Chapter 1
Surely, Paul must be mistaken, when we read what follows in Colossians 3: 5-10?
“So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual sin, impurity, lust, and shameful desires. Don’t be greedy for the good things of this life, for that is idolatry. 6 God’s terrible anger will come upon those who do such things. 7 You used to do them when your life was still part of this world. 8 But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behaviour, slander, and dirty language. 9 Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old evil nature and all its wicked deeds. 10 In its place you have clothed yourselves with a brand-new nature that is continually being renewed as you learn more and more about Christ, who created this new nature within you.”
You would think by listening to this list of sins Paul is referring to, that they apply more to a non-Christian than to a Christian. However, if we are to be brutally honest, in our own hearts we know that even as believers we are under constant temptation and very often give in to, or justify, what God clearly calls sin. Paul is, as always, the complete realist. He does not want us kidding ourselves and other people that we are better than we are in reality. It is only by honestly facing the truth about ourselves that we can ever have any hope of meaningful change taking place in our lives. Those heading the movement for greater self-esteem would argue that this strong emphasis on dealing with sin is too negative and that we need to build on what is good in us in order to promote good self-esteem. If we go into the garden and it is full of weeds, do we plant our flowers without weeding the ground and preparing it? Surely, we have to deal with the weeds [sin] in order to be able to promote growth [goodness] and therefore continue this process right through our lives – weeding out and planting go together! Repentance and Holiness, go together.
Let us take a walk through the Bible and look at some people who were at the very heart of God’s purposes and see how human they were and how prone to a whole variety of sins.
There was Abraham. He is referred to as a friend of God and also as a great man of faith – perhaps the greatest man of faith. In many respects he is our father in the faith because we are told that future generations throughout the world would be blessed because of him. Because he was such a great person of faith we should honour him. But there were times, when the pressure was on, when Abraham resorted to lies. On at least two occasions that we know of [Genesis 12:10f and 20:1f] the great man of faith refused to put his trust in God, resorted to his own way of dealing with things and ended up in a mess, because he tried to lie his way out of a difficult situation. Does that ring any bells with you? It does with me! How easy it is to resort to a lie to get out of a difficult situation, rather than tell the truth, trust God, and face the consequences. I know in my own life, that I am prone to panic when I get something badly wrong – for example not doing something I was asked to do or promised to do. At first, a lie seems the easy way out, but the truth always catches up with us because God insists upon it. We are so prone to try and save face by lying or pretending to be something we are not:
A minister told his congregation, "Next week I plan to preach about the sin of lying. To help you understand my sermon, I want you all to read Mark 17." The following Sunday, as he prepared to deliver his sermon, the minister asked for a show of hands. He wanted to know how many had read Mark 17. Every hand went up. The minister smiled and said, "Mark has only sixteen chapters. I will now proceed with my sermon on the sin of lying.”
Where does lying come from? Satan is the father of lies, and the Lord, in his goodness, will not allow us to be like His, and our, great enemy. Go back to Abraham for a moment. He tells his lies, thinking he will get away with them. But how does he feel inside? He has no peace and never can have as long as he is not walking in the truth. God knows this, and being the good father and friend that He is, painfully forces Abraham to face the truth. In doing so, Abraham was publicly humiliated. He had to learn a hard lesson. Why? Because the Lord loved his friend too much to allow him to continue to live a lie. God is not just committed to the truth as an end in itself, but to us as His cherished people. He loves us too much to allow us to indulge in what is ultimately destructive to us.
None of us dare point the finger at Abraham, for to do that would be supreme hypocrisy. People in the church are not strangers to lying. We hide the truth from one another when we give the impression that we are better people and more spiritual than we really are. Some of us resort to lies rather than face the truth or a difficult situation in our lives.
We, like Abraham, are not perfect, and are prone to sinful responses. The weakness of our father Abraham is in all of us. We are not greater than he was; yet we, like him, are friends with God. His friendship will mean that there will be times when He will insist on bringing light into our self-imposed darkness – and always! always! because he loves us and is passionate about our best interests.
Then there is Jacob, a man who partly followed in his grandfather’s footsteps and lived a life of deception rather than openly trust God to work out things on his behalf. Indeed, though Abraham had moments of deception, Jacob’s life was one long story of deception. Who is this principally like? Jesus tells us that Satan was a liar from the start. He is a self-deceiver. He truly believes that he is on a par with God and has deceived himself into thinking that he can get away with his rebellion – indeed, he blindly and sincerely believes that he will succeed in getting the better of God. You and I might think that he is monumentally stupid, but are we really any different? Think about the many ways we indulge in self-deception.
