Colossians 3:1-5 • Dying to Live

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

We didn't know we were going to compare the same book, did we? That must be a good recommendation. So would you look in your Bibles at Colossians 3?

[ Pause ]

There is some trajectory we've been on. We looked at Gideon. My intent was to rattle you a bit and kind of say, "Well, that doesn't exactly make sense. I mean, the scales don't balance there."

He was bad and he got blessed.

And earlier this morning, my intention was to say, "Well,

how does grace work? I mean, is grace fair?" And the answer is, "Of course not. You don't want God to be fair, believe me. You do not want God to be just except toward his son.

You want God to be merciful."

And understanding the mercy side that God provides for his people because he dispensed his justice on Christ begins to help us understand how grace now motivates us. But there's a danger always.

And the danger that Jerry Bridges was dealing with in discipline of grace is to say, "Now people will say, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, well, grace, great."

Fight's over.

And Paul is saying, "No, grace is the fuel for the fight."

And he begins to explain now, "How do we fight

on the solid ground of the provision of Christ?"

Paul explains in Colossians 3, "Since then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.

Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.

You used to walk in these ways in the life you once lived, but now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these, anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.

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

Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slaver free.

But Christ is all and is in all."

I have a PCA pastor friend. A lot of you will know him, Randy Nabors in Chattanooga.

And Randy, for most of his ministry experience, has also been an army chaplain in the reserves.

And in recent years, he's been deployed to some of the world's hot spots.

And his long experience in the military has meant that sometimes young people come to him and ask,

should I go into the military? Should I consider that as a career?

And Randy says he usually asks a question when he himself has been questioned about such things. He says to somebody, would you be willing to die for your country? I mean, if you want to serve, you have to be willing to answer that question. Would you be willing to die for your country?

And Randy says almost everyone replies pretty fast.

Yeah, yeah, I think I would love my country. I think I'd be willing to die for my country.

So Randy says he asked a follow-up question.

Would you be willing to kill for your country?

And he says that gives people some pause.

Would I be willing to kill for my country?

My question for you is, would you be willing to kill for your God?

Because what Paul is calling you to do is to kill.

He says it, verse 5, "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature.

Sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed."

He says in verse 8, "Also, rid yourselves of anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language." What a legalist.

And yet it's Paul, the apostle of grace, talking.

Let's pray and ask that God would guide us.

Father, would you help us to know how to walk with you?

You have given us such privileges.

You have loved us so.

And now you who love us want us to be kept safe.

And so you give us instruction of safe paths.

And because our hearts can be so corrupt,

we look at those safe paths as sometimes limiting and mean.

Help us to understand your heart,

that our hearts might be pure, enabled to serve you because we love you, and because you love us, willing to serve.

Grant us your blessing, I pray, in Jesus' name, amen.

I read a report recently of a young man who, when he was only seven years old, was sent away by his family to be raised for a year of instruction with a preacher.

I'm not sure all preachers want such a thing, but that's what this particular family did. It was the practice of this particular church.

He went, and actually there were nine other young men, age seven, went to live with this pastor for a year to receive religious instruction. They would memorize scripture. They would pray. They would receive doctoral instruction. That was the morning.

They would have lunch, and then in the afternoons, they would actually be sent out into the streets of the city, and they would collect money, giving away tracks, and trying to collect enough so that they could actually pay for their food because they would turn it back over to the pastor, who was expected to take care of all 10 of them for a year.

At the end of the year, all 10 of the young men vowed that they would live with a renewed spiritual zeal,

and they meant it. But after all, they were only eight,

and the teen years were ahead.

And for this particular young man, as he got into his teen years, he discovered music and girls and other things, and he forgot about the eight-year-old zeal.

Went off to university, and there took up in the party life, enjoyed it until it just became routine.

Hardly knew what he was doing. Basically, just as a middle class college student, he knew he was just getting his ticket stamped so that he could follow in the path of his parents.

That didn't excite him too much.

It was actually just kind of in a haze one day, sitting in a classroom, that he listened to one of his professors.

Somehow, what the professor broke through-- the professor was talking about the inequities of power and wealth in the world, discrimination, hate, prejudice.

And something kind of triggered in this young man's mind that took him back to that preacher so many years ago.

And as he listened to the professor, he recognized, you know what? The world really was bigger than his own pleasure,

that you really could live for a purpose larger than self.

