Uncle Paul’s Two Step

Uncle Paul's Two-Step

 
Ok, folks. I have decided to do something a little unorthodox this morning. I am actually going to read this passage through twice. I am going to read this once through in the New King James Version, which is your pew Bible. Then I am going to read this passage again in the Message, a more contemporary translation. I will be referring to both ways of wording what God's word says here—so take time and listen to God's word from Colossians 3:1-17.

 

First, the New King James Version

 

 1 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.
5 Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, 7 in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.
8 But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, 10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, 11 where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.
12 Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; 13 bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. 14 But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. 15 And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful. 16 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 hearts to the Lord. 17 And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

 

And now the Message

 

 1-2 So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.

 3-4Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you'll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.

 5-8And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That's a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God. It's because of this kind of thing that God is about to explode in anger. It wasn't long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better. But you know better now, so make sure it's all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.

 9-11Don't lie to one another. You're done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.

 12-14So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

 15-17Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.

Following Jesus is not always as easy as it sounds. At least it isn't for me. God, by his grace does not let me think it is easy anyway. Oh, there are times when I think that I am really doing well. I am saying the right things, I am thinking the right thoughts, I am doing the right things at the right times. I think to myself…"Clint, you are a pretty good guy. I am impressed with all that you do. You chose to be kind to that person who you can't stand. You are being patient. You are working hard. You talked on the phone with your mother and did not smart off…" I tell myself these kinds of things inside my head for a little bit. Then reality comes along and smacks me upside the head. I find myself marching around, mumbling under my breathe, angry about something that is very small in the eternal scheme of things. I let it get a couple of hours or even a couple of days of my time. And I realize that there is a lot of my life, a lot of my heart, and a lot of my attitude that still needs to be turned over to God.

 

For the last two chapters of the book of Colossians, we have listened as God has pointed us to Jesus through his Word. God's Word has told us about the power of Jesus, the importance of what Christ has done, about how Jesus is our foundation and our hope. As we listen, many of us can believe that. We can agree. We can shout Amen. We can study it. We can know God's Word inside and out. And yet, we can fail to live what we know.

The Apostle Paul points out a few different ways that we can miss the mark in following Jesus in Colossians Chapters 2 and 3. I want to take a look at these, as well as the proper direction to take as we follow Christ.There is so much here in Chapter 3, I could preach this same passage several times. I might do that. But, I won't try to do that this morning.

 

What I want to talk with you about is what I call "Uncle Paul's Two-Step". In several of his letters, but especially in Galatians 5-6 and here, the Apostle Paul works very hard to keep people from drifting to one extreme or the other in their attempt to follow God, and thus miss the mark of being in a powerful, living relationship with him. In this part of Scripture it is like God is saying through the Apostle Paul—not like this—or like that---but like this.

 

As you will remember last week we talked a little bit about legalism. At the end of Colossians Chapter 2 the Apostle Paul counsels very strongly against legalism. He reminds us that when we accept Christ we are free from the law. Why does he do this?

 

Because when we choose to follow Jesus, one of the easy pitfalls to fall into in understanding what Christianity is all about is too think it is about a bunch of rules. With the Colossians they were being pressured into possibly having adult males circumcised (which by the way, would probably not be the best church growth strategy)and going back to obeying all sorts of ceremonial rules.

 

For me legalism came easy in other ways, especially in my teenage years. Part of this was due to the church I went to. I attended a church where any music that was in any way contemporary in style was evil. Non-Christian or Christian. And if I listened to them, I was somehow stumbling as Christian. I vividly remember the shame I felt when I was listening to an Amy Grant album in the mid 80's thinking I was doing a worshipful Christian thing, only to be shamed for doing it by the youth leaders of our church. No shorts were ever allowed at any church activity, no matter how informal the activity was, and how hot the weather was outside. Girls and boys had to swim separately, and the pool was a hike away from the camp so that the girls and guys would not be provoked to lust over one another by actually seeing one another's legs. The King James Version was the only version I was allowed to read, devotionally or in church. Dances were wrong. Only Christian music was allowed. There were proof texts for this I was told. I remember one young man, who had come to church nearly every week, being yelled at from the pulpit by the preacher for 5 minutes because he had an earring in his ear. I could go on and on about this, and I am sure that some of the disciplines that the church of my childhood instilled in me you would agree with as even helpful and healthy, and some you would disagree with as excessively stringent and legalistic. In the middle of this, I had a mother that clearly was ministered to by the church, but did not buy into all the "rules" of the church, for better or for worse. She told us that the rules against shorts was silly, and that the pastor didn't even have his kids follow it all the time. She did not give up on Linda Ronstadt or Elvis. She still had wine and beer with her friends, though I never saw her drink more than one or two drinks. This created all sorts of internal conflict for me. My mom, I decided, was less godly than I. But someone I still had to obey to follow the rules. This attitude created lots of arguments between us, and she will say were some of the more difficult years in raising me.

The point is, as a teenager, especially in my early teen years, Christianity was less about having a relationship and more about following a set of rules. I did not listen to any music on the radio that was not Christian. I threw away all my early 80s music, including that Weird Al Yankovich album I loved. And, I was not shy about telling other people how wrong they were if they listened to "secular" music. In addition to youth group, church and Sunday School, I also attended the Wednesday Night Adult Bible Study and helped the pastor and the music director set up the church for an hour on Sunday morning. I told other people they should do the same. And gave fellow church members guilt trips whenever they were not living up to my standards—in the name of Jesus of course. Pretty soon, I began to see myself as the rule enforcer for everyone. Telling them that if they went to a different church, they probably did not believe in Jesus. Especially if it was affiliated with any sort of denomination. If they did not read the King James, they were going to used by the Antichrist to form his one world government that would signal the end of the world. I was faithful to the rules, but I was not very loving.

