Putting On the New Self | December 28 2025 (Jacob Deboer)

Good morning everybody. Merry Christmas.

Hope you've had a chance to enjoy the, the holidays and

celebrations over the last few days.

Yeah, today there we're focusing a little bit more on what's

ahead the the new year coming up.

As Stan said, this is the last Sunday of 2025.

And so I thought we could reflect a little bit on, on the

year to come ahead. Maybe you've heard the, the

popular saying new year, new me. There's this, this idea even in

sort of secular circles of, OK, there's a new year coming up.

This is, even though it's kind of arbitrary thing, this is an

opportunity for me to kind of reinvent myself, to take stock

of who is it that I am, who I become, and who do I want to be

in the year to come ahead. Of course, New Year's resolution

is a very popular thing. Anyone here planning to to make

any New Year's resolutions? Show of hands, anyone Oht.

Not very many. Few there.

OK, maybe it's a little early. Yeah, that's like a December

31st thing, right? Looked at a few different

surveys, some of the most popular resolutions that people

are planning to make in 2026. Exercising more, eating

healthier, losing weight, improving mental health, saving

more money, spending more time with friends and family, reading

more, learning something new, improving job performance and

doing more from the environment. So maybe there's some ideas

there for you. Not bad things, all probably

pretty good things, but I think it shows maybe in our culture,

what is it that that we're focused on trying to change

about ourselves? What are our priorities?

What is the new self that we're trying to become as as a culture

and as a society? And it shows, I think a

recognition as well with all these different resolutions that

even outside of the church, there's a recognition that that

we need to change somehow, that our lives aren't perfect exactly

the way that they are. That we need to resolve to make

some kind of difference in ourselves and in the world

around us as as a new year approaches.

Fortunately, we're not very good at it.

And another study I looked at estimated that only 9% of people

actually keep their New Year's resolution and 23% quit in the

first week. It's pretty, pretty startling.

So I have two questions for us to consider today as as we look

at this, this chapter of Scripture.

First one is how do we change? We're not very good at changing.

Only only 9% of us apparently stick with our resolutions

through a whole year. And what should we be trying to

change into, right? Are we trying to change into

people who exercise more and eat healthier and spend our money a

little bit more wisely? Or are we trying to change into

something else? So those are the questions that

we're going to look at today as we turn to Colossians chapter 3.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

So I invite you to turn in your Bibles there with me to

Colossians chapter 3. We're going to be looking at

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

verses one through 17, and as you turn, they'll give you a

little bit of context about this letter.

Um, this is a letter that Paul the Apostle is writing from

prison to a pretty young church in Colossae.

And this is a church that was founded by one of his coworkers,

Epaphras. And Epaphras just come to visit

him in prison and is reported on how things are going with this

young church. And he's got a good report.

He says, like this church has been faithful, things are going

really well, but they're facing a lot of pressure, pressure to

compromise on kind of two fronts.

On the one hand, there's this pressure to compromise to a sort

of polytheism that a lot of them would have come out of when they

became Christians, that Jesus is maybe just one other God to kind

of add to the pantheon of gods that you worship.

And on the other hand, there's a pressure to sort of strict Torah

observance, the kind of same kind of thing that Paul's

writing against in the letter to the Galatians say that in order

to be part of the Messiah's family, in order to be part of

the family of God, you actually have to follow all of the

dietary restrictions of the Torah.

You have to follow all the feasts and observances in the

Tory, have to become circumcised, all these different

kinds of things. And so there's this pressure on

this young church in Colossae on either hand here to to

compromise their faithfulness to Jesus.

And so Paul's writing this letter to encourage them to say,

hey, it's great, it's encouraging, it's awesome that

you have been faithful thus far. He's going to address these

these challenges that they're facing.

And then in the part of the letter that we're looking at,

he's going to actually challenge and encourage them to a deeper

and a greater faithfulness in Jesus in every single area of

their life. So in face of these these

challenges to compromise, you saying don't compromise.

In fact, go, go deeper, become more radical in your

faithfulness to Jesus. And so that's the context for

what we're going to read right now here in Colossians 3,

starting in verse one. 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 also will

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

and 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 did 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 and 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, wholly 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 1 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. So back to our two questions

that we started with. How do we change and what should

we be trying to change into? I'm gonna answer the second of

those questions a little bit more briefly.

We take a look in verse 10. We get our answer there.

We are being renewed into the image of our Creator, right?

