NEW CLOTHES FOR A NEW LIFE
Colossians
3:9-16
The clothing industry has
made huge inroads into the pocketbooks of consumers. If you don’t believe that to be the case,
just think of your own familiarity with some of the following mottos:
You
are what you wear.
Clothes
make the man.
Dress
for success.
As Christians, we are
inclined to dismiss such quips as shallow and superficial and not even worthy
of serious consideration. However, if we
pause and reflect, we might remember that the Bible has some things to say
about what we wear.
There is in the Bible what we
could call “a theology of clothing” that goes all the way back to the Garden of
Eden. The first man and the first woman
were created without the need for clothing and they did not miss its absence
until their experience with sin.
A bite from that which had
been forbidden brought a realization of guilt and shame and led to an impulsive
need to cover that which previously had needed no covering and to hide that
which before had been open and unashamed.
The change that was wrought
from within led to a corresponding necessity of changing that which was on the
outside. The internal condition
necessitated a corresponding external reaction.
Because of inward shame, Adam and Eve looked to clothe their outward
nakedness.
Operation fig leaves came
into being. The first attempts at
fashion design must have been less than stellar. Fig leaves might look very adequate on fig
trees, but they don’t make the grade when it comes to human apparel. The first gust of wind and the leafy covering
would have given way to exposure and shame.
Genesis 3:8 says that they
heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. What did that sound like? I don’t know.
Could it have been the sound of the rustling of leaves that comes with
an evening breeze? Whatever it sounded
like, it was enough to make Adam and Eve run for cover. Embarrassment. Shame. Nakedness. Exposed before the sight of
the Holy One.
Somehow they recognized that
their self imposed fig leaves were completely inadequate for the job at hand
and that their sin had changed forever the way they could relate to the
Almighty.
The account in Genesis 3 ends
with a promise of One who would one day come and destroy the works of the
serpent; One who would bruise the serpent with a deadly wound even at the
expense of personal suffering. Perhaps
it is not by chance that the fulfillment of that prophecy saw Jesus, the second
Adam, hanging naked upon the cruel cross.
Exposed before His detractors. Exposed to the wrath of the
Almighty as He took upon Himself the guilt and the shame that were rightfully
yours and mine. He was made
physically naked in our place as He donned the garments of our sinfulness,
wearing our iniquities upon Himself.
Because He was naked for us,
we are able to find ourselves clothed in Him.
And so it is that, as we come to this passage in Colossians 3, Paul
speaks to us as having “put on” and “donned” a new persona.
WE ARE CALLED TO DRESS IN
TRUTH
Do not lie to one another, since
you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, 10 and
have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to
the image of the One who created him 11
‑‑ a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and
Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but
Christ is all, and in all. (Colossians 3:9-11).
There is described here an
“old self” and a “new self.” These are
seen in contrast to one another.
|
Old Self |
New Self |
|
Characterized
by “evil practices” |
Characterized
by the image of the One who created him |
|
This is the way
of class and racial distinctions |
There is no
distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian,
Scythian, slave or free. |
|
This is the way
of the liar |
This is in
accordance with true knowledge |
Paul says, “Don’t lie to one
another because that clashes with your new suit of clothes. Women can better identify with this issue of
clashing colors. Men are not normally as
conscious of that which clashes. I
shudder to think of some of the color combinations I wore before I was
married. My wife’s influence is such
that she will look at a tie or a shirt that I am about to put on and she will
say, “That does not go together. It
clashes.”
Paul says the same thing here
about the way in which you speak to others.
Lying does not go with the new you.
It clashes. When you came to
Christ, you found yourself coming to a place where lying was unnecessary
because you came to Christ by admitting your own sinfulness and your own
failures. You came to Christ confessing
that you need a Savior who will take away your sins.
Once you have entered into that
realm of salvation, not on the basis of any of your own goodness, but based
only on the goodness of Jesus, there is no more need to lie. We are to be truth-tellers about ourselves
and about everything else. It is the
truth that made us alive.
You see, one of the reasons
people lie is because they do not want the truth to be known. They realize that the truth could condemn
them. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden,
they want to hide their nakedness behind the lie of a fig leaf. But when you find that you have been clothed
in the righteousness of Christ, there is no need to lie. He takes away the need and you can rest in
the truth of your own inadequacy and know that it is okay because Christ has
been adequate on your behalf.
There is a freeing quality to
that kind of truth. You don’t have to be
afraid of what the truth will show because, in coming to Christ, you have
confessed that you are a guilty sinner in need of a Savior. There needs be no more masks. There needs be no more pretending. The truth has set you free from all of that.
WE ARE CALLED TO DRESS IN
KINDNESS
And so, as those who have been
chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness,
humility, gentleness and patience; 13 bearing with one another, and forgiving each other,
whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also
should you. (Colossians 3:12-13).
The quality of kindness is
only one of several that are mentioned in this passage. Paul tells us to put on a heart of
compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience as well as
forbearance and forgiveness. Each of
these qualities speak to how we treat our neighbor or
our co worker or even our family member.
