Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Colossians 3:5
Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:
5 12. Universal Holiness the necessary issue of the life of Union: the negative side
5. Mortify therefore ] Observe the “ therefore.” Because of the possession of a hidden life, and in its power, they were to put sin to death. Here is no mere assertion of duty, but an implied assurance of power, the power of life, life welcomed and developed. So, in nature, the rising sap of the tree makes the dead leaf fall.
“ Mortify ” : the verb occurs elsewhere, in Biblical Greek, only Rom 4:19; Heb 11:12; in both cases of Abraham’s physical condition in old age. Its plain meaning is to reduce to a state of death, or like death; a state helpless, inoperative. The Christian, in the power of his hidden life in Christ, is thus to deal with his sins; entirely to renounce the thought of compromise or toleration, and to apply to them the mighty counter-agent of his union with his Head.
The verb is in the aorist tense; decisive and critical action is in view. The believer, reminded of his resources and of the will of God, is now, with full purpose, to “ give to death ” (Conybeare) all his sins, and to carry that purpose out with critical decision at each moment of temptation, in the power of his true life.
No assertions of an attained “sinless perfection” are warranted by such a word. The following context is enough to shew that St Paul views his converts as all along morally imperfect. But that side of truth is not in view here; the Christian is called here to an unreserved decision of will and to a full use of Christ’s power.
In the closely parallel words, Rom 8:13, the verb (another verb in the Greek) is in the present tense, indicating the need of continuous action after however critical a decision.
your members ] Your limbs, as if of an invisible, non-material, body, viewed in its separate organs. A bold but intelligible transition of thought thus speaks of the organ rather than of its action; giving a more concrete effect to the mental picture. See below, the next note but one.
Lightfoot compares the phrases “ old man, new man.” See below however on Col 3:9-10.
upon the earth ] Conversant, sympathetic, with “ earth ” as the scene of temptation, and not with heaven, where lies the Source of victory. Cp. the language of Article xvii “Such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their minds to high and heavenly things.”
fornication, &c.] Lightfoot places a colon before this word in the Greek, and goes on to the imperative verb “ put off ” (Col 3:8) for the (broken) grammatical government. The startling identification of “ members ” with sins is thus avoided. But the construction is extremely difficult and really unlikely. The R.V. constructs as the A.V.
“ Fornication ” : a sin often in view in the Epistles; evidently an evil wofully rife, but not the less ruthlessly condemned. Cp. 1Co 6:9; 1Co 6:13; 1Co 6:18; Gal 5:19; Eph 5:3 ; 1Th 4:3; Heb 13:4. See our note on Eph 5:3. It is to be decisively “done to death” by the Christian.
uncleanness ] A word of wider reference than “ fornication,” and so conveying a still stronger appeal. Act, word, thought, unworthy of the member of the All-Pure Christ all are to be put to death in the power of His life.
inordinate affection ] Lit. and better, passion (R. V.). Cp. Rom 1:26; 1Th 4:5; the other places where the Greek ( pathos) occurs in N. T. The word denotes lust from the passive side of experience, uncontrollable desire, to which the man is a slave. All the more significant is the implied statement that even this form of sin is to be, and can be, “done to death” in Christ.
evil concupiscence ] Concupiscentiam malam, Latin Versions; and so all the English Versions, except Wyclif, “ yvel coveitise,” and R. V., evil desire. “ Passion ” and “ desire ” (or, in older English, “ lust ”) are combined, 1Th 4:5, and collocated, Gal 5:24. “The same vice may be viewed as a [passion] from its passive and a [desire] from its active side The epithet (“ evil ”) is added because [“desire”] is capable of a good sense.” (Lightfoot).
covetousness idolatry ] “ Avarice, whiche is servyce of mawmetis ” [84] (Wyclif). See Eph 5:3; Eph 5:5 for a close parallel. Lightfoot here sees a reference to covetousness in its ordinary sense; “the covetous man sets up another object of worship besides God.” And he shews clearly that the Greek word never, of itself, denotes sensual lust. But cp. this passage with Eph 4:19; Eph 5:3; Eph 5:5; 1Co 5:11; 1Th 4:6; and it will appear that it at least lends itself to a connexion with sensual ideas, just as our word “greed” lends itself to a connexion with avarice. If so, the “ idolatry ” of the matter lies in its sensuous and unwholesome admiration, developing into acts of evil.
[84] i.e. idols. Strangely enough, the word is a corruption of Mahomet, the name of the great Iconoclast.
“ Which is ” : more precisely, seeing that it is.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Mortify therefore your members – Since you are dead to sin and the world, and are to appear with Christ in the glories of his kingdom, subdue every carnal and evil propensity of your nature. The word mortify means to put to death (Rom 8:13, note; Gal 5:24, note), and the meaning here is that they were entirely to subdue their evil propensities, so that they would have no remains of life; that is, they were not at all to indulge them. The word members here, refers to the different members of the body – as the seat of evil desires and passions; compare the notes at Rom 6:13. They were wholly to extirpate those evil passions which he specifies as having their seat in the various members of the earthly body.
Fornication – Notes, Rom 1:2.
Uncleanness – Notes, Rom 1:24.
Inordinate affection – pathos. Rendered in Rom 1:26, vile affections; see the notes at that verse. In 1Th 4:5, the word is rendered lust – which is its meaning here.
Evil concupiscence – Evil desires; licentious passions; Rom 1:24. Greek.
And covetousness, which is idolatry – It is remarkable that the apostle always ranks covetousness with these base and detestable passions. The meaning here is:
(1) That it is a low and debasing passion, like those which he had specified; and,
(2) That it secures the affections which properly belong to God, and is, therefore, idolatry. Of all base passions, this is the one that most dethrones God from the soul. See this whole passage more fully explained in the notes at Eph 5:3-5.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Col 3:5-9
Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth.
Slaying self
Mortify, therefore, because ye were raised with Christ. The homeliest moral teaching of the Epistle is based upon its mystical theology,. Character is the outcome and test of doctrine. But too many people deal with their beliefs as they do with their hassocks and hymn-books in their pews, so it is necessary to put the practical issues very plainly.
I. The paradox of self-slaying as the all-embracing duty of a Christian. Mortify conveys less than is meant. Slay your members is the spiritual duty which stands over against the error of severity to the body against which the Colossians had been warned (Col 2:23). It consists in the destruction of the passions and desires.
1. Pauls anthropology regards men as wrong and having to get right. A great deal of moral teaching talks as if men were rather inclined to be good, and its lofty sentiments go over peoples heads. The serpent has twined itself round my limbs, and unless you give me a knife to cut its loathsome coils it is cruel to bid me walk. Culture is not the beginning of good husbandry. You must first stub up the thorns and sift out the poisonous weeds or you will have wild grapes.
2. The root of all such slaying is being dead with Christ to the world. What asceticism cannot do in that it is weak through the flesh, union with Christ will do; it will subdue sin in the flesh.
3. There must, however, he vigorous determination. Slaying cannot be pleasant and easy. It is easier to cut off the hand which is not me than to sacrifice passions and desires which are myself. The paths of religion are ways of pleasantness, but they are steep, and climbing is not easy. The way to heaven is not by the primrose path. That leads to the everlasting bonfire. Men obtain forgiveness and eternal life as a gift by faith; but they achieve holiness, which is the permeating of their characters with that eternal life, by patient believing effort.
II. A grim catalogue of the condemned to death. Paul stands like a jailer at the prison door, with the fatal roll in his hand, and reads out the names of the evildoers for whom the tumbril waits to carry them to the guillotine. It is an ugly list, but we need plain speaking, for these evils are rampant now.
1. Fornication covers the whole ground of immoral sexual relations.
2. All uncleanness embraces every manifestation in word, look, or deed of the impure spirit.
3. Passion and evil desire are sources of evil deeds, and include all forms of hungry appetite for the things that are upon the earth.
4. Covetousness, whose connection with sensuality is significant. The worldly nature flies for solace either to the pleasures of appetite or acquisition. How many respectable middle-aged gentlemen are now mainly devoted to making money whose youth was foul with sensual indulgence. Covetousness is promoted vice, lust superannuated. And it is idolatry, a fetish worship, which is the religion of thousands who masquerade as Christians.
III. The exhortation is enforced by a solemn note of warning (verse 6).
1. The thought of wrath is unwelcome because thought inconsistent with Gods love. But wrath is love wounded, thrown back upon itself, and compelled to assume the form of aversion, and to do its strange work of punishment. God would not be holy if it were all the same to Him whether a man was good or bad; and the modern revulsion against wrath is usually accompanied with weakened conceptions of Gods holiness. Instead of exalting, it degrades His love to free it from the admixture of wrath, which is like alloy with gold, giving firmness to what were else too soft for use. Such a God is not love but impotent good nature.
2. The wrath cometh. That may express the continuous present incidence of wrath or the present of prophetic certainty. That wrath comes now in plain and bitter consequences, and the present may be taken as the herald of a still more solemn manifestation of the Divine displeasure. The first fiery drops that fell on Lots path as he fled were not more surely percursors of an overwhelming rain, nor bade him flee for his life more urgently, than the present punishment of sin proclaims its own future punishment, and exhorts us to flee to Jesus from the wrath to come.
IV. A further motive is the remembrance of a sinful past.
1. Walking. That in which men walk is the atmosphere encompassing them; or to walk in anything is to have the active life occupied by it. The Colossians had trodden the evil path and inhaled the poisonous atmosphere. Lived means more than Your natural life was passed among them. In that sense they still lived there. But whereas they were now living in Christ, the phrase describes the condition which is the opposite of the present–When the roots of your life, tastes, affections, etc., were immersed, as in some feculent bog, in these and kindred evils.
2. This retrospect is meant to awaken penitence and to kindle thankfulness, and by both emotions to stimulate the resolute casting aside of that evil in which they once, like others, wallowed. The gulf between the present and the past of a regenerate man is too wide and deep to be bridged by flimsy compromises. It is impossible to walk firmly if one foot be down in the gutter and the other up on the curbstone.
V. We have as conclusion a still wider exhortation to an entire stripping off of the sins of the old state (verses 8, 9).
1. The Colossians, as well as other heathen, had been walking and living in muddy ways; but now their life was hid, etc., and that in common with a community to join which they had left another. Let them keep step with their new comrades, and strip themselves, as their new associates do, of the uniform they wore in that other regiment.
2. This second catalogue of vices summarizes the various forms of wicked hatred in contrast with the various forms of wicked love in the other list. The fierce rush of unhallowed passion is put first, and the contrary flow of chill malignity second; for in the spiritual world as in the physical, a storm blowing from one quarter is usually followed by violent gales from the opposite. Lust ever passes into cruelty, and dwells hard by hate. Malice is evil desire iced.
(1) Auger. There is a righteous anger which is part of the new man; but here it is the inverted reflection of the earthly and passionate lust after the flesh. If anger rises keep the lid on, and dont let it get the length of wrath. But do not think that its suppression is enough, saying, I did not show it–strip off anger, the emotion as well as the manifestation. But I have naturally a hot disposition; but Christianity was sent to subdue and change natural dispositions.
(2) Malice. Anger boils over in wrath, and then cools down into malignity; and malice as cold and colourless as sulphuric acid, and burning like it is worse than boiling rage.
(3) It is significant that while the expressions of wicked love were deeds, those of wicked hate are words. The blasphemy of Authorised Version is bitter railing of Revised Version–speech that injures, which when directed against God is blasphemy, and against man vituperation.
4. Lying has its proper place here because it comes from a deficiency of love or a predominance of selfishness. A lie ignores my brothers claims upon me, and is poisoned bread instead of the heavenly manna of pure truth. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The flesh to be crucified
A brave officer said once to his soldiers in a day of battle, Unless you kill your enemies they will kill you. In like manner may it be said, Unless we crucify the flesh, it will be our everlasting ruin.
The mortification of the sinful principle in man
I. The sinful principle has an active outward development.
1. It is mundane in its tendencies. Your members, etc. It teaches the soul to grovel when it ought to soar.
2. It is manifested in acts of gross sensuality. Fornication, etc.
3. It is recognized by debasing idolatry. Covetousness is insatiable lust for material possessions.
II. The active outgoings of the sinful principle call for Divine vengeance (verse 6). The wrath of God is not a malignant unreasoning passion. Nor is it a figure of speech into which the maudlin philosophers of the day would fain resolve it, but an awful reality.
III. The indulgence of the sinful principle in man is inconsistent with the new life he has in christ (verse 7).
IV. That the sinful principle in man is the source of the most malignant passions (verses 8, 9). The former classification embraced sins which related more especially to self: this includes sins which have a bearing upon others.
1. There are sins of the heart and temper.
2. There are sins of the tongue.
V. The sinful principle in man, and all its out-goings, must be wholly renounced and resolutely mortified. Now ye also put off all these (verses 8, 9). (G. Barlow.)
Denying the
flesh:—A brave officer said once to his soldiers in a day of battle, Unless you kill your enemies, they will kill you. In like manner may it be said, Unless we crucify the flesh, it will be our everlasting ruin.
Mortifying the flesh
Punting after perfection Dr. Judson strove to subdue every sinful habit and senseward tendency. Finding that for want of funds the Mission was languishing, he cast into the treasury his patrimonial estate. Finding that his nicety and love of neatness interfered with his labours among the filthy Karens, he sought to vanquish this repugnance by nursing those sick of most loathsome diseases. Finding that his youthful love of fame was not utterly extinguished, he threw into the fire his correspondence, including a letter of thanks he had received from the Governor General of India, and every document which might contribute to his posthumous renown. And finding that his soul still clave unto the earth, he took temporary leave of all his friends, and retired into a but on the edge of the jungle, and subsisting on a little rice, for several weeks he gave himself entirely to communion with God. (T. Hamilton, D. D.)
Corruptions overcome by grace
My gardeners were removing a large tree which grew near a wall and as it would weaken the wall to stub up the roots, it was agreed that the stump should remain in the ground. But how were we to prevent the stump from sprouting, and so disarranging the gravel-walk. The gardeners prescription was, to cover it with a layer of salt. I mused awhile, and thought that the readiest way to keep down my ever-sprouting corruptions in future would be to sow them well with the salt of grace. O Lord, help me so to do. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Corruptions overcome gradually
When Sir Christopher Wren was engaged in demolishing the ruins of old St. Pauls in order to make room for his new cathedral, he used a battering-ram with which thirty men continued to beat upon a part of the wall for a whole day. The work men, not discerning any immediate effect, thought this a waste of time; but Wren, who knew that the internal motion thus communicated must be operating, encouraged them to persevere. On the second day, the wall began to tremble at the top, and fell in a few hours. If our prayers and repentances do not appear to overcome our corruptions, we must continue still to use these gracious battering-rams, for in due time by faith in Jesus Christ the power of evil shall be overthrown. Lord, enable me to give hearty blows by the power of thy Holy Spirit until the gates of hell in my soul shall be made to totter and fall. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Covetousness.
Covetousness
1. Is a thirst for gain. When it burns in a mans heart, he must make some effort to obtain relief. He must try either to extinguish or satisfy it; to starve it by a religious self-denial, or feed it by a carnal indulgence.
2. Covetousness is ruinous to the individual, to the nation, and to the Church, and the elements which go to constitute the material prosperity of each contain in them the seeds of ruin. Hence the stern exhortation, Take heed and beware of covetousness.
I. Its company. Things and men are known by the company they keep. It is the companion of fornication. The collocation is not accidental, it is uniform (1Co 5:11; Eph 5:3; 2Pe 2:14.) When a man has plunged into some fashionable vice, he is indignant to find that the law makes him stand side by side with more vulgar convicts. So with covetous people who find themselves here branded with the same infamy as the unclean. All its respectability is here stripped off. Covetousness is like sins of uncleanness, in that it is–
1. The unlawful direction and acting of desires not in themselves unlawful. Its great strength lies here. The complex apparatus of trade is innocently and dutifully set in motion; but who shall tell when it ceases to be impelled by virtue and begins to be impelled by vice. But the evil spirit enters, and when mammon gets the power, he allows others to retain the name: and the love of money takes the place of a God-fearing, man-loving sense of duty, as the motive-power in a mans soul.
2. It grows by indulgence. It grows by what it feeds on. The desire of the mind as well as of the body is inflamed by tasting its unhallowed gratification. It burns in the breast like a fire, and fuel added, increases its burning. And the man who makes money an object to be aimed at for its own sake is by common consent called a miser (miserable one). Mammon first entraps, and then tortures its victims. Many would be afraid to dally with approaches to lasciviousness (Pro 5:5). But the two lusts are born brothers.
3. The least incipient indulgence displeases God, and sears the conscience. Although the disease may never grow to such a height that men will call you a miser, yet He who looketh on the heart is angry when He sees a covetous desire. He who has said Whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her, etc., has not a more indulgent rule whereby to judge this kindred sin.
II. Its character. Idolatry. Other Scriptures less directly, but no less surely, affirm the same (Luk 16:13; 1Ti 6:17; Job 31:25-28). It is not the form or name of the idol that God regards, but the heart-homage of the worshipper. This leads us back to the former topic; idolatry is represented as uncleanness in the Bible. God is our Husband, and to transfer our affections from Him is adultery. (W. Arnot, D. D.)
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Covetousness
The Romans worshipped their standards; and the Roman standard happened to be an eagle. Our standard is only one-tenth of an eagle–a dollar–but we make all even by adoring it with tenfold devotion. (Edgar A. Poe.)
Gold in the heart
Mr. Fuller was one day taken into the Bank of England, where one of the clerks, to whom he had occasion to speak, showed him some ingots of gold. He took one of them into his hand, examined it with some care, and then, laying it down, remarked to his friend, How much better to have this in the hand than in the heart!
Covetousness is idolatry
I. What is covetousness?
1. There is a good covetousness (1Co 12:31), as of grace and glory.
2. Sinful: to love the world inordinately.
(1) In the inordinate desire of riches–above Gods glory and our own spiritual good.
(2) In the sinful acquiring them
(a) As to matter–anothers goods (1Ki 21:1-29.).
(b) As to manner and means–unjust (Pro 10:2; Pro 28:8).
(3) In the wrongful retaining them–not laying them out for the ends God has appointed.
II. What is idolatry?
1. External.
2. Internal: worship given to what is not God (Joh 4:24).
III. How is covetousness idolatry?
1. In that
(1) man admires riches (Rom 11:33).
(2) Loves it (Mat 22:37).
(3) Desires it (Psa 73:25).
(4) Fears losing it (Mat 10:28).
(5) Trusts on (1Ti 6:17; Mar 10:23-24).
(6) Grieves for the loss of.
(7) Rejoices in (Php 4:4).
(8) Labours after (Mat 6:33).
2. Objections.
(1) I worship no images. Yes, of thine own fancy.
(2) I do not fall down to them. But in thy soul, and that is the principal.
(3) I offer no sheep or rams. But thyself. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians offered men, but yours is the greater sin. For they offered bodies not souls, others not themselves.
(4) We do not look upon them as gods. You do in effect, because as the chiefest good. You know them to be no gods, and yet worship them as such.
IV. Signs.
1. Such as whose thoughts run more upon earth than heaven (Luk 12:22; Luk 12:25; Luk 12:29).
2. Whose joy and grief depend on out ward successes (Luk 12:19).
3. Who strive to be rich, but no matter how.
4. Whose desires increase with their estate.
5. Who grudge the time spent in Divine duty (Amo 8:5).
6. Whose hearts are upon the world, while their body is before God (Eze 33:31).
7. Who do not improve the estates God has given them (Mat 25:24-25).
V. USE. Avoid it. Consider–
1. How odious it is to God (Psa 10:3).
2. How injurious to our neighbour.
3. Dangerous to us (1Jn 2:15; 1Ti 6:10). It fills the heart with anxiety (1Ti 6:9-10) and will certainly keep us from heaven (1Co 6:9-10).
4. Foolish in itself.
(1) To act so much below ourselves.
(2) To throw away our souls for vanity (Mat 16:26).
(3) To spend that little time on earth, wherein we should prepare for heaven.
(4) To make oneself a slave for he knows not whom (Psa 39:6; Ecc 4:8).
VI. Means.
1. Think much of the vanity of earth and the glory of heaven.
2. Act faith in the promises (Psa 37:25; Heb 13:5).
3. Meditate on the universal providence of God, and His fatherly care (Luk 12:31-32; Mat 6:25, etc.).
4. Be much in prayer.
5. Often remember the text (1Jn 5:21). (Bp. Beveridge.)
The idolatry of covetousness
Idolatry is the earliest thing mentioned in the decalogue, and coveting the latest. The two tables bend round and touch each other so closely that he who breaks the tenth commandment breaks the first. The inordinate love and pursuit of wealth are simply heathenish, and are put down on the same level as the worship of images. Gold seems in many respects very like a god.
I. In the attributes it possesses.
1. Omniscience. Wealth seems to know everything. Let any novelty be presented and men will know of it instantly. You cannot keep any plan or line of business secret if there is any money in it.
2. Omnipresence. The least opening for business invites competition, and so wealth rushes in. Mammon wins its way where seraphs might despair.
3. Omnipotence. How many of us know to our sorrow the power of riches! the overmastering, crushing opposition it sets up before every poor mans enterprise. Gold rules the world, covers the land, buys up the offices of the nation, sways the sceptre of social influence.
II. The worship it attracts.
1. The roar of excited men who clamour with each other in the death grapple of competition, how little does it differ from the cries of the Town Hall of Ephesus.
2. But this is not mere lip-worship. The devotees are as desperately in earnest as the priests of Baal on Carmel. Body and soul are consecrated.
III. The favours it bestows. The fine residence, the gorgeous apparel, the flowing wine, the tremulous obeisance of the seedy gentleman, the obsequious flattery of the lady whose charms have faded, the adulation of the crowd, the flutter in the market, the cringe of ancient enemies; and then the fine funeral, and the marble tomb. Verily they have their reward. Wealth, as a duty, is not remarkably beneficent, but it would be uncandid to say that he has nothing to bestow on his faithful devotees. The world likes priestcraft; and the priest has power according to his nearness to his duty, and to the faith of the populace. And hence there is no hierarchy so absolutely revered, feared, and obeyed as those who crowd the temples of gold.
IV. The scourges it inflicts. The temples of heathenism are beautiful, but the gods are ugly because malignant. They are supposed to maltreat and even eat their subjects, and mammon is well typed in them. His most noticeable characteristic is that he loves to trample on and devour his devotees. He that trusteth in his riches shall fall. There are some sins which seem to be considered by the Almighty as sufficient for their own punishment, such as pride and anger; passion means suffering. So here this trusting in riches possesses a kind of inflated power to baloon one up to such a height that he suffocates and falls headlong into ruin. It is painful to see how rich men pitch on each other when any one falls into difficulty. The horrible heartlessness with which a neighbourhood will devour a broken estate reminds one of the fabled furies. Conclusion:
1. See, then, why God strikes against this sin. It sets up another god in the place of Him. One of the Roman Emperors offered Jesus a place beside Jupiter. It would not do then, neither will it now. God will have all or none.
2. See how covetousness destroys grace and piety. What agreement hath the temple of God with idols?
3. See how it ruins all ones future, Ephraim is joined to his idols, etc. But when ones god is gone, where is he! Shrouds have no pockets.
4. See how it prevents all hope of progress in a Church. Will a man rob God, etc. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)
For which things sake the wrath of God cometh.–
Dissuasives from evil
I. The destructive consequence
1. The cause, fornication, etc., not that we should conclude that it is peculiar to these sins alone to excite the Divine wrath, but because upon these which especially overthrow human happiness God is especially provoked (Heb 10:31). The apostle wished to point out distinctly the cause of human misery and Divine judgment.
(1) That God might be cleared from all suspicion of injustice. God the Father of mercies is not indifferent to evil, but is incensed against it.
(2) To throw a restraint on the wicked. Those who are proof against reason and right may yield to fear.
2. The effect. The wrath of God; or the punishment inflicted by wrath. Augustine says, The anger of God is not the perturbation of an excited mind, but the tranquil constitution of righteous judgment. This wrath is particularly connected with sins of the kind referred to here (Gen 6:11; Gen 6:17; Gen 18:20; Gen 19:24).
3. The persons subjected to it Children of disobedience. Two crimes are involved–unbelief and disobedience, the latter as the genuine offspring of the former (1Pe 3:20; Mat 24:38-39 : Gen 19:14; Zec 7:11).
4. From these things draw the following instructions.
(1) Under public calamities we must not murmur against God; but impute them to our sins.
(2) Oppose to solicitation to sin the consideration of the Divine wrath.
(3) Nothing is more to be desired than the Divine favour, nothing more to be dreaded than the Divine wrath.
(4) God is not so much prevoked by sin as by the obstinacy of the sinner.
(5) How ever much the children of disobedience flatter themselves, the wrath now cometh upon them, and will come, and will not tarry.
(6) The same holds good of Gods children when disobedient.
II. The removal of the cause (verse 7). Sin is the reigning cause of a wicked life; but sin is not living in you, but mortified; the cause, therefore, having ceased, the effect ceases.
1. From the consideration of their former life learn–
(1) Nothing is more unhappy than unrenewed man. To walk in sin with pleasure is to hasten towards hell with pleasure (Rom 6:23).
(2) The fruits of a man in a corrupt state are not works preparatory to grace, or, deserving of eternal life–congruity, as the schoolmen say–but are preparatory to hell, and meritorious of eternal death, from condignity.
2. From their new state learn–
(1) It is not idle for the renewed to call to mind their former state, inasmuch as the apostle reminds the Colossians of theirs, not to upbraid, but to encourage them.
(2) Christians ought not to take it amiss when ministers remind them of their former state (Rom 6:19; 1Co 6:10-11; Eph 2:11-13).
(3) The regenerate receive a twofold advantage from a notice of this kind. They are excited
(a) To gratitude (Rom 6:17; 1Ti 1:12-13).
(b) To newness of life (Rom 13:12; Eph 5:8). (Bishop Davenant.)
The wrath of God a present thing
It is not merely a thing of the past, as seen in the deluge, the destruction of Sodom, the overthrow of Israel in the wilderness; nor a thing wholly reserved for the world to come. It cometh as an enduring and essential principle of the Divine government. In physical debility and disease, in a shattered constitution, in dethroned reason, in destroyed power, you often witness the working of a righteous retribution, the marks of Divine indignation against sin. A sight of terrible penalty under Gods law is it, to see a man carrying to a premature grave the evidences in his body of Gods curse on sins of sensuality; to see the rich man, who has lived in avarice for gold, and has amassed it in millions, now in his old age unable to enjoy it, and haunted with the idea of dying in a workhouse; to see a man of pleasure, who has tried and exhausted all the resources of the world in finding it, now ending his days as a gloomy maniac. Yet these cases are nothing as compared with the wrath to come; only a few drops from a dark and dismal cloud, which will hereafter discharge itself in a storm of judgment and fiery indignation. (J. Spence, D. D.)
