Colossians 3:1-11 - Oct. 18, 2026

Well, good morning.

If you're in uh kindergarten through third grade, you can go ahead and head on back to your classrooms.

Uh the rest of you, you can go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Colossians chapter three, uh, verses one through eleven.

That's where we'll pick up in our uh series this morning as we've been working our way through the book of Colossians over the last many weeks, really this fall.

Uh we are now entering into kind of a new section here in Colossians uh chapter three this morning.

I wonder if many of you these last few days, maybe last few weeks, as you wake up and get ready for the day, you've been having a little bit of a problem, a little bit of a trouble like me.

Uh you don't know what to wear because it's cold in the morning, like 30, and then it's like 70 later in the afternoon.

It's kind of like you need two outfits for the day.

It's a little bit difficult, right?

So you uh don't get me wrong, I love fall.

October is one of the best months, really, of the year.

I mean, it's an awesome weather, it's great to be able to wear different things.

Uh, but it's difficult to know what to wear when you're kind of in between two seasons.

You know, it can be a little more difficult than just that to live in between two lives.

Now I'm not talking just about a double life.

Uh that would certainly be difficult, but I don't know much of that.

Uh what I do know of is kind of living in between two lives, like Abby and I did last year when we came actually to the fields.

Uh we got moved in.

We're so thankful for many of you who helped us even move in and get here.

Uh, but there was a week after we moved in and got into our house just down the road here, where we still went back and had responsibilities and all sorts of things in our old life there in Crawfordsville.

And so, as we did, I would commute every single day all the way back and go back to where we used to work and used to go to church and have all of these relationships.

And and so in that week, it was it was difficult to figure out what which life are we supposed to be oriented around?

Which is the real life for us right now?

I mean, we have this life that we have these responsibilities in and relationships with, and then we have this new life where we live now and where everything is headed, and yet we don't know that many people, and we're we haven't started living it yet.

And then even as we began, uh, life here, we had to learn some new things about what life was like here in Westfield and here at the Fields Church.

We had to learn how to approach a roundabout.

We had to learn what times a day you really shouldn't go shopping because there's real traffic here, not where we used to live.

Uh we had to learn some things about the best parks and where we would go and rhythms for our family.

See, it can be tough living between two lives, and I think that's a little bit of what it's like to be a Christian.

It's to kind of have to live between two lives.

See, the Bible tells us that we are new creations in Christ.

We've been new and we have new life with him.

And yet, in many ways, we still live in the old world, in our old life, and we still feel pulled by those things.

The Bible says that to be a new creation means we belong to a new king, and our lives are to be for him.

And yet, if we're honest, we would admit there's still many traces of our old life, our old habits, our old sins still popping up in life even now.

And we can be tempted by the sins of our past or feel weighed down by the shame of the ways that we don't live for King Jesus like we know that we probably should.

We can feel drawn to the things of this world just like everyone else can.

And we can maybe wonder, are we really new?

Like if there's all this old stuff that seems to be popping up and still there, like, am I really all that new?

You see, I think in part this is one of the struggles that the Colossians had too.

That they may have been tempted by the visions and good works and self-made religion of these false teachers because they wondered, why can't I see all the newness that I'm supposed to have in Christ?

It seems like they've got all these experiences.

They have all these things that are completely different about their life.

They're doing all of these things.

Maybe we need to do that too.

If I'm really new, shouldn't it be so different, so opposite from the way that I used to live?

You know, we can wonder this too.

And I think that's why our text this morning, Colossians 3, is really helpful for us.

Because it tells us about the new life that we have in Christ and how to actually live and walk that out.

Because God wants us to know that if we're in Christ, we really are new.

And God really is renewing us and really working that out.

But we might sometimes it just takes time for us to see that.

And there's and there's ways that God is working that out in us.

I think God wants us to know this morning, what he wants us to see about our Christian life is that it's not about living and being something that you aren't yet, but about being someone that you already are.