Here is an example from my own pastoral experience: Joan didn’t like Mary and there was always friction between them. Deep down the truth was that they were very alike and rubbed each other up the wrong way very easily. Joan tried at first to get along with Mary, but Mary was difficult, argumentative and even dismissive of her overtures. Eventually it came to Joan’s attention that Mary had been gossiping about her. At first she tried to ignore it, but eventually it got to her. She started to take her revenge, and spoke badly about Mary to other people and made it plain to Mary how she felt about her. She felt okay about her response because she reckoned Mary deserved what was coming to her – it was a smouldering war between these two ladies within the fellowship and eventually people started to take sides – of course there was an appeal to our fallen nature here, because people often enjoy having a go at others, and old wounds are opened up – old scores settled.
Was Joan right in what she did? She certainly had convinced herself she was justified in her response, but she was deceived – by her own choice and feelings. She cocooned herself in a lie and deceived herself, knowing deep down that the way God wanted her to respond to Mary was different. God wanted Joan to go on loving Mary, praying for her, forgiving her, and refusing to go to war over injured emotions. God wanted reconciliation, and if that was not possible, for Joan to continue to forgive Mary. Any other response and she was deceiving herself. The same of course was true for Mary. It is amazing how they, and we, so easily deceive ourselves and hide behind the cloak of self-justification, when we know better; how we ignore God and spurn the clear directives of His Word.
Back to Jacob. Lest we be too hard on Jacob, we ought to humbly ask the Holy Spirit to show us our own path of darkness and self-deception. Jacob was not helped by the example he was set within his own home. His parents exercised obvious favouritism – Esau was obviously his father’s favourite son and Jacob had his mother looking out for him. Rebecca decides to take matters into her own hands and teach Jacob the art of deception and lying – something that he became very good at. His parents also taught him the art of favouritism that he so impressively displayed with his wives and his son Joseph thus causing deep divisions within his own family that was to lead in turn to his sons lying and deceiving him. R.T. Kendall very insightfully says this about Jacob in his wonderful book, “Totally Forgiving Yourself”:
Also known as Israel, Jacob is the best example I can think of, of the sheer grace of God. He is one non-stop illustration from birth to burial of how God continues to love, overrule and look after a selfish, manipulative, insensitive and complaining man. God never stopped loving Jacob and never ceased blessing him, although it must be said that Jacob knew a lot of blessing as well…like it or not, it would seem that, sadly, Jacob was simply not self-conscious of his deeply flawed character – and yet God still blesses him anyway. Yes, Jacob went through the whole of his life blaming everybody but himself, feeling sorry for himself and yet apparently unconscious of a sense of sin or shame. If this is indeed true, he would have felt no need to apply Robert Burns’ famous line:
‘O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see ourselves as others see us’
It seems to me, therefore, that Jacob never saw himself as we see him, neither can we prove that he would have cared all that much if he did! I therefore wonder if God chose to let Jacob be an example of sheer grace if only to demonstrate how much God can love unworthy people.
Yet in the Bible the Lord says, “Jacob have I loved.” [Malachi 1:1] and of course when the Lord speaks to Moses to declare who he is, he says that he is “The God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” [Exodus 3:6 and 15.] The Psalmist refers time and again to God’s relationship with Jacob. What is instructive for us through Jacob’s life is that we do pass on generational sin to our children. I would love my children not just to live by my example, but be better than I am. However, I know that they will learn vice easier than virtue from me, and they too will learn to justify what I have justified, even though deep down I know it to be wrong.
I may say that I love all of my children equally. That is easy to say, but quite another thing to impress upon the young minds of our children. It is obviously the case that there will be one of my children that I will get on with more easily. It is equally the case that another of my children might be needing me to sacrifice time and attention that I am not willing to give. He or she may rightly conclude that we do not care about them as much as another sibling. What God may be saying to me, and what I might be missing hearing, is that I have to invest more time and care in the child that I least identify with in order to understand and support that child. Isaac and Rebecca were to learn from the bitterness of experience that favouritism, and a failure to invest time and understanding in all of their children, was going to cost both them and their children dearly. If we don’t give our children the time and attention they need and deserve, they might end up by looking for it, and finding it, in quite inappropriate places and relationships. I am reminded of the man who asked his child to spell love. When he looked down at the piece of paper, she had spelled it TIME.
Then there was Aaron the brother of Moses. Moses had such great confidence in Aaron that he asked that he should come with him to Pharaoh and speak on his behalf because he was the more eloquent speaker. Moses was convinced that he knew the situation better than God and insisted that Aaron was the better communicator. Aaron may have been good with words but he didn’t have the heart that Moses had for the Lord and His people. However, the Lord allowed this and Aaron stood with Moses through all of the confrontations with the king of Egypt. However when Moses went up the mountain to speak with God and receive the commandments, and it looked as if Moses would not return, the people turned to Aaron and said, “Look, make us some gods who can lead us. This man Moses, who brought us here from Egypt has disappeared.” One would have thought that Aaron would have refused such a request, but he takes over and directs “Operation Golden Calf!!” He is right at the forefront of this return to Egyptian idolatry. Yet he was to become the first high priest and a line of priests was to descend from him. He was guilty of breaking a fundamental commandment and came up with a howler of a lie to justify his sin [see Exodus 32:2-6 and verses 22-24], yet he is held in honour in the history of his people and the heart of God.