And all the things that he had heard when he was a little kid kind of came back with a new reality.

And so one day, he kind of grabbed his knapsack that he'd used to carry his college books, and he headed back into the busy streets of the city.

And he pulled a string on his knapsack,

and he blew himself up.

Hurting dozens in the process around him.

Some of you recognize what I was describing, this actual report of our own US government of the path of a Middle East terrorist.

Raised with religious instruction as a young child, and yet despite what some of us may think, became a terrorist not out of great poverty, but out of a middle class upbringing, gone to a university, but somehow begin to think, the purpose that I can fulfill that's larger than myself will be achieved when I die for my God and kill other people in the process.

As horrible as we think that experience, as much as we say it is demonic, it is wrong, it is horrible, as much as that comes over, I must tell you, there's another part of me, a part that's kind of in a corner dark somewhere, where I kind of admire the man.

I don't mean the thing he did was right, but I mean the willingness to give yourself entirely for your cause,

to give your very life for your God, because you think it's the right thing to do.

I think his God is very wrong, I think his actions are very wrong, but I have to say to myself, if I really believe that my God has given his Son for me, that my life is to be lived for his glory and service, then why do I struggle as I do just to live

in barely pure and decent ways?

What would it really mean to die to self, to live for my God?

To live as the Apostle Paul is calling me to.

To understand, I have to kind of follow the very structure of what he does here.

It first is Paul just taking a great deal of time and imagery to remind me who I am in Christ.

Remember I talked about the indicatives earlier, who we are.

Paul starts with language that may be familiar to you, right? Verse one, "Since then you have been raised with Christ." Now if you've been raised, that's resurrection language, and if you've been raised, that means you had to have died already.

How did you die?

We don't think of it so much, but Paul is actually referring to an earlier portion of this same book if you look back over at chapter two, and verses 11 and 12. We Presbyterians like these verses because it's the place we go to talk about baptism,

being the parallel of circumcision, when we talk about the importance of covenantal baptism.

But Paul is reminding of those of us who have been made Christians.

Verse 12, that means that in this circumcision done by Christ, this circumcision of the heart, this purifying that he has done, this is happening because we have been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead. We don't think of baptism as signifying a death very much. And the reason is because baptism is too much a part of our Bible culture.

I mean, it's just something you do, something your kids do. I mean, we don't think of, but if you were a New Testament pagan or Jew,

and you recognize that what was happening is if you went into a church and you were baptized, you received that mark that you are now entering a new religion, a new life, and that everything that identified who you were, who your family was, your identity and place in the culture was now passed. This baptism was a sign of death.

That life of mine that I have lived is past. It's done, it's gone. I'm starting something new. And this baptism is this initiation sign that I am going into a new life and the old is done and passed and dead.

All that I thought made me right, all that gave me significance, all that gave me identity is dead to me now.

I'm starting something new by identifying with this Jesus.

And that means that I'm starting this new life as a new person as though I've been raised from the dead.

Now, it's that resurrection language because Paul wants us so much to understand what we've already referred to. We have the identity of Christ now. We have the power of Christ in us. It doesn't mean that all problems are passed. Some of you may have seen just last week again in St. Louis, we had the floods come and we saw again on our screens in the news what's familiar where people are rescued from their houses by helicopters. You see the pictures?

No, there is the mire, there is the flood, there is sure death.

But the helicopters come in and raise them from the dead as it were. Now, it doesn't mean there are no problems ahead

but people say, "I'm alive now." There's the potential of real life now. That that was death is behind me. I'm about to live a new life. Maybe with struggle, maybe with difficulty but raised to this new life.

And Paul in the first verse says more about what this new life is about. "Since you have been raised with Christ, "set your hearts on things above where Christ "is seated at the right hand of God." Do you all remember what that right hand is about?

The place of privilege, the place of the prince to the king.

"You are seated with Christ at God's right hand." Not only do you have new life, it's the life of privilege. So Paul is saying again, things familiar to you by now. You are loved. You have the identity of Christ. You have in this new life that you've been given not based on your performance but based upon his. His very identity so that he's at the right hand of God and you are too.

But it's more than being at the right hand of God. He is seated at the right hand of God and you are with him. The words don't mean much to us anymore but all of the New Testament Christians, particularly those of Jewish background, knew the importance of the language. He is seated at the right hand of God and you with him.