The children of disobedience
Men are sent to the ants to learn diligence, to the conies to learn that there is a way which terminates in a great rock, to the locusts to learn how littles, when combined, may become mighty, sufficient for all the duty and obligation of the day. What if it be found at last that all the lower orders and ranks of creation have been obedient, dutiful, loyal, and that the child only has wounded the great heart. The ox knoweth his owner, etc. God has no trouble with His creatures–no trouble with His great constellations–they never mutinied against Him; He has had no trouble with His forests, no rebel host ever banded themselves there. Where has His sorrow lain! His own child, His beloved one, in whom He has written, in fairest hues, the perfectness of His own beauty, that child has lifted up his puny fist and smitten Him, not in the face only, but in His heart of love, which can be only forgiven by shedding sacrificial blood. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Effects of disobedience
Let the sickles alone, said a farmer to his son, who was left in the fields while the reapers went to dinner. James obeyed his father for a time; but at length he grew lonesome, and took up a sickle, just to look at it. He then felt its edge, and at last thought he would cut one handful. In so doing, he cut his little finger, inflicting a wound which rendered the middle joint useless for life. When it was healed an ugly scar and a stiff finger were lasting mementoes of his disobedience. Disobedience to his heavenly Father leaves a scar on the sinners soul, and lessens his capacity for virtue. (E. Foster.)
The wrath of God
The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the higher the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose. If God should only withdraw His hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it. (Jonathan Edwards.)
But now ye also put off all these.–
The believers view of past sin
I once walked into a garden with a lady to gather some flowers. There was one large bush whose branches were bending under the weight of the most beautiful roses. We both gazed upon it with admiration. There was one flower on it which seemed to shine above all the rest in beauty. This lady pressed forward into the thick bush, and reached far over to pluck it. As she did this a black snake, which was hid in the bush, wrapped itself round her arm. She was alarmed beyond all description, and ran from the garden screaming, and almost in convulsions. During all that day she suffered very much with fear; her whole body trembled, and it was a long time before she could be quieted. That lady is still alive. Such is her hatred now of the whole serpent race, that she has never since been able to look at a snake, even though it were dead. No one could ever persuade her to venture again into a cluster of bushes, even to pluck a beautiful rose. Now this is the way the sinner acts who truly repents of his sins. He thinks of sin as the serpent that once coiled itself round him. He hates it. He dreads it. He flies from it. He fears the places where it inhabits. He does not willingly go into the haunts. He will no more play with sin than this lady would afterwards have fondled snakes. (Bishop Meade.)
Conversion and the old nature
There are a great many men who are like one of my roses. I bought a Gloire de Dijon. It was said to be one of the few everblooming roses. It was grafted on a manetti-stalk–a kind of dog-rose, a rampant and enormous grower, and a very good stalk to graft fine roses on. I planted it. It throve the first part of the summer, and the last part of the summer it grew with great vigour; and I quite gloried, when the next spring came, in my Gloire de Dijon. It had wood enough to make twenty such roses as these finer varieties usually have; and I was in the amplitude of triumph. I said, My soil suits it exactly in this climate; and I will write an article for the Monthly Gardener, and tell what luck I have had with it. So I waited and waited and waited till at blossomed; and behold! it was one of these worthless, quarter-of-a-dollar, single-blossomed roses. And when I came to examine it I found that it was grafted, and that there was a little bit of a graft down near the ground, and that it was the manetti-sprout that had grown to such a prodigious size. Now, I have seen a great many people converted, in whom the conversion did not grow, but the old nature did. (H. W. Beecher.)
I. The general persuasion.
1. The circumstance of time–now. Ye did indulge in these as long as sin lived, but now, since sin is mortified, ye must put these things away (Rom 13:12; 1Th 5:5-6).
2. The act commanded. The word may be explained either to put off as men put off their old and dirty clothes, or to lay aside from the affections and senses, as dead bodies shut up in sepulchres. The last best agrees with mortify.
3. Learn then–
(1) We must not account sin a pleasure, but a thing to be hated as deadly poison, or to be avoided as a putrid carcase.
(2) This putting off applies to all sin, of which anger, etc., are only samples.
II. We are to put off sins of the heart.
1. What they are.
(1) Anger, an inordinate desire to injure ones neighbour for some past offence. Damascenus defines it as an appetite for revenge, and in this what the schoolmen term the formal of anger is contained.
(2) Wrath denotes the hasty excitement of this passion, and that accession of blood round the heart which schoolmen call the material of anger. Wrath, says Damascenus, is the boiling up of the blood around the heart, and arises from the kindling of resentment.
(3) Malice some affirm to be that vicious propensity which infects all the affections and desires, and inclines them to evil; and Bernard, the taste for evil, which makes evil sweet and good insipid. But it is rather that machination of evil in the heart which is wont to arise from anger in malevolent minds (Gen 4:5; Gen 27:41).
2. The reasons why they should be extirpated. Because–
(1) Through anger wisdom is lost, and reason for the time extinguished (Ecc 7:19). Anger is a short madness.
(2) Justice is violated for while an exasperated mind sits in judgment everything which its fury may suggest it thinks right (Jam 1:20; cf. Gen 49:7)
(3) The kindness of social life is lost (Pro 22:24).
(4) The illumination of the Spirit is shut out.
(5) Forgiveness of sin is hindered (Mat 11:26).
(6) The attribute of God is usurped with sacrilegious audacity (Pro 20:22; Deu 32:35). An angry man makes himself the judge, and would have God the executioner.
3. But is all anger unlawful? No! for God has implanted in the mind the faculty of anger, and Christ was angry (Mar 3:5). Hence the apostle enjoins, Be ye angry and sin not.
(1) Anger is good–
(a)Which arises from a good motive, viz., from the love of God or our neighbour.
(b) Which tends to a good end, the glory of God and the correction of our neighbour.
(c) Which proceeds according to a good rule, awaiting or following the determination of reason. Basil would have anger to be a bridled horse, which obeys reason as a curb.
(2) Anger is evil–
(a) Which arises from a bad beginning–hatred or love of praise.
(b) Which tends to a bad end–revenge and our neighbours injury.
(c) Which is exercised in an improper manner, forestalling the judgment of reason.
III. Sins of the mouth, arising from the inordinate affections of the heart.
1. What they are.
(1) Evil speaking. Blasphemy means injuring the fame of another by evil words.
(a) It is offered to God; first, when that which is repugnant to His nature is attributed to Him; secondly, when that which most befits Him is taken away; thirdly, when that which is His property is attributed to the creature. So heinous was it that God made it a capital crime (Lev 24:16; Lev 24:23).
(b) It is offered to man (Rom 3:8; 1Co 4:13; Tit 3:2), and is secret (detraction) and open (railing). Rash and angry persons take the open course; the crafty and malicious the secret. Its grievousness is evident. First, it greatly injures the person himself. His reputation, a principal external blessing is wounded, and is not easy to repair, since the quantity of the loss cannot be estimated. Secondly, it greatly injures those who take it up, engendering as it does suspicions and strifes (Psa 120:2). Thirdly, it is a great injury done to God. For as He is praised in the saints when the works He effects in them are praised; so when they are defamed He is defamed.
(2) Corollaries.
(a) Such as respect the blasphemers. First, the habit argues an unregenerate state, for it is one of the principal deeds of the old man. Second, slanderers are unhappy, for, as Nazianzen says, It is the extreme of misery to place ones comfort not in ones own happiness, but in the evils of others. Third, they are the disciples of the devil (Rev 12:10).
(b) Such as respect hearers. First, since it is so great a crime, those who delight to hear it are not void of sin. Each has a devil; this in the ear, that in the tongue. Second, it behoves a pious man to turn away from and reprove slanderers, and to defend his brother (Pro 25:23; Psa 101:5; Job 29:17).
(c) Respecting those injured. First, grieve more for the slanderer than for what he says. Second, slander harms not a good conscience. Third, there is the counterbalancing testimony of conscience and good men. Fourth, do not be provoked to return evil for evil (1Co 5:12).
2. Filthy communication (Eph 2:29; 1Co 15:33). This is to be avoided because–
(1) It makes that most precious and peculiar faculty of speech foul and ridiculous.
(2) It indicates a corrupt mind.
(3) It is opposed to the sacred profession of a Christian (Eph 5:3-4).
(4) It corrupts speaker and hearers. Wherefore rebuke it in others. Avoid it yourselves. (Bishop Davenant.)
Anger
There is an anger that in damnable; it is the anger of selfishness. There is an anger that is majestic as the frown of Jehovahs brow; it is the anger of truth and love. If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he should not be roused to meet it; but if he is angry after he has had time to think upon it that is sinful. The flame is not wrong, but the coals are. (H. W. Beecher.)
The evils of bad temper
There are households where this demon of anger governs all at its pleasure, incessantly troubling the concord of husband and wife, the union of parents and children, and the peace of masters and servants. There is nothing done, nothing said, but in anger. You would say of these houses, that they are the fabled cavern of Eolus, where the winds shut up in it are heard night and day, roaring and blustering. There is no climate, no sea, no coast in all the earth, where storms are greater or more frequent. For whereas natural tempests happen but at some seasons of the year, in these miserable houses no calm is ever seen; and there needs but one petty action, one word, yea, one look, to raise storms of many days continuance: as it is said of certain lakes in the mountains of Berne, that if one cast but a stone into them, the surrounding air becomes turbid, and is immediately filled with winds and clouds, which soon issue lightning, thunder, and excessive rain. Yea, there are some whose passion is so violent, that it cannot be kept within the enclosure of their houses. It issues out of doors, and without respect to the faces of those who pass by, without apprehension of scandal, audaciously shows itself in public, and acts its tragedies in the presence of all the world. (J. Daille.)
Control of temper
When M. de Persigny was French Minister of the Interior he received a visit one day from a friend. A warm discussion arose between them. Suddenly an usher entered and handed the minister a note. On opening it he at once changed his tone of voice, and assumed a quiet and urbane manner. Puzzled as to the contents of the note, and by the marked effect it had suddenly produced upon the minister, his friend cast a furtive glance at it, when, to his astonishment, he perceived that it was simply a plain sheet of paper. More puzzled than ever the gentleman took his leave, and proceeded to interrogate the usher. Sir, said he, here is the explanation, which I must beg you to keep secret. My master is very liable to lose his temper. As he is aware of his weakness, he has ordered me, each time his voice is raised sufficient to be audible in the ante-room, without delay to place a sheet of paper in an envelope and take it to him. That reminds him that his temper is getting the better of him, and he at once calms himself. Just now I heard his voice rising, and immediately carried out my instructions. (W. Baxendale.)
Malice
The word is of great extent, and signifies in general that venom and evil of sin which is diffused through any one of our passions, whichever it be. But here, as frequently elsewhere, I suppose it is taken for the malignity of anger; when a mischievous and vindictive stomach inwardly broods on its passion, and feeds its fire under the ashes, hatching some ill turn for the person it aims at, and waiting for opportunity to break out. Such a man works under ground, as miners do, and appears not till the ruin he prepares for his enemy is fully ready. His passion is like a stinted fire, that does not burn up till its season. Of all kinds of auger, there is none more black and malignant in itself, or more noxious and pernicious in its effects. Wherefore the apostle calls it malice, naughtiness, or malignity particularly; and it seems to be the same thing he elsewhere calls bitterness. (J. Daille.)
Blasphemy, its nature
Though the term, in our tongue, imports words spoken to the offence of God, when things unworthy of his greatness, and holiness, and truth, are attributed to Him, or those which belong to Him are denied Him; or when that which is proper to His divinity is communicated to creatures; yet in the Greek, that is, in the language the apostle speaks, the word blasphemy generally signifies any offensive, injurious speech, whoever it concerns, whether God, or angels, or men. Tim truth is, this word, if we respect its origin or etymology, simply denotes injuring the reputation, or offending some ones honour. Consequently, St. Paul uses it not only here, but also in other places, to signify such revilings and detractions as are directed properly to men, and not to God (1Co 4:13; Tit 3:2). (J. Daille.)
The evil speaker
While the Lord desires us to consider the good qualities with which He has endowed His creatures, to the end that we might praise and esteem them, and imitate them, the evil-speaker looks upon nothing but their defects and vices. And as vultures fly over fair meadows, and flowery and sweet-smelling fields, and alight only on dunghills, and places full of carrion and infection; and as flies, without touching the sound parts of the body, fasten only upon sores and ulcers; so the evil-speaker, without so much as noticing what is graceful and happy in the lives of men, falls upon that which is weak and sickly in them. If they have chanced to stumble, as is very ordinary in this infirmity of our nature, it is upon this that he fixes; in this he takes pleasure, this he gladly exposes and publishes, amplifying and exaggerating it with his infernal rhetoric. It is by this he knows persons; it is by this he marks them out and describes them; as bad painters, who represent nothing so exactly as the moles and scars of the faces which they draw, the deformity of the nose, the protuberance of the lips, and other such marks which they have from the birth, or receive by some accident. Charity covers sins, and forgets them; the evil-speaker divulges them, and remembers them perpetually, and takes out of the grave that which had been buried in oblivion, and brings it to light again. He loves pollution, and feeds on nothing but poisons and filth. And for this end he has always a sufficient store of such provision by him. His memory is a magazine, or rather a sink, where he heaps up the villainies, the sins, and the scandals, not of his own neighbourhood, or his own quarter only, but of the whole city; yea, if he possibly can, of the whole state. It is from this diabolical treasury that he derives the subject of his sweetest thoughts and most pleasing entertainments. These things are his perfumes and his dainties. But he is not content only to rake together and lay open the imperfections which he finds in his neighbours; he is so malignant that he feigns more, and fancies some where there are none. He spreads it abroad for truth; and that he may persuade others of it, he artificially colours his fictions, giving out shows for truths, and shadows for substances. He so bitterly hates all good, that where he sees any he bespatters, blackens, and disguises it, and causes it to pass for evil. And as the snail sullies the lustre of the fairest flowers with its sordid slime; just so this bad man, by the poison of his malignity, defames the most grateful virtues, and turns them into vices. He takes valour for temerity, and patience for stupidity: justice for cruelty, and prudence for craftiness. Him that is liberal he calls prodigal, and the frugal person covetous. If you be religious, be will not fail to accuse you of superstition; and if you be free and generous, and far from superstition, he will accuse you of being profane. In fact, there is no virtue nor perfection for which this wicked man has not found an infamous name, taken from the vice that borders next upon it. To this iniquity he usually adds a base and black piece of treachery, when, to cause his poisons to be the more easily swallowed, he mischievously sugars them, beginning his detractions with a preface of praise, and with an affected commendation of the persons whom he intends to revile; protesting, at his entrance, that he loves and respects them, for the purpose of creating a belief that it is nothing but the mere force and evidence of truth that constrains him to speak evil of them. He kisses his man at meeting, and then murders him, as Joab formerly did: he crowns his victims before he kills them: a fraud which, notwithstanding its ordinary occurrence, is the blackest that can be perpetrated. (J. Daille.)
Slander cannot be recalled
A lady presented herself to Philip Neri one day, accusing herself of being a slanderer. Do you frequently fall into this fault? inquired he. Yes, my father, very often. My dear child, said Philip, your fault is great, but the mercy of God is still greater. For your penance do as follows: Go purchase a chicken, and walk a certain distance, plucking the feathers as you go along. Your walk finished, return to me. Accordingly she repaired to the market, did as she was bidden, and in a short time returned. Ah, said Philip, you have been very faithful to the first part of my orders. Retrace your steps, and gather up one by one all the feathers you have scattered. But, father, exclaimed the poor woman, I cast them carelessly on every side; the wind carried them in every direction. How can I recover them? Well, my child, replied he, so is it with your words of slander; like the feathers, they have been scattered. Call them back if you can. Go and sin no more. (W. Baxendale.)
Filthy conversation
As offensive breath betokens some inward indisposition and corruption; so filthy and dishonest conversation discovers the impurity and unchastity that are in the soul of him who uses it. Hence the apostle in another place expressly puts this among other parts of Christian sanctity, that our conversation be pure, chaste, and honest (Eph 5:3-4; Eph 4:29). (J. Daille.)
Purity of conversation
It is related that General Grant was once sitting in his tent with officers around him, when a general came in in much glee and said: I have a good story to tell; there are no ladies present, I believe. No, said General Grant, but there are gentlemen present. The mans countenance fell; the good story was never told. Some Christians could learn a good lesson from the great commanders remark. (Christian, Boston.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 5. Mortify, therefore, you members] . Put them to death: the verb is used metaphorically to signify, to deprive a thing of its power, to destroy its strength. Use no member of your body to sin against God; keep all under dominion; and never permit the beast to run away with the man. To gratify any sensual appetite is to give it the very food and nourishment by which it lives, thrives, and is active. However the body may suffer by excessive sensual indulgences, the appetite increases with the indulgence. Deny yourselves, and let reason rule; and the animal will not get the ascendency over the rational man. See Clarke on Ro 6:11, c.
Inordinate affection] . Unnatural and degrading passion bestial lusts. See Ro 1:26; Ro 1:27; and the notes there.
Evil concupiscence] . As signifies strong and vehement desire of any kind, it is here joined with , evil, to show the sense more particularly in which the apostle uses it.
Covetousness, which is idolatry] For the covetous man makes his money his god. Now, it is the prerogative of God to confer happiness; every godly man seeks his happiness in God; the covetous man seeks that in his money which God alone can give; therefore his covetousness is properly idolatry. It is true his idol is of gold and silver, but his idolatry is not the less criminal on that account.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
That they might not think he, who had given check to superstitious abstinences, was for the indulging of any carnal affections, he infers here, how the exercise of truly Christian mortification was incumbent on those who were dead to sin and had their life hid in Christ. Neither is it any incongruity, that they who are in a sort already dead should be exhorted to mortification, if we do but distinctly consider of mortification, and what they are to mortify, or endeavour to make dead.
1. As to mortification; which may be considered either as to its inchoation, when, upon effectually calling, a mortal wound is by the Spirit of God given to the old man, or to the habit of sin, which will in the end or consummation be a total privation of its life, though as yet it be but partial. It is not in regard of this inchoative mortification, which was begun upon their effectual calling, that the apostle exhorts the saints at Colosse in this verse to mortify. But mortification may be considered as to its continuation, and the carrying on the life of grace, in the making dead all that is contrary to it; even the renewed person should be continually solicitous to have the old man killed outright without any reprieve. This is it that the apostle put the believing Colossians upon, not to spare any remaining ill dispositions or depraved habits of the old man; but by the assistance of the Spirit, (for it is not a natural, but spiritual work), Rom 8:13; Gal 5:24, continually to resist to the killing of it, or putting it to death: never to desist in this war.
2. As to the earthly members of it. The apostle expresseth the object of mortification, or what they are to mortify, by their members upon the earth; not as if he designed to put them upon a dismembering of their bodies, or a deadening of those bodily natural parts whereby the sex is distinguished, Rom 6:13, (though, agreeably to his own practice, he would have the body kept under and brought into subjection, 1Co 9:27), but upon subduing inordinate motions and carnal concupiscences, as is evident from the particular vices following, which, taken as collected and heaped up together, may well pass under the notion of a body. He had before in this Epistle mentioned the body of the sins of the flesh, Col 2:11; this he might say not only metonymically, by reason such lusts do reside in the natural body and members of it, Rom 6:6,12,19; but (and that chiefly) metaphorically, the mass of corrupt nature dwelling in us is compared to a person, the old man, or old Adam, or body of sin, Col 3:9; Rom 6:6; 7:24; Eph 4:22; and, continuing the metaphor, the parts of this corrupt body are called members, and our members, the whole body of the old man being made up of them, which are said to be upon the earth, as being inclined to earthly things and employed about them, taking occasion from sensual objects here below to get strength, unless we be continually upon our watch to abolish all that contributes to the life of the old man in the particular members; viz. fornication: see the parallel place, Eph 5:3, with 1Co 6:9, where he begins with this, as most turbulent, understanding by it not only the outward act, but the inward affection, which the heathens were apt to reckon no fault, though the Spirit of God in the Scripture do greatly condemn it, Mat 5:28; Rom 1:29; 1Co 5:1; 6:18; 7:2; 10:8; 1Th 4:3.
Uncleanness: see Eph 5:3; impurity which is more unnatural, whereby they dishonour their own bodies, Rom 1:24,27; Ga 5:19; 1Th 4:7; Rev 17:4.
Inordinate affection; that passion which some render softness, or easiness to receive any impression to lust, i.e. the filthy disposition of a voluptuous, effeminate heart, delighted with lascivious objects, Psa 32:9; Rom 1:26,27; 1Co 6:9, with 1Th 4:3,5.
Evil concupiscence; that concupiscence which in nature and measure is excessive, being an irregular appetite, and an undue motion against reason, especially against the Spirit, Gal 5:17.
And covetousness; and an immoderate desire after and cleaving to the things of this world, either in progging for them, or possessing of them to the feeding of other lusts, and so estranging the heart from God, Ecc 5:10; Luk 12:18; trusting in riches rather than in the living God, Job 31:24; Mat 6:24; 1Ti 6:17.
Which is idolatry; upon which account it may pass under the title of idolatry, as the covetous person is an idolater; see Eph 5:5; and further he might reckon covetousness to be idolatry, because nothing was more execrable in the judgment of the Jews than idolatry was, it being ordinary with the Hebrews to note sins by the names of those most detested; as rebellion against God by witchcraft, 1Sa 15:23, not that it is so formally, but that the Spirit of God may show how odious an incorrigible obstinacy of mind against God is unto him. Hence, considering the odiousness of these vices, the apostle would have us not to content ourselves to cut off some branches of them, but to grub them up by the roots.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
5. MortifyGreek, “makea corpse of”; “make dead”; “put to death.”
therefore(See on Col3:3). Follow out to its necessary consequence the fact of yourhaving once for all died with Christ spiritually at yourregeneration, by daily “deadening your members,” of whichunited “the body of the sins of the flesh” consists(compare Col 2:11). “Themembers” to be mortified are the fleshly instruments of lust, inso far as the members of the body are abused to such purposes.Habitually repress and do violence to corrupt desires of which themembers are the instruments (compare Rom 6:19;Rom 8:13; Gal 5:24;Gal 5:25).
upon the earthwherethey find their support [BENGEL](Compare Col 3:2, “thingson earth”). See Eph 5:3;Eph 5:4.
inordinate affection“lustfulpassion.”
evil concupiscencemoregeneral than the last [ALFORD],the disorder of the external senses; “lustful passion,”lust within [BENGEL].
covetousnessmarked offby the Greek article as forming a whole genus by itself,distinct from the genus containing the various species justenumerated. It implies a self-idolizing, grasping spirit; far worsethan another Greek term translated “the love of money”(1Ti 6:10).
which isthat is,inasmuch as it is “idolatry.” Compare Note, see onEph 4:19, on its connection withsins of impurity. Self and mammon are deified in theheart instead of God (Mt 6:24;see on Eph 5:5).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Mortify therefore your members,…. Not your bodies, as the Ethiopic version reads, nor the members of the natural body, but of the body of sin, indwelling sin; which as a body consists of various members, which are parts of it, rise out of it, and are used by it, as the members are by the body; and intend the sins of the flesh, or sinful actions, which are generally performed by the members of the natural body, in which the law of sin is, and by which it operates; so that the mortification the saints are here exhorted to, in consideration of having a spiritual life in them, and a hope of eternal life in Christ, from whence the apostle argues, is not a mortification or destruction of the body of sin itself, or of the being and principle of it in the soul, where it is, and lives, and dwells, and will as long as the saints are in this tabernacle, but of the deeds of the body, or of sinful actions, as to the life and conversation; and signifies a denial of them, an abstinence from them, and a non-performance of them; [See comments on Ro 8:13]. These members, or deeds of the body, or acts of sin, are called “your”: for as the old man is ours, the vitiosity of nature is what we bring into the world with us, and is rooted and incorporated into us; so the actions that flow from it, and are done by it, are not to be ascribed to God, nor even to Satan, but they are our own actions, and which are performed by the members of our mortal body, or by the faculties of our souls: and are,
which are on earth: or earthly; are concerned about earthly things, the things of the world, worldly lusts and pleasures, which rise out of earthly mindedness, and incline unto it, and are only what are done here on earth, and will have no place in heaven. The particulars of which follow:
fornication; the sin of uncleanness committed by single persons, or out of the state of marriage, and which the Gentiles did not account sinful: hence so much notice is taken of it, with a censure, and so often, by the apostle, in almost all his epistles, and dehorted from, as a sin against the body, as what disqualified for church communion, and was not to be named among the saints, who should be dead to that, and that to them, as to the commission of it.
Uncleanness; of every sort, all other impure actions, as adultery, incest, sodomy, and every other unnatural lust; all which should be abstained from, and never committed by those who profess to be alive unto God.
Inordinate affection; which may intend the passions, or first motions of sin, stirred up by the law, and which work in, and operate by the members of the body, and bring forth fruit unto death, and therefore to be opposed by such as have a life in Christ; and also those vile affections, which some in a judicial way are given up unto, and prevail with those who are effeminate, and abusers of themselves with mankind, and which are to be abhorred and denied by all who are heirs of the grace of life, and expectants of an heavenly one.
Evil concupiscence; so called to distinguish it from that natural concupiscence, or desire after things lawful and necessary, and which is implanted in nature by God himself; and from that spiritual concupiscence or desire after spiritual things, and that lusting against the flesh and carnal things, which is formed in the heart of a regenerate man by the Spirit of God. It is the same with , “the evil imagination”, or corruption of nature so much spoken of by the Jews. This here is what is forbidden by that law, “thou shalt not covet”, Ex 20:17; and includes every fleshly lust and inordinate desire, or every desire after that which is not lawful, or does not belong to a man; as what is another’s property, his wife, or goods, or anything that is his; and so very naturally follows,
covetousness; an immoderate love of money, the root of all evil, an insatiable desire of having more, and of having more than a man’s own; and is enlarged as hell, and as death is not satisfied, but still craves more, without making any good use of what is possessed:
which is idolatry. The covetous man, and the idolater, worship the same for matter and substance, even gold and silver; the covetous man lays up his money, makes no use of it, as if it was something sacred; he looks at it, and adores it, and puts his trust and confidence in it, and his heart is so much set upon it, that he neglects the worship of the true God; and indeed no man can serve God and mammon. Some think, that by this rendered “covetousness”, is meant, that greedy desire after the commission of all uncleanness, and impure actions, which were perpetrated by the followers of Simon Magus in their religious assemblies, and under the notion of worship, and as acceptable to God, and therefore called idolatry; and which ought not to be once named, much less practised, among the living members of Christ. Moreover, such filthy actions were performed by the Gentiles in the worship of their deities.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
| Necessity of Mortifying Sin. | A. D. 62. |
5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: 6 For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: 7 In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.
