So back in the day, whenever that was—12, 15 years ago—back when zombies were everywhere, right? All the movies, all the TV shows, they threw zombies in there somewhere. Do y'all remember those days? Now it's comic book movies, but back then it was zombies. Before that, it was vampires. That's kind of the way things cycle.
Me and some friends would sit around fire pits and discuss for hours what we would do in the event of a zombie apocalypse. And I know I'm not the only guy in this room that's had that conversation. I mean, we would talk about the best place to go to create life. Should we just get a big boat somewhere? Should we find an island? Those kinds of things.
And I mean, Daryl was involved in a bunch of those conversations, and Daryl actually went and bought a zombie weapons kit. He would show it to us. This is the best thing ever! I don't think he actually did that, but I know if any of us would have, it would have been you, right?
So, I mean, where do you go first to get your supplies? We even would have conversations about you can't run to a grocery store because that's where everybody's going. Go to a pet store because you can eat pet food. I mean, it's not great, but it'll keep you alive, and people wouldn't think to go to the pet store. I mean, that's how deep we got into the levels of these conversations about a zombie apocalypse.
I mean, what's the best weapon if you run out of bullets? Everything! We talked about it. And while none of us actually believed there was going to be a real-life zombie apocalypse, it was some fun conversations for a bunch of guys just hanging out, having a good time.
And about several months ago, probably February or March of this year, I heard Dr. Ken Jones talking about the old man and overcoming sin, and he made this passing reference to it being like a slow-moving zombie that chases us around. And that stuck with me, I'm sure because of all these conversations I'd had.
But when I got into this text in Colossians 3 and really began to flesh out this zombie motif a little more, it fits too well to not use it. So I titled the message this morning "Executing Our Spiritual Zombies."
So let's turn to Colossians 3:5-11. We're gonna see some zombies. Paul's dealing with the concept of sin, the old man, and the new man, and how we as Christians are in a battle with that old man. And while it seems a little bit morbid, it fits because think about it like this: What is a zombie? A zombie is something that is technically dead but is still walking around.
Zombies are mindless beings driven by nothing other than basic instinct and desire. Does that not sound like the old man? Supposed to be dead, but it keeps walking around. And it moves slow. You can outrun this one until it tracks you down and finds you. These aren't the fast-moving zombies; these are slow-moving zombies—the old school.
And even though Christians have accepted Christ and theoretically the old man is dead, there are times in our life where it seems like that old man comes back to life and continues to influence our behaviors and our choices, just like old school slow-moving zombies.
And what does Paul say to do to that old self, those old desires, those thoughts, actions of the old self, your old life? Well, we looked at a little bit last week in verses 1 through 4. He said, "Look to Christ. Look to the higher things. Look to heaven where Christ is. Focus on Christ."
Now in verse 5, he says, "Put it to death." So let's read verse 5: "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator."
Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all.
There's one thing right at the front of this text Paul tells us we have to do if we're going to overcome sin in our life. He tells us we have to embrace the struggle. We need to acknowledge it's real and embrace the struggle. In verse 5, he drives home this idea that Christians have a duty to put sin out of its misery in our lives, saying, "Get rid of your sin. Shut them down for good."
Richard Baxter is famous for saying, "Kill sin before it kills you." And despite its innocent look at times, sin is a disaster waiting to happen. And if we want to stay true to our zombie theme this morning, Paul says, "Stop aiming for the legs and shoot in the head."
Something to highlight here is that Paul doesn't paint this process as optional. He maintains that if you're a Christian, you're in the business of fighting sin. And then he says why we should do it. In verse 6, he says it's because of sin that God's wrath comes down, saying God will judge the world, and it's sin that's to blame. And that's why we need to deal with sin in our own life.
There's a list of other reasons we'll get into those. We can't afford to not take sin seriously in our life. We can't afford to turn a blind eye to pretend it's not a thing. It's something we need to be actively working at in our lives.
And then in verse 7, Paul says something interesting. He tells these people, "Before you met Christ, this is what you were living in." And what he means by that is that your entire life was wrapped up in these two things: sexual sin and covetousness, which is idolatry.
So everything in the life of this church before Christ was about sexual desire and whatever selfish thing they could find and get next. Does that sound familiar? Does that describe any other culture that you can think of outside of this? See, this isn't new. This writing is 2,000 years old, and here we are in 2023, and this could easily describe the culture outside of Christianity—that it's just about sexual desire and what can I get next for me.
There are five things in this that he's got in his mind here. He says, "Get rid of sexual immorality." And when he talks about this concept of immorality, he's talking specifically about actions—sexual acts that are not okay, basically the bad stuff. He says, "Obliterate it," especially those coming from a background filled with this kind of behavior.
