Putting Your Sin To Death --The Short List (Col. 3: 5b)

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In the first 5 verses of Colossians 3 we have learned these 5 principles:

1.  We have been raised with Christ and must now begin to seek what is above. (Col. 3:1)

2.  That means we must stop living for earthly pleasures.  (Col. 3: 2)

3.  All believers are now considered dead to themselves.  (Col. 3: 3)

4.  Christ now has the right to live His life through us.  (Col. 3: 4)

5.  All that is "earthly" in us must be put to death.   (Col. 3: 5a)

My guess is that you believe all of these statements to be true.  God has said it, so it must be true, right?  But we must take it beyond what we know to be true in theory, to the place where it is true in our response to God.  Our actions must align with the truth.  That is why He gave us the second part of Colossians 3: 5.  God gets very specific now with us.  We are to put to death what is earthly in us.  Then He gives us a specific list by which we are to examine our own lives.  Theory should become highly personal in this part of the verse as you read through this short list of sins.

"Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness, which is idolatry."

Ouch!!!

I have to say, though, at first blush, it is so easy to read each one slowly and tell yourself that "That is not me."  But if you wait just a moment, the Holy Spirit will likely begin to convict you in one of these areas, if not all of them.  That is where my "ouch" came from. 

You see, you don't have to be sleeping around to be sexually immoral.  A inappropriate sexual thought is all it take to make you guilty of the sin.  And if you have had one of those kinds of thoughts, you are now guilty of impurity as well.

Then if you consider what things you are passionate about, you might discover with the Spirit's help that you are imbalanced in your passion, so it has become sin in your life.  If you have let that passion develop a deep root in you, then you are likely have to crossed a line without even knowing it into desire that is no longer pure, but evil.

Now, maybe you still can't relate, and the Spirit is convicting you of nothing so far.  Praise God for that!  You may be the rare one that is not guilty of the first four.  But don't break your arm patting yourself on the back just yet, for the fifth sin will convict us all.

We don't often think of coveting something as being idolatry.  We tend to think it is only wanting what someone else has, stemming from our own jealousy.  But biblically speaking, covetousness is far more than desiring someone else's stuff.  Covetousness has a much deeper root than that.  It is the act of wanting something instead of what you have.  In this case of sin, it is wanting something more than you want God.  That is why is is referred to as idolatry.  It is the sin of having something that is more important to you than God.  And if you think about it, all of the 5 sins listed could be considered idolatry.

In the course of any ordinary day there are idols in my life that choose above God.  In this, I break the first commandment of God which states I should have no other gods other than God.  I can think of several idols that are currently active in my life.   Maybe you struggle with the same thing.

No matter which of these 5 sins you commit, (and of course this is not the complete list!), Paul is telling you in Colossians 3: 5 that they are earthly, and they are to have no part of you. They are to be put to death.  They are to be mortified.  Your life and mine is hidden in the holiness of Christ, so we must put to death anything that will tarnish His holiness.  It is a command:  "Put to death what is earthly in you."

 

The Distant Sound of the Trumpet Call

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Do you hear it?  It is not the blare of a trumpet, but it is a trumpet call nonetheless.  God is calling this Christian generation to a lifestyle of holiness.  For too long we have been "winking" at our sin or simply turning a blind eye to it.  But God neither winks at our sin, nor does He close His eyes to it.  

One of the biggest problems I see in Christianity today is that we are living lives that are sinful and impure, but we are not attacking our sin and impurity.  We seem to be quite content to peacefully co-exist with unholiness, with a great sense of "entitlement."  We know that we are believers and that our eternity will be spent in heaven, so we tend to let sin off of hook instead of daily dealing with it by surrendering to the Spirit and with the repentance that should follow our surrender.  We are very good at telling God we are sorry for the sins we commit, but are we good in the area of turning around from our sin so that we can walk back to God?  Do we really desire to walk on His highway to holiness?

