Christ is Our Resurrected Life

Do you remember when you were first, if you were like me, you came to Christ late in life, do you remember that initial joy? That initial love you had for Christ? The great freedom you experienced for the first time? I have been listening to Keith Green all week and much of his music is about going back, going back to that first love. What is so unique about that first love? Well, of course, you get the first shackles off. You learn about peace. You learn about forgiveness. The great joy that comes in just knowing you're forgiven for the first time. Having the wrath of God removed from you and the peace of God poured out upon you. Why is it that we tend to lose that love? We're not called to have faith. Like children always. We need to grow in maturity. We need to get beyond childhood in many ways. But why is it that we oftentimes lose that love? Well, I think it's because we stop repenting of sin. And when you become a Christian, you repent of kind of the low-hanging fruit sin, the obvious sin. You repent of the sin that's just obvious in every way that's gross, even to society. But as you grow in Christ, more sin is revealed to you. And we lose the love that we have for God. We lose the vigor we have for God. We lose the joy when we're confronted with sin. And we say, I can't give that up. You want to know why you've lost your first love and your first joy? Go back to that sin that you're confronted with. And you said, I can't give that up. See, as Christians, we're called to put to death all sin. And the longer we live as Christians, the more our sin is in front of us. The more we realize how deep it is. The more we realize how big it is. We want to know the love of Christ. We want to experience the love of Christ. We want to experience our love in response to His love more. We must continue to put our sin to death. Our message this morning comes from Colossians, and it speaks to the issue of putting sin to death, putting away sin, ceasing to sin. Our message this morning is this. You can find the outline in the back page of your bulletin. Jesus gives us new life so that we die to our old sinful nature and habits. Jesus gives us new life so that we die to our old sinful nature and habits. Let me read our passages in entirety. I'll be in Colossians chapter 3, verses 5 through 11. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these, you too once walked when you were living in them. But now you must put them away, put them all away. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another. seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian and Scythian, slave free, but Christ is all, all in all. Our passage, we're going to break up into two sections, verses 5 through 8 and verses 9 through 11. The first section is die to your sin or die in your sin. Then it's be transformed by the truth and remain in the life. There's two ways to live. You have two options. You can trust Christ who gives you life, which means you die to your sin. Or you remain in your sin. And you die because of your sin. There's a clear connection to our passage last week. Look in verse 5. Therefore, Paul has made a grand argument in verses 1-4. Seek the things above. Set your mind on the things above. Not on the things of this earth. For Christ is coming. Therefore, put to death the things of this earth. There's an immediate connection with chapter 3, verse 2. Above, we were commanded to put our minds above. We were told not to put our minds on the things of this earth. Now we're unpacking that particular phrase. There's a clear two ways to live. You can put your mind on the things above or you can put your mind on the things of this earth. Here we're unpacking what it means to stop putting your mind on the things of this earth. You put them to death. You put them away. You cease sinning. There's really three imperatives in this passage. Put to death. Put them away. That's verses 5 and 8. And then do not lie. I've organized it into two different sections because I believe that logically and stylistically, verses 5 and 8 fit a bookend. I don't think they're saying anything too different. I believe verse 5 says put to death the things that are earthly. Verse 8 is saying, put them away. The only difference is the list in verse 5 seems to have more to do with the desires and the list in verse 8 has more to do with actions. They seem to have that in common more. What we're going to look at this morning is just the unpacking of what it means to not set your mind on the things of this earth. Really, we have a grand imperative of being with Christ. If we believe in Christ, He's the right hand of the Father, we need to be with Him. In order to truly enjoy Him where He is, we must kill our sin. We must put it to death. We must, as one would say, we must learn to practice our position. Let's look at our first main point. Die to your sin or die in your sin. I'll read this section again. