“But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.” (Colossians 3:8)

With an adversative (“But”) Paul makes a turn from what used to be true of us as believers (v.7) to what must “now” be true of us.  What should be “now” is in direct contrast with what was “once” true of us (v.7).  Instead of the indulgence we once practiced (v.7) now we are to “put . . . away” such practices.  To “put . . . away” simply means to put aside or put off something, as one would do with clothing (cf. Acts 7:58).  Over time the word came to mean to give up or renounce.  This is another way of describing what Paul meant when he earlier commands us to “Put to death” (v.5).  Paul will employ yet another verb in verse 9 to communicate the same basic idea (“laid aside”).  This is a matter of urgent, immediate obedience.  Paul makes the personal nature of compliance emphatic (“you”).  The expression may mean either “you also” (NASB) as with all other Christians or “you . . . yourselves” (NIV).  That which is to be put aside is “them all.”  Does this expression serve as “a summation of what precedes” (the list of sins in v.5) or does it anticipate the list of vices that is to now follow here in verse 8?  Most likely it serves in an all-inclusive manner, indicating all that relates to the “old self” (v.9)—including all the items in these two vice lists and whatever else may be added to them—must be “put . . . away” as worn out clothing from a previous life.

Now, as in verse 5, Paul strings together another series of five nouns to form a second list of vices.  Whereas verse 5 dealt with sexual sins, here the focus is upon social sins.  First is “anger.”  The word is a powerful one.  Thayer says it derives from another word which means “to teem, denoting an internal motion, especially that of plants and fruits swelling with juice” (452).  Unresolved conflicts fester and eventuate in bitterness.  The churning resentment eventually erupts upon the surface and destroys those in its path.  What is holy in God (“the wrath of God,” v.6) is unholy and destructive in man (v.8).  Second, is “wrath.”  The previous word describes a settled wrath, but in contrast this word “is used of anger that boils up and subsides again” (Friberg, 200).  Thus it describes active anger or wrath.  It is can be thus variously translated as “angry tempers” (2 Cor. 12:20, NASB) and “outbursts of anger” (Gal. 5:20, NASB).  Third is “malice.”  Paul can use it more generally simply of “evil” (1 Cor. 14:20), but often also in the more specialized sense, as here, of “malice” (Rom. 1:29; 1 Cor. 5:8; Eph. 4:31; Tit. 3:3).  In this latter sense it describes “maliciousness or inward viciousness of disposition” (Robertson, 4:332).  Then comes “slander.”  We derive our word “blasphemy” from this word, and it can have that connotation when used of speech directed against God (e.g., John 10:33).  When directed at persons, however, it can also refer to “slander” or more generally to “abusive language” (1 Tim. 6:4).  And finally Paul cites “obscene talk.”  The word is used only here in the New Testament.  The word comes from through another word from a compound formed from two words meaning “disgraceful” and “word” (Thayer, 17).  The dual elements of “filthiness” and “evil-speaking” may be contained in the word (Lightfoot, 212).  It is “evil speech in the sense of obscene speech” (BAGD, 25).  This is to be kept “from your mouth,” or more literally “out from the mouth of you.”  It is possible that this clause governs both of the last two words, since they both have to do most directly with sins of the tongue.

In the previous list of vices (v.5) Paul began with the manifestation of the evil and worked backward toward its root motivation (see post “Dealing Radically With Sin, Part 3”).  Here, however, he moves in the opposite direction—beginning with the root motivation (“anger”) and moving outward in ever increasingly demonstrative expressions of that anger (concluding with “obscene talk”).  Thus we may trace the progressive nature of these sins.  It begins with an inward anger (“anger”), which, if not checked, moves forward into a flash of anger (“wrath”).  Such “wrath,” if not “put . . . away” quickly, festers and becomes increasingly intent on actually harming the other person (“malice”), an impulse which may express itself in “slander” or “obscene talk.”  Many a married couple, if they are willing, can trace this pattern through many of their worst moments together.  Jesus was correct in His analysis of the order: “the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart.” (Matt. 12:34b).  Again, as in verse 5 (though here it is developed in reverse order), the implication is that victory is found in dealing with the sins at the level of their root motivation, not at the level of fruit-bearing.

