In this sermon, Pastor Joe Babij continues looking at Colossians 3 and the new life of a believer in Christ. In part 2, Pastor Babij examines the second characteristic of the new self as explained in Colossians 3:5-9: the new self deals decisively with the old man of sin.
Three Characteristics of the New Self in Christ
1. The New Self Has New Pursuits (vv. 1-4)
2. The New Self Deals Decisively with the Old Man (vv. 5-9)
2a. The first list of vices to put to death (vv. 5-7)
2b. The second list of vices to put away (v. 8)
2c. Lying (v. 9)
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Summary
We are reminded that the gospel transforms us radically—not just forgiving our sin, but empowering us to put it to death. Drawing from Colossians 3, we are called to decisively deal with the old self by laying aside both the sins of the flesh and the sins of speech, recognizing that we now have resurrection power through union with Christ to say no to sin’s mastery.
Key Lessons:
- Because we died and rose with Christ, we have real power to refuse sin’s reign—we are no longer slaves to it but are called to consider it dead.
- The first list of vices (sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed) are forms of idolatry—they place something other than Christ on the throne of our hearts.
- The second list of vices (anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech, and lying) harm others and reflect whose lord we are serving in that moment.
- Knowledge, willpower, and self-imposed religion are all insufficient to overcome sin—only the Spirit of God working through our union with Christ gives us true victory.
Application: We are called to actively put off the dirty garments of sin—both fleshly and relational—and prepare to put on righteousness, because leaving a vacuum without putting on virtue makes repentance incomplete.
Discussion Questions:
- Which of the two lists of vices (sins of the flesh or sins of speech) do you find hardest to ‘put to death,’ and why?
- How does remembering that we ‘once walked in’ these sins (v. 7) shape the way we respond to others who are still trapped in them?
- In what practical ways can you ‘make no provision for the flesh’ this week—what would it look like to starve a specific sin rather than feed it?
Scripture Focus: Colossians 3:1–11 is the central passage, showing that the new self must put to death earthly vices and lay aside social sins. Romans 6 reinforces that sin is no longer master over the believer, and James 3 warns of the deadly power of the tongue.
Outline
- Introduction
- The Story of Gerald Lander
- The Transforming Power of the Gospel
- Review: The New Self Has New Pursuits
- The New Self Deals Decisively with the Old Man
- First List of Vices: Sins of the Flesh
- Sexual Immorality and Impurity
- Passion, Evil Desire, and Greed as Idolatry
- Satan’s Lies and Our Responsibility
- The Motive of Holy Living: God’s Wrath
- Humility: We Once Walked in These Sins
- Second List of Vices: Sins of Speech
- Lessons on Dealing with Sinful Desires
- Putting Off Sin and Putting On Righteousness
Introduction
And let me have a word of prayer. Father, this morning as we approach your word, we thank you for it again. We thank you for the awesome privilege to have it in our hands, to be able to read it.
And thank you, Lord, that we’re still free to read it, to live it, to speak of it. And I pray, Lord, that you would allow that to go on for some time.
I just pray, Lord, that you, through the word of God, would make us mature, especially, Lord, in regard to sin and how we deal with it. I pray, Lord, that by your spirit you may give us the power to say no to it when it often tempts us.
To past sins and even present realities that are around us that are not pleasing to you, that do not honor your name, that do not bear the light of the gospel, nor is it the salt that should provide flavor and preservatives to our surroundings.
Lord, this morning open thy word to us, teach us, so we are maturing in this area and are steadfast in it. And I pray in Christ’s name, amen.
The Story of Gerald Lander
It was the year 1882.
You probably never heard the name Gerald Lander, but you probably heard the name D.L. Moody. He was an evangelist around the 1800s, and he had planned to preach at the Historical Cambridge University in England.
On a Sunday morning when he started the meetings, many Christians met early for a prayer meeting, and then about eight o’clock they returned to a hall and began to fill it with rowdy university students, eventually numbering about 1700.
The brave choir began singing, mocked by the students that were there, and pandemonium reigned during that particular meeting. The door was open and D.L. Moody the evangelist came in, and his song leader Ira Shanky came in, and several Christian faculty members also came in, along with other clergy.
They had a word of prayer. Ira Shanky began to sing “The Ninety and the Nine,” and the audience began to shout, “Here, here,” and then when he was done they would shout, “Encore,” not in a good way but in a bad way.
Then he got up before the message and started singing “Man of Sorrows,” and before he was done he was almost in tears because of the chaos going on amongst the students.
Then D.L. Moody began to preach on Daniel in the Lion’s Den. Moody’s monosyllabic pronunciation, where he would pronounce Daniel, “Daniel,” was too much for the rabble rousers, and they came back and began to repeat, “Daniel, Daniel,” each time Moody mentioned the name.