The apostle exhorts the Colossians to the mortification of sin, the great hindrance to seeking the things which are above. Since it is our duty to set our affections upon heavenly things, it is our duty to mortify our members which are upon the earth, and which naturally incline us to the things of the world: “Mortify them, that is, subdue the vicious habits of mind which prevailed in your Gentile state. Kill them, suppress them, as you do weeds or vermin which spread and destroy all about them, or as you kill an enemy who fights against you and wounds you.”–Your members which are upon the earth; either the members of the body, which are the earthly part of us, and were curiously wrought in the lower parts of the earth (Ps. cxxxix. 15), or the corrupt affections of the mind, which lead us to earthly things, the members of the body of death, Rom. vii. 24. He specifies,
I. The lusts of the flesh, for which they were before so very remarkable: Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence–the various workings of the carnal appetites and fleshly impurities, which they indulged in their former course of life, and which were so contrary to the Christian state and the heavenly hope.
II. The love of the world: And covetousness, which is idolatry; that is, an inordinate love of present good and outward enjoyments, which proceeds from too high a value in the mind, puts upon too eager a pursuit, hinders the proper use and enjoyment of them, and creates anxious fear and immoderate sorrow for the loss of them. Observe, Covetousness is spiritual idolatry: it is the giving of that love and regard to worldly wealth which are due to God only, and carries a greater degree of malignity in it, and is more highly provoking to God, than is commonly thought. And it is very observable that among all the instances of sin which good men are recorded in the scripture to have fallen into (and there is scarcely any but some or other, in one or other part of their life, have fallen into) there is no instance in all the scripture of any good man charged with covetousness. He proceeds to show how necessary it is to mortify sins, Col 3:6; Col 3:7. 1. Because, if we do not kill them, they will kill us: For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience, v. 6. See what we are all by nature more or less: we are children of disobedience: not only disobedient children, but under the power of sin and naturally prone to disobey. The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies, Ps. lviii. 3. And, being children of disobedience, we are children of wrath, Eph. ii. 3. The wrath of God comes upon all the children of disobedience. Those who do not obey the precepts of the law incur the penalties of it. The sins he mentions were their sins in their heathen and idolatrous state, and they were then especially the children of disobedience; and yet these sins brought judgments upon them, and exposed them to the wrath of God. 2. We should mortify these sins because they have lived in us: In which you also walked some time, when you lived in them, v. 7. Observe, The consideration that we have formerly lived in sin is a good argument why we should now forsake it. We have walked in by-paths, therefore let us walk in them no more. If I have done iniquity, I will do no more, Job xxxiv. 32. The time past our lives may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, 1 Pet. iv. 3.– When you lived among those who did such things (so some understand it), then you walked in those evil practices. It is a hard thing to live among those who do the works of darkness and not have fellowship with them, as it is to walk in the mire and contract no soil. Let us keep out of the way of evil-doers.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Mortify (). First aorist active imperative of , late verb, to put to death, to treat as dead. Latin Vulgate mortifico, but “mortify” is coming with us to mean putrify. Paul boldly applies the metaphor of death (Col 2:20; Col 3:3) pictured in baptism (2:12) to the actual life of the Christian. He is not to go to the other Gnostic extreme of license on the plea that the soul is not affected by the deeds of the body. Paul’s idea is that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1Co 6:19). He mentions some of these “members upon the earth” like fornication (), uncleanness (), passion (), evil desire ( ), covetousness () “the which is idolatry” ( ). See the longer list of the works of the flesh in Gal 5:19-21, though covetousness is not there named, but it is in Eph 4:19; Eph 5:5.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Mortify [] . Only here, Rom 4:19; Heb 11:12. Mortify is used in its literal sense of put to death.
So Erasmus : “Christ was mortified and killed.” And Shakespeare :
“- his wildness mortified in him, Seemed to die too.”
“I Henry v, 1, 26”
Members [] . See on Rom 6:13. The physical members, so far as they are employed in the service of sin. The word falls in with the allusions to bodily austerities in ch. 2.
Which are upon the earth. Compare ver. 2. The organs of the earthly and sensuous life.
Fornication, etc. In apposition with members, denoting the modes in which the members sinfully exert themselves.
Inordinate affection, evil concupiscence [, ] . See on Rom 1:26.
And covetousness [ ] . And has a climactic force; and especially; see on Rom 1:29.
Which is [ ] . The compound relative, explanatory and classifying. Seeing it stands in the category of. Compare Eph 5:5. Idolatry. See on 1Co 5:10.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
PROPER CHRISTIAN LIVING (or the Christian dress code) V. 5-17; 18-25)
1) “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth” (Nekrosate oun ta mele ta epi tes ‘ges) put ye to death therefore the (your) members on the earth,” to make flesh body members unfruitful, keep under control, gentry guard, to the Spirit or new nature, Gal 5:24; Rom 6:6; Rom 7:23; 1Co 9:27; Rom 8:13.
a) “Fornication” (porneian) “fornication” moral impurity of illicit inter-sex relations or such may refer also to infidelity to and forsaking the true God, Mat 5:32; 1Co 7:2; 2Co 12:11.
b) “Uncleanness” (akatharsian) “uncleanness” moral or physical uncleanness, filth, Rom 1:24; Rom 6:19; Eph 4:19; Eph 5:3; 1Th 2:3; 1Th 4:7.
c) ” Inordinate affection” (pathos) “passion” corrupt or perverted affections, corrupt, Eze 23:11.
d) “Evil concupiscence” (epithumian kaken) “bad desire,” of fleshly lusts, Rom 7:8; 1Th 4:5.
e) “And covetousness” (kai ten pleoneksian) “and the covetousness;” the impulse or affection of selfish desire for earthly, worldly things. Lust for riches and things they may buy is covetousness. Mat 6:24.
f) “Which is idolatry” (hetis estin eidololatria) which is or exists as idolatry;” Eph 5:5. Selfish craving for worldly things is here identified as idolatry, to be put away, avoided, disapproved by every child of God. Gal 5:20.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
5. Mortify therefore. Hitherto he has been speaking of contempt of the world. He now proceeds further, and enters upon a higher philosophy, as to the mortification of the flesh. That this may be the better understood, let us take notice that there is a twofold mortification. The former relates to those things that are around us. Of this he has hitherto treated. The other is inward — that of the understanding and will, and of the whole of our corrupt nature. He makes mention of certain vices which he calls, not with strict accuracy, but at the same time elegantly, members. For he conceives of our nature as being, as it were, a mass made up of different vices. They are, therefore, our members, inasmuch as they in a manner stick close to us. He calls them also earthly, alluding to what he had said — not the things that are on earth, (Col 3:2,) but in a different sense. “I have admonished you, that earthly things are to be disregarded: you must, however, make it your aim to mortify those vices which detain you on the earth.” He intimates, however, that we are earthly, so long as the vices of our flesh are vigorous in us, and that we are made heavenly by the renewing of the Spirit.
After fornication he adds uncleanness, by which term he expresses all kinds of wantonness, by which lascivious persons pollute themselves. To these is added, πάθος that is, lust, which includes all the allurements of unhallowed desire. This term, it is true, denotes mental perturbations of other kinds, and disorderly motions contrary to reason; but lust is not an unsuitable rendering of this passage. As to the reason why covetousness is here spoken of as a worshipping of images, (436) consult the Epistle to the Ephesians, that I may not say the same thing twice.
(436) “ Est appelee Idolatrie;” — “Is called Idolatry.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Col. 3:5. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.Quite so! the heretic teacher might say; this is just what we ourselves advise. Yes, rejoins the apostle; but let us know what it is we are to slaughter. It is no hewing and hacking of the body, but what is as much more difficult as it is noblethe excision or eradication of evil thoughts (Mat. 15:19-20). Inordinate affection, evil concupiscence.R.V. passion, evil desire. The former of these seems to indicate the corrupt conditions from which the latter springs. Covetousness, which is idolatry.Covetousness, or having more. There is many a man, beside the clown in Twelfth Night, who says, I would not have you to think my desire of having is the sin of covetousness. The full drag can afford to sacrifice (Hab. 1:16).
Col. 3:8. Anger, wrath.The former is the smouldering fire, the latter the fierce out-leaping flame. Malice, blasphemy.The former is the vicious disposition, the latter the manifestation of it in speech that is meant to inflict injury. Filthy communication.One word in the original; R.V. gives it as shameful speaking. The word does not occur again in the New Testament. It means scurrilous or obscene speech. A glimpse of Eastern life helps us to understand the frequent injunctions as to restraint of the tongue in the New Testament. Dr. Norman Macleod says: In vehemence of gesticulation, in genuine power of lip and lung to fill the air with a roar of incomprehensible exclamations, nothing on earth, so long as the body retains its present arrangement of muscles and nervous vitality, can surpass the Egyptians and their language. But the same thing is witnessed of other Eastern tongues.
Col. 3:9. Lie not one to another.Very elementary teaching, we should be inclined to say. Whether there was any special tendency to this vice in the Colossian converts we cannot know.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Col. 3:5-9
Mortification of the Sinful Principle in Man.
Practice follows doctrine. The genuineness of a precept is tested by its adaptability to the practical working out of lifes problem. The apostle has laid down his doctrine clearly and emphatically, and now he proceeds to enforce the use of the best methods for securing the highest degree of personal holiness. These methods are in perfect harmony with the exalted experience into which the believer is introduced when he is risen with Christ and participates in that glorious life which is hid with Christ in God.
I. That the sinful principle in man has an active outward development.
1. It is mundane in its tendencies. Your members which are upon the earth (Col. 3:5). It is earthly, sensual, depraved. It teaches the soul to grovel when it ought to soar. It is in sympathy with the whole mass of earthly thingsriches, honour, pleasure, famewhich stand opposed to the higher aspirations of the soul, whose affection is fixed on things above.
2. It is manifested in acts of gross sensuality.Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence (Col. 3:5). A revolting catalogue, a loathsome index to the festering mass of corruption within! A rakes progress has been portrayed by the genius of a Hogarth; but where is the pencil that can delineate the dark progress of evil? For there is an order observed in its abhorrent development. The mischief begins in evil concupiscence; yielding to the first unholy impulse, it goes on to lustful and inordinate affection; proceeds to uncleannesspollutions which follow on the two preceding vices; and ends in fornication, both in its ordinary meaning and in that of adultery. Possibly the apostle had reference to the rites of Bacchus and Cybele, which were wont to be celebrated with many peculiar impurities in Phrygia, of which Coloss, Laodicea, and Hierapolis were cities, and which so deeply depraved the morals of the people. The outgoings of evil are not less rampant and shocking in modern times. Evil is the same in principle everywhere.
3. It is recognised by a debasing idolatry.And covetousness, which is idolatry (Col. 3:5). Covetousness is a sin that comes the earliest into the human heart, and is the last and most difficult to be driven out. It is an insatiable lust after material possessionsthe greed of getting more for the sake of more, till often the brain is turned and the heart withered. The apostle brands it with the significant term idolatry. With the covetous man his idol is his gold, which, in his eyes, answereth all things; his soul is the shrine where the idol is set up; and the worship which he owes to God is transferred to mammon. Avarice is the seed of the most hateful and outrageous vices. The exhortation to mortify the flesh is pressed home by reminding them of the certainty of the divine wrath which would overtake the contumacious and disobedient.
II. That the active outgoings of the sinful principle in man call for the infliction of divine vengeance.The wrath of God is not a malignant, unreasoning passion, like that with which we are familiar among men. Nor is it a strong figure of speech, into which the maudlin philosophers of the day would fain resolve it. It is an awful reality. It is not merely a thing of the past, to the terrible havoc of which history bears faithful and suggestive testimony. It is the wrath to come, and will be revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. It is not inconsistent with infinite love, but is an impressive form in which the divine righteousness expresses itself against all disobedient and impenitent workers of iniquity.
III. That the indulgence of the sinful principle in man is inconsistent with the new life he has in Christ.There was a time when the sins here enumerated formed the atmosphere in which the Colossians lived, moved, and breathed; they represented the condition of their life and the character of their practice: they lived and walked in sin. But that time was past. A great change had taken place. They were surrounded by a purer atmosphere; they lived in another world; they aspired to a nobler destiny. To return to the vices and idolatries of their former life was utterly inconsistent with their exalted character; it was unworthy the high and holy vocation wherewith they were called. It is salutary to be reminded now and then of our former life of sin. It magnifies the grace of God in the great change He has wrought. It warns against the danger of being drawn into old habits and associations. It stimulates the heavenward tendencies of the new life.
IV. That the sinful principle in man is the source of the most malignant passions.The former classification embraced sins which related more especially to self; this includes sins which have a bearing upon others.
1. There are sins of the heart and temper.Anger, wrath, malice (Col. 3:8). There is an anger which is a righteous indignation against wrong, and which is so far justifiable and sinless. It is the anger without cause or beyond cause, and which degenerates into a bitter feeling of revenge, that is here condemned. Wrath is the fierce ebullition of anger, expressed with ungovernable passion; and is at all times unseemly and unlawful. Malice is anger long cherished, until it becomes a settled habit of mind. It involves hatred, secret envy, desire of revenge and retaliation, and universal ill-will towards others. It is altogether a diabolical passion. If anger exceeds its bounds, it becomes wrath; if wrath lies brooding in the bosom, it degenerates into malice.
2. There are sins of the tongue.Blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another (Col. 3:8-9). Blasphemy in a lower sense includes all calumny, evil-speaking, railing, slandering, scoffing, ridiculingall vile insinuations, whether against God or man. Filthy communication refers to all foul-mouthed abuse, indelicate allusions, details of vicious scenes, and whatever hurts the feelings and shocks the sense of propriety rather than injures the character. Lying is also here condemned. Wherever this vice prevails society is rotten to the core. The almost total want of truthfulness is one of the saddest features of the moral condition of heathendom. Lying basely violates the gift of speech, saps the foundation of human intercourse, and overturns the first principles of morals. That which is spoken in ignorance, though untrue, is not a lie; but to equivocate, to speak so as to lead another to a false conclusion, is to lie as really as if the speaker deliberately stated what he knew was a falsehood. All these sins are directly opposed to that ingenuous sincerity which is the leading characteristic of the new life in Christ.
V. That the sinful principle in man, and all its outgoings, must be wholly renounced and resolutely mortified.But now ye also put off all these (Col. 3:8). Mortify, therefore, your members (Col. 3:5). There is much force in the word therefore. Since ye are dead with Christ and are risen with Him, since ye possess a glorious life hid with Christ in God, therefore mortifyput to death the members of your earthly and corrupt nature, and encourage the expansion of that pure, beauteous, and exalted life which ye have received through the faith of the operation of God. Not that we are to kill or mutilate the members of the body that have been the instruments of sin, but to crucify the interior vices of the mind and will. It is wholly a moral process; the incipient inclination to sin must be restrained, deadened, crushed. In order to this there must be the total renunciation of all sin. But now ye also put off all these. The verb is imperative and the exhortation emphatic. There must be not only an abstinence from open viceheathen morality insists on as much as thisbut there must be the putting away of every secret evil passionremoving it out of sight as we would remove a dead body to burial. As the prince casts off the coarse garment in which he has been disguised, and stands forth in an apparel befitting his rank and dignity, so the believer is to divest himself of the unsightly and filthy garment of the old man, and allow the new man to appear adorned with heavenly magnificence and bright with the inextinguishable lustre of a divine spiritual life.
Lessons.
1. The sinful principle in man is a great power.
2. The new spiritual life in the believer is in ceaseless antagonism with the old.
3. The constant duty of the believer is to subdue and destroy the sinful principle.
4. In fulfilling this duty all the powers of good are on his side.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Col. 3:5. Covetousness, which is Idolatry.
I. In its essence.It is putting the creature in the place of the Creator, and giving it the worship due to God alone.
II. In its practice.Body and soul are consecrated to the service of mammon.
III. In its punishment.Idolatry is a sin peculiarly obnoxious to Godis not merely the breach of His law, but treason against His government. God deprives the covetous of his idol at last, and sends him treasureless into the unseen world, wrecked and ruined, to endure the wrath to come.Preachers Magazine.
Col. 3:6. The Wrath of God
I.
A reality to be dreaded.
II.
Is roused by the workings of iniquity.
III.
Will overtake the disobedient.
Col. 3:7-9. The New Life
I.
Must break thoroughly away from the old life of sin.
II.
Is evident in temper and speech.
III.
Is the interpretation of all that is pure and true.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
5. Put to death therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry; 6. for which things sake cometh the wrath of God upon the sons of disobedience:
Translation and Paraphrase
5. Put to death, therefore, the (sins done by your physical) members upon the earth. (Bring them into such complete control that it will be as if they were dead. These include such things as:) fornication, uncleanness (of mind and life), passionate desire, evil desire (for what is forbidden), and covetousness (the desire to have more and more), which is (a form of) idolatry.
6. On account of these (things) the wrath of God comes upon the sons who are disobedient.
Notes
1.
Col. 3:5-11 gives a list of some of the sins that we are to put to death. Paul declares that these sins are the work of the old man, our old nature that we had before we became Christians. This old man is contrasted with the new man.
The five vices Paul lists in Col. 3:5 involve the sinner as he is in himself. In Col. 3:8 he lists five more vices that involve the sinner in relation to other people.
2.
MORTIFY therefore your members which are upon the earth. (Col. 3:5, KJV). Mortify means to put to death, or give over to death. (The words mortify, mortuary, and mortal are all related words, referring to death in various ways.) The Greek verb (nekrosate) is in the aorist tense, a form indicating point action, rather than continuous action. When dealing with sins, the way to stop is to stop! Tapering off gradually does not get the job done. Putting sins to death can be done. It must be done. Now. (Gal. 5:24).
3.
Put to death your members. These members are identified as being certain sins that are done by the members of our bodies, by our minds, hands, eyes, etc. John Calvin said that our vices are here called members because they adhere so closely to us. (Mat. 5:29-30).
Perhaps a simpler explanation for their being called members is that they are called such by a figure of speech (a metonomy, the container standing for the contained objects). We sometimes use similar expressions: e.g. Ill have none of your lip.
4.
Though we put our members to death, this death is of such nature that they may revive, if a man walks in any other power than the Lords.
5.
We might wonder: How can we put to death our members when we have already died? (Col. 3:3). Both the scriptures and experience tell us that in this life our state as children of God does not always fully coincide with our condition in the flesh. Nonetheless, our intentions must always be that our fleshly members be dead to disobeying God.
6.
These are the five sins which Paul calls members:
(1) Fornication. This term refers to illegal sexual intercourse in general, both by those married and those unmarried. Act. 15:29; 1Co. 5:1; 1Co. 6:15; 1Co. 6:18; 1Co. 7:2.
(2) Uncleanness. In its moral meaning this refers to a state of mind that delights in immoral, lustful, luxurious, lawless things. Paul uses the word to refer to impure motives in 1Th. 2:3. Compare Rom. 1:24; Rom. 6:19; 2Co. 12:21; Gal. 5:19; Eph. 4:19; Eph. 5:3.
(3) Passion (KJV, inordinate affection; Gr. pathos). This word may refer to various feelings which the mind suffers; emotion; passion; passionate desire. Paul obviously uses it here in a bad sense, referring to depraved passions. Passion is a more specific term than evil desire (No. (4)). Passion is the ungovernable desire. It refers to desire for sexual perversion in Rom. 1:26-27.
(4) Evil desire (KJV, evil concupiscence; Gr. epithumia). The word desire by itself simply refers to yearning, or longing, and may be good or bad. Note the good meaning in 1Th. 2:17; Php. 1:23. In a bad sense it is desire for what is forbidden, or lust. (Rom. 7:7; Jas. 1:14; 1Pe. 1:14; Gal. 5:24). Evil desire seems to describe that type of life which is always desirous of things forbidden. This evil desire frequently rises to peaks of passion.
(5) Covetousness (Gr. pleonexia). Covetousness is greedy desire to have more. It is the constant desire for material things, and the feeling that material things make up real life. (Luk. 12:15).
Covetousness is rooted in selfishness and a mistrust of God. Its fruit is discontent, stealing, debt, and other such undesirables.
7.
Anything that normally occupies our minds and loyalties is a god to us. Covetousness is a constant desire for earthly things. Hence the things are a god to us, and the desire for them is a form of idolatry. It takes us from God, Eph. 5:2; Eph. 5:5.
8.
The sins which Paul mentionsfornication, covetousness, evil desire, etc.are practically unchecked by human laws, even the finest human laws. The thief will probably be punished, but the fornicator goes on his way almost unhindered. The law of Christ is therefore superior to human law, because it blocks evil at its source, in the heart.
9.
If Paul felt obliged to warn the Christians in Colossae about the sins of the flesh, how much more must the non-Christians have given themselves over to immortality and covetousness. These sins must have been rampant in Colossae.
10.
The wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, those who are guilty of fornication, evil desire, covetousness, etc. Sons of disobedience is an expression referring to those people who disobey God. The wrath of God is coming upon all such. Too little is said today about the wrath of God. Some people are opposed to teaching about the wrath of God, as if we had developed beyond this doctrine. We never shall.
Whether we like it or not, the wrath of God is coming upon all who disobey Him. (Joh. 3:36; Mat. 3:7; Eph. 5:6). The disobedient will drink the full cup of Gods wrath, undiluted. (Rev. 14:10). God has seven fearsome bowls (or vials) of wrath to pour out upon evildoers; in these is completed the wrath of God (Rev. 15:1-8; Rev. 16:1-21). Gods wrath is fierce. Rev. 19:15). Evil-doers will suffer frightening vengeance for their defiance of God the Almighty, and His son.
Study and Review
13.
Define the word mortify in King James version. (Col. 3:5)
14.
What are we to put to death? (Col. 3:5)
15.
What sins are called members which are upon the earth?
16.
To what does uncleanness refer?
17.
What is covetousness?
18.
Why is covetousness called idolatry?
19.
What comes upon those who do the sins listed in Col. 3:5? (Col. 3:6)
20.
Explain the phrase sons of disobedience.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(5) Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.The expression is doubly unique. It is the only passage where mortificationthe killing of anything in usis enjoined; and it is also notable, as not explicitly distinguishing between the members themselves, and the evil of which they are made the instruments. The sense is, of course, clear enough. It corresponds to the crucifying the flesh of Gal. 5:24; and the idea of evil, mostly expressed plainly in the word flesh, is here hinted in the phrase which are on the earth, that is, which are busied with earth and bind us down to the earthly life. The particular word members is perhaps suggested by our Lords command to cut off the right hand and pluck out the right eye if they cause us to offend (Mat. 5:29-30). But, as a rule, Scripture more clearly marks the distinction between the members and the law of sin in the members (Rom. 7:5; Rom. 7:23); and we are usually bidden not to kill our members, but to turn them from instruments of unrighteousness to be instruments of righteousness unto God (Rom. 6:13). The fact is that this passage contains only half the truth, corresponding to the death with Christ, and not the whole truth, including also the resurrection to the new life. Accordingly, as the next verse shows, the members to be mortified are actually identified with the vices of the old man residing in them.
Fornication, uncleanness . . . covetousness, which is idolatry.See Eph. 5:3, and Note there.
Inordinate affection, evil concupiscence.These words are not found in the parallel passage. The word rendered inordinate affection is the general word for passion (pathos). It is found united to concupiscence in 1Th. 4:5, the lust of concupiscence. Both words here are general words, denoting the condition of soul, of which fornication and covetousness are both exemplifications. This is the condition of unrestrained passion and desire, the former word implying a passive receptiveness of impression from without, the other the positive energy of desire to seek gratification. Comp. Gal. 5:24, the affections (passions) and lusts. Of such a temper Article IX. of the Church of England declares with singular accuracy, not that it is sin, but that it has in itself rationem peccati, that is, the initial principle of sin.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Col. 3:5-9 contain the negative section of St. Pauls practical appeal, drawing out the consequences of the death with Christ, in the mortification of all tendencies to impurity, malice, and falsehood. For these are the opposites to purity, love, and truththe three great attributes of God, and therefore the three chief graces of man.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
[5.
Practical Exhortation, General.
(1) NEGATIVE.To MORTIFY THE OLD MAN, by fleeing from
(a)
Uncleanness and lust (Col. 3:5-7);
(b)
Wrath and malice (Col. 3:8);
(c)
Falsehood (Col. 3:9).
(2) POSITIVE.To PUT ON THE NEW MAN, making Christ our all in all.
(a)
In love and peace, as shown in mercy, humility, patience, and forgiveness (Col. 3:10-15);
(b)
In thanksgiving (Col. 3:16);
(c)
In living to the glory of God (Col. 3:17);
(The whole of this section stands in close parallelism, frequently in verbal coincidence, with Eph. 4:20 to Eph. 6:9. There are, however, constantly emerging indications of independence of handling. Generally speaking, the Ephesian Epistle is fuller and deeper in treatment; and, moreover, it constantly brings out, in relation both to moral duty and to the observation of the relations of life, the great characteristic doctrine of the universal unity in Christ. This Epistle, on the other hand, is briefer and more incisive, and has only slight, though clear, indications of the idea so powerfully worked out in the other Epistle.)]
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
2. General Christian duties, Col 3:5-17.
a. Avoidance of evil conduct and sinful tempers, Col 3:5-11 .
5. Mortify Make dead. Let nothing live that is at war with a death to sin and a true life in Christ. Kill your bodily members, so far as their action is merely earthly and sinful. Some specimens of it in this direction follow. See notes on Rom 1:24 and Eph 5:5. These sins of impurity, which are connected with the animal nature, have their seat in the soul. Renounced by the will, they must be unpractised in fact, and the tendencies to them destroyed by the sanctifying Spirit.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Our Christian Walk is To Reflect Our Glorious Privilege ( Col 3:5 to Col 4:6 ).
1). The Man That We Were Has To Die ( Col 3:5-11
‘Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness which is idolatry, for the sake of which the wrath of God comes on the sons of disobedience.’
Because we have died and have been raised into things above, the heavenlies, that which we have, as it were, left on earth with its fleshly behaviour, must be put to death. It represents ‘the old man’ (Col 3:9) who is to be stripped off. For it is the behaviour of this old man that brings the wrath of God on those who indulge in such things, as they follow in the way of disobedience, and by coming to Christ for salvation we have consented to his death. So we will be foolish not to be rid of it. Indeed it will be the greatest of crimes.
Paul is picturing our bodies as containing two lives, one the natural life, the life of the flesh, and the other the spiritual life, the life of the Spirit (Rom 8:5). In Christ we with our spiritual lives are taken into the spiritual realm with Christ. The natural life is left behind ‘on the earth’, that is with no access to the spiritual realm. And so he says that by the Spirit we are to ‘put to death’, reckon as dead, that natural life with its deeds (Rom 8:13). We are to consign it to the grave and allow the spiritual, resurrected life to hold the reins and live through our bodies (Gal 5:16-18). We are so used to indulging the flesh that for some this is at first very hard. But as we become more aware of Him, and of our glorious position in Him, it will gradually take place, for He is at work within us to will and to do of His good pleasure (Php 2:13).
