Thursday, October 7, 2021
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek cthe things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him iin glory. 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. 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. Colossians 3:1-10
Leave It Behind
Once we begin our jouney to sanctification – to becoming like Jesus – there are things we will have to leave behind if we want to be transformed. Behaviors, addictions, and even relationships that do not bring us closer to God will hinder our growth and possibly pull us away from Him.
Having our minds and hearts focused on Him and praying and reading our Bibles everyday will help us leave behind the things that willl hurt our relationship with Jesus.
Sometimes we have a hard time with this part of sanctification. We leave behind behaviors for a while only to pick them up again. We think we can still hold onto some of these things and that we can control it, but Satan will use it to try to bring us down. He will use whatever weakness and whatever vice we can’t let go of to drive a wedge between us and God.
Verse 3 above says that we died and our life is hidden with Christ in God. All we have done in the past – our past sins – have been covered by His blood. We have new life in Him, and this new life is covered with Him. Setting our minds on Him and things above will ensure that we have the abundant life only He gives. Nothing that we have to leave behind to have a right relationship with Him will fulfill us more than Him. These things are completely opposite of what we are trying to achieve. They are conflicting to our identiy in Him – our newidentity.
Paul tells us we are to “put those things to death.” He uses the term – nekrosate – which is a strong command, but he knew that we cannot live by Christ’s desires for our lives and still let our old self do what it wants. He is encouraging us to focus on godly and spiritual things and not live in the sins that used to be our habits. Only when we “put those things to death” will we be able to be fully committed to becoming like Christ. It is a pretty long list and we will still lose our temper at times becaue we are human, but we are to intentionally make an effort to keep our lives free of these so that we can grow and be transformed every day.
We all have pages – or chapters – from our past we would like to erase. Since we cannot to that, we have to look at what we have been through or done, and see where God can use us to help others with the same issues or struggles. God specializing in delivering us from hopeless, impossible situations, to save us from the ultimate hopeless situation, death. Everything happens for a reason and God is constantly taking our piles of ashes and turning them into something beautiful for His glory.
