Wear Christ Daily: Practical Truths from Colossians 3 - Sermon 23rd November 2025

G'day. Thanks for joining the Heights Church podcast today. We hope you enjoy our message.

If you're in the Sydney area, be sure to join us at the Heights Church at Gostum

Road, Cornfield Heights, Summingsville.

Good morning, Church. It's lovely to be here this morning.

So the reading this morning is from Colossians 13, verses 1 to 17.

Since then, you have been raised with Christ. Set your hearts on things above,

where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with Him in glory.

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature—sexual immorality,

impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.

Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways,

in the life you once lived.

But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these,

anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.

Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices,

and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator.

Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised,

barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all.

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves

with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone.

Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love,

which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you

were called to peace. And be thankful.

Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly, as you teach and admonish

one another, with all wisdom, through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.

Singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do,

whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus,

giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

This morning we have a look at Colossians chapter 3, the 17 verses that we had

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

read for us today by Suzanne. You may want to follow along as I speak.

And they're actually a particularly interesting part of Scripture for me,

personally, which I mentioned to Mark when he was talking about different sermons

over this Colossians series.

And he was very kind to say, well, yep, Chris, you can have Colossians chapter

three, which I now realize cost him nothing at all.

If you have a look at some of the things that are said in Colossians chapter three,

it's particularly special to me because if you don't know much of my story,

about 22 years ago, I was somebody that didn't go to church,

Didn't grow up going to church, wasn't a part of my life.

One series of afternoons, I would find myself reading a Bible at the park opposite

Castle Towers, which is now a metro station.

And on one particular afternoon, I was sitting at this park reading a Bible.

And when I got up from that park bench, I realized that I had decided,

as we sung this morning that I wanted to follow Jesus.

And the piece of scripture that I was reading when this took place were the

words that were read for us this morning in Colossians chapter three.

What always stands out to me personally as I come back to this chapter is how

much this chapter is not what I would recommend to somebody to read if they

were thinking about becoming a Christian.

It's not evangelical. It's not a presentation of the gospel.

It presents as a list of do's and don'ts, a list of rules, a list of obligations,

a list of things that you should be doing.

It's not a gospel heavy. It's something different altogether.

What it is really is that It is a call to those who are followers of Jesus to

remember who they really are.

I wonder this morning, as we explore this chapter, if you might,

as I speak, ponder that idea, that idea, that question of who am I really?

Perhaps like me, 22 years ago, it might also prompt you to ask,

who do I want to be really?

Let's pray again.

God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the way that it moves in us

still. It teaches us. It encourages us.

And Lord, I pray that your word this morning would be a light for our path,

that you, God, would enable us to hear something fresh and new for our day today again.

Lord, we thank you so much that you don't leave us to try and work it out on

our own, but you guide us and you teach us and you show us the way to live.

And we ask you again today to show us the way to live. Amen.

Well, Colossians was written to, as you have worked out by now,

a small church in a place called Colossae, which in the first century was a

place that was in some senses, small and young,

was made up of ordinary people living in a busy trade city.

The people that lived here lived in a world where they were surrounded by ideas

that pulled them in every possible direction.

There were philosophies promising deeper wisdom. There were people inside the

church and around the church that would teach Jesus-like messages,

suggesting that faith in Jesus was good, but not quite enough.

But to make it even better, you could mix it together with spiritual trends.

You could mix it with performing righteousness or goodness.

You could mix it together with other faiths and religions.

You could have a combination of faithful obedience, but also still fitting into

all of the cultural expectations of the day so that you could follow Jesus,

but still be palatable to society.

And doesn't that sound actually really familiar?

Not too dissimilar to the world that we live in today, pulled in lots of different

directions. In fact, in some ways, never before have humans been pulled in so many directions.

We hear so many different things from so many different worldviews,

not on a weekly basis, but on an hourly basis sometimes.

And as we get to Colossians chapter 3, we find the Apostle Paul reminding those

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

in Colossae that might wish to be people who follow Jesus, that they don't need to chase novelty.

They don't need to chase new highs, new depths of wisdom.