‘Therefore.’ For the very reason that you have died and have been raised with Christ and are to be presented with Him in glory.
‘Put to death your members which are on the earth.’ We are seen here metaphorically as having been taken in one aspect of our body (the new man – Php 2:10) into the heavenlies, the spiritual realm, and as having left one on earth (the old man – Php 2:9). When we were raised with Christ that part of us which indulged our sinful cravings, having died with Christ, was left behind on earth as dead, crucified with Christ (Gal 2:20), having no access to the spiritual realm. And we are now, having ‘died’, to put it effectively to death and bury it, to leave it behind. Its desires are to be given no attention, their voice is not to be heard, they are to be ignored, boycotted, treated as having died. Why? Because of what they produce.
‘Fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and especially covetousness which is idolatry.’ These failings constitute the make up of our fleshly members, for they are their fruit. They define the condition of our fleshly members. They cover every aspect of sexual misbehaviour (uncleanness) including sexual activity between a couple who are not married (fornication), passion and evil desire of any kind, whether greed, bad temper, wrongful anger, lack of self-control, and ‘especially covetousness’ (in the Greek this is distinctively separated off from the others), the desire and longing for what others have, which is described as idolatry, ‘worshipping’ such things rather than God because they, rather than He, are taking up their minds. For the Christian should be content with such things as he has (1Ti 6:6; 1Ti 6:8; Heb 13:5 compare Php 4:11), looking with joy to God. We are further warned in Ephesians that those who practise these things ‘have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God’ (Eph 5:5).
‘For the sake of which the wrath of God comes on the sons of disobedience.’ In Ephesians Paul is even more emphatic (Eph 5:6). People then, as now, had their excuses ready, so Paul says, ‘Let no man deceive you with empty words.’ We are very good at empty words when our lustful pleasures are in mind. But such things incur the wrath of God, not because He is against us enjoying life, but because in the end they bring misery and hurt on those affected by our actions. That is what concerns Him.
‘The wrath of God.’ The inevitable response of a holy God in judgment to sins which can only result in hurt and the destruction of what is good. ‘The sons of disobedience’. Those who behave as though disobedience were their father (there is good manuscript evidence which suggests that this last phrase was not in the original but was imported from Eph 5:6).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Putting Off the Old Man and Putting On the New.
v. 5. Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry;
v. 6. for which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience;
v. 7. in the which ye also walked some time when ye lived in them.
v. 8. But now ye also put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.
v. 9. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds,
v. 10. and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him;
v. 11. where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all and in all. The apostle here shows how the life of the believers in and with Christ should be manifested: Put to death, therefore, your members that are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, lustfulness, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. The apostle here speaks of the members of the body in its unregenerate state as servants and instruments of sin, bidding the Christians to put them to death in that capacity, by a single decisive act to terminate their functions in this respect. See Rom 6:13. Among the sins that are performed by the members of the body the apostle mentions especially such as were prevalent among the heathen in those days, sexual vices: fornication, when people that are not husband and wife cohabit as husband and wife; uncleanness, impurity, the being addicted to erotic thoughts and acts in one’s own mind and body; lustfulness, to desire the gratification of sexual desire outside of holy wedlock; evil lust, out of which all the other sins against the Sixth Commandment flow. With these sins was often associated that of covetousness, of devising ways and means for indulging in lustful passions. Monsters of covetousness have usually been also monsters of lust. But covetousness, which kills brotherly love and hardens the heart against the gentle working of God’s Holy Spirit, is, as St. Paul specifically states, idolatry, a gross transgression of the First Commandment, Mat 6:24. Faith cannot live in a heart which is devoted to Mammon, 1Ti 6:9-10. And the end is: On account of which things comes the wrath of God on the children of disobedience. All these things, all the sins which the apostle has mentioned, are under God’s judgment of condemnation; His righteousness and holiness demands the punishment of the transgressor by death, eternal death. There is, therefore, an alternative held before the Colossians: Either put to death the members that perform such deeds, or suffer eternal punishment on account of your transgressions. All the children of disobedience that refuse to heed the gentle call, the warning admonition of the Lord, are under the wrath of God, which will eventually overtake and condemn them.
The apostle now places the Colossian Christians in direct contrast to the children of unbelief and disobedience: in which also you formerly led your lives when you lived in these. The moral conduct of all men by nature is subject to the censure and condemnation of God. The Colossian Christians also, before their conversion, had been habitual transgressors with reference to the one or the other, or to all the vices named above. They had been living in these vices; they represented the sphere of their conduct, the state in which any one could find them. See Rom 7:5; Eph 2:2.
The contrast between the converted and unconverted state is stressed still more: But now do you also put away all of them: anger, rage, malignity, slander, abusive speech out of your mouth. The life of heathendom, of disobedience and unbelief, lies behind the Colossian Christians, and yet the apostle addresses this urgent admonition to them, since by reason of the Christian’s evil nature the tendency, the proclivity, toward all these sins is found also in their hearts. A Christian’s entire life is a battle against the efforts of the old Adam to regain supremacy in his heart. Only a few of the most flagrant offenses are named: anger, the settled, continued condition of extreme displeasure against one’s neighbor, which is so apt to culminate in hatred; indignation or rage, the sudden and passionate outburst which, in a way, is worse than is low anger, since the enraged person loses all control over himself; malignity, the feeling which causes a person to make a habit of injuring his neighbor; slander, by which the neighbor’s good name is dragged into the mire; abusive talk and language which reveal the malice of the heart. Even as the finest garden will be ruined quickly if the weeds are permitted to gain a foothold, so the Christian community life, in home and congregation, will soon be utterly spoiled if these sins gain a foothold. And one more sin the apostle adds to the transgressions of the mouth which he has enumerated: Lie not to one another. For Christians to belie one another, deliberately to pervert the truth in order to work harm to their neighbor, is the very opposite of their calling, it cannot be reconciled with the life in and with Christ of which they have become partakers. To lie is characteristic of the devil’s domain, Joh 8:44.
The apostle now brings the motive for proper Christian conduct from another point of view: Seeing you have put off the old man with his practices, and have put on the new man that is being renewed toward knowledge, according to the image of Him that created him. When they were converted, the Christians put off the old man, the old sinful nature, like an old, filthy garment. This putting off, this laying aside, included also that of the evil deeds and practices in which the old evil nature of man delights, the denying of the flesh with all its affections and lusts. See Rom 8:13; Gal 5:24. This was a single process, it took place in regeneration; but it is also a continued process, for the evil thoughts and desires in the heart, murders, adulteries, fornications, false witness, blasphemies, are always seeking to overcome the resistance of the Christian and to plunge him again into the filth of the children of disobedience. The believer, therefore, will at the same time put on the new man, the nature which is created by God, a product of His grace, consisting in righteousness and holiness in truth, Eph 4:24. This new man, this new, spiritual nature of the Christian, is continually being renewed. So long as we live in the flesh, so long must this process go on without ceasing; we must be renewed in knowledge and unto knowledge. We must grow in the knowledge of God’s Word and will, after the image of God, who wrought the new nature in us in conversion. We are not only to be restored to the image of God which Adam possessed, but we shall eventually know and see our heavenly Father face to face, in everlasting glory and majesty. The more we Christians, by daily, prayerful study, penetrate into the wonderful Gospel-message, the more we understand the wonderful depth of love which was revealed in Jesus Christ, the more the image of God is impressed upon our soul, until finally, in the light of the eternal glory, we shall know Him even as we are known, 1Co 13:12.
In this respect, so far as this renewal unto the perfect knowledge is concerned, the fact stands out: Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, freeman, but all and in all Christ. See Gal 3:28. Wherever there are Christians, wherever the new man is created, all these distinctions vanish. Whether a person be a Greek, a person versed in all the wisdom of this present world, a member of the most advanced and enlightened nation of the world, or a Jew, priding himself upon his descent from Abraham and upon certain outward advantages which his nation enjoyed; whether a person is circumcised or uncircumcised: whether a person is a barbarian or even a Scythian, the most extreme example of lack of civilization and culture; whether a person is a slave and subject to an earthly master, or free and his own master before the earthly law, all these factors have no influence with reference to the power of God in the Gospel and with regard to the standing of the individual Christians before God. There is no difference: all are sinners before the righteous and holy God, all are in need of redemption, for them all Christ died on the cross, for them all He obtained a perfect reconciliation, and so all Christians are in a state of absolute equality before God. And Christ is all and in all. The fullness of all blessings is found in Him, and this fullness He transmits, He gives to His members, to the believers, Eph 1:23. In the Church, as the vessel filled with the fullness of Christ’s grace and mercy and with all the gifts which they include, the great union is brought about, by virtue of which all man-made distinctions are abrogated and perfect love and harmony in Him results. “Christ is the aggregation of all things, distinctions, prerogatives, blessings, and, moreover, is in all, dwelling in all, and SO uniting all in the common element of Himself.”
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Col 3:5. St. Paul, having concluded the principal design of his writing, comes now, according to his usual manner, to give the Colossians some rules and directions for their Christian behaviour and conversation. These rules are of four kinds: First, such as concerned themselves personally, and their own purity in abstaining from sensual lusts, Col 3:5-7.Secondly, such as concerned them as Christians in society, and were to be observed by them with regard to, and in conversing with each other, Col 3:8-17. Thirdly, the duties resulting from the several relations that men stand in to each other, Col 3:18ch. Col 4:1. Fourthly, such as had respect to their enemies, among whom they lived, ch. Col 4:2-6. Instead of covetousness, the English expositors in general, after Mr. Locke, render the word , insatiable desire, or licentious intemperance. See Eph 4:19.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Col 3:5 . [142] ] draws the inference from Col 3:3-4 , in order now to lead to that which must be done with a view to the carrying out of the . . The inference itself is: “Since, according to Col 3:3-4 , ye are dead, but have your life hidden with Christ in God and are destined to be glorified with Christ, it would be in contradiction of all this, according to which ye belong no longer to the earth but to the heavenly state of life, to permit your earthly members still to live; no, ye are to put them to death , to make them die” (Rom 4:19 ; Heb 11:12 ; Plut. Mor . p. 954 D)!
] prefixed with emphasis as the point of the inference; the term is selected in significant reference to and , Col 3:3-4 .
] means nothing else, and is not to be explained otherwise than: your members (hand, foot, eye, etc.). That these were not to be put to death in the physical sense, but in an ethical respect (comp. Col 2:11 ) seeing, namely, that they, as the seat and organs of sinful lusts (Rom 7:23 ), which they still are even in the case of the regenerate (Gal 5:17 ; Gal 5:24 ), are to lose their vigour of life and activity through the Christian moral will governed by the Holy Spirit, and in so far to experience ethical deadening (comp. Rom 7:5 ; Rom 7:23 ; Rom 8:13 , and the analogous representation by Jesus as to plucking out the eye, etc., Mat 5:29 f., Mat 18:8 f.; comp. also Mat 19:12 ) was self-evident to the reader, as it was, moreover, placed beyond doubt by the following appositions . . . Hence there was neither ground nor warrant in the context to assume already here (see Col 3:9 ) the conception of the old man , whose desires are regarded as members (Beza, Flacius, Calvin, Estius, Cornelius a Lapide, Calovius, and others, including Bhmer, Olshausen, and Bleek), although the required putting to death presupposes that the old man is still partially alive. Nor is sin itself , according to its totality, to be thought of as body and its individual parts as members (Hilary, Grotius, Bengel, Bhr, and others; comp. also Julius Mller, v. d. Snde , I. p. 461, Exo 5 , and Flatt), a conception which does not obtain even in Col 2:11 and Rom 6:6 , and which is inadmissible here on account of . The view of Steiger, finally, is erroneous (comp. Baumgarten-Crusius), that the entire human existence is conceived as . We may add that the of the members, etc., is not inconsistent with the death ( , Col 3:3 ) already accomplished through conversion to Christ, but is required by the latter as the necessary, ever new act of the corresponding morality, with which faith lives and works. [143] And in view of the ideal character of this obligation the command . . . this requirement, which is ever repeating itself, of the ethical mortificatio is never superfluous.
] which are upon the earth , corresponds to the . . in Col 3:2 ; in contrast, not to the glorified human nature of Christ (Hofmann, Schriftbeweis , I. p. 560), but to the life hidden with Christ in God . In this antithetical addition is involved an element which justifies the requirement . . ., not expressing the activity of the for what is sinful (de Wette, comp. Flatt and others, in connection with which Grotius would even supply from Col 3:2 ), which the simple words do not affirm, but: that the , as existing upon earth, have nothing in common with the life which exists in heaven, that their life is of another kind and must not be spared to the prejudice of that heavenly ! Comp. also Hofmann’s present view. The context does not even yield a contrast of heavenly members (Huther), i.e . of a life of activity for what is heavenly pervading the members, or of the members of the new man (Julius Mller), since the is not to be understood in the sense of the spiritual , ethical life.
. . .] Since Paul would not have the members slain as such absolutely and unreservedly, but only as regards their ethical side, namely, the sinful nature which dwells and works in them (Rom 7:23 ), he now subjoins detailed instances of this sinful nature, and that with a bold but not readily misunderstood directness of expression appositionally , so that they appear as the forms of immorality cleaving to the members, with respect to which the very members are to be put to death. In these forms of immorality, which constitute no such heterogeneous apposition to . as Holtzmann thinks, the life of the , which is to be put to death, is represented by its parts . Paul might have said: ; but by annexing it directly, he gave to his expression the form of a distributive apposition (see Khner, II. 1, p. 247), more terse and more compact after the . It is neither a sudden leap of thought nor a metonymy.
.] in reference to lustful uncleanness; comp. on Rom 1:24 ; Gal 5:19 ; 2Co 12:21 ; Eph 4:19 ; Eph 5:3 . Paul gives, namely, from . to , four forms of the first Gentile fundamental vice, unchastity , beginning with the special ( ), and becoming more and more general as he proceeds. Hence follows: , passion (the , Plat. Prot . p. 352 A; Dem. 805. 14; Arist. Eth . ii. 4), heat; Rom 1:26 ; 1Th 4:5 ; and Lnemann in loc . Comp. also Plat. Phaed . p. 265 B: , Phaedr . p. 252 C. And finally: . ( Plat. Legg . ix. p. 854 A), evil desire , referring to unchaste longing. Comp. Mat 5:28 ; Breitenbach, ad Xen. Hier . 6. 2. Unnatural unchastity (Rom 1:26 f.; 1Co 6:9 ) is included in ., ., and . ., but is not expressly denoted (Erasmus, Calovius, Heinrichs, Flatt, Bhmer) by (comp pathici , Catullus, xvi. 2; , Nicarch. in Anth . xi. 73), a meaning which neither admits of linguistic proof, nor is, considering the general character of the adjoining terms ( . . .), in keeping with the context. . . is to be distinguished from as the more general conception; the is always also and relatively . , but not the converse, since a or may also take place.
. ] After the vice of uncleanness comes now the second chief vice of the Gentiles (comp. on Eph 4:19 ): covetousness . Hence the connection here by means of , which is not even , but (in opposition to Hofmann) the simple and , and the article , which introduces the new category with the description of its disgraceful character, [144] associating this descriptive character as a special stigma with the vice of . In opposition to the erroneous interpretations: insatiable lust (Estius, Michaelis), or: the gains of prostitution (Storr, Flatt, Bhr), see on Eph. l.c ., and Huther. The is not separated by the article from the appositional definitions of the , and co-ordinated with , so that the latter would only be “the members which minister to unchaste lust” (Huther); for . can only denote the members generally, the collective members; and (Rom 7:5 ; Rom 7:23 ) understood generically, and not as referring to particular individual members, sin is operating with all its lusts, as, in accordance with this ethical mode of viewing the matter, the collective members form the of Col 2:11 . Bengel remarks aptly that the article indicates totum genus vitii a genere commemoratarum modo specierum diversum .
.] quippe quae est , etc., further supports the specially in reference to this vice, which, as the idolatry of money and possessions, is of a heathen nature. It has been well said by Theodoret: , , . In 1Co 5:11 , the . is to be taken differently (in opposition to Holtzmann). Moreover, see on Eph 5:5 . Observe, further, that the addition of the to unchastity (comp. 1Co 5:11 ) can afford no ground for supposing that the author of the Ephesians borrowed this combination from 1Th 2:3 , and that it was taken into our present Epistle from that to the Ephesians (Holtzmann). Comp. also 1Co 6:9 f.
[142] In the section vv. 5 17, in which Hnig, in relation to Eph 4:1-5 ; Eph 4:20 , finds the stamp of originality, Holtzmann discovers the concentrating labour of the interpolator, whose second (and better) effort is the passage in Colossians.
[143] Chrysostom illustrates the relation by comparing the converted person to a cleansed and brightened statue, which, however, needs to be afterwards cleansed afresh from new accretions of rust and dirt.
[144] Looking to the so closely marked twofold division of the vices adduced, it is inconsistent with the text to take, with Hofmann, the three elements, ., , and . ., in such a general sense as to make mean every “action which mars the creaturely honour (?) of man,” , the passion which enslaves through excitement of the blood, and , all evil desire, which is, as such, a morbid excitement of the blood. The excitement of the blood, thus sanguinely enough invented without any hint whatever from the text, is then held to convert the second and third elements into cases in which one sins against his own body, a characteristic point, which Paul has not in view at all in connection with the apposition to . . ., as is plain from the appended . . belonging to the same apposition.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
2. General exhortations
Col 3:5-17
a) Exhortation to put off the old fleshly nature
(Col 3:5-11.)
5Mortify therefore your4 members which are upon the earth: fornication, unclean-ness, inordinate affection [lustfulness],5 evil concupiscence [or shameful desire],6 and covetousness, which is idolatry: 6For which things7 sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:8 7In the which [Among whom]9 ye also walked sometime 8[once], when ye lived [imperfect, were living] in them. But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy [evil speaking],10 filthy [abusive]11 communication out of your mouth. 9Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; 10And have put on the new man, which is renewed [is being renewed]12 in [unto, ] knowledge [,] after the image of him that created him: 11Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor [ omit nor]13 free: but Christ is all, and in all.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The first exhortation concerning the relation to the pleasures and possessions of earth. Col 3:5-7.
Col 3:5. Mortify therefore your members, which are upon the earth.Mortify therefore is joined to Col 3:1-4, containing an inference from were raised together (Col 3:1) and died (Col 3:3). Their being dead has as its result a new life, in which a making dead () is possible and necessary. The verb (only here and Rom 4:19; Heb 11:12) is reddere , i. e, cadaver omnibus viribus privatum (), stronger than (Rom 8:13). See Tittmann, Syn. I. p. 168. [The aorist denotes a definite act, which Ellicott thus expresses: kill at once; Alford: put to death.R.] After the Christian died (Col 3:3), he has as quickened (Col 3:1), with the newly gained vital power, to kill the members which are upon the earth. This expression corresponds with the context, and refers in its sense to putting off the body of the flesh (Col 2:11). There the whole organism was brought into view, here the individual members; there of the flesh describes what here, in accordance with Col 3:3, is described by which are upon the earth (Bengel: where is found the sustenance of those members, of which collectively the body of sin consists). Because they are fleshly, there is a motive for putting them to death. This must be understood in an ethical, not a physical sense (Huther, Unger and others), not of the Church members as the vital activities of the body of the Church (Schenkel); for the Christian is not required to mutilate his body, nor are members or masses of members who are on the earth, organs of the Church and its activity, since it is a creation of God; the words might be applied to Christians, who are worldly minded, but, as regards these, , putting to death, is a duty only in the view of fanatics.
[Ellicott thus aptly paraphrases: As you died, and your true life is hidden with Christ, and hereafter to be developed in glory, act conformably to itlet nothing live inimical to such a state, kill at once the organs and media of a merely earthly life. Put to death the portions of your body, which are the instruments of sin, as respects the sphere (on the earth) of these sinful activities, and the actions and desires below specified: a duty very different from and more difficult than asceticism, or obedience to the commandments of men (Col 2:21-22).R.]
The substantives, which follow in appositional relation to members, show more specifically what is meant: fornication, uncleanness, lustfulness, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.Bengel: these (, members) are enumerated. There is no metonymy here (De Wette), nor are these the ethical ingredients inhering in the members (Meyer, Winers Gram. p. 494). On the first two and the last substantives, see on Eph 5:3. Lustfulness () [not limited to unnatural lust, as Rom 1:26.R.] and evil concupiscence ( ) are to be referred, according to the context, to sexual sin; the former denoting rather the formal eagerness, the latter the intrinsic unworthiness, determined by the object; the former is always the latter also, but not vice versa (1Th 4:5 : in the lust of concupiscence, ). [The latter being more general.R.] The category introduced by fornication, on account of its manifold and frequent manifestations (Gal 5:19), is prominently set forth in detail; unnatural uncleanness is included in the last two substantives, but not specially described (Erasmus and others).
By the side of fornication thus specified, the Apostle puts covetousness as a second category, indicated by the article. Bengel: articulus facit ad epitasin et totum genus vitii a genere enumeratarum modo specierum diversum complectitur. He gives prominence to this by means of the relative clause, which characterizes it and gives a motive for mortifying it. Which (quippe qu, which indeed; Winers Gram. pp. III, 157). See on Eph 5:5. It is incorrect to apply it to insatiable voluptuousness (Estius and others) or to gains from lust (Baehr and others). [Braune in the parallel passage extends the application of the relative clause to all the preceding forms of sin, which application is grammatically inadmissible here, though allowable there. , covetousness, is marked by the article as the notorious form of sin, not merely introduced thus as forming a new category; for while it is another form of sin, there is an intimate connection in point of fact, monsters of covetousness have been also monsters of lust. Covetousness has as its primary objectwealthbut there is no objection to expanding its meaning here, as Trench does. He intimates that the Greek Fathers use this word to designate both the sins of impurity and avarice, even as the root out of which they alike grow; namely, the fierce and ever fiercer longing of the creature which has turned from God, to fill itself with the inferior objects of sense is one and the same. Syn. N. T. 24. This is idolatry. It is worthy of notice too that idolatry and lust are connected historically, as well as in the O. T. passim.R.]
Col 3:6. For which things sake the wrath of God Cometh.Thus he adds a motive for the necessity of the exhortation, mortify: you must either kill or be killed. The relative refers to the sins mentioned above,14 on account of which the wrath of God Cometh. See on Eph 5:6. [Also for notes upon: on the children of disobedience, which Braune rejects here.R.] The absence of on the children of disobedience denotes a reference to Gods judgment on earth, under which the saints also suffer. The expression, which is to be distinguished from the day of wrath (Rom 2:5), and the context which is to be distinguished from 1Th 1:10, the wrath to come, does not refer to the future judgment (Meyer, Bleek and others). [Ellicott, following Theophilus, refers it to punishment here and hereafter. There is this strong objection to Braunes view, that the New Testament does not represent the wrath of God as coming in any sense upon the saints. If the longer reading be adopted, his remark is also grammatically incorrect. Whatever interpretation be put upon , the following verse excludes the Colossian Christians from the threatened wrath.R.]
Col 3:7. Among whom ye also once walked.If on the children of disobedience be retained, the relative must be joined to that antecedent; otherwise it refers as to the enumerated sins. Once walked denotes their conduct in different relations. See on Eph 2:2.When ye were living in them.[That is, in these sins, as the sphere of life. There is no tautology if the personal reference of the last clause be adopted.R.] The verb, in emphatic position, marks the internal life with undisturbed gratification, while walk denotes the manifestations of it in thought, word and deed; the imperfect (were living) refers to a continued state, the aorist (walked) to the individual acts, corresponding thus with the meaning of the verbs. Their sinful walk was conditioned by their sinful nature, not merely by habit and circumstance. Bengel: Vivebatis tanquam in veslro principio, origins, elemento (Gal 5:25). Hence and refer to the same antecedent. This is not tautological (Meyer) but emphatic: the first is not merely walking in heathenism, and the other a vicious life (Schenkel); the former is rather the act and the latter the power of sin (Calvin) or the one energy, , the other habit of nature (Estius).[It is obvious how much is gained in the exegesis of this verse, by retaining on the children of disobedience. It then means: Among which children of disobedience ye also walked, when ye wore living in these sins. Surely with preponderant uncial authority, this exegetical advantage should decide in favor of retaining it, instead of being used to support the omission as lectio difficilior.R.]
The second exhortation concerning their social relations to each other. Col 3:8-11.
Col 3:8. But now ye also put off all these.But now (), in contrast with once, (, ), is the present Christian state, which begins with conversion. Hence put off corresponds with mortify (Col 3:5), or put away from you (Eph 4:31), and ye also puts the readers here beside other Christians, as in Col 3:7 by other heathen. All these () refers to what follows (Winers Gram. p. 102); not to all those (Col 3:5) and these also which follow (Meyer, Schenkel). [Ellicott, Alford follow Meyer, but Braunes view is more strictly grammatical. Eadie unfortunately makes the verb indicative instead of imperative.R.]Anger, wrath, malice, evil-speaking, abusive communication out of your mouth.See on Eph 4:31. The last substantive is wanting there, but corresponds to (Eph 5:4). It describes shameful speech in-general, which, according to the context injures the neighbor, who hears it or of whom it is spoken, as evil speaking (). It is not to be applied to lewd speaking (Huther and others), at least not exclusively, though it may include it. The first three substantives form a climax, describing the internal condition, from perceptible excitement to passionateness which is its basis, then to deep-seated malicious nature; the other two refer to speech, hence to both is significantly added: out of your mouth. It might be joined with put off, but without any reference to the first three, since it would not be enough that among Christians these never found expression in words (Schenkel); they should not be found at all.
Col 3:9. Lie not one to another.See Eph 4:25. denotes the direction: belie not one another. [The practice is thus stamped as a social wrong (Ellicott). Michaelis observes that it is only in this Epistle and that to the Ephesians, that the Apostle warns his readers against lying (Barnes).R.] The aorist participles which follow (Col 3:9 b11) give a motive for the injunction in Col 3:8-9 a.Seeing that ye have put off the old man.[The E. V. thus admirably expresses the force of the aorist participle .R.] The aorist requires this as the Apostles view: first, the experienced death and rising, then the active mortification of the members, first the experienced putting off the old man and putting on the new, then the active removal of what is contrary thereto, here a motive, drawn from what has preceded, is pre-supposed. Hence the Vulgate: exspoliantes, and Bengel: putting off, as if it were contemporaneous, are incorrect; Luther also: put off, as though it were an injunction. The verb is to be taken according to the parallel expression (Eph 4:22 : ) like the substantive Col 2:11, and its object as in Eph 4:22. The old man, the sinful nature as it is before conversion and regeneration is to be laid off as a garment that has become useless, with all its peculiarities, hence: with his deeds.Here is the stringent conclusion that what was detailed above must of course be put away. Comp. Rom 8:13; Gal 5:24 : the flesh with the affections () and lusts.