I’ve heard Terry Wise speak
in glowing terms of various members of this ministry and one of the nicest
compliments I’ve heard her say is that he or she was “kind.” If there is a legacy for which I want to be
known when all is said and done, it is that I be known as one who was
kind. It is a general sort of word and
it seems to me that kindness takes in all of the other qualities that are
described in this passage.
• If you have a heart of compassion, you
will be kind.
• If you are humble, you will likely also
be kind.
• If you are gentle, you will also be kind.
• If you are patient, it is probably
accompanied by kindness.
• If you bear with others and are able to
forgive others, that is a characteristic of one who is kind.
Each of these qualities forms
the threads to weave together that which we can summarize as “kindness.” From where does such kindness come? How do you get this heart of compassion and
this humility and this gentleness and this patience and this ability to
forgive? You get it by knowing that...
• Someone was first compassionate toward
you.
• The One who had the right to all glory
and honor humbled Himself on your behalf.
• That One has treated you with the utmost
gentleness.
• There is One who
has showed His kindness toward you.
• He has been patient with you.
• You have been forgiven an infinite debt.
You have each of these
qualities because they were first mirrored for you in the person of Christ.
Paul points this out in two
ways. He points it out in verse 12 when
he says that you have been chosen of God. We in the Presbyterian church
hear such a statement and we immediately think of predestination and the
sovereignty of God. We refer to these
teachings as the “doctrines of grace” and there is nothing wrong with that
title. At the same time, there is a
danger in studying the doctrines of grace apart from knowing the grace of the
doctrines.
You are not told of God’s
choosing you in order to inflate your ego or to make you think how worthy or
wonderful or intelligent you are. Quite
the contrary is true. You are told that
God chose you so that you will know that you did nothing of your own power and
effort to bring yourself to Him. You did
not believe the gospel because you were smarter or because you held to a more
lofty wisdom or because you were nobler.
You did not get anything to
get yourself chosen. God chose you when
there was nothing in you to recommend yourself as being worthy of being chosen.
What is to be our response to
the fact that He chose us? It is to be a
response of love. Earlier this week,
Paula and I were enjoying some “together time” and I asked her, “Why do you
love me?” She replied, “Because you
first loved me.” We are called to
respond the same way to the Lord. He
chose us and He chose us to love us and the only possible response is that we
love Him in return.
Paul further underscores this
as a work of God’s grace in verse 13 when he says that God forgave you. Have you ever had a problem forgiving someone
who has done a wrong against you? Here
is the answer. Look at the cross. See the One who hangs there between heaven
and hell and know that He is there because of you. He is the One who calls you to forgive as He
has forgiven you.
Forgiven people forgive. And the more they come to realize the depth
of the forgiveness with which they have been forgiven, the more they are able
to forgive others.
WE ARE CALLED TO DRESS IN
UNITY
And beyond all these things put
on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. 15 And let
the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one
body; and be thankful. (Colossians 3:14-15).
Notice the progression
here. There is a movement from love to
unity to peace. Love leads to unity --
it is called here the perfect bond of unity -- it is the glue that holds
unity together.
Christians are called to be
united. It is a unity that comes, not
necessarily because we are all nice and enjoy being around nice people, but
because we have been united to our Lord Jesus Christ through a bond of love and
that love is the glue that binds us together.
If there is this loving
unity, the result will be peace. This is
not merely an absence of war or conflict, but the positive quality that the
Jews called shalom -- the quality of well being.
|
Love |
→ |
Unity |
→ |
Peace |
When one thinks of peace, one
normally thinks of passivity. But this
is an active rulership. This peace takes
an active part in ruling -- we are told to let the peace of Christ rule
in our hearts. The term used here is not
one that describes the ruling of a king.
Instead, it is the present active imperative of brabeuw, describing the actions of an umpire. It is the verbal form of brabion which Paul uses when he speaks of how those who
run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize (1
Corinthians 9:24).
If the peace of Christ is
acting the part of umpire of your life, then that means other things are
not. It means that your life is no
longer being run by circumstances.
If circumstances are the
umpire of your life, then your life is subject to all sorts of variation and
chance. You might have a good day and
your heart is full of peace or you might have a bad day and your heart is in a
state of unrest and turmoil.
If circumstances are the
umpire of your life, then you will always be looking for a way to change your
circumstances, to change your job, to change your spouse and to change your
church. Your life will be characterized by
a lack of rest and a lack of peace and you will be tossed about by every detail
of life. But if the peace of Christ is the umpire of your life, then you have a
source of true and lasting peace that cannot be swayed by the details of life.
His name was Horatio Spafford and he was a successful American businessman in
the 19th century. His success came to a
crashing halt in the great Chicago Fire of October 1871 when he lost his
business in that inferno. One tragedy
was compounded with another while his family was crossing the
Several weeks later, his own
ship passed over their watery grave and he wrote these words:
When
peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When
sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever
my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It
is well, it is well, with my soul.
