Text: Colossians 3:1-11
Focus: holiness
Function: to find a positive way to reject the world’s values
3:1So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, 3for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
5Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). 6On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. 7These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. 8But now you must get rid of all such things: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. 9Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. 11In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all!
Good morning to the beloved children of the living God!
This morning, we are going to talk about holiness or what it means from scripture to be engaged in Godly living.
By Godly living, I mean, living for God. I don’t mean the pride that comes with being able to justify oneself with following a bunch of rules made up by people instead of God.
I mention this because I have been guilty of the pride of being religious and God has begun to show me that it is by God’s grace that I live and move and have my being. God’s grace forgives my weakness and personal failures. Praise God for God’s mercy towards us!
The Colossian Church had become infected with people what had come in and had added a bunch of rules to what it meant for them to become Christian. They were adding human rules to God’s grace.
Grace is hard for us to handle because there is nothing we can do about it. And we live in a culture with a value system that tells us that it is up to us individually to do something about our own problems and conditions. We are taught independence and self reliance, which is good, but it does get in the way of us trusting in God’s grace for us when we do what is called sin.
The first verse gives us a practical way to live a godly life of grace. And it is obvious: Think about God.
Well, maybe that is not so obvious. What does it mean to think about God?
I believe it comes from the scripture that tells us to pray without ceasing. We aren’t on our knees 24/7, but we are walking in a thought life that acknowledges the presence of God’s Spirit dwelling within our own souls or spirits.
So, we walk, humbly, with God.
Because the passage ends with that part of the baptism vows that made the church so attractive to loving people: “There is no difference…,” the whole passage is a recalling to the individual believer to their baptism.
So, inside the attitude of the heart implied in the passage is the idea of the symbol of dying to self so that we can come alive to Christ. We are buried under the water in baptism and we come alive to a new life, a new way of living.
I believe that God wants us to thrive when we are baptized. We are baptized into the power of God to transform the whole of our lives into the, as the passage says, the glory that God has for us.
So let me unpack the idea of dying to self. I mean dying to living selfishly.
The moral precept of Narcissism is that the moral good is what is good for me regardless of how it impacts my fellow human. It believes that we do not have to care for others.
When we follow God in the Kingdom of heaven, we change that perspective from living selfishly to living communally recognizing that God has given us enough to live on and to share with others.
So, he explains in the text a list of distractions that we put to death and it isn’t ourselves, our hopes, our dreams and our inspirations, but it is desires that keep our focus away from the love that God has called us to give to others.
The list of sins is short. He mentions passion which is being controlled by rage instead of the Spirit of God.
He mentions impurity both sexual and otherwise.
He speaks of evil desire, and I understand this to mean an action with consequences that will harm others.
And he ends with greed, which he idolatry. Greed keeps us from holy living.
Let me add today’s gospel lectionary text to the thoughts about holiness Luke 12:15-21:
16 Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
The story tells us whether we are wealthy or poor to put our trust in God instead of our earning potential and what we have accumulated.
God was looking at the heart of the rich fool who had placed, in his heart, his confidence in his wealth instead of God.
Again, God blesses us and we are grateful.
What we don’t say is that we don’t need God anymore. That is what the rich man did.
But more than that. Brian McLaren pointed out that the rich man was expected to sell off his grain at a fair price because that was the just way that they conducted business. He was to sell it at a fair price because there were others who were starving. He might even have been trying to drive up the price of grain to get more for himself.
The world we live in calls that smart business. Jesus implies that it is exploitation and greed.
Most men, when they achieved the kind of wealth the rich fool achieved, instead of hoarding contributed to the society’s welfare. They would go to the center of the city and sit with the elders and participate in the governance of the city for the common good of the people.
This man, instead became selfish and did not consider the impact, or evil, of his actions.
He was not living in love for others, instead, he was living selfishly and Jesus condemns these actions.
I found it interesting that the lectionary writers combined these texts about the relationship of holiness to greed.
It boils down to following the command to love others as much as we love ourselves.
When we do that, selfishness seems to go out the window.
So, I hoped to help us understand what holy living is.
And from my perspective, Holy Living is living for the common welfare of my neighbor as much as myself.
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