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these, you too once walked when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Again, I believe the structure is there's two imperatives, put sin to death, put away sin. And then in between those two, there's actually two reasons. The two reasons are you once walked that way. That's a second one. The first one is the wrath of God is coming against sin. Those are the rationale for putting it to death and putting it away. As we start looking at this passage, let's start first with put to death our earthly desires. We'll start with verse five. And we really need to start looking at what are these different desires. I'm going to begin with the list and then we're going to think about what it means to put these things to death. So, these earthly things, again, connected with chapter 3, verse 2. Let's look at the list. The first is sexual immorality. The Greek word here is pornea. That sounds familiar. We get the word pornography from this word. It originally, in the most general sense, is just excessive behavior and a lack of self-control. But it became more and more acquainted with sexual sin, with a lack of sexual self-control. It really now means, at the time of the New Testament, it's a general term that means all sexual deviance and all sexual perversion. It's a big umbrella for every kind of sexual sin. Fornication, adultery, lust, and so forth. This is a sin because it's taking a beautiful gift from God, intimacy, and it's using it for our selfish end. It's taking a beautiful gift from God meant to procreate, a way of imaging God, and it's using it for our selfishness. It's an intimacy because it actually lets us participate in the plan of God. God's will is to fill this earth with image bearers, and while we're procreating sinners, We're hoping that as we procreate, those sinners will come to know Christ and the earth will be full of those who glorify Him. There's clear teaching in Scripture, throughout Scripture, against sexual immorality. John read one in Matthew 5. You have heard it said, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. See, it's not just the act. It's the desire. 1 Corinthians 6.18, every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. They're referring to sexual sin. Ephesians 5.3, but do not let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you as is proper among the saints. We're saints. We're called out of that darkness. into purity. 1 Thessalonians 4.3, For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality. It could not be any clearer. God has called us to be sexually pure, to only have that particular relationship with our spouse, a husband with his wife, a wife with her husband. There's another passage in Paul. That really speaks to the seriousness of sexual immorality and many other sins. 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 10. Hear the logic. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters. nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." This last passage is a warning to the church. Within the church, the church had lost its way. The church had been deceived that these kinds of sexual gross sins were OK because Jesus forgives us of our sin. Paul's making it clear anyone who persists in the practice of these kinds of gross sins, sexual immorality being at the front of the list, theirs is not the kingdom of heaven. They're making a false profession. You cannot proclaim to be a brother, to be a child of God and persist in this kind of sin. We must not disconnect our profession from our practice. We cannot profess Christ and practice gross sin. This is important because our culture is very sexually loaded. You can't watch a basketball game without some gross commercial coming on that you think, I'm glad my child's not here. Or maybe I wish my child was not here. Sex is prevalent and pervasive. It's the selling tool. It's what most people think about in our culture. 98% of the songs in the top 40 last year were about sex. It's prevalent. So we need to be on guard about letting sexual deviancies, sexual perversions that seem so normal out there seem normal in here. We must be on guard in thinking that perversion is actually normal. That's why we study God's Word. We let it guide us into truth, not the cultural mandate, not the cultural ideas. The second thing on the list, unclean. Those things that are not pure. This is fairly generic. An unclean desire, an impure desire. God has always separated the clean from the unclean. Here we can think of Paul's command, whatever is noble, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure. Think on these things. We need to make sure that we are not having unclean thoughts. It's a very generic term, but it's very clear from God's Word what is noble, what is honorable, what is pure. That's what we must pursue. One of the passages that always challenged me is, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. I want to know God more, but I cannot know Him more if I continue in my impurity. We must purify ourselves so that we can see God even today. Passion. Passion. Now here, I want to go ahead and say between passion and evil desires, we're really going Cut off two different layers into the onion of our sin. It's going to make your eyes burn. Our sin is multifaceted, multilayered. Again, the longer we walk with Christ, the deeper we realize our sin goes. And so with passion and evil desire, I'm going to try to parse between what these two terms, I think, mean. We are full of passions. I think I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago. Our heart is always desiring something. We are full of passion. We are always wanting something. And this is not saying become stoic so that you are passionless. Rather, it's saying we need to be mature and be able to control our passions. Everyone has passions. Everyone has desires. Everyone wants something. I think the key