Whenever Moody used an American phrase or non-British pronunciation, they were louder and started laughing at him. Hecklers were there, led by a student named Gerald Lander. He was the vocal minority of the group, but he was the leader of the group and he was the main heckler in the front row.
Moody was looking at him and tried to shut him down, but he wouldn’t, and he got louder, and those with him also. He finally said, after the message, “If uneducated men will come to teach the varsity, they deserve to be snubbed.”
The next morning, November 6th, a bellboy knocked on Moody’s hotel room door and handed him a personal calling card bearing the name Mr. Gerald Lander. Moody invited Lander to his room and recognized him instantly.
The student said humbly, “I want to apologize, sir. I brought a letter of apology from the men, some of the more gentlemen, appalled that my behavior has written an apology.” He came to deliver the apology, though reluctantly.
When Moody, the English gentleman, realized that he overstepped his bounds of propriety, he had a long talk with this man. He said, “If you are really sincere, you’ll come to the meeting tonight and show me your sincerity.”
This man was definitely an abusive person and a very prideful person, and a person that definitely was not a believer. But a most unlikely thing happened.
Years later, and little did Moody know, that one day Gerald Lander, the disruptive leader and the leader of the students, would spend the rest of his life evangelizing Southern China as a missionary.
“One day Gerald Lander would spend the rest of his life evangelizing Southern China as a missionary.”
So what happened? See, that’s the question. What happened?
The Transforming Power of the Gospel
Well, Gerald Lander came to believe in Christ. The transformative and sanctifying gospel got a hold of his heart, and he was no longer that abusive student from Cambridge. He was now a man under the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying process.
What now moved his heart to evangelize in one place for the rest of his life? I’m sure that was an encouragement to D.L. Moody, and it’s an encouragement to us to hear a story and see how God works in people’s lives and how he changes them.
He makes them new, and they put off sin—even the sins of abuse and speech—so they can live for the Lord.
“The transformative and sanctifying gospel got a hold of his heart—he was now a man under the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying process.”
We come to Colossians again, and we realize that a Christian has experienced a radical change of their spiritual environment. That environment should affect the whole of their life: the way they live, the way they think, the way they act, the way they speak.
That just does not happen by itself. When a Christian realizes they’re now different, they’re changed, they’re alive as never before, because God opened their heart and soul to the truth and to the spiritual light given to them from the word of God, everything becomes different and everything becomes new.
I’ve already said in Colossians 3:1-4 and chapter 4, verse 6, the applications are given for living a true life in Christ and practicing biblical imperatives.
Now, there are three things that are realized very quickly about the actual life of a Christian, and the scriptures before us this morning in Colossians 3 actually help us identify some characteristics of the new self.
The first has already been covered. Today I will examine the second. There is a third, but most likely I’ll not get that far today.
Review: The New Self Has New Pursuits
But the second one this morning, found in our passage, but I’ll just mention first of all the first one from last week: the new self has new pursuits. And why they have those new pursuits is because in verse 1 of chapter 3, the new self is risen with Christ.
Also, the new self is consecrated for Christ, and then in their consecration they are to pursue certain things. The first thing they are to pursue is seeking things above, that the direction of the Christian’s life is different. And they are to keep minding things above, meaning the direction of their thinking and outlook is different.
The Christian is also identified with Christ. The first reason for you and I to seek and mind things above is because in verse 3 we have died, that’s past. Secondly, we are hidden in Christ, that’s present.
Being hidden in Christ means that for us, that is a secret thing, it’s hidden from the view of the world. They can’t see it, but we can see it in the change that’s taking place in our life, because the spirit of God is transforming us.
It also means that there’s a security as a Christian of double protection, where it says in verse 3 that the security comes with God in Christ. The way that is referred to there is that the Christian has an unbreakable bond, because Christ and God are their fathers and the spirit of God now indwells them.
It is a bond that provides security for the believer as they await the final fulfillment of God’s plan of history. And that also gives us a new identity, that our identification is no longer the way we were in our old sin, but what we are now in Christ. We are called to identify ourselves as Christ followers.
And then that leads to a lasting identity: the new self is glorified in Christ. In verse 4, it says, “When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you will be revealed with him in glory.” So we will be glorified with Christ, that is future.
The Bible says that God is taking care of our past, he’s taking care of the present, and he will take care of the future. Our future is guaranteed, we have a certainty, nothing can prevent our final salvation. We are under the power and dominion and reign of the grace of God.
“God is taking care of our past, the present, and the future. Our future is guaranteed—nothing can prevent our final salvation.”
That means the saints in Christ are to be Christ-directed, for they are indwelled by the spirit of God. And the old self, the old self of sin, is to be shriveled up, and it is to become ineffective in the life of the believer.
The New Self Deals Decisively with the Old Man
Now, this morning we want to look at the second point: the new self deals decisively with the old man. This becomes the reality of the Christian.