Our main idea this morning is this that we are renewed as our heavenly identity shapes our life now.

We are renewed as our heavenly identity shapes our life now.

So let's turn then to Colossians 3, verses 1 through 11, and we'll read this passage together.

Colossians 3:1–11

Seated at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things, for you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

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

Therefore, put to death what belongs to your earthly nature sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry.

Because of these, God's wrath is coming upon the disobedient, and you once walked in these things when you were living in them.

But now, put away all the following anger, wrath, malice, slander, and filthy language from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old self with its practices, and have put on the new self.

You are being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator.

In Christ, there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythians, slave and free, but Christ is all and in all.

So this morning we're gonna see two ways that our heavenly identity actually begins to shape our life now, how it begins to show up in our daily lives.

That because we're already new in Christ, Paul's gonna tell us how to live in light of that new life that we have.

The first way that he wants us to see is that we ought to set our minds on our new life.

That we set our minds on our new life.

That's what Paul begins here in this section.

He says, If then you have been raised with Christ, Paul is not raising a question for the Colossians.

No, he's telling them, you have received Christ your Lord by faith.

And if that's true of you, then what's true is you've been raised with Christ.

See, see, that's what we've been talking about many of these last few weeks, that we are united with Christ by faith.

And this new life we have with him reorients everything.

What it means to be united to him, to have faith in him, means that what happened to Jesus is now true of you.

That you died to your old self, your old ways, that you died with him to sin.

And then when Jesus rose again, you also were raised to a new life with him.

You see, to have faith in him means that we believe that what Jesus did was for me, that he paid for my sins, that he went to the cross in my place, that he was resurrected to give me life.

And so Paul says then seek the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

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

If we want to be renewed, he says we must set our minds and our lives on this new life that we have for.

Here's the reason: because you died in verse 3, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Now, Paul here is not talking to dead people.

You might think, maybe, if you just read that, that's what he's doing, but you also might think, well, he's probably not doing that.

Because he's not talking to a graveyard, he's not writing to dead people, he's writing to real people.

So how can he say here, you died?

What kind of dead people might he be talking about?

Well, he's talking to a people whose previous identity has died.

Who they used to be, their old life, their old self in their sin, their sinful earthly nature.

He's gonna describe, as we saw later in the passage, those who belong to the world, those who are under God's wrath, those who are disobedient and opposed to God, that life, that person has died.

And now you're someone different.

Do you know there's actually a category of people in our world, in our country, actually, who have died and yet still live?

I know you're probably really interested.

What kind of zombies are these?

There's something called the witness protection program.

And in the witness protection program, someone enters it because their life is under threat.

They're in danger because of some truth that they've revealed, some something that they've done to help the judicial system.

And so what they need, what they get actually when they enter this program is they get a new identity.

They're given a new life, which comes with a new name, legally, a new uh a new social security card, a new birth certificate.

They're moved to a different location, and they have to follow strict rules, particularly related to their old life.

They can't make contact with people back there.

They can't go back to that place that they used to live.

You see, their old identity in life, in one sense, it must die.

It's no longer real, it's no longer really who they are.

And yet at the same time, they seek that because there's a promise of security, a promise of life by doing this.

That's the reason that they do this, even though their old life, their old ways must die.

You see, like a Christian, this death doesn't necessarily mean that this is a whole new, different person than before.

Actually, they're the same person.

They're the same, they had the same family growing up, it's the same person, and yet they're known by a new name.

They're known in a new place.

That's what it's like to be a Christian.

That in truth, we have died.

Our old self has died.

We used to be God's enemy.

We used to follow and live for our sinful patterns and ways of life and ways of being, but now we've been transformed by an encounter with Christ, who's raised us up to a new life that's different.

We have a new identity, a new family, and a new person, Christ, who orients everything about our lives now.

And so, because you have this new life and identity, Paul wants us then to set our minds on it, so that our life now would match that truth in real life.