Ultimately this is what what our aim should be as followers of

Christ. This is our aim at this church,

right? Our vision is to live out our

full potential in crisis that we want to become like Jesus,

right? We were created in the image of

God. That image has become distorted

and broken. But the new self that we're

putting on is Christ right. If we look back at Colossians

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1 where Paul and this very letter has this like

wonderful poem on on on the incarnation in verse 15 he says

this is the following. Where are we here?

Verse 15, The sun is the image of the invisible God, the first

born over all creation. So we have this idea that in the

incarnation, the birth of Jesus that we've been reflecting on

these last four weeks over Advent, that Jesus is actually

come God in the flesh to be the perfect image of the invisible

God that he's lived the life that we were meant to live.

He's been the true human being, the kind of person that we were

all intended to be. And as we are in him, as we're

united with him, we're being renewed into that same image

that we're meant to be like Christ.

So that's the answer to that question is what are we?

What are we trying to become? Is it people who maybe take care

of their bodies better, take care of their finances better?

Yes, because like we saw at the end of this letter or at the

section of the letter that we're looking at, all of our life

comes under the rule of Christ. Everything that we do ought to

be unto the Lord, but ultimately our focus and our our purpose in

putting on the new self has become more like Christ.

So then we're going to focus a little bit more on this, on the

first question of how do we change?

And as we, as we focus on this question of how we change and

what, what Paul's letter might have some wisdom for us in

regards to that, the emphasis I'm gonna be placing is on our

part in the change. And I just want to say up front,

the change that we undergo, the sanctification of undergo is a

work of the Spirit. This is God's grace for us.

This is not something that we can just drum up on our own

effort. And so even though I'm going to

be focusing on a little bit more our part, the reason I'm

focusing on that is because that's our part.

That's what we can control, right?

I can't control what God's going to do in my life, but he does

call us to partner with him and changing.

And so the focus today is going to be what's our part and how we

change, what some of the wisdom that Paul has for us and how we

can be partnering with God and putting on the new self.

So I'm just gonna go through a few different few different

things that have come up as I've studied these 17 verses.

First one is that we change over time.

If you look in verses 9 and 10, our verse 10 specifically, it

says that the new self is being renewed.

There's this idea that this is a is a continual process, right,

that we're being renewed slowly overtime.

So change is something that's progressive.

This is maybe a kind of a no brainer.

But sometimes we think like in our especially in our world of

sort of instant gratification that OK, like I'm just going to

instantly be zapped into the kind of person that I want to

be. But formation into Christ

likeness isn't an instantaneous change, but a slow process.

The only other place in the New Testament that this particular

words were being renewed is used is in Second Corinthians chapter

2 Corinthians 4:16

4, verse 16. Pauses that were being renewed

day by day, right? This is a gradual process.

Regent College professor James Houston put it like this.

He said spiritual formation is the slowest of all human

movements. This is a a day by day, over a

lifetime process of change that we're undergoing.

It's slow, it's constant. We're always being shaped and

formed, whether it's into the image of Christ or deformed into

something else. And so this is this is 1 lesson

for us to learn from from this this little bit of the letter,

how we change, we change slowly over time.

Second lesson for us to learn is that we change on purpose.

I notice all the active language that Paul's using in this letter

to set your hearts, set your minds, put to death, rid

yourselves, do not lie, clothe yourselves, bear with each

other, forgive, put on. There's a sense here that we put

on the new self not just by waiting for it to happen.

We don't just sit around passively.

We don't just hope that maybe by accident I'll somehow become

like Jesus, but we're called to actually take attentional steps

to partnering with God and putting on the new self.

John Mark Comer puts it this way.

There are no accidental Saints. You don't just wake up one day

and suddenly I'm Mother Teresa. We need to have an intentional

plan just like with anything else, right?

If I want to become a great marathon runner, I'm not just

going to sit around with no plan.

I'm going to start to stake out, OK?

I'm going to start by just running a mile and then I'm

going to run 2 miles and I'm going to have this plan for my

diet and I'm going to have a good sleep schedule, right?

That doesn't just happen by accident.

That's something that you need to have an intentional plan for.

I think some of us have this sort of Matrix idea of how

spiritual formation happens. Or there's a scene in the Matrix

where have you seen the movie Trinity is up on on the roof of

a building and there's a helicopter.

That's the only way for her in Neo to escape.

And she needs to, she doesn't know how to fly a helicopter.

And so she she calls up the guy on the other end is like, I need

a program downloaded into my brain for how to fly a

helicopter And boom, suddenly she knows how to fly a

helicopter. She's just downloaded into her

brain. I think sometimes think of

spiritual formation like that, that I don't even have a plan

for how I'm going to become like Jesus.