What We Are to Consider and Present
And notice what it says in verse 5: “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead.” Let me just stop right there for a minute, because that word “consider”—we’re to consider several things.
The first thing we’re to consider means to think about, to observe. In the Old King James it says to reckon. The one thing we’re to consider and reckon is that a Christian’s sin has been put to death and Christians have resurrection power. That’s what we’re to consider every single day we wake up.
We should consider that. That means to take into account, to calculate how that is going to change how I live my life, because I now have the power to actually say no to my sin.
We are to consider also that sin is no longer master, but Christ is the master. We have the power to refuse sin and its command that it tries to reign over us. In other words, we don’t have to obey it.
In Romans 6:6 it says, “Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.” See, that’s what we were before. We were slaves to sin. Sin had mastery over us; it dictated our passions and desires. But now we’re different, and that no longer should be taking place.
The purpose of the believer’s death with Christ is that the body, as controlled by sin, might be completely put out of a job. Christians should want to put sin in the unemployment line. Christians do not have to serve sin, really, ever again.
“Christians should want to put sin in the unemployment line. Christians do not have to serve sin, really, ever again.”
Now, that’s one thing we’re to consider. But there’s also one thing we’re to present. In verse 5 it says we’re to present our members, our earthly members of our body—that means the sinful flesh. We’re to present them to God. It’s the practice of walking in grace.
We don’t present our members to unrighteousness anymore. And this really does assume that we can quit sinning. That’s not becoming sinless, but sinning less. And when we do sin, we are confessing the sin and then putting that sin to death. We’re not making provisions for that sin anymore.
We don’t present our members to unrighteousness and to sin, but we present our members to the righteousness of God, to pleasing God.
What does putting to death mean? There’s a negative sense to it, because immediately there’s a struggle. In fact, Ephesians tells us there is a battle. We are to resist such temptations and impulses. If you are a believer, you no longer make provision to gratify the flesh.
It also has a positive sense to it, because you are given the way of victory over your sin. You are to seek and set your mind on things above, where Christ is the one we desire to please.
The Fivefold Grace of Union with Christ
The picture is of one putting off the old sinful behavioral patterns that evidence a new transformed life in Christ. Believers are enabled to carry out this death sentence on the members of their body, their passions and their desires, because they now have a fivefold grace that has been bestowed upon them by virtue of being in union with the risen Savior Jesus Christ.
What is that grace? Those graces have already been given in the word of God: that we died with Christ, that we are raised with Christ, that we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies, that we are hidden with Christ, and that we will be revealed with Christ when that day comes.
Death to the old way of life should be the reality of every believer every single day of their life. In fact, the imperative here means to wipe away or to utterly slay, not simply to suppress or control evil acts and desires, but to actually put those sins out from you and to death.
Anything that is dead is not going to get back up and get you anymore. In our passage, the decisive act is to strike dead the bodily members, so that being dead they shall become incapable of being used for any of the vices that are listed in our passage this morning.
“The imperative means to wipe away or to utterly slay—not simply to suppress evil, but to actually put those sins to death.”
Either you are joined to Adam and in union with the old Adam, and in Adam what happened with him—we were under the reign of sin and death. Or you are in union with Christ, and in Christ we are under the reign of grace and life and power.
That was not what you used to be, but that’s what you are now. We could talk about our sin, we can talk about putting sin to death, we can even share stories about others who put their sin to death. But are we putting our sin to death?
“In Christ we are under the reign of grace and life and power. That was not what you used to be, but that’s what you are now.”
Are we looking on ourselves honestly to say, “Listen, that is something that was part of my life, and even now it rears its ugly head and tries to get me to go that way again”? You could say no to that and then find victory in that.
The next section of scripture is going to give us vices and it’s going to give us virtues. But I’m not going to look at the virtues today. I’m going to look at the vices, because that’s what’s next in the text.
First List of Vices: Sins of the Flesh
And I want you to notice the first general list of vices to put to death, found in verses 5 through 7. These are five kinds of impulses of the flesh, and here it’s really clear. It’s really a direct call to avoid certain vices and the manifestations of the human sinful heart that is going to raise its head to try to drag us down.
These are sins connected to our old hell-bound life. I want you to notice—I’ll read them quickly, then look at each one individually.
In verse 5 it says, “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, greed, which amounts to idolatry.” Now that last one is really telling us all these sins are really forms of our idolatry. They become the master in your life.
Sexual Immorality and Impurity
Now the first one is the word immorality. It’s the Greek word pornia, and this is a word that includes every kind of extramarital, unlawful, or unnatural sexual intercourse: fornication, sexual immorality, prostitution. All those words can go there.
The word we derive—the word porn or pornography—from this Greek term. It’s used here as an all-inclusive term designating complete abstinence from any form of sexual immorality. This includes abstinence from any real or imagined sexual deviant behavior.
