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We're reading in Colossians chapter 3. I wonder if Bob if you'd have a suggestion where to start.
About verse 3.
Colossians Chapter 3 and verse 3.
Christ in God, When Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members, which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate, affection, evil, concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry, for which things sake, the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience.
Into which he also walks sometimes when you lived in them. But now ye also put off all these anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication. Out of your mouth lie not one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. Where there is neither Greek nor Jew circumcision, nor in circumcision, barbarian, Scythian bond, nor free, but Christ is all and in all.
Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye, and above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts to the which also you are called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.
Teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord and whatsoever you do in Word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by Him.
Wives, submit yourselves and your own husbands, as it isn't fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.
Servants, obey in all things your masters according to flesh, not with eyes service as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And whatsoever you do do it hardly as to the Lord and not to men. Knowing that of the Lord he shall receive the reward of the inheritance. For you serve the Lord Christ, but he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done. And there is no respect of persons.
I know Brother Bill spoke extensively about verses three and four yesterday rather than perhaps.
We should move on, but I do want to focus again on, especially verse 4, verse three, Our life is hidden, we're told.
And verse four, our life will appear.
And we will appear with him in glory. But I found it such a blessing, brethren, this expression in verse 4.
Christ.
Who is our life?
In the beautiful, isn't that wonderful that we can look at an object that is completely perfect in every aspect of the word and say with scriptural authority?
That is my life.
We look sometimes at ourselves and when we do so, we see failure.
And brethren, I can't say I'm without failure.
We still have that old man in us, but we need to recognize by faith what God has said, that what you see.
Failure that you see in you and me and maybe your other brethren. That is not my life. My life is there at God's right hand. He's one that is completely perfect. The more you and I are occupied with him, like Brother Don mentioned yesterday in Second Corinthians chapter 3, verse 18.
We all with unveiled face.
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Beholding the glory of the Lord are changed.
We're not changed by looking at our failures, brethren. We have failures and we need to judge them.
And confess them to the Lord when there is failure.
But that's not what is going to transform me. It is looking to him.
In all His perfection, and I must say, increasingly as I read through the Gospels and see the perfection in our Lord Jesus.
Always completely balanced. We sometimes get on the side of grace and we forget truth. Or we get on the side of truth and we get we forget grace. We're not balanced in ourselves. That's why we need our brethren too, to help us.
But there was one man who?
Was always completely balanced, and I marvel as he meets the Samaritan woman there at the well of Samaria, how he met her in perfection. Did he compromise truth in meeting with that woman?
You know, after he had offered her the water of life and she had asked for it, he said Go call thy husband and come here.
And she says, I don't have a husband. I suppose she wanted to just kind of cover her life up by that simple statement. The Lord Jesus said to her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband, for thou hast had five husbands. And the one you now have is not your husband that sits thou truly.
You know what my marvel at Brethren is? The way that he manifested himself to her. She did not feel repulsed. She felt drawn. That's grace and truth. He did not compromise truth, brethren, That's our life. That's our life. And the more we're occupied with that.
In all his perfection, the more it will transform you and I morally while we're here in this world.
Christ is our life. It doesn't say Christ should be our life.
He is our life. That's what scripture says. But then just to go on a little bit further in verse 4.
When Christ who is our life.
Shall appear. Then shall ye also appear with him in glory.
Whenever it speaks of the appearing, sometimes it uses the word, the manifestation.
Or Scripture uses the word revelation as well. We're talking about the Lord's coming at the end of the tribulation with his Saints and brethren.
We properly speaking, our hope is not only the rapture to see the Lord in the air, that's what we look for forward to at any moment, but it is also the glorious appearing of the Great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.
And I suggest, brethren, if you look into scripture, the Old and the New Testament, both are full of scriptures dealing with the appearing.
I really believe it will be the most glorious.
Display of power and glory that this world has ever or will ever see. The heavens are going to open and Jesus is going to come.
In all his glory. And we're going to accompany him. Think of the millions upon millions of all the Saints from all times. And it also says the angels of his power are going to accompany him at that time too.
Those poor armies that are going to congregate to do war against him will not have one chance, and he's going to take the beast and the Antichrist and cast them into the lake of fire. He's going to slay those armies. He's going to establish his Kingdom.