here is that do those passions guide you or do you guide those passions? Do they direct you or do you discipline those? I was just talking to a young man and there's the great training tool. As you teach your children to obey, they need to obey quickly, fully and happily. And the young man did not like the idea that he was supposed to obey happily. How can you make me obey happily? Because your heart wants what it wants. Either you're happy or you're not. That's one way of looking at it. Or you can see that God has given you control over your passions to discipline them, to guide them, to direct them. The Christian, really I would say the adult, they're not guided by their passions. They're not always saying, I need this now and then throwing a tantrum if they do not get it. No, the mature, I would say it's just a mature man or woman, especially the mature Christian. They're not always being driven by their passions. They're able to discipline them. A child throws a tantrum when they don't get what they want. We need to not be that impulsive. Rather, we need to make sure we are disciplining our passions. See, you're gonna have to do a lot of things you don't want to do in your life. You have to learn to do things you don't want to do. And there's actually a way you can make yourself enjoy doing those things if you look at it from the right perspective. If you actually counsel yourself with the gospel. I mean, the great model here is Christ. He obeyed the Father to die on the cross for us. He did it because he knew that was the best way he could glorify the Father. And it was the only way we could be saved. He saw obedience, even when he did not want to do something, something he must do, and he didn't even found joy in doing it because it was how he glorified God. It was because of how he helped us. Prince Christ is our model. When we do what we do not want to do, and then we can make ourselves want to do it because we can see in obedience and fulfilling Christian duty, even when it's not what we desire, we can glorify God. And we can help others. Christ is our model. Now, let's look at evil desires. These are different from passions. Passions are those things that bubble up and say, I must have this now. It's sinful because it's a passion that says, I must do this now, I must have this now. Evil desire isn't just impulsive, it's perverse. And evil desire is taking something from God and intending that thing to be used for something God did not intend it to be. So, to be ruled by your passion is just to be impulsive. To be full of evil desire, that's to be impulsive and also wanting to use that thing in a way God did not intend. That's the great difference between God and sinners. God uses evil for good and we use good for evil. And evil desire is taking the good gift of intimacy and using it outside of marriage. And evil desires includes how we look at food. We're about to go to a Sunday lunch. Do we use food and look at food as a way to enjoy God and his creation and to fulfill ourselves with sustenance? Or do we try to get pleasure and satisfaction out of it? I'll never forget C.S. Lewis identified two different kinds of gluttons. One overeats. And one takes only the most delicate, the most delicious food, but wants the smallest portion. That's how you rationalize it. One kind of glutton, he orders the porterhouse. The other orders the petite filet mignon. I guess the worst is the one that orders both. God created us for relationships. And evil desire is manipulating and lying to one another for our good. rather than telling the truth for others' good. Finally, covetousness or greed, some translations have. This particular kind of evil, he mentions, it's at the end of the list, but he gives this really interesting qualifier. This qualifier is only connected to covetousness, which is idolatry. Coveting is looking at what someone else has and saying, I want that. Looking at what someone else has and desiring that. And there's really two sins going on here. One, you're wishing your friend or your neighbor wasn't blessed. You're wishing to take what God has given them. And this is the worst sin. There's always a theological problem behind every sin. You're saying, I'm wiser than God. I should have gotten that, not them. There's a reason God keeps us from certain things. Idolatry is loving things of this earth rather than God and His right rule. It's a love for things or a love for God. This is why Jesus said, you either love God or love money. Things so easily take our heart. It's not a love for God or His kingdom, rule, and His glory. Well, those are the things on the list that we're told to put to death. What does it mean to put these things to death? Well, I want to be consistent with the word dead. Paul's already used the word dead once. It was in Colossians 2.13. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your faith, God made alive together with him. Now, I define the word dead there as the lack of the capacity to respond to God. A dead person cannot respond. So, whenever God's truth was told, a dead person, without God giving them life, cannot respond. A dead person needs new life given to them. I compare this to trying to teach a turtle astronomy. You can teach astronomy until you're blue in the face, but the turtle does not have the capacity to get that mentally and intellectually. See, our problem is our hearts, not just our heads. We are dead to the things of God. We are not capable of responding without Christ and His life-giving power. So, what does it mean to put these sins to death? I believe it still relates to the capacity. We need to put our sins to death in such a way that we no longer respond to them. These are all desires. These are all desires that bubble up within us. These are all things that come up from our heart and we are constantly responding to those things that come up from our heart. We need to stop allowing these passions, these evil desires, this sexual immorality to have influence and sway over us. To put them to death says, I'm no longer going to listen to you. To put them to death means you silence them. You stop listening. And the more you fight, the fainter the command to sin gets. But if you don't fight, that command to sin only gets louder. I want to tell you this, and this is actually encouraging, it's not discouraging. You never stop fighting sin. You will always have to put sin to death. There's never an age or a day that you can actually say, I'm done, I've purified all my sin. No, the more you put sin to death, the more you realize there's sin behind that sin, and sin behind that sin, and sin behind that sin. See, a lot of people look for assurance in that they're fighting against sin. I don't know if I'm really ready to say, if you're just fighting against sin, then that's enough to have assurance of salvation. But I know this for certain. If you're not actively fighting against sin, If you're not trying to put sin to death that keeps coming up in your heart and in your life, you shouldn't have assurance. The Christian life is all about receiving the life from God and having your sins revealed from the Word of God and from His Spirit and from our brothers and sisters. And then we must be fighting that sin. When was the last time you fought sin? Is your assurance merely in that one time you fought sin when you first became a Christian? Your assurance must be in the constant, regular putting sin to death. No one's arrived. Not until Christ calls you up and gives you your glorified body. Are you still fighting against sin? Paul gives us a few rationale, a few reasons why we must put sin to death. This is verses 6 and 7. The first, repent of sin because God hates sin. On account of these things, the wrath of God is coming. If we're Christians, it means we've seen Christ. We've seen that He had to die on a cross in our place. And what we have to see on the cross is first the wrath of God. We must see first how offensive our sin is to God. That's what we first see on the cross. Every sin we commit, every sin we think, every sin we desire, that is why Christ, the perfect man, God himself, God's own son, had to die. So when we look at the wrath of God, we see sin for what it is. We see sin in all its grossness. We see sin in all its filth. We see sin in how offensive it is. The reason we put sin to death is because we see it in light of God. We see it how God sees sin. We talked about thinking God's thoughts after him last week. One of the most important things we must think after God is what sin is. We can't trust the culture to tell us what sin is. We can't trust our own self-deceiving, self-rationalizing heart to tell us what sin is. We must trust God's word to tell us what sin is. Sin is offensive. Sin is gross. If we know the wrath of God is coming against our sin, how could we continue to delight in it? If we're going to walk with God, we must delight in what God delights in. Friends, we must know that we, because we have a position in Christ, because we have peace with God, that is why we put sin to death. This is an important rule. The Christian mortifies sin because he is at peace with God. The legalist mortifies sin to try to be at peace with God. If you do not have peace, do not think, I need to put so many sins aside before I can then come to the cross and get the peace that Christ can provide. No, you cannot do anything on your own. You cannot make yourself better equipped, more ready for the cross. All you have to do, as our song sang earlier, our song said earlier, to see your need of him. See your need of him. See how powerful he is on the cross to forgive sins. and come to Him. And then you will mortify sin because you are at peace with God. The second reason. Repent of sin because God has called you out of sin. In these two you once walked when you were living in them. This is who you were. This is who you used to be. It's not who you are anymore. Now you're with Christ. You're with Him at the right hand of the Father. You're a saint. You've been forgiven. How can you go back to the what Christ saves you from is what Paul's saying. We're no longer children of wrath, which means we no longer play with sin that brings about God's wrath. See, too many Christians are like a child playing with a viper. It's a fun toy to play with. The snake, it crawls on your arm. It's slithery. Well, maybe it's fun for some. I see grimaces. But a child, it plays with a snake and it's a viper. It's poisonous. The child's having fun playing with the snake, but all along the viper is biting him. And after he bites him so many times, it stops hurting him. It's numb, but he's still playing with the snake. He's treating something that's trying to kill him as if it's a toy. That's what happens when we do not put sin to death. We let it hang around, thinking it's a toy, thinking it's safe, thinking it's not really