Pornography really reduces a person to a subordinate tool, and when a person puts that person in that place, it really robs them of the dignity as one created in the image of God.
For human beings to attempt to gratify their sexual hunger in any way other than marriage or abstinence is really a deviation from God’s plan and God’s will. That would include any man-to-woman sexual relationship outside or before marriage. Before marriage it would be called fornication; after marriage it would be called adultery.
It also would include any man-to-man or woman-to-woman sexual gratification, such as occurs in homosexuality. Even though some people today would have us believe that sexual activity is neither wrong nor immoral, but simply a different lifestyle that they chose because of the strong attraction that they had, they can usually conclude, “Would God want me to be unhappy?”
Well, God declares in the word of God, in many places, that it is sin. It is a twisted perversion of the norm created by God: one man, one woman, in the marriage bond.
It also would include self-stimulation or gratification that occurs in masturbation. Masturbation is impure because it is attempting to have pleasure outside the marriage bond or outside of abstinence that would please God. It is a selfish act rather than a loving one; it is gratifying the flesh; it is a perversion of something good.
We know from scripture that sexual desires are a very, very powerful desire. You can’t just shut that down. That has to be shut down by someone greater than us and the power that God’s given us in his spirit.
It’s like what Paul told the Romans, in Romans 13: “Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing or drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.”
Romans 13: “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.”
In other words, this really cannot be done unless someone is a believer and has the spirit of God and wants to obey the spirit. The words, as it says in Romans, would make no provision. Any lust is impure, no matter how small one considers it to be or how short-lived it is.
The Apostle Paul also said to the Ephesians Christians, “But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.” When you read something like that, you hear something like that, and immediately you say, “That can’t happen, that’s impossible.”
It is impossible, but it’s not impossible as a believer. That lust is so aggressive that we must fight against it as a soldier of Jesus Christ, and not to fight against it is actually to accept defeat.
This battle has cosmic proportions, for it is part of the war against Satan, who is really viciously fighting to divert our attention as believers away from our glorious God and savior, and trying to get our mind to be in the gutter instead of heaven, and on the earth instead of where Christ is.
“This battle has cosmic proportions—it is part of the war against Satan, who is fighting to divert our attention from our glorious God.”
Now, that’s the first one. Look at the next one. They’re all connected, but I believe that as you look at this passage of scripture, God is saying, “Listen, no one could wiggle out of this in some form or some way.” This type of sin you have to deal with, or you have dealt with, or maybe you’re dealing with it right now.
Pornography in our culture is on the rise, both for men and for women and for young people, because of the access they have to the internet and to sites that you don’t even know what they’re watching there.
The next word is impurity. In our verse, that’s really uncleanness. It’s used in the Old Testament to refer to ceremonial uncleanness. In other words, you’re unclean, where you cannot come into the presence of God; you have to take care of that first. It’s really something opposite of holy living.
Immorality and impurity are the most nasty pair, which include every kind of sexual deviant behavior, and here, dirty-mindedness, having your mind on dirty things.
Passion, Evil Desire, and Greed as Idolatry
And then the next word is passion. Passion here is a strong emotion of desire or craving. It’s really a base fire kindled in the human heart which reaches out for an object in order to satisfy itself, and does not rest until it is satisfied. That’s how strong that is, like uncontrolled sexual passion or evil craving, usually of a sexual nature.
Again, Paul writing to the Thessalonians says that each of you is to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion like the Gentiles, or like the way you were when you were not a believer, who don’t know God.
And that is always key when it comes to sexual sin: that people who do not want to deal with it, they don’t know God, because they love their sin. They don’t love and want to please God at all.
And then the next one is evil desire. That’s any strong, overwhelming evil desire of the mind. And then the last one there would be greed. Greed is really a disposition to have more than one’s share. You always want more, never satisfied with anything. In this case here, it’s greed also not only for material things but for sexual things.
And the relative clause he uses at the end of the passage, “which amounts to idolatry,” meaning that all these vices are a manifestation of the worship of idols. It’s a loss of contentment with Christ, it’s not having your mind above and your desire to want to please Christ.
The worship of gold instead of God. When a person has greed in his heart, he loses sight of God in his mad desire to get things for himself. Covetousness is a sin of always wanting more.
That’s the last commandment. That’s the commandment that really done in the Apostle Paul. He says, “When I realized I was covetous, it slayed me, it killed me. I realized that I was guilty of all the commandments.” And that’s what it ought to do. It ought to put us in a place where we realize that these sins are powerful sins and they have no part of the Christian walk anymore.
Idolatry, because covetousness puts things in the place of God, idolatry puts things in the place of God. And when sexual sin begins to dominate one’s every waking moment, every thought, every look, every relationship, well then sex has become the Lord of that very moment, in that very day, and in that person’s life. And that is idolatry.
