New You!

In one of the Peanuts comic strips, Lucy asks Linus, “Do you think people ever really change?” 

 “Sure,” replies Linus, “I feel I’ve changed a lot this past year.” 

To which Lucy replies, “I meant for the better.” 

I believe that people can and often do change for the better. Otherwise, I would not be in the business I am in. 

In the passage of Scripture that we are going to read today, Paul lays out a plan for becoming a “new you”. Listen for God’s word to you from Colossians 3:1-14… 

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Why should I become a new person? 

Now I can imagine what you might be thinking: “Why should I become a new me? After all, I rather like the old me!” Well, Paul gives us four reasons…

1.    We have died. 

In other words, Christians ought to have as little desire for their old life as a dead person has. Paul is not asking the Colossians to be so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good. He expects the Colossians to go on with the work of this world and to maintain relationships with non-Christians. But there ought to be a difference in the way we live as followers of Jesus Christ. Christians ought to view everything against the background of eternity and no longer live as if this world is all that there is. And that leads to a second reason Paul gives for becoming a new you.

2.    We have been raised with Christ. 

When we become Christians, we identify ourselves with the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is symbolized in baptism, dying to our old life and rising to the new.

3.    When Christ appears, we also will appear with him in glory. 

Paul speaks here of the Second Coming of Christ when Jesus will return to the world to judge the living and the dead. If we are truly living new lives in Christ, then we can look forward to Jesus’ return and to sharing in his glory. 

4.    The wrath of God is coming. 

 The judgment day will not be good for everyone. Wrath is a sort of fiery image. In 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 Paul writes… 

If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward. If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames. 

Paul’s warnings about the final judgment ought to lead us to ask the question: what materials are we using to build upon the foundation of Christ in our lives? Are we building with lasting materials like gold, silver, or costly stones? Or are we building with wood, hay or straw that will be burned up in the fire of judgment? 

Personally, I would say that I have always been more motivated to live a life for Christ by the positive images in Scripture than the negative. I didn’t become a Christian to escape hell. I became a Christian because I was drawn by the love of Jesus. That same love is what motivates me to grow as a Christian. 

Three Ways to Become a New Person 

So, let’s examine the ways that Paul says we can grow in Christ. How do we become new persons in him? Paul suggests three ways…

1.    Put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature. 

There are three categories of things that Paul says we should put to death. The first category is sexual immorality and impurity. Paul uses two words in Greek that we have encountered before in his letters: πορνείαν and ἀκαθαρσίαν. The root word from which we get πορνεία is πορνos which means a prostitute. We have seen many times before in the ancient Greek and Roman world how there were temple prostitutes. Thus, πορνεία and idolatry were directly connected in Paul’s world. 

From ἀκαθαρσία we get our English word “catharsis” which means “cleansing”. So, ἀκαθαρσία literally means “unclean”. There were a vast number of things and actions that could render the ancient Jew “unclean”, that is to say “ceremonially unfit” to enter worship in the Temple. 

So, we can see why Paul would want the Colossians to put to death πορνεία and ἀκαθαρσία in order to live clean and holy lives. 

The second category of things Paul urges the Colossians to put to death include lust and evil desires. Paul uses three words in Greek just as we have three words in English. One of those Greek words is πάθος from which we get our English word “pathetic”. Someone who is “pathetic” is suffering and elicits our compassion. We talk about the passion of Christ, by which we mean his suffering on the cross. But pathos has not only to do with suffering; it has to do with passion. We think of someone who is passionately in love, or passionate about their job, or some hobby, or cause. Passion can be a very good thing, but it can also drive us to do wrong things when it is misdirected. 

The second word Paul uses is ἐπιθυμίαν. This is the word that often gets translated as “lust”. It refers to desire that is piled upon desire. It is “over the top”. 

And then there is the simple word for evil: κακήν. This word can also be translated as “bad”. In English we talk about “caca” which is something we don’t even want to touch. 

Augustine writes in his Confessions… 

Sin arises when things that are a minor good are pursued as though they were goals in life. If money or affection or power are sought in disproportionate, obsessive ways, then sin occurs. And that sin is magnified when, for these lesser goals, we fail to pursue the highest good and the finest goals. 

Augustine and other theologians in the early church talked about the ordo amoris or orderly loves. Life gets out of hand when our loves are out of order, but life goes well when we put first things first, second things second, and so on. 

The third category that Paul says we must put to death is greed which is idolatry. Greed is simply the desire to have more. Enough is never enough. The person whose life is dominated by a desire to get things has set up things in the place of God. That is why greed is idolatry; it leads us to worship false gods. 

2.    Put off the old self. 

The second major thing Paul says we ought to do to become new people is that we ought to put off the old self. Paul is again picking up on the image of baptism. In the early church, when someone was baptized, they would take off all their clothes and go down naked into the waters of baptism. Then after being baptized they would step out of the water and put on new clothes. So, Paul is saying that we need to put off our old, non-Christian ways of thinking and talking and living, just like we take off an old set of grimy clothes. Paul mentions four types of old clothing we need to get rid of. If Paul were here, he would say, “Don’t even take these old clothes to the thrift shop! Burn them!” 

The first type of old clothing we need to get rid of is that of anger and rage. Rage refers to a blaze of sudden anger that is quickly kindled and just as quickly dies. The word for anger means an emotion that has become a settled disposition, a long-lasting, slow-burning anger that refuses to be pacified, and nurses wrath to keep itself warm. Anger and rage are both types of clothing typical of the non-Christian life that we need to put off. 

