Some Basics of the Christian Life, Colossians 3: 1-17 by Rev. Charles Swann

I was taught English grammar in elementary school by a severe lady named Otley Pippin who took no guff from any student. After I grew past the elementary stage, I realized that I was indebted to her for drumming the rules of English grammar into my head, for she laid much of the foundation of my education that later enabled me to become a minister and writer and editor. But while I was in elementary school, I joined all the other kids in reciting, “I’d rather have a whippin’ than a class from Otley Pippin.”]

Miss Pippin taught me that there were three kinds of English sentences.

Imperative: “Charles, wash your hands.”

Declarative: “I did wash my hands.”

Interrogative: “Did you use soap?”

What does this have to do with the Christian religion? I hope to explain that these three categories have a lot to do with how people understand and/or misunderstand what the Christian religion is all about. I have encountered in my time a great many people who have, at best, only a hazy understanding of the Christian religion. And not all of them were outside the church! It is all right for people to be quietly religious and not get too deeply into theology. But all too often, a lack of understanding leads to misunderstanding.

It leads people to define religion in terms of imperatives--orders or commands: thou shalt; thou shalt not. Do this or don’t do that, although it seems impossible for you to obey the imperatives, the commands you think you hear from religion and you certainly don’t know anybody who gets it right. And be a certain way, you think you hear from religion, although it is altogether unlike the way you are and you don’t know anybody who gets it right.

A religious understanding--or misunderstanding--that is couched only in terms of imperatives, commands, inevitably leads to frustration and a sense of personal futility…because you can never pull it off…you can never get it right. So what happens? Many, many times it causes people simply to leave religion alone, to stay away from it.

A better understanding recognizes that, yes, there are imperatives in the Gospel. But they rest on declaratives, on statements about what has been done for us. The Bible is not just a collection of imperatives, things for us to do. It is first and foremost a presentation of declaratives, things God has done.

I.

To understand all that Paul had to say to the Colossians, and all that this passage has to say to us today, requires examining and understanding the declaratives as well as the imperatives in this letter. For it is what God has done for us that makes it possible for us to live the life that is envisioned in the imperatives--the kind of life that the Apostle Paul calls the risen and redeemed life.

Why is it called that? Because it is a life of participation. The word participation implies doing something along with other people, or entering into an experience that someone else has prepared for you. In our case, it means that we participate in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is basic Christian belief.

In our profession of faith and baptism, we participate vicariously in the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the inextinguishable life of Christ. The symbolism in baptism is that we die with him, we are buried with him, we are raised and made alive with him. On and over my mortal life and my lack of merit has been superimposed the life and merit of Christ. This understanding was so real to Paul that he could say, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” This was much more vivid in the minds of the ancients to whom Paul wrote this letter than it is in our minds, unfortunately.

Now, we can insist that we are just as bad and useless and disappointing as we ever were, but God does not think so, because he sees us joined to Jesus and participating in his life.

The wonderful results of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection are passed on to us at our profession of faith, our baptism and when we celebrate Holy Communion. In these sacraments, God reminds us the reminder that we are his people. We belong to him; we are members of his family.

The Christian faith demands awareness of my life not as my own invention, but a gift of God. And as an historical faith rooted in a specific place and a specific people, this faith means that I am to embrace my own particular life, the place where God has set me down and the people God has placed me among, also as gifts of God. God has put his chosen, forgiven people together in the one holy Christian Church made up of congregations like this one.

If we participate in the life of Christ, we do so together. The church is the physical manifestation of the body of Christ. As part of the body of Christ, we are part of each other. As members of the body of Christ we participate in a common life of sharing and mutual help. No Christian can be a tight little island. I have reminded you before of the Simon and Garfunkel song that says, “I am a rock. I am an island.” This is not and cannot be true of a believing Christian. We are not and cannot be apart from each other. The people to the right of you and to the left of you are your brothers and sisters, your siblings in the household of God. We have true fellowship with one another because we have all been united with Christ.

II.

When we understand the declaratives of the Gospel, we can deal with the imperatives. Because through our baptism we have participated in the death and the risen life of Jesus Christ, with all that involves, Paul can charge us to put to death that which is earthly in us. He gives us a list.