It’s now a master to you. And we as a Christian can do that, we can allow sin to master us. But we’re different than we used to be. Now we don’t have to let sin master us, and we have the power to say no to it.
But we also know enough that if our mind is in heaven, we will make no provision for that particular sin. We will not feed it, we will not give to it where it keeps it alive, we will not imagine in our mind things that will put our imagination to death, because we don’t want that sin to have authority over our life.
“When sexual sin dominates every thought and look, sex has become Lord of that moment and that life. That is idolatry.”
Or, as Romans says, to reign over us as a king. And it will, if we let it.
Satan’s Lies and Our Responsibility
See, Satan, with each expression of sin we must put to death all the impulses and actions. We must go to the root of such acts and impulses and deal a death blow to them and the lies they feed us.
Believe me, sin and continuing in a sin has a lot to do with how you lie to yourself. Satan is the father of lies, that’s what the Bible says. He has a toolbox full of lies.
Satan will flatter sinners by saying to them, “You’re as good as anyone else, everybody’s doing it, it is not a big deal, today it’s not considered shocking anymore, the whole culture embraces it, even the government approves of it. So go ahead, indulge yourself, enjoy yourself, whatever passion, whatever desire you have, go ahead and do it, because God wants you to be happy, and if this makes you happy, you do it.”
Have you ever lied to yourself like that? I have. I’m going to be honest with you. Sometimes you like those lies, because maybe he’s right, maybe I need a little fun in my life, and I want to do this, and an opportunity to do it, and you do it.
But I tell you what, if you have the spirit of God in your heart, you’re going to be deeply convicted by it, to the point where you say, “Lord, I know you hate this, I want to hate this sin, I want this sin out of my life, but I need your power to do it, and I need my mind to be on the right things.”
If someone would think that God will overlook a habitual pattern of sexual, covetous, idolatrous sin, he or she has already believed a lie. Just because our culture has subtly normalized sin, and we live in the middle of a highly charged, sexually intoxicated culture, that is no excuse to fall in line with the world’s norms instead of putting sin to death.
See, it’s not so easy being a Christian. A Christian, as Paul said in Ephesians 6, is warfare. It’s going to be warfare with your own mind, with your own past, with your own passions and desires. That’s where you fight the battle, and that’s where you win the battle.
If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time and you’ve been putting these things into practice, they work, because God gives you the power to say no to things. You are in a new position, and you can stop sin’s reign in its path right when you’re being tempted with it. You can.
There’s a biblical principle behind this, found almost in every book of the New Testament, and that believers are free from the mastery and controlling power of sin.
Paul said in Romans 6, which we read this morning, “For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” He also said in Romans 6:18, “And having been freed from sin, you have become slaves.” We are slaves, but now we’re slaves to righteousness.
Romans 6: “Sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
What’s righteousness? Doing what pleases God. What pleased God? That we once yielded ourselves to uncleanness and sinful behavior, and what did that lead to? It led to more iniquity, more lawlessness, and eventually only to death.
But now that you’re a believer, you present your members as instruments of righteousness. So now you’re slaves to God, but God’s a good master. He’s a loving master, he’s a kind master, he’s a merciful master.
He will forgive you of your sin that you confessed to him. Why? Because he’s already taking care of that sin on the cross. That’s why 1 John tells us, “If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all our unrighteousness.”
Every time we confess, God’s cleaning up everything else. When we live like that, we will realize that these passages of scripture are real and they are practical for us every single day.
From a past standpoint, positionally, the sinner becomes a saint the moment they are saved. Presently, experimentally, or experientially, we are growing, we’re growing to spiritual maturity.
Everybody who’s a believer is at different levels of spiritual growth right now. These sins may be sins that you’re no longer really dealing with anymore, because you’re past them. But it still rears its head from time to time, depending on how you want to let things into your life.
But there’s a future aspect: this sinless state that we don’t have on this side of eternity, we’ll have when we’re at home with the Lord. And that’s the hope that we have.
We’re always going to have this struggle here while God leaves us here. We’re going to be struggling with our sin, all kinds of sins, at all different stages of our life.
Just because you’re an older Christian doesn’t mean you won’t struggle with sin. Sometimes the sin is more complex and the temptation is more subtle, because Satan’s smart. He knows that he can’t get you with the old stuff anymore, so he has to make up some new stuff, and he does, and he’s good at it.
He puts you in situations, like, “How did I get in a situation I didn’t even ever want to be here, but I’m here now, I’m dealing with this and this and this and this?” But you have to put everything into practice at that time.
Believe me, when you do, and you put first God, and you call upon him in that weak moment, he will deliver you. He will deliver you.
“When you put first God and call upon him in that weak moment, he will deliver you.”
