Clothes Make the Man (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromised Radio Ministry. Mike Abendroth here at the helm, Engage. We talk about the Lord Jesus Christ, duplex gratia, Christ for pardon, Christ for power, Christ for us, Christ in us, the only one that never compromised.

Our ratings were better. We had more downloads when we were more of a discernment ministry, but that's just the way it goes. It's kind of like a conference. We're having Steve Meister here in March to talk about who God is and a classical theistic view of God.

And if we had a marriage conference or an end times conference, it probably would have been probably have more people sign up, but we're having a conference on God. So people are probably busy. Today on No Compromised Radio, we're going to talk about the clothes making the man.

That's what we're going to talk about. You said, say what? Before I do that, don't forget if you go to American Gospel, they have a paywall that you can get around for at least a week. I did a five-part series, a video series on sanctification, a five-part series on law gospel, and a five-part series on assurance of salvation.

And if you go there, maybe that would help you. We have two new books, Gospel Assurance, The Daily Guide and The Daily Devotional, two separate books. And those are on Amazon. The guide is also on Kindle and Audible now.

So getting a few downloads on Audible. So if you want that thing read, great. In addition, we are here working on the S. Lewis Johnson Colossians Commentary. That's the next thing that's coming out, I'm hoping by May.

I've said probably 15 times that it's coming out and 15 times I've gotten sick, sidetracked, something or other, but I'm actually going to get it done, Lord willing, very soon. All right. Do the clothes make the man?

And already you're telling me, well, come on, do the clothes make the woman? If you're going to use a proverb, you've got to use it, do clothes make the humankind? Do clothes make... What about children?

What about adolescents? What about teenagers? Clothes make the man. It's a little proverb. And of course, you know the proverb, probably, and you know it, it's meaning that people will judge you by the way you dress.

That's just probably a fact. I read in psychology today, of all places, that physical objects like clothes can be used to change our internal mindset, allowing us to transition more easily into roles that are unfamiliar by first dressing the part.

That was done by not King Solomon, but a man named Solomon in 1983. Of course, every time I read the word Solomon, I think of the Hebrew version of Solomon and it's what? Shlomo. I just kind of like the name of that, Shlomo.

Song of Shlomo. It doesn't sound that romantic. This psychology today theory is called, technically, it's called symbolic interactionism. Did you get that? Symbolic interactionism. And they say that when we surround ourselves with objects that symbolize a particular role, let's say for their illustration, a teacher, a biker, executive, gym rat, our sense of identity begins to interact with those symbols and we unconsciously begin to behave in a way we expect a person who wears such clothes to behave.

So you didn't know you were going to learn symbolic interactionism today, did you? And they say if symbolic interactionism is real, then dressing for the job you want may subconsciously change your behavior, helping you to perform better and get the promotion.

Interesting. The clothes make the man. The clothes make the woman. The clothes make the children. You say, well, where did this come from? I found a few different cases. Mark Twain's short story, The Czar's Siloquy.

And he says, one realizes that without his clothes, a man would be nothing at all. That the clothes do not merely make the man, the clothes are the man. That without them, he is a cipher, a vacancy, a nobody, a nothing.

There's no power without clothes. It's also found in Latin by a man that you know probably of Erasmus, think Erasmus Greek New Testament, Luther got a hold of. And he said in Latin, vetus vermin facted.

Clothes make the man. I was doing Duolingo and I think I did 23 days on Latin. I kind of thought, that's probably enough, so I switched to modern Hebrew. I think I'm day 98 now or something. Shakespeare, of course, remember he used to love his Elizabethan wardrobe.

He wrote in the tragedy of Hamlet through a man named Polonius, the apparel oft proclaims the man. And isn't that interesting? So today on No Compromise Radio, we're going to be in Colossians chapter three, and there's this language of clothing.

That's the tie-in today. Yeah, it took me six minutes to get there, but that's okay. It's free radio. Well, we used to have to pay to be on. Now in the two stations in Wyoming and Alaska, we don't have to pay to be on.

We are in Alaska, K-A-G-V, 1110 AM, Alaska's Gospel Voice. And it is a vfcm .org forward slash K-A-G-V, and that's 1110 AM there. And we're also on in Powell, Wyoming. And this is coming out of Trinity Bible Church, and it is 88 .1 on the FM dial.

They don't have dials anymore. And that one is called K-F-G-R, K-F-G-R. So, but I don't have to pay to be on either of those because we don't pay anymore. They should pay me, right? They should pay me.

Clothes make the man. And in Colossians three, similarly to Ephesians four, there's language of put this off and it's clothing language. Take that, take those clothes off. You can imagine if you were walking outside in New England and it was a spring day and you look down and you had 15 ticks on your leg.

I remember once I was walking over in the reservoir area, kind of through the cemetery and some trails, and I had a rock in my shoe. So when I first got here, it was 1997, and I thought, I got a rock in my shoe.

