Putting It to Death
Last week in Colossians 2 we heard Paul rail against human-made religion focused on asceticism and restriction – do not handle, do not taste, do not touch. He exposes this type of religious practice as having “no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” And by “flesh” Paul means the opposite of the Spirit; he means the sinful nature. Our solution when God exposes sin in our lives is always the same. We think we need more rules, more restrictions…we need more law. If we have more law, then we will be able to follow it and prevent this kind of sin in the future. Problem is that God had just exposed the fact that we were not able to follow the law in the first place…that’s what the sin is: us breaking the law. As Paul says, this is human-religion made up of lists of dos and don’ts and it has “no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” It does not work.
Instead of this kind of religion that is based on human effort to control and ultimately try to stop sin, Paul drives the Colossians back to first principles, back to the major of the Bible, back to the heart of the Christian faith. He drives them and us back to Jesus and his completed work for sinners. He says, “In him you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead” (2:11-12). In Christ God has made us alive, we who were dead in our trespasses.
This is true religion – one that is based on God’s work in Christ for humanity and not on human effort. Also, Paul pointed us to Christ as the “Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God” (2:19). SO, Paul points to Jesus Christ and his work for us as both the source of our salvation and our growth as Christians. In other words, he says the same thing that makes a Christian, grows a Christian, and that is Jesus’ work for us and in us. Paul does not do what so many Christians tend to do, which is say Jesus saves us, but now it’s up to us to grow in holiness, to mature, etc. He says it is not up to us. It is up to God. We grow because we are a part of the body, which is attached to the Head, which is Christ, and we “grow with a growth that is from God.” Paul is as explicit about this as he is about anything. He does not want the Colossians nor any Christian putting their faith and trust in anything except Jesus and what He has done for them.
This is the context of our passage this week. I wanted to remind us of it because our passage in Colossians 3 carries a lot of temptation with it. Read by itself, which it so often is, it looks like Paul is actually advocating for the very thing he just spent the previous two chapters tearing down. This passage exhorts the Colossians and us to action, and without the proper lens of the complete sufficiency of the work of Jesus Christ we might think we hear Paul saying now it’s up to us again. You might ask, “Well, isn’t that what he’s saying? He’s warning us off of certain behaviors here, and in the following section exhorts us to other behaviors.” At face value, this passage seems like a moralist’s dream. Finally, we’re getting to the good stuff, right? The meat. At least that’s what some people might think.
Well, if that were indeed the case, if Paul was simply advocating for us to get busy being moral, he would be guilty of contradicting himself. We would have a kind of schizophrenic Paul. In one breath saying, “It’s not up to you; it’s not about self-made religion,” and then in another breath saying, “What are you waiting for? Stop sinning and be holy.” I want to assure you that Paul is not schizophrenic, and he is not contradicting himself.
It is important to see that he has not forgotten what he has just finished arguing. As he introduces this new section, he sums up what he just said, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (3:1). Everything that follows is in this context – we’ve been raised with Christ, and he is seated at the right hand of God. The imagery of Christ seated speaks to his completed work. As the book of Hebrews explains more fully, Jesus is sitting down because his work is finished. As Tullian Tchividjian wrote, “As Christians we live under the banner of Christ’s words on the cross, ‘It is finished.’” That’s the context of the Christian life, and that is what Paul keeps in full view as he exhorts believers to action.
Paul cannot belabor this point enough, which we can see from all of his letters, and neither can any preacher, because Paul knows that he’s dealing with a bunch of addicts, sin junkies. That’s what we are. In our flesh, our sinful nature, we are addicted to sin. There is no better way to describe it. We are addicted to any idea or bit of advice that says: It’s up to you. You can do it. Words are cheap; actions are what matter. You have to deal with your sin. Get busy. Try harder. Do more. We hear that and the old sinner in us springs to life. Think of Bruce the shark in Finding Nemo. He’s in recovery from eating fish, and he leads the recovery group for him and his buddies, Chum and Anchor. He’s doing really well until Dory gets accidentally hit and gets a little bloody lip. Just the tiniest bit of blood floats up to Bruce’s nostrils, and he completely freaks. He goes on a binge, screaming, “Just a bite!” trying to eat Marlin and Dory. It’s all very funny, and it is a perfect illustration of us and justifying ourselves, our addiction to self-made religion. The old man and woman in us is like an itchy junkie desperate for a fix, for anything that has the faintest sound or smell of telling us that we can do it on our own.
With that in mind Paul uses a crucial phrase when he talks about our behaviors. He says, “Put to death…” This is the action that he exhorts us to, to put to death what is earthly in us. He keeps our minds focused on baptism, on death and resurrection when he talks about the Christian life because he knows there is no other hope for us. There is no other way to deal with your problem of sin than Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. And so, we are to put our sinful behaviors to death. What does that mean? How do we do this?
