A New Suit of Clothes (Part 1)

The last time we visited the book of Colossians, was on Nov. 24

At that time we looked at Chapter 2 verses 16-23

And I tried to challenge us with this question:

Do I qualify?

Do I qualify to be a member of the family of God

Do I qualify to be one of His Chosen People

I think that a key part of how God has created us is to be part of a community

We want to know that we are accepted by someone, or by a group of people

And, unfortunately, when it comes to our churches and religious communities, this can be a very tricky and difficult question

What, really, do I have to do in order to be accepted?

What, really, do I have to do in order to be qualified to be a part of this community?

And so we looked at chapter 2 and these are the questions that Paul is dealing with

Because they were questions that the Colossian church was dealing with

And these are questions that most of us have had to deal with at some point or another

And I’m not going to go over the whole sermon again, but you can skim over those verses in Colossians 2 again

And you can go back and listen to that sermon on Youtube if you would like

But, very quickly, some of the things that were being used to disqualify people were things like:

Asceticism—how strictly you live

Religious beliefs and practices

Visions

Things you eat, things you touch

And Paul says about these things:

Don’t let anyone judge you! Based on these things!

Don’t let anyone disqualify you!

Don’t let anyone deceive you (verse 4)

saying that these are the things that you have to do in order to be a member of the people of God

And I challenged us to think about our own practices

And think seriously about whether or not they have been used to disqualify people from being a part of the body of Christ

Now, I don’t know what you heard me saying on that Sunday

I did have short conversations with a few people

But if you heard me saying that we just need to throw everything out and that nothing matters

Or that the only thing that matters is “just me and Jesus”

I can do whatever I want, just as long as it’s me and Jesus

Nothing could be farther from the truth!!

There may be Believers and churches today that sort of live like they believe this

But this is clearly not what is taught by the Scriptures.

The things that you handle and taste and touch and your religious garb

Those things are not the most important things. They should not be used to disqualify people

But, clearly, there are things that are extremely important

And there are things which are clear markers, clear indicators of whether or not a person does belong to the people of God

They should be used to judge whether or not a person really does belong

What really is important is, “Have you been clothed with Christ?”

Has He given you a new suit of clothes?

And that is what Paul through the Holy Spirit turns our attention to next

English Standard Version Chapter 3

3 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is 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 what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Are you raised with Christ?

Paul does not presume this to be the case in your life

just because someone dresses right or sits in church and does all the right things, does not mean that this person has been raised with Christ, does it?

He says, IF THEN

A number of translations translate this word “Since”

But most of the translations that I read say, “IF you have been raised

IF, then you have been raised with Christ

Paul does not presume this to be the case in your life

Clearly, I believe, that he is drawing on the thoughts in the previous chapter and saying

Look, if you are still fighting about things like this and disqualifying people over things like this, then there is some doubt about whether or not you have been truly raised with Christ

But then we get into chapter 3 and he says, “if you have been raised with Christ, then here is going to be the evidence of that

And BTW, it’s worth pointing out that we don’t raise ourselves

He says, “If you have been raised with Christ”—implies that there is a power acting on us to raise us.

Because, after all, we are dead. We are helpless. We can’t make ourselves rise (verse 3 says taht we are dead)

But, if we have been raised up, then

it’s going to change how you live

it’s going to change how you think

Because, what does it mean to be raised with Christ?

Well according to Romans 6:4, it means that you receive a new life.

“4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

This is not a life that you try to add on to your old life. It’s not a way of thinking and practicing that you try to add to your old way of thinking and practicing

It’s not a life that you invent by doing all the right things

NO! It’s a new life. It’s a new way of thinking and living

So, if indeed you have been raised with Christ, that is a wonderful thing

However, it’s not the time to sit back and just hope that Christ somehow works some magic in your life

Rather, there are four very intentional and active things that we need to focus on doing:

Seek the things that are above vs. 1

Set our minds on things that are above vs. 2

Put to death what is earthly vs. 5

Put on new clothes vs. 12

Seek the things that are above

It’s probably safe to say that most of us at some point in our lives have lost or misplaced something that is valuable or important to us

When that happens, what do you do?

Well, you look for it, don’t you? You SEEK

Your life changes. Your priorities change. You stop what ever you are doing and you go into action, looking for that thing that you lost

And even when you are lying in bed, or often when you are doing something else, your mind often is in gear trying to imagine where you put that thing

Just soon after we got our white van, we misplaced one of the two key fobs that it came with

We still haven’t found it—we’ve been driving around the last 9 years with one key fob

But we can all probably identify with the way our lives and our priorities change when we loose something

But you know, we all are seeking for something. Most of us are seeking for various things

And the question that we need to ask ourselves is, “What am I seeking for? What is it that drives me? What does my life revolve around?”

And this takes a real heart check

Am I seeking the things above,

Or am I seeking the things below

Am I seeking for things like:

control—like when something doesn’t go quite my way, or somebody doesn’t do something quite like I think they should, my dander goes up

Reputation—keeping my cards really close to myself, and living in fear that I’m going to be made to look foolish in front of people

Money—seeking to make myself financially comfortable

seeking pleasure

These are all things that we as humans spend our time and energy seeking after

and a lot of problems that we have in church or in our lives in general come because we do spend too much time seeking the wrong things

But Paul says here, “Seek the things that are above

What are those things?

