put on Christ

When I was in the 6th grade, I started taekwondo. I was a chubby, shy kid back then and my parents wanted to teach me some discipline so I started training under a 10th degree black belt, which is the highest rank you can get up to. There were photographs of the Grand Master Kwan in the front of the studio and it showed his forehead going through about a foot of concrete. I saw that and said, where do I sign up?

When I first put on the uniform as a white belt, I was inflexible, I was lacking confidence, I was awkward in my kicks. But a few years later, by the time I was 15 and I had my black belt, I had undergone a transformation.

Our studio was big on respect. If you messed up or the tone of your voice was slightly disrespectful, you would be doing 20 knuckle pushups. Whenever a black belt entered the studio, the highest ranking belt would call the entire class to attention and we would bow to him as a class altogether and then each one of us would bow as the black belt made his way to the back to change. As a 15 year old kid, I had people in their 50s and 60s bowing to me because I outranked them.

When I compare how I felt when I first put on the uniform with the time when I put on the uniform a few years as a black belt, there is no comparison. Same uniform, but I was a different person. What made the difference? Many years of practice.

Consider an athlete who puts on the uniform for the first time during a summer practice versus the same athlete who is putting on the uniform the day of the championship game. All of the difficult practices and the games played in between make for two very athletes. Same uniform but the person who puts on the uniform at the beginning of the season is vastly different from the person who puts on the uniform before the championship.

Consider a private who puts on the uniform for the first time during boot camp versus the the private who has graduated from boot camp and is now a soldier. He puts on the same uniform years later before going into battle, but he is a changed person.

Same uniform but two different people because the person has changed during the process. Practice makes perfect. The same applies for the Christian. As a new convert, we put on the Christian uniform. We put on Christ. We put on his qualities of compassion and humility and love, but at first, we feel like imposters because there is an immense gap between the standard that Christ sets and where we are. But like the athlete who has endured many grueling practices and games over the course of a season, the Christian also has closed the gap between Christ and himself over the course of a lifetime.

The soldier puts on the uniform and the uniform symbolizes bravery and courage and honor. But as an 18 year old, pimply faced high school graduate who just entered the army, he is not feeling courageous nor honorable. But by the end of boot camp, the gap has closed a little bit. The Christian, we are ever closing the gap between Christ and ourselves as we put the Christian life into practice and we become more and more like Christ.

Something like compassion doesn’t come naturally. I am much more compassionate today than I was 20 years ago when I first became a Christian. Why? Because I practiced compassion over the years. What about humility? Humility was really hard 20 years ago. It is still hard, but I hope I am more humble today than I was 20 years ago because I have been put into many situations where I had to exercise humility. At first, it felt like an act. The gap was immense because I put on humility knowing full well that I was still proud and arrogant on the inside. But I obeyed. I put humility into practice. Over time, humility became more natural. Christ is like a garment at first, but over time, the garment and who we are underneath become indistinguishable. Because we have become like the garment on the inside, we have become Christ-like.

Here are some applications based on the message.

First, spend some time this week examining your heart and repenting of specific sins. One area is speech. Put away the sins of speech: negativity, bitterness, angry words, gossip, slander.

Second, put on Christ in terms of your speech with other believers.

Col 3
15 And let the peace of the Messiah, to which you were also called in one body, control your hearts. Be thankful.

Be thankful. Use your words to verbalize your thanksgiving to God and others. Be specific.

Col 3
16 Let the message about the Messiah dwell richly among you, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, and singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with gratitude in your hearts to God.

Col 3:16 speaks of admonishing others. I think this verse teaches us an important lesson about our speech and the attitude and heart behind our speech. You can see someone in sin or doing something wrong and you can say the right words, but in the wrong way. This verse needs to be read in context. We are to admonish others. We are to use our mouth to speak and correct sin where there is sin.

But how are we to admonish others? Col 3:12 – we are to admonish with a spirit of heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Col 3:13 – we are to admonish with a heart that accepts and forgives, even those who have a complaint against us. Col 3:14 – we are to admonish with a spirit of love because we don’t want to lose the brother or sister we are admonishing, but we want to maintain unity. Col 3:15-17 – when we admonish, we do so in a spirit of peace and thanksgiving. Think of a person who is constantly singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with gratitude in their hearts and consider how that person would admonish you.

In parenting, there is a lot of admonishing of children, and I know as a parent when I am admonishing out of impatience and annoyance and when I am admonishing out of genuine love and patience.