Indeed, as we progress through this story of the people of God we cannot help but see that God is constantly dealing with his people on the level of grace – how else could a holy God tolerate such behaviour, except that He deeply loved his people? Interestingly I read the following quote from Rick Beneteau,
“Of all the good parents I know, I can't think of one who doesn't love their children more than they are loved back.”
Those of us who are parents, despite all of our imperfections, realize just how true this is. If the stability and happiness of our parenting depended on our children loving us with the same commitment as we love them, we would be continually in the miseries. As we turn towards the Lord, we see the same truth. We will never love Him the way he loves us, and He does not expect it from us. His love, truly is love of a different kind – a different order. He does not excuse our sins and will do everything to help us change, but the bottom line is that he always deals with us at the level of grace.
Of course there is Moses himself. Moses is chosen by God to lead his people at the age of 80. Why did it take so long for the Lord to use Moses in this responsible way? Because Moses was not responsible as a younger man. He had a bad temper where he acted first and thought later. How shatteringly true that is of me – guilty of opening my mouth, clenching my fist without putting my brain into gear. We are told that Moses murdered an Egyptian soldier whom he saw mistreating a Hebrew slave. Many people would have some sympathy for what Moses did, and Moses thought that he would get away with it because the Hebrews would be on his side. This was not to be the case and Moses ended up having to flee for his life from Egypt and would not return there for nearly 40 years. Moses, the hothead and the murderer, yet this is the man that the Lord chose to lead his people out of Egypt and who would be held in such reverence by the people of Israel and Jews and Christians throughout the world.
Isaiah was a man whose reputation could not be touched, and indeed he was referred to as the godliest man of his generation. He is like the person in our church that we all look to as being the saintliest, who makes our own efforts at obedience and godliness look poor. This is the person in our congregation who seems to have a genuine peace about themselves and is in touch with the Lord – a person who mildly irritates us because we wonder if they are as good as they seem, because we do not feel like very good people some (if not a lot!) of the time. We seem to struggle to get it right, but there seems to be an effortlessness in this person – a saintly smile with a soft voice who always seems to say the right thing in the right way to all the people. This person doesn’t seem to have the personal, family and relational struggles we have. They don’t seem to be tempted as we are; they don’t seem to fall, as we so often do, especially in the privacy of our own thoughts, mind and emotional life. I can immediately think of a man who fitted that category in the church where I first became a Christian, yet years later I was to hear of him committing suicide – the two did not seem to fit somehow! All was not as it seemed to be on the outside, but more fool me for thinking that that could ever be the case. Back to Isaiah, this godly and good man. He has a vision in the Temple of God and he records his feelings when he sees the Lord:
“Woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the King.” Isaiah 6:5
The King James Version of the Bible has caught it perfectly! In the presence of true and genuine goodness Isaiah almost has a complete nervous breakdown. He feels as if he is disintegrating because he keenly senses how unclean he is – in particular his mouth. Yet the Lord chose to reveal great things to this man of God and to use him in a mighty way as he wrote his prophetic insights down! Was there ever insight given to any man greater than what Isaiah was inspired to write in Isaiah chapter 53? Could anything have more perfectly depicted the sufferings and saving acts of Jesus? Yet this came from an unclean man – his own words!
Then, keeping to the Old Testament, there was Jeremiah. Many people feel that this man of God suffered badly from depression, and that may be the case, but he was given the task of confirming God’s judgement over Judah and Jerusalem, which was hardly a popular task. He was the kind of religious man depicted in the character of Rev. I. M. Jolly by Scottish comedian Rikki Fulton. Just to be around Jeremiah was to feel his misery and pain. Jeremiah has the audacity to complain to the Lord and wishes that he had never been born. Yet the Lord is patient with his servant and rarely criticizes him for his behaviour. There is a Jeremiah or two in every church – people who are only ever able to see the negative side of things. This kind of person will see the end of days as a tragedy rather than a time of fulfilment and blessing for the Lord’s people. However God has chosen this person to be part of His family. They are a necessary part of the great tapestry of grace that God will one day present to the universe.