And so we want our minds, our hearts to be shaped by what's already true of us in heaven.

So we seek things above and not on earth.

So, what is this new life that he's talking about?

Well, the first thing that we should understand is that compared to heaven and earth or above and on earth, is he's saying that this new life for us is a heavenly life.

That's what it is.

And in part, the reason that it's hard for us to even figure out what exactly he means when he says, seek the things above and not things on earth, is because the things on earth are just right here.

They're just the things that are right in front of our faces.

It's the things we do each day, it's the people that we interact with, it's the stuff that's on our to-do list, cleaning the house or laundry, or neighborhoods and our homes, all these things.

Does Paul really want us to have our heads in the clouds and disregard all of those other things?

Well, I don't think that's quite what he's getting at.

He's not saying that you shouldn't do the laundry or show up for work or care about other people.

But I think to set your mind on something, to seek something, it's to have your life oriented by it.

That is the center.

That's what matters most to who you are, to have it shape everything in your life.

And so he's telling us to seek things above rather than things of earth, meaning that we set our life on what's true of us in heaven, that that's what matters most to us, that's what's most significant to us now.

We let our identity in Christ be where we get our meaning and our value and our significance and our worth.

Not things of earth like our bank accounts, our spouse, our children, the next vacation that we hope to have, or our retirement plans, or even our jobs or dreams that we hope come true.

Rather, we set our minds on this heavenly life.

I wonder if heaven can ever sound abstract to you.

Even like when I say something like that, you're like, how do I set my mind on something like that?

The Bible ought to shape our thinking here.

Because in many ways, uh we it's a place we haven't been.

We don't know much about unless we let Scripture inform the way we think about it.

But the way that Scripture often tells us about heaven is by telling us what it's like in comparison to what our life here on earth is like.

And in many ways, heaven is the place we long for, underneath every sort of other good desire in this life.

So maybe even like think about your longing for peace.

It's a longing for a place where there's no more evil, where uncertainty doesn't cloud your future, or the desire that we have for happiness and joy.

It's to long for a place where goodness never runs out.

There's no sickness or sadness or end to taint it.

Maybe to long for rest is to seek a place with better bodies than the ones that we have that wear out and need sleep all the time, or to have, to be able to do and be all that you were created for.

Maybe the longing that we all have to be loved and to love.

That comes from wanting to actually not have to be someone to be loved.

And all of that, the Bible says, will be true of those who are in heaven.

Heaven is the place where our tears are wiped away, where all things will be made new, even as we heard at the beginning of our service, where death will be no more.

It'll be but a place of rejoicing, light, and rest.

But we must see that the center of this reality of heaven is not just a place, it's not just a location, but what Paul tells us to set our minds on here is a person.

That's what he says.

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

So what's actually most significant about heaven is that Christ is there, that God is there.

He's actually what makes all of these joys of heaven all that they are.

Maybe some of you, maybe you're here this morning, even.

And you long for something better than what you've got right now.

You long for something better than this world and and what you've had and what's been hard in life for you.

Maybe you you you want to go to heaven, and so you know that the the people who want to go to heaven, they go to church.

And that might be why you're here this morning.

But hear me out.

What you want is a good thing to want heaven.

But you're missing the best thing.

Because the best thing about heaven is Christ.

He is what makes heaven all that it is.

And you won't find the welcome of heaven to be what you're looking for if you don't want Christ, if you don't have Christ, if you don't love him, if he is not your Lord and your treasure.

In fact, the Bible says that the welcome of heaven is only for those who submit to him as king, as the Lord of heaven and their treasure.

He's the fountain and source of all the good and rest and joy that will be found there.

And so Paul says when he's when we're to set our minds on things above, he's saying to set our minds on Christ, to set our minds on where he is.

And says that he is seated at the right hand of God, which means he has this place of rule and honor and authority above everything else.

In some ways, this is the central place of all of heaven and earth, which means that everything finds its relation in where it's relates to him.

