Don't Just Remove Your Old Clothes, Bin Them!

Colossians 3:9-10 –

‘Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.’

Paul calls us to ‘put to death the things of this earth’ (v5) - not only to remove them and put them to the side, but to destroy them, so that they cannot return or be ‘put on’ again. These are sinful human traits that have died with Christ and have no part in our renewed image in him. 

In the Colossians passage, Paul uses the phrase ‘taken off your old self’ which can be translated literally as removing an item of clothing. This metaphor is describing taking off one set of clothing and immediately putting on another. 

This is more than swapping outfits and laying the old outfit to one side; this is about destroying our old outfit so we can never put it back on. In N.T Wrights commentary on this section he relates this to baptism, where we say goodbye to our old earthly ways and replace them with a new set of ‘Christ-centred’ clothes. Paul re-iterates the importance of living in our ‘renewed image of our creator’, rather than that of the earth.

In what ways are we behaving ‘according to the earth’, rather than according to Christ? An example of this behaviour is falsehood: Paul says: ‘Do not lie to one another’. I feel personally challenged by this in the area of social media. I find that it can be very easy to portray the ‘highlights’ of my life and show case only what is going well in my day. Here, Paul calls us to be open and honest with each other, to acknowledge that we are sinners and to share our struggles and our burdens with each other in a way that we can continue to grow together in Christ. 

Prayer – Holy Spirit, please show me if are there any areas of my life I need to destroy today, rather than just take off?'