WE ARE CALLED TO DRESS IN
THANKSGIVING
And let the peace of Christ rule
in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful.
(Colossians 3:15).
Notice how the command to be
thankful seems to be appended to the previous command to let the peace of
Christ rule in your heart. You might
be tempted to think that this command to be thankful is merely an afterthought,
but I don’t think that to be the case.
Rather, I want to suggest that there is a correlation between having the
peace of Christ ruling in your heart versus being thankful.
|
It is only as the peace of
Christ rules in your heart that you will also be
thankful and It is only as you are
thankful that the peace of Christ
will rule in your heart |
Paul goes on to underscore
this quality of thanksgiving in the following verse:
Let the word of Christ richly
dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts
to God. (Colossians 3:16).
While in verse 15 we see the
peace of Christ leading to thanksgiving, here in verse 16 we see the word of
Christ leading to thanksgiving. Of
course, we realize that these are not mutually exclusive. It is through the word of Christ richly
dwelling in you that you receive the peace of Christ and it is as a result of
these that you come away in thanksgiving.
|
The Word of Christ |
→ |
The Peace of Christ |
→ |
Thanksgiving |
You might hear this about
thanksgiving and you might be thinking, “Wait a minute, John. You don’t know all of the things I am going
through. It is easy for you to give
thanksgiving when everything is going your way, but my life is falling apart at
the seams. How do I give thanks in such
a situation?”
The truth is that I don’t
know what it is through which you are going.
But I do know what the one who wrote these words was going through. This was written by Paul and it was written
by him while he was in prison. He had
been in prison for a long time and prisons in those days were lacking in the creature
comforts that prisons enjoy today.
It is one thing when someone
who has all of the creature comforts of life speaks of peace. It is quite another when someone who has been
wrongfully imprisoned, shipwrecked, beaten and accused -- when someone like
that speaks of how we can hearts of thanksgiving.
To the degree that
thanksgiving is present in your life, it is to that degree that you have
realized and appropriated and appreciated the grace of God. Show me someone who has no heart for
thanksgiving toward God and I will show you someone who has lost sight of God.
SUMMARY
We have been speaking of the
new clothes the Christian is called to wear -- the clothing of...
-
Truth
-
Kindness
-
Unity
-
Thanksgiving
Ultimately, this involves the
clothing of Christ. We are called to
“put on Christ.” Whereas we have
previously been clothed in garments that were anything but desirable, we are
now called to wear His righteousness.
However, you can only put on
these new clothes if you have been given the life that comes from the one who
gives them. Jesus illustrated this point
when He attended a funeral of His friend, Lazarus.
You remember the story. The sisters of Lazarus had sent word to Jesus
that their brother was sick. They had
asked for Jesus to come and to heal their brother. But Jesus had not come in time. By the time He did arrive, Lazarus was not
only dead, but the funeral was over and he had been buried in a tomb.
Jesus ordered that the tomb
be opened and then He called for Lazarus to come out. John 11:43 tells us that he who had died
came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings; and his face was wrapped around
with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."
Do you see it? He was dressed in grave clothes. He was dressed in that which represents death
and rot and decay. Those clothes had
been perfectly appropriate to his state.
He was dead and that is what dead people wore. But then life came and those grave clothes
were no longer appropriate.
How about you? Have you come to the new life that is in
Christ? If you have not, then it will do
not good to change the clothes of your outward life. It would be like putting new clothes on a
corpse. You need to trust in the Lord
Jesus Christ, appropriating through faith what was accomplished upon the
cross. You can trust in Him and enter
into new life.
Most of you have already done
that. You have been walking with the
Lord for some time. But there are
perhaps some of those old grave clothes still in place.
-
Immorality
-
Impurity
-
Evil desires
-
Greed, which is just another name for idolatry
Paul gives these as
representative samplings back in verse 5 of our passage and perhaps some of
those continue to adorn your life. I
want to give you notice -- they CLASH with your identity in Christ. Time for a change of
clothing.
How do you do it? How do you take off those sorts of sinful
habits? How do you replace them with the
clothing of Christ? You do it the same
way you first came to Christ. You come
to the cross and you confess your inadequacy and you ask that the Lord might
take away that old sinful self and you accept that which He gives to you in
faith.
And then, in faith, you thank
the Lord for that which He has promised to accomplish within you so that whatever you do in word or deed, do all in
the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father
(Colossians 3:17).
Let’s do that right now. We are going to have a time of silent
prayer. I want you to take that part of
your life that has been clashing with your Christly character and I want you to
take it to the cross. You are not
telling God anything He does not already know.
Just as He called out to Adam and Eve in the cool of the Garden, saying,
“Where are you?” He is calling
today. He is calling you to see your
spiritual nakedness and to come to Him and to be clothed in that which He has
prepared for you.
Return
to Stevenson Bible Study Page