Third, put on Christ in terms of your speech with non-believers.

Col 4
2 Devote yourselves to prayer; stay alert in it with thanksgiving. 3 At the same time, pray also for us that God may open a door to us for the message, to speak the • mystery of the • Messiah , for which I am in prison, 4 so that I may reveal it as I am required to speak. 5 Act wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. 6 Your speech should always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.

The second set of sins is a little more subtle. Verse 8 – anger, wrath, malice, slander, filthy language. Verse 9 – lying. I meet a lot of so-called Christians who are angry, they are wrathful, they have malice in their hearts, they wish harm and ill-will toward another person, they are bitter, they harbor unforgiveness. Their hearts are like cauldrons of sin. They are simmering with anger deep down inside. They can appear nice on the surface most of the time. But if you put them in the wrong set of circumstances, the anger and rage inside boils and bubbles over in the form of slander. They tear down a parent or sibling or a former best friend who betrayed them or another brother or sister in Christ through slanderous words or gossip. Same with filthy language or lying. How do you know if someone has anger or malice or filth in their heart? You examine their speech. Out of the overflow of our hearts, our mouths speak. Through the words that come out of their mouth, you get a window into our hearts. The words reveal the heart.

In the context of these two sets of sins, twice, Paul talks about repentance. Verse 5 – therefore put to death. And verse 8 – put away. The phrase “put to death” can be translated as stop completely. Don’t do it anymore.

Verse 6-7 are critical. You got to get this.

Col 3
6 Because of these, God’s wrath comes on the disobedient, 7 and you once • walked in these things when you were living in them.

For the Christian, these sins of sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, greed, anger, wrath, malice, slander, filthy language, lying, these should be past tense. You once walked in these things. Past tense. You used to walk in these things before you were saved. Before you were a Christian, you had no choice but to walk in these things. You were enslaved to sin. Satan was you master. Greed was your master. You were a prisoner of sin. Even if you wanted to stop, you couldn’t.

But brothers and sisters, if you are saved and you are still living this way, then either, your salvation is questionable, OR, you are being disobedient. The only way you can live an earthbound, fleshly life continuously is because either you think you’re saved but you’re not, or, you are being disobedient.

The difference between a victorious Christian and a defeated Christian can be summed up in one word. Obedience. A victorious Christian obeys God and a defeated Christian doesn’t.

If you are a Christian who obeys God, you will follow these 2 steps. First, you will put off your old, sinful nature and second, you will put on the new nature.

Col 3
9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self.

In verse 8, when it says to “put away” or in verse 9, when it says you have “puff off the old self with its practices” and in verse 10, when it says “put on the new self,” there is a connotation of clothing. You put away or take off clothing. Or you put on clothing.

The more I think about it, this imagery of putting off and putting on clothing is such a good imagery for the Christian life. Jesus gave us a visual object lesson to illustrate this spiritual principle of putting off the old nature and putting on the new nature when he raised Lazarus from the dead.

John 11:38-44 [READ]

This is a physical salvation, a raising of a dead man to life, but it gives us a great picture of what happens to every believer spiritually. Lazarus was literally mummified, bound by linen strips to the point that I’m sure it was very difficult for Lazarus to move. The word “bound” here can refer to being imprisoned, or to be in chains. This is a physical binding, but sin does the same thing to our spirits. We are bound, in chains, imprisoned on the inside due to sin.

So when Jesus tells the crowd to “loose him” by taking off his grave clothes, he is telling them to put away, to untie, to loosen, to unbind. Isn’t this what happens internally when you and I are saved? Jesus sets us free from the prison of our sin. The prison doors fling open. The chains fall off. We are free.

If our sinful nature is like old clothing that needs to be put off, what are we to put on instead? Simple – Christ.

Gal 3
27 For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ like a garment.

Christ is like a garment we put on. I’m not sure if you ever thought of Christian life in this way.

Both putting off the old and putting on the new are important. What happens if you stop at putting off the old? What if you stop at repenting? This is not Christianity. This is self-improvement. Your goal cannot be, how can I be less lustful and less angry? You make adjustments. You get accountability and over time, you overcome these sins. Someone who is highly disciplined and has loving support around him can make a lot of surface level, behavioral change. This is self-improvement, not Christianity.