The Motive of Holy Living: God’s Wrath
And not only that, back to Colossians, it is the motive of holy living. What is that motive? That Christians know God’s serious about these vices, and he’s also patient.
Notice what it says in verse 6: “For on account of these things the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience.” Is that not a motive to live a holy life? What’s the motive? I know God’s going to judge this stuff. God’s not going to look over this stuff.
This passage of scripture is not just stuck in there. It’s giving us something here, that the anger is the reaction of God’s holiness and righteousness against sin, that we should have also. We hate living that way, we hate those times where we fall into sin.
And this also shows that our sovereign Lord will carry out his judgment on all those who do not obey the gospel. So if the culture goes one way and they say, “Well, all this sexual freedom is fine, don’t worry about it, you’re all right, everything’s fine, well and dandy,” it’s a big lie. It’s not fine, well and dandy.
Not according to this passage of scripture, because God is the one who inflicts wrath. What did Paul tell the Romans in Romans 3:5? “But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? The God who inflicts wrath is not unrighteous, is he?”
Is God unrighteous to say that lifestyle is all right, it’s all right to do those things, no matter what people around you are saying? It’s not all right. See, that’s a motivation for holy living.
“God is the one who inflicts wrath. Just because the culture says it’s fine and dandy does not make it fine and dandy.”
That God, it was for such perversions as here listed that God brought the flood in Noah’s time, that the wickedness of their heart was continual. And that fire and brimstone fell upon Sodom and Gomorrah for the sins, sexual sins, and that of homosexuality and all the other things that go with that.
And today the audacious sinners flaunt unrighteousness, with which we are bombarded every single day, with the LGBTQ Plus agenda of unrighteousness. Judgment will come. And who should know that the most? Christians should know that most.
But it is a motivator. It’s a motivator to know that God is going to take care of things. But what happens is that it’s like what it says in Ecclesiastes.
“Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly,” what does it say? Ecclesiastes: “Therefore the hearts of the sons of men are given fully to do evil.”
See, I said that God is not only holding wrath but he’s patient. His wrath will come. The Bible says in this passage of scripture it will come. Don’t make that mistake to think it won’t. It will come, and it will come on these sins, on a culture who flaunts these sins, and people who love these sins also.
God’s wrath presently abides on unbelievers. In the Gospel of John 3:36, it says, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
And also, what does Paul say in Romans 1? The wrath is currently falling from heaven on all unrighteousness. For Romans 1:18, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” That’s what they’re doing, they’re holding down what they know is true.
John 3:36: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
“God’s going to judge?” “Nah, no he’s not, I’m a good person, I’m good most of the time.” No. It should be a motivation for holy living.
Humility: We Once Walked in These Sins
But then notice in verse 7 there’s a humility also for holy living. And what is that humility? In verse 7, “And in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.”
That is close to home. What is it saying? Don’t let your head get too big as a Christian. You were just like that. You not only walked in it—that’s the manner of life, that’s your lifestyle—but you also were in it.
Such conduct actually belongs to the past. Maybe there’s no better way to say, “Stay humble when dealing with our sin and the sins of others, before we’re too quick to judge,” than to know that we were enslaved and engaged in a sinful, habitual lifestyle until we were made alive to repent of our sins and to trust in Jesus Christ as our Lord and savior.
At that point we realized that our walking wasn’t pleasing to him, our living was not pleasing to him, and our thinking wasn’t pleasing to him. These are all in your past as a believer. Don’t go back. Don’t go back to the dreary catacombs of sin.
“Stay humble—we were enslaved in sinful, habitual lifestyle until we were made alive to repent and trust in Jesus Christ.”
When I was in Rome, I got a chance to go down to the catacombs, where many Christians actually held services and prayed because they had to stay away from persecution. What a dreary place. It was like pretty much dirt and cubes carved out so they put the dead bodies there with no cover on them at all.
That must have been a horrible place to go. But that’s how we should look at sin. That’s going back to the old dreary catacombs—lifeless, dead things. Why would we want to spend time in a cemetery as a Christian? We don’t want to spend time in the cemetery.
Second List of Vices: Sins of Speech
Now, that leads me to something else in our passage of scripture. Here’s the second general list of vices to lay aside. These are a little bit different from the first group. The first group really harmed the sinner themselves. This group of vices harms other people.
These are what some have called the social sins, related to speech and violence of the heart. Notice what it says in verse 8. Here’s the second general list of vices to put aside. The first group was to put to death; this one is to lay aside.
It says, “But now you also put them all aside.” And here they are: anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech from your mouth.
The Christian is really to execute what God has already sentenced, and to put to death the old practices, and put off the domination of the old self, put away from you once for all, since the fearful former time has passed. And thank God that you’re able to do it.
“The picture is of changing clothes—putting off dirty garments of sin, and putting on the good virtues of the new self.”