doing much harm, but all the while, it's biting us until we grow numb. And it puts us to death. I love this quote from Richard Baxter. Use sin as it will use you. Spare it not, for it will not spare you. It is your murderer and the murderer of the world. Use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you. And though it bring you to the grave as it did your head, it shall not be able to keep you there. No parent invites a child predator into their home to babysit. They realize the danger. You do not expose your children to that kind of danger. If you're letting sin harbor in your heart, that sin has been revealed to you, you're letting the equivalent of a child predator stay in your heart. You're inviting him into your depth, into your own personal home. Friends, sin is crouching at the door and it's seeking to kill you. It presents itself as fun, as harmless. But all the while, it's killing you. We must put it to death. He had a young child, the child started walking, and it was known that if you ate the leaves of this plant, it would die. The person would die, especially a small child. So the missionary, what any dad would do, he'd cut the plant down. The problem is he couldn't unroot it. He couldn't get deep down enough into the soil to get the roots out. So often it would sprout again and he would have to go and he would cut it again because he was protecting his child. He sins like that. No matter how much we cut back, if we stop cutting, it's going to grow back. And it's going to be dangerous. It's going to be poisonous. It's going to be destructive. It's going to seek to kill us. We must constantly be cutting back the sin that's always growing in our heart. Our hearts need continual mortification. John Owen warns us this way. We must be exercising mortification every day and in every duty. Sin will not die unless it be constantly weakened. Spare it and it will heal its wounds and recover its strength. We must continually watch against the operations of this principle of sin. in our duties, in our calling, in conversation, in retirement, in our straits, in our enjoyments, and in all that we do. If we are negligent on any occasion, we shall suffer by it. Every mistake, every neglect is perilous. We must always be putting sin to death. Well, that's the question. How do we put it to death? How do we Keep it from having such an influence over us. First step is trusting Christ. Putting your confidence in Christ. And that's the first step because your sin is more powerful than you. Our sin is more powerful than us. If we try to fight it, it will overcome us. We need to march to fight it under the banner of the champion, the risen one, Jesus Christ. The only way we can ever have any progression in our fight against sin and putting it to death is if we trust the power of Christ that frees us from the chains of sin, that's able to destroy us, the one who sent the Holy Spirit in us to give us the power of the resurrected Savior. We must look to Him and His freeing strength. One of the ways you do this is to pray for forgiveness for sin. Pray for sin to be revealed. Pray for God to point out sin, and then to give you the power to accept His forgiveness, and the power to resist it. Finally, quit feeding it. If you want to put to death sin, you have to stop feeding it. You don't fertilize the poison plant. You kill it, and you cut off its life source. Our last section of the first point, put away sinful behavior. Verse 8, but now you must put them all away, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. What are these things? Let's start with the list again. The command is very simple. Put them away. Set them aside. Stop practicing them. Stop wearing them. First, anger. You're supposed to put anger away. Well, as I look at this, I thought, what about righteous anger? There's a way to be angry and be righteous. Not for me. We're sinners. While someone may have actually done something wrong to you, and there is a way to be angry at them, if you can even have a smidgen of a second of righteous anger, I would be surprised. Because as soon as we have a righteous anger, it then boils into sinful bitterness. It becomes resentful and ruthless. Only God can be perfectly righteous in His anger. Yes, someone can wrong us and we can be upset about it, but we never stop with a simple, I'm angry. No, if that anger sits, that anger becomes malice and slander. That anger becomes ruthless. The reason anger is on this list is because we're too sinful to truly be angry without sinning. We must be quick to forgive because Christ has been quick to forgive us. The second word on the list, the second sin on the list, wrath. Now, this is the same word that was used of God. The wrath of God is coming against these things. The wrath of God is coming against earthly things. Here it's saying we need to put off wrath. Again, we're sinful. We're wrathful in our unrighteous anger. We're wrathful because we're trying to protect our glory. God's wrath is righteous because it's protecting His glory. Whenever we exercise wrath, it always has a sinful motivation. Now, of course, there's always the righteous motivation that we use to justify that wrathful action. But it's always overwhelmingly sinful. Malice. This is just doing harm to others. This is being harmful to other people. Now, there's two ways to be harmful. Well, there's many ways to be harmful, but two kind of basic ways I want to think about. First