With power and glory, brethren, these things are before us and we need to live in view of that fact. He's coming and he's going to display his glory, and we are going to be displayed in glory with him.
Christ is our life.
That is hid. Today people look at the believer and say, what in the world do those Christians live for? It's hit, but in that coming day our life will be manifested.
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With him in glory.
And so could we suggest that there is a relatively simple antidote?
When these questions of sin arise in our hearts, and when the old sinful self rears its head.
Again, as Bob said, not to dwell too much on these verses because there is much more in this chapter.
But there's a very simple way of dealing with it.
And that is simply to turn away from it.
To look up and say Lord.
I thank thee that thou seest me.
Not as a lost, guilty, helpless Sinner, but rather as being in Christ and having new life in him, and that thou seest me in all the perfection of Christ himself.
And when that really gets a grip on my soul and I realize how God sees me in that way, I would suggest that the overwhelming sense of the grace of God is the strongest, shall we say, force, to keep me from falling into sin and worldliness by realizing that Christ is my life, He is up there in glory. I am going to appear with him someday.
But even now.
He is my life.
And I am entitled, I say entitled to say, to that old sinful self.
You have no rights anymore.
My new life is in Christ.
Like to look at Galatians chapter 2 and verse 20 in light? It's a well known verse in light of our chapter.
Galatians 2 and 20.
Fossil, Paul says I am crucified with Christ.
We had that yesterday in the reading.
That when the Lord Jesus died, that was the end before God.
Thing to come from the creation of Adam as far as life is concerned.
And so he died, and in God's sight we who have faith in Christ died with him, and that was the end of us before God as far as responsibility.
Connected with the atom creation.
But then, so Paul says I'm crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, that is, Paul could say it, but.
Although I died, I'm I'm not dead.
I do live.
And how does he live the life which I now live in the flesh? That is, he had a body, and that body was alive, and in that body there was a life to be lived. If he had died with Christ, then what life was living there before God?
He says I live.
By the faith of the Son of God.
Who loved me and gave himself for me.
The life of Christ that he received by faith was in him.
Christ in you the hope of glory were told.
And.
So that he now lived a new life.
That life was Christ, and also in connection with our chapter here it says.
I live by the faith of the Son of God. That means I live by that faith.
Which has the Son of God as its object.
That was the object of his faith, the Son of God, that was the one that he had his eye on.
That he lived with him before his soul is the object of that life. I'd like to make a further comment on this matter of life, and it's really very important to understand in light of the verses that follow.
Each one of us here came into this world receiving a life through our parents.
And once we were born, we had a life that we could say was independent of our parents.
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That is, we live, they live. We can die. They can die. It's not the same life. We got life from them, but we have our own life and they have theirs.
That's not the way scripture presents new life to us.
The Word of God would teach us that.
In new creation with respect to God, there's just one life.
Just one. It's the life of Christ.
And we have been made to participate in that life, but not independent. And that's the great difference. The life that we now have, the life of Christ, is not independent life.
There's really just one.
And that's a wonderful truth that makes us recognize the holiness, the purity, the character.
Of the life we have. It's the life of Christ. It's Christ in US, and as such, it can never be lost.
If I can lose it.
I can't. Then Christ could lose his, and we know that's impossible. It's life beyond death. It's life that's eternal in its character. And so the exhortations that begin in verse five are based on that fact.
That we're to put certain things to death with respect to the body, the members.
Because it's saying to us.
Don't anymore live according to the old.
Those impulses, that nature, that character of the old so-called life, is not to be seen anymore.
It's judged as dead with Christ, and if that.
And this is important to recognize. According to Romans, where it's more developed, we still do have within us, in our members, in our body, that thing called sin.
We're to treat it as dead, but in that's one part of the truth. But the other truth is it's something that is in US and it's something that is can still capable of acting. And it's in Romans 8, God says it's condemned.
And when we're taken to heaven, it'll be removed from us, and then we shall be like him.
In a perfect, complete sense. But until then, because that thing called sin still resides in our members, even while it's a condemned thing, it has to continually be recognized in us as something that's been judged and morally were to look upon it as dead to it.
