Tuesday, March 5th, 2024

Scripture: Col. 3:5 Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.

Col. 3:6 For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience,

Col. 3:7 and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.

Teaching: Paul is speaking on the life we now live in Christ, and because we are in Christ (and not of this world any longer), we are to set our minds on the things above, the things of Christ. In verses 5-7, Paul further expands this upward call by relegating the things of this world to their proper place: below and behind us. Following his theme of being raised to life in Christ, he calls us to “consider the members (or parts) of our earthly body as dead” because they are the things that we once shared with the world before being born again by the Spirit. To Paul, being born again, raised to life in Christ, is far more than simply leaving behind our old ways – it is considering them dead and gone forever.

These verses use the aorist verb tense, which is a tense that shows an action has happened once and the present is now happening as a result of it (as opposed to past activity that was more than one single instance, i.e. an ongoing activity). It’s a fascinating aspect of this verse, revealing the power of a once and for all time rebirth that enables this sanctification, or becoming more Christ-like. This passage is much like Paul’s words in Ephesians 2:1-10, reminding us that we all were once living in sin but by the grace of God, Christ has raised us up with him. So, in this life, though we struggle against sin in our fleshly body, we are to consider our bodies as dead to these impulses because of the new life given to us in Christ.  

Takeaway: Paul himself may be the gold standard for what he writes in Col. 3:5-7. Perhaps more than any other New Testament writer, Paul’s transformation from Saul exemplifies what it means to focus on the things above and consider his old life and ways as dead. He spent his years in ministry enduring stonings, shipwrecks, starvation, and imprisonment all to pursue the mission of Christ. He rejected his old ways of thinking as a Pharisee in favor of the truth in Christ. He understood that everything about him had been made new by Christ, and thus, he let go of anything that resembled the previous version of him who did not know Christ. Being born again is not merely a metaphor: it is the truth of what the Spirit does in our lives when we believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior and follow Him. As the aorist verb tense conveys, our lives are at once changed and forever different by being born again in Christ.