You and I included.

And so we are called to set our minds on Christ, the center of heaven, the center of the universe, and let that reality that he is at the center shape the way that we live now.

Well, what's true if Christ is on the throne?

What's true if he's seated there?

Well, that means he's in control.

That means no matter what circumstances you find yourself in, no matter what you're going through, it means that it's authored by Christ.

He sees it, he knows it, he's in control of it.

And so that means you can trust him.

There's nothing that you will go through, nothing that can happen to you that he does not permit.

And used for the good of those who love him.

It means that also if we're united to Christ, as we said, that we have faith in Christ and are united to him, that we are seated where he is seated now, which means that our future is secure.

So no matter how feeble you might feel, even in your own faith, our our faith is not on the basis of how strong we are, but who our faith is in.

And the one seated at the right hand of God, which means the Bible says in Ephesians also that we are seated with him in the heavens.

You know, my ID card in my wallet right now is very outdated.

And as I've gone through different airports and different places recently and had to explain that I actually don't live at the address on my uh ID card, uh, it's kind of frustrating.

I'm excited.

Next year, I'm gonna get a new ID card, and it's finally going to match where I actually live.

Friends for the Christian, your citizenship card, your ID card says you're in heaven.

But right now, your life doesn't match that.

But one day it will, because you're seated with Christ, who is in heaven, and he has never failed to bring any of his children there with him, too.

And so if you're in him, that's where he's bringing us.

And so we set our minds on him, on who he is to us.

Matt McCullough says it this way.

He says, the only way to long for a place you've never been is to long for the person whose presence makes that place what it is to you.

Back when Abby and I were dating, uh, she lived in Cleveland, a place I had never been really before.

And so as we began to get to know each other and then we did some long distance for a while, uh, I would I would go and plan some visits to Cleveland.

I would get to uh kind of look and maybe see where were some good places for us to go on dates or good places for us to check out, because I'd never been there.

And you might say, as I anticipated time for us to be together, you might say that I was excited to go to Cleveland.

You might say I longed to go to Cleveland.

Which I might be one of only a few people in this room who's ever longed to go to Cleveland.

But the reason for that was not because I all of a sudden thought Cleveland was this awesome place.

It's because of her.

That's why I wanted to go there.

You see, we set our minds on things above by setting our mind on Christ and who he is, that we love him and the love that he has for us and all he's done for us.

And then when we set our minds there, it begins to shape how we live now.

And so we set our minds on Christ, things above, and the love that he has for us.

He highlights it for us in verse four.

Because he wants us to keep in perspective the renewing work that God is doing.

That in fact, this renewal work that God is doing, and why sometimes we wonder if we really are new, if God really is making us new.

The truth is we can't actually see it all now.

Because verse four tells us that right now, your life is hidden with Christ and God.

But when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

He wants you to know that your life is headed somewhere.

But it's not there right now.

That right now, your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Your new life is hidden with Christ.

So you can't see all the ways that it's working itself out.

And sometimes, maybe, maybe even this morning for some of you, that can be discouraging.

You know, maybe you're discouraged by the lack of newness that you see in your life now as a Christian.

Maybe you thought that God could transform certain areas of your life, and when you became a Christian, you started to see some things, but it's all kind of trickled off now.

Maybe you wonder if God has given up on you.

Maybe some sin in your life has begun to creep back in and you've given in to temptation.

Maybe there's something that you've done that makes you believe that you're too far gone, as if God would not want to renew you.

Maybe you are discouraged because you're not who you thought you would be today.

You thought if you looked back five years, the person that you are today is not what you thought, and not what you hoped, not what you wanted.

And because of the aches, the pains, the disappointments of your present life, it's hard for you to see if God really is renewing you.

If there's any sort of newness in your life.

And maybe even for some of us who things are going okay, if those hardships don't characterize your life, we can be tempted to wonder on those days where we do really struggle with sin, where we're so frustrated by just the things that are right in front of us, or we're distracted from Christ by temporary pursuits.