What if you put on the new nature, what if you put on Christ without dealing with the old nature? That would be as ridiculous as Lazarus walking out of the tomb and refusing to take off the linen cloths. The grave clothes underneath and the linen layer on top of it must have smelled terribly after the body was decomposing for 4 days. And it restricted his mobility. He was literally bound. Why wouldn’t Lazarus want to remove the linen and the grave clothes? Of course, he wouldn’t resist people ripping off the linen and the old clothes.

Putting away the old and putting on the new. Both are necessary. You can’t mix the old and the new. You can take an old wineskin with a hole in it and patch it up with a piece of new wineskin. It doesn’t work. When new wine is poured into an old wineskin, the wine ferments and expands and because the old wineskin has lost its elasticity, it bursts. You can’t mix the old nature and the new. Both are important. You have to put off the old sinful nature and put on Christ.

How do we do this? Verse 9 gives us a helpful clue.

Col 3
9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices…

The key word is “practices.” The old self with its practices. There are practices associated with the old self. If you indulge in sexual immorality with things you watch and things you listen to and things you engage in, you are strengthening your sinful nature. You are feeding the beast and sin, like a prowling lion, will devour you. If you nurse your wounds and grudges and you are in the practice of holding onto your anger and you allow it to harden into bitterness, and worst of all, unforgiveness, you are being bound again to elemental forces. You are losing the spiritual battle.

The adage “practice makes perfect” applies rather well to spiritual life. If you engage in practices that strengthen the sinful nature, you will be unspiritual and earthbound. On the other hand, if you engage in practices that strengthen your new nature by putting on Christ every day, then your new nature will be strengthened.

This explains why some Christians are saved but they don’t change. Salvation is not a one-time event. There is a point in time when every believer is saved and Col 1:13 – rescued from the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the Son He loves. But that is only the beginning. The rest of the Christian life is a process of becoming more and more like Christ.

Col 3:12-17 [READ]

The qualities listed here include: heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, accepting one another, forgiving one another, love, peace, and thanksgiving. If you want to define what a Christian is and what a Christian looks like, here’s one list to start with. Jesus embodies all of these qualities. Jesus is compassionate, Jesus is kind, Jesus is humble and gentle, Jesus is patient, Jesus accepts and forgives us, Jesus is loving, Jesus he is more than merely peaceful, He is the Prince of Peace. Jesus is more than a thankful person, he is overflowing with thanksgiving. So when we put on Christ, we are putting these qualities into practice. You are living it out over and over again. And eventually, these things become second nature because Christ has changed you to the point that these qualities simply shine forth from your life without you even thinking about it.

When you put on clothes in the morning, I can kind of do it on autopilot. I spend about 10 seconds picking out a shirt and some pants and then I’m out the door. I don’t have to think about each step. Step one: put left leg in left side of the pants. Step two: put right leg in right side of the pants. Step three: pull up pants to waistline. No, these steps come naturally because you’ve been doing it every day of your life since you were 2 years old.

When an athlete practices the mechanics of shooting a basketball, he practices the motion over and over until his body has been trained to shoot even without thinking about it. In the beginning, he had to concentrate on the mechanics, but by the time he was a veteran in the NBA, he can do things on the court without giving even a second’s thought. This is muscle memory. The athlete practices the same move over and over during practice so that when he steps out onto the court, he can perform that move naturally.

Text: Col 3:1-17

We are wrapping up the book of Colossians today. We started by talking about the gospel. Col 1:3-6. [READ]

Paul preached the gospel to the Colossians. The gospel is the good news of Jesus dying on a cross for hopeless and helpless sinners. Jesus conquered sin and death by resurrecting 3 days later so that those who repent of their sins and turn to Christ in faith can be saved. The Colossians recognized God’s grace in the truth. The gospel quite simply refers to the person and work of Christ. The Colossians heard this message and were saved and the gospel began to bear fruit at their church, just as it had been bearing fruit and growing all over the world.

If there is one message that we should never grow tired of, it has to be the gospel message. We can teach other topics from time to time, but if the predominant message from this church, or any church for that matter, is not the gospel, we will stop bearing fruit. The gospel message, consistently preached and obeyed, will bear fruit in a believer’s life.

Next, we talked about God’s will for your life. Col 1:9-10 [READ]

What is God’s will for your life and mine? Paul prayed that the Colossians would be filled with the knowledge of His will. That we would know God’s will. God’s will for your life is not to get into a certain school, or to have a certain job, or to accomplish a certain task. God’s universal will is much broader. God’s will is to walk worthy of the Lord. To fully please Him. And how do you walk worthy of the Lord in a way that please Him? By bearing fruit in two areas. First, bearing fruit in every good work. Visible work done for others. And second, growing in our personal knowledge of God. Not growing in our knowledge ABOUT God. Not learning facts. But growing in relational knowledge of God the same way that you get to know a best friend over many years by spending time together.