Col 3:10. And have put on the new man.The putting off and on, connected by , are to be regarded as contemporaneous, according to the principle: natura et gratia non patiuntur vacuum (nature and grace do not tolerate a vacuum); only in the domain of grace in distinction from the physical, the initiative is with the new man and in virtue of the divine power creating him. In contrast with , old, we have in Eph 4:24, , new, as not yet present, here ; being therefore old, superannuated, senile; both are found in Eph 4:23-24 [) and here in the adjective and added participle. The motive drawn from , recent, young, as it were [newly entered and fresh state. Ellicott.R.], lies in the danger prepared by the false teachers for Christians, who had been just now or not long converted.
The condition of the new man and his immediate task is more closely defined: which is being renewed, .The present participle denotes what is to go on in the present. The context requires the middle sense to denote the self-exertion, the active life. The new man is not anything complete at once, but in a state of vital growth, of further development, and that by the Holy Spirit (Tit 3:5). [This seems to contradict the last opinion that the participle is middle. Alford, Ellicott, Wordsworth all regard it as passive. The latter naturally suggests: the new man was born in you at your regeneration in baptism, but needs the daily renewal of the Holy Ghost. Omit in baptism, and the explanation will be generally received as correct. The passive or middle interpretation will be adopted as the stress is laid upon the divine or human side of the progressive work of sanctification, and yet as the Apostle is speaking of the new man, of our becoming holy, which lies back of active holiness, the passive is to be preferred. The new man is being renewed, rather than renewing himself.R.] Comp. 2Co 4:16. The preposition marks the further, upward, onward striving, which is then more closely defined:
Unto knowledge, after the image of him that created him.Unto knowledge denotes the end, after the image of Him that created him, the norm. According to Col 2:2; Col 1:9, knowledge is not further characterized as a knowledge corresponding to the image of the Creator, for by thus regarding both clauses as one (Hoffmann, Meyer), no natural sense is given. In this knowledge, which cannot be supplied by worldly wisdom, the new man must grow according to the image of his Creator, God; this image is Christ, since the Christian is a new creature (2Co 5:17). There is an unmistakable allusion and reference to the first creation (Gen 1:26-27). The second new creation is not to be separated from the first, the Christian is the genuine man, Christianity is true, God-willed humanity. [The latter clause is to be joined with being renewed (Alford, Ellicott). The final word him refers to the new man. The passage means more than the restoration of the image of God lost by Adam. It is certain that the image of God, in which Christs Spirit re-creates us, will be as much more glorious than that, as the second man is more glorious than the first (Alford). So Eadie in loco. Compare Eph 4:24.R.]
Col 3:11. Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond, free.Where refers to the region of the new creation in Christ, in contrast with the domain of creation without Christ; in the latter there is division, contrariety and discord; in the former union, fraternity. Just as in the parallel passage (Eph 4:25 : for we are members one of another), this fellowship of the regenerate, the converted, requires truth and friendship among each other. It is incorrect to join where, as =qua in se, to the yet remote knowledge alone, finding here its object now brought in (Schenkel). means, as in Homer: there is there, therein; denies division as respects nationality (Greek and Jew),15 as respects religion (circumcision and uncircumcision), culture (Barbarian, Scythian), social status (bond, free). It is worthy of note, that, in nationality, the Greek who ruled in language is put before the Roman who held empire; in religion, Israel honored with revelation takes precedence; in culture, the step is from the uncultivated to the extreme savage (Bengel: Scythians, more barbarous than the Barbarians; ), as in Rom 1:14, the polished Greek not being again mentioned, while the summary is indicated by the omission of the conjunction; in the social category, the slave stands before the freeman to note the receptivity of the insignificant, and the exalting power of the gospel. Comp. Gal 3:28. [Langes Com. pp. 88, 91.R.]
But Christ is all and in all.But presents the contrast to the condition in the region of the natural life; hence within the Church there is not difference, divisions; in spite of the distinctions, there is no schism there, but union, concord on the ground of unity; in all these four directions (), and in all the individual persons, the Christians (in all, ) is the same (), who alone occupies the whole, as the saying is, between stem and stern, and is both beginning and end (Calvin). Comp. 1Co 15:28; Gal 6:15. Bengel: Scythian is not Scythian, but Christs; Barbarian is not Barbarian, but Christs. Christ is all things, and that in all who believe. In Christ are new creatures. [Meyer: The subject is placed at the end, for the greatest emphasis, He, the all determining principle of the new life and activity ( ) in all his believers ( ), forms the higher unity, in which all those old divisions and antitheses become without significance and as if no longer existing. Ellicott: Christ is the aggregation of all things, distinctions, prerogatives, blessings, and moreover is in all, dwelling in all, and so uniting all in the common element of Himself.R.]
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Christian Exhortation. All truly Christian exhortation to a moral life, internal and external alike, is directed mainly towards the right use of salvation as already possessed, towards its preservation in given circumstances, and the maintenance of conduct which meets the conditions of the rightly adjusted relations of the Christian. What is accepted and received as a germ through faith in the mercy of God in Christ, must be held fast, ever more vitally appropriated, nourished and developed practically in every direction. The regenerated believer, with the powers imparted to him by God, must now so work, that his action and conduct are as much his consenting, as Gods continued action. Christ for us becomes Christ in us, and Christ before us becomes Christ through us.
2. The world in and about the Christian. With respect to its pleasure, sensual, especially sexual pleasure, he must strive after purity; with respect to its possessions, after contentment, in order not to fall away from God and under His wrath. [For the sin of sensuality is not only intimately connected with that of covetousness, but both are essentially idolatrous. Those without God (Eph 2:12) are in the world, and the worlds pleasures and possessions are put by them in the place of God.R.]
3. Towards his neighbor, especially the brethren, there must be friendliness in disposition, word and truth.
4. All sin must be repelled. All that is opposed to what is required, both in its various shades from coarser to finer and finest, and in its different manifestations in act, word, thought, perception, from external to internal and inmost, must be contended against and repelled. Only what is sinful, yet all that is sinful, is contrary to Christianity and Christian character.
5. Christ the point of unity. Upon the absolute dignity of Christ and His central position toward the world (Col 1:17 : in Him all things subsist), which points to His Divine Fulness (Col 1:19; Col 2:9), to Him as the image of the Creator, rests the fact that He is the absolute point of unity, the central and terminal point for men. What He is for the macrocosm He is also for the microcosm; He is the Second Adam, a quickening spirit (1Co 15:45). Hence the requirement to become a Christian and be a Christian must be deemed absolute for every man. Union with Christ is absolutely right, but it alone; contrasted with it all diversities as to nationality, confession, culture and station (Col 3:11) are only relatively right; this they are, in so far as that absolute right remains unimpaired. Cosmopolitism in political and social life, union in denominational life are fruitless, or stunted products of the natural man working within the Church, when and where they do not recognize and maintain union with Christ, established above all unions. This is then the rule: one with Christ, united with one another. By this every Christian, that is every evangelical Christian, and every age, such as that of the Reformation, must be tested. [By it too must be tested many human organizations, which aim at uniting selfish men so as to contribute to the common good. Many social and political problems remain to be solved, but social science has not always remembered that the putting on of the new man alone brings man where there is neither Greek nor Jewbond nor free, but Christ all and in all.R.] Compare the notes on Eph 4:22 sq.; Eph 5:25; Eph 5:5-6.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
With every sin look at its concealed beginning in the heart, and its public issue in the judgment of God, who regards the heart.Be not content with strength enough to prevent the sin of the heart from breaking out unto word and work. Be so ashamed of the past, that the present may not be as it was, and the future become far worse.As a rule lying to others is closely connected with lying about others.
Starke:Improvement of the sinful life is as difficult for the flesh, as if the man should go to his death; for he is as much in love with fleshly lusts, as if this were his life. One of the chiefest members of the old man is the lust of the flesh; this secret poison hides in all. Though this fire be at once quenched in believers, yet, if they do not take care, the ever-glowing cinders may easily and quickly burst into a flame again. 2Sa 11:2 sq.Covetousness breaks not only the eighth and tenth commandments of the second table, but the first and second of the other also; hence the covetous are idolaters too.Old rags we throw away; sin, which makes us so old and deformed and ugly before God, the Christian must so put away, that he not only restrains its outbreak, but also exhausts the spring itself, draining it more and more, even if he does not dry it up entirely.[What a mark of our great corruption, that the tongue, which should be the means of doing our neighbor good, is so often the instrument to injure him.R.]The state of the regenerate is a putting off the old and a putting on the new man. Hence in a believer there are as it were, two men or a double nature. Spirit and flesh, which contend against each other. Gal 5:17. The one from its corrupt propensity wills what is evil, the other from divine operation what is good.
Rieger:With all that belongs to the old nature, we are never done; yet we should not be grieved by the, way: the quietest plan is with childlike mind to learn, and to regard the matter as ever in progress.Gerlach:The capacity for knowing and loving God is that alone wherein man excels the rest of creation, whereby he rules it. Is he a mirror of the Most High, then there is in him an image of God, which sin has not obliterated, but so polluted and marred that his own power can never more restore it.When the image of God is restored in the soul, the partition-walls among men fall down.
Schleiermacher:When Christians seem to us to be not yet permeated entirely by the new life in Christ, we may not thence infer an entire lack of the Spirit.Paul admonishes them to put off their old members, not by virtue of the old man itself, but by virtue of the new and because the vital strength of the new man in them is presupposed.This work of putting off the old man and putting on the new is a common one, and we should not believe in the fancy that somewhere it is wanting altogether.
Passavant:[Col 3:15. Covetousness which is idolatry can be found among Christians, in men who rejoice in a Christian education, and bow before the cross of Christ as the tree of life. The life of the covetous man is hid with his hoards in iron chests; the life of the Christian is hid with Christ in God.
Col 3:7. It is better, if one has never walked in these things, if they have never been the elements of our life, for then our sanctification is easier. On this account we should learn the fear of God from our youth.]
Col 3:8. A single word, slipping from the mouth of the Christian can pollute the whole God-sanctified new man.[Col 3:9. It is long before a tongue, hitherto unaccustomed to lie, becomes accustomed to the truth; this is the work of the Spirit of God, which is the Spirit of truth.
Col 3:11. God regards in us only His Son and His image, as He hates only the old man and his corruption.R.]
[Burkitt:
Col 3:7. No argument will prevail more with a Christian to follow on the work of mortification closely for the time to come, than the remembrance of his long continuance in sin. in time past.
Col 3:9. Lying makes a man like the devil, who was a liar as well as a murderer from the beginning.
Col 3:11. O blessed Jesus! Art thou thus all to me? I will labor to be all to thee; to give thee all that I am.R.]
[Henry:
Col 3:5. It is very observable, that among all the other instances of sin which good men are recorded in the Scripture to have fallen into; (and there is scarcely any but some or other in one or other part of their life, have fallen into;) there is no instance in all the Scripture of any good man charged with covetousness.
Col 3:9. Lying makes us like the devil (who is the father of lies), and is a prime part of the devils image upon our souls.
Col 3:10. The-new man is said to be renewed in knowledge; because an ignorant soul cannot be a good soul. Light is the first thing in the new creation, as it was in the first.R,]
[Eadie:
Col 3:5. If the heart is dead let all the organs which it once vivified and moved die toonay, put them to death. Let them be killed from want of nutriment and exercise.This desire of having more, and yet more, is idolatry. What it craves it worships, what it Worships it makes its portion.
Col 3:11. 1. Such distinctions do not prevent the on-putting of the new man. 2. In the church, prior and external distinctions do not modify the possession of spiritual privilege and blessing.Wordsworth:
Col 3:5. You must be dead to earth, in order to life in heaven. While we mortify our members upon the earth, we quicken our members in heaven.R.]
Footnotes:
[4]Col 3:5. is wanting in . A. B. and others. [It is omitted by Tischendorf (ed. 2, not 7), Alford, and by Braune; retained however by Rec. Lachmann. Meyer, De Wette, Wordsworth. Ellicott; the latter remarks: The great preponderance of MSS. and the accordant testimony of so many versions seem to render this otherwise not improbable omission here very doubtful.R.]
[5]Col 3:5.[Alford and Ellicott thus render ; not merely just, but the disposition toward it.R.]
[6]Col 3:5.[Evil concupiscence is correct, but shameful desire would be more generally understood.R.]
[7]Col 3:6. on the authority of . B. C. and others, is better supported than . [The former reading is adopted by Lachmann. Tischendorf, Ellicott: the latter by Meyer and Alford.R.]
[8]Col 3:6.The clause , on the children of disobedience, is wanting in B.; apparently taken from Eph 5:6, where it is supported by all. [Rejected by Tischendorf and Alford. The uncial authority, . A. C. D. E. K. L., in support of it is so preponderant, that it cannot safely be omitted. The two Epistles might well contain expressions exactly alike. Meyer retains it.R.]
[9]Col 3:7.[ refers to the children of disobedience, if that clause be retained. If it be rejected, the E. V. is correct, but is incorrect as it now stands. (Braune, Ellicott.)R.]
[10]Col 3:8.[Evil-speaking or calumny is evidently the meaning of here, as in Eph 4:31, where the E. V. reads: evil-speaking.R.]
[11]Col 3:8.[Abusive, perhaps foul-mouthed communication, is better than filthy; the idea of obscenity is not necessarily included in .R.]
[12]Col 3:10.[The present participle here denotes a process going on. See Exeg. Notes.R.]
[13]Col 3:11.Before , A. and others read , a few also before , but both weakly supported. [Nor is unnecessarily supplied in the E. V.R.]
[14][Alford, reading , refers it to idolatry alone, and hence in his exegesis, make it the all-comprehending and crowing sin. Meyer, adopting the same reading, refers it to the whole immoral character just named.R.]
[15][The E. V. places the negation in the conjunctions. A more literal rendering would be: There is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, etc.R.]
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
(5) Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: (6) For which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: (7) In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them. (8) But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. (9) Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; (10) And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: (11) Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.
I pray the Reader to observe with me, the particular expression of the Apostle, when he saith: mortify, therefore, your members which are upon earth. The word therefore is an inference from what went before; of a life hidden with Christ in God: meaning, as plain as words can render it, that from Christ, grace must be obtained, to subdue all the corrupt affections of our members, which are earthly; and which he enumerates. And this corresponds to what the Holy Ghost by Paul taught elsewhere. It is by the SPIRIT; believers mortify the deeds of the body, and live, Rom 8:13 . And here, as in all other parts of the sacred writings, the Holy Ghost teacheth the Church, to consider the spirit, when quickened from the death of trespasses and sins, to be brought forth into a new, and spiritual life; and as such, to be perfectly holy in Christ, being made a partaker of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust, 2Pe 1:4 . Whereas, the body remains the same, unregenerated, unrenewed, and as Paul himself found it to the last, and groaned under it accordingly; a body of sin and death, Rom 7:24 . To mortify, therefore, this body by the spirit; is what is here commanded, and enjoined. These members are properly said to be upon the earth, meaning wholly earthly. And for the sins of which, in the unregenerate, or as is called here the children of disobedience, God’ s judgment follows them. And these different characters are strikingly set forth, under the similitudes of the old man, and the new. But these things, are so plain, and self-evident, that I think it unnecessary to enlarge on them in this place.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:
Ver. 5. Mortify therefore ] Sin hath a strong heart, and will not be done to death but with much ado. Peccata saepe raduntur, sed non eradicantur. Sins often are itchy but are not rooted out. Something is done about sins, little against them; as artificial magicians seem to wound themselves, but do not; or as players seem to thrust themselves through their bodies, but the sword passeth only through their clothes. Some part with sin, as Jacob did with Benjamin, because otherwise he should starve; or as Phaltiel did with Michal, lest he should lose his head; but to cast it away because it is offensivum Dei, et aversivum a Deo, an offence against God, and a breach of his law, this is mortification; this is more than to have seraphical knowledge and cherubinical affections in any duty. This (saith a Father) is the hardest text in all the Bible, and the hardest task in all Christianity that we can go about; but hard or not hard, it must be done, or we are undone, and check must be given to our corruptions, though full mate we cannot give.
Covetousness, which is idolatry ] For it robs God of his flower, his trust, and draws a man away from all the commandments,Psa 119:36Psa 119:36 . See Trapp on “ Eph 5:5 “
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
5 17 .] General exhortations : and herein (5 11) to laying aside of the vices of the old man , (12 17) to realizing the new life in its practical details . Put to death therefore (the connects with the of Col 3:3 ; follow out, realize this state of death to things on earth notice the aorist implying a definite act: cf. Gal 5:24 , Rom 8:13 , in the same reference) your members which are on the earth (literally, as to : your feet, hands, &c.: reduce these to a state of death as regards their actions and desires below specified as regards, in other words, their denizenship of this earth. With this you have no concern they are members of Christ, partakers of His resurrection, renewed after His image. The metaphorical sense of , regarding . &c., as ‘membra quibus vetus homo, i.e. ratio ac voluntas hominis depravata perinde utitur ac corpus membris.’ Beza, ‘naturam nostram quasi massam ex diversis vitiis conflatam imaginatur.’ Calv., seems unnecessary. And the understanding of with , as Grot., after Thdrt. ( ), is certainly a mistake: cf. above, Col 3:2 ), fornication (these which follow, are the carnal functions of the earthly members. It is one instance of that form of the double accusative, where the first denotes the whole, the second a part of it, as , , Il. . 240, ; Od. . 64 See Khner, ii. p. 230), impurity (reff.), lustfulness (see Rom 1:26 , whence it would appear that the absolute word need not be understood of unnatural lust, the specifying genitive giving it there that meaning. We may understand it generally as in Plato, Phdr. p. 265 b, , ‘morbum libidinis,’ Beng.), shameful desire (more general than : as Mey. remarks, . is always ., but not vice versa. The relation is the same as between and ), and covetousness ( . as Beng. ‘articulus facit ad epitasin, et totum genus vitii a genere enumeratarum modo specierum diversum complectitur.’ On , see on Eph 4:19 , and Trench, N. T. Synonyms, xxiv.), for it is (‘quippe qu, sit’) idolatry (the has set up self in his heart and to serve self, whether by accumulation of goods or by satiety in pleasure, is his object in life. He is therefore an idolater, in the deepest and worst, namely in the practical significance. , , , , Thdrt.), on which account (on account of the , which amounts to idolatry, the all-comprehending and crowning sin, which is a negation of God and brings down His especial anger) cometh (down on earth, in present and visible examples) the wrath of God: in which (vices. Mey.’s remark that the reading makes this necessarily refer to the . . which he reads after , does not apply if be interpreted as above to refer to . There does not seem to occur in St. Paul any instance of , after absolute, referring to persons. Cf. 2Th 3:11 ( . ), Joh 11:54 , Eph 2:3 , which last, if the clause . . . . . were inserted here, would certainly go far to decide the matter) ye also walked once, when ye lived (before your death with Christ to the world) in these things (the assertion is not tautological: cf. Gal 5:25 , , . When ye were alive to these things, ye regulated your course by them, walked in them. “Vivere et ambulare inter se differunt, quemadmodum potentia et actus: vivere prcedit, ambulare sequitur.” Calv.):
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Col 3:5 . Partially parallel to Eph 5:3-5 . . “Put to death, therefore” ( cf. Rom 8:13 ). The aorist implies a single decisive act. Perhaps . is chosen as a weaker word than (Cremer, Haupt), implying the cessation of functions during life, is interesting. It seems strange that the assertions in the previous verses, of their death and resurrection with Christ and hidden life with Him in God, should be followed by the exhortation to put their members to death. Clearly these assertions are idealistic. The death and resurrection potentially theirs are to be realised in the putting to death of their members, . The members are referred to in so far as they are the instruments of the , and are included in the “things on the earth,” with which the Christian has no more concern (Col 3:2 ). Lightfoot places a stop at , and regards . . . as governed by (Col 3:8 ). He thinks Paul intended to make these accusatives directly dependent on ., but, owing to the intervening clauses, changed the form of the sentence. It is true that the apposition of and the list of sins that follows is strange, but not so strange as to make this very forced construction preferable. We should have expected . at the beginning of the sentence. : “and covetousness,” not “impurity”. It comes fitly here, for gold provided the means for indulging these lustful passions. For the noun with the article at the end of a series without it, see Winer-Moulton, 9 p. 145. : “inasmuch as it is idolatry”. refers simply to ., not to the whole series of vices enumerated, nor to , by attraction for . The lust for wealth sets riches in the place of God ( cf. Mat 6:24 ).
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Col 3:5-11
5Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. 6For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience, 7and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. 8But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. 9Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, 10and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him- 11a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.
Col 3:5
NASB “consider the members of your earthly body as dead”
NKJV”put to death your members which are on the earth”
NRSV”put to death whatever in you is earthly”
TEV”you must put to death the earthly desires at work in you”
NJB”you must kill everything in you that is earthly”
This is an aorist active imperative which denotes urgency (cf. Col 3:8; Col 3:12). It begins a section which emphasizes the need for believers to strip themselves of evil once and for all (Col 3:5-11). Paul often used clothing as a metaphor for the spiritual life (cf. Rom 6:6; Rom 6:11; Rom 8:13; Eph 4:22; Eph 4:24-25; Eph 4:31, possibly from Zechariah 3). Believers are to die to self, to sin, and to worldliness. The next section emphasizes that Christians should put on Christlike virtues (Col 3:10-17).
Paul often characterized the sins of the old life and old man in lists which in many ways were similar to the Greek moralists (like the Stoics) of his day.
SPECIAL TOPIC: VICES AND VIRTUES IN THE NT
“immorality, impurity” This first Greek term (porneia) originally meant “harlot,” but it came to be used for sexual immorality in general (cf. 1Co 6:9). We get the English term “pornography” from this word. The second term “impurity” (akatharsia) was also a general term for sexual immorality, though it was originally used in the OT in the sense of ceremonial uncleanliness or moral uncleanliness. Paul intended the second connotation.
“passion, evil desire” These two terms are also used together in 1Th 4:5 and translated “lustful passion.” The first term, “passion” (pathos), is used in two very different senses: (1) of suffering and (2) of sexual desire.
The second term, “evil desire” (epithumia), is also used in two very different senses, a strong desire for something (1) good or (2) evil. Context must determine which aspect of a word’s semantical field is meant by the author.
This list of sexual sins may be related to the false teachers. Gnostic false teachers were of two types: (1) those who lived ascetic lives of self-abasement and (2) others who viewed the body as irrelevant to spiritual life and indulged the body’s desires. Often sexual and financial exploitation characterize false teachers.
“greed” This term is usually used of desire for things, but in a context of sexual exploitation, it may have meant more and more sexual pleasure at any cost! Some see others only as objects for personal, sexual gratification.
“which amounts to idolatry” Anything that dominates, controls, or demands allegiance becomes an idol which replaces God. For some, sexual pleasure becomes the focus of their lives, thoughts, and plans.
Col 3:6 “the wrath of God will come” In many ways this is similar to Paul’s discussion in Rom 1:18 to Rom 2:16. God’s wrath was viewed in two time frames in the Bible: (1) sin resulted in punishment now, in this life (temporal) and (2) God will judge all mankind one day (eschatological).
There is a Greek manuscript variant at this point. The longer text, which includes the Semitic idiom “upon the sons of disobedience,” is in the uncial MSS , A, C, D, F, G, H, K, L, and P. It is omitted in MSS P46 and B. The longer reading is found in every manuscript of Eph 5:6 which may be the source of this addition (see Bruce M Metzger, A Textual Commentary On the Greek NT, p. 824).
Col 3:7 “in them you also once walked” The background of the Colossian believers was paganism (cf. Rom 6:19; 1Co 6:11; Tit 3:3). These believers used to think and live these kinds of sins.
Col 3:8 “But now” Notice the contrast (old man vs. new man).
“put them all aside” This is an aorist middle imperative which denotes urgency. Believers must be different. Paul used clothing as a metaphor for a person’s lifestyle choices. Believers are encouraged to take off the old life and lay it aside like a garment (cf. Col 3:8-9; Eph 4:22; Eph 4:25; Eph 4:31; Jas 1:21; 1Pe 2:1). They are to put on Christ (cf. Col 3:10; Col 3:12; Col 3:14; Eph 4:24 : Rom 13:14; Gal 3:27). These believers were once controlled and dominated by their evil desires, but now, through Christ, they can turn from them (cf. Romans 5-6).
“anger” This term means continuing, long-lasting, simmering anger (cf. 2Co 12:20; Gal 5:20; Eph 4:31).
“wrath” This term means fast-burning anger or outburst of rage (cf. 2Co 12:20; Gal 5:20; Eph 4:31).
“malice” This term means “vicious thoughts” (cf. Rom 1:29; 1Co 5:8; Eph 4:31). It implies a desire to hurt others.
“slander and abusive speech” People are listening; our speech reflects who we really are (cf. Mat 12:34-35; Mat 15:11; Mat 15:18; Mar 7:20; Eph 4:29; Eph 5:4; Jas 2:3-12).
SPECIAL TOPIC: HUMAN SPEECH
Col 3:9 “do not lie” This is a present middle (deponent) imperative with negative particle which meant stop an action in process. The Greek sentence runs from Col 3:9 to Col 3:11. Christian speech must be true, honest, edifying, and spoken in love (cf. Eph 4:15).
Col 3:10 “the new self who is being renewed” This is a present passive participle with the implied agent being God or the Spirit. The Christian life is both a state (Eph 2:5; Eph 2:8) and a process of development (1Co 1:18). Its goal is Christlikeness (cf. Rom 8:29; Gal 4:19; Eph 1:4), being restored to the image of God. This “renewing” (cf. 2Co 4:16 and the noun in Rom 12:2 and Tit 3:5) is a work of God that each believer must allow, and must cooperate with God to perform it in them (like the “filling” of the Spirit, also a present passive participle in Eph 5:18).
SPECIAL TOPIC: RENEW (ANAKAINSIS)
“a true knowledge” This is literally “in full knowledge” (epignsin). In contradistinction to the false knowledge of the Gnostics.
Col 3:11 This verse expresses the same truth as Rom 3:22; Rom 3:29; Rom 10:12; 1Co 12:13; Gal 3:28 and Eph 2:11-22. All human barriers and distinctions are removed by the gospel. This does not remove all biblical distinctions, for example, the relationship between husbands and wives (cf. Eph 5:21-31) or the rich and poor (cf. Jas 1:9-10), but it does remove all inequality!
“no barbarian, Scythian” This referred to cultured and uncultured Gentiles. The onomatopoeic term “barbarian” originally referred to the way that people of the Greco-Roman Empire heard the European tribes speak which they referred to as “bar bar bar.” Greco-Roman society considered the Scythians the most uncivilized and barbaric national entity.