Do you remember what that seating is all about? If you've got your Bibles just looking at Hebrews 10, you'll remember.

Hebrews 10 and verse 11.

Hebrews 10, 11, day after day.

Every priest stands and performs his religious duties. Again and again, he offers the same sacrifices which can never take away sins.

But when this priest, this Jesus, had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins,

he sat down at the right hand of God.

If you were to go and look at those Old Testament passages describing the furniture of the temple,

we have intricate detail.

We know what the walls were made of. We know what the paneling in the walls of the tabernacle were made out of. We know what the priest's robes were to look like. We even know what the tassels on the robes of the priest were to look like. We know about the laver in the seven branch candle stand. We know how the altar was made, what it was to look like, what was even to be put in the Holy of Holies and what was to be put inside the Ark of the Covenant. Detail after detail after detail but there is one article of furniture never described in the temple or tabernacle. What was it? What article of furniture is never described?

No chair.

No chair.

Why?

Because day after day every priest stands

and performs his religious duties again and again. He offers the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. We don't have the picture anymore. We don't even have the capacity to see the picture anymore.

Every year for a thousand years plus more, do you remember? Every family would offer a Passover sacrifice. I've actually been in Muslim cities in the modern world at the time of a Seder, that is a Muslim Seder where every family sacrifices a goat. Do you know what that's like?

Where the ditches fill up with the offal of the entrails of the animals throughout the whole city as families by the hundreds of thousands in some of these large cities, every family slays a goat and the blood runs in the ditches and the stench fills the streets. It's just unfathomable. And here it was, happening in Israel at Passover time year after year after year for a thousand years plus more. The people would come, not just at Passover time of course, but they also had seasonal offerings where they would come to the priest with their first fruits and first offerings and the blood would be spilled upon the altar and sprinkled upon the four horns. If it was a major celebration, the people themselves would be sprinkled with blood and the blood would run every season.

And not just every season, but every new moon, every month. Again, the sacrifices would be brought and the priest would slay the animals. They would be heifers and goats and lambs and birds.

And not just monthly, but every week, every Sabbath sacrifice, new lambs to be slaughtered upon the altar, the blood to run. And not just every Sabbath, but every morning and evening of the Sabbath were to be the Sabbath sacrifices.

And not just every Sabbath, but every morning and evening of every day.

And not just the sacrifices for the people morning and evening of every day, but people who themselves recognize there had to be purification for menstrual periods, for their own sin, for their own wrongdoing, for not having done enough with their neighbor would bring their sacrifices to be sacrificed. There would be sacrifice upon sacrifice year after year, month after month, season after season, day after day, morning after morning, evening after evening, person after person, every day, every year, every season, every month, every person, year after year after year for a thousand years plus more,

until one lamb went to a hill called Calvary.

(footsteps) And the fire on the altar went out.

And the curtain before the Holy of Holies was rent. And the smoke died and it was done.

And the priest sat down.

It was over.

All the sacrificing, all the struggle. God, when will you be sacrificed? When will you be satisfied? When will I have done enough? When will it be enough? Enough penalty, enough sacrifice, enough, when will it be enough?

It's done.

And now the apostle Paul says, you are at the right hand of God and seated with him. What's it meant to say?

The long night and day and week and year and years and years and years of wrestling for God's approval is done.

Jesus paid it all.

It's done now and you are right with God. Not by your work, but by his. You can sit down now.

It's done.

And with that seating,

we learn not only that we have this privilege, but verse two, you are to set your mind on it.

Set your mind on things above. Your life, he says, verse three, after you have died, your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

You know the dead language, right? Because we covered that already. If you're identified with Christ and he died, all that was wrong about you is dead.

But I love the language of you're also hidden with Christ in God.

My daughter and I, I have a 13 year old still at home, sometimes play a game at the dinner table. It's after the dinner's over. It's called napkin war.

I usually try to wait till she's not looking. And then I kind of wad up my napkin in my lap. And when she turns away, I get her.

And the war is on. She'll get my napkin or her napkin or her mom's napkin and the napkin start flying back and forth. But I have to tell you something, I'm a better shot than she is.

I always win.

But she has found a way to take care of herself. You know what she does? She gets up out of her seat and she gets behind her mother.

(congregation laughing) Because I won't throw at her mother. (congregation laughing) She's safe.

She's hidden there.

