Colossians 3:11

The passage opens with “therefore”, which ties it to the verses just before. Believers are risen with Christ (Colossians 3:1), they are to set their affection on things above (Colossians 3:2), and their life is hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3). Here the letter turns from what God has done in Christ to how his people are to live, and the order matters. The commands rest on a death and a resurrection that have already happened. You have died and your life is with Christ, so you are to treat these sins as already finished with.

Paul teaches the same order elsewhere: “if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Romans 8:13), and “they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Galatians 5:24). He could say of himself, “I am crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). Christ’s death on the cross broke the power of sin, and his resurrection opened a new life in the Spirit. So putting sin to death is our share in his victory, carried out in the strength of the Spirit he has given, and it is a glad response to new life in him far more than a burden of rules.

“Mortify” translates nekróō, a verb built on nekrós, “dead”. It means to make dead, to put to death, to render powerless. The believer is called to kill sin and cut it off from what feeds it, which is far stronger than keeping it under control. The “members” (mélos) are limbs, the parts of the body. Paul is speaking in a picture, and he names at once what he has in mind: the list that follows gives the sins in which those parts of the body are used. They are the desires and habits through which sin works in a fallen human life, and “upon the earth” marks them as belonging to the old earthly way of living that believers have left for the things above.

Mortifying sin is a decisive act and also a lifelong discipline. It begins by seeing sin as the destructive thing it is. Then it means fleeing tempting situations, filling the mind with Scripture in place of ungodly thoughts, confessing sin, seeking others who will hold you to account, and starving the old self while you feed the new. Where one of these sins still has a pull on you, bring it to the Lord and ask for the Spirit’s help.

“For which things’ sake” points straight back to the list of verse 5. Fornication, uncleanness, evil desire and covetousness are what the wrath of God is coming on, and this is the reason Paul gives for putting them to death.

The word for wrath, orgḗ, is God’s settled and righteous indignation against sin. It is his holy opposition to evil, a just and steady response to rebellion against his character and his law, far removed from the sudden temper of a pagan god. The verb “cometh” (érchomai) is the common word for coming or going, and it stands in the present tense. God’s wrath is already at work against unrighteousness, and it is certain to end in the final judgment. As Paul wrote to the Romans, the wrath of God “is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Romans 1:18), and John says that it abides on the one who refuses to believe the Son (John 3:36).

“The children of disobedience” is a Hebrew way of speaking, in which the “children of” a thing are people marked by it. The word apeítheia means obstinate, rebellious unbelief, an active refusal to believe God or to obey him. Paul has in view a whole pattern of life lived in willful opposition to God, more than an occasional sin. He repeats the warning to the Ephesians in almost the same words: “because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 5:6). Here he speaks of such people in general, and the next verse turns to the Colossians themselves.

“In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.” The verb “walked”, peripatéō, literally means to tread all around, and in the New Testament it is the ordinary word for how a person lives day by day. It describes a settled pattern of conduct. “Some time” (poté) means formerly. “Lived” is záō, to live, and “in” (en) marks a fixed position or state, so “when ye lived in them” says that these sins were once the setting of their whole life, the air they breathed. With the words “ye also” Paul places the Colossians beside the people of the verse before.

Colossae lay in Phrygia, in Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey, and it was a meeting place of many religious and philosophical influences. Many of the believers there had come from a pagan background, where sexual immorality, greed and idolatry were commonplace and often part of worship. Walking was a familiar picture of conduct among both Jews and Greeks, so Paul’s readers would have understood him at once.

Others in the New Testament recall the same past. Peter writes that “the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles” (1 Peter 4:3), and Paul tells the Ephesians that they once walked “according to the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:2), when they were dead in trespasses and sins until God quickened them together with Christ (Ephesians 2:1–5). The reminder shows how much has changed, and it prepares for the “But now” that follows. Their old walk has given way to a walk “in newness of life” (Romans 6:4), for “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

“But now ye also put off all these.” The word “now” sets the present against the past of verse 7. “Put off” is apotíthēmi, from apo, “from”, and tithēmi, “to place”. It means to lay aside or cast away, as a person takes off old, soiled clothing. “All these” gathers up the sins of verse 5 and the ones about to be named, and the word “all” matters, because Paul expects the whole set to go, the small sins along with the ones that look worst. Where the earlier list dealt with sins of desire, this one deals with temper and tongue. The first three live in the heart, and the last two come out of the mouth.

• Anger (orgḗ) is the same word used of God’s wrath in verse 6. In people it is a settled, deep-seated indignation, a smouldering resentment that can turn toward revenge. God’s orgḗ is righteous, while human anger of this kind is a violent passion that leads to sin.
• Wrath (thymós) is a sudden outburst of temper, a boiling passion that flares up hot and may die down as quickly, and does great harm while it lasts. Paul names both, so that the lingering bitterness and the sudden explosion are both put away. Scripture says, “Be ye angry, and sin not” (Ephesians 4:26–27), a caution against letting anger carry a person into sin, and James gives the reason: “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).
• Malice (kakía) is badness of heart, ill will toward others and the wish to harm them. Peter tells believers to be “laying aside all malice” (1 Peter 2:1).
• Blasphemy (blasphēmía) is abusive speech, slander and reviling. The word is used of speaking against God, and here it stands among sins against other people, so it likely covers railing against them too.
• Filthy communication (aischrología) joins aischros, “shameful”, and logos, “word”. It is vile, obscene or abusive talk of every kind.

“Out of your mouth” brings the command down to words that can be heard, which show what is in the heart, for “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh” (Matthew 12:34). Paul gives the other side in Ephesians: “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying” (Ephesians 4:29), and he sets out almost the same list there, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice” (Ephesians 4:31). The world of the Greeks and Romans often tolerated, and even enjoyed, abuse and coarse language in public speech and in satire, so a church marked by clean and gracious speech stood out.