Well, since left to ourselves we are in fact addicted to sin, I want to look at how recovery from addiction most often happens. If you ever get to go to a 12-Step meeting there are a couple things you will never hear and a couple of things you will always hear. First, you will never hear anyone ever give anyone else advice during a meeting. It is part of the boundaries of 12-Step fellowships. They call it “cross-talk,” which means you hear someone share something they are struggling with and you think, “Oh, I know what they need to do. I want to tell them.” That’s “cross-talk,” and it is not allowed. The main reason for this is the fact that most addicts, aka all of us, are experts on what is wrong with everyone else, but they are terrible at owning what is wrong with them. SO, no one is allowed to give anyone else advice during a meeting.
A part of this advice giving is to tell someone to stop their addictive behavior like: Stop drinking. Stop binge eating. Stop gambling. Stop looking at pornography. Stop having illicit affairs. Stop doing drugs. Stop doing whatever it is that you know you shouldn’t be doing. You will never hear anyone ever say that. That’s because it is not helpful. Not only is not helpful, it’s patronizing and it’s ridiculous. Oh really, I need to stop being an addict? Thanks for tip! Insert expletive here. The steps are predicated on the fact that a person is out of control in their addiction. Step 1: “We admitted we were powerless over our addiction, that life was unmanageable for us.” No one needs to be told to stop doing the behavior in question. That’s why they are there in the first place.
So that’s what you don’t hear: advice giving and to stop the behavior. We do not hear Paul saying that either. In fact, as we have seen, he attacks the very notion of basing faith on restriction – do not handle, do not taste, do not touch – do not do whatever you should not do. He says something much deeper, “put to death…”
This leads me to what you do hear in the steps and at meetings. You hear people owning their problems. You hear people saying, “My name is Sean, and I am powerless over my addiction.” You hear honesty. You hear confession. People owning their own brokenness. People owning their own sins. Healing and recovery from addiction is only possible when the denial ends, when the constant finger-pointing at everyone else and their problems stops and a person admits that he or she has a problem. Owning our brokenness and confessing it to others is the heart of all recovery.
There is fellowship over the shared brokenness, over the shared experience of pain and struggle. The first word in the 12-steps is “we.” The knowledge that you are not alone is also one of the things that gives you the courage to keep walking through the pain that your addiction has caused you and others. We are all in the same boat. We are in this together. We are not alone.
That leads me to the other thing you always hear at a meeting. When anyone shares that they have been struggling or that they have fallen back into their addiction you never hear judgment. In fact, that person becomes the most important person at the meeting in that moment. What you do hear is people say, “Keep coming back. Keep coming back. We’re so glad you’re here.” That is the response. It is grace. It is a group of people knowing exactly why they are there and the fact that they all know what it is to fail. They know that a person in the throws of addiction needs hope, needs encouragement.
These things that you hear at 12-step meetings are a part of the process of putting sin to death, the process of recovery. To put something to death is not to simply stop doing it because as we know behaviors are only fruit of what’s inside us. Something can live on in our hearts and minds long after we’ve stopped the behavior. To put something to death is to first bring it into the light, to bring it out into the open so that it can be seen for what it is, to own it and confess it. Think about your own life. Any time you are struggling with something, you tend to obsess over it. It seems like it has a power over you. But when you simply share it with another person it immediately begins to lose some power. The death process has begun.
The death is completed when after we confess we hear these words: “You are forgiven. It is finished.” You are forgiven. The sin, the addiction, the behavior no longer has any power over you because it no longer defines you, it no longer controls you and drives you into secrecy. Because that’s what we do. When we sin and realize what we’ve done our first reaction is to hide, to keep it a secret. But when we hide it makes things worse. Secrecy never works, but we think it will this time. That’s why I call us all addicts. We’re sick. We keep on doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. BUT, when you confess it and bring it into the light the death process begins. The sin has been exposed, and it has been forgiven. You are now defined by grace, by the fact that you are accepted and loved by Someone else. Instead of being an addicted sinner you become a forgiven one.
This is what Paul is exhorting us to. He is calling us to put our sin to death by owning it, confessing it, and receiving the already won forgiveness of Jesus Christ. Martin Luther put it this way when he preached on this very passage during Easter week centuries ago: “And this is how to mortify sin: it must be perceived with serious displeasure and repented of; and through faith Christ’s forgiveness must be sought and found. Thus shall sinful inclination be resisted, defeated and restrained from triumphing over you.” This is what it means to be a Christian, or another way to put it is, a sinner in recovery. It is still full dependence on Jesus.
And as we saw in the 12-step groups, in order to put something to death we need to know we are not alone in it. We need fellowship. As Paul said Christ is the Head of the body, which refers to the Church. The church is one big recovery group for sinners like us. We are all in the same boat. It is how our passage today ends in verse 11, “Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all.” There is no distinction between us. We are humans in need of a Savior. This is church. It is a place where we confess to God and to one another our brokenness and we remind each other of the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. It’s where we bring our struggles and instead of hearing advice or judgment we hear, “Keep coming back. We’re so glad you’re here. You are forgiven. It is finished.” Amen.
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