And we are reminded not only might we sit down because the wrestling for the approval of God is over,

but we're safe now.

Hid with Christ in God.

The wrath of God that could rightly be poured out against all unrighteousness is taken care of. We are safe from it. We are hidden from that wrath that could rightly come upon us because we're with Christ hidden with Him

in the presence of God.

As these things begin to pile up, you recognize, these are all past things. As the apostle is kind of saying, "Listen, this is your position. "Don't you understand before you seek to live for God, "before you seek to be that holy man, "don't you recognize who you are?

"You're raised and seated at the right hand of God "with Christ. "Your past is dead, but you're hidden now with Christ in God." And that's all taken care of. It's all past, it's the already.

But so much as the apostle wants to appreciate the privileges of our position, he also tells us what's ahead.

Do you see that? Verse four, "When Christ, who is your life," I almost just wanna stop there and sing the doxology. Do you hear it?

"When Christ, who is your life,

"when Christ, who is your life, appears, "then you will appear with Him in glory." You know, in St. Louis now, we have a great hitter, Albert Pujols.

And even though Pujols is a great hitter, he can go through a dry spell.

You know, you can get a time sometime about mid-summer, you know, in the dog days of July, where, you know, he's struggling, he may go 0 for 5.

Now, you know, if he goes 0 for 5, the next time he walks to the plate, what does the radio announcer say? Pujols has gone 0 for 5, he's do.

He's do. Now, that announcer's saying something good's coming.

Now, he's just talking probabilities, right? He's just talking probabilities.

The apostle is talking promise.

He's do to appear.

He's coming.

He's coming in glory.

The trumpets of heaven will announce him. The host of the angels will proceed him. And you will be with him.

And all who are in glory will say, "This is the Lord of glory." Then you also will appear with him in glory. Now, if Christ is in glory, we have some image of that in our minds, perhaps wrong, we have no way of really determining it, but we have some sense of the glory in which Christ will appear. But what we don't perceive is that the apostle's saying, "You're already seated with him in heavenly places,

at God's right hand. So when he appears in glory, if you're with him, what will you be?"

You'll be glorious too.

C.S. Lewis in an amazing sermon called The Weight of Glory describes it this way. He said, "What this means is, the dullest, most uninteresting Christian that you could possibly meet.

If you could see them now in the condition they will be when Christ appears,

you would be tempted to bow down and worship them."

Now, that's just thinking abstractly for the moment, just think of the person seated next to you.

"If you could see them now

in the condition they will be when Christ appears,

you would be tempted to bow down and worship them." Don't look at him, it'll be embarrassing.

But that's what God is promising to his people. Now, this is all background for Paul, right? He is saying, "Don't you understand what Christ has done for you?

Your past is dead.

Your position is glorious. It is the privilege of seated at the right hand of God. God knows your sin, God knows your weakness, he knows your failure, and still he privileges you to be in the seat of the Prince of Heaven.

And when he appears, the glory of that Prince of Heaven is going to be yours too. That same glory is, that's who you are. You are the partaker

and the soon to be evident, glorious child of God because of your faith in Jesus Christ. That is what God has done and will do for you. That is your position, that's who you are.

Now the apostles gonna do something with that truth. What's he gonna do?

He's gonna say, "If that's who you are, live that way."

Verse five, "Put to death therefore,

whatever belongs to your earthly nature."

Now that's really the third of three imperatives that have come.

The first was right there in the first verse. "Since you've been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above." Now let me just tell you what the apostles doing. If you were looking at this in Greek, you would say that's a very mild imperative. It just kind of sets you, he's just kind of saying, "Consider this."

You just kind of reflect on the fact that you have this wonderful privilege.

It gets a little tougher in verse two.

The language there, "Set your minds on these things above." It's like he's saying, "You let this grip you." It's like, "You let this get around your neck." You just let it grab you.

I think of it when I actually watched an interview with somebody after Hurricane Katrina.

There was a man who was being interviewed by a CNN reporter and she was talking to him and saying, "I hear that your house was overtaken by the flood, can you just tell us what happened?"

There's this regular guy who was talking and he was sure reflecting on 100 news reports that he'd seen sometime over the course of his life. He just kind of talked flatly for a little bit. He said, "Well, yeah, the water kind of came up to the porch and then it came into the first level house."

So the family and I, we went upstairs and before we knew it, it came upstairs.