Well, he doesn’t name those thing specifically right here

However, he does say that the things that we are supposed to seek are the things that are where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God

What is the significance of that? This has tremendous significance!

well, the right hand of God is the place of power and authority. It is the place chosen for Jesus to establish His Lordship

It’s also a place of completeness

Hebrews 10:12 “12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,”

He sat down at the right hand of God signifying that the work that He had set out to do was complete and sufficient

There is probably a lot more that we could talk about when it comes to the right hand of God

But, at the very least, I believe that what the Holy Spirit is saying to us is to consider whether or not we are seeking

His Lordship

And His sufficiency

Are we seeking His Lordship? There is so much that we could say about seeking the Lord. there are many references exhorting us to seek the LORD

but do we constantly examine our lives and hearts and submit the areas to His Lordship

Do we live our lives believing in His sufficiency for us?

as opposed to the earthly things that are identified in the previous chapter

Set your mind on things that are above

I think that with this statement Paul is sort of just restating what he has already said about seeking the things that are above

But this statement has sort of a different feel about it

When I think of seeking, I think of something that is very active, very involved

But when I think about setting my mind on something, I think of my thoughts and my goals

Like, this past week I set my mind on getting this sermon done. It was a goal that I had and I was working toward that

When Paul instructs us to “set our minds” on things above, he mean simply to think about the things that are above

Let those thoughts be the things that run through your mind.

It seems like this should be something that we naturally do having experienced the new birth

But for some reason it seems to be something that I fight against, for some reason

Maybe we think that if I think about heavenly things too much that people won’t be able to relate to me

If I talk about heavenly things too much, people will think that I’m a religious nut or something.

“He’s so heavenly minded that he’s no earthly good”

And we think, “I’ve got to think about and learn about earthly things so that I can be relevant and talk about the things that other people talk about”

And that’s OK to some degree but then those are the things that we set our minds on

Earthly things are sometimes ALL we think about

or at least the majority of what we think about!

Instead of heavenly things

Thinking about Jesus

Thinking about what it means for Him to be LORD of my life

Thinking about what does He want from me today? How would He like to lead me today? Does He have something different than what I had planned?

Thinking about how wonderful it is that he offered a final sacrifice in my place and then sat down

And how all of that is finished

Thinking about the love that He has for me and how can I pass that love to others

How can I give Him glory today? How can I point the hearts of others toward Him?

I think these are some of the things that Paul is thinking of when he says, “Set your minds, or think about, those things that are above”

You have died. Now put to death earthly things (summary from 3 and 5)

This is an interesting sort of concept

You have died. So now you must put to death some things

How can this be?

Well, of course, when Paul says that we have died, he doesn’t mean that we have physically fallen over and died

Because otherwise he wouldn’t have anybody to read his letter

When he says, “You have died”, he goes on to shed some light on this by saying, “Your life is hidden with Christ in God”.

The word, “Hidden”, can also mean “sealed” or “protected”

In other words, he is saying, you have given up control of your life. You have been separated from your old life

which is a scary thing to do.

Something that you have always controlled and managed and loved, you are giving that up

Taking your hands off of it and releasing control

and that’s scary

Maybe sort of like a mother dropping her kid off at school for the first time

Or mom and dad taking their daughter out to Rosedale and leaving her there and driving all the way back to Iowa.

It’s a scary thing to take your hands off of your life!

But don’t worry! says Paul. Your life is hidden with Christ in God

In other words, yes you release control of your life, that’s true. But you are releasing your life into the hands of someone who

Loves you very much

And who has the power to take better care of you than you do.

When we dropped Alissa off at Rosedale, we knew it was going to be OK because we trusted in the Rosedale staff

to take care of her and we prayed that this experience would add to her life

So, this idea of us dying I think is the picture of us releasing control of our lives into the hands of Jesus

And He is holding, or concealing, our lives

In fact, HE has become my life

And one day, when Christ appears, we are going to be with Him

And maybe it’s like He will give our lives back, but meanwhile, while He was holding our lives, He was adding to our lives

And so when we get our lives back, they will be absolutely full and abundant

And so, we give up our lives to Him

And then we get to work on some things that He wants us to have an active part in

That is, putting to death the earthly things inside of you verse 5

This phrase “put to death” is one Greek word: nekróō

And it only appears 3 times in the NT

Here and in Romans 4:19 and in Hebrews 11:12. Both of those references talk about Abraham dying, being full of years

His life had come to an end and it was time for him to die

this is an interesting picture: We have released our life to Christ

We have died to that old life, are separated from it

And now, there are some thing that also must come to an end!

They cannot continue to be part of your new life

They have aged. They are full of years. And their time has come to die, and so it’s time for you to hasten their death along!

And maybe we will get to those things next time!

We are running short on time this morning. And I don’t want to to hurry through this next section

But as we dismiss and go into our week, consider

Have I been raised with Christ through the power of God?

What are you seeking?

What is it that occupies your mind daily?

Are there things in my life that need to be put to death?