Christ is the pattern here. His words always carried grace and truth, even under great provocation, and “when he was reviled, reviled not again” (1 Peter 2:21–23). The putting off of verse 8 goes with the putting on of verse 12, where Paul names the new clothes of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience (Colossians 3:12). The old is laid aside to make room for the new, and both belong to the one ongoing work of growing in holiness.

“Lie not one to another.” The verb pseúdomai means to tell an untruth or to try to deceive by falsehood, whether by word or by act, and the form of the command forbids lying as an ongoing habit. “One to another” (eis allḗlōn) makes it a command about how believers treat each other, which is why it stands beside the sins of the mouth in verse 8. Deceit eats away the trust on which fellowship rests.

The rule is an old one. The law says “neither lie one to another” (Leviticus 19:11), and the prophet says “Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour” (Zechariah 8:16). Paul gives the reason in the church: “speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another” (Ephesians 4:25). If believers are parts of one body, lying to a brother is lying to part of yourself.

Lying is the devil’s habit, for “he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44), and truthful speech marks those who belong to Christ. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and he exposed the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his day (Matthew 23). He “did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2:22), and he sends the Spirit of truth (John 16:13) to live in his people. So truthfulness reaches into small things too: exaggerations and half-truths, misleading omissions, convenient excuses and flattering words.

Paul gives the reason for truthfulness in the same sentence: “seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds”. The verb here is apekdýomai, a stronger word than the one in verse 8. It means to strip oneself wholly, and its tense marks the stripping as something already done. That finished act is the ground of the command. The “old man” (palaiós ánthrōpos) is the person each of them was before Christ, the whole former self ruled by sin. Palaiós means old, worn out, belonging to the past. “With his deeds” uses sýn, “together with”, and prâxis, a practice or habit, so the deeds go with the man. When he is stripped off like a worn-out garment, everything he did goes with him, and lying belongs to what has gone. Romans 6:6 describes the same event from another side: “our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” Paul uses the same pair of pictures to the Ephesians, telling them to put off the old man and put on the new (Ephesians 4:22–24).

“And have put on the new man.” The verb endýō comes from a root meaning to sink into a garment, and it is the word for putting on clothes. It answers the putting off of verse 9, and its tense also points to something already done, at conversion, when a believer was joined to Christ. So the new self is something a believer already wears. To put on the new man is to put on Christ himself, being united with him in his death to sin and his resurrection to new life (Romans 6:3–11).

“Which is renewed” tells us that this new self keeps growing. The verb anakainóō joins ana, “again”, and kainos, new in quality and fresh. It means to make new again, to renovate and restore something to a good state, which implies that there was something worn out to begin with. It is in the present tense, so the renewing goes on day after day and the believer is still being made new. The change is real, and it continues, and both truths belong together. When you fail, remember that the new self has truly been put on and that God is still at work renewing it.

“Where” points back to the new man of verse 10. In that new life Paul names the divisions that people in the deeply divided Roman world treated as final.

• Greek nor Jew. The Jew belonged to the nation of Israel. Héllēn means a Greek, an inhabitant of Hellas, and so a Greek-speaking person, and here it stands for a Gentile, a member of the culture that ruled the empire. The tension between the two groups troubled the early church, as when the Grecians murmured against the Hebrews (Acts 6:1).
• Circumcision nor uncircumcision. Circumcision was the mark of God’s covenant with Abraham and a boundary of Jewish identity, and whether Gentile believers needed it was hotly argued until the council at Jerusalem (Acts 15).
• Barbarian. Bárbaros was the Greek word for anyone whose language was something other than Greek, and it often carried the sense of uncultured.
• Scythian. Skýthēs named the nomadic tribes of the Black Sea region, at the far edge of the known peoples, who were thought of as the roughest and most savage of all.
• Bond nor free. Doûlos means a slave, and in that world whether a person was slave or free settled nearly every part of life, from rights to living.

In the new man, none of these decides a believer’s place. “But” (allá) turns from what has lost its weight to what fills the whole picture: “Christ is all, and in all.” Pâs means all, every, the whole. Christ is everything the new life is built on, its source, its substance and its goal, the One by whom all things consist (Colossians 1:17). And he lives in each of his people, in the Jew and the Gentile, in the slave and the master, so every believer has as much of him as any other.

The same truth appears in Galatians 3:28, “ye are all one in Christ Jesus”, and in 1 Corinthians 12:13, where all are baptized by one Spirit into one body, “whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free”. Christ has “broken down the middle wall of partition” between Jew and Gentile, “for to make in himself of twain one new man” (Ephesians 2:14–16). This prepares for the verses that follow. Those told to put on kindness and meekness, to forgive one another, and above all to put on charity, “which is the bond of perfectness” (Colossians 3:14), are a mixed company who share one Lord.

What Paul asks here rests on what God has already done. You have been raised with Christ, the old man is off and the new man is on, so you can name the earthly sins still pulling at you and starve them in the Spirit’s strength. Covetousness is the one most easily missed, so it is worth asking what you want more than God.

The same new life shapes your words. Notice what comes out of your mouth in a day, since it shows what is in the heart, and when a sharp word is ready you can put it away before it is spoken. Tell the truth to the people of your own church, in small things as well as large. When you feel the pull to rank a fellow believer by background, education or status, remember that Christ is in that person as much as in you, and treat him as you would treat Christ. And when you fail, take heart. You are being renewed after the image of the One who created you, and the verses that follow go on to show what the new man wears (Colossians 3:12–17).