I don't have a plan for how I'm gonna clothe myself with

patience and humility. But God was kind of ZAP me with

it and I'll just learn how to be patient.

He's just gonna do it for me. And yes, we need to rely on

God's power, but it also takes intentional practice for us to

partner with God and do these things on purpose.

These are the Third Point though, that it is, yes, a

purposeful, intentional process that we need to engage in, but

it's also by God's grace. Alright, we see that Paul says

later on in this section in verse 15, Let the peace of

Christ rule in you. There's also this sense that we

change by God's grace by allowing him to make change in

US, right? These two things, the

intentional part that we play and the grace of God at work in

us, they go hand in hand. They're not opposed to each

other. Augustine said this really

nicely. He said that without God, we

cannot, right? We don't have the power in and

of ourselves to become like Christ.

But Augustine says without us, God will not, right?

God's not in the business of coercing us, of forcing change

against our will, but rather it's this beautiful partnership,

right? Where by God's grace, he

empowers us to be able to make change.

But it's not something that's going to force on us, right?

He calls us to to want it, to will it to partner with him in

doing it. So often what our intentional

kind of focused plan for discipleship and formation into

into the person of Jesus involves is just taking on

practices that position us to receive the grace of God, right?

These things like prayer and reading scripture and fasting

and practicing the Sabbath, these habits that we can take

on, really they position us to receive God's grace.

That's largely what they're about.

So these two things hand in hand, we do, we change on

purpose, but we also change by God's grace.

Fourth thing is that we change by putting to death.

Paul says to put to death. Therefore, then he lists his

host of sins, practices, ways of life that we need to put off

that aren't Christ like. So one way that we change, one

way that we become like Christ, it has just as much to do with

what we don't do as what we do, right?

So we can think about all of these things, these spiritual

practices. We go into the new year like,

OK, I've got to, you know, get better at reading the Bible and

I've got to get better at praying and I've got to add

fasting and practicing Sabbath and all these different things

to my schedule. But how we change has so much to

do with what we don't do as well, right?

What am I gonna put to death this year?

What am I going to refrain from doing that's maybe deforming me,

that's making me less like Christ, right?

Maybe I'm spending a whole lot of time doing things that maybe

they aren't even necessarily super wrong feeling, but they're

just distraction. They're just pulling me away.

They're wasting my time. You know, TS Eliot said we're

distracted from distraction by distraction in our age, right?

That's the the the malady of our day.

And so maybe it just needs to be.

We need to put to death my distractibility.

I need to have a better plan for how I'm going to use my time to

not get sucked into mindless entertainment, but spend my time

putting on better things. So that's the second part of it

is that we change by putting on. So there is this side of we need

to determine what we're not going to do, but there's also

this side of we need to put on new practices, right?

Paul says. To clothe yourselves with

compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

This is to put on love. So there's a sense in which we

also intentionally take on practices that will form us and

shape us into Christ likeness. We pray, we engage with

Scripture. We seek God in solitude and

silence. We worship together corporately

like we're doing this morning. We gather in small groups.

We serve the less fortunate. We witness all of these

different things. They're not necessarily direct

right pulses to put on patience and humility and kindness.

There's not right a direct like, OK, I'm just gonna get that out

of my closet and put it on. But there are steps that we can

take from the life of Jesus that will begin to I produced the

life of Jesus within us, right? And so praying isn't necessarily

a direct way to become patient. But as we wait on God, we will

slowly develop virtues of patience, this kind of thing,

right? And so there's a wisdom and a

practicality in taking on the way of life that Jesus had,

taking on the way of life that many Christians through the ages

have had, putting these practices into practice

ourselves. Six we change by way of life.

A Paul says you used to walk in these ways and the life you once

lived, and further on you've taken off the old self with its

practices. The lesson here is that our life

is a product of a lifestyle. Who we are is the product of a

pattern and a way of life. There's a saying in business

circles that your system is perfectly designed to give you

the results that you're getting. And whether we realize it or

not, all of us have a lifestyle, a pattern or a way of life, a

system that's producing the kind of life, the kind of person that

we are. So your lifestyle might be

highly organized, it might be highly disorganized.

You might have a lot of structured time that's aimed at

certain things. You might have a lot of

unstructured time that doesn't really have any aim or purpose,

but that's still a lifestyle, a way of life.

For many of us, a lack of structure can kind of lead us

taking the path of least resistance, right?

Just like water or something, right?

