Gooding, David: 10 - Life in which Christ is All, and in All

From the epistle to the Colossians, chapter three. We read now verses five to seventeen. Colossians chapter three, five to seventeen. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, the which is idolatry. For which things sake cometh a wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience. In the which you also walked afore time, when you lived in these things. But now put ye also away all these, anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speaking out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him. Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman, but Christ is all and in all. Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, long suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving each other, if anyone have a complaint against any, even as the Lord forgave you, so also do you. And above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfectness. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to the which also ye were called in one body, and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts unto God. And whatsoever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Now, we concluded our last study session with the words of the apostle ringing in our ears that we were to set our mind on things that are above and to seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated on the right hand of God. Now we begin to come to the practical part of the epistle that outlines our practical duties and the way salvation is meant to work out in our lives. We shall, I trust, see the importance of this particular piece of advice. Vital to the practical outworking of our salvation is that we set our mind on things above and seek those things that are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God. And we may help ourselves to see that if we go back just briefly for a moment over the epistle and notice in the second paragraph of each section what the Holy Spirit God ha- says God has done for us. In chapter one and verse twelve, we are to give thanks to the Father who has made us sufficient, has qualified us. And when we studied it, we emphasized to ourselves the wonder and glory of the, that past tense. He has actually qualified us for our share of the inheritance of the saints in light, so that even now we be- can begin to enjoy the riches of that inheritance. And similarly, in chapter two verse ten, we read how that Christ is the head of all principality and powers. In him, in fact, dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And then Paul adds, in him you have been filled. That is a past fact. In giving us Christ, God has given to us all the fullness that there is in Christ. You have been filled. But now when we come to chapter three verse ten, notice the present tense, which is being renewed. To put it in its context, it tells us that we have put off the old man with his doings, we have put on the new man, that is a fact. But now let us notice what is said about that new man. He is constantly being renewed. If I might take a faint analogy from that, our very bodies, they tell me, are constantly changing. The old skin wears off, new skin takes its place. Old cells go, new cells take their place. Now, while there is nothing corrupt with the eternal life that God has given us, yet we are told that the new man is constantly being renewed after the image of him that created him. And for the purpose of that renewing, it is important that we set our minds on things above. We have the living Lord living within us. If his life is going to express itself through us, it will often require that we understand what God is doing. He will not make us like Christ in spite of ourselves. It won't be that one of these mornings, one of these Monday mornings, we wake up and say, as our eyes open and take in the dimness of Belfast, uh, morning light, say, I don't know, I feel a bit funny. Wonder what's happened. Oh, I know what I want. I've been made perfectly like Christ, but while you were asleep and you didn't know about it, and it's all happened, hey presto. No, no, it won't happen that way. It will happen as the Blessed Lord within us begins to inform our thinking and our moral judgments. We shall not become less responsible as believers because the Lord dwells in us. We shall become more responsible, more self-controlled, not less self-controlled, not less in control of our thinking than we were before, but more in control of our thinking, not less sharp in our thinking, but more sharp in our thinking, not less muddled in our moral judgment, but more clear in our moral judgment and able to see, as Paul said to the Philippians, to make a distinction between things that look the same but are different. The blessed work of the Lord Jesus is not to destroy us, to turn us into machines, irresponsible and out of control. The work of the Lord Jesus is to make us more responsible human beings, men and women, than ever we were before. And he uses our moral judgment, and he uses our intellectual capacity. And as Paul would put it in Romans twelve one, if we would offer our bodies a living sacrifice, as we should, then the way those bodies will be used will be controlled as our minds are constantly being renewed. And therefore we are to set our thoughts upon the blessed Lord, because, as the verse ten tells us, we are created, this new life that we have is created after the image of him that created us. And similarly, when we come to verse eleven, we are reminded of the implications of Christ being in us. We are not to lie, and presently we shall consider it in more detail. We are not to lie one to another. Why not? Well, take you and your Christian friend, and you're proposing to lie to your Christian friend, are you? But I suppose so I s- I thought you were meant to be the image of the Lord Jesus, the image of God. Would you so misrepresent the Lord that is in you and be untrue to him that is in you? And be careful before you finish with that lie to your friend, won't you, dear believer? Because if the person you're lying to is a believer, the Lord is in them as well. Will you lie to the Lord? You say you're talking airy fairy stuff now. Well, that's just the point, isn't it? Whether you really believe