LEARNING DAILY

 

Colossians 3:12-17, Therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on the tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another; even as Christ forgave you, so you must also do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you were also called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

 

Whew! The instruction Paul is giving to you and me is overwhelming because I have failed in so much of this. In fact, I cannot live this way by trying to do it on my own; I have learned over and over the only way to live like this is for the Holy Spirit, living within me, to encourage and help me to do so. I seem to fail even then. I am so thankful for God’s grace given to me every day!

 

Whenever a verse begins with “Therefore” you need to refer to the verses before it. In this case, Paul gives quite a list of behaviors that are unacceptable in our lives and are causing the wrath of God to come upon those who indulge in these things! Paul states (this is my interpretation) that you and I might recognize some of these things in our “old self”; the life we lived before we gained “new life” in Christ. Here is the same challenge for us that Paul gave the Colossians: make a clean break from our past and diligently do all we can to walk on the narrow way with Jesus Christ. This is not a one-time decision! It is something we decide to do every day. Remember, you do so by allowing the Holy Spirit to defeat these old desires and cleans you from within. Do not become discouraged – there are some things that may take longer than others to destroy. The somewhat sad thing is, you and I will probably not be totally cleansed until the day Christ makes things final and forever new (DJSB). Colossians 3:10 Makes it clear that at the moment we give ourselves to the Lord’s salvation, these earthly desires begin to fade because we begin to take on His image.

 

“Therefore” God’s people not only begin to remove the “old self” and its evil desires, they begin to take upon themselves the new characteristics of the verses above. Ray Stedman suggests that this is like taking off old dirty clothes and putting on clean new ones. That is a great way of thinking about what you and I need to do. As I wrote before, this needs to be done every day. Don’t you want to reflect the character of Jesus every day in your life? When you get out of bed, you put on clean clothes. So, why not think at that time about putting on these new qualities of life in Christ? We are new in Him and we should begin our day in that way. In Romans 6:11-12, Paul writes it this way, “Likewise you also reckon (consider) yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.” In the next verse he encourages us to not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.” You and I must not allow sin a place of power in our bodies (by our choice). We do not have to, because the death of Jesus has made sin powerless unless we grant it power.

I did not even really get to the verses above. That will be for the next day’s page. I pray for the Holy Spirit to strength each of your walk on the narrow way to God’s kingdom and eternal life. I pray for Him to strengthen your resolve to walk with Jesus Christ and that every day you have a hunger and thirst for His righteousness and your desire to place His kingdom before everything else!

 

From now on DJSB will be used to note information or quotes from the David Jeremiah Study Bible and LSSB will refer to information and quotes from the Life in the Spirit Study Bible.  I have added Jimmy Swaggart’s Expositor’s Study Bible to be referred to from now on as JSESB.