And we had to go up into the attic and then his voice caught

and he couldn't say it flatly anymore. It suddenly captured him what he was saying.

And then I had to kick out the roof of our house because the water was coming in so fast. I hadn't kicked out the roof, we would have died.

It grabbed him.

We would have died.

And Paul is saying to the people of God, "You let this grab you.

You were dead in your transgressions and sin.

Your life was nothing but misery. There was pain and you know it was painful. You were going to die in that." But God in his great mercy resurrected you through the power of Christ and lifted you from the mire. He lifted you from death itself and he has given you a place of privilege and honor. And when glory comes, you're going to be part of it. Now you let this settle in

because he's going to say what the consequence is because you got to put to death something.

You put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature.

If that's really who you are, if you look back at that mire and you say, "There was death and ugliness and struggling and misery." And you know it. If you know that,

then you face what's going to happen if you get back in the mire.

You're going to be miserable again.

Put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, which is idolatry. It's not as apparent to you in the English but there's a progression here.

Sexual immorality is the umbrella term.

You recognize sexual immorality is a problem. Put to death therefore impurity. That's just the joke with the sexual innuendo.

Just the little playing with sexual humor

and sexual images.

Because that impurity leads to lust.

And when lust begins to build, you actually have evil desires. You actually begin to want those things again. It's not just the incidental lust. You feed it, you begin to go after it. You want it. And greed, greed doesn't fit for us easily but what is greed? It's craving for the things you are not meant to have.

I now begin to crave it.

And when you crave something that God doesn't want you to have,

it's an idol.

It is idolatry. You worship what you want more than what God wants for you. And so the apostle just kind of goes through what we know as men are these natural triggers in our lives. How the dominoes fall and lead to something else, lead to something else. And he says in essence, you nip it in the butt. You recognize what does attract you, what does cause problems in your life. Don't listen to other people. I so often face it with seminarians, people who will say to me, you know what, I don't feel like I should have strode this because those people over there say it's no problem for them. I want to say, I'm not talking to those people. I'm talking to you. Is it a problem for you?

If it's a problem for you, don't even go down the path. Don't start down it. If you know it's a problem, you stay away from it. Don't let other people tell you what attracts them. You deal with your own heart. What is starting you down the path that you know is gonna be hard for you. Because the apostle in words that are shocking to us, verse six says, because of these things, the wrath of God is coming.

I want to be clear here. The apostle is saying, listen, you're already resurrected from the mire. You're already lifted up. But don't you recognize the rest of the world that is still indulging of these things is going to face the wrath of God. How can you think as a believer that you can begin to dabble in this stuff again, and it's not gonna touch you? It's not gonna affect you? You're not eternally gonna face the wrath of God, but how could you think that if the wrath of God is coming upon these things, that this will have no consequence in your life?

It is dire and serious warning of the apostle to say if you really have these great privileges, you have to live them, or you will in ways you cannot even imagine begin to jeopardize the wonder and the goodness of the life that God, I'm not talking about jeopardizing your salvation. I am talking about jeopardizing the experience of the goodness of God.

A Puritan preacher once explained it this way. He said there was a man that came to him after a strong sermon on the nature of sin and its corrosive effects upon the life of the believer. And the man came up after the service and said to him, "Pastor, you know, I know that there are some of these things that I ought to get rid of in my life. There are these few of these cobwebs that I still struggle with. What should I do about these cobwebs that are still in my life?" (congregation laughing) The pastor said, "Kill the spider."

Oh, don't wanna hear that. No, listen, cobwebs,

because of such things, the wrath of God is coming.

These things are so dangerous, so abhorrent to God that he wants to protect his people so he tells you don't even start down the path.

And that means these things have to be recognized for the horror they are.

Guys, don't you recognize how many pastors are out of the ministry because of sexual issues?

How many families are broken today because a man did not start controlling his rage, didn't seek counsel, was too prideful to seek counsel for what he knew was destroying his relationship with his wife?

The apostle is saying to us, you take account, this is who you are. Look at the glory and the goodness of that. Look at the effects it ought to have in your life. Are they not there?

Then identify what is besmirching and hurting the glory that God is providing for you and deal with it. Put to death whatever is messing up what God means to be glorious.

That language of put to death, in the NIV there, it almost, you know, put to death almost sounds weak. It's just the language of kill it.

You identify and you kill it. Isn't it a time for compromise?