A second thing Paul says we need to put off is malice. The word refers to a viciousness of mind from which other individual vices spring. Malice is a type of hatred that becomes an all-pervading evil. 

When anger settles into the soul and is directed repeatedly at another person, it becomes malice. 

A third category that Paul says we need to put off has to do with speech: slander, filthy language, and lying. We all remember the childhood chant: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” That saying is patently false. Words do hurt, especially slanderous, untruthful, unkind words, spoken in anger with malice aforethought. 

As we were often told when we were young: think before you speak. THINK forms a great acronym. Before you say anything about anyone else ask, is it …

• True?
• Helpful?
• Inspiring?
• Necessary?
• Kind?

A fourth thing Paul suggests we should put off is barriers. Paul says that among Christians there is no longer Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Christianity destroys many different barriers. It destroys barriers of birth and nationality because Christians come from many different nations. It destroys barriers of ceremonial and ritual. Jews who are circumcised are joined in one church with Gentiles who are not. Christianity destroys the barriers between the cultured and the uncultured. The Scythian was the ignorant barbarian of the ancient world. The Greek was the aristocrat of learning. The uncultured and the cultured come together in the church of Jesus Christ. Christianity also destroys the barriers between classes. The slave and the free person came together in the ancient church. Social distinctions ought to be irrelevant in the church of Jesus Christ. This passage challenges us as Christians to put off barriers and become bridge-builders instead. 

3.    Put on the new self. 

Finally, in this passage, Paul urges us to put on the new self. Paul mentions several virtues that are part and parcel of this new self… 

First, there is compassion. The ancient Jew thought of the bowels as the seat of the emotions, not the heart. Imagine how that would look on a Valentine’s card! To experience compassion meant to be moved in one’s bowels. Now, that is not as awful as it sounds. We have an expression like it today. We talk about being moved at gut-level. Christians ought to have a gut-level compassion for those in need. 

Second, we need to put on kindness. The ancient writers defined kindness as the virtue of the person whose neighbor’s good was as dear to him as his own.

The third virtue Paul says we ought to put on is humility. It has often been said that humility was a virtue created by Christianity. In classical Greek there was no word for humility that did not have some tinge of servility about it. But Christian humility is not a cringing thing. 

Alex Haley, the author of Roots, had a picture in his office showing a turtle sitting atop a fencepost. He said the picture was there to remind him of a lesson he learned early in life: “If you see a turtle on a fence post, you know he had some help getting there.” 

Haley went on to say, “Any time I start thinking, ‘Wow, isn’t this marvelous what I’ve done!’ I look at that picture and remember how this turtle—me—got up on that post.” 

That’s a picture of the kind of humility we need to put on as Christians. 

A fourth virtue Paul tells us to put on is gentleness. Aristotle defined gentleness as the happy mean between too much and too little anger. The man who is gentle is the man who is so God-controlled that he is always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time. That was true of Jesus. He got angry enough to overturn the tables in the Temple. But he was never angry at the wrong time, about the wrong thing, for the wrong reason, toward the wrong person. 

Anger, in and of itself, is not wrong. I always compare feelings like anger to the warning lights on the dashboard of a car. They are telling us to look under the hood and see what’s wrong with the car so that we can fix it. Yes, Paul tells us to put off anger, but he is talking about anger misused and out of control. Gentleness helps us to put off self-centered anger. Francis de Sales once wrote, “Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as real strength.” 

This leads to a fifth virtue that Paul commends: patience. Sometimes the word is translated as long-suffering. This word refers to the quality of a person with a slow-burning fuse, someone who does not immediately react or overreact when treated wrongly. But we must remember when we pray for patience, God is probably going to test our patience. As Manford George Gutzke once said, “To become long-suffering one has to be long-bothered.” 

Paul commends a sixth pair of virtues that we need to put on. This pair of virtues go together: forbearance and forgiveness. As Christians we have the greatest reason to forbear and forgive… because God is patient with us, and he has forgiven all our sins in Christ. 

At weddings I often tell the story of the grandmother who was asked the secret of her long marriage. She said that before she married her husband, she made a list of his top ten faults that she would forgive for the sake of holding their marriage together. 

So, someone asked grandma, “What were some of your husband’s faults that you put on the list?” 

To this grandma replied, “Oh honey, I’ve long since lost the list. But every time my husband did something that made me hopping mad, I said to myself, ‘Lucky for him it’s one of the ten!’” 

That’s forbearance and forgiveness! 

The final virtue Paul urges us to put on is love. This is the one virtue that holds all the others together. It’s like the thread in the garment that if you pull it out, the whole garment falls apart. Love sums up all the virtues. If we put on love, we will be putting on all the other virtues as well. 

I’ve shared this before, but I think it worth repeating. It is a poem by the most prolific poet of all time… Anonymous. Becky and I had this poem printed on the program for our wedding, and in a way, it says it all… 

Love is not passion, love is not pride, 

Love is a journeying side by side 

Not of the breezes, nor of the gale, 

Love is the steady set of the sail. 

Deeper than ecstasy, sweeter than light, 

Born in the sunshine, born in the night, 

Flaming in victory, stronger in loss, 

Love is a sacrament made for a cross.