If you have a channel for water to follow, it's going to be

directed a certain way. But if you don't have any

channel for it to follow that you've carved out, it's just

going to follow the path of least resistance.

Unfortunately for us, the path of least resistance for many of

us is probably looks more like just scrolling on our phone than

it does taking on practices that are going to form us into Christ

likeness. It's the easy Rd. that leads to

destruction, right? It's the difficult Rd. the

putting to death, the putting on the righteousness of Christ that

that is difficult and takes intentionality and effort and

accountability and all these these difficult things as a

helpful images to think of yourself maybe like a vine and a

vineyard on a trellis, right? The vine, in order for to

flourish and grow, need some kind of structure to guide it

towards flourishing and growth. We need to support and guidance.

And so the lesson here is that if we want to change, we need to

structure a way of life, a routine, a set of practices

that's actually aimed at the result that we want to achieve.

David Brooks said that commitment is falling in love

with something or someone and then building a structure of

behavior around it. For those moments when love

falters, I love will falter. This past year has really been a

year for me of beginning this journey and starting this

journey of intentional spiritual formation, of trying to be

intentional about how am I partnering with God and becoming

more like Christ in my discipleship to Jesus.

And if there's one thing that I've learned, it probably is.

I guess that love will falter, that desires and emotions are so

fleeting and fickle, right? There's moments where I've been

so on board with a yes, this is so important.

I need to be changing. I need to be growing.

I'm so excited about what God's doing in my life.

I'm going to pray more. I'm going to read scripture

more. I'm going to serve people in the

community more. And then there's days where I'm

just like, there's months where I'm like, I don't feel like it.

What does it matter? I don't like, what do I care,

right? There's going to be those times

that come. So the question is, you have a

structure in place that when those moments come where it's

like I just don't feel like it, I've built up the habits at

least that it's not a huge act of will for me to spend 5

minutes in prayer in the morning because I've already built that

habit up that I have that structure in place.

There's going to be those difficult times, but do you have

a way of life that's supporting you and that's aimed towards the

the deepest desires of your heart?

Final lesson is that we change in community.

At the end of this section, Paul says that we ought to admonish

one another. We need each other's support and

encouragement. We need each other's

accountability and trust if we're really going to change on

a deep level. And also what Paul's calling us

to the new self that we're called to put on the kind of

person that Jesus was is ultimately a person of love.

And love isn't something that you can do alone, right?

Love requires other people to love.

And so we need to do this, this change in community, right?

Not just for the support that we receive from others, but because

these are the kinds of people that we practice love on so that

we become people of love, right? You can't do that alone.

And so we need to be embedded in community as we change.

So just wanna close with a few final thoughts as we head, as we

head into the new year and you're thinking about how you

might want to change in the upcoming year, how you might

want to direct your life towards Christ likeness.

And the major idea, a major theme of the book of Colossians

is that we ought to live in the present as a kind of humans that

we will become. You might summarize Paul's

message, as Tim Mackey does, that Paul is inviting us to see

that no part of human existence remains untouched by the loving

and liberating rule of Jesus. We're invited to live in the

present as if the new creation really arrived when Jesus rose

from the dead. Say that again, we're invited to

live in the present, as if the new creation really arrived when

Jesus rose from the dead. So I think a good question for

us is, is that what my life is aimed at, has been aimed at this

past year? Is that my priority, right, Is

living in the present as if the new creation has already

arrived? And so, yeah, that's something

for you to reflect on, I think. What are your goals and

priorities this year? Are you too busy to prioritize

becoming like Jesus, or are there other things that have

kind of crowded out your commitment to discipleship to

Jesus? And if so, I think it's

important to ask yourself, are those things really more

important? Are they really more pressing?

What are kind of the foundational big rocks that I

need to set in my schedule and in my priority as I hadn't had

into this new year? Is your goal the kinds of goals

that you think an apprentice of Jesus ought to have?

And is that reflected in your schedule, how you spend your

time? All these sorts of things.

Nurturing and growing spirituality with depth and our

present day culture will require a thoughtful, conscious,

intentional plan for our spiritual lives, says Pete

Scazzero. And I think he's absolutely

right in that, that in our day and moment, we need a

thoughtful, conscious, and intentional plan if we're going

to grow in Christlikeness. So I just thought I would share

maybe 3 lessons that I've learned over the last year that

hopefully will encourage you as you maybe think about, ponder

what it will look like for you to change in this upcoming year.

What steps God's calling you to take in your discipleship to

Jesus. So just three things that I've

taken away and reflecting on this past year of my journey.