If, then, we have accurately perceived the root-to-fruit pattern of the vice lists in verses 5 and 8, that means that Paul is identifying two key root sins here: “greed” (v.5) and “anger” (v.8).  What are “greed” and “anger” except selfishness—self-orientation toward what another has (“greed”) or does (“anger”)?  This serves only to underscore the essential nature of a Christ-focused, heaven-directed orientation for our thinking as set forth in 3:1-4.  The key to deliverance from the power of these sin-vortexes is found at the root of our thoughts and interpretations of life and its relationships: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (v.2)!

“On account of these the wrath of God is coming.  In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.” (Colossians 3:6-7)

What would sufficiently motivate you to put something to death?  To put something in you to death?  Paul has just ordered us to “Put to death” the sins of verse 5 (see Dealing Radically With Sin Parts 1, 2, and 3). The natural question is: Why?

In verses 6 and 7 the Apostle gives an adequate reason for this jarring imperative of verse 5.

“On account of” translates a Greek word that points to “the reason or cause on account of which anything is or is done, or ought to be done” (Thayer, 134).  By “these” Paul means the five vices he just listed in the previous verse.  The powerful motivating force is “the wrath of God is coming.”

The concept of God’s wrath is more broadly spoken of in the New Testament.  Paul lays special emphasis on it in his letter to the Romans.  He is “The God who inflicts wrath” (3:5).  And God’s wrath presently abides on the unbelieving (John 3:36); indeed they are storing up God’s wrath against them by their unbelief (Rom. 2:5).  And yet God’s wrath is in some way currently falling from heaven against unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18).  At least one expression of this would be through the secondary means of the government’s power to punish evildoers (Rom. 13:4).  Yet God is patient in the expression of His wrath (Rom. 9:22).

Here we are told that the outpouring of God’s wrath “is coming.” The verb is present tense and pictures the wrath of God as already in motion and its ultimate arrival as inevitable. The middle voice pictures God acting upon Himself to express His wrath, moving Himself in the current expression of His wrath, and moving toward its fullest and unrestrained outpouring.  God has judged sin in Christ for all who through repentance and faith hide themselves in Him.  But for those who do not, God is currently pouring out His opposition to sin and will ultimately, climatically, devastatingly do so in fullest measure.

This, says Paul, is more than reason enough to take the radical step of putting to death the vices and impulses within us as listed in the previous verse.

Note that some versions, unlike the ESV, include a clause which is present in some manuscripts of the Greek New Testament.  Its inclusion is disputed, but we will note here that it adds that God’s wrath is coming “upon the sons of disobedience” (NASB).  It is possible that a scribe may have added them here because the same words appear to be genuine in the parallel verse in Ephesians 5:6. The expression itself (“the sons of disobedience”) is a “Semitic idiom that means ‘people characterized by disobedience’” (NET Bible).  That the wrath of God is described as coming “upon” them indicates that the judgment falls from above, from a higher plane of authority—that is to say, it is indeed divine.  Those who live out their live on the purely horizontal plane, seldom if ever lifting their eyes to include the higher perspective of divine realities exist for the purely selfish (“greed”) and sensuous (“evil desire,” “passion,” “impurity,” and “sexual immorality,” v.5).  There is no one “above” them – who created them, who owns them, who is ruling them – no one to whom they must answer.  One day they will be utterly shocked to discover divine, inescapable, eternal wrath descending upon them and holding them accountable for a lifetimes of misdirected desires and actions.

Yet, says Paul, “In these you too once walked, when you were living in them” (v.7).