At the top of the list, are moral failures related to sex, that most basic of human urges that is second in our drives only to meeting our survival needs. Nothing pervades our whole nature--physical, mental and emotional--more than sex. There is no man in this room who has not taken a second look at a pretty young lady. And there is no woman in this room who has not taken a second look at a handsome man with beautiful blue eyes. This is because God created us as sexual beings. God intends for us to use and enjoy this powerful drive--chastely and rightly and properly, keeping our sexuality controlled and directed only in the proper channels.

But it is hard to keep sexuality in its proper place when our whole culture is shot through, saturated, with sexual license--when our culture constantly throws at us all the things Paul lists: fornication, impurity, lust, evil desire. The opposite of chastity and purity is thrown at us in every newspaper, magazine, TV show and movie. But the constant awareness that we are participants in the life of Christ and of each other can enable us to put these sins off from us.

Next on Paul’s list is greed, the inordinate desire for money, for things, things and more things. But be reminded that just as there are right and proper sexual urges, so there are rightful desires and uses for things for things. W3e need a certain amount of material--as I call it--”stuff.” Even monkish old John Calvin could say, in writing about the right use of this world’s goods, that clothing, for example, is not merely to cover us and keep us warm, but also to give us a pleasing appearance that delights the eye. Looking good makes you feel good!

But in our time, we have gone far beyond necessity, convenience and even beauty. Our world runs on the desire for more, more, more. Dr. Al Winn, a past president of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, observed that the worst danger of television is not the soft porn that besmirches so many programs; it is the hard sell of the commercials between program segments. What we are being told dozens of times a day is the by buying and owning things, we can receive the peace, joy and blessedness that, truly, only God can give. The hunger for things is pure idolatry.

Dr. Gilbert Bowen has observed that our secularist consumerist society is almost inevitably a society that breeds envy of what others have, which is by definition restlessness and discontent with who we are and what we possess. It rarely occurs to the folks who fill up the parking lots of the malls that happiness may consist more in what we do without, the willingness to be content with less than having what everybody else seems to think important or necessary. If we are truly to live happily and fulfilled, rather than always empty and hungry for more “stuff,” it will be as we learn to treasure the life given to us now, this day, rather than continually longing to be someone else or to live out some other story.

Next, Paul moves on to another list of things we must put away from ourselves. I call them sins of the tongue. They include anger: the unrestrained outburst of temper. Wrath: the slow-burning grudge. Malice: a frame of mind that wishes bad things, not good ones, for another person or group of people. Slander: the urge to belittle or defame others, to build one’s self up by cutting someone else down. Abusive language that says to or about other people things we would not want said to or about ourselves. And Paul caps the list of the sins of the tongue with “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self and clothed yourself with the new self.”

III.

That last is an important point. When we put off the old self, we must take the positive step of putting on the new. I have a lot of old clothes. In fact, some of my clothes may be older than some of you. I wear them around the house and Janell lives in the constant fear that I will wear some of them outside the house, that I will go somewhere in them. Well, as casual as I am about clothes, I do recognize the need now and then to put on something that was actually acquired in this decade. But there is no now-and-then in clothing ourselves with the new self. We have to remember to wear the new self every day. Clothing ourselves in the new self every day, to borrow some of Father Calvin’s words, gives us a pleasing appearance that delights the eyes, both of God and our neighbors and ourselves. Looking good makes you feel good! And we never look better than when we wear the new nature that Christ provides us.

Reminding us of our new natures, Paul then shifts from things we are to turn away from to list some things for us to turn to. (I know, I am ending a sentence with a preposition.) Things to turn to. So there.

Compassion: not pity, not merely feeling sorry for others from a position of comfort and safety, but stepping down from the position of comfort and safety and entering into the sufferings of others.

Kindness and gentleness: Did you ever stop to think that kindness and gentleness are only good manners?

Humility: not thinking of ourselves more highly than we should.

Meekness: being honest with myself about myself, in the light of God’s mercy.

Patience: having a long temper instead of a short one. And patiently saying I am sorry when I have been short-tempered.

Paul says that we should use these virtues in order to be able to put up with each other…in order to forgive one another. And he goes on to speak more about love and peace and thankfulness, the very hallmarks of the church.

And finally he says, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”


This is a beautiful picture: to be able to live and work and play, to earn our daily bread, to keep our house, to grow our tomatoes, to cook a meal, to hammer a nail, to play a game of bridge or a round of golf, or even to mow the lawn--to do all these things giving thanks to God. Though we may not be able to achieve perfectly this ideal way of being, it nevertheless is a noble goal to keep in sight, because we live risen lives…risen with Jesus Christ.