The picture here, and further into the passage, is of changing clothes. You’re putting something off, like dirty garments, and then you’re going to put something on. Those are going to be the good virtues, and we’re not going to get to those today.
Anger, Wrath, Malice, and Slander
But I want you to notice what they are. The first one is pretty simple: anger. It really means revenge too. It includes a subtle feeling of hatred towards someone.
And then the next one is wrath. This is an intense outburst of passion that someone has, that usually builds up inside, and then boom, it bursts out through all kinds of body language and attitudes.
And then malice. Malice is really meanness, being mean to people. There’s a lot of bullying today that goes on with younger and older people, but it’s mean. And also it includes a desire to want to inflict bodily injury on someone, because of the boiling agitation of the feeling someone has when they have malice towards someone.
It’s almost like you want to put your hands around their neck and choke them. If you could do that and get away with it, you would.
And then slander. It’s the word blasphemy here in scripture, speaking against God. But also blasphemy is really self-opinion, and it’s expressed with challenges to the character and the wisdom of God.
“I don’t think it’s that way, there’s other ways to look at this, or I think I want to do this, or I will do what I want no matter what God says.” That’s blasphemy. Defamatory speech against others, human beings being created in the likeness of God.
See, people don’t often think that. Listen, if I am outbursting towards someone, whether it’s in anger or wrath or malice or slander, speaking about them in a way I ought not to, we think that’s all right, that we have the privilege to do that.
And yet what does James tell us? What he says in James 3:3: “But no one can tame the tongue, it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men.”
And then it says this: “Who have been made in the likeness of God.” So in other words, treating all people with respect, for what reason? It doesn’t matter how great a sinner they are, they have been created in the image of God, they have the likeness of God stamped upon them.
So therefore they have no right for us to be angry towards them, or wrathful, or hold malice, or slander them.
James 3: “With the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God.”
Abusive Speech and Lying
And then also he uses the word abusive speech, and at the end of verse eight he says, “Put abusive speech from your mouth.” Ephesians says that there must be no filthiness or silly talk or coarse jesting, which is not fitting, but rather giving of thanks.
Evil speech is also reflective in a refusal to worship God and the lordship of Christ. It always has to do with whose Lord. Is your sin Lord? And if your sin is Lord, then you’re going to convince yourself, “I have every right to be angry with this person, I have every right to slander them with my tongue and slice them to pieces with abusive speech, because I have rights and I’ve been abused.”
Instead of being thankful that what you do have has been given to you by God.
These are sins that harm other people. I always say in the membership class, “Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never harm me.” That’s the biggest lie from the pit of hell.
Throw stones at me, hit me with a stick, but words, I remember words. When I was just five years old, if somebody said something to me that was really hateful, I never forgot it. It was a dentist, and I told my mother, “I’ll never go back to him again.” And my mom says, “Well, that’s your family dentist.” I said, “I’m not going back to him because of what he said to me.”
I was just a little kid, I didn’t know the context of that, I just know that it was mean and I didn’t want to hear it. You have stories, I have stories, of people who have said things to you that you have never forgotten, and probably never will. You just know what to do with it now, right?
But here’s this last one, in verse nine, and this is very crucial. Look what it says: “Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices.”
Now, brethren, if we lie to each other, where do you go with that? What do you do with that when someone lies to you? There’s nothing, I don’t know what to do with that, because I don’t know when you’re telling the truth and when you’re not.
Don’t forget half truths, part truth, conveying wrong impressions, exaggeration which really distorts the facts, hypocrisy, false teaching contrary to the Bible. If we lie to one another, there is no way to establish trust or to work together to accomplish anything worthwhile.
Can’t happen in a marriage, can’t happen in a relationship, in the family with parents and children, can’t happen at work, can’t happen anywhere, if someone is not going to tell you the truth.
All of us have committed this sin, and more than once. Sometimes you get to the place where, “I’m not even going to open my mouth right now until I have the facts right and tell this person exactly what is true.” Because they say, if you tell the truth you’ll never have to remember what you said, right? And it is true.
But I tell you what, you fudge the facts, you just turn the truth a little bit, and that’s all Satan does, he just gives it a little twist. You won’t remember from day to day what you said to that person at that point and at that time. Your story is going to change and change and change and change.
And then what’s going to happen? People aren’t going to come to you and ask you for anything, because they cannot trust you.
If this is a person’s practice, it will demonstrate that they do not know the Lord and are in fact a child of the devil, who is the father of lies. I’m saying this according to First John: if they practice this, if this is the mode of operation for their life, and they do not want to let go of it because they have some good success doing it, they don’t know the Lord, and they shouldn’t deceive themselves that they do.
“If you tell the truth you’ll never have to remember what you said. Fudge the facts, and your story will change and change.”