SPECIAL TOPIC: RACISM
“Christ is all, and in all” Jesus is the leveling influence and sphere. In Him all human distinctions are removed in the love of God! All may come, all are welcome, all become family (cf. Gal 3:28). Salvation in Christ is the reversal of the Fall (cf. Col 3:10, “image”) and the Tower of Babel (cf. Genesis 10-11, division of people).
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Mortify = Put to death. See Rom 4:19; Rom 6:6-11.
upon. App-104.
inordinate affection = passion, or lust. See Rom 1:26.
evil. App-128.
concupiscence = desire, See Joh 8:44.
covetousness. See Rom 1:29, and Eph 5:5.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
5-17.] General exhortations: and herein (5-11)-to laying aside of the vices of the old man,-(12-17) to realizing the new life in its practical details. Put to death therefore (the connects with the of Col 3:3; follow out, realize this state of death to things on earth–notice the aorist implying a definite act:-cf. Gal 5:24, Rom 8:13, in the same reference) your members which are on the earth (literally, as to : your feet, hands, &c.: reduce these to a state of death as regards their actions and desires below specified-as regards, in other words, their denizenship of this earth. With this you have no concern-they are members of Christ, partakers of His resurrection, renewed after His image. The metaphorical sense of , regarding . &c., as membra quibus vetus homo, i.e. ratio ac voluntas hominis depravata perinde utitur ac corpus membris. Beza,-naturam nostram quasi massam ex diversis vitiis conflatam imaginatur. Calv.,-seems unnecessary. And the understanding of with , as Grot., after Thdrt. ( ), is certainly a mistake: cf. above, Col 3:2),-fornication (these which follow, are the carnal functions of the earthly members. It is one instance of that form of the double accusative, where the first denotes the whole, the second a part of it, as , , Il. . 240,- ; Od. . 64 See Khner, ii. p. 230), impurity (reff.), lustfulness (see Rom 1:26, whence it would appear that the absolute word need not be understood of unnatural lust, the specifying genitive giving it there that meaning. We may understand it generally as in Plato, Phdr. p. 265 b, ,-morbum libidinis, Beng.), shameful desire (more general than : as Mey. remarks, . is always ., but not vice versa. The relation is the same as between and ), and covetousness ( . as Beng.-articulus facit ad epitasin, et totum genus vitii a genere enumeratarum modo specierum diversum complectitur. On , see on Eph 4:19, and Trench, N. T. Synonyms, xxiv.), for it is (quippe qu, sit) idolatry (the has set up self in his heart-and to serve self, whether by accumulation of goods or by satiety in pleasure, is his object in life. He is therefore an idolater, in the deepest and worst, namely in the practical significance. , , , , Thdrt.), on which account (on account of the , which amounts to idolatry, the all-comprehending and crowning sin, which is a negation of God and brings down His especial anger) cometh (down on earth, in present and visible examples) the wrath of God: in which (vices. Mey.s remark that the reading makes this necessarily refer to the . . which he reads after , does not apply if be interpreted as above to refer to . There does not seem to occur in St. Paul any instance of , after absolute, referring to persons. Cf. 2Th 3:11 (. ), Joh 11:54, Eph 2:3, which last, if the clause . . . . . were inserted here, would certainly go far to decide the matter) ye also walked once, when ye lived (before your death with Christ to the world) in these things (the assertion is not tautological: cf. Gal 5:25, , . When ye were alive to these things, ye regulated your course by them, walked in them. Vivere et ambulare inter se differunt, quemadmodum potentia et actus: vivere prcedit, ambulare sequitur. Calv.):
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Col 3:5. , Mortify[21]) [not knowing to spare.[22]-V. g.]- , your members) of which united the body of sin consists, ch. Col 2:11. [Here all impurity, without exception, is repelled and excluded.-V. g.]- , upon the earth) where they find their support. These things are presently enumerated.-, …, fornication, etc.) Eph 5:3-4.-, passion [inordinate affection]) the disorder of lust within.-, concupiscence) the disorder of the external senses.- , covetousness) The article has the effect of Epitasis [an emphatic addition], and includes the whole genus of vice, which is different from the genus of the species just now enumerated. Avarice most of all makes men cling to the earth.
[21] Lit. Punish with every kind of death.
[22] Strangers to all tender-heartedness, such as would lead you to spare the flesh.-ED.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Col 3:5
Col 3:5
Put to death therefore your members which are upon the earth:-These members are those which seek only fleshly and sensual gratification, and pertain only to the flesh. They are those of the fleshly body in contrast with the faculties and desires of the spiritual body. The exhortation is to put them to death. Hold them in restraint, check them. Unrestrained they lead to the sins enumerated.
fornication,-Strictly speaking, fornication is illicit intercourse between the sexes, whether married or unmarried. Adultery is a violation of the marriage bed, or unlawful sexual intercourse with another person, whether married or unmarried. Fornication sometimes signifies adultery. (Mat 19:9). [The church of Christ should wage such a relentless warfare against all such wickedness that all such characters would either come to repentance or learn that the church has no fellowship for them.]
uncleanness,-Every manifestation in word or look or deed of the impure spirit, and so is wider and subtler than the gross physical act. It includes self-abuse, bestiality, and sodomy.
passion, evil desire,-[The source of evil deeds. More inward and more general than the preceding. They include not only the lusts and longings which give rise to the special sins just denounced, but to all forms of hungry appetite and desire after the members which are upon the earth. If we desire to draw a distinction between the two, probably passion is somewhat narrower than desire, and the former represents the evil emotion as an affection which the mind suffers, while the latter represents it as a longing which it actually puts forth. The lusts of the flesh are in the one aspect kindled by the outward temptations which come with terrible force and carry the unstable captive, acting almost irresistibly on the animal nature. In the one the evil comes into the heart; in the other the heart goes out to the evil.]
and covetousness,-Covetousness is such an overmastering desire for what belongs to another that the laws of right and justice are violated to obtain it. It is closely allied to the grosser forms of sensuality, and but another form of evil desire going out to the things which are upon the earth. The ordinary worldly nature flies for solace either to the pleasures of appetite or to the passion of acquiring. And not only are they closely connected in root, but covetousness often follows lust in the history of a life just as it does in this catalogue. When the former evil spirit loses its hold, the latter often takes its place. Many men are now mainly devoted to making money, whose youth was foul with sensual indulgence. When that palled, this came to titillate the jaded desires with a new form of gratification. In that case, covetousness is promoted vice, lust superannuated.
which is idolatry;-Those who reject the God of the Bible formulate a god from their own imagination and desires. Such a god is of necessity the deification of their own reason, desires, appetites, and lusts. The heathen embody them in idols of wood, stone, and metal which are visible objects of worship; but these images are all representatives of certain qualities which they cherish and seek to attain. They are the embodiment of their ideas of the highest good. A man really worships that on which his heart is most earnestly set, which is the chief end of his labor in life. That which man most ardently desires, he worships; and the service he renders in obtaining it is worship. Hence the Holy Spirit defines covetousness to be idolatry. The man that is covetous unduly desires and seeks money, worships it, and becomes sordid, heartless, selfish, and his whole soul is absorbed in the one end of gaining money. When a man desires, above all things, to gratify his lusts and fleshly appetites, and finds happiness only in this, he worships the god of lust; becomes licentious, sensual; loses all ennobling spiritual aspirations; and abandons himself to the gratification of his lusts, and the same is true of covetousness.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Chapter 12 Practical Holiness by Conformity to Christ in Relation to Ourselves
Col 3:5-11
Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: for which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: in the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them. But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. (vv. 5-11)
We come now to the consideration of the practical teaching of the epistle where we have emphasized for us the importance of walking in the power of the truth of the new man and our relationship to Christ as Head. And in this section, which includes verses 5-17 and is too lengthy to be taken up in one address, we have, first, that which relates to ourselves, our individual judgment of the old ways, in verses 5-11, which we will consider at this time. Then in verses 12-17, we have rather our relationship to others, particularly our brethren in Christ; or, as we might put it, the claims of Christian fellowship. We must be right ourselves, in our own inner lives, if we would be right toward others. Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. What I am when alone in the presence of God is what I really am. What I am before my fellows should be the outcome of this, otherwise my public life will be largely a sham.
There is a very suggestive lesson along this line in connection with the fine linen in the tabernacle. The tabernacle, as we know, was primarily a wonderful type of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was Gods dwelling place; and we read, The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (authors translation). Surrounding the court of the tabernacle were curtains of fine twined linen suspended from pillars. The fine linen, we learn from Revelation 19, is the righteous acts of the saints (literal rendering). Therefore the fine linen surrounding the court would speak of the perfect ways of our Lord Jesus Christ as displayed before men on earth. The hangings of the court were visible to all who drew near. But inside, covering the upright boards of the tabernacle, which were of acacia wood overlaid with gold, were ten curtains also of fine twined linen. These were not visible to men on the outside; they were seen by God Himself and, in measure, by His ministering priests. So if the fine linen outside speaks of Christs righteousness as Man on earth visible to the eyes of other men, which led them to exclaim, He hath done all things well, and which caused even Pilate to declare, I find no fault in him, the ten curtains inside would speak of His perfect righteousness as seen by God the Father, that perfection which caused Him to open the heavens and proclaim, This is my beloved Son in whom I have found all my delight.
Now how many cubits of fine twined linen were there forming the wall of the court? We learn that the court was 100 cubits long and 50 cubits wide. Subtracting 20 cubits for the varicolored gate of the tabernacle, we have 280 cubits, 100 on each side, 50 in the rear, and 30 in front. Inside there were ten curtains joined together, and each one was 28 cubits long. Here then we have another 280 cubits. Note this well. There were 280 cubits of fine twined linen surrounding the court where all could behold it, and 280 cubits of fine twined linen forming the tabernacle itself, where only the eye of God saw it in its completeness! How suggestive is all this, and what a lesson for us. Our blessed Lord was just the same before God as before men. But the fact that the width of the curtains was different to that of the hangings is also suggestive. The curtains were four cubits wide, and four is the number of weakness, and speaks of Christs perfect subjection to the will of the Father. The hangings were five cubits wide, and five, we know, is the number of responsibility, and suggests our Lords taking the place of responsibility here on earth, as meeting every claim of God that man had flouted. When His enemies came asking, Who art Thou? He answered, Altogether what I have said unto you. With Him profession and life were in perfect agreement, and this is the standard which God now puts before the believer.
Recognizing, then, our union with Christ, we are called upon to manifest His life. There must be first of all the judgment of the old ways in their totality. In chapter 2 we have learned of our identification with Him in His death; in the cross we were circumcised with the circumcision of Christ, therefore we are to mortify, or put to death, our members which are upon the earth. The believer is never told to crucify himself; he is told to mortify the members of his body. We have been crucified with Christ. Faith lays hold of this, and so it is written: They that are Christs have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts. All passed under judgment in the cross, but in order to make this practical the flesh must be kept, by faith, in the place of death and its evil promptings refused in self-judgment.
The apostle insists first of all upon the importance of dealing unsparingly with the sins that were so common in the heathen world out of which these Colos-sians had been saved. Sins, alas, almost as common in the world today, in spite of increased light and civilization. The believer, recognizing his link with Christ, is to abhor all uncleanness. He is to remember that the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body, consequently every tendency to the sins mentioned in verse 5-fornication, lasciviousness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence (or, unlawful lusts) and covetousness, which is idolatry (for in reality it is the worship of self)-all these are to be judged in the light of the cross of Christ at no matter what cost. No excuse must be offered for such sins nor any palliation of their wickedness attempted on the ground of the innate tendencies of human nature. These things are abhorrent to God and abhorrent to the new nature in every believer, and because of them the wrath of God is coming on the children of disobedience; as of old, when God destroyed the antediluvian world because of corruption and violence, and rained fire from heaven upon the cities of the plain because of unbridled lusts and passions.
In these sins, so characteristic of men away from God, the Colossians had once walked, living in them unblushingly, but that was before they knew Christ. Now, as risen with Him, these things, seen at last in their true light, must be refused as dishonoring to God and contrary to Christ. Other sins there are which in the eyes of many are far less vile and abominable than those mentioned above, but these, too, are to be put off. They were the habits of the old man, his old clothes, which are not fit to adorn the new man. And so we read, But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds. The old man is more than the old nature. It is the man of old, the man you used to be before you knew Christ as Savior and Lord. In other words, the old man is all that I once was as an unsaved person. I am through with that man. He has disappeared, for faith, in the cross of Christ. But if I make this profession, let me be sure that I do not manifest his ways. Sometimes those who make the loudest professions in regard to the truth of the new creation are the poorest performers of the truth, and thus they give the lie to what they say by what they do. It was Emerson, I think, who said, What you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say. It is to be feared that many a Christian has lost his testimony because of carelessness here.
Anger, which, as we know from Eph 4:26, may be righteous, is generally but the raging of the flesh, and even where it is warranted (and we read of our blessed Lord looking round about upon His opponents with anger because of the hardness of their hearts), still this must not be nursed or it will degenerate into wrath, which is a settled condition of ill feeling toward an offender and generally has coupled with it a desire for revenge, and so malice springs from it. We have three generations of sin here: anger cherished begets wrath, and wrath if not judged begets malice. No matter how grievously I have been wronged, I am not to give place to the Devil and malign, or seek to harm, the one against whom I may have been righteously indignant in the beginning. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil.
Blasphemy-this dreadful sin may be either Godward or manward. To impute evil to God or to seek to misrepresent Him, or to pervert the truth as to the Father, the Son, or the Spirit, these are various ways in which men blaspheme against God. But to speak injuriously of one another, to circulate wicked and untruthful reports against ones brethren, to revile rulers or governors, or to seek to harm, by evil report, servants of God, all these are included under the general term blasphemy, and here how often have sharp-tongued religious controversialists failed even at the very moment that they were endeavoring to meet the blasphemy of their opponents in regard to divine things. When the hyper-Calvinist, the father of William Hone, the one-time infidel, described John Wesley as a child of the Devil because of his Arminianism, he had himself fallen into the sin of blasphemy. No wonder his son turned from such Christianity in horror, and was for years in darkness, until reached by divine grace. Railing accusations ill become those who have been saved through mercy alone and have occasion daily to confess their own sins and sue for divine forgiveness. The wrath of man works not the righteousness of God, and He, the Holy One, is not served by our hard speeches against His saints, nor even against men of the world.
Did we not know the corruption of our own hearts, it might not seem necessary to warn redeemed saints against the vice of using unclean language or relating salacious stories, but this is what is involved in the next expression, filthy communication out of your mouth. Questionable stories and the relating of things true or false, the details of which only tend to feed a corrupt nature, these are to be shunned by a Christian. It was a wise answer and a deserved rebuke that a brother once gave to one in my own presence who began a story with the remark, As there are no ladies here I want to tell you something I heard the other day. But the other checked him by saying, Brother, though there are no ladies present, the Holy Spirit is here. Is your story fit for Him? The first blushed in confusion and accepted the rebuke. We did not hear the story.
Were there any truth in the unscriptural theory held by some that the nature of the old man is eradicated in the case of a sanctified believer there would be no room whatsoever for the next injunction, Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds. Lying is one of the very first evidences of the carnal nature. Of the wicked we read, They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. And untruthfulness is one of the hardest habits for anyone to overcome. It is so natural to these vain hearts of ours to try to make things appear better than they really are, to cover up our own failures and to accentuate the sins of others. Yet these are just different forms of lying, and we are called upon to judge all guile-untruthfulness of every character-in the light of the cross of Christ. The old man was judged there in the person of our Substitute, his deeds are to be refused, his habits put off as discarded garments that, as we have seen above, are in no sense fit for the new man.
In the next two verses we are told that we have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all. The new man, then, is the man in Christ, even as the old man was the man in Adam. This new man has a new, divinely imparted nature, and it is to this new nature God by the Spirit appeals. The new nature alone is capable of receiving divine instruction, and as the truth thus imparted controls the life, the believer manifests increasingly the image of Him who is the Head of the new creation. He Himself, as we have seen, is the image of the invisible God. Man was created in the image and likeness of God in the beginning, but that image became terribly marred through sin. In the new man this image again becomes manifest, and the very lineaments of Christ are seen in His people. This is true, no matter who or what they were before receiving the new life, whether cultured Greek or religious Jew; whether within the circle of the Abrahamic covenant marked off from the rest of humanity by the ordinance of circumcision, or whether in the world outside, strangers to the covenants of promise; whether barbarian or Scythian (that is, of the wild tribes outside the pale of civilization); whether slaves or free citizens. All alike were sinners; all alike are included in the term the old man.
Now those who through grace have believed the gospel, from whichever of these classes they may have come, are members of the new creation and are seen by God as justified from all things and are possessors of a new and divine life. They belong to that new company where Christ is everything and in everyone. This is not to deny racial or class distinctions in the world-these the Christian must still recognize, and he has his responsibilities as to these distinctions-but above and beyond all these responsibilities is his new place in Christ, linked up with the new Head. It is from this that his new responsibilities flow; because he is a new creation man, he is called upon to manifest new ways and to put on new habits, new clothes suited to his new relationship. These new clothes will come before us in our next study.
In closing let me remark that new creation is not simply individual. It is not merely that I, as a believer, am a new creature in Christ Jesus. A better rendering of 2Co 5:17 would be, Therefore if any man be in Christ, it is new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
Joyful now the new creation
Rests in undisturbed repose;
Blest in Jesus full salvation
Sorrow now nor thraldom knows.
Not yet do we see the manifestation of all this, but we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor, seated above all the changing scenes of time. Until He returns, it is as members of the new creation that we are called upon by our new ways to manifest the holiness, the grace, the righteousness, the love, and the compassion of Him who is the beginning of the creation of God.
It is not that He is the first being created. This error was exposed in an earlier lecture. But He is the First, the Prince, the Head, the Origin of the new creation where all things are of God. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature [or a new creation]. And as many as walk according to this rule [the rule, the controlling principle of this new creation], peace be on them and mercy, and upon the Israel of God (Gal 6:15-16). This is the very opposite of legality. It is the spontaneous expression of the life of the Head in the members here on earth!
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
Mortify: Rom 6:6, Rom 8:13, Gal 5:24, Eph 5:3-6
members: Rom 6:13, Rom 7:5, Rom 7:23, Jam 4:1
fornication: Mat 15:19, Mar 7:21, Mar 7:22, Rom 1:29, 1Co 5:1, 1Co 5:10, 1Co 5:11, 1Co 6:9, 1Co 6:13, 1Co 6:18, 2Co 12:21, Gal 5:19-21, Eph 5:3, 1Th 4:3, Heb 12:16, Heb 13:4, Rev 21:8, Rev 22:15
inordinate: Rom 1:26, 1Th 4:5,*Gr.
evil: Rom 7:7, Rom 7:8, 1Co 10:6-8, Eph 4:19, 1Pe 2:11
covetousness: 1Co 6:10, Gal 5:19-21, Eph 5:3, Eph 5:5
Reciprocal: Gen 34:7 – thing Exo 20:17 – thy neighbour’s house Exo 37:22 – were Lev 11:29 – creeping things that creep Jos 7:21 – I coveted Job 31:24 – General Psa 10:3 – whom Psa 119:36 – and not to Isa 57:17 – the iniquity Jer 22:17 – covetousness Eze 3:21 – if thou Eze 11:18 – General Eze 18:28 – turneth Eze 18:31 – Cast Eze 43:9 – Now let Mat 5:29 – pluck Mat 19:22 – for Mar 8:34 – take Mar 9:43 – if Luk 9:23 – If Luk 12:15 – Take Luk 15:15 – to feed Luk 18:23 – he was very sorrowful Act 15:20 – fornication Rom 3:10 – none Rom 6:19 – for as ye Rom 13:13 – chambering Rom 13:14 – and 1Co 5:7 – Purge 1Co 6:11 – such 1Co 9:27 – I keep Gal 5:16 – and Eph 4:17 – that ye Col 3:2 – not Col 3:8 – put 2Ti 2:19 – depart 2Ti 3:2 – covetous Tit 2:12 – denying Heb 12:15 – trouble Heb 13:5 – conversation Jam 1:21 – lay 1Pe 1:14 – not 2Pe 2:10 – in the
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
(Col 3:5.) -Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth. Therefore, since such are the peculiarities and prospects of your spiritual state, act in harmony with them; and since you have died, diffuse the process of death through all your members. If the heart is dead, let all the organs which it once vivified and moved die too-nay, put them to death. Let them be killed from want of nutriment and exercise. Similar language is found in Rom 8:13, where is employed; and in Gal 5:24, where occurs the modal verb . In , the allusion is to members of the body, taken not in a physical, but in a spiritual sense. Hilary, Grotius, Bengel, and others, destroy the point of the allusion in regarding sin itself as a body, and its special parts as members. The apostle had strongly condemned asceticism, and declared it in the conclusion of the preceding chapter to be an absolute failure, and he now shows how the end it contemplated is to be secured. There is no reason for Meyer to deny that the apostle regards the old man as the body to which such members belong. It is not, indeed, the eye, foot, and hand, as these are in themselves, or as they belong to the physical frame, but as they belong to, and are in subjection to the old man. The phrase is to be understood in the same spirit as our Lord’s emphatic declaration about the plucking out of the right eye, and the cutting off of the right arm. Mat 5:29. The lust that uses and debases these organs or members as its instruments, is to be extirpated.
And the members are characterized as being -upon the earth. The allusion is to the previous phraseology-set your affections not on things on the earth. That is to say, earth is the sphere of their existence and operation; and as they belong to it, they are to be killed, for they are in utter antagonism with that higher life which is hid with Christ in God. They are of the earth, earthy-their essence is earthy, and so are their temptations, sources, and forms of enjoyment. The man who possesses a life that has its spring in heaven, and seeks and relishes things above, will not stoop to gratifications which are so far beneath him in nature, so utterly opposed to that new and spiritual existence which he cherishes within him, and which grows in power and health in proportion to the thoroughness and universality of the death which is executed on the members which are on the earth. The apostle then enumerates some of these forms of sensuality.
, , , -Fornication, impurity, lust, and evil concupiscence. These accusatives are in apposition to . The first two terms are found in Eph 5:3, and denote fornication and lewdness. 2Co 12:21; Gal 5:19. See especially under Eph 4:19, where the second occurs, and is described. But, in fact, the shapes and kinds of lewdness, to be found not only in the pagan worship, and in the symbols carried in religious processions, but also in common life, as depicted on tables and furniture, are beyond description. The term is too lightly understood by Grotius and Chrysostom, as signifying-motus vitiosi, such as anger and hatred; and perhaps too darkly by such as refer it wholly to unnatural lust. The noun does not seem of itself to have this last sense, but it occurs with a special adjunct in Rom 1:26; and the adjective, , has an indescribable baseness. It seems here to denote the state of mind that urges and excites to impurity- , that condition in which man is mastered by unchastity, and the imagination being defiled, is wholly at the mercy of obscene associations. It is morbus libidinis, as Bengel says. The next term, , refers to the same circle of vices, and is more general in its nature. The four words may be regarded as in two pairs. The prior pair refers to act, the first term more particular, and the second more comprehensive; the second pair to impulse, the first again more special, and the second more sweeping in its nature. They were no longer to be guilty of fornication, or any similar deed of lewdness; they were no longer to be filled with libidinous thoughts, or any other prurient feelings, having their i ssue in lecherous indulgences.
-And that covetousness which is idolatry. The form may correspond to the Latin quippe quae-since indeed. The reader may turn for the meaning of , and its occurrence in this connection, to our comment on Eph 4:19; Eph 5:3-5. The noun . has the article, which none of the preceding substantives have, and it alone is the antecedent to . Winer, 24, 3. We believe that it does not characterize any form of sensuality, or quaestum meretricium, as the Greek expositors, and others after them, suppose, though it denotes a vice that has its origin in the same selfish or self-seeking depravity. Trench, in his New Testament Synonyms, 24, has some excellent observations on this word, remarking that the is as free in scattering and squandering as he was eager and unscrupulous in getting; that monsters of covetousness have been also monsters of lust; and that is a far deeper passion than mere miserliness or avarice, as being the fierce and ever fiercer longing of the creature which has turned from God to fill itself with the inferior objects of sense. This desire of having more, and yet more, is idolatry. What it craves it worships, what it worships it makes its portion. To such a god there is given the first thought of the morning, the last wish of the evening, and the action of every waking hour.
Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians
Col 3:5. In the preceding chapter Paul condemns the extremists who considered it a virtue to torture the body. In the present passage he instructs the disciples to mortify (put to death) certain evil things that are often practiced in the members or parts of the body. Fornication. According to Thayer’s explanation of this word, it means unlawful intimacy in general, between the sexes, whether married or not. Uncleanness is a general term and applies to any kind of defilement whether of body or spirit. Inordinate affection is from PATHOS, which Thayer defines, “depraved passion; ” it is the word for “vile affections” in Rom 1:26. Evil concupiscence is a term for evil desire, and it is described by Thayer as, “desire for what is forbidden, lust.” Covetousness is from PLEONEXIA, and Thayer defines it, “greedy desire to have more, covetousness, avarice.” Idolatry is from IDOLOLATREIA, and its primary meaning is as the King James Version renders it. Thayer explains it at this place to mean “avarice [greed], as a worship of Mammon.” The last word is derived from the Chaldean lagnuage, and means “what is trusted in,” which shows us why Paul says that covetousness is (not just as bad as) idolatry.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Col 3:5. Put to death. The term is stronger than that usually thus rendered; but mortify is misleading, and make dead is awkward. Kill once for all, is the thought of the original, and the command is an inference, therefore, from Col 3:1; Col 3:3.
Your members. This distributes the figure of chap. Col 2:11 (the body of the flesh).
Which are upon the earth; as the sphere of their activity. The putting to death is to be understood in an ethical, not in a physical sense; and the list of sins which follow shows that members cannot refer to the parts of the body as such, but only as instruments of these sins. While sensuality is the prominent characteristic of the things to be put to death; covetous-ness, which forms the climax, is not distinctively a sin of the body. The command is more difficult to obey than are the rules of asceticism (chap. Col 2:21-22).
Fornication, etc. These are the members, although some would supply put off from Col 3:8. A special form of sexual sin comes first, the following terms are more general: uncleanness including impure acts of every kind (comp. Eph 5:3); lustfulness, shameful desire, being still more extensive, but still referring to impurity, not exclusively to unnatural sin. The former includes all ungovernable affections; the latter extends to all evil longings.
And covetousness. Prominence is given to this form of sin, by the presence of the article in the Greek, as well as by the relative clause which defines this alone: which (or, seeing that it) is idolatry. The relative here may be paraphrased thus. There is an intimate connection between sins of lust and sins of greed; they both spring from the same root, the fierce and ever fiercer longing of the creature which has turned away from God, to fill itself with the inferior objects of sense (Trench). Idolatry and lust are connected in the Old Testament; out covetousness is more distinctly idolatrous. The covetous man sets up another object of worship besides God. There is a sort of religious purpose, a devotion of the soul, to greed, which makes the sin of the miser so hateful (Lightfoot).
