SERMON: Put Off and Put On

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And may you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word.

Well, good morning everyone. This morning we're going to be considering Colossians chapter 3, verses 1 through 17. Follow along with me as I read from the King James Version. If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.

Set your affection on things above, and not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then ye also shall appear with him in glory.

Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. For which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience, in the which ye also walked some time when ye lived in them, but now ye also put off all these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.

Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all.

Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.

And above all these, put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called, and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to.

The Lord.

And whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. It's the word of the Lord.

Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we pray that you would please be with us today and let your word sink deeply within our hearts, that you would sanctify us and make us more holy according to your promises. I ask that you would lift us up now into the heavenlies as we worship you.

Amen.

Please feed us in Christ's name. Now for context, in the previous chapter, St. Paul exposed what Calvin puts as those fruitless exercises which the false apostles urged. As though they and we are still subject to the rudiments of this world, he established how our death and resurrection with Christ by faith in baptism liberates us from the yoke of the ceremonial law.

Now in this chapter he encourages us, he admonishes us to pursue loftier religious exercises. He says, if ye then be risen with Christ. We are risen with Christ now.

We are dead.

The old man is dead. We are risen. Therefore, we ought to think of ourselves as the sojourners in this world that we truly.

Are.

We ought to take captive, as Paul tells the Corinthians, all of our thoughts to Christ. We ought to dwell much on the heavenly in our daily thoughts and prayers and lives. We are to set our affections on the things above, he says.

The higher we place our affections, the less enthralled, and that's just children and an older English word meaning enslaved, the less enthralled we will be to earthly things. I remember reading somewhere years ago, a man wrote that hardships, earthly losses, even those of loved ones, losses of our favorite things that we consider to be valuable, you know, the irreplaceables, the family heirlooms, whatever it is, suddenly end up coming up.

Broken or lost.

Everything that we lose by whatever form of consumption or corruption is simply Christ weaning us from this world. Let those things go. What is it in this world? What is there that makes us so fond of it anyway?

And what isn't in heaven so as to not naturally draw our hearts to it and attract us to it, cause these affections to stir? The point is, again, we are dead already and risen already with Christ. Paul said our life is hid with him.

Not hid from us in the sense of a secret or something being kept from us, but it's hid for us, denoting security. In other words, kind of colloquially, he's got you.

He knows.

Now, given this truth, we are commanded to do the following in verses 5 through 9. He says, given this truth, he says, mortify therefore. Because of these truths, mortify your members upon the earth. He mentions fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, meaning having an affection for either things that are unlawful, sinful things, or having too much affection for things that are otherwise lawful.

It's like Kendall mentioned earlier, and Calvin clearly puts our hearts are idol factories. That would be an inordinate affection, idolatry. Evil concupiscence. That's a polite old English term for, I kind of struggled how to adequately describe this given smaller ears in the room, but it's the mental lust that drives our evil actions.

It's the brewing up here. It's the gear that starts turning that we don't shut off, that eventually grips us and drives the evil fruit. When sin's conceived, it brings forth death. Covetousness, which is, as he says, idolatry.

And then he contrasts the children of disobedience with the Colossian believers. The unbelieving, or reprobate, versus the believers when he says that in which ye also walked sometime, when ye lived in them.

He then says that now, however, when ye lived, past tense, in them, now you've also put off all these.

Anger.

Now I don't think here that he refers to all anger in general, because there is a righteous anger that Christ describes in Matthew when he says that when you're angry with your brother without cause. There is a cause, sometimes I believe, for anger, righteous anger.

In fact, sometimes I think we fail to be as angry as we ought for some of those things. Other times we fail being angry over silly things that we have no cause over which to.

Be angry.

Malice.

That is an evil lust to cause harm, to want to hurt someone on purpose. Blasphemy. We covered that this morning, interestingly, in the reading of the Catechism. It's any loose or light or frivolous use of the Holy.

It's not just the typical vulgarity that we're all used to hearing. It's any light thought of the Holy. Anywhere where we pull down in our thinking the Holy God, or attempt to pull down, the Holy God from His throne into something that is not holy, not revered.

Filthy communication out of your mouth. This covers any form of unchaste or unedifying speech. Cruel jokes. Those times when we're teasing someone and it gets a little too far. Things that maybe someone says, oh, that's a little edgy.

Think about those things before we say them. Think about those things when we hear them, that they might be lessons from unbelievers.

To us.

Don't do that. Lie not one to another. Kendall touched on this in one of his recent law homilies. This means not to deceive in any way. That doesn't mean also to be, on the other hand, cruelly truthful.

Does this shirt make me look fat?

Sure does.

Doesn't mean that. But the example that Kendall gave us out of the Scriptures, and as you likely recall, mentioned how our father Abraham told Pharaoh that Sarah was his sister. While that was true, it was certainly not the most important truth in that situation.

He intentionally left off the most important truth, fearing for his skin. Don't lie one to another. Now, Paul commanded the Colossians to mortify these things because we have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.