We can wonder if God really is in the process of making us new.

We can wonder why can't we see the difference of the life in Christ we have?

I think our passage answers it here for us in two ways.

First, it tells us about the kind of renewing work that God is doing.

See, when we think of something being renewed, we often think of something being like so different, so obviously different, that's better in obvious, tangible, seen ways.

And even the newness that we want God to do sometimes is often tied to circumstances.

We want God to take this thing away, to make this thing different for me than it is right now.

The things we pray for, the things we would want most if we if God could change one thing in us are those things.

See, I think it's this reason that we struggle to see what God's doing when our lives don't always feel all that new, when there's not obvious differences.

But friends, the problem that we have is not our habits.

It's not some struggles.

It's not even our sinful actions that we commit or the pain and hardship that's happened to you.

Our problem is deeper.

The Bible says our problem is our very selves.

It's who we are, not what we do.

For the old life that Paul speaks of later on in this passage, he tells us in verse 6 that because of these things and the way that you lived in your old life, God's wrath is coming upon the disobedience.

And the truth for all of us, apart from Christ, is that we stand in a position deserving of God's wrath against us.

We are vulnerable, exposed to his wrath for our rebellion and evil.

Friends, the reason that we all probably in some way or another see our need to be renewed is because there actually is something wrong with us.

We're not all right.

There is things that we wish we could change.

There is things that we need to be made new in.

But that problem is deeper than just surface level fixes.

And we face a storm of God's wrath that's coming upon all the disobedient, upon all who are sinners, against a holy God.

And in our own changes, a new set of circumstances from where you find yourself now, or some new habits that you have, they won't help you against that storm that's coming any more than a new coat of paint is going to help a house if a hurricane's coming.

That can't save you.

We need a different shelter, a better shelter from God's wrath than something we can do with our own hands.

And so notice what notice what Paul says again in verse 3 about those in Christ, that their life is hidden with Christ in God.

See, we need a shelter that's better than ourselves, better than we can build, better than we can do.

And the Bible says that if you're in Christ, you have this shelter.

You are hidden in Christ.

And so the kind of renewal that God is doing in us is not some sort of renovations on the outside.

No, our God is not in the business of renovations, he's in the business of resurrections.

We need a new life.

That's what it says that we have and we need and what God is doing.

If you've been raised with Christ, you died and your new life now is hidden with Christ in God.

God takes what's dead and makes it alive.

He takes old selves and makes them new.

And so this deeper work that God is doing isn't something that we can just snap our fingers and see on the outside.

Because it's on the inside that it has to work first.

It's a process of dying to the old and learning to live in the new.

It's like walking out of a grave and into the light as the Bible describes it.

That's disorienting if you were to think about that.

You might stumble a little bit because you've got legs that once were in a coffin.

That's why it's hard to live this new life.

That's why we can't always see why it takes so long?

Why is progress so hard?

Often, the way that God renews us, it feels like it hurts.

It feels like it's an uphill battle.

We don't feel new right away.

But because we're hidden with Christ, if that's true of where you stand, you can be sure that he is renewing you.

And we grow as we let that truth of what he's done, how he's made us new, shape us day by day.

Dane Ortland says this, he says, The pleasures of life point forward to eternity, but the pains of life do so even more.

The pleasures of life make it harder to long for heaven, but the pains of life make it easier.

So I wonder for you, maybe whatever it is that you're going through, and you wonder, is God at work here?

What could he be doing here?

Could it be maybe that what keeps you most up at night right now, what's most discouraging or frustrating about your Christian life, what's most painful and hard right now, could it be that maybe that's exactly the tool of God's renewal in your life?

The way he's working in you.

That you might look back 10 or 15 or 20 years from now and you might say, I'm different.

Because God made me new through that.

And that might be the very, very thing that you would want God to change right now.