And consequently, these exhortations are based on these foundational truths, really, that there are in the practice of life. That's why verse five is an exhortation. It means something we have to it's not our position before God. In other words, it's not something that is simply so because Christ died for us and took care of our sins and gave us eternal life. But these things are practical exhortations based on those truths.
And so it's put as put to death, something that we're exhorted to do in a practical sense and carry out in our daily life. And there are those things that are mentioned here that no longer are to be allowed as part of everyday life, but to be treated as condemned, judged and dead before God.
Not to be too technical, but Don while you're on that subject.
Could you give us something on the difference between what is mentioned in verse 9?
Seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds.
What is the difference between the old man and the flesh? We know there's a connection between them, but yet they're not the same and it's important to have the difference. Is there a simple way we could see a difference between them?
Man.
With that thing called sin in his members.
When looked at by God as a creature of Adam is looked at by God as in flesh.
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Romans 8 tells us they that are. Well, we better go back to it if we're going to look at it and actually read the verse.
Romans chapter 8.
Romans chapter 8 and verse eight. It says so then they that are in the flesh or in flesh cannot please God.
If God has to look at me, and He did when I was born into this world.
Lost and very soon a Sinner by action, when God looks at me. He looked at me then as a creature before him.
Living in a condition that's here called in flesh. It's called in flesh because within me is that thing that we call in Roman sin. Sometimes we refer to it as the old nature.
And that old nature resides in the members. It's connected with the body itself. In Chapter 7 of Romans and when God looked at me, he said.
That person dawn is in flesh, and then he tells us here they that are in flesh cannot please God.
A person in that condition before God never does anything.
That God can be happy with because why? Because every action of that person in that condition.
Springs with motives that come from that sinful nature.
Everything that the person does results from the activity of that sinful nature of that person, and so when God looks at that person, he says.
They're in flesh.
And consequently, as in flesh, they cannot please God.
When we put our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God comes to dwell within us. And when the Spirit of God comes to dwell within us and also God gives us a new life, the life we've been talking about.
Then God looks at us differently, as we have in Romans 8.
Were treated as is. It says verse 9 Ye are not in flesh but in spirit.
If so, be the Spirit of God, dwell in you.
And so he looks at us differently and says.
All right.
You're in spirit because the Spirit of God dwells in you, and that Spirit of God will work in you to cause you in the new life.
Act in a different motive and for different reasons. And those I'm pleased with because I God the Spirit.
I am the source of the motives and the activities of that life. And so God looks at that life and he finds pleasure in it and he's pleased with it. But if you look at man as he was, as a whole.
In his nature, in his character, in his activity.
The whole sum of it. Scripture describes it in Romans, in Ephesians, and in Colossians as the old Man.
Because it's that which is seen as a whole.
The more detailed side of it is the flesh and sin, but when looked at as a whole, it's called the Old Man.
And consequently there was about us before God that which he calls the old man.
But once we become a new creation in Christ Jesus.
Then God has put us into a new position and a new condition before him.
And a new character of life is seen in us and that is called the Newman.
But it's the whole looked at as a as a complete thing.
And Ephesians and Colossians bring before us the new man. Romans doesn't go that far. We don't see the new man so much in Romans, but we see him in Ephesians and in Colossians. And just to make one further comment about it.
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In Ephesians and Colossians, man isn't looked at in the same way as he is in some of the other epistles there. He's starting point.
That God is working with is a dead man.
In Romans he is seen as a living, responsible man before God. But in Ephesians and Colossians, the very viewpoint of God is man is dead.
And God has to work to give him life. So ye who were dead, as it says in Ephesians in trespasses and sins. And then God works, and the result in Ephesians is he gives life, and then he takes us positionally with Christ to be seen in Ephesians, in the heavenly places in Christ. And it's the highest Christian truth as to the position of the believer.
In Ephesians, he's seen in in the work of God is in Christ in heavenly places.
In Colossians, it doesn't go that far. We are seen as dead, we are seen as given life, but we're still seen as on earth with a heavenly object. And so in Colossians, where we're reading in this chapter, we're not looked at as in heavenly places as we are in Ephesians. But God is giving us exhortations as a people who have new life with a heavenly object. But we're still on earth.