Now he tells the Colossian Christians and us, calling us God's holy and beloved. That's what we are. You know, the parents in the room, you think your children are set apart and beloved? Not as much as we are.

We're only human. You're holy and beloved. And then he goes on to describe, now, what does this putting on of the new man look like? In verses 10 and 11. You see, you can't, it's not possible to simply continually put off.

You're going to be left with a void. I'll do better, I'll do better. I got to stop doing that, I'll stop doing that. It's going to leave a void and it's just going to be filled with further vices. When you put off, you must then also put on.

And we put it on because we are the elect of God, holy and beloved. And what does he direct us to put on? Bowels of mercies. This just means a deeply felt affection. In the ancient world, they described what we would say comes from our heart as coming from our bowels.

And I'm sure, you know, some of you have felt over the years, you know, in the past, a deep yearning for something or somewhere or whatever, like homesickness or something, and it makes you nauseous. You kind of feel like, ugh, you know, you feel it in your gut.

That's what he's talking about. Feel mercy like that for one another.

Kindness.

Be nice. Be amiable.

Be gentle.

Humbleness of mind. An old friend of mine over the years has said, still says, from time to time, that he feels like he needs to get lower. He'll get in certain situations in life where he feels like he's getting a little bit too high up.

And he's like, brother, I need to get low.

Get low.

Be humble. Esteem others higher than yourself. Paul tells us in Philippians chapter 2, 1 through 5, that this is the mind of Christ, meekness and long-suffering. And where do these holy virtues then lead?

Well, to him continuing in verse 13, to forbearing one another and forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. Someone slights you, you feel, you know, I mean, we've all been there, right?

Get a little offended over something, forgive them. Even as Christ has forgiven you, let go. And above all these things, all of the aforementioned holy virtues, above it all, put on charity. Just the old English word for love.

Without love, Paul tells us, we are nothing. You could exercise every other one of these virtues and be nothing without love. God is love, St. John tells us. Notice John there, he doesn't say God loves, which he does.

Although, he doesn't command us necessarily in that one passage to love, although we are commanded to do so. He says there, God is love. It's what he is. And we are made in his image. Therefore, it is utterly incongruous for a Christian not to love.

Let us repent of not loving. He refers to it as the bond of perfectness. Why do we think he describes it that way? The bond of perfectness. Again, it's because all the other holy virtues flow from it.

You will find that the more sanctified you are with regard to your doctrine, or the doctrine of love, the more sanctified you will be in all other aspects of life and doctrine. Now, let's consider verses 15 through 17.

He says,.

And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also you're called in one body, and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him. Let the peace of God reign in your hearts. Let it dictate from your heart. Let it rule, reign, govern.

Let it have its seat in your heart. Where the peace of God rules, the judgments of man and the devil fail to cause conflict or misery in our hearts and lives. Be at peace. And let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

Let it inhabit you.

Be in your Bibles much, Christian. Let it dwell in you not poorly or meagerly, but richly. Whitfield would say, prick him anywhere. His blood is bableen. He said of Bunyan, let it be that much a part of you to dwell in you richly.

Cultivate a certain longing of the word in your heart, or for the word, rather, in your heart, and let the word dwell in you that you may be wise. It says here, in all wisdom. And the purpose of that is that, he tells us, to teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Stir each other up in holiness. Encourage one another in holy exercises, in holy language, in holy behavior. Do it from the heart, but do it with wisdom. And then, lastly, whatsoever you do, do in the name of Jesus, giving thanks.

He says this several times throughout this chapter, to be thankful. To give thanks, be thankful, be grateful. We are to be a grateful people. We have so much to be thankful for. We're told over and over again, give thanks.

I found it interesting, in going through and preparing this sermon, that Paul reiterates, essentially, this same exact message for four of the seven churches in Asia Minor. He sent this message to the Corinthians.

He shared it with Galatia, the church in Ephesus, and at Philippi. When instructing the church of Thessalonica, he addressed the put-offs. But when he got to where you would think the following, the put-ons, he said one sentence in verse 9 of chapter 4.

But as touching brotherly love, ye need not that I write unto you, for ye yourselves are taught of God to love one another. God had already taught them that. He said, you know, everybody in Macedonia knows it, so I don't have to write to you about these things.

And notice he addresses the chief virtue, love. That they had that, that they were already exercised in that. He had no need to give them further instruction. The Thessalonian believers had already been exercised much in the school of Christ with regard to that doctrine.

May we be like them in that regard. Brothers and sisters, the Almighty, in fact, is exercising us this morning. Therefore, when we go out from here into our homes, into the world, let us go out with renewed strength and vigor to put off the old man and to put on the new.

Let us return to our individual positions within the legions of the church militant, having been exercised and more prepared for the battle, bearing the standard of the God of the bond of perfectness.

Let's pray.

Our Heavenly Father, I pray that you would please now be with us as we go out, Lord. As we continue in this service, and then as we go out into the world, that we would indeed be exercised, and that we would indeed put off the old man and put on the new for your glory and our good.

In Christ's name, amen.