But he's working in it.

You can be sure.

But notice the other way that Paul answers the question of why we don't always feel new, why we don't always see this.

Because our change goes deeper.

Yes, we need a resurrection, but also it's because of where we're at now with where we're headed.

That's what this idea of this hidden life that we have now compared to what will appear one day when Christ appears, when he returns on the last day.

What we already are, new people in Christ, will actually see it in full.

See, right now we're in the process of becoming the glorious person.

God is working to renew us.

The glory of that new life, it really is real, but it's hidden.

But one day we're gonna see it.

It's going to appear when Christ appears.

And the reason we sometimes we really can't see that right now is because that's not where we're at on God's timeline in history.

He hasn't had Christ appear, and so our newness, our whole new life hasn't appeared yet.

And so God wants to give us a vision for where we're headed, that we're headed for this glorious future and destiny with him, that we will appear with him new.

But right now you're not there.

And so the reason your life may not look all that impressive, it may be slow and grueling growth, and the fruit that you hope for isn't all that you would think that it should be, is because you haven't reached your destination yet.

We're not there, we're on the way right now.

And so it's because of that that our life might now look heavenly, even though we have a new heavenly identity with Christ.

And so he wants us to see all that is coming, that when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you, your whole new life in full, will appear with him in glory.

And so, what that means for us, then, friends, is that the small areas and traces of God's grace, God's renewing work in you, should not be discouragements, but actually encouragements.

That God is renewing you, that he is making you new, that those small ways that you say no to temptation, the small budding fruits of the Spirit in your life, the small ways that you're growing in a desire for Christ, even if incrementally, that's evidence of the new life that you have in Christ.

And church, we have a responsibility to help one another see this, to encourage one another in this.

That this is part of the role that God has given us in our fellowship together, to call out and to point out ways that God is at work, maybe in ways that your brother or sister can't see.

Friends, this heavenly identity and future hope actually makes us new now as we set our minds on it.

See, we're renewed as our heavenly identity shapes our life now, which leads us then to the second way that God is doing this.

We put to death what belongs to our old life.

See, we're to put to death what belongs to our old life.

That's the way that we're called to work out this heavenly identity into our life now.

Because Paul then says in verse 5, therefore.

So because of this, this new life, setting your mind on heaven, this new identity you have, it means you are to put to death or to kill what belongs to your old way of life.

These things, he says in verses five through nine, belong to our earthly nature.

And they're deserving of God's wrath.

They're deserving of him executing his wrath upon us.

And he says, because we're already new in Christ, these things don't go with who you are.

You can't live this way anymore.

See, though we live kind of between two lives, you can't just pick one day, I'm gonna live for this life, and one day I'm gonna live for this life.

No, you've been given a new life in Christ.

So you're to live that way.

That's the way that you now have.

He describes this in verses 9 and 10 when he says, Don't lie to one another since you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self.

He describes this saying, You've put this off.

This is not who you are.

He's he's talking about it like it's clothing here a little bit.

That in some ways that they're putting off this old clothing, this old man, this old person, and they're putting on new.

You know the way to enjoy new clothes, especially maybe after you're out in the sun, sweating on a hot day.

What you need to do is not just put your new clothes over your old clothes.

That does not work very well.

That does not help you enjoy the freshness of new clothes.

No, you need to get rid of your old clothes.

Put them in the laundry basket, maybe rinse off.

Then you put on the new clothes, and then you feel new.

Then there's a difference in those new clothes.

So it says, put off the old.

Put off what belongs to your former manner of life.

He's saying there's a way of life that fits with being in Christ.

And there's some things that don't.

So what does Paul tell us those are?

Well, verse 5, he says, sexual sin does not fit with our new life in Christ.

That's what he says.

He says, put to death what belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry.

So this list describes sexual sin in a number of different ways.

Sexual immorality here is any sort of sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman.