But we're still to live before God as new men.
And all that we were as men in the flesh, we should have come to the conviction that that's something that is put off.
I have found it help thinking about it, brethren, to go back to perhaps to Romans Chapter 7 to point out.
Something there that is said we talk about sin in the flesh. Sometimes it's called just simply sin. That's the sin nature.
But look at what it says here in verse 17.
Now then.
It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
For I know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing verse 20. Now if I do that, I would not it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.
That's that sin nature.
If we go on to chapter 8 like Don was mentioning, our position there in verse one is in Christ Jesus.
And in verse 9, like Don mentioned, says ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit.
Now put those verses together. We are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.
In verse in Chapter 7 it says sin dwelleth in US. And so while we are here in this world that sin nature is in us but we are not in that sin nature we are in Christ. And if you can simply understand it in the simplicity of scripture, I believe it really helps when it says here in our chapter like Bill was drawing attention to.
You have put off the old man with his deeds. It's that whole.
Thing that we were as men in the flesh, we have come to the conclusion that God has.
That there is nothing profitable in that God has condemned that He's condemned sin in the flesh. So in that sense of the word, we come to the conclusion we put that off. But it doesn't mean that we deny that there's sin in US, but that sin in us is something we have to reckon as dead, as we were talking about yesterday.
And that's where we're getting to in verse five of our chapter.
Mortify or put to death, therefore your members which are upon the earth, and then it puts the pretty serious list fornication.
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Uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
My late father-in-law was in the Second World War, an officer in the Canadian Navy, and he used to use an example that I found helpful, he says. In this chapter there is a change of command of the ship.
And when this new commander comes onto the ship which is our Lord Jesus.
Why there are some members of that crew that are so bad?
That they have to be put to death. And so that's what we have in verse five. We have another list in verse 8. And he says these members of the crew are also bad, but it doesn't say mortify them. It says put them off, put off these. So some of the sailors are put off the ship. They no longer have a place.
Because there's been a change of command on that ship. Oh brethren.
You're young people when there's been a command, a change of command in our lives, no longer I but Christ, I love that those 4 words that in that verse that Don mentioned in Galatians 220, not.
I but Christ. What a tremendous model for the Christian life. Not I, but Christ.
There's a change of command. I'm not the one that directs the ship any longer. There is somebody else that has come aboard. So there are things in life that must be put to death.
Does a dead man sin?
No. Why not?
Because he's dead.
Like I mentioned yesterday, sometimes I've had young people say I don't feel bad.
Talking about feelings here, we're talking about what God says we are and we are to put that into practice. So even though I don't feel that in there and that old flesh in me wants to rise up and do it anyhow, I say you're dead and leave it there. It's not struggling with those sinful things. It is simply recognizing what God says. We're dead.
And then we put to death.
Those.
Members upon the earth.
And it gives that terrible list in verse 5. This is what is so characteristic in the world that we live in. And sometimes, like was mentioned yesterday, we start to accommodate some of these sinful practices that are so evident in the world around.
Clearly, may the Lord help us simply to obey what he says here.
There are two great figures in the Old Testament that I think.
Help illustrate the New Testament epistles and help us understand the things we're talking about. One of those figures, of course, is Israel's journey from Egypt to Canaan.
And I think it's helpful to see that in connection with what we have here.
First of all, if we look at the book of Romans, we find that that corresponds with the Passover and the Red Sea.
The verses we've been reading about in Romans really have to do with what's illustrated by the Red Sea. And it's often been said that in the Red Sea we have an understanding of what Christ's death means to me.
But then they went, entered into the wilderness, and it's no longer the book of Romans so much.
Romans introduces us to the wilderness, but then we have books like Philippians where we're seen as men on earth looking up towards heaven.
2nd Corinthians, First and second Peter, 1St and 2nd Thessalonians. Perhaps we'd say the 1St and 2nd Thessalonians is first because those were words written to brand new believers. And then they go on. And then when they got to the Jordan River, we have what really corresponds to Colossians, as brethren have often thought.
It's not exactly a wilderness book.
But it's crossing the Jordan River and Justice entering into the new land of Canaan.