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Note here, 1. That although the apostle told them in the third verse, that they were dead to sin, yet here, in the fifth verse, he bids them mortify sin; intimating, that the work of mortification, at the best, is but imperfect, and must be carried on daily and progressively; they were mortified but in part; the old man has a strong heart, and is a long time a dying, after it has received its deadly wound: Sin lives a dying life, and dies a lingering death; Mortify therefore, &c.
Note, 2. What it is they are called upon to mortify, their members upon earth; where, by members, we are to understand all the lusts and corruptions of our hearts and natures, all the relics and remains of sin unsubdued and unpurged out of the soul; he instances in fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affections and desires and covetousness, which loveth the world above God, and is therefore no better than idolatry.
But why are these called members, and members upon earth?
Ans. They are called members, in allusion to what St. Paul had called sin before, namely, a body of sin Col 2:11; therefore he calls particular lusts members of that body; and also because they require and call for the members of the body, as instruments to bring them into act; likewise, because these lusts are naturally as dear to men as their bodily members, they can as soon part with a right hand or a right eye, as with a bosom and beloved lust; they are also called members upon the earth, because they are conversant about earthly things, because they will cleave to us as long as we live upon earth; and to intimate, that none of these must be carried to heaven with us, but be mortified on earth.
But what is it to mortify these members?
Ans. To mortify sin is to deny our consent to the solicitations of sin, to suppress the first motions of sin, to enervate the power and activity of sin.
Learn hence, 1. That in the holiest and best of God’s children and servants, there are relics and remains of sin, to be daily mortified, and gradually subdued.
Learn, 2. That after God has brought a person into a state of grace, it is his duty, and ought to be his endeavour, daily to mortify sin, and all the remains of unsubdued corruption. A caution, Take heed of concluding sin is mortified, because it is restrained, because the acts of sin are intermitted, because some particular sins are subdued: Is all sin hated of thee, loathed and left by thee? It is more to loath a sin, than it is to leave a sin; sin may be left, and yet be loved; but no man can loath a sin, and love it at the same time.
Learn, 3. That covetousness is a sin, which, above others, a Christian should set himself against, and endeavour to mortify and subdue, it having a sort of idolatry in it, drawing our love, our trust, our fear, our joy, from God, and placing the supremacy of our affections in and upon the creatures. True, the covetous man does not believe his money to be God; but by his inordinate loving of it; and fiducial trusting in it he is as truly guilty of idolatry, as if he bowed his knee unto it: for God more regards the internal acts of the mind, than he doth the external acts of the body.
In like manner, the Papist do not believe their saints and angels to be gods; but by praying to them, and trusting in them for relief and help, they give them the inward worship of the soul, and consequently they are as guilty of idolatry as if they did believe them to be God.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Putting to Death Earthly Thinking
Having shown how the Christian is alive, Paul next turned to show what each member of His body must put to death, or mortify. Thomas suggest mortify means “to dig out by the roots, and utterly destroy.” Notice, Jesus’ followers die with Christ to become Christians and must continue to put to death wrongful desires that may come up in their lives. Fornication describes unlawful sexual relationships. Uncleanness is moral impurity which is brought on by lustful thinking. Thayer says the word translated “passion” refers in the New Testament to “depraved passion”. A desire, craving or longing for that which is forbidden would be evil desire, according to Thayer. Covetousness might well be described as a lust for money. It makes the acquisition of material things the god of one’s life, thus it can be called idolatry.
Paul indicates all those who live in the above described ways and refuse to obey God will face a predetermined end. Notice, God’s wrath in judgment is reserved for those who will not obey him, not a group destined to be lost. Remember, Christians have quit living in worldliness and started living in Christ. When the Colossians lived in worldliness, they participated in some of the sins Paul had mentioned ( Col 3:5-6 ).
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
Col 3:5-7. Mortify therefore Put to death, slay with a continued stroke; your members The members of the old man, which together make up the body of sin; inclinations and dispositions which spread themselves through all the members of the body, and draw even them into a compliance with themselves; which are upon the earth Where they find their nourishment, or which are earthly, inclining to earthly things, and wholly engaged about them. Uncleanness In act, word, or thought; inordinate affection Every passion which does not flow from, and lead to, the love of God; evil concupiscence Or desire, namely, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life. Covetousness The desire of having more, as the word signifies, or of any thing independent of God; which is idolatry Properly and directly, for it is giving the heart to a creature, putting that trust in a creature which ought to be placed in the Creator, and seeking that happiness in a creature which can only be found in God, and ought therefore only to be sought in him. For which things sake Though the carnal and sensual regard them lightly; the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience Even on the heathen themselves, who bid the most open defiance even to the first principles of all true religion. The apostle speaks in this severe manner against the vices mentioned, because they were commonly practised by the heathen, and had been practised by the Colossians. In the which ye also walked Had your conversation, partaking with your neighbours in all their enormities; when ye lived in, or among, them Kept company with the children of disobedience. By their walking in these things, the apostle seems to have meant their committing the vices, mentioned Col 3:5, habitually, and with pleasure. For Colosse being a city of Phrygia, where the rites of Bacchus and those of Cybele, consisting of all sorts of lewdness in speech and action, were practised with a frantic kind of madness, the Colossians, no doubt, had been much addicted to these gross impurities in their heathen state.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
ARGUMENT 14
GODS METHOD WITH SIN, EXTERMINATION
5. Therefore kill your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, covetousness, which is idolatry. Mortify, E.V. which theologians have endeavored to construe, gradualisticis nekrosate, from nekros, a corpse. Hence, the word here used by the Holy Ghost is the strongest possible expression for kill. It literally means kill instantaneously, because the Greek verb is in the aorist tense, which means a sudden momentary action. God, in his providence, put that instantaneous tense in the Greek language (which is not used in English), to reveal to the world his wonderful work in the destruction of sin and the salvation of the soul. Here we are commanded to kill the evil surviving in our hearts suddenly as you could fire a revolver. Can I thus instantly slay the man of sin in my own heart The Bible is pre-eminent for common sense. Charles Wesley says, How can I cleanse my hands or my heart but by believing Thee. O Lord! These variations in phraseology and attitude wonderfully relieve the Bible of monotony. Here we have especial prominence given to human agency. While it is impossible for me to kill old Adam in my heart, either suddenly or gradually, I can, in the twinkling of an eye, turn him over to omnipotent Adam the Second, who, pursuant to my faith, will kill him before I can open my eye to see him fall. So the way you kill all the evil in your heart is simply to trust for it.
7. In which you also at one time walked about when you lived in them. This verse shows that Paul is not commanding sinners to kill all the evil tempers surviving in them, but Christians, as he here alludes to their former lives when they once lived under the dominion of these evil tempers. They are not there now. Their service to these evil tempers is a matter of the bygones. Yet they have them on hand, though in a subjugated state, an everlasting annoyance till exterminated. Some holiness people teach only the suppression, and not the extermination of sin. That is simply the Bible standard of regeneration, while sanctification here, and in hundreds of other plain passages, is sins extermination.
8. Now you also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, evil speaking, disgraceful talk out of your mouth. The Greek here is the same aorist tense, imperative mood, setting forth the instantaneous and utter removal of these hereditary evils. Hence, it is simply another expression parallel with verse five for the extermination and complete elimination of these evil tempers.
9. Lie not one to another, having put off the old man along with his habit;
10. And having put on the new man, who is renewed in perfect knowledge, according to the image of him who created him. These verses speak of the old man eliminated suddenly and completely, and the new man instantaneously put on, involving the reception of the Divine image lost in the fall. In this paragraph we have a beautiful variety of expression, all fulminating instantaneous death to the man of sin, surviving in the heart of the regenerate. While we have this variety of expression, in two instances ordering us to kill and utterly remove the members of old Adami.e., our evil tempersin two other instances the man himself is specified. Of course, these statements are substantially synonymous. When you kill all the members, you kill the man, et vice versa. When old Adam dies, all is over.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
Verse 5
Mortify–your members; keep evil propensities under strict subjection.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
DIVISION IV PRACTICAL APPLICATION.
CH. 3:5-4:6.
SECTION 11. GENERAL MORAL TEACHING: NEGATIVE.
CH. 3:5-11.
Put to death then the bodily members which are upon the earth fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and the covetousness, which is idolatry; because of which things comes the anger of God upon the sons of disobedience. Among whom ye also walked once, when ye lived in these things. But now, also ye, put away all things, anger, fury, badness, railing, shameful talking, out of your mouth: lie not one to another; having put off the old man with his actions, and having put on the new man which is being renewed for knowledge according to the image of Him that created him. Where there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond, free, but Christ is all things and in all.
In the light of the glory of the Risen Lord, which shone upon us in Col 3:1-4, the errors prevalent at Coloss have utterly vanished. In the rest of the Epistle, no trace of them remains. But Paul remembers that his readers are still men on earth, exposed to the temptations incident to human life. Therefore, as he comes down from this Mount of Transfiguration, he uses the brightness of the vision as a moral influence deterring from sin, and prompting every kind of excellence. In other words, the vision of Christ in Col 3:1-4 is a transition from the specific errors treated in DIV. III. to the principles of general morality taught in DIV. IV. In 11 we have negative moral teaching, i.e. a warning against various forms of sin; in 12, positive moral teaching, i.e. incentives to various kinds of excellence; in 13, precepts for various classes of persons; and in 14 sundry general exhortations.
Col 3:5. Practical application of the foregoing: put-to-death then. Cp. Rom 8:13, putting to death the actions of the body. [In contrast to Rom 8:13, the Greek aorist here bids that the putting to death be at once completed so that henceforth the bodily members be not dying but dead. Similarly 2Co 7:7, let us cleanse ourselves, so that henceforth we be clean.]
The members which are upon the earth: hands, feet, lips, eyes, etc., according to Pauls constant use of the word and his frequent reference to the immoral influence of the body. This implies that the word death is metaphorical. And it recalls the very strong metaphor of Mat 5:29-30, especially one of thy members perish. The body exerts on the unsaved, through its various parts and their various functions, an active and immoral influence. Its members may therefore be represented as a living and hostile power. Not that matter or the body is essentially bad: for they are good creatures of God. But mans body has fallen under the dominion of sin, and has thus become a fetter with which sin binds the spirit within. This hostile power, Paul bids us kill, so that the bodily senses shall no longer, clamouring for indulgence, shape our actions or even our desires. He means that we surrender ourselves to the saving influence which comes to us through the cross of Christ and appropriate by faith the deliverance from the rule of the bodily life which Christ has gained for us by His death. Thus are the members of our body, which once enslaved us, nailed to His cross and thus rendered powerless for evil. And, since this deliverance comes by our own self-surrender and faith, we may be said, as here, ourselves to put to death the members of our bodies. Thus (2Co 7:1) we cleanse ourselves from all pollution of flesh and spirit.
Upon the earth: recalls the same words in Col 3:2, thus bringing them to bear on this exhortation. Our bodies and all that pertains to them belong to the earth. Therefore, to allow them to rule us, whom God has raised to heaven, is to bow to the dominion of a world which God has placed far beneath our feet.
Fornication, uncleanness: as in Gal 5:19.
Passion: an inward emotion aroused by some external object; in this case by an impure object prompting inchastity. Same word in Rom 1:26.
Desire: good or bad; see under Gal 5:17. It therefore needs to be further specified as evil desire. It is a wider term than passion, and describes a mind going out after some external object. These four terms descend from the specific to the general: intercourse with harlots, any form of outward inchastity, the inward emotion from which inchastity springs, any bad desire.
Covetousness, literally having more: desire for more than our share. The definite article raises this sin into special prominence: and this is increased by the comment which follows.
Which (or better which sort of thing) is idolatry: it belongs to a class of things all which are idolatry. Covetousness is worship of material good. And it presupposes that our well-being depends upon having the good things of earth, and that therefore created objects around are arbiters of our happiness. To suppose this, is to put the creature in the place of the Creator, and to put man under the dominion of the accidents of life. Thus (1Ti 6:10) love of money is a root of all the evils. That this apparently casual assertion is repeated in Eph 5:5, reveals its firm hold of the thought of Paul. This double warning is the more needful because the great evil of covetousness is not at once apparent. Both covetousness and sensuality are exact contraries, in different directions, to seeking the things at Gods right hand.
Notice here, as in Rom 1:29; Rom 1:31; 1Co 6:9, Gal 5:20, a catalogue of sins. This marked feature of Pauls writings reveals a familiar student of fallen human nature. Also that, after bidding us put to death the members of our body, Paul mentions first sins directly connected with the body.
This list of sins is placed in grammatical apposition to the members which are upon the earth as something which we must put to death. Practically it is an explanation of the foregoing metaphor. Paul really wishes us to kill the various sins which once used our bodily powers as instruments of evil. This simple explanation accounts fully for the arrangement of the verse. Paul does not say that these sins are members of our bodies, nor does he ever use such a metaphor. But, looking upon the bodies of the unsaved as organs of sin, as animated by a power hostile to us, he bids us put them to death and then explains his meaning by saying that what he wishes us to kill is sin in its various forms. Thus this verse is a natural development of the teaching of Rom 6:12-19.
Col 3:6. Solemn assertion of the inseparable connection of sin and punishment. A frequent conclusion to Pauls lists of sins: Eph 5:6; Gal 5:21; 1Co 6:10. He was accustomed thus to guard from abuse the doctrine of Justification through Faith. This solemn assertion greatly strengthens the foregoing exhortation.
Anger of God: Rom 1:18; Rom 5:9 : His determination to punish. It comes in the day of anger and of revelation of the righteous judgment of God, Rom 2:5. The certainty of future punishment makes it to Pauls thought a present reality, as though retribution were already on the way: cp. 1Th 1:10. It comes down from heaven upon the wicked.
Disobedience: same word in Rom 11:30; Rom 11:32; Eph 2:2; Eph 5:6; Heb 4:6; Heb 4:11. It is practical unbelief.
Sons of disobedience: Eph 2:2; Eph 5:6 : as though the abstract principle were the source of their immoral nature. In each sinner the abstract principle of unbelief has given birth to a child. Similarly Joh 17:12, son of destruction; 1Jn 3:10, children of the devil; Eph 5:8, children of light; Luk 20:36, sons of the resurrection. It is a Hebrew phrase: 1Sa 2:12, sons of Belial; 1Sa 20:31, a son of death is he. The phrase suggests how completely disobedience is a part of the nature of sinners. On the correct reading of this verse see Introd. iii. 2.
Col 3:7. If in Col 3:6 we omit upon the sons of disobedience, we must render here in which things ye walked: cp. Eph 2:2; 2Co 4:2; Rom 6:4. This would imply that when the Colossians lived in these things they walked in them. Now, when used of sinners, the word live can mean only the outward manner of life. Touching the inner reality, their state is not life, but death. In this sense none but believers can be said to live and to have vital surroundings: e.g. Gal 2:20, live in faith. And, if the word live means here only the outward manner of life, it is practically the same as the word walk. Consequently, if we omit the doubtful words in Col 3:6, the latter part of Col 3:7 becomes an empty tautology. This confirms the testimony of almost all the ancient documents that these words are genuine; and suggests that this is one more of the many cases in which the Vatican MS. omits genuine words.
If we accept these words as genuine, we must render among whom also ye walked. Cp. Eph 2:3, among whom also we had our manner of life formerly in the desires of our flesh. They travelled in company with other sons of disobedience. All walked along the same broad way.
Lived in these things: close parallel in Rom 6:2, live in it, i.e. in sin. Somewhat different is Col 2:20, living in the world. Formerly Pauls readers lived in the sins mentioned above: they then went along a path trodden by those whose character is derived from, and determined by, the principle of rebellion against God. This justifies the exhortation of Col 3:5, and prepares a way for that of Col 3:8.
Col 3:8-9. But now: Pauls frequent contrast of past and present: so Col 1:22; Col 1:26; Eph 2:13; Rom 6:22; Rom 7:6. It introduces here, in contrast to the readers past life just described, a repetition in plain language of the metaphorical exhortation of Col 3:5.
Put-away: as in Eph 4:22; Eph 4:25; Rom 13:12.
Also ye; joins the Colossian Christians in present duty with all believers, just as the same words in Col 3:7 joined them with the sons of disobedience.
All things: including the list in Col 3:5, the further list now added, and every kind of sin. It gives to Pauls prohibition the widest universality.
Anger: a disposition which prompts to inflict pain or injury: see under Rom 1:18.
Fury: a bursting forth of this disposition. Same words in same order in Rom 2:8, describing Gods determination to punish sin. Converse order in Eph 4:31. That they are here classed among sins, reminds us how easily anger oversteps the line and becomes evil.
Badness: general worthlessness, in contrast to excellence: same word in Rom 1:29; 1Co 5:8; 1Co 14:20; Eph 4:31.
Railing: the Greek original of our own word blasphemy. It denotes any hurtful or evil speaking against God or against man. See under Rom 2:24; Rom 3:8.
Shameful speaking: foul-mouthed language of any kind. These two forms of improper speech are closely associated. For language hurtful to our neighbour easily becomes coarse abuse. And both are a frequent expression of anger and fury.
Out of your mouth; adds to the prohibition graphic definiteness. Put out of your mouth, as unworthy to be in it, every form of bad speech. To take these words merely as describing the bodily organ of speech, (cp. Eph 4:29,) would make them almost meaningless.
Lie not: another kind of prohibited language.
One to another; recalls their close mutual relation, as (Eph 4:25) members one of another. This separate prohibition of falsehood reminds us of its unique wickedness: cp. Rev 21:8.
Col 3:9-10. Reasons, negative and positive, supporting the prohibitions of Col 3:8-9 a.
Put-off: as one takes off and lays aside clothing. Same word in Col 2:15, where see note.
The old man: same words in Rom 6:6. So complete is the change that the man himself as he formerly was is spoken of as an old garment laid aside, as though personality itself were changed. So 2Co 5:17, the old things have gone by.
Actions: same word as in Rom 8:13; Rom 12:4. The various activities of the old life are supposed to have been laid aside together with their one personal source: the old man with his actions.
Put-on: as one puts on clothes or weapons, the exact counterpart of put-off. Same word in Mat 6:25; 2Co 5:3; and in Rom 13:12; Rom 13:14; Gal 3:27, where we have close parallels.
The new man: in marked contrast to the old man. So complete is the change, and so distinct from ourselves is the new life, that Paul speaks of it as a new personality put on as we put on clothing. This implies an inner and neutral and unchangeable personality which puts off and on, and another personality with moral qualities which is put off and on.
New: recent in time: same word in 1Co 5:7; Mat 9:17, etc.; a cognate word in Eph 4:23. It recalls the shortness of time since the change. The word rendered renewed comes from another root found in Eph 2:15; Eph 4:24; 2Co 3:6; 2Co 5:17, and denoting that which is new in quality.
Which-is-being-renewed: a gradual renovation day by day of the new character which has once for all been put on. The old character, now put off, was day by day undergoing corruption: Eph 4:22. Thus the new life is represented as one definite assumption of a character which henceforth is gradually progressing. The word renewed does not necessarily mean restoration to a former state. For the New Covenant is by no means a restoration of the Old Covenant to its original form: and the New Earth and Heaven will differ greatly from the present ones. But it involves the removal of all defects. The renewal will not be complete until every trace of the damage done by sin is erased.
Knowledge, or full-knowledge: same word as in Col 1:9-10; Col 2:2. It notes the direction and aim of this renewal, as designed to bring us into full-knowledge. As the Christian life progresses we know more and more of that which is best worth knowing.
Image: an outward manifestation of the inward reality of God. It is the nature of God as set before the eyes of men.
Him that created: the Father, as always; Rom 1:25; Eph 3:9. This is confirmed by Col 1:16, where Christ is not the Author, but the Agent, of creation.
According to the image etc.; recalls at once the same words in Gen 1:26-27. Cp. Jas 3:9. The story of creation teaches that the Creator is Himself the Archetype of His intelligent creatures. Now the Creator knows perfectly whatever He has made. And Paul says that this divine knowledge is a pattern of the knowledge which this renewal aims to impart to men: for knowledge according to the image of Him that created him: viz. the new man, the chief matter of this verse. Consequently, the word created must refer to the moral re-creation. This use of a word originally used of the old creation implies that the old and new are analogous. So are all Gods works in harmony one with another, and in proportion to the similarity of their occasion. Whether the words according to the image etc. be joined to knowledge or to being-renewed, is unimportant and was perhaps not definite to the writers mind. For knowledge is an aim of the renewal, and the Creator is its pattern: therefore the knowledge aimed at must be a human counterpart of the Creators infinite knowledge. As the renewal makes progress, we shall in greater measure share Gods knowledge of all that He has made and done. In other words, spiritual growth is growth in intelligence.
This mention of knowledge as an aim of renewal is in close harmony with Col 1:9; Col 1:28; Col 2:2, and with the general scope of this Epistle.
[Grammatically, the aorist participles having-put-off and having-put-on denote only actions preceding, in act or thought, the laying aside of sin to which in Col 3:8 Paul exhorts; and do not say whether the putting off be something still to be done and therefore a part of the exhortation, or something already done and therefore a reason for it. Each of these expositions is in harmony with Pauls thought elsewhere: cp. Gal 3:27 for the latter, and Rom 13:14 for the former. The practical difference is very slight. Perhaps it is best to understand Paul to mean that by joining the company of the followers of Christ the Christians at Coloss had already formally stripped off from themselves and laid aside their former life and character and had put on a new life; and that he appeals to this profession as a reason for now laying aside all sin. Similar appeal in Rom 6:2. This latter exposition may be embodied in translation by rendering, inasmuch as ye have put off etc.
Col 3:11. A comment on the new life just described as a new man undergoing further renewal.
Where there is etc.: the new life looked upon as a locality in which the old distinctions are no longer found. Paul cannot repress a thought very familiar to him, the great distinctions of Greek and Jew, of bond and free; and these distinctions overshadowed and set aside by Christ. Close parallels in Gal 3:28; 1Co 12:13. The similarities and differences of these unexpected allusions to the same human distinctions as set aside in Christ reveal the hand not of a copyist but of one original author.
Greek and Jew: in this order only here; contrast even 1Co 1:22. These words embrace all mankind from the point of view of Jewish nationality: the words circumcision and uncircumcision do so from the point of view of Jewish ritual. The preposition and puts, in each pair, the two counterparts in conspicuous contrast and combination.
Barbarian, Scythian: no longer an inclusive description. The word Greek, which to a Jew included usually all nations other than his own, seemed to Paul not sufficiently inclusive. He therefore adds the word Barbarian, a frequent and all-inclusive contrast to Greek: and to make his description still more specific he mentions by name one of the most barbarous of the barbarian nations. Cp. Josephus, Against Apion bk. ii. 38, The Scythians differ little from wild beasts. As not containing an inclusive description of mankind, these two last words are added without a connecting conjunction. And in the same loose way the words bond, free, are added, the reader being left to observe that they include the whole race. As in 1Co 12:13; Gal 3:27, Paul declares that in the new life these wide distinctions do not exist.
But Christ etc.: a positive truth, of which Col 3:11 a is but a negative counterpart.
All things in all persons: see under 1Co 15:28, where God is all things in all. To have Christ, is to have all things: for He is Himself all that His servants need. And in all His servants, as Himself all things to them, Christ is. In the slave Christ is, as his liberty; in the Scythian, as his civilisation and culture. And since Christ includes in Himself the whole world of mans need, and dwells in all His servants, all human distinctions which are but embodiments of human defects, have in the new life passed utterly away. National and social barriers there cannot be where Christ is.
In DIV. III. Paul dealt with the specific matter of this Epistle, viz. certain errors prevalent at Coloss, errors derogatory to the dignity of Christ. For his refutation of these errors, he prepared a way in DIV. II. by expounding the nature and work of the Eternal Son. In DIV. IV. this refutation of specific doctrinal error is followed by the general principles of Christian morality. And this moral teaching is directly based upon the specific and exalted Christian doctrine with which DIV. III. concludes. For with Paul morality is always based upon doctrine: and doctrine is always brought to bear upon morality.
First comes, in 11, negative moral teaching. And every line reveals the peculiar thought of Paul. The various members of the body, taken as a whole, are in his thought almost identical with various sins, of which he gives a list beginning with sins specially related to the body. All these, the members of the body metaphorically, the specific sins actually, Paul bids his readers kill. He calls special attention to the worship of material good implied in the everywhere prevalent greed for wealth; and then points to the anger of God which will fall upon those whose character is moulded by rejection of His word. After a direct exhortation to cast away everything of this sort, Paul continues his list by mentioning sins of inward passion and of its outward expression in word, noting specially among sins of the tongue the unique sin of falsehood. He strengthens his exhortation by an ideal picture of conversion which he describes as a laying aside of the old personality and its various activities as one lays aside an old garment, and as a putting on of a new personality marked by progressive renovation tending towards perfect knowledge-like that by which the Creator knows all that He has made. This ideal Christian life, Paul cannot mention without remembering the national, theocratic, and social barriers which separate men, but which are completely broken down by Christ, who dwells in all His people as the full supply of all their need.
Fuente: Beet’s Commentary on Selected Books of the New Testament
“Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:”
This text has many implications for the local assembly as well as for the individual, however I want to concentrate on the individuals relationship with Christ. You can do a study for yourself relating to the persons relationship to the church.
If you have been raised with Christ, if you are born again, if you have accepted Christ, if you are truly a believer, then SEEK things above and SET your mind on things above.
Why should we concentrate on these two items? BECAUSE THAT IS WHERE CHRIST IS AND THAT IS WHERE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FOR “CHRIST WHO IS YOUR LIFE” – you have died and have been raised with him. We are to treat ourselves as though we are there even if our old body is holding us here on earth for a time.
Seek, set, put to death, put aside, and put on are not words of insignificance. There are some today that would teach us that when we accept Christ we are zapped into holy purity. No! You have to do it. You don’t eat your sugar flavored zappies one morning and get your zap of holy. You must consciously do these things.
The term “seek” is a general term for looking for or going after something with great seriousness. It would seem to be the thought of committing yourself to this seeking with a purpose of completion in mind.
The phrase “Christ Who is our life” really ought to grab and keep our attention. It is a bold statement of the Christian life. Just sit and contemplate the phrase this week.
Paul states this as a fact to the folks he was writing to. This included the mature and the immature – all should understand that this fact should be present in their lives.
The meaning of the phrase might fall along the following lines.
1. Without Him we would have no eternal life. We would all be bound for hell and torment.
2. Without Him we would have no physical life. He sustains all creation.
3. Without Him we would have no meaning in life. Without Christ to serve what goals can we have? None except material goals for this life. It is no wonder people in America are bored, depressed, self centered, self serving, despondent and suicidal – they have no goals or aims in life save material possessions.