that the risen Lord is in you and your fellow believer. So then, as we set our minds on things above, our minds are renewed, made again, refashioned. The old dirt and the clogged thinking and the insincerity and the untruth and the selfishness begin to yield like a fresh spring of water bubbling up through the mud and cleaning away the things that have choked the faucet, or the tap, as I should say, of our thinking and our moral judgments. And so we come to our practical duties, therefore. And as we begin to think of them. We, uh, could divide them for practical purposes, as I have done here. You don't have to follow the analysis, it's merely a practical suggestion for getting our fingers round the passage. Our practical duties, therefore, as people that have put off the old man and put on the new. Our practical duties, and first of all, the negative ones. There are two actions required of us, says the passage, to mortify our members, verse five, which are upon the earth. And verse eight, now put you away also all these things, these wrong and perverse things. The negative side then, two actions. Two groups of sins are mentioned in particular. Of course, we're to put away all sins, but Paul is pleased to specify two groups. In verse, uh, five, he talks about perverse desire. Fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Pervous desires. And then in verse eight, he talks about evil hostilities. Anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speaking, lying. And then you notice he gives us reasons. Christian life is reasonable. And the two reasons he gives us on this occasion are, first of all, the question of God's wrath. Verse six, we're to mortify those things for which things sake cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience. And the second reason he gives is God's image, as we have been considering from verse ten. put on the new man which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created. And all I want to do now is very briefly just to run over those. I'm not going to preach you sermons. It seems to me that when it comes to these practical matters, it is more helpful that you consider them and thrash out the practical implications of them in your studies, rather than sit there listening to me preaching sermons on them. For the question is above all, not what does the preacher say in theory, but how are these facts going to work out in my life in practice? So, to the two actions required of us, mortify our members that are upon the earth. Just let me repeat that this is not how we get new life. This is how new life will express itself. For many long ages, the saints of God have been in the habit of illustrating it by pointing to certain trees that keep their leaves all through the winter. There they are on the tree, dead leaves. How does the tree get rid of the leaves? Well, the tree gets rid of the leaves because the new sap in the spring begins to rise up through the trunk, through the branches, through the twigs, and the new life rising up in, in the tree pushes out the old leaves. They're not putting off the old leaves so that they can get new leaves. The old leaves are being pushed off because they've got new life in them. Yes, so is it with us. And the other action required of us to put away, deliberately to put away. Let me use an easy analogy. Of course, it's going to break down and you're going to protest. But there's you coming in from mending the car, sir, and you're greased from head to foot, and your dungarees are impossible, and the wife makes you take them off in the shed, and you then are, uh, conducted to the bathroom. You scrub yourself from top to toe, you're perfectly beautiful, uh, sweet and pure, and then there's a whole range of new clothes, and you put them on, and then you go down to the garage and say, I like those dungarees, and you put them on top of the new. No, of course not. You put them off, we'll keep them off then. We'll say, yes, your analogy is too slick, Mr. Preacher. If I could put off my old deeds, uh, like my husband puts off his dungarees, I'd put them off right now. Trouble is, I can't undo the buttons. Can't get them off. And once I get them off, they come back again. Yes, I know. But nowhere are we told it's going to be magical. And this is where the matter arises, doesn't it, that we talked about in our very first sessions on the first Saturday, strengthened with all power by the might of his glory unto all endurance, stickability. The analogy of the grain of wheat growing out first a blade and having to push its way through the unhelpful clods of the earth, and then when it gets up being pounced upon by rainstorms and winds and dogs and goodness knows what have you, and persisting in spite of it. Yes. So must we, and learn to take hold of the might of his glory, the great God who created us and now has redeemed us, to strengthen our moral resolve in continuing the battle against sin. There are some, of course, they don't mean to do it, but some preachers that discourage their audiences, and I doubtless have been guilty of it myself, and have given the impression that you've only got to devote yourself today, and all the opposite forces of sin will be pushed down tomorrow. It isn't true, is it? Let me remind you of a biblical analogy. When Joshua brought the people of Israel over the Jordan to face Jericho. How do you read the story? Why you say they had a prayer meeting, they claimed victory, and the walls of Jericho fell down at once. Well, you have a different Bible then. No, they didn't. They first day they went round the walls of Jericho, and when they got back at night, the walls were still there. And the next day they, um, went round the walls of Jericho and came back. The walls were still there, weren't they? You say, yes, the wretched folks, they didn't have enough faith. Oh no. God didn't tell them the walls would come down the first day, nor the second day, nor the third day. In fact, God left the walls in place six days. And it was only on the seventh they came down. Why do you suppose he left them there six days? Well, I don't know. I've no verse for it, but I imagine if you'd have been an Israelite and had to walk round the walls of Jericho six days, uh, on end and look at those horrible bearded enemies over