He wants them to be on guard against it because it was so prevalent in their lives before. It's what's going to be chasing them through their Christian life. But it's also not simply about what you do. According to Paul, he also takes it a step further. He says, "Get rid of impurity too," which is talking about the mind. He's talking about your impure thoughts or your impure motives.
So don't just stop sinning with your actions; stop sinning with your thoughts as well. Clean up your thoughts. He says, "Get rid of immorality, impurity, lust, wicked desires." And what's he hinting at? He's literally talking about willpower here. He's saying if you don't control your desires, you're going to end up back where you started, and your actions will follow.
Basically, he's saying if you secretly want to continue to commit a sin, eventually you're going to give in to that and actually do that sin. But if you can manage to deal with the desire, to deal with the heart, to deal with the thoughts, you can tackle the behavior. And even if you have to, you can sort the thoughts out later, but deal with the desire.
Honestly, I see this happen with Christians all the time who come and say, "Look, I've got this particular sin I'm dealing with, and I need to stop the behavior," which is true. I'm not saying don't stop the behavior; you need to stop the behavior. But I think they don't take it far enough because they practice the part where they try to stop the action, but then that's where they stop it.
They put all these things in place to keep them from doing the action, but they never actually address the root of the problem, which is the heart and the desires that cause us to manifest in those actions of sin. We need to work on all three. You can put a million things in place to avoid the situation, but eventually, if you're not dealing with the desire, if you're not dealing with the heart, you will figure out a way around all those fences you put up. You'll figure it out.
James talks about this. He says, "Lust, when it's conceived, brings forth sin." That starts inside. It starts with the heart, starts with a thought, starts with the desires. And we need to not just kill the action; we need to replace those thoughts. That's why Proverbs 4:23 gives great advice: "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from the heart."
And what Paul says is if you want to be free from sin, we need to deal with what we think and what we want, and that will help us stop the action of sinning. Then Paul says to this church in Colossae, he says, "Look, you've been filled in your past lives." And he goes on to list anger, malice, rage—all this list of things here—but you've been changed in Christ as a witness to the world.
He said, "But you, I know these things are still there. You need to slay these things in your life." He knows they're still coming at them, and it reminds us there's hope, though. See it as sin. Acknowledge it as sin. See it as something left over from the old life that you need to kill.
The Puritans loved the word "mortification." Mortify that thing! That means it literally means kill it, but it's a really nicer word than kill. So if you like nice words, mortify it or kill it; either way, do something about it.
And Paul said, though, if you're going to do that, you have to embrace the struggle. Now this is where it starts. This is almost like the—what's the first step? What's the first step? A.A.? Come here, help me remember what it is. You have to acknowledge you have a problem, right?
It's honestly the same concept. I mean, that's actually where A.A. got the concept. You have to acknowledge that you have a problem in your life, that you have a sin problem that you need to deal with. Embrace the struggle because even if the rest of the world doesn't know what's going on in our hearts, we know what's going on in our hearts.
And we don't want the others to know because we think they won't accept us. And Paul said, "No, that's actually not the case." Listen, you're not fooling anyone if you pretend that you aren't in a battle against sin. We're all in a battle against sin, so stop pretending and embrace the concept so you can deal with it.
He says, "I know what you're struggling with." Paul wouldn't have given them this super long list if he didn't know for sure that this was exactly the sins that this church was struggling with. He's like, "To say we're not dealing with these things is going to be a waste of his time and theirs."
Paul's speaking about these things because they are things we as Christians continue to struggle with. And the quicker we own that, the quicker we can get about the business of working on continuing repentance and killing sin in our life, putting it to death.
And Paul says, "Lay it aside." Specifically this. He doesn't speak in generalities. He literally gives them a list: "Lay aside these things: sexual immorality, covetousness, anger, malice, unclean talk." He said, "You can't fight sin in generalities."
And we do that all the time. We do it in our prayer life: "God, forgive me of any sin I might have committed this week." Well, how about taking an extra five minutes and getting yourself a list and asking God to forgive you of those specific sins? I promise you that'll be more productive than just generically saying, "God, I'm sure I did something. I'm sure I probably did something this week that I need to be forgiven for, so just forgive me for that, whatever it was. Don't make me actually have to think about it; that'll make me sad."
All right? Despite it specifically, you repent. It's specifics, not generalities.
And so Paul talks about these specifics. And I mean, if you think about this second list—this list of anger, wrath, rage, malice, slander, and obscene talk—all of those things are actually directed at other people. And Paul says people who are captured by sin are people who are internally conflicted.