While reading in Ezekiel the past several days, some truths jumped off the page for me to consider.  Ezekiel's message was to Israel because they, as God's elect and chosen ones, had fallen far away from His commandments, and were guilty of assumption that God would do them no harm.  They even had "prophets and priests" claiming that God didn't really see what they were doing!  My heart has taken notice that it would be easy to think, that because I am now in the family of God, my sin really is irrelevant now because I am covered by the covenant.  It is easy to think that now, and it was easy to think that just prior to God exiling His own people to Assyria and Babylon.  

Ezekiel 16: 1-14 outlines God's merciful grace to Israel when they were nothing but a sinful group, just like the rest of the world.  He declared to them, "Live!"  Then He entered into a covenant with them. Ezekiel reminds them that God then bathed them, washed off the blood on them, anointed them with oil, and clothed and adorned them.  Having done all of that, He made them beautiful, famous, and full of splendor.

Now I have to ask.  Isn't that exactly what He did for you and me?  He offered us eternal life through His Son, and when we accepted it, He entered into covenant with us, and us with Him.  He baptized us into His family, washing away our sin-stained hearts and continues to wash us with the water of the Word of God.  He anointed us with oil by sending the Holy Spirit to dwell within us, and we wear robes of righteousness when we walk in the Spirit, obey the righteous commands of God.  God has made the Gentile believers, who were once no part of God's chosen,  to be beautiful and full of splendor now.

Ezekiel 16: 15-29 tells the sorrowful story of Israel's ultimate trust in themselves and their "beauty."  The result of that was their idol worship that took their trusting eyes off of God, focusing instead on the gods of their own making.  They exchanged the "jewels" of  God, His bountiful blessings, for those activities, thoughts, and beliefs that fed their own flesh.  Having forgotten the place out of which God had saved them, Israel now turned to their selfish ways and began to live again like the world around them, trusting more in the world than in their God.  Chasing every other god and idol around them, and doing whatever they wanted to do, they still seemed to think that their one true God didn't mind.  Yet He said to them just prior to taking them into exile, "Were your harlotries so small a matter?"  Israel never seemed to catch on that they never were satisfied living in the ways of the world.

Have we not, in this 21st century, created the exact same scenario for ourselves?  We trust more in our ticket to heaven than in the God who stamped the ticket with His own blood.  We have exchanged the many blessings He bestows on the repentant and obedient for what the world and our flesh can give us.  We, too, have forgotten the wretched state that our Savior pulled us up and out of, desiring more to jump back into that "miry clay," thinking that our lifestyle of "some" sin is okay with God, because He has saved us from sin and death.  And He is saying to you and me today, "Are your sins and the things you put before Me a small matter to Me?"  The answer seems obvious.

In Ezekiel 16: 30-43 God called His people harlots several times, and also referred to their lovers whom they had chosen far above Him.  Are we not His people, too, who have chosen so many lovers (mostly ourselves) over Him?

Finally, in Ezekiel 16: 44 an old proverb is quoted, "Like mother, like daughter."  For Ezekiel's day Israel was the mother, and Judah was the daughter.  But if we Gentile believers were grafted into the branch of Israel, adopted into the original family, then Israel is the mother, and we are the daughter.  God is saying we are just like them, doing exactly what they did.  He didn't like it then; He doesn't like it now.  If you look at verse 47, He also declares that what the daughter is doing is more corrupt than the mother.  That would seem to be true, given that Israel had no fulfilling Sacrifice, no Holy Spirit and no written Word of God.  We have the privilege to partake of all three, yet we are unwilling to surrender ourselves and turn from the wicked idol worship present in us all.

I cannot speak for you, but I know that this message has convicted my heart and causes me to desire to walk according to the calling on my life, to be holy because God is holy, using the "everything" that has been given to me for life and godliness.

These are the ideas that God spoke to me about in His word this morning.  They are a trumpet call to me.  Maybe they will be to you, as well.  The trumpet is calling me to put away my sin for good.  Is it calling you to do the same?