the, over the walls, by the end of the sixth day, you would have hated those walls. Ha. Yes. And sometimes God makes us march around the uglinesses of our personality, doesn't he? And how we wish they would go. Thank God for the hatred of sin that God thereby builds into our personality. You'll be all the safer for eternity in heaven, my friend, for the hatred of sin that God works into your heart. As in faith of him, you continue the battle and unresistingly and uncompromisingly are determined with God to see it through to the end. Two groups of sins, perverse desire and perverted hostility. If one wants to sum them up under general heads, of course, the first one has to do with love gone wrong, doesn't it? Love is a very good thing. How terribly it has been perverted in the human personality and in the world, I've no need to remind you. We are to let the risen Christ purify our love. And as we pass by, let us notice that along with the sins, uh, so-called sins of the flesh that come from a perverted desire, is catalogued covetousness. That impeccable Christian businessman that wouldn't be seen anywhere near the red light district of Belfast could be guilty of a sin, couldn't he, that should be bracketed with those other sins. Loving. Loving things. More than loving God. We need to watch our affections, therefore, our loves. And we need to guard our hatreds. Not all hatred is wrong, is it? Writing to the church at Ephesus on an occasion, our Lord Jesus says, very well done, you hate the things I hate. So hatred is a positively healthy thing. And if we would be healthy, we too have to learn to develop our hatred, our hatred of all that is evil and sinful, of course. But hatred can go wrong, can't it? And we have to watch ourselves. There is such a thing very well known to reviewers of theological books called odium theologicum. A hatred that theologians, uh, indulge in. You should listen to them reviewing other people's books. Mm, as far as they know, they're concerned simply for the truth. But in their campaign for the truth, sometimes other people would discern a lot of pride and self-will and goodness knows where what, so that if we're not careful, we stand for the truth of God with a spirit that is utterly fleshly, and sometimes with a hatred that is inspired, says James, of hell. We have to watch our hatreds as well as our loves. And then, of course, the reasons. God's wrath and God's image. We need to notice very carefully what, in fact, verses six and seven say. They're not saying that if a believer misbehaves, he will suffer God's wrath eternally. It is saying that God's wrath comes on the sons of disobedience for these things. Therefore, if you are a believer, you mustn't go on doing those things. Why not? Well, pray consider God's feeling about it. God's wrath comes upon those things. Once you lived in them. Not now. If you are considering what pleases the Lord and what displeases him. That, after all, has got to be, isn't it, our chief motivation. Is what I am doing, does it please the Lord? Not positively, how far may I go, but, uh, positively, will it please the Lord, or will it offend him? And secondly, and I need not stress it further, the question of God's image. We're meant to represent God, aren't we? To express God. It's not merely what could I get away with and God not take steps against me. It's, but I have been given the supreme honor of being the image of God. Man originally made and put into the Garden of Eden was made in the image of God, wasn't he? And what a high order of office that was. To be the very viceroy of God. To be in God's place and organize this world and subdue it and make something of it as God's viceroy, God's representative, made in the image of God to have dominion. The wonder is that when mankind rebelled against God, he didn't destroy them, but has offered them a redemption and not only reinstated us and put us in another Garden of Eden, but infinitely higher than that, has joined us to his son, and we're seated with his son in heavenly places, far above all principalities, powers, mights, and dominions. And we, along with the Lord Jesus, have to be the image of God in redemption, the queen to Jesus the King. Why we must judge angels, so it says. We must judge the world one of these days. God's representatives made in the image of God. I know it's difficult to remember it, isn't it, when you've lived all your life as a spiritual pauper. It's difficult to remember as you go out on Monday, isn't it? That you are, in fact, joined with the risen Lord, made in the image of God. And as I said earlier, it comes down to practical things. Don't lie to one another, for you see this new man that you have put on. In it there cannot be Greek and Jew circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman or freeman, but Christ is all and in all. Notice that list of things. You will notice that in this particular list, it's not to be confused with other lists. It doesn't say here that there's not, um, male or female, of course there is. But certain distinctions here go, don't they? Religious and ethnic. Greek and Jew, ethnic. Circumcision and uncircumcision, religious. Barbarian, Scythian, bondmen and freemen are social, aren't they? The Greeks, you know, with that arrogance suitable to them, as being the inventors of nearly everything that's important in, in Western civilization, regarded anybody who couldn't speak Greek as a barbarian. Mm. There are people who, when they spoke, sounded to the Greek as if they were saying, and people who speak like that are, to Greeks, barbarians, juicy babblers. Ha ha. So even if it were a very learned Cicero, the Greek held him to be a barbarian, though he were talking Latin, he was saying very learned, but he wasn't Greek, that's all. Well, then there were other, of course, foreigners to the Greek mind. There were Scythians. They came from the edge of the world, where if you went a few inches further, you dropped over the side of it. And by definition, you'll see, they were impossible savages and uncouth Scythians. And then there were the social levels within their city. There were slaves as distinct from freemen. And, uh, of course, the distinction was kept up. They wore different clothes and so on. Yes, but in Christ, those distinctions