Killing Sin

When I was nineteen years old, Ragan and I were newly married and at the time my friends and I found ourselves obsessed with getting together on the weekends and playing tackle football. The issue with this was that the longer we played, the more confident we got in our tackling abilities. That is until one of my pastors found out that his newly married disciple was participating in such reckless activities. So, he took it upon himself to find me and to remind me that I was no longer a carefree bachelor, but was a married man who needed to be able to take care of my family. To put it simply, we could say that he wanted to ensure that my identity as a husband was informing the decisions that I made in my day to day life.

Now, that seems simple enough. Obviously marriage is a life changing thing and that’s true enough. However, many of us claim to be Christians, to love Jesus, and say that He is our Lord - yet we often live exactly as we did before He saved us. While God promises us that He will make us more like Jesus in this life, He doesn’t do it by the flip of a switch. Instead, one way He does it is by commanding us to kill our sin by His grace.

If you find yourself here tonight and you’re struggling with the same sins day in and day out, this lesson is for you. Because tonight we will learn 5 truths that equip us in killing our sin.

1. Be Mindful of Your Exalted Lord (vv. 1–2)

“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is…”

In verses 1–2, Paul does the same thing my pastor did with me to the Colossians. He reminds them of their new circumstances. Paul writes, “You’ve been raised with Christ.” Because that’s true, this relationship is going to affect your life. How? Paul continues by reminding us to seek the things above. Let your heart and mind be preoccupied not with worldly things, but with the exalted Lord.

This “resurrection mindset” is not aspirational. It is positional. You have been raised with Christ. He is seated at the right hand of the Father—enthroned, exalted, and reigning. Your life must reflect that. So, upward thinking is not this vague floaty spiritual thinking of angels and clouds. Rather, it is anchored in a concrete person: Jesus Christ, exalted in glory.

So, our heavenly-mindedness isn’t abstract—it is focused. If we are going to kill our sin, we need to set our affections where Christ is. Fix your eyes on the One who conquered death, intercedes as your Great High Priest, and rules as the sovereign King.

This mindset says: “I belong to a risen Christ. Therefore, my thoughts, goals, desires, and affections must align with His majesty.”

In essence, we don’t have to go around moping and saying, “Sin is just the worst, we’ll never win, everything is awful.” No, instead, we are to have our minds focused on the fact that we serve Jesus Christ. And Jesus isn’t dead, Jesus isn’t losing, Jesus isn’t moping around, He’s ruling over everything and that’s whose side you’re on so get to killing sin.

2. Be Mindful of Your Place in Christ (v. 3)

“For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

To live with a resurrection mindset is not only to look up, but also to look back. Here Paul wants us to remember that you died with Christ. You are no longer the old man or woman that you were before Jesus. You are in Him, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

When Paul says you are “hidden,” he is pulling on some rich biblical imagery. Before Christ, men tried to hide from God’s presence. Remember, in the Garden Adam and Eve tried to hide, in Isaiah 6, Isaiah wanted to hide. In the NT, Peter tried to hide. To put it plainly, when we are confronted with our sinfulness and God’s holiness, we want to hide, but there’s no hiding from God. But now, through Christ, we are hidden in God’s presence. Why? Because Jesus, became sin and was exposed to the wrath of God for us. And because of that, we are covered by the cleft of the rock—Christ Himself.

To be “hidden” is to be secure. It's to know that your life is enveloped in Christ’s, protected by His righteousness, concealed from condemnation. And this changes everything about how you live. You are not your own. You have died with Christ and have been raised to live for Him.

Whenever you feel like you’ve lost it. When you feel like you’re exhausted from losing the same fight with sin, remember that your spiritual address has changed. You live at the intersection of grace and glory and are hidden in Christ. That means sin no longer gets to define you. Guilt no longer controls you. You are not fighting for identity; you’re living from it.

Because that’s true, you can find strength in His grace to kill the sin in your life.

3. Be Mindful of Your Future Reality (v. 4)

“When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.”

Right now, the world may not see the fullness of who you are. You might not even see it clearly yourself. But a day is coming when Christ will appear—and in that moment, your hidden life will be revealed in radiant glory.

C.S. Lewis once said, “The dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship...”

This truth fuels the Christian’s endurance. When the enemy whispers, “You’ll never change,” or “You’ll never make it,” we look ahead. Christ is our life, and He is coming. And when He comes, we shall appear with Him in glory. In 1 John, John says that those who have this hope purify themselves now. In essence, I know what I am in Christ, and I know what I will be when I see Him on the last day, and because that’s true, I’m not going to let sin define my life now.

For the Christian, our best days are always eternally ahead of us. The hope of glorification is not a vague encouragement, it’s a concrete promise. One day, the same Christ who saved you and sanctifies you will glorify you. And on that day, you’ll shine, not with your own brilliance, but as a mirror of His. You will be like the moon reflecting the sun—radiating the beauty and holiness of Christ forever.

4. Be Mindful of How God Hates Sin and Saved You From It (vv. 5-8).

Now, this point echoes what we covered in point two, but it’s important to get. I believe that one of the reasons we don’t hate our sin like we should is because we don’t realize the wickedness of it. But we need to come to see sin as God sees it and in verse 6, we learn that He sees it as something so atrocious, that He will pour His wrath out on it. One Puritan said that if we came to see our sin rightly, we would understand that if it got its way, it would ungod, God. Our, to put it plainly, when we willingly sin against God, we’re staring Him in the face and make it clear that we are the gods around here.

Because that’s true, of course God should judge sin! But He provided a way of escape for us in His Son and because we’ve been saved, we should seek to kill off the sin in our lives. One thing that might be helpful for us to ask when we look at sin in our life is, “Do I view this sin as the thing that nailed the Son of God to the cross for me?” When we begin to view sin as something that evil, we will begin to hate it like God does.

5. Be Mindful of God’s Word (vv. 9-11).

In verse 9, Paul is making an application of this text and making it clear that this means we shouldn’t be lying to people. As he builds on that, he wants us to know that the way we grow in godliness is by having our minds renewed with the knowledge of Christ who made us new in Himself. Last Wednesday someone asked me my thoughts on those who prioritize prayer over bible reading and I answered that they’re both equally important, but that our prayers are based on what we learn from the Bible and that truth applies here.

When we spend time in the word, we learn of our exalted Lord. We learn of our place in Jesus. We learn of our future hope. We learn how God hates sin. Because this is true, it is in God’s word that we find our mind renewed and our souls strengthened in godliness. So, if we are serious about going to war against our sin, and all Christians should be, then we need to see to it that our minds are being filled with the word of God instead of being informed by the things of the world.