The preposition (“In”) pictures the sphere of the Colossian believers’ pre-Christian lives.  It stands in stark contrast to their present life “in” Christ, an emphasis found so frequently in Colossians (e.g. 1:2, 28; 2:3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11-13, 15) and elsewhere in Paul’s writings.  That Paul is speaking here of the Colossian believers is made clear by his use of the plural form of the personal pronoun (“you”).  The verb (“once walked”) is a common one meaning simply “to walk.”  But it is often used by Paul as he does here (cf. also 1:10; 2:6; 4:5) in a figurative sense describe the unfolding of one’s life one step at a time.  This way of life was true of them “once,” though, apparently, no longer because of the liberty from sin they had found through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.  Paul is thinking back to the time “when you were living in them.”  By “them” he means the five vices listed in verse 5. The imperfect tense views their former life as an ongoing, repeated set of experiences that made up a certain quality of life.  The second person plural reminds the Colossian believers that this was the case in each and every one of their lives.  Again, as the opening of the verse, Paul pictures the sphere of their pre-Christian lives (“in them”).  In the sphere of these sins and impulses the Colossians—and we—had both “walked” and “lived” before we met Christ.

Before we met Christ we stood at ground zero for the detonation of God’s wrath.  Is there any better motivation to deal in death with all that once held us immobile before the gathering clouds of God’s holy, divine, infinite wrath?

“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” (Colossians 3:5, emphasis added)

The Apostle now lists just what it is we are to “Put to death.”  The five vices are common to other vice lists in Paul’s writings, though they are not all used together in any other place.  Each is in the accusative case, being either accusatives of reference (i.e., “put to death the members in reference to . . .”) or in apposition to “the members.”  The first here is “immorality.” The word refers to “every kind of unlawful sexual intercourse” (BAGD).  To this is added “impurity.” In the LXX the word is used to describe ritual uncleanness.  In the New Testament it can continue to carry this connotation, but widens out to include uncleanness in a moral sense.  It is often connected with sexual sin.  It is a broader word than the previous one, but it “denotes immoral sexual conduct” (O’Brien, 181).   It is paired with the previous word frequently (2 Cor. 12:21; Gal. 5:19; Eph. 5:3, 11).  Then comes “passion.” It designates “a strong emotion of desire or craving,” (Friberg, 291) a “drive or force which does not rest until it is satisfied” (Rienecker, 578).  It is used elsewhere in the New Testament only in Romans 1:26 and 1 Thessalonians 4:5, both of which confirm that a sexual connotation may be implied here as well.  Next is “evil desire.” The word “desire” points to any strong and overwhelming desire, but here clearly it is “evil” desire that is mind.  It can refer to everything from the desire to be told what one wants to hear (2 Tim. 4:3) to illicit sexual desire (1 Thess. 4:5).  To these Paul adds “greed.” The word literally refers to “a desire to have more.”  It can be variously rendered as greediness, insatiableness, avarice, and covetousness (BAGD, 667).  To this final, climatic, word Paul adds a relative clause: “which amounts to idolatry.”  The relative pronoun (“which”) may emphasize a particular characteristic quality (“which, by its very nature,” Harris, 147) or it may have a causal sense (“for,” BAGD, 587).  The present tense verb (“is”) emphasizes the ongoing nature of “greed.”  It is ever and always “idolatry.”

The latter term (“greed”) may seem out of place after four nouns that all relate to sexual sins.  But this disassociation is probably only apparent.  The word group from which “greed” arises can be associated with sexual sin as well (cf. 1 Thess. 4:6) and Plato and Aristotle both used this noun of sexual sin (O’Brien, 182).  Furthermore sexual sin is viewed elsewhere in the New Testament as a form of idolatry (Rom. 1:23-27).  Sexual sin—like so many other forms of vice—is subject to the law of diminishing returns.  What once titillated and thrilled has now become less exciting.  “More!” is required in terms of experience and expression in order to maintain the initial level of excitement.  Thus “greed” is an apt description of sexual lust.  And the all-consuming desire for “more” in terms of sexual experience begins to dominate one’s every waking moment, consuming every thought, every look, and every relationship.  Sex has become lord of every moment and as such is aptly designated as idolatry.  Thus by using these five nouns the Apostle may be developing a theme, rather than simply stringing random nouns together.  He seems to be moving from the more specific expressions of sexual sin in the direction of less specific expression and on to the core inner impulse that drives such sexual deviance.  O’Brien calls it “a movement from the outward manifestations of sin to the inward cravings of the heart, the acts of immorality and uncleanness to their inner springs” (178).  Paul begins at the broad end of the problem with manifold individual expressions of sexual sin (“sexual immorality”) and moves toward the narrows of the single impulse from which they arise (“greed”).