They don't need to keep reinventing the wheel because in Christ,

they already possess the fullness of God.

It's already theirs. It is in Jesus that they find everything that they need.

In Jesus, we find both truth and actual life transformation.

We find answers for our brain and applications for our behavior.

We find hope and we find instruction.

And so Paul begins here in chapter three of Colossians, since you have already

been raised with Christ—,

here are some things you might want to think about. Paul doesn't say,

hey, try harder, be more.

If you maybe reach a certain standard, if you certainly bring enough goodness

into your life, enough goodness into the world, then I will consider you as

somebody who has been raised with Christ.

No, he doesn't say that. He starts with the idea of since you are already raised

with Christ, since Jesus has already done his thing in the world and in you,

you may now go and try some of these things.

He speaks in past tense.

Something decisive has already happened.

That through faith in Christ, the follower of Jesus, their old life.

Their self that was ruled by fear and ego and self-preservation has already died.

And a new life is available to us, hidden with Christ in God.

He says that in some senses, you're not waiting to become new.

You are learning how to live as the person that God made you to be.

And verse 2 says, set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.

Paul here isn't telling us to withdraw from the world, to never think about

real world things, to pretend that ordinary life doesn't matter.

No, he's saying that in the midst of your every day,

remember to center your attention and your focus and your affections on Christ

and his kingdom, even while living in the midst of this one.

To set your mind on things above is to let the priorities of heaven infiltrate

your priorities in your day-to-day life.

It's to let those priorities become your priorities.

It is to live with that awareness that your identity and your worth are based

on something unshakable.

They're not based on things that are here because the things that are here are

temporary and breakable.

No, he's saying your deeper identity, your deeper worth are built in heaven, in an unshakable place.

Doesn't shift with trends. It doesn't depend on whether you're having a good

week or a good year or a bad week or a bad year.

It doesn't depend on your successes or your resume or human approval. No, it's above.

And because it's already above, here is what your life can and in some ways should look like.

He says, put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature.

He says, as long as you are living here, as long as you are in your body,

as long as you are still you in this world, There are still going to be things that are in your life.

There are still things that you're

going to be drawn to, things that your flesh are going to cry out for.

He lists some things, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed.

And what he's talking about here is not just these practices or these acts, these habits, but.

What he's saying is that on a deeper level, the sin that still lives in our

life is sin not just because it's wrongdoing, but at a deeper level,

it's misdirected worship.

It's idolatry. It isn't just participation in those things that we ought to put to death,

but it's that deeper down belief that we need those things in order to survive and cope.

And you might think, oh, I don't actually, I don't think that,

I don't think that, I don't think that.

But every single time that we have fatigue or stress or worry,

and instead of depending on Christ and being faithful to Him,

we go and seek those old habits that soothe and calm and distract or entertain,

we are misdirecting our worship.

And so, Paul says, take off those things. Kill them. Don't give them life.

As if you were removing an old piece of clothing and burning it so that you

could never have the opportunity to wear it again.

I wonder if you've got some clothes in your wardrobe that may need to get that treatment.

Maybe you've got some clothes in your wardrobe that your spouse has suggested

to you should have that treatment.

Paul says, those things, they belong to your former way of life.

That one that died with Christ, Phil singing, and he said, yes, a little bit loud there.

And what he does then is he then lists a bunch of stuff that then can replace those things.

He says, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility.

Clothe yourselves with gentleness.

Clothe yourselves with patience. And what is really cool about this imagery

of clothing is that for us,

every day, we have a deliberate and active process and decision of putting on

our clothes for the day, for work, for church, whatever it is that we might be going to.

Every morning, you decide what to wear.

Every day as well, Paul says, in the life of your faith, you also decide what

the clothes you're going to clothe yourselves with.

And he says, you can wear those old clothes that shouldn't even be in your wardrobe

anymore, or you can put on some new stuff.

You can put on forgiveness when your eyes get drawn to continuing to hold that grudge.

You can put on patience when irritation actually feels a little bit more satisfying

and you can put on love, not as a vague sort of self-serving notion,

but as a deliberate way of being around others.