Number one, start where you are, not where you feel like you

should be. Building habits is key to

sustaining life building practices.

And so if you can't do more than say, say your goal is that you

want to read the Bible more to be transformed into a person

like Christ. If you can't do more than two

minutes of Bible reading a day, then that's OK Start there,

right? The, the aim is just build a

consistent habit of engaging with the word of God and then

slowly build from there, right? So if you try to extend yourself

way too much at the beginning, you're just going to burn out

and falter and it's not going to work.

You're not going to build that habit and it's just going to

drop off, right? Like, think of it like running

or something, right? If you haven't, you know, if you

live a sedentary life and you haven't run in years and then

you try to, you know, run a 10K your very first time, you're

just going to probably hurt yourself and then not run again

for a week and be like, that was awful and never do it again,

right? So start where you are, read

your Bible for two minutes. Do that for a week.

Now you've built that habit over a week, maybe you go to 3

minutes the next week. You slowly build that up

overtime. But the point have grace for

yourself. Start where you are.

Don't feel guilty about all. I'm a follower of Jesus.

I've been a Christian for 30 years.

I feel like I should, you know, have already read the whole

Bible and mastered all of these spiritual disciplines.

I can't just read the Bible for two minutes.

It's OK to start there. It's OK to start there.

Try to do less, not more. And this is my second, second

lesson, my second take away for you.

We already talked about this a little bit, but a huge part of

putting on the new self is putting off the old self.

And so you think about subtraction more than addition.

Don't be intimidated by OK if I want to put on the new self, I

need to adopt all these practices and habits from the

historic church in the life of Jesus and I need to start them

all on January 1st and and keep them up for the whole year.

Start by thinking about what can I do less of?

Where am I wasting my time? What am I spending time on that

isn't actually fruitful that I can maybe cut out from my

schedule to make some more space for what's life giving?

What's just distracting me? What is pulling me away from

Jesus? What did you know?

What am I doing that actually doesn't align with my

priorities? Third thing, don't be frustrated

when change isn't immediate. We live in this age of instant

gratification where, you know, I wanna know what year Nixon was

president. I look it up on my phone.

Boom. I know right away change

spiritual formation. It's not an immediate process.

You know, if you run for two minutes, you're not gonna become

a great marathon runner overnight.

Spending a few minutes in prayer likewise isn't going to

transform you into the apostle Paul overnight.

And so just have have some grace for yourself, right?

Spiritual formation into the into the person of Jesus, a

lifelong process. And none of us are ever going to

reach the end of that process before the new creation comes to

have grace for yourself, right? There's going to be times where

you feel like we may be taking a step back.

Words, you're maybe not gonna see the change, right?

Like if you think of like a rock and a stream or something, if

you just watched the rock every day, every minute of every day

for a long time, you wouldn't notice it changing really.

But if you look at the rock one year, come back five years

later, there's going to have been a ton of changes.

The water moves over it and shapes it and changes it, right?

Or the same thing with a kid growing up, right?

It's like when you see them every day, it's like, oh, you

don't really notice them growing that much.

But you know, you see your relative at Christmas that you

haven't seen for a year. It's like, whoa, when did you

get so tall, right? This change is slow, but there

is change happening. And so that's my encouragement

to use change might not be immediate, right?

You might just be like, OK, all I'm doing is reading the Bible

for 5 minutes a day. How is this making any

difference in my life? I don't feel like I'm becoming

more loving or patient or kind or joyful.

But I think there's this a lesson that we need in our, our

instant fast culture that there's, there's a trust in the

process that we need to have that God is working in you, that

these means of grace that you're engaging in are actually having

an effect and that that change will happen.

So that's my encouragement to you.

Yeah. I hope you don't feel

overburdened heading into this new year.

I hope that, yeah, you can enter into a new year just with a

sense of, of joy and, and happiness and excitement about

the prospect of becoming more like Jesus, living in mission

with him. And that that is a is a grace

for you this year and not a burden.

So I'm just going to close, close this in prayer.

The other thank you so much for your mercies that are new every

morning and for these moments in time that we've marked out that

they give us a chance to to start fresh to reevaluate.

Yeah, the trajectory that are lives have been on and what

changes we can make to partner with you in becoming the kind of

person that you want us to become.

Lord, I pray that yeah, you would give each one here a clear

sense of what what next steps you are calling them to and an

intentional process and plan of becoming more like you and

partnering with you in that sanctification process.

We ask this in Jesus name, Amen.