It’s just like the prophet Jeremiah. Listen to what the prophet Jeremiah said to the people who started believing the practices of the false prophets. Listen what he said: “They bend their tongue like their bow, lies and not truth prevail in the land, for they proceed from evil to evil, and they do not know me, says the Lord.”
And then it says, “Let everyone be on guard against his neighbor, and do not trust any brother, because every brother deals craftily and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer. Everyone deceives his neighbor and does not speak the truth. They have taught their tongues to speak lies, they weary themselves committing iniquity. Your dwelling is in the midst of deceit. Through deceit they refuse to know me, says the Lord.”
Probably the greatest characteristic of someone who’s a perpetual practice and gifted liar is that they are a tool of Satan, because Satan is their father and Lord, and not Jesus.
If we’re convicted about anything in our life, it should be this sin, that we’re always, always to be on guard with, right, to making sure. If we’re not sure, we don’t say anything. It’s only when we’re sure.
These two lists of vices belong to the old, unsaved, unregenerated, dead self. Are you going to leave them behind? Are you going to put them off? Are you going to put them to death?
You are to put them away, because these are the dirty rags that should be away from your mouth and the practice of your life.
Lessons on Dealing with Sinful Desires
But there’s a few lessons I just want to close with to learn in dealing with sinful desires. The first comes from Romans 6 and 7, and also Colossians 2. I’m not going to give you all those things, I’m just going to tell you what they are.
Knowledge is not the answer. Paul felt fine as long as he did not understand the law’s demand. As soon as he knew the law’s demand, what was his conclusion? “I’m doomed.” In other words, there’s an inadequacy of human knowledge to overcome the flesh.
I could know this is wrong to do, and it could be clear theology or clear theoretically, but I just don’t do it. Your knowledge helps you understand that you sinned, but it doesn’t help you overcome the sin.
Secondly, self-determination or will doesn’t overcome the flesh. Where does that come from? Romans 7:15: “For the willing is present with me, but the doing of the good is not.” Just because you’re strong-willed and have the ability to do all these things, you have no will to overcome the flesh by yourself.
There’s an inadequacy of the human will to overcome fleshly passions and desires. The human will, not strengthened by Christ, is bound to crack.
Thirdly, self-imposed religion is not the answer. Where do I get that from? Colossians 2 says this: “Are matters which have to be sure the appearance of wisdom and self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value against fleshly indulgences.”
There’s an inadequacy of human religion to overcome the flesh. Many people park right here because they think this is going to be the balance between them overcoming something and God forgiving them.
That’s why there’s a lot of religions that are giving approval to all these sins and say, “Don’t worry, come to our church, come be with us, be who you are made to be, and we can have fun together.” All that’s kind of garbage, because it’s just a big lie, that’s all it is.
“The human will, not strengthened by Christ, is bound to crack. There is an inadequacy of human will to overcome fleshly passions.”
Putting Off Sin and Putting On Righteousness
And then the last one is even profound: Christian experience does not instantly stamp out all sin from a believer’s life. That means a conversion to Christ does not stamp off all sin in your life. It forgives you of your sin, it covers your sin, but now you must deal with your sin, putting it to death and putting on righteousness.
All I say to you this week is that it is our responsibility to put off and to put to death these vices. Next time, for balance, we will learn to put on the virtues.
Because anytime you put something off, like sin, you cannot leave a vacuum. You must put on the opposite of what you’re repenting of and putting to death. If not, then that repentance is not complete.
We put off the old dirty garments of whatever sin it is, and then we put on the righteousness and we robe ourselves in it. That’s where we find protection, and that’s where we find the power of the spirit of God to say no to the mastery of sin and allow Christ to reign. That’s where you find joy and peace in Christ.
“Put off the old dirty garments of sin, put on righteousness—that’s where you find the power to say no and allow Christ to reign.”
Amen. Let’s pray.
Lord, thank you this morning for the clarity and conviction of scripture. Thank you, Lord, that these things are clear to us, that these are the things that are not righteous, that are the things that come under your judgment, and the things, Lord, you’ve given us the power to say no to.
I pray, Lord, if there’s anyone here struggling with any of these things, and maybe they have been struggling with it for a long time, the struggle is good, Lord, but I pray that they would win the battle and they would put these sins aside into death.
And that you would give them the joy and the peace that they’ve been looking for in that sin, but found, did not find it there, just found bondage and disappointment. But, Lord, in you we find peace and rest, and we find your merciful face shining upon us.
Strengthen us in these things. As we do that, let us be the ambassadors of light in a culture, and we can even counsel other people with the word of God, to say, “Listen, I struggle with this until I had victory, and this is how I had the victory.”
Lord, let us do that, and let us give honor to your name, that, Lord, you would be our Lord and master, and that sin would be something that we hate, and we learn to put it aside and put it to death and not make provision for the flesh.
I pray all this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.