Dead Men Walking

We visited Niagara Falls over the holidays and while we were there, we crossed a famous bridge. It’s called the Rainbow Bridge. It is located just below the Falls, and it spans the border between Canada and the United States. That means that it has one support in Canada and the other support, at the other end, in the United States.

And that makes it a lot like a Christian, because a Christian is someone who has a foot planted in two worlds—one foot is planted in heaven and the other foot is planted here on earth.

Now the Bible talks about this unique situation in a rather unique way. Let’s go back to our high school English class for a minute and think about the different kinds of sentences. The simplest and most basic kind of sentence is an indicative sentence. An indicative sentence is a simple statement of fact—”The dog is barking.” “The apple is red.”

But then you can have an imperative sentence. An imperative sentence expresses a command—”Feed the dog.” “Eat the apple.”

Now when the Bible talks about the Christian life, it uses these two kinds of sentences, and it does so very deliberately. When it talks about the Christian life from the heavenly perspective, it uses the indicative. But when it talks about the Christian life from the earthly perspective, it uses the imperative.

The apostle Paul often does this in his letters. In the first part of his letters, Paul usually talks about the spiritual facts which are true of a Christian from the heavenly perspective. He has been justified by faith. He is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. He has been given a new life. And Paul uses indicative sentences to describe these great spiritual truths.

But then in the second part of his letters, Paul spends time talking about how those spiritual truths ought to make a practical difference in the way we live here on earth. His perspective shifts from the heavenly to the earthly. And he starts using imperative sentences—giving us commands on how to live the Christian life.

The book of Colossians is laid out this way. In the first two chapters, he explains the doctrine of the Christian life. That’s indicative. In the last two chapters, he teaches us our duty as Christians. That’s imperative. Doctrine is always followed by duty.

And today we are going to start looking at the last two chapters of Colossians, so let’s turn to Col. 3. And watch for the imperative sentences as we read the first few verses…

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.

Now remember, a Christian is somebody who has a foot in two worlds. One foot is in heaven and the other foot is on earth. And Paul here tells us what our orientation ought to be if we’re going to live the Christian life successfully.

He tells us that we ought to be deliberately seeking the heavenly. We ought to be consciously and intentionally focusing our hearts and our minds on things above.

If you are a farmer driving a tractor and you want to plow a straight furrow across a field, you have to focus on a target at the other side of the field and keep your eyes on it. You can’t be looking around at the scenery; you can’t be looking behind you at the lovely furrow you’ve just plowed; you can’t be looking over at the farmer who’s plowing in the field next to yours. You’ve got to keep your focus on one thing.

And the same is true in the Christian life. If I want to live a successful Christian life, I need to constantly be asking myself four questions:

1. Is my heart in the right place?

Is my heart set on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God? Now when you talk about your heart, you’re talking about the seat of your affections. You’re talking about what makes you tick; what turns your crank; what you are really living for.

Some Christians have their hearts set on earthly things—things which are passing away. You talk to them and that’s all they talk about. They are really focused on those things. You can tell where their heart is.

Paul reminds us that, as Christians, we have been identified with Jesus Christ. When Christ rose from the dead, we rose too. And now Christ is seated in heaven at the right hand of God, and our life is hidden in him (v. 4). So that’s where our hearts ought to be. Our hearts ought to be in heaven.

2. Is my mind in the right place?

In verse 2, Paul says “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” If your heart is on heavenly things, then you’re going to want to give your mind to those things too.

What am I filling my mind with these days? What am I reading? What am I watching? What am I thinking about? Am I feeding my mind heavenly food—food that will nourish my spiritual life as a Christian? Or am I feeding my mind the intellectual equivalent of junk food—food that satisfies for a moment, but ultimately leaves me empty and flabby and unhealthy?

Notice that both of these statements—set your hearts on things above, and set your minds on things above—are commands. They are imperatives. That means that we are supposed to do something about them. The onus is on me to obey these commands. And the key to whether or not I’m going to do something about these commands has to do with the next question:

3. Have I attended my own funeral?

What does that mean “Have I attended my own funeral”? Simply this: if you are a Christian, you are dead. You are a dead man (or a dead woman) walking. You are dead in that your old self has died—it has been crucified with Christ. And you are no longer living, but Christ is living in you.

Now that old self that died was very responsive to sin. Before I was a Christian, sin was my master. I was its slave. But now that I’m a Christian, the old me is dead. And I need to remember that. I need to reckon myself dead to sin and alive to righteousness.

When I feel sin pulling at my heartstrings; when I feel temptation coming on strong; I need to go back to that funeral parlor and see my old self lying in that casket. And I need to tell Satan “You’re talking to a dead man, devil. You don’t have any power over me anymore. The Bible says “anyone who has died has been freed from sin.” So that means that when you say ‘Jump’, I’m not gonna say ‘How high?’ anymore. Because I belong to Jesus now, and my life is hidden with him in God.”

If you’re having trouble visualizing this—if you’re having trouble attending your own funeral—you want to go and read Romans 6.

4. Am I ready for Christ’s appearing?

Look at verse 4. “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

You know there are a lot of Christians who are dreading the return of Christ. Why? Because they don’t have their hearts and their minds in the right place. They are living earthbound lives. They’ve set their affections on things below rather than things above.

So when Christ returns to receive us to himself, they’re not going to be ready. They are going to be ashamed at his coming.

Maybe the best barometer of how you are doing in your Christian life is how you feel about the Lord’s coming. The early Christians used to say “Maranatha”, an Aramaic expression which meant “Come quickly, Lord!” Is “Maranatha!” the desire of your heart this morning?

