawn me. And it's almost as though he's saying, who do you think would have been the best witness to me as a great intellectual?

Well, somebody with powerful intellectual gifts. Well, no, it was his kindness. And when we begin to see that, we begin to see that when we are united to Christ, everything begins to change. And our knowledge of our union with Christ is the engine that drives that change. So once again, this is what it means to be united to Christ.

Well, I hope that reality provides you with a better understanding, indeed a greater appreciation of what Christ accomplished on our behalf. That's Dr. Sinclair Ferguson explaining our union with Christ. I'm glad you've joined us today for Renewing Your Mind.

I'm Lee Webb. Dr. Ferguson will be our teacher for the next couple of days, and I hope you'll make plans to be with us. The series is called Union with Christ, and we'd be happy to send you all 12 messages on two DVDs for your donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. Plus, we'll add the PDF study guide to your learning library online.

That's especially helpful if you're leading a group study. To make your request, simply call us at 800-435-4343 if you prefer you can give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org. The last couple of years have certainly brought changes in our world, but with all of the change, more and more people are accessing Ligonier resources. Last year, through your prayers and monthly financial gifts, Ligonier Ministries reached more than 56 million people around the world. If you are a ministry partner, thank you. We were able to do that because of your generosity, and there's even more work to do because there are nearly 8 billion souls on this planet. Ligonier exists to proclaim, teach, and defend the holiness of God to as many people as possible. So if you're not a ministry partner but you recognize the importance of this mission, would you consider joining me and the thousands of others who are committed to reach even more people this year?

You can sign up online at ligonier.org slash partner. Well, this theme that we've been studying, our union with Christ, permeates practically all of Paul's writings, but the idea didn't originate with him. Actually, it's really important we understand this aspect of the gospel, that we're united to Christ, because he's saying it is the real key to us understanding how we're going to be fruitful in the Christian life. We are united to Christ. That's our relationship. What's the relationship between the branch and the vine? The branch is united to the vine. I hope you'll join us as we continue the series, Union with Christ, tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. you