disappear, don't they? I know, I know, I know I rub you up the wrong way and bring out the worst in you, but it won't quite do to say, well, he's one of these Englishmen, you know. Well, in one sense it is true. Be do be careful, because in me, though I was, and I suppose am an Englishman, and I couldn't help it. In me is the Lord Christ. Believe it or not, underneath the uncouth and broken hysteria is that new man, which is Christ, and Christ is all. And in all. We shouldn't be having ideas, should we now anymore? Oh, well, he's a southerner and he's a northerner, should we? He's a Jew, and he's an Arab. Oh, he's not a grammar school person. He only went to what they call in Suffolk the elementary school. He's in Christ. The blessed Lord of glory is in him and in her. Yes, and then there are practical duties that are positive, as you'll see them. And I'm not going to expound on them at length. There has to be God-like and Christ-like love. There should be the rule of Christ's peace within our hearts. There should be Christ's word dwelling in us richly. We are to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. You'll see, there is to be Godlike love. Consider, says Paul, your status. Put on therefore, verse twelve, as God's elect, holy and beloved, beloved of God, his chosen people, and holy. Do remember your status. Can be a little trying, can't it? I believe Charles and Di, uh, find it very difficult to get away from things and, uh, let their hair down. You are never given permission to get away from your position of holy and elect and beloved of God. And if you've been beloved of God, then, says Paul, we must show that kind of love in our hearts, and not only loved of God, but loved of the Lord who forgave us. We are to forgive as he forgave. Notice the realism. He didn't forgive you before you repented, did he? He was prepared to forgive you. He put up with you. He bore with you, and we're to do the same, long suffering, forbearing one another. We are to forgive as Christ forgave us the moment the offender repents, to forgive, and always to be willing and to be forbearing and patient. And let the peace of Christ rule, not just our own subjective state and enjoyment of peace, but the Lord's peace. If I were to get drunk tonight and noisy and break a few windows and upset the citizens of Belfast, the police would haul me in. Why? For breaking the Queen's peace, not my peace, the Queen's peace. And Christ has established peace through his reconciliation and joined his people together in one body, and the old enmity is gone. Don't let me start and break the peace. So in all the decisions that I must take, I must have that in mind, mustn't I? I must work for peace. Doesn't mean that I shall compromise with evil and peace at any price. My motivation must be to keep and preserve and to foster the king's peace and the peace of the body of Christ. And do be thankful, says Paul. Isn't it tremendous how easily we forget to be thankful and are full of criticisms? I go to a lot of Christian tea parties, and most of them are nice. I have no meter, no meter to record the proportion of conversation that is saying how wonderful Christ is and how marvelously his people have done. The proportion of that to the proportion of, you heard what they're doing in such and such a church, you heard what she's doing, we don't think this is right. To get the impression that the whole thing has gone to rack and ruin. Oh, let's learn to be thankful. It pertains to our psychological health, not only to the absence of hostility, but peace in the sense of wholeness. To be full of thanksgiving and to dwell on the healthy, holy, wholesome things that make for peace and wholeness. And let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. My brothers, my sisters, we need to take it seriously, don't we? My old granny knew her book, had she had more time to read it. More, I think, than sometimes in our modern generation knows it. We must be careful of talking of Holy Scripture as though it was sometimes a little unspiritual to know too much about it. It's the word of the Lord, isn't it? You can't soak yourself too much in it. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. How do you suppose you'll come to see the wonderful things Shakespeare is saying if all you read of Shakespeare is a potted edition for, for two minutes each day and the odd talk on a radio? Understand the heart of Shakespeare. You must soak yourself in. If you want to know about computers, you'll have to soak yourself in computers. If you want to know what God thinks, you'll have to soak yourself in his word, won't you? Let it dwell in you richly. Oh, let me have every hobby under the sun, but my friend, let's ask, do I know more about my hobby than I do about the word of the Lord Jesus? And if the word of Christ dwells in us richly, it will do lovely things, won't it, to us? Able to admonish one another, of course, in all wisdom, singing, whether to ourselves or delightfully singing in our hearts to the Lord. And when you remember what this epistle has been about, how once we were enemies and Satan has got us in the dark and persuaded us that God was a terrible old tyrant and an absolute wet blanket and a bore. And that's the worst accusation our modern generation could hurl at God, isn't it, that he's a bore. How Satan must gnash his teeth when he hears you going around singing to the Lord in your heart. What a lovely thing. And if you've got the rheumatism or something, or lie ill in bed, that you can still sing to the Lord, why that's Satan and all his hosts and his slanders defeated already, isn't it? Singing to the Lord's supreme commander because you love him and admire his wisdom and his rule. And do all in the name of the Lord Jesus. I'm never to act upon my own authority, but I shall have to be careful here, shall I not? Terrible things have been done in the name of the Lord. If I'm going to fulfill my responsibility and privilege of acting in the name of the Lord, then doubly do I need to let the word of Christ dwell in me richly, so that when I act in the name of the Lord, my action shall be according to and in line with his word. But they are brief observations, and you will want now to get down to the real practicalities. So to our study groups.