Well, every coin has two sides. And every Bible truth has two sides as well. The positive side of living the Christian life is to seek the heavenly. And the negative side is to slay the earthly. Look at verse 5…

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature

Now that expression “put to death” is a pretty strong expression. It means to “make dead; to exterminate; to kill completely” and the verb tense that Paul uses indicates that you are to do it urgently and decisively. No half measures will work.

Picture a man who is working on a giant machine in a factory. This machine has several huge rollers and pulleys. All of a sudden, the man gets his sleeve caught in one of the rollers. The machine begins to pull his arm in. In a matter of seconds, it is going to crush his shoulder and his head, so with his last ounce of strength, he grabs an ax with his free hand and chops his arm off, and saves his own life.

Sound pretty brutal? That’s how severely we are to deal with sin in our lives. Jesus said “If your eye causes you to stumble into sin, yank it out. If your hand causes you to sin, chop it off. Better you should go into the kingdom of heaven maimed than go to hell whole.”

Now what are we to deal with that way? The things that belong to our earthly nature. You see, although your old self has died with Christ, your old nature still clings to you. Your old nature is like a spiritual hangover from your previous way of life. It’s those old habits and attitudes and appetites that are left over from your life before you were a Christian.

And you can’t play around with those things because they are deadly. The only thing to do with them is to exterminate them. Take the most severe measures possible. Kill them off.

Now Paul lists some of these behaviors, and he divides the list into two parts—sensual sins—sins of appetite—and social sins—sins of attitude.

Look at verse 5 again…

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.

Sexual immorality is from the Greek word “porneia” from which we get our word “pornography”. Impurity means “unclean thoughts”. Lust and evil desires refer to natural passions that are out of control. And greed means always wanting more. And when you always want more, you are acting as though you are the only person that matters—you’re putting yourself at the center of your universe. And that, of course, is idolatry.

I don’t need to tell you how common these temptations are in our society today. Everywhere you go in our culture, you are assaulted with the message that, not only is illicit sex okay, you should try to get it wherever and whenever you can.

God gave us our desire for sex. He built that appetite into us and it is beautiful and good when we follow God’s guidelines for it. But what we are seeing today in our society is a blatant disregard for God’s principles, and an uncontrolled pursuit of the passion and the appetite for its own sake.

And that is devastating. It is devastating to individuals, to marriages, to families, and to the moral fabric of our society.

And as Christians, we are subject to this temptation. So how are we to deal with it? Paul tells us right here in this passage. Kill it. Don’t take half measures. Don’t fool around with this kind of temptation. You cannot stand around and rationalize when you are being tempted to sin sensually.

Do what Joseph did and run for your life. Take drastic measures. Maybe you need to chop that cable that comes into your house. Maybe you need to cancel that magazine subscription. Maybe you need to stop going to those R-rated movies.

Uncontrolled passion, sex outside of marriage, evil thoughts, impurity—these are things that God is going to judge—not because he’s against sex. God invented sex. But he is against those who would take that beautiful gift and cheapen it and misuse it and destroy it.

Sensuality, and the temptation to sensual sin—to take our physical appetites outside of God’s boundaries—is a very powerful part of our old nature that we have to fight to exterminate.

Next, Paul gives us a list of social sins—sins not of appetite, but of attitude. Look at verse 8…

But now you must 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.

G. Campbell Morgan once called these the “sins in good standing”. The reason he called them that is that they somehow seem to have become more acceptable to us than the previous list of sins. For example, we would be shocked and saddened to see a church member fall into sexual sin, but we will watch that same person lose his temper in a business meeting and just shrug it off as inconsequential.

We have become so accustomed to anger, critical attitudes, lying, gossip, and coarse joking among believers that we’re no longer upset or convicted about such things. Yet the Bible labels them as sins and lists them right next to the sensual sins.

What’s the difference between anger and rage? Anger is when you do a slow burn. Rage is when you explode all at once. Malice is when you really desire to hurt someone—think of malice as “congealed anger”—anger taken the next step.

Slander is when you speak untruthfully about another person and try to tear him down; to damage his reputation. Filthy language is just that—using foul words, coarse humor, obscenity. It’s pretty prevalent in our culture, but there’s nothing attractive about talking like that.

And of course lying is when you distort the truth for your own purposes. It’s possible to tell a lie even when your words are technically correct, because your tone of voice, your body language, the expression on your face, can communicate something else.

And when you lie, you’re doing the devil’s work for him because the devil is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).

These are the behaviors that we are to put off, or rid ourselves of. The picture is of changing your clothes.

Imagine that you are a hospital patient who is suffering from a terrible form of cancer. Your condition is terminal, and the cancer is eating up your body. You are in excruciating pain and your body is covered with oozing sores. You are terrible to look at and you can’t help noticing that the people who come to visit you avert their eyes.

But one day, a great doctor comes to that hospital and cures you. Overnight, you are healed. And within 24 hours, you are ready to be discharged because you are perfectly healthy.

Now it’s time for you to get ready to go. So you take off that miserable old hospital gown—it’s like an old rag that is soiled and stained by the disease that was once killing you. And you put on your new, clean clothes in preparation for your release.

That’s the picture we have here. Paul says “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.” You’ve changed your spiritual clothes.

And when you get your new clothes on, you find that there are no more barriers of hostility and prejudice and hatred that cut you off from other people. “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” (v. 11)

Christians, as new creatures, are one in Christ. No more divisions based on nationality or race or ethnic background or social status. Christ is the one who brings us all together.

But remember, this is only going to happen if we seek the heavenly and slay the earthly. That’s the imperative. It’s up to us now to do it.