Impurity and lust are in the same flow of thought, so it's not just adultery or physical sexual acts, but it's also what Jesus says: a lust of the heart, a desiring for someone who is not your spouse.

Impurity is not just the external perversion of God's ways, but the internal perversion of those things.

It's cherishing sexual fantasies in your mind, thinking about those things, that being what you desire.

And then he says, evil desires, which are opposed to, I think, good desires, good ways that God has designed for sex and for marriage to work.

Those would be things like homosexuality in our day.

Those things would be evil desires because they are against what God has said is good in this context.

And at the end of the list, he lists greed, which might be a little bit confusing.

You might think, well, how does that fit?

I think it does.

Because greed is a desire for more of something.

To want more of something that you don't have.

To want more of something than what you already have.

In part, this is at the heart of every kind of sexual sin.

It's to desire what God has not given, what he has not said yes to.

To want more of something because we feel that we lack it.

And our world is telling us often that what's most true of you is your desires, especially your sexual desires.

That no one can tell you that you can't have those or you can't want those, because actually that's what's most central to who you are.

We've been sold the lie too that sex is a need, that it's something that you must have if you want to live a full and happy life, and that you can pursue it in any way that you see fit.

But friends, we've put that life off.

Christ is now what's most true of us, not our desires.

And so we can't live for those sexual desires anymore.

We must must put them to death, any hints of lust or sexual immorality in us.

As John Owen has said, be killing sin, or it will be killing you.

Sexual sin outside of marriage of any kind is not what belongs to your new life.

And so you must put that to death.

Church, it's a grievous thing that statistics would show the pornography use inside the church is hardly different than the world.

Friends, how can we who've died to the world still live in it?

How can we who say that we have Christ still think we lack something?

Still think we need something that he does not give us.

If Christ is in you and your life is hidden with him in heaven, then he needs to be on the throne of your life, not something else, some other desire.

Those things don't fit with your new life in Christ.

We can't live like that anymore.

And so, friends, what we do is we we set our mind on things above where Christ is.

And we see a surpassing pleasure, a surpassing treasure than any pixels on a screen or illicit relationship could ever give to us.

We have the joy of Christ and the hope of heaven.

And so, friends, we must let that heavenly identity that we have shape our life now so that we say no to sexual sin of any kind.

And brother or sister, maybe if that's you right now, you're you're maybe entangled in that sin, the sexual sin of pornography or something else.

Can I just say that we're not here, I'm not here, because we're perfect, because we've never struggled with that?

Each one of us are sinners in need of the grace of Christ.

And we come all, even this morning, needy for Christ to rescue us from our sin, for Christ to change us and renew us.

And so we're a group of people who would love to talk to you and help you.

Because we believe that what Christ has to offer you is something far better, a joy far better than what you can find in sexual sin.

But that's not the only area that Paul says does not match, does not fit with our new life in Christ.

Paul also says that unrighteous, harmful speech does not match our new life in Christ.

So just as the other list of sins had had a sort of theme, so does Paul here with this list here in verse 8, where he says, but now put away all the following anger, wrath, malice, slander, and filthy language from your mouth.

It's the idea of things that are coming out of our mouth, things coming out of our lives in that way.

Anger here is this emotion of hatred that boils within us, often because someone or something has stood between what I want and where I'm at.

Something is between what I want or what I feel like I need, and so I get frustrated or we lash out, or maybe if you're the quieter sort, you just grow cold and distant.

But it's anger that's at our heart.

And Paul says that's not who you are now.

That fits with your old life and not your new life.

That fits with your old life where you sought your own desires above other people, but now you're new.

And so we must put away all passive-aggressive comments, all of our quick words that cut deep, our cold shoulders that cover over real anger.

We must repent and let our new life in Christ change us.

He also says we must put away all malice, using our words to hurt others rather than to build them up.

We must put away slander, which goes along with what he says next, which is to lie to one another.

Because when we slander, we lie not to maybe to someone's face, but we lie about them behind their back.