And ultimately, we're told that love is the thing that binds everything else together.

And I think that the reason that Paul uses this metaphor of clothing is because

what he is trying to get us to understand is that the transforming power of

Jesus is both immediate and it is ongoing.

It's not either or, it's both.

That is, you've already been made new in Christ since.

He uses past tense. That's happened. When you come to Jesus,

transformed immediately.

But also, you then daily learn how to live within that reality.

This is what theologians call sanctification. It means becoming more and more and more like Jesus.

And in lots of ways, what it is, it's learning how to wear Jesus's goodness,

how to wear Jesus's resurrection on top of our broken and flawed lives.

And I don't know about you, but this is such a relief to me as I think about it this way.

Because what Paul isn't saying is, isn't saying that we actually need to be

Jesus. No, what we can do is we put his character on us like we do with clothing.

And what that means is, is that as we attempt to wear Jesus's character on top of us,

we can actually also at the same time be honest that underneath those clothes, we are vulnerable.

We're weak. We are tired. We are imperfect.

Paul isn't inviting us to pretend and fake it.

He's saying, every day, wake up aware that you don't have it all together.

And then put Christ on top so that when people look at your life,

they're not looking at you and being impressed by how amazing you are.

They're thinking, whatever it is that they're clothing themselves with,

I would like to clothe myself with too.

They would look at the life of a follower of Jesus and not think,

wow, they're so good No, they're thinking, they're just like me.

Broken, struggling, hurting But every day they wear something Every day they're

putting on something We aren't pretending when we do this We're saying every

day to ourselves and to the world again and again and again,

I need Jesus And so it isn't just about trying to become a good person Whatever that might mean to you.

Now, Paul places this ongoing transformation within the context of our regular

lives, but also in the context of community, other people.

And what we need to see here is that in our attempt to live out these virtues and these things,

in our attempt to wear the character of Christ and be clothed by these things,

other people aren't the obstacle to doing that successfully.

Now, other people, in all the ways that they are different to us,

in all the ways that they press our buttons, in all the ways that they might frustrate us,

now other people and being in community with other people is in some ways the whole point.

Paul is saying spiritual maturity can't be separated from how we treat one another.

Being like Jesus doesn't mean just

escaping into the desert and ridding yourselves of every earthly thing.

No, it's attempting to do this in the mess of the everyday life with the people that are around us.

It's not separated from how we treat one another. The one another is in some

ways sort of the main point.

And so verse 15 says, Let the peace of Christ rule in your heart,

since as members of one body, you were called to peace.

And the word rule here sort of means to act like an umpire or a referee,

the one that gets to make the decision.

So what gets to make the decision in our communities if we want to be like Jesus?

It's the peace of Christ. It's that thing that transcends all understanding.

It's that thing that's bigger than all of us, that thing that is above.

In moments of conflict, when our arrogance and our pride says,

win, win, be right, show them that you're right, show them that your way is the right way.

Instead, the peace of Christ gets to rule and decide.

Or when your anxiety says, run away, get out of there, say nothing,

remove yourself, withdraw from that situation.

Paul says, the peace of Christ will be the thing that decides how you respond.

He says, let the peace of Christ set the tone for your relationships and your community.

Many ways, this vision of letting the peace of Christ be your basis for everything

is similar to what modern psychology calls attachment.

The idea that every human heart longs for a secure base,

a relationship that's stable enough for us to allow us to face the uncertainty

of the world without fear and to love other people and to love without constant self-protection.

The idea of attachment says that from our earliest moments in life,

we learn how to relate to other people based on whether we experience safety,

responsiveness and love or whether we experience other things.

And I don't know what your foundations were.

I don't know what your earliest experiences of relationship were.

But most likely they were imperfect.

When they are perfect, when those foundations are secure,

what happens is we grow into people who know how to trust other people,

who can draw close to other people without being terrified, who can navigate

other people's distance without completely panicking.

And what we find here is that all of us have imperfect foundations,

but when we come together as community, as imperfect people,

we have the opportunity to let the peace of Christ, to let God be the perfect

foundation upon which we can build our relationships upon.