So things come out like rage or slander or unclean talk. And if you want to see a person characterized by ungodliness, look for these things. And so Paul says to these Colossians, "Don't live that way because this is what he told us in the first four verses, actually since verse one of chapter one: Don't live that way because that's not who you are. That's who you were. That's not who you are now. Be who you are now. Therefore, kill sin in your life."
And then verse 9, he says, "Change your clothes. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator."
This is literally visually taking off clothes and putting on different clothes. This is a picture. It's actually a picture of what happens at baptism, and it's one of the reasons some churches use white robes when they baptize because it symbolizes the putting off of the old self and the putting on of new, fresh, clean white clothes.
Most churches have forgotten that's even why they have robes. If you go to talk to most churches, "Why do you do robes?" "We got them." Right? They forgot that those things actually do represent something. We don't use robes here because robes hold an insane amount of water, and if you get out of that baptistry on this floor with a robe, we would all drown right there. There'd be water going out into the hall, right?
So, but that's the visual symbolism that's tied to this of putting off and putting on. So the essence of what we're talking about here when we engage in destructive behaviors, Paul says, you're actually covering up the divine essence of who you are at salvation—the divine essence of the Holy Spirit that lives inside of you.
So it's really hard to spot any godliness in someone who is committing these sins. And as followers of Christ, we're tossing out these old behaviors like old worn-out clothes and stepping into a new way of being. It's a restoration of God's image within us, and this effectively changes our actions.
When you dive into Colossians 3:10, there are a few takeaways here that I find interesting. First, he tells us that this new existence we're talking about doesn't come from a daily battle of temptation. That's just the starting point, the launching pad for this.
This isn't a self-help seminar; it's not a TED Talk. This isn't Paul nudging the Colossians to tweak a few things, change a couple of patterns in your life, and it'll affect everything else in your life. That's not what Paul is saying. This isn't "Pick a bad habit and stop doing that habit, and then pick another bad habit and stop doing that habit."
This isn't a "30 days to changing your habits" talk Paul is giving. He says, "No, this is actually a new life. This is a complete reset. You are renewed." But he also says we're renewed, but we are also in a perpetual state of renewal.
So this never-ending process of progress of becoming more like Christ, we're meant to keep chipping away at our old selves despite them being technically dead. And so we have to be careful even in how we think about this because we're called to continually bring to life this new creation that already exists in us.
And that's why there's kind of a "do this" tone in this text. We've been chosen by Christ, set on a path, but we need to still actively walk that path. And it's as if spiritual truth says, "You're this now; act like it."
The third thing that's important to note is this "do this" tone here from Paul that we know from other parts of the letter, like especially the first two chapters. This whole call for renewal is not something we can pull off on our own or we have to pull off on our own.
The person who's been renewed is a masterpiece of God's creation. This new self is a gift from God. It's not a trophy of our self-control or showing how determined we can be or how many good habits we can be. No, this is actually allowed us to live out salvation that God's already worked inside of us.
And Paul's saying, "You've got it already." So the source of renewal is our connection to Christ. So there's no checklist of "do this, don't do that" that's going to recraft us into the image of God. Sanctification is not about making you become a better person; it's about making you more like Christ. And those are two very different things.
It's only a work of the Spirit of God. And then out of nowhere, we get verse 11, seemingly out of nowhere: "Here there is not Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all."
In the context of this passage, Paul is saying to the church, "Recognize who you are now." For some reason, people want to jump on this passage and deal with diversity in the church, and you can do that from that passage, but the context is still in the context of sin and the Christian life.
So we have to keep it in the context. When you think about this whole letter, you realize what Paul does in verse 11 is it's a cheer for a new humanity that's reborn through Christ. It does erase the old lines that separate us from each other.
If you think about the pairings of Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, you're dismantling religious divides that were dividing the Jews and the Gentiles. The main idea here is that these outside influences, especially if you take it in the context of one and two of dealing with this group that's come into Colossae, created chaos.
Paul says, "No, these outside influences should not mess with the community's belief that they're part of God's family." And then barbarian, Scythian, slave, free—those are about cultural barriers, tearing down cultural barriers.
And I won't get into all the details of what a barbarian was, Scythian, and all those things, but barbarian, just really quickly, literally just meant gibberish. And we think of barbarians as cavemen back in the day, but that's not what it was meant. It actually just meant to Greeks, "I don't understand what you're talking about."
And because I don't understand you, that means I'm better than you. So you're just speaking gibberish to me; you are a barbarian. So barbarian may or may not mean something negative, but it definitely meant uncouth. The Greeks were snobs; that's just basically it.