is just outright, I'm going to harm you. I'm going to say something that intentionally hurts you. I'm going to do something that intentionally pushes your button. If you've been a Christian for any long period, you know this isn't the way to go about being malicious. No, the safer way is to be passive aggressive. The safer way is to not do something or not say something that will then hurt someone. This is like the husband and wife. The husband who says hurtful things and makes his wife cry and she runs to the back room. And he knows it's his duty to get up and go care for her. But instead he sits on the couch. Because the longer he sits, the more hurtful it is. That's malicious. That's malicious passive aggression. No, it's the duty of the husband to go and care for his wife. He's intentionally holding back what she needs, and that is comfort and love. Fourth, slander. These are lies, but they're also lies that ruin reputations. When we're tempted to say something about someone, we need to ask a few questions. First, is it true? Is what we're going to say true? That's where it gets in the slander. We're trying to ruin someone's reputation, usually with a lie or a twist of a truth. So, first we need to ask, is what we're going to say entirely and perfectly true? Is telling that thing what you know helpful for the person you are telling it about? So, whoever you're telling it about, is it going to be helpful for you, for them, for you to share it with someone else? Third and related, is telling what you know encouraging and helpful for the person you are telling it to. Then finally, will telling this thing glorify God and be good for the brothers and sisters? So is it true? Is it good for the person you're telling it about? Is it good for the person you are telling it to? And is it going to glorify God and encourage the saints? I've seen talk. from your mouth. This is words that are not encouraging or edifying. This is being unhelpfully humorous. It comes from a desire to be inappropriate, a desire to be humorous. Now, as we've already said before, Paul tells us to put our minds on the things that are above, to think of those things that are honorable and noble. We also need to be saying those things. So, what do we do with all these different sins? We put them away. This was our unrighteousness. Christ died for unrighteousness. We take off our filthy garments and we put them before Christ. He dies for them. He dies wearing them as if he had sinned. And we receive his righteousness. We put these things away because we have died to their power. We trust the power of these sinful actions has been conquered in Christ. Secondly, our second main point, be transformed in truth, remain in the lie. This is our third imperative, but our second main point. I believe we have a transition to another line of thought here, even though this is clearly connected to the things we say. Do not lie to one another. Verse 9, Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave-free, but Christ is all and in all. First, we see we need to be committed to the truth. Do not lie to one another. Our culture doesn't think of lies anymore. We call them misstatements. We start arguing over words like, what does the word is mean? Lying is not something that anyone likes to admit. There's a TV show that I've watched occasionally called House, and I actually like the show because he's very clear about how sinful everyone is. Everyone lies is one of the main themes of the TV show, and there's truth there. Everyone lies. This is what it means to be a sinner. And the most basic root of sin is deceit. That's why many Christian traditions have actually said lying is the worst sin. It's the first sin that led to our fall. Lying. It's misrepresenting the truth. It's a sinful practice that perverts God's truth. It's a simple practice that takes God's people and misdirects them. It's important here that he says, do not lie to one another. It's the command that's supposed to happen within the body. Do not lie to one another. And remember, false teachers had snuck in. They had began saying things that weren't true. They had began saying things that were not taught by Christ and by his apostles. We need to be on guard against lies and sharing them. Now, there's two ways to lie. And this is just for your own self-reflection. Which one is the one that tempts you the most? One is lying to your advantage. You're always trying to get ahead and manipulate. So, maybe you lie on a time card, whatever it may be. You're lying to get ahead. The other one is lying for your protection. Denying sin and weaknesses. Not allowing someone to really know what's happening. There's two kinds of lies. Which one are you most tempted by? Is it lying for your advantage or lying for your protection? The last one is, they're both important to think about. The last one, especially as Christians, we must be honest about our sin. We must be honest about our weaknesses. It's only when we are honest about our weaknesses and failures that we can truly exalt Christ. If no one ever confesses sin, then why are we confessing Christ? Did He just forgive you of those sins you repented of a long time ago? Or is He constantly drawing you to repentance and forgiving you regularly for your sin? We're called to be truth-tellers. That means we tell the truth about our sin so we can tell the truth about the gospel. Secondly, the truth has transformed us. The