We must “put to death” all such impulses and actions.  We must do so with both each expression of sin and with the root disposition that gives rise to them.  Strategically speaking, however, we will never win the battle simply by addressing the “acts” or expressions of sexual sin (the initial nouns in the list).  We must discontinue these, but strategically we must go to the root of such acts and there deal death to those impulses and desires.  James is right, “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.  Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death” (vv.14-15). To the end of such application, consider the following two instructive charts.

sexual.idolatry

sexual.idolatry.strategy

“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you . . .” (Colossians 3:5a, emphasis added)

Death!

God’s command is radical and unnerving.  It makes us swallow hard and take a second look.  Just what—we wonder—is it we must “Put to death”?

The object of your execution is “what is earthly in you.”

This is a somewhat interpretive rendering of a difficult expression in Greek.  More literally this might be rendered “the members, the upon the earth [ones].”  The foundational part of this clause is “the members.”  The definite article is probably to be understood as possessive, so we should understand it as “your members.”

Things just get more difficult, don’t they?  Immediately this makes the object of our death-dealing something turned upon ourselves.  Gulp!

Paul frequently uses the word “members” in his description of the body of Christ (1 Cor. 6:16; 12:12, 18, 25, 26).  Perhaps for this reason The New American Standard Bible renders this “the members of your earthly body.”  Though there is nothing in the Greek text here corresponding to the NASB’s “body,” it seems an appropriate understanding of the Apostle’s intent.  Yet it is doubtful that the Apostle means the literal members of one’s body (i.e., arms, legs, eyes).  Rather, it probably refers to the kinds of sins that are committed by the “members” of one’s body.  O’Brien seems to have captured the idea when he says, “Here the practices and attitudes to which the readers’ bodily activity and strength had been devoted in the old life is in view” (p.178).

The rest of the clause (lit., “the upon the earth”) may be understood as an adjectival phrase describing “the members” – “your members, that is to say the upon-the-earth [members]” (Harris, p.145).  This precise phrase is used three other times by Paul. The first two times refer to God’s intent to sum up all thing in Christ, whether things in heaven or “things on the earth” (Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:20).  But more telling for our purposes is its use in Colossians 3:2 where he said, “Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (emphasis added).

We died and our “life is now hidden with Christ in God” (v.3).  We eagerly look to heaven for the revelation of Christ “who is our life,” and anticipate the consummation of our greatest hopes at that time (v.4).  We are to seek and set our minds upon “the things above” (vv.1, 2).  Thus all “the things that are on earth” have nothing to offer us.  They are connected with our old, hell-bound life.  They offer temporary titillation, but cannot offer hope or on-going life.  Thus whatever is in “your members” that is connected to these time-bound, temporary matters, we must “Put to death,” considering them worthless to us and our ultimate desire and destiny.

Just what does this mean in practical terms?  How do I actually put this within me to death?

This putting to death involves both a negative and a positive action.  Negatively, it means that we resist all such temptations and impulses as Paul will begin to describe in the latter part of this verse.  We, to use his words from Romans 13:14, “do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (NIV).  But a wholly negative approach to the matter may only leave one obsessed with the very temptations and impulses which he is trying to “put to death.”  There also must be a corresponding and dominate focus which is positive.  This is found precisely in what the Apostle has already prescribed: that we seek and set our minds upon “the things above” (3:1, 2).  We must resist temptation as it presents itself.  But ever and always we must seek and set our minds positively on Christ as the locus of our life and hope.  This is the path to victory.  This negative and positive approach is fleshed out as the chapter continues to unfold.  Negatively we are commanded to “put . . . away” (v.8) and “put off” (v.9).  This explains and expands upon what Paul means by “put to death” in verse 5.  Yet we are also, positively, to “put on” (vv.10, 12, 14).

And all this we must do – drastically, radically, and thoroughly.  We must deal ruthlessly with that earthly part which remains within us.  No mollycoddling.  No mercy.  No pity, leniency or compassion.  Thoroughly.  To the end.  All the way.  To death!  It is a matter of “it” or us, heaven or earth, light or darkness, God or Satan.