4. Without Him we would not have peace of life. I often wonder how lost people face the trials of life – the loss of loved ones – war – loss of job/retirement etc.
Is this phrase a truth in your life today? Is He really your life? Our lives must merge with His to be truly effective for Him and His plan for our lives.
Now, that we understand this phrase better do Paul’s words to the Philippians make more sense to you? “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
“Christs who is our life” – “to live is Christ”
With this concept in mind Paul walked across geography and history preaching Christ to everyone he could. With this concept he endured persecution, with this concept he endured beatings, with this concept he endured jail, and with this concept he faced everything the Devil could throw at him.
With this concept surely we can face those particular little problems facing us from time to time.
Christ who is our life. Decide on it. Allow it. Live it. Continue in it.
Forenoon and afternoon and night, —
And day is gone, —
So short a span of time thee is
‘twixt dawn and evensong.
Youth, – middle life, – old age, –
And life is past, —
So live each day that God shall say,
“Well done!” at last.
Edward Rowland Sill
So love your life, that when Ralph Edwards says “This is your life” – all they have to do is present a portrait of Jesus Christ your Savior.
Christ is our life.
Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson
3:5 {6} Mortify therefore your {c} members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:
(6) Let not your dead nature be effectual in you any more, but let your living nature be effectual. Now the strength of nature is known by the desires. Therefore let the affections of the world die in you, and let the contrary desires which are spiritual, live. And he reckons up a great long list of vices, and their contrary virtues.
(c) The desires and lusts that are in us, are in this passage very properly called members, because the reason and will of man is corrupted, and uses them as the body uses its members.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
B. The proper method 3:5-17
"Col 3:1-4 has provided the perspective from which the daily life of the Colossian Christians should be lived out. Now follows more specific advice that should help them the better to carry out the thematic exhortation to ’walk in him’ (Col 2:6)." [Note: Dunn, p. 211.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
1. Things to put off 3:5-11
On the basis of their position in Christ, Paul urged his readers to separate from the practices of their former way of life. He did this to enable them to realize in their experience all that Jesus Christ could produce in and through them. Three imperatives indicate Paul’s main points: consider as dead (lit. put to death, Col 3:5), put aside (Col 3:8), and do not lie (Col 3:9).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
In view of our actual position (Col 3:1) we should adopt a certain attitude toward our present phase of experience. This will help us to become what we are. The key word translated "consider . . . as dead" is an aorist imperative and means "put to death." There must be a decisive initial act (aorist tense) that introduces a settled attitude (present tense). [Note: Bruce, Commentary on . . ., p. 267.]
"Despite the power of their having been identified with Christ in his death, there were still things, parts of their old lives, habits of hand and mind, which tied them ’to the earth’ and hindered the outworking of the ’mind set on what is above.’" [Note: Dunn, p. 212.]
To put something to death is never pleasant.
"This practice of reckoning dead finds an excellent illustration in the gardener’s practice of grafting. Once the graft has been made on the old stock the gardener is careful to snip off any shoot from the old stock that may appear. So, in the believer’s life, since he has now been grafted into the Last Adam and His new life, he must by the Spirit put to death any products of the old life that may appear (cf. Rom 8:13)." [Note: Johnson, 481:24.]
Paul’s first list deals with sexual practices. Lists of virtues and vices were common in the ethical systems of the ancient world, and the imagery of putting off and on was also well-known. [Note: Dunn, p. 211; O’Brien, Colossians . . ., pp. 179-81. Cf. Romans 1:29-32; 1 Corinthians 5:9-11; 6:9-10; Galatians 5:19-23; Philippians 4:8; 1 Timothy 3:1-13; Titus 1:5-9; 1 Peter 4:3; et al. See René A. López, "A Study of Pauline Passages with Vice Lists," Bibliotheca Sacra 168:671 (July-September 2011):301-16.]
Immorality (Gr. porneia) refers to illicit sexual intercourse.
Impurity (akatharsia) in any form is in view, especially moral impurity in this context.
Passion (pathos) means uncontrolled illegitimate desire.
Evil desire (epithymian kaken) means any evil desire in a more general sense.
Greed (pleonexian, lit. "desire to have more") is any materialistic desire, including lust, that disregards the rights of others. It is "the arrogant and ruthless assumption that all other persons and things exist for one’s own benefit." [Note: G. B. Caird, Paul’s Letters from Prison, p. 205.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Chapter 3
SLAYING SELF THE FOUNDATION PRECEPT OF PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY
Col 3:5-9 (R.V.)
“Mortify therefore”-wherefore? The previous words give the reason. Because “ye died” with Christ, and because ye “were raised together with Him.” In other words, the plainest, homeliest moral teaching of this Epistle, such as that which immediately follows, is built upon its “mystical” theology. Paul thinks that the deep things which he has been saying about union with Christ in His death and resurrection have the most intimate connection with common life. These profound truths have the keenest edge, and are as a sacrificial knife, to slay the life of self. Creed is meant to tell on conduct. Character is the last outcome and test of doctrine. But too many people deal with their theological beliefs as they do with their hassocks and prayer books and hymn books in their pews-use them for formal worship once a week, and leave them for the dust to settle on them till Sunday comes round again. So it is very necessary to put the practical inferences very plainly, to reiterate the most commonplace and threadbare precepts as the issue of the most recondite teaching, and to bind the burden of duty on mens backs with the cords of principles and doctrines.
Accordingly the section of the Epistle which deals with Christian character now begins, and this “therefore” knits the two halves together. That word protests against opposite errors. On the one hand, some good people are to be found impatient of exhortations to duties, and ready to say, Preach the gospel, and the duties will spring up spontaneously where it is received; on the other hand, some people are to be found who see no connection between the practice of common morality and the belief of Christian truths, and are ready to say, Put away your theology; it is useless lumber, the machine will work as well without it. But Paul believed that the firmest basis for moral teaching and the most powerful motive for moral conduct is “the truth as it is in Jesus.”
I. We have here put very plainly the paradox of continual self-slaying as the all-embracing duty of a Christian.
It is a pity that the R.V has retained “mortify” here, as that Latinised word says to an ordinary reader much less than is meant, and hides the allusion to the preceding context. The marginal alternative “make dead” is, to say the least, not idiomatic English. The suggestion of the American revisers, which is printed at the end of the R.V, “put to death,” is much better, and perhaps a single word, such as “slay” or “kill” might have been better still.
“Slay your members which are upon the earth.” It is a vehement and paradoxical injunction, though it be but the echo of still more solemn and stringent words-“pluck it out, cut it off, and cast it from thee.” The possibility of misunderstanding it and bringing it down to the level of that spurious asceticism and “severity to the body” against which he has just been thundering, seems to occur to the Apostle, and therefore he hastens to explain that he does not mean the maiming of selves, or hacking away limbs, but the slaying of the passions and desires which root themselves in our bodily constitution. The eager haste of the explanation destroys the congruity of the sentence, but he does not mind that. And then follows a grim catalogue of the evil doers on whom sentence of death is passed.
Before dealing with that list, two points of some importance may be observed. The first is that the practical exhortations of this letter begin with this command to put off certain characteristics which are assumed to belong to the Colossian Christians in their natural state, and that only afterwards comes the precept to put on (Col 3:12) the fairer robes of Christlike purity, clasped about by the girdle of perfectness.
That is to say, Pauls anthropology regards men as wrong and having to get right. A great deal of the moral teaching which is outside of Christianity, and which does not sufficiently recognise that the first thing to be done is to cure and alter, but talks as if men were, on the whole, rather inclined to be good, is for that very reason perfectly useless. Its fine precepts and lofty sentiments go clean over peoples heads, and are ludicrously inappropriate to the facts of the case. The serpent has twined itself round my limbs, and unless you can give me a knife, sharp and strong enough to cut its loathsome coils asunder, it is cruel to bid me walk. All men on the face of the earth need, for moral progress, to be shown and helped first how not to be what they have been, and only after that is it of the slightest use to tell them what they ought to be. The only thing that reaches the universal need is a power that will make us different from what we are. If we are to grow into goodness and beauty, we must begin by a complete reversal of tastes and tendencies. The thing we want first is not progress, the going on in the direction in which our faces are turned, but a power which can lay a mastering hand upon our shoulders, turn us right round, and make us go in the way opposite to that. Culture, the development of what is in us in germ, is not the beginning of good husbandry on human nature as it is. The thorns have to be stubbed up first, and the poisonous seeds sifted out, and new soil laid down, and then culture will bring forth something better than wild grapes. First-“mortify”; then-“put on.”
Another point to be carefully noted is that, according to the Apostles teaching, the root and beginning of all such slaying of the evil which is in us all, lies in our being dead with Christ to the world. In the former chapter we found that the Apostles final condemnation of the false asceticism which was beginning to infect the Colossian Church, was that it was of no value as a counteractive of fleshly indulgence. But here he proclaims that what asceticism could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, union with Jesus Christ in His death and risen life will do; it will subdue sin in the flesh. That slaying here enjoined as fundamental to all Christian holiness, is but the working out in life and character of the revolution in the inmost self, which has been effected, if by faith we are joined to the living Lord, who was dead and is alive for evermore. There must, however, be a very vigorous act of personal determination if the power of that union is to be manifested in us. The act of “slaying” can never be pleasant or easy. The vehemence of the command and the form of the metaphor express the strenuousness of the effort and the painfulness of the process, in the same way as Pauls other saying, “crucify the flesh,” does. Suppose a man working at some machine. His fingers get drawn between the rollers or caught in some belting. Another minute and he will be flattened to a shapeless bloody mass. He catches up an axe lying by and with his own arm hacks off his own hand at the wrist. It takes some nerve to do that. It is not easy nor pleasant, but it is the only alternative to a horrible death. I know of no stimtilus that will string a man up to the analogous spiritual act here enjoined, and enjoined by conscience also, except participation in the death of Christ and in the resulting life.
“Slay your members which are upon the earth” means tears and blood and more than blood. It is easier far to cut off the hand, which after all is not me, than to sacrifice passions and desires which, though they be my worst self, are myself. It is useless to blink the fact that the only road to holiness is through self-suppression, self-annihilation; and nothing can make that easy and pleasant. True, the paths of religion are ways of pleasantness and paths of peace, but they are steep, and climbing is never easy. The upper air is bracing and exhilarating indeed, but trying to lungs accustomed to the low levels. Religion is delightsome, but self-denial is always against the grain of the self which is denied, and there is no religion without it. Holiness is not to be won in a moment. It is not a matter of consciousness, possessed when we know that we possess it. But it has to be attained by effort. The way to heaven is riot by “the primrose path.” That leads to “the everlasting bonfire.” Forever it remains true that men obtain forgiveness and eternal life as a gift for which the only requisite is faith, but they achieve holiness, which is the permeating of their characters with that eternal life, by patient, believing, continuous effort. An essential part of that effort is directed towards the conquest and casting out of the old self in its earthward looking lusts and passions. The love of Jesus Christ and the indwelling of His renewing spirit make that conquest possible, by supplying an all-constraining motive and an all-conquering power. But even they do not make it easy, nor deaden the flesh to the cut of the sacrificial knife.
II. We have here a grim catalogue of the condemned to death.
The Apostle stands like a jailor at the prison door, with the fatal roll in his hand, and reads out the names of the evil doers for whom the tumbril waits to carry them to the guillotine, It is an ugly list, but we need plain speaking that there may be no mistake as to the identity of the culprits. He enumerates evils which honeycombed society with rottenness then, and are rampant now. The series recounts various forms of evil love, and is so arranged as that it starts with the coarse, gross act, and goes on to more subtle and inward forms. It goes up the stream as it were, to the fountain head, passing inward from deed to desire. First stands “fornication,” which covers the whole ground of immoral sexual relations, then “all uncleanness,” which embraces every manifestation in word or look or deed of the impure spirit, and so is at once wider and subtler than the gross physical act. Then follow “passion” and “evil desire”; the sources of the evil deeds. These again are at once more inward and more general than the preceding. They include not only the lusts and longings which give rise to the special sins just denounced, but all forms of hungry appetite and desire after “the things that are upon the earth.” If we are to try to draw a distinction between the two, probably “passion” is somewhat less wide than “desire,” and the former represents the evil emotion as an affection which the mind suffers, while the latter represents it as a longing which it actively puts forth. The “lusts of the flesh” are in the one aspect kindled by outward temptations which come with terrible force and carry men captive, acting almost irresistibly on the animal nature. In the other aspect they are excited by the voluntary action of the man himself. In the one the evil comes into the heart; in the other the heart goes out to the evil.
Then follows covetousness. The juxtaposition of that vice with the grosser forms of sensuality is profoundly significant. It is closely allied with these. It has the same root, and is but another form of evil desire going out to the “things which are on the earth.” The ordinary worldly nature flies for solace either to the pleasures of appetite or to the passion of acquiring. And not only are they closely connected in root, but covetousness often follows lust in the history of a life just as it does in this catalogue. When the former evil spirit loses its hold, the latter often takes its place. How many respectable middle-aged gentlemen are now mainly devoted to making money, whose youth was foul with sensual indulgence? When that palled, this came to titillate the jaded desires with a new form of gratification. Covetousness is “promoted vice lust superannuated.”
A reason for this warning against covetousness is appended, “inasmuch as (for such is the force of the word rendered the which) it is idolatry.” If we say of anything, no matter what, “If I have only enough of this, I shall be satisfied; it is my real aim, my sufficient good,” that thing is a god to me, and my real worship is paid to it, whatever may be my nominal religion. The lowest form of idolatry is the giving of supreme trust to a material thing, and making that a god. There is no lower form of fetish worship than this, which is the real working religion today of thousands of Englishmen who go masquerading as Christians.
III. The exhortation is enforced by a solemn note of warning: “For which things sake the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience.” Some authorities omit the words “upon the children of disobedience,” which are supposed to have crept in here from the parallel passage, Eph 5:6. But even the advocates of the omission allow that the clause has “preponderating support,” and the sentence is painfully incomplete and abrupt without it. The R.V has exercised a wise discretion in retaining it.
In the previous chapter the Apostle included “warning” in his statement of the various branches into which his Apostolic activity was divided. His duty seemed to him to embrace the plain stern setting forth of that terrible reality, the wrath of God. Here we have it urged as a reason for shaking off these evil habits.
That thought of wrath as an element in the Divine nature has become very unwelcome to this generation. The great revelation of God in Jesus Christ has taught the world His love, as it never knew it before, and knows it now by no other means. So profoundly has that truth that God is love penetrated the consciousness of the European world, that many people will not hear of the wrath of God because they think it inconsistent with His love-and sometimes reject the very gospel to which they owe their lofty conceptions of the Divine heart, because it speaks solemn words about His anger and its issues.
But surely these two thoughts of Gods love and Gods wrath are not inconsistent, for His wrath is His love, pained, wounded, thrown back upon itself, rejected and compelled to assume the form of aversion and to do its “strange work”-that which is not its natural operation-of punishment. When we ascribe wrath to God, we must take care of lowering the conception of it to the level of human wrath, which is shaken with passion and often tinged with malice, whereas in that affection of the Divine nature which corresponds to anger in us, there is neither passion nor wish to harm. Nor does it exclude the coexistence of love, as Paul witnesses in his Epistle to the Ephesians, in one verse declaring that “we were the children of wrath,” and in the next that God “loved us with a great love even when we were dead in sins.”
God would not be a holy God if it were all the same to Him whether a man were good or bad. As a matter of fact, the modern revulsion against the representation of the wrath of God is usually accompanied with weakened conceptions of His holiness, and of His moral government of the world. Instead of exalting, it degrades His love to free it from the admixture of wrath, which is like alloy with gold, giving firmness to what were else too soft for use. Such a God is not love, but impotent good nature. If there be no wrath, there is no love; if there were no love, there would be no wrath. It is more blessed and hopeful for sinful men to believe in a God who is angry with the wicked, whom yet He loves, every day, and who cannot look upon sin, than in one who does not love righteousness enough to hate iniquity, and from whose too indulgent hand the rod has dropped, to the spoiling of His children. “With the froward Thou wilt show Thyself froward.” The mists of our sins intercept the gracious beams and turn the blessed sun into a ball of fire. The wrath “cometh.” That majestic present tense may express either the continuous present incidence of the wrath as exemplified in the moral government of the world, in which, notwithstanding anomalies, such sins as have been enumerated drag after themselves their own punishment and are “avenged in kind,” or it may be the present tense expressive of prophetic certainty, which is so sure of what shall come, that it speaks of it as already on its road. It is eminently true of those sins of lust and passion that the men who do them reap as they have sown. How many young men come up into our great cities, innocent and strong, with a mothers kiss upon their lips and a fathers blessing hovering over their heads! They fall among bad companions in college or warehouse, and after a little while they disappear. Broken in health, tainted in body and soul, they crawl home to break their mothers hearts-and to die. “His bones are full of the sins of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust.” Whether in such extreme forms or no, that wrath comes even now, in plain and bitter consequences on men, and still more on women who sin in such ways.
And the present retribution may well be taken as the herald and prophet of a still more solemn manifestation of the Divine displeasure, which is already as it were on the road, has set out from the throne of God, and will certainly arrive here one day. These consequences of sin already realised serve to show the set and drift of things, and to suggest what will happen when retribution and the harvest of our present life of sowing come. The first fiery drops that fell on Lots path as he fled from Sodom were not more surely precursors of an overwhelming rain, nor bade him flee for his life more urgently, than the present punishment of sin proclaims its sorer future punishment, and exhorts us all to come out of the storm into the refuge, even Jesus, who is ever even now “delivering us from the wrath which is” ever even now “coming” on the sons of disobedience.
IV. A further motive enforcing the main precept of self-slaying is the remembrance of a sinful past, which remembrance is at once penitent and grateful. “In the which ye also walked aforetime, when ye lived in them.”
What is the difference between “walking” and “living” in these things? The two phrases seem synonymous, and might often be used indifferently; but here there is evidently a well marked diversity of meaning. The former is an expression frequent in the Pauline Epistles as well as in Johns; as for instance, “to walk in love” or “in truth.” That in which men walk is conceived of as an atmosphere encompassing them; or, without a metaphor, to walk in anything is to have the active life or conduct guided or occupied by it. These Colossian Christians, then, had in the past trodden that evil path, or their active life had been spent in that poisonous atmosphere-which is equivalent to saying that they had committed these sins. At what time? “When you lived in them.” That does not mean merely “when your natural life was passed among them.” That would be a trivial thing to say, and it would imply that their outward life now was not so passed, which would not be true. In that sense they still lived in the poisonous atmosphere. In such an age of unnamable moral corruption no man could live out of the foul stench which filled his nostrils whenever he walked abroad or opened his window. But the Apostle has just said that they were now “living in Christ,” and their lives “hid with Him in God.” So this phrase describes the condition which is the opposite of their present, and may be paraphrased, “When the roots of your life, tastes, affections, thoughts, desires were immersed, as in some feculent bog, in these and kindred evils.” And the meaning of the whole is substantially ‘Your active life was occupied and guided by these sins in that past time when your inward being was knit to and nourished by them.’ Or to put it plainly, conduct followed and was shaped by inclinations and desires.
This retrospect enforces the main exhortation. It is meant to awaken penitence, and the thought that time enough has been wasted and incense enough offered on these foul altars. It is also meant to kindle thankfulness for the strong, loving hand which has drawn them from that pit of filth, and by both emotions to stimulate the resolute casting aside of that evil in which they once, like others, wallowed. Their joy on the one hand and their contrition on the other should lead them to discern the inconsistency of professing to be Christians and yet keeping terms with these old sins. They could not have the roots of half their lives above and of the other half down here. The gulf between the present and past of a regenerate man is too wide and deep to be bridged by flimsy compromises. “A man who is perverse in his two ways,” that is, in double ways, “shall fall in one of them,” as the Book of Proverbs has it. The attempt to combine incompatibles is sure to fail. It is impossible to walk firmly if one foot be down in the gutter and the other up on the curbstone. We have to settle which level we shall choose, and then to plant both feet there.
V. We have, as conclusion, a still wider exhortation to an entire stripping off of the sins of the old state.
The whole force of the contrast and contrariety between the Colossian Christians past and present lies in that emphatic “now.” They as well as other heathen had been walking, because they had been living, in these muddy ways. But now that their life was hid with Christ in God; now that they had been made partakers of His death and resurrection, and of all the new loves and affinities which therein became theirs; now they must take heed that they bring not that dead and foul past into this bright and pure present, nor prolong winter and its frosts into the summer of the soul.
“Ye also.” There is another “ye also” in the previous verse-“ye also walked,” that is, you in company with other Gentiles followed a certain course of life. Here, by contrast, the expression means “you, in common with other Christians.” A motive enforcing the subsequent exhortation is in it hinted rather than fully spoken. The Christians at Colossae had belonged to a community which they have now left in order to join another. Let them behave as their company behaves. Let them keep step with their new comrades. Let them strip themselves, as their new associates do, of the uniform which they wore in that other regiment.
The metaphor of putting clothing on or off is very frequent in this Epistle. The precept here is substantially equivalent to the previous command to “slay,” with the difference that the conception of vices as the garments of the soul is somewhat less vehement than that which regards them as members of the very self. “All these” are to be put off. That phrase points back to the things previously spoken of. It includes the whole of the unnamed members of the class, of which a few have been already named, and a handful more are about to be plucked like poison flowers, and suggests that there are many more as baleful growing by the side of this devils bouquet which is next presented.
As to this second catalogue of vices, they may be summarised as, on the whole, being various forms of wicked hatred, in contrast with the former list, which consisted of various forms of wicked love. They have less to do with bodily appetites. But perhaps it is not without profound meaning that the fierce rush of unhallowed passion over the soul is put first, and the contrary flow of chill malignity comes second; for in the spiritual world, as in the physical, a storm blowing from one quarter is usually followed by violent gales from the opposite. Lust ever passes into cruelty, and dwells “hard by hate.” A licentious epoch or man is generally a cruel epoch or man. Nero made torches of the Christians. Malice is evil desire iced.
This second list goes in the opposite direction to the former. That began with actions and went up the stream of desire; this begins with the sources, which are emotions, and comes down stream to their manifestations in action.
First we have anger. There is a just and righteous anger, which is part of the new man, and essential to his completeness, even as it is part of the image after which he is created. But here of course the anger which is to be put off is the inverted reflection of the earthly and passionate lust after the flesh; it is, then, of an earthly, passionate, and selfish kind. “Wrath” differs from “anger” in so far as it may be called anger boiling over. If anger rises keep the lid on, do not let it get the length of wrath, nor effervesce into the brief madness of passion. But on the other hand, do not think that you have done enough when you have suppressed the wrath which is the expression of your anger, nor be content with saying, “Well, at all events I did not show it,” but take the cure a step further back, and strip off anger as well as wrath, the emotion as well as the manifestation. Christian people do not sufficiently bring the greatest forces of their religion and of Gods Spirit to bear upon the homely task of curing small hastinesses of temper, and sometimes seem to think it a sufficient excuse to say, “I have naturally a hot disposition.” But Christianity was sent to subdue and change natural dispositions. An angry man cannot have communion with God, any more than the sky can be reflected in the storm-swept tide; and a man in communion with God cannot be angry with a passionate and evil anger any more than a dove can croak like a raven or strike like a hawk. Such anger disturbs our insight into everything; eyes suffused with it cannot see; and it weakens all good in the soul, and degrades it before its own conscience.
“Malice” designates another step in the process. The anger boils over in wrath, and then cools down into malignity-the disposition which means mischief, and plans or rejoices in evil. falling on the hated head. That malice, as cold, as clear, as colourless as sulphuric acid, and burning like it, is worse than the boiling rage already spoken of. There are many degrees of this cold-drawn, double-distilled rejoicing in evil, and the beginning of it in a certain faint satisfaction in the misfortunes of those whom we dislike is by no means unusual.
An advance is now made in the direction of outward manifestation. It is significant that while the expressions of wicked love were deeds, those of wicked hate are words. The “blasphemy” of the Authorised Version is better taken, with the Revised, as “railing.” The word means “speech, that injures,” and such speech may be directed either against God, which is blasphemy in the usual sense of the word, or against man. The hate blossoms into hurtful speech. The heated metal of anger is forged into poisoned arrows of the tongue. Then follows “shameful speaking out of your mouth,” which is probably to be understood not so much of obscenities, which would more properly belong to the former catalogue, as of foul-mouthed abuse of the hated persons, that copiousness of vituperation and those volcanic explosions of mud, which are so natural to the angry Eastern.
Finally, we have a dehortation from lying, especially to those within the circle of the Church, as if that sin too were the child of hatred and anger. It comes from a deficiency of love, or a predominance of selfishness, which is the same thing. A lie ignores my brothers claims on me, and my union with him. “Ye are members one of another,” is the great obligation to love which is denied and sinned against by hatred in all its forms and manifestations, and not least by giving my brother the poisoned bread of lies instead of the heavenly manna of pure truth, so far as it has been given to me.
On the whole, this catalogue brings out the importance to be attached to sins of speech, which are ranked here as in parallel lines with the grossest forms of animal passion. Mens words ought to be fountains of consolation and sources of illumination, encouragement, revelations of love and pity. And what are they? What floods of idle words, foul words, words that wound like knives and sting and bite like serpents, deluge the world! If all the talk that has its sources in these evils rebuked here were to be suddenly made inaudible, what a dead silence would fall on many brilliant circles, and how many of us would stand making mouths but saying nothing.
All the practical exhortations of this section concern common homely duties which everybody knows to be Such. It may be asked-does Christianity then only lay down such plain precepts? What need was there of all that prelude of mysterious doctrines, if we are only to be landed at last in such elementary and obvious moralities? No doubt they are elementary and obvious, but the main matter is-how to get them kept. And in respect to that, Christianity does two things which nothing else does. It breaks the entail of evil habits by the great gift of pardon for the past, and by the greater gift of a new spirit and life principle within, which is foreign to all evil, being the effluence of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
Therefore the gospel of Jesus Christ makes it possible that men should slay themselves, and put on the new life, which will expel the old as the new shoots on some trees push the last years lingering leaves, brown and sere, from their places. All moral teachers from the beginning have agreed, on the whole, in their reading of the commandments which are printed on conscience in the largest capitals. Everybody who is not blind can read them. But reading is easy, keeping is hard. How to fulfil has been wanting. It is given us in the gospel, which is not merely a republication of old precepts, but the communication of new power. If we yield ourselves to Christ He will nerve our arms to wield the knife that will slay our dearest tastes, though beloved as Isaac by Abraham. If a man knows and feels that Christ has died for him, and that he lives in and by Christ, then, and not else, will he be able to crucify self. If he knows and feels that, by His pardoning mercy and atoning death, Christ has taken off his foul raiment and clothed him in clean garments, then, and not else, will he be able, by daily effort after repression of self and appropriation of Christ, to put off the old man and to put on the new, which is daily being renewed into closer resemblance to