truth has transformed us. This is the second part of verse nine, the basis for that command not to lie. Seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and having put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Now, there's something very important being revealed here that we'll think of more next week. This is really a first part of a two part sermon. You put off sin and you put on new life. You put off death and you put on life. You put off sin and you put on righteousness. There's the two parts to sanctification. Here we see He says, put off the old self of those practices so that you can then put on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge of its Creator. You can't put clothes on top of clothes. You don't put a tuxedo on top of your gardening clothes. You have to first get off the filthy rags. Then you can start practicing and exercising the righteousness of Christ. We see here that there's a clear allusion to the way we were created, being renewed in the knowledge after the image of its creator. Christ came to recreate us, to give us born-again life, to renew us, to give us life again. We had life. It was in the garden. It was with God. It was good. And then we sinned. We were dead in our trespasses. But Christ has come to perfectly image God. He is the one who did everything God said. He's the one who did the will of God perfectly and completely. We're supposed to imitate Christ as he is that perfect image of the Creator because he is now what we failed to be. We were the one that were supposed to be doing the will of God as his image. We failed. So Christ came to do what we could not do, so that we could do it again. This renewal is seen in the word that really is behind self and the ESV. Put off the old self, put on the new self. It's actually the word Anthropos, the word for man. You can hear the Adam language. In Adam, we all died. When Adam first sinned, we all died with him in that sin. The world and humanity fell altogether that moment. In Adam, if that's where we remain, we remain dead. We remain doomed to destruction. But in Christ, we're recreated. We receive a new nature in that second Adam. We're restored and reconciled to God. And finally, Christ is our only true union. I really wrestle with how this particular passage fit with everything else. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all. Well, let's first ask, where is here? I think you're referring to that new humanity. the new self, in the new man, in Christ, the new head of a new race, of a new people. He's speaking of Christ in the new humanity. It's the church. The church universal now manifested here as this local church. It says here there's neither Jews nor Greeks. These are two cultures and races that were very proud and opposed to one another. Barbarians, well, this is the uncultured folks who are outside of those two cultures. And Scythians, well, they're the more barbarous of the barbarians. They're worse than the barbarians. There's neither slave nor free. What he's saying here is there's no distinction. I wonder if this is an implied imperative. I wonder if Paul could paraphrase this in saying, let there be no distinction among you. Because we all have just one thing in common. We're sinners in need of grace. It doesn't matter your race. It doesn't matter your heritage. It doesn't matter your culture. It doesn't matter your pay scale. It doesn't matter anything about what the world thinks of you. We all come here as one and for one reason. Because we're sinners who have recognized our need for grace. That's why Christ is all. Those other things that distinguish us in the world, they don't distinguish us here. We're all equal, we're all equal in our need because we're all equally sinful. We're all equally the recipients of God's grace in Jesus Christ. This is very helpful as we look to the Lord's Supper. Because no one's getting any fresher juice and no one's getting any fresher bread. We're all getting the same symbols that represent the death and the blood, the body and the blood of Christ and his death. As we take this, let me remind you, we are all one, united under the headship of the one who died for us. No one here is more special than the other. We're all one because we're all in need of the Savior. And we've all received that great salvation from Him. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Almighty God, we come before You. We thank You that You have died for us so that we can receive Your life. We thank You that You came down to be that second Adam so that we can have new life in the new creation. I pray that You would be with us. Help us, Lord, to put sin to death. To put to death those things that keep us from enjoying Your love, that keep us from participating in the joy You have set before us. Help us, Lord, to fight with perseverance and patience and persistence. Father, we praise You that You fight the battle for us that in you sin has lost its sting. There is no victory for sin, but ours is the victory. Father, I pray for us as a body that we would constantly be moved by that You are our Head and that You have united us together. Help us, Lord, to exercise our need for one another, our need to confess our sin to one another, our need to confess our sin so we can glorify You among one another. Bless us now as we get to partake in this great symbol You've given us of our unity and our need for You. In Your holy name we pray. Amen.