There is Peter in the New Testament and he knows how to fail big time. There are Peters in every church – thank God for them – and they tend to be the visionaries who are enthusiastic about getting the church moving and making a difference in our world. But the Peters can often fail badly. The Peter in the New Testament is called the agent of Satan on one occasion, for trying to turn Jesus away from the Cross and thinking that he knew better than Jesus what His destiny was to be. There is Peter who, many people believe, takes a sword and attacks a servant of the High Priest, cutting off his ear, even when Jesus specifically said there was to be no resistance. There is Peter who declares that he will never deny his Lord, yet does so, so emphatically. Yet when the Lord meets Peter after the resurrection he does not condemn him, but encourages him in his duty to the church of feeding the flock. There is not one word of condemnation on the lips of Jesus for Peter’s failures and imperfections. One wag in the Free Church in Lewis, jokingly said that it is a good job Peter appeared before Jesus and not the elders in the Free Church in Ness [a notoriously legalistic group of men]. What goodness and grace Jesus shows to the Peters in His Church.
Then there is Paul. Paul, the consistent, rational believer who is so significant in the mission of the church to the non-Jewish world [I hate the word “gentile” because it sounds so derogatory]. But he was a believer with a “past”. It was Paul who stood holding men’s cloaks as they stoned Stephen to death. Was Paul in the Jewish Council when Jesus was condemned to death? Whatever, this young Pharisee was given the task of rounding up Christians and having them punished or put to death for their faith, and he did it with enthusiasm because he believed in his cause. He is later to describe himself as the “worst of sinners” in part at least because of the persecution of the early church. We have many people in our churches who have a “past” that is painful for them to look back on because it reminds them of significant failure, yet the Lord does not condemn them and wants them in his family as full members and never to be treated as second class citizens. Also, these people are never to be paraded by the church like trophies of what God can do to change even the worst of people. I remember a young man telling me his story of how, after being found guilty of a homicide, he became a Christian in prison. When he came out of prison he was paraded around churches to tell the story of how “the killer had become a Christian” It may sound a powerful story to tell, yet he was being labelled by the church and not allowed to move away from his past – eventually he had to move somewhere else for a time simply to escape the label the church had put on him. The Church has to remember that when we come to Christ we are new people in him, and need to be treated with a dignity that reflects this reality.
In other words the Lord deals with a very mixed bag of people that he calls the Church and who are designated as his family – that is always the way it has been with God. When he speaks to the Church, he does so to a group of imperfect people who need to get their act together and begin the process of transformation. All believers are people who fall short of being the perfect article. All believers have only one thing to boast in – that they are people who have been saved only by the grace of Jesus Christ – apart from Him there is nothing else for us to boast in. We are a group of imperfect people [very imperfect, if only we knew it] who have been given the Kingdom of God, out of the most unusual love that there is – love of a different kind, as Bill Hybels is so fond of putting it.
I have very deliberately, and at length, gone through all of these Biblical examples because, though Paul here wants us to get rid of sin, our starting point must always be the grace and love of God even for the worst of sinners. God takes us on board not because we are good or better than anyone else. He does not wait for us to improve or shed our sins before taking us into His Kingdom. He calls us to come as His beloved children with the promise that He will help us to change and improve and become good – a life-time’s work for the Holy Spirit and ourselves.
We need therefore to be re-clothed. Watch a person who goes into a shop for clothing. Unless they are a very experienced shop lifter they will generally not put on new clothes over their current clothing. There has therefore to be a changing that takes place. It is logical that we take off the old clothing first and then replace it with new clothing. The logic of Biblical thinking is that we are never made aware of our sin or corrected by God without the alternative or positive behaviour being put to us:
- Stop stealing but be engaged in the kind of work that now means there will be no need to steal.
- Stop lying, but now use your tongue in such a positive way it will encourage other people.
- Stop gossiping about other people in the church, but now find ways to speak graciously and positively in order to build these people up in their faith.
- Stop causing conflict and try instead to be at peace with yourself and other people.
The list could go on and on, but the truth is that for every sin, there is a corresponding virtue. I want us to see as we go through Paul’s negative and positive suggestions as to how we should re-clothe ourselves that the aim is not just corrective but to turn us into better people who are more presentable to the world as members of the Kingdom of God and better equipped to serve God in our world.
However there is another fundamental point that Jesus makes when he encourages us to lead enhanced lives, “Without me you can do nothing.” If we look at the argument as it progresses in John chapter 15 you will see that Jesus comes back again and again to this vital reality – we cannot live fruitful lives without a life that radically depends on Him and the Spirit. Take the example of a young child. As parents we do not expect the very young child to take off and put on their own clothes: The same could be said of a very old or infirm person. Jesus does not expect us to be able to change our lives without his constant help. Indeed, Jesus encourages us to become like little children. We need therefore never move far away from Jesus and by faith engage in this change of clothing – off with the old habits, attitudes and ways of living and on with the new and God-pleasing. The key will be not just to improve our lives but to depend on Jesus to enable that change to take place. We must always submit ourselves to a wisdom and power that is greater than our own.