In fact, Paul uses this in 1 Corinthians 14:11, talking about speaking in tongues. He said, "You speak in tongues when others can't understand your tongue; they consider you a barbarian." Same concept; they don't understand what you're saying.
And so a lot of times, it was just used for non-Greek people. But Paul says, "No, the gospel shatters all these walls, all these labels that people have built up about race, tribe, nationality, and class. It doesn't judge their worth based on these divisions."
So Jew, Greek, circumcised, uncircumcised, slave, free, barbarian—all this—you're all brothers and sisters in Christ. That's actually, I think, probably verse 2 of chapter 1.
These distinctions, think about it this way, these distinctions that we build in humanity are so arbitrary. And Paul said, "No, in the Christian life, these distinctions disappear because we're now all part of the body of Christ."
So the gospel obliterates the "us versus them" mindset. But it's the reason why that matters in the context because it shatters the assumption that anybody has special privileges because of who they are or who they were born or where they were born, what language they speak, what religion they practice.
Paul said being in Christ is what gives you value, not specific race or class. The only thing that matters in the body of Christ is that you are part of Christ. So if Christ is truly at the center of everything, then no one has a right to belittle or disrespect another person's value or worth, whether in their relationship with others or God.
Because the Christian's value and worth and identity isn't tied to the world's values; it's tied to Christ, who removes all these arbitrary distinctions. You're not going to get closer to God because you're a Greek or a Jew or a barbarian or a Scythian or you're free or you're a slave. None of those are going to earn you points with God.
You're all sinners, and it's Christ that tears down those barriers and brings us all back to even, which is humble in who we are as sinners. You're a sinner just like everyone else, Paul says. So put that to death.
And I want to deal just for the last few minutes with the practical aspect of this. Augustine said the church was a hospital where the sick get well, and I agree with his concept. But I wonder sometimes if we treat each other like that, or do we treat the church like a place where we're supposed to act like we've all got it figured out?
Are we a church that allows people to struggle with their sin while we, who might not be struggling with that sin, can help them in grace and forgiveness and patience—all the things that we need when we're struggling with sin? Or if that's not our particular struggle, do we just go, "What is wrong with that dude? Why can't he just stop doing that?"
If we're being honest, churches that are actually practicing what Scripture teaches, we don't have an option but to operate in grace and forgiveness and mercy. And we can look at Matthew 18; there are actually steps played out in that to go to people and say, "Hey, stop doing this."
There's also—Jesus also talked about the guy who came hundreds of times and asked for forgiveness. And what did he say? He said, "Forgive the guy." There's balance there. I mean, we need to challenge people. Understand we need to—there is an aspect of accountability, but we do that in grace.
Why? Because Christians still sin. I heard a guy say this a few months ago, and it has stuck with me. And I thought about it, and the more and more I thought about it, the more I agree with him. But when he first said it, I was like, "I don't like that at all." This is what he said: "God expects you to sin." That's what he said.
And I was like, "No, he doesn't." And then he kept talking. This was an explanation. He said, "Oh, I'm not saying God wants you to sin or is okay with your sinning, but he's not surprised when you sin because he knows who you are. He expects you as a Christian to sin because he knows that that slow-moving zombie is still right behind you, chasing you. And sometimes you thought you outran it, and it caught up with you. You were on the roof of that building, and all of a sudden it climbed the ladder and found you."
And when we become Christians, we do not become immediately sinless, right? That should—you should go, "You don't have to be perfect. One day you will be, but it's not here. It's not going to happen here." You're not going to be perfect in heaven. I don't know if we're going to be perfect in heaven, but we will not be sinning. Close enough for me, right?
You're not going to be free from the struggle with sin in this life, so don't pretend you are. Instead, embrace the struggle so you can overcome the sin you have in your life. Paul says you don't have to figure it out; you just need to admit it.
And when I say "embrace the struggle," I mean it. You see, when it comes to the Christian life, the struggle is not something we can shy away from. It's a significant part of the journey.
Y'all should all be going to the class at 9 on the Second London Baptist Confession. There's a whole lesson in there on this particular topic. And in the Christian life, there's an undeniable tension that exists between the struggle between our human frailty and the divine life that's bestowed on us in the family of God at salvation, regeneration by the Holy Spirit—all those things.
There's this constant tension, this tug of war between our human frailty and the divine life we receive through Christ. That's the heart of the spiritual journey. And we are not complete on our own; we're complete when we put our faith in Christ.
