Colossians 3:1-11
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost | 03.08.2025 | Col 3:1-11 | The Rev. Beth A. Schlegel |
Colossians 3:1-11 English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Baptism is a Change of Life
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
How hard it is to be a Christian! This might seem strange to many of us who don’t remember a time when we were not a Christian. If this is true for you, it is probably because like me, you were baptized as an infant or young child and brought up in a practicing Christian family. We were immersed in the Christian life from the beginning and did not have a radical conversion. Being Christian is simply who we are.
This was certainly not the case for the earliest Christians, and it is not the case for many people today who are converting to – and from – Christianity. For them, it is a conscious change from one thing to another, from a life defined by one set of beliefs and practices to a life defined by a different set of beliefs and practices.
Whether we are cradle Christians or become Christian later in life, it is important for us to pay attention to this aspect of conscious change in our life. God’s Word is clear that it is not our personal choice that makes us Christian, but God’s choice of us. God acts upon us when we are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and made children of God. It is God who unites us with the death of Jesus, drowning our sinful self and joining us with Jesus’ resurrection from the dead by bringing us up from the waters of baptism. God’s great love and mercy in giving us this new birth as Christians demands a response in how we live. This response – the good works we undertake, the life devoted to loving God with all our being and loving our neighbors as ourselves, our commitment to following the way of Jesus in this world – these fruits of faith are a matter of our choice, an exercise of our will, as the Holy Spirit works in us. In response to God’s saving grace toward us, we make conscious change a daily act of faith.
So, St. Paul writes to the Colossians: GNT version
You have been raised to life with Christ, so set your hearts on the things that are in heaven, where Christ sits on his throne at the right side of God.
Every morning when I wake up, I say a prayer of thanks to God for a new day and I recommit to living as a follower of Jesus.
That prayer could be: Dear Jesus, help me to set my heart on things in heaven. Help me today to put away the sinful desires in me so that I can fully live the life you give me. Amen.
Or, as Martin Luther prayed: We give you thanks, heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ your dear Son, that you have protected us through the night from all danger and harm. We ask you to preserve and keep us, this day also, from all sin and evil, that in all our thoughts, words, and deeds, we may serve and please you. Into your hands we commend our bodies and souls and all that is ours. Let your holy angels have charge of us, that the wicked one has no power over us. Amen.
However we might pray, it is important to consciously ask for God’s help to respond to our baptism life with thanks and obedience, because it is hard to be Christian.
The believers in Colossae were challenged by their environment, a culture of sexual excesses, immorality, corruption and dishonesty, indulgence of destructive passions, and greed. And their behavior reflected this culture: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language. Before coming to know Jesus Christ, they were used to living soap opera lives, lives with plots like TV crime dramas and political intrigue.
I wish I could make a joke here about how alien such a culture from the 1st c. must seem to us in the 21st c., but, sadly, I can’t. Like the early believers in Colossae, we face these same challenges and the reality that old habits die hard. And so, we too must heed the warnings and daily recommit our lives to the conscious change our response to God’s grace calls forth.
Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly; get rid of all such things.
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self…
Yes, daily – just like we put on an outfit of clothes for our body–we mindfully put on Jesus Christ as the clothing for our soul.
When we do this, Jesus with his Holy Spirit governs our life. Then, as Jesus calls us to follow, we can strive to be rich toward God.
Jesus, in our Gospel reading from Luke 12:13-21, and St. Paul both highlight greed as a particular temptation for those seeking to live God’s life.
I confess to knowing this sin far too well.
It takes many forms:
- having and hoarding too much stuff
- seeking to get more and more money and wealth
- wanting to be first in everything
- competing for “likes” in social media
- keeping for oneself what somebody else needs
St. Paul nails it when he calls greed idolatry. When we are greedy, we make that thing into our god. It becomes the focus of our life, the most important thing, the thing we tell ourselves we cannot live without. But none of what we are greedy for can save us. None of it can deliver us from death. None of it can give us the life God gives us in Jesus Christ.
Giving in to greed is like spending our entire life’s savings on a single potato chip when we could have the entire smorgasbord for free.
Well, not free…it cost Jesus his life.
But the riches of heaven are free to us.
For in Holy Baptism, you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
What a wonderful future we are promised as the children of God! What a great hope Jesus has given us! It is worth leaving everything behind for!
Let us then intentionally respond to God’s great mercy
- by taking care to live as Christians,
- daily recommitting our lives to following Jesus,
- guarding against greed and all destructive behavior,
- so that we enjoy the riches of new and eternal life.
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
©The Rev. Beth A. Schlegel, STS
pastorschlegel@live.com
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, York PA, USA
Christ Lutheran Church, Manchester PA, USA