I bent down to get the rock out and I saw all kinds of ticks. I think five or six ticks on my pant legs. I thought, you know what? I'm going to walk inside the church around the Iwana circle instead. So 27 years of walking around the Iwana, the Iwana circle.

If you don't know what Iwana is, approved workmen are not ashamed. It's a boys and girls club that we have here at the church. I want to talk about Iwana and their direction, but I'm not going to do it.

So we spiff up our Iwana. I'll just say that because I'm prideful and I don't want you to think that I'm doing something that I shouldn't be with this discernment ministry. So that's what it is. And you take those clothes off.

You're like, I have to get out of these clothes. There's ticks all over these clothes. I don't want these clothes at all. You take them off. And Paul uses that language in Colossians 3. Take off the clothes of sin and sexual sin and idolatry and lying and blaspheming and just get rid of those and instead put on some other clothes and those clothes would be kindness and meekness and all that stuff.

And so that's what we're going to talk about today on No Compromise Radio. Do the clothes make the man? And big picture is simply this, that we are new creatures in Christ Jesus. We are united with Christ.

The spirit of God has taken off and put on, and that's our position. And now we want to live in light of our position, our practice. We want to match up to our position. Ephesians 1, 4, 1 would call it, walk in a manner worthy of your calling.

Who you are will live it out. You have been given the righteousness of Christ Jesus. So act like it. The clothes make the man, the clothes make the woman. Jesus perfectly obeyed. You get his perfect obedience put on you, imputation.

Think put on like clothes, a righteous robe, Isaiah 61 talks about it. And since that's happened to you, Christian, now live the right way. Live a life commensurate to your calling. If you have a uniform on, a military uniform, you should act like a soldier.

And if you have an officer's uniform on or officer's patches or whatever, pins, I don't know, stripes, you can tell I was in the military, then you ought to act like an officer. Conduct befitting an officer.

And so if you're a Christian today and you're listening to the show, you need to be remembering what Jesus has done, who he is, Colossians 1 and 2, of course. And then because of that, you want to live out who you are.

Think how hard it would be to do the opposite. Why don't you try to become something you're not? And that's where a lot of counseling falls flat, getting people to change when there's no capacity to change, no ability to change.

I mean, real internal long-term change. Of course, there can be externals, obviously. But deep down in terms of the kind of change that God wants, you can't stop being something just if you're not a different person.

And so now God makes us new creatures. We're different people. He's put off and put on for us. And then now we need to live in light of that. And we need the Lord Jesus to help us. And he's, of course, helped us because he's given us his spirit, right?

He hasn't left us as orphans. And we have the spirit of God so that we can have a life that's right. So one of the things when it comes to change in your life, and you want to be better at a certain area, and you want to say to yourself, I'd like to excel in this area and I'm not being very godly in it, I seem to relapse into sin in this area.

You need to not just run to how-to books. You need to run to, oh, let me be reminded of what God has done. He's put off and put on. And then I want to respond to what he's done. There's a tie-in between, I was going to say faith and works, and the tie-in is not there.

They're completely different. But we have faith in the Lord Jesus in the justification category, full stop. And then that faith works, that's in the holy living category. And they're not to be blended or anything like that.

The apparel often proclaims the man. And you'd hear Paul say elsewhere, adorn the gospel. I mean, how do you adorn good news? Well, the good news has affected you, has it not? And you want to respond properly.

Colossians 1, Paul prays for them that they might walk in a manner worthy, that remember that they might bear fruit, increase in the knowledge of the Lord, have endurance and be thankful people. And Paul goes on to talk about how great this Jesus is and how great he is because he's God in essence and in nature.

And he is Lord, he's sustainer, he's sovereign, he's a reconciler. And then Paul says in chapter 2, I want you to not be deluded by people saying things about Jesus they ought not to. You have received him by faith and you need to walk in him by faith as well because he's the Lord and don't get caught up into asceticism, angel worship and all that stuff because it doesn't really work.

So Colossians 3 is this great chapter that reminds us about clothes making the man. And if you're a woman, you know what I'm saying, clothes make the woman. You see in Colossians that Jesus is preeminent over Satan at the cross, over creation in the church.

And don't you think then, dear Christian, that he should be preeminent in your lives? In your life, if I say dear Christian, singular, or dear Christians in your lives? Well, that would seem to make sense.

And Paul is moving in chapter 3 to doctrine's duty. That's what I like to call it, doctrine's duty. Yes, it's duty, but it's in light of the doctrine because even in chapter 3, verse 5, you're going to see therefore.

So on No Compromise Radio today, I want you to start thinking through what's sanctification look like? We talk about sanctification all the time here at No Compromise Radio, and properly speaking, strictly speaking, it's God's work.