That instead of resorting to control or withdrawal or people pleasing or whatever

it might be for you, we let the peace of Christ be our foundation.

Jesus becomes the secure base that our souls were made for.

That Jesus becomes that unshakable center from which we then can move from and

risk vulnerability, that we can extend forgiveness in situations we thought

we could never extend forgiveness,

that we can stay connected in some situations that we thought I could never

have stayed connected there.

Even when tensions arise, we can be anchored in God's peace.

And one of the ways that we can do this, as it says in verse 16,

is to let the word or the message of Christ dwell in you richly.

Let God's word live in you.

That word dwell means to take up residence, to make its permanent address within you.

And this isn't about collecting Bible verses, being able to just like have all

the quotes and all the knowledge.

No, it's about letting scripture on a regular basis be a part of your life. It lives with you.

That spare bedroom, scripture lives there.

It talks to you every day. It shapes your identity, your emotions,

your instincts, the message of Jesus, then shapes, Paul says.

How we can live. And how does it make us live?

Richly. It helps us in how we handle disappointment, how we interpret success,

and how we go about loving one another.

And then this section closes Paul, he closes it with sort of an encompassing

instruction, sort of an overall like, okay, if you forget everything else,

just sort of aim for this.

And he says, whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Everything that you do, everything, doesn't say, hey, when you pray,

do it in the name of Jesus.

When you go to church, do that in the name of Jesus.

No, everything that you do, from the most sacred things to the most mundane,

all of it becomes something that you can do as an act of worship.

When you do something with an awareness of God's presence, it can become an act of worship.

You can answer an email. You can serve a customer. You can teach a child.

You can share a meal. You can sit with a friend in grief with a sense of this

is a sacred opportunity and I'm doing it in the name of Jesus.

And so much of the life and the way of living that Paul describes in this chapter

are ways of living that will never make headlines, that will never be written

about, that won't even always be noticed by other people.

It's less about human glory and esteem, and it's more about quiet consistency.

It's about the acts of love that we try to repeat every single day to the people that are around us.

It looks like care. it looks like service, and it doesn't look like applause.

And so the encouragement for you this morning is that when you choose patience

in the small things, when you make peace instead of winning,

when you serve, when you are generous, what you are doing is demonstrating Christ

in ways that matter probably more than you will ever realize.

We live in time and circumstances that aren't completely different from first century Colossae.

The noise of competing values surround us as well.

We live in a world that will tell us that our identity, who we are,

is something that we construct, we build.

We're told, we're encouraged, curate your image, define your own truth,

chase what feels good in the moment.

Yet what I'm seeing this morning in Colossians chapter 3, and I hope that you

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

might be as well, is that Paul's message here still whispers to us,

even this morning, saying, you don't have to manufacture a self.

You already have one, and it's found in the risen Christ.

And it's that truth that frees us to live differently.

It's that truth that enables us to forgive when we'd rather retaliate.

Not as dry obligation, but an opportunity to participate in something higher than us.

Setting our mind on things above, not to fake, not to pretend,

but so that every day we can clothe ourselves with those things,

compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience.

Doing so with the honesty that underneath we're still struggling,

we're still falling short, we're still deeply imperfect.

Encouragement to you this morning is to let this guiding truth

be something that shapes how you speak how you

work how you treat the people around you

how you respond in the moments that test your patience may our lives be lives

that point to a story of a god who still transforms still renews and still calls

us as his people to reflect heaven on earth let's pray lord help us to aim higher

than what we are at the moment.

Help us, Lord, to set our mind and our hearts on things above.

Help us to place our attention and our affection on you.

We pray this morning to say we aren't getting this right all the time.

We're not nailing this. Lord, there are times when we choose to clothe ourselves

with things that we shouldn't.

There are parts of us deep down that we go back to because we think,

We need that more than we need you We ask you, Lord, this morning to forgive

us But also to redirect us to remember who we are,

Redirect us to remember our identity in Jesus To give us again this morning hope And we pray,

God, that you would continue to build our life On the firm foundation of Jesus

The resurrected Christ who sits above and God may be his peace that rules our

hearts and our community today. Amen.