Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:13] Welcome to another edition of the weekday podcast. I'm grateful you're here. Yesterday we talked about the idea of being free to worship, no matter where you were starting from. But grace was never meant to leave us where it found us. Colossians 3 says this, and it gets really specific in verse 5. Then in verses 8 through 9 says, Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. But now you also put them all aside. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices. Now, honestly, that's a hard list to read out loud because Paul's not being vague. He's naming things. Anger, malice, lying, greed. And he's calling them what they are. They are patterns that belong to a self that you don't have to be anymore. When he says put to death, that's not a suggestion. Notice that language. He doesn't say, try to manage it or gradually reduce it. He says, put to death. It's decisive, it's final, it's active. It's the language of a funeral, not a diet plan. Some of us are trying to negotiate with sin instead of bearing it. We want to keep it on life support, just in case we need it later. But Paul says there's no version of the new self that still needs the old one breathing.
[00:01:32] What I found is that naming it is the first step to killing it. Here's something practical. You can't put to death what you don't name. Vague guilt. It doesn't lead to change. Specific confession does not. I need to do better. But I have a temper. I keep excusing or I've been trying to keep the peace. So grab a pen this week, write down one thing on the list. Anger, greed, harsh speech. Whatever it is that you've been keeping alive instead of burying, name it in prayer. Ask God to help you actually let it go and not feel bad about it. Now, lying is on the list, and I think it's worth noticing that he says, do not lie to one another. It's right in the middle of anger and malice. Now, we don't always think of lying as being in the same category as those, but Paul does. Lying, even the small kind, the cat kind, that smooth things over or protect your image. It's just another way of protecting the old self instead of burying it. So if you've laid aside the old self, you don't need the old self's tools anymore, including the small dishonesties you've grown used to now. This isn't punishment, it's actually freedom. So as you hear this, don't hear this as God trying to make your life feel smaller. He's trying to make it lighter. That every sin pattern you keep dragging around is weight that you were never meant to carry.
[00:02:47] And so putting it to death isn't a loss, it's finally settling it down so that it's lighter now. You already died with Christ. The old self doesn't get to keep showing up uninvited. So this week, name one thing and let it go. You can't carry the old self and walk in the new one. Something something has to be put down. Have a great.
