{"id":421,"date":"2010-05-03T13:28:36","date_gmt":"2010-05-03T17:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/?p=421"},"modified":"2013-06-26T11:27:11","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T15:27:11","slug":"sufficient-motivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/?p=421","title":{"rendered":"Sufficient Motivation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOn account of these the wrath of God is coming. \u00a0In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.\u201d<\/strong><\/span> (Colossians 3:6-7)<\/p>\n

What would sufficiently motivate you to put something to death? \u00a0To put something in you <\/em>to death?\u00a0 Paul has just ordered us to \u201cPut to death\u201d the sins of verse 5 (see Dealing Radically With Sin<\/em> Parts 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, and 3<\/a>). The natural question is: Why?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In verses 6 and 7 the Apostle gives an adequate reason for this jarring imperative of verse 5.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn account of\u201d<\/strong><\/span> translates a Greek word that points to \u201cthe reason or cause on account of which anything is or is done, or ought to be done\u201d (Thayer, 134).\u00a0 By \u201cthese\u201d<\/strong><\/span> Paul means the five vices he just listed in the previous verse.\u00a0 The powerful motivating force is \u201cthe wrath of God is coming.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The concept of God\u2019s wrath is more broadly spoken of in the New Testament.\u00a0 Paul lays special emphasis on it in his letter to the Romans.\u00a0 He is \u201cThe God who inflicts wrath\u201d (3:5).\u00a0 And God\u2019s wrath presently abides on the unbelieving (John 3:36); indeed they are storing up God\u2019s wrath against them by their unbelief (Rom. 2:5).\u00a0 And yet God\u2019s wrath is in some way currently falling from heaven against unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18).\u00a0 At least one expression of this would be through the secondary means of the government\u2019s power to punish evildoers (Rom. 13:4).\u00a0 Yet God is patient in the expression of His wrath (Rom. 9:22).<\/p>\n

Here we are told that the outpouring of God\u2019s wrath \u201cis coming.\u201d<\/span> <\/strong> 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.\u00a0 God has judged sin in Christ for all who through repentance and faith hide themselves in Him. \u00a0But for those who do not, God is currently pouring out His opposition to sin and will ultimately, climatically, devastatingly do so in fullest measure.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Note that some versions, unlike the ESV, include a clause which is present in some manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. \u00a0Its inclusion is disputed, but we will note here that it adds that God\u2019s wrath is coming \u201cupon the sons of disobedience\u201d (NASB).\u00a0 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 (\u201cthe sons of disobedience\u201d) is a \u201cSemitic idiom that means \u2018people characterized by disobedience\u2019\u201d (NET Bible). \u00a0That the wrath of God is described as coming \u201cupon\u201d them indicates that the judgment falls from above, from a higher plane of authority\u2014that is to say, it is indeed divine.\u00a0 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 (\u201cgreed\u201d) and sensuous (\u201cevil desire,\u201d \u201cpassion,\u201d \u201cimpurity,\u201d and \u201csexual immorality,\u201d v.5).\u00a0 There is no one \u201cabove\u201d them \u2013 who created them, who owns them, who is ruling them \u2013 no one to whom they must answer.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Yet, says Paul, \u201cIn these you too once walked, when you were living in them\u201d<\/strong><\/span> (v.7).<\/p>\n

The preposition (\u201cIn\u201d<\/strong><\/span>) pictures the sphere of the Colossian believers\u2019 pre-Christian lives.\u00a0 It stands in stark contrast to their present life \u201cin\u201d 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\u2019s writings.\u00a0 That Paul is speaking here of the Colossian believers is made clear by his use of the plural form of the personal pronoun (\u201cyou\u201d<\/strong><\/span>).\u00a0 The verb (\u201conce walked\u201d<\/strong><\/span>) is a common one meaning simply \u201cto walk.\u201d\u00a0 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\u2019s life one step at a time.\u00a0 This way of life was true of them \u201conce,\u201d<\/strong><\/span> though, apparently, no longer because of the liberty from sin they had found through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Paul is thinking back to the time \u201cwhen you were living in them.\u201d \u00a0By \u201cthem\u201d<\/strong><\/span> 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.\u00a0 The second person plural reminds the Colossian believers that this was the case in each and every one of their lives.\u00a0 Again, as the opening of the verse, Paul pictures the sphere of their pre-Christian lives (\u201cin them\u201d<\/strong><\/span>).\u00a0 In the sphere of these sins and impulses the Colossians\u2014and we\u2014had both \u201cwalked\u201d and \u201clived\u201d before we met Christ.<\/p>\n

Before we met Christ we stood at ground zero for the detonation of God’s wrath.\u00a0 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?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cOn account of these the wrath of God is coming. \u00a0In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.\u201d (Colossians 3:6-7) What would sufficiently motivate you to put something to death? \u00a0To put something in you to death?\u00a0 Paul has just ordered us to \u201cPut to death\u201d the sins of verse 5 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colossians","post-preview"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgYGxX-6N","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1605,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions\/1605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jkitchen.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}