Then, we talked about Jesus as first. Col 1:15-18 [READ]

Jesus is first over all creation because Jesus was there before the creation ever existed. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. In the beginning was Jesus and Jesus was with God and Jesus was God. Jesus is the agent of creation. Jesus is like the foreman on the construction site who oversaw the creation of the universe. And to this day, He still holds all things together. Scientists may think that the universe is held together by the laws of physics and subatomic particles and gray matter, but Scripture is clear, Jesus is behind it all.

Jesus is first in all the universe. Jesus is the head of the church, Jesus is first in the church. Jesus is the beginning, He is literally the First. Jesus is the firstborn from the dead, Jesus is first in the present creation and He will be first in the future new creation. And in case you missed the main point, Paul adds, Jesus is first place in everything. There was never a time, past, present or future, when Jesus was not first. He is first now and forevermore.

Last week, we talked about false teachers. Col 2:6-8 [READ]

These false teachers are not well-intentioned teachers who are slightly off in their theology. Their teachings are more than a bit off. They are based on the elemental forces. Who’s in charge of the elemental forces? Satan. Satan is the one behind the false teachers. The false teachers are Satan’s ambassadors the same way that pastors and missionaries and Christians are ambassadors for Christ. You can either walk in Christ, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith or you can abandon Christ and start following a deceitful philosophy based on human tradition. Worst of all, when you abandon Christ and follow a human tradition taught by a false teacher, you are actually following Satan.

Col 2:16-19 [READ]

This particular brand of false teaching involved ascetic practices and a high degree of legalism. They taught that everyone needs to follow their version of proper religious behavior and the more you abstain from worldly pleasures, the higher you will ascend to spiritual heights, even worship of angels. The particular brand of false teaching is not important. What we have to aware of is the overall strategy. The goal of Satan and the false teachers is always the same. The methodology can change, but the goal never changes. They want to cut off Christians from our Head, Jesus Christ. Whatever Satan can put as the top pursuit of your life, if it is something or someone other than Jesus, then he’s accomplished his goal. Because without the Head, there is no life. Jesus as the Head of the body provides nourishment to all believers.

It makes sense, then, that in the conclusion of this letter to the Colossian church, Paul talks about the Christian life. What does it mean to be a Christian? What does it look like? How do we live out Christian life? How do we stay connected to Jesus as our Head and not fall into Satan’s schemes?

Christian life involves two parts. First, you got to put away the old. And second, you got to put on the new. You can’t do one without the other. Both are important. If you’ve been a Christian for a while, I hope this is review. Salvation began when you put away the old, when you initially repented of your sin and you died to your sinful nature. Repentance was step one. Putting your faith in Christ was step two.

Let’s look at step one. Repentance.

Col 3:1-8 [READ]

Paul begins by contrasting the earthly life with the heaven-minded, spiritual life. What determines which path you’re on. Verse 1 – what you seek and verse 2 – what you set your minds on. If you seek heavenly things, spiritual things and you set your mind on heavenly, spiritual things, then you have a chance of being spiritual. If you seek earthly things and your mind is set on earthly things, chances are, you are earthbound, you are fleshly.

Verses 5-8 describe the earthbound life. There are two sets of sins that characterize the earthbound life. The first set can be found in verse 5. The earthbound or fleshly life is characterized by sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire and greed. This much pretty much sums it up. I can’t think of a better description of this world and a person who is living according to the worldly nature. This world is all about sex and greed. How can I satisfy this flesh, how can I treat the opposite gender as an object of my pleasure? How can I pursue greed, greed for material things, greed for money or greed for power?

The deception of the world is that you can pursue these things thinking you will be satisfied, but you will never be satisfied. You can sleep around with a different woman every night, you can surf the net and engage in your fantasies, you can have all the money in the world and eat whatever you want and travel the world, and guess what? It will never be enough. The earthbound life is a life of panting for more and more and more because the sinful nature is like a beast that can never be satisfied. One more sexual experience, one more website, a little more money, a slightly bigger car, a slightly higher job title, it’s never enough. This first set of sins define the essence of the world and those who live according to the worldly or sinful or earthbound nature.