Changing Clothes

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS

CHANGING CLOTHES

Col 3:5-11

5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.   7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. 11 Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.

NIV

Having dealt with the first list in this passage, we move on to the second list. The idea is that once we walked in that city of darkness, making every effort to fulfill our own passions and destiny and we had indeed made ourselves objects of God’s wrath. It was not that God decided to put his wrath on us, but it was because of the choices we decided to accept his wrath instead of his love. However, having decided to change the course of our lives because of hearing that convicting voice of the Spirit, we crossed over to the city of light and life. In doing so, we have to rid ourselves of certain attitudes which can and do cause certain behaviors, for as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Thus we are to rid ourselves of anger, rage, malice, slander and nasty speech. We should explore these words in Greek and maybe we can get a better picture of those attitudes and behaviors. First, the Greek word translated anger, has the meaning of the natural disposition, temper, character, movement or agitation of the soul, impulse or any violent emotion. It would seem just getting angry is not the fullness of this word. It implies more of the state of our disposition or our character, which would look more like always being angry at life, more than at people. That might suggest always being discontent with our life, even angry with who we are, and how we live.  Rage, on the other hand, is striking out in angry heat against others. It may well be the result of anger within the soul. Malice then becomes the next step in striking out at someone, having enough ill-will toward them we desire to inflict injury upon them. This is most likely not in the physical sense, but more in an emotional or mental way. Which might well appear in the form of slander, which is speech that is injurious to another’s good name, as the Greek word implies. When it gets right down to it that type of speech is the filthy language coming from our lips. It is foul speaking, low and obscene, shameful speaking, which is what the Greek word translated filthy language means. It would seem all these are not independent of each other, but rather a progression of being a person with anger inside their soul, where truth does not reside, but only lies, which are the tool, no, the native tongue of the evil one. So then we have taken off that self, and we have clothed ourselves with the new self, which is actually clothing ourselves with Christ. Once we have taken off that old self and clothed ourselves in Christ, we live free of all that anger deep within us, and we are free to love the Lord with every fiber of our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Ah, there is the rub, we must love ourselves, which means we have put off the old angry inner being and put on the peace of Christ in our lives. Then everything else living in the city of light and life falls neatly into place, for Christ is in all and all are in Christ. So it comes down to simply changing clothes.