God alone is the sanctifier. And of course, then we respond. And how do we respond? Remember, what are the two general categories that you see in Romans 6 and here even in Colossians 3? These are the two categories that I talk about all the time, and you'll see them right here in the text.

Can you imagine? Right here in the text. I'm not even quoting a creed today. How about that? I would never play the band Creed, but that's another story. Mortification, vivification. Think vivid, alive, dead, alive.

Yes, to righteousness is the alive part, and the dead part is no to sin. Killing sin, killing unrighteousness, killing ungodliness, killing lawlessness. Once again, when people say, oh, you're antinomian, it's kind of like, you know, with Calvinism.

Somebody says, that guy's a hyper-Calvinist. What does that ever actually mean? Because it's not true. I'm not a hyper-Calvinist because I believe in prayer and evangelism and the love of God, not just for the elect.

There's three things about hyper-Calvinism that I don't believe. So how am I hyper-Calvinist? And so when people call me a hyper-Calvinist, it's not historically true. It just means I'm more of a Calvinist than they are.

They're a four-pointer, I'm a five-pointer, that kind of thing. And it's the same thing when it comes to antinomian and neonomianism, against the law, new laws. Oh, Abendroth is antinomian. That just means they're more gnomian than I am.

And I can identify that pretty well because I used to live in that kind of idea. So anyway, do you see, here we have in verse five, dead, legacy standard Bible. And I believe, let's see, what does ESV say?

ESV, I think says it rightly, put to death. Yes. And that's the word put to death. LSB and maybe NASB talk about consider yourselves. And it's like they're importing some of the Roman 611 language, which I like Roman 611 language.

But here in the Greek, put to death. And then verse 12 is the vivification thing. He didn't say to make a lie, but he says, put on then as God's chosen ones. So Colossians chapter three is about, well, the first few verses, you remember who Jesus is.

And then he says, put off, put on. Then he says, mortify, live for righteousness. This is sanctification language. God is sanctifying you, dear Christian. You didn't even know that, did you? He is, even when you're sleeping, maybe.

That's a good question. That's I think even A .A. Hodge talked about. God is sanctifying us. He saved us. He's sanctifying us. And one day he'll glorify us. And that's all the work of God. What's our response to God's work?

Well, thankfulness, saying no to sin, saying yes to righteousness, and living a life commensurate to our calling. We've been given the righteous robes of Christ Jesus, and now we should act like it. Not confusing in position and practice, but just saying, you know what?

This is who we are. We should live that out. And back to what I said earlier. What if we had to live out who we weren't, right? And again, that's the problem with a lot of counseling that says, okay, how can we change behavior when the person can't do it, right?

They're just unable to do it. But now we have the spirit of God. We're regenerate. He's made us alive. We're new creatures in Christ Jesus. We're justified. We're being sanctified. The spirit of God dwells in us.

I mean, the list could go on and on and on and on. And so now we can do it. We can say what's earthly in me, sexual immorality, impurity, everything else, dead. I want to put that to death. It's rotten.

It stinks. Dead. I used to do it. I have different clothes on now. I used to be, you know, living for myself. And now I've been closed with the righteousness of Christ. I've got new clothes on. And why would I go running back to the mud pit or to the pig pit or to the pig pen?

Van Dix-Horne said, it is important to remember that sanctification is God's work because Christians sometimes summarize salvation as if one part of its progress is to be credited to God and one part to us.

Doubtless, this is said with good intent and with the hope of making us serious about the Christian life. Nevertheless, we must insist that the only way to play a part in cleansing oneself is by clinging to the one who is white as snow.

Those who want to walk the path of self-sanctification must be reminded of Romans 6, and I would add Colossians 3, that we are told that sanctification only happens in Christ. And then we are told the only way to be dead to sin is to see our old self crucified with Christ in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

He concludes, like every blessing in the Christian life and every benefit, sanctification is found in union with Christ. We have God supernaturally sanctifying us, and he is doing this by sheer grace.

And he is enabling you, Christian, to say no to sin and yes to righteousness. So, you can't start saying when it comes to sin, I can't. Let's say you're enslaved to pornography and you say, I can't stop.

Is that technically correct? I can't stop. Now, I understand addictive personalities. I understand addictions. I understand addictive behavior and habits and all that kind of stuff and all that jazz. But is it you won't or is it you can't?

That's a really good question. I can't control my temper. Really? I can't forgive my wife. Really? I can't submit to my husband. What are you telling me if you're saying those things? And of course, I fall into these traps as well, but it's my show.

I'm talking to you. You can. It's just you won't. You've been given every resource. Last time I checked in 2 Peter 1, everything pertaining to life and godliness. And I'm trying to encourage you, Christian, that you can.

Let's say you're full of anxiety all the time. I just can't stop worrying. Well, maybe if you started saying, and I want to say it kindly, I think what you're saying is I won't stop worrying. I actually like worrying.