And we need to share in his divine life. This is the principle that empowers us in our struggle against sin. And it's not just a metaphor; we are spiritually crucified with Christ. That's what all last week was about, just as Paul talked about. This is what he talked about in verses 1 through 4.
And you can picture it as a spiritual wardrobe change where you're putting off old, nasty clothes. I don't know about y'all, but I have had—I worked a lot of construction in my younger days and took some jobs that, looking back on, were just absolutely—well, I don't know what we were thinking.
I don't know what we were thinking. We got into something so nasty one time that when I got home, I walked out back to the house, and it was in the woods. There was nobody behind us to see, and I took my clothes off and just threw them in the trash and went in the house because I was like, "Even if it's possible to get those clean, I don't want to wear them anymore."
What's on those clothes? The memory of what was on those clothes was worse than—and if you want to know, I grew up working in chicken houses, and I don't know if y'all know what chickens do. This was way worse than chickens, right? 25,000 chickens in each house, too, so that's 25,000—add that up multiple times a day.
This concept is all through the apostles' teaching, not just Paul, that constantly reminded the early Christians to live in accordance with their new identity, your union in Christ, saying, "Hey, remember who you are. You're free from the chains of sin because of Jesus, so start living like that because of who Jesus is."
And we don't become flawless. We're going to grapple with shortcomings. We're going to all have—and it's different for everybody—that sin that easily besets us. It's the one that we're constantly having to put down, and everybody in here knows what that is for you.
And I don't want to know; keep that one to yourself unless you really need me to help you work through it. Then you can tell me, and I'll do my best to help you work through it. But the struggle is not a one-time event.
The thing is, though, we're not alone. It's why we're sitting in this room right now. It's why we gather and fellowship and get to know one another and all those things. And in the middle of that, I'll make an announcement to show up to the game night next Sunday night.
And the reason for that is you might think you're playing Uno when, in reality, what you might be doing is, in that moment, helping somebody work through a sin they have in their life. And y'all think I might be overselling that, but I'm probably underselling it.
Each week we gather as a community to confess sin, to remind ourselves of Christ's sacrifice, to find comfort in shared experiences. We partake in communion together to remind us of our need for salvation and our need for spiritual renewal.
And thank God, though, that our righteousness does not come from our actions. It doesn't come from our efforts. It doesn't come from our goodness. It's given to us at the cross. You can think of it as a divine gift presented to you because of the work of Christ.
He fulfilled the law; he endured the curse. Our standing before God is reliant on Christ's finished work, not on anything we've done, not on how well we can follow rules—not even, listen, Jim, it's not even based on how good we can do what Paul told us to do in this text.
My righteousness is not based on how good I am at putting my sin to death. It doesn't mean I don't need to keep trying. It's not an excuse to sin. Brent read that this morning in Romans 6. But we've got to get over this thing that the Christian life is about achieving perfection because it's not.
You know how I know that? Because I know all y'all, and I've known Christians for 51 years, and I've not yet met that perfect one. I've met two or three that told me they were, but the moment they said that, I knew they were liars because the Bible told me if anybody says they don't have sin, they're a liar.
So I already know they blew that the moment they told me that. If we can live this, it affects our community, affects how we treat others, it affects our lives, our struggle because we can approach life with the grace and humility that we need to become more like Christ.
And look, I know this is like the crazy paradox of the Christian life. We're sinners and not sinners at the same time. There's a fancy Latin word for that if you all like Latin. It's out there; you can find it. We're sinners, yes, but we're sinners saved by grace, justified by God by the work of Christ.
And that's something to proclaim loud and proud. And after all, this paradox is to embrace who we are until we see Christ face to face and fully become the reality. We're still in this already-not-yet concept.
Hebrews says, "Cast off every weight and the sin which clings so closely. Let us run with endurance the race set before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith."
So the battle for sin starts by looking to Christ, verses 1 through 4. Look to Christ. Rest in what Christ has already done. Don't let anything hinder us from pursuing Christ.
And then he gets to verse 5 and says, "But it ain't easy. If you want to do it, you need to put to death that stuff that's left over in your life—the old self still making noise. It's still dragging around."
Instead of saying "brains," mark it saying "sin" chasing you. And as long as we're in this life, we're not going to avoid the temptation to sin. But our sins should prompt us to seek Christ in those moments, and it's a reminder there's nothing in this world that will bring us satisfaction.
There's nothing that's going to spring a spiritual joy other than that. That's the entire point of the book of Colossians: real joy does not exist outside of Christ.
And then Paul tells us in 3:13, we have a job as believers: "Encourage one another daily as long as it is today, so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin."
So see, I wasn't overselling that game night thing. Encourage one another daily.
on Nov 05, 2023