We say something that's not true about them, probably to make ourselves feel better or make ourselves not look as bad.

And so we can't slander.

That's not what fits with our life in Christ.

If we have Christ, he says, we also must put away all filthy language.

Things like swearing, things like might be referred to as locker room talk.

Those things don't characterize us now that we're in Christ.

We are new people.

And so we don't laugh at those jokes anymore.

We don't talk about those things anymore because we're new.

We're different.

We've put on something different.

Put on Christ.

And I think it can be easy for us in the church to take seriously and really seriously the thing that I just referred to, sexual sin, and overlook something like what Jerry Bridges calls more respectable sins, things like anger, lying, slander.

But friends, these are just as out of step with our life now in Christ.

James 3, 9 and 10 says, with the tongue we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in God's likeness.

Blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth, my brothers and sisters.

These things should not be this way.

And so, friends, we have a new heavenly identity, which means we ought to learn and begin to look like and speak like God speaks.

The way that he speaks in love and in truth and encouragement towards us, that we are to speak and have our life and speech match his life and his speech.

We put these things to death because, as verse 10 says, we put on the new self.

And he tells us that this new self is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of your Creator.

See, as we come to know God, as we set our minds on these heavenly things above and realize who we are now with Christ, we begin to actually reflect, to image the God that we've come to know.

And so what this means is that we grow as we know more of God, as we know God more deeply.

But what that also means is that our knowledge can't be intellectual only.

That actually to know God means that we change, that we begin to be renewed by seeing him, by knowing him, by loving him.

It must be a knowledge that changes us because we know him and we know who we are in him.

See, Paul here is not telling you and I to get rid of sexual sins or get rid of all anger and lying as if this is something that only the marines of spirituality can do.

Something that only the elite people who are super disciplined can ever get rid of these things in their life.

No, he's really just telling them be who you are.

Be who you are now in Christ.

See, our new life in Christ is the starting point for our battle with sin and temptation.

Our starting point for our battle with sexual sin and anger and lying is that we have a new life in Christ.

That we're already new in him.

And now we're just trying to show that and live that out in the way that he calls us to by putting to death what belongs to the way that we used to live and who we used to be.

And so Paul is telling us here take that new reality and let it spill and color every aspect of your life now.

All the way that you speak and the desires that you have and the values that you live with.

Let the way that you think be influenced by the scriptures and not earthly wisdom.

He says, Let your life be defined by Christ.

In some ways that's what I'd sum up verse 11 as, which might have been a little bit confusing as we read through it the first time.

Verse 11, it says, In Christ, there's not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all and in all.

You might wonder, who are these people?

What exactly is he talking about?

Well, I think that this is a list of people and ways that people would define themselves.

That they would define themselves as either a Greek or a Jew, either circumcised or uncircumcised.

They might be a barbarian or a Scythian from these different places, they might be slave or free.

And in fact, that's actually what matters most about them, and matters most about how they could relate to God.

What matters most is that they're either a Greek or a Jew.

That's going to affect the way that you think that you can relate to God, or that you're circumcised or you're uncircumcised.

But Paul's saying no.

Christ is all and in all.

Christ is the one who defines who you are and how you stand before God.

And so what defines each person most is not your job or your abilities.

It's not what you've done in your past, your sin, your struggles.

It's whether your life is hidden with Christ or not.

That's what matters most.

That's what defines us.

And the more that we, as believers, take hold of this truth, the more it begins to change how we live.

The more we are renewed into this image of our Creator.

Christ is all and in all, friends.

So that means whatever you might have come in here this morning thinking about, you hoped that God would change you in.

You hoped would be different in your life.

That's not what most defines you.

What most defines you is where you're at with Christ.

Who He is to you and who you are to him.

And you see, we are renewed as our heavenly identity shapes our life now.

So, friends, we set our minds on this new life that we have and we put to death the things that don't belong with it.

Let's pray.