Colossians 3:1-11 (NRSV) So if 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 is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. 5 Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. 7 These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. 8 But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. 11 In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!
Parents tell children: Remember who you are. My cousin Robert talks about: The way “Trapps” do things. Live up to the quality and standards of those who taught you the “right way.”
Paul reminds the Colossians, and us, about our address. We are to live according to the way “Christians” do things. This is the major turning point in this short letter. Baptized into Christ, our address changed from an earthly to a heavenly one. We are “heavenly” people. The Triune God has installed and instilled in us a whole new heart. Our old nature, with what is done according to the world’s pattern, is dead. Like my house in Detroit, that house of sin and selfishness got burned down. It is gone. There is no going back. We are living out our eternity.
The only problem, as Paul knows it only too well, is that we do go back; there are many comfortable things about that old address, that old way of thinking, in our hearts and minds, baptism notwithstanding. Evil passions and desires seem just fine for what goes on behind closed doors and among friends. Anger, wrath, malice and the like seem to be our right, in our private hearts. The list is long, and it is uncomfortable. No one should tell us how to live and what is right and wrong.
It is so hard to think of ourselves as a new creation, as having desires typical of grace. We mush old and new all together and define ourselves by our own likes or dislikes, not what God moves our new nature to be. Weekly, we need to hear the good news, to read and reread and meditate on such texts as Colossians. Let us ask the Lord to work on and in our heart, spoiling the old, worshiping Him and yearning for the new. Let us live according to our new address: eternity in the presence of God in Heaven. Let us yearn for His guidance, which alone brings peace. We gather to praise Him who loves us into our new life.
Pastor Tom Trapp, Mission Pastor
Walking the Emmaus Road with the Risen Lord
(Originally published in Emmaus Footprints, Vol. XVI, Number 12, July 2015)