 

The problem was, as you might guess, that not only was I lonely kid at that point, but I had a warped view of God. I knew that I had been saved at that point, in spite of the fact that I sinned. But I viewed God as a God who was looking down from heaven, waiting to catch me doing something wrong. And when anything went wrong, it was because God was punishing me for being a bad person. So I kept having to work harder and harder, following more and more rules, to get God to love me. He was like I perceived my earthly father at that age, distant, hard to read, and hard to please.

 

I tell you all this so that you can see the problem with legalism. Legalism teaches that you are saved by grace, but you should still live by the Law. It gives God control of your eternity, but when you are legalistic your whole Christian life now is all about you working hard enough to be good enough. You don't depend on God. You try to live in your own power.

 

That is why Colossians 3:1 says, "1
If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.

OR as the Message puts it so well

So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.

 

So….then what happens when a person rejects legalism? I started moving away from my legalistic heritage in my college experiences. And, even more so by the time I got in ministerial school. When you move away from legalism, it is easy to overcorrect. Like when you skid on the road because of ice, one of the biggest mistakes is to oversteer in the other direction. The results can put you in a tailspin. This is what Paul was concerned about with some of the Colossians. It is also something that we need to guard against. When we move away from a legalistic spirituality, it can be easy to fall into an attitude of "Christ has set me free, so I am free to do whatever I want". Which also runs counter to the good news of Jesus.

 

You know what it is like. The kind of relationship where we do what we want and then ask forgiveness later. As Protestants, we talk about how Catholics can do this with confession quite a bit. That Catholics can do whatever they please, and then they just go to confession. But often, Baptists are guilty of the same things. We do what we want to do, and then ask forgiveness afterward, only to do that same wrong thing over and over again. When we ask forgiveness, we have no intention of changing our ways. We just want to do what we want to do, no matter if it is wrong or not, and then ask God for forgiveness and freedom from the consequences after we have done exactly the opposite of what his Word teaches us.

 

We want God to save our souls for eternity, but we want to do what we want to do in the mean time. This is the opposite of the resurrection life that God has for us as well. It is a life that takes Jesus' cross for granted. It is the kind of way of living that makes no difference in the world, offers no hope to those lost in lives without the truth of Christ.

 

You will notice as you read through these, that two particular families of sin are identified. One family that are mentioned are sexual sins. Paul lists of several different kinds of sins that deal with our sex lives. He also mentions several kinds of sins that have to do with how we use our words. He mentions a few other sins. All of the sins he mentions that are the opposite of the Way of Jesus are sins that are about a loss of self-control and discipline.

 

When we choose to live with no boundaries, we treat God as our codependent instead of our Master. We do whatever we feel like, not caring about anyone but ourselves, and then expect God to bail us out for whatever we do—whether it is his will or not. We take God for granted.

 

So if we are not supposed to be legalistic, trying to discover and follow all sorts of rules and traditions, and we are not supposed to be people who accept Christ and just do whatever feels right, what are we supposed to do?

 

Well, we are supposed to be led by the Spirit. We are supposed to above all "put on love". Not a sappy sentimental kind of love. But the kind of love that passionately loves the Word of God and bases their lives on it, that loves the Lord so much we are constantly seeking to do his will. And a kind of love that spills out in how we treat one another. Eager to do right, but also eager to forgive. The kind of love that hopes for the best for people, but the kind of love that is patient with people when they disappoint us. The kind of love that sees people in need, and reaches out to help them. The kind of love that when it sees someone being treated unfairly, choses to help make that thing right for them.

 

What kind of people are we called to be. We are called to be the kind of person that chooses to be not living under our own rules and power, or controlled by our desires and passions, but driven and controlled by the love of Christ.

 

How does that happen? Well…we are going to need a couple more weeks to figure all that out, but for right now, I want you to be aware of the imagery the Bible text gives us. The Bible says to "put on" this, and "take off" that when it talks about how we are going to live here. And the Message gets it right. It is talking about taking off and putting on clothes. Specifically, it is talking about a baptism ritual. But it also points to something for us in our living.

We need to take time to make a daily commitment to live in love. Like we put on our clothes and get ready for each day, we need to make a conscious commitment to be guided and led by the Spirit in loving God and loving others every day. Each day, we need to remind ourselves not to miss being in relationship with Christ by making our lives about a bunch of rules for ourselves and judgments of other people. Each day, we need to remember not to take Christ and his death on the cross for granted by doing whatever we please whenever we choose to do it. Each day, we need to remember v1.

 

Seek Christ. Seek where he is at. Seek to join him in what he is doing . Seek to love him and please him. Seek to know Jesus more. Don't ignore Him. Don't try and do life without him.

 

Today and each day he offers you new hope and new life. Don't walk around, getting caught up in what is going on around you. Look to what Jesus is about. Look to what Jesus is doing. And join him in it. With Hope. With Joy. With Love. In Faith.

 

Trust him enough to let go. Trust him enough to let him lead you. Trust him now. Trust Jesus today. Trust him. Trust him.