This is just kind of what I do. That's what I am. I'm kind of a worry ward. I'm actually known as a worry ward. That's kind of like what I do. I worry. Well, coming from me, a one who has to kill worry and has to remind those around me to kill worry because of who Jesus is.

And let's just, let's just be careful. Let's be careful. I want you to see, see, part of this is I've got to give you the diagnosis. So, so you want to take the medicine? Here's the diagnosis. Stop saying I can't.

Stop saying this is just my besetting sin. Stop saying this is just the way I am. And this is kind of, you know, everybody's got weaknesses. This is mine. And it'll be this way to the end till I die. I'm going to have this kind of reoccurring, besetting sin.

And I just can't stop. Would you please not talk that way? Would you please not think that way? Would you think Roman six union with Christ way? You died with Christ. You've been raised with him. You can now kill sin and you can say yes to righteousness.

Did you know you can do that by the power of God, by the grace of God in you? That's Colossians three. This is the preeminence of Jesus. This is who he is. Matter of fact, when I'm on the show or preaching on Sunday, sometimes I think, man, I needed my own little sermon there.

I need my own radio show. See, because by ourselves, we can't do this. If somebody was just calling me and they're there on their show, I should just tell them, Hey, they're, they're calling me on the show.

And now, now what am I going to do? It's one of my kids. I could probably just call him back. Let's do this live on the radio and see what happens. And I'm going to just talk to Luke. Luke Avendroth. When they FaceTime, then I try to respond.

It does say connecting here on No Compromise Radio. Luke Avendroth is on No Compromise Radio right now because I'm recording a show. Anything that you want to say to the masses? Sorry, you're kind of cut down.

Well, that's all he wants to say. So Luke, I'll be calling you a little bit later. How's that sound? He just, he just didn't say anything. God enables you to die to sin, to say yes to righteousness. Westminster Catechism.

Of how many parts of sanctification consists? Two. As there were in regeneration, a mortifying of the flesh and it's at its root and an implanting of new principle of life. So two, in sanctification, there's a continuation of this double work.

That is great. Matter of fact, that isn't Westminster. That's Gerhardus Voss, Reformed Dogmatics, volume four. Putting to death the old man, enlivening of the new man. We're progressively renewed in Christ Jesus.

Hebrews chapter 13 talks about God working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. I want you to know, dear Christian, that you can.

It's just that you won't. Right? That's the hopeful part. So I want to leave this on. This is not scolding. This is just telling you the truth. This is me going to my little infant Haley or my other children, got slivers in their hands, and they were too young to understand.

Daddy's got to dig this out with a needle, this sliver for your own good. And it's going to hurt a lot. And they're looking at me like, you're hurting me, dad. That hurts. Why would you hurt me? This is out of character for you to hurt.

Of course, do it for their own good. And so for your own good, for my own good, I'm telling you, and I'm telling me, dear NoCo world, that you can. So whatever besetting sin you have, whatever sin you struggle with, quote, end quote, whatever sin you think, you know what, I might have to have this till the day I die.

It may be there till the day you die. Looking at a woman with lust temptation for that, it may be to the, but it doesn't have to have the same frequency. It doesn't have to have the same import. It doesn't have to have the same length of duration.

It doesn't have to have the same enticing details. It doesn't have to do any of that because we have Christ's clothes put on us and the clothes do make the man. And instead of some mumbo jumbo psychology interactionism, we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us and it is God working.

And that's why in Colossians chapter three, the first thing Paul does is he said, I want you to be thinking about the ascension. You've been raised with Christ. Seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Here's what I want you to think about the exalted ascended Jesus, because this exalted ascended Jesus is the one who saved you and the one who gave you the Holy Spirit and the one who you're not united with.

And you died with Christ and you're dead to sin. You were raised with Christ alive to newness of life. I want you to begin thinking about the ascended Jesus in heaven now. That's where it all starts because did you know what?

The clothes make the man. And so today on No Compromise Radio, we're talking about Colossians three and making sure, oh, you know what? I'm going to go in this interview and I'm going to dress up a little bit.

I feel pretty good and I know kind of what to do. And you know, if I need to go get a bank loan, I usually don't wear my sweats. I wear a suit and tie and I get a lot of respect. If I need to go someplace and, you know, go into the hospital or something, I have a suit and tie on.

I kind of look like a doctor. I can get past the guards for the COVID and everything else. And then I kind of act like that, right? Because the clothes make the man. So here in a spiritual way, we've talked about some of that today.

My name is Mike Abenroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Why don't you go ahead and get on the website and you can check out any of our past episodes. And if you want to go to iTunes, I think you can only get the last 10.

I don't know how to fix that problem. Anyway, this is Mike Abenroth. God bless you.