Isn't it a time to be soft? You identify what is going to hurt you and your family and you deal with it as the assault of Satan that it actually is. You kill it. Deal with it, face it. It's awful, it will hurt you. (footsteps) Oh, you legalist.

It's not legal, it's deep care. It's deep affection from the apostle dealing with the nature of sin and being honest about it and talking to us in such terms.

Do you all remember a few years ago when a man named Alan Ralston, there was a hiker going through Blue John Canyon in Utah

and he was in kind of a remote place in the canyon and along a trail kind of let his hand trail across a rock wall and didn't recognize it. But as he did, he offset a rock that was in a very tender balance.

And the rock tripped and caught his hand.

For six days he was trapped

until he began to smell the putrefying of the flesh of his own hand and in dehydration began to recognize what he had to do.

What did he have to do?

Before he cut off his hand,

he recorded in a book later what he did was he looked at it and he said, "You are garbage.

"You are killing me and I must get rid of you. "I will do it, I will get rid of you. "You are garbage."

And he cut off his hand.

Now as horrible as that sounds, listen to what he said.

"To me, the amputation was the most beautiful experience "I will ever have because it comes from the context "of being dead in my grave for six days

"and then suddenly getting my life back." It doesn't make sense in one level, beautiful experience coming up, but at another level you understand

when my family is being destroyed by my sin,

people I love being hurt, the life God has granted being damaged and I begin to recognize that. I have lived a life that is leading to the putrification of the goodness that God has given.

I want to be rid of it and if God actually gives victory, if God actually gives me the ability to amputate the flesh that is dead so that I do not die

of the goodness that he has provided, what do I say? God, thank you.

Praise God I'm free of that.

I know it's awful to talk about, but the Lord talks about it in these awful terms to deal with real men in real terms.

It can hurt you, it can hurt your family, face the reality of sin for the horror that it is.

I recognize the apostle didn't talk in any of these ways until he had first said, but remember who you are. Remember, there was the indicative first.

You are raised with Christ and seated with him in glory.

You're already God's precious child and you will be hid from his wrath when he comes in glory. In fact, glory will be yours.

Take hold of it now, begin to grasp the goodness of it and face what is jeopardizing the wonderful life that God intends.

How do we do that? If we really have these imperatives to live out of the indicative of who we are,

what are we actually being called to do? Where is their victory?

I know in a conference that emphasizes grace, we can talk in platitudes and forget the realities.

Here's the first reality. Where is victory?

It's first in a fight.

John Owen was the Puritan who was the greatest preacher of grace of any of the Puritans.

And yet when he talked about the mortification of sin, hear that language of death again? How do we put sin to death in our lives? He talked about the necessity of fighting it. Now, you have to know there is a fight even by the language the apostle is using here because he says to us, "Listen, these are the things that are passed. "You're already raised with Christ, "seated with him in heavenly places. "You are already in the position." That's what settled.

But there are some present tense things.

Set your hearts on things above. There are some things to do right now. Set your minds on things above. You grasp this now and begin to really wrestle with it like you're supposed to. And finally, you put to death. There's the present tense. These things are to be done in the moment based upon what has already been accomplished. There is a fight.

John Owen in the mortification of sin said there are two times at which men begin to believe that they don't have to fight sin.

The first time is when they have just given into it greatly.

And having given into the sin, it is so repugnant to their own sensibilities that now they say, "Thank you, God.

"I sinned this great sin,

"but it is so repugnant to me now. "I now see the wrong of it "that I know I'll never do it again."

We really do think that sometimes, don't we?

Lord, I hurt my wife so badly.

She is so torn up by this.

I know I'll never do it again.

Owen said the repugnance will grow old.

The sin will renew.

The other time he said that Christian men sometimes think that they will not have to fight sin

is when God has brought them through a great crisis.

And during the crisis, they made some vow to God that they would not do this thing again.

"Oh God, you saved my business. "Now I'll be honest. "Oh God, you saved my family.

"I won't be attracted to other women anymore."

Owen says the crisis will pass.

The sin, temptation will come again.

There is a fight.

There is a fight. And we damage one another. As Christian men, if we begin to say, "Oh, it's not really that hard. "Just live in the Christian life, no big deal."

It sure is for me.

I wrestle with pride and arrogance and fear and despair and lust and greed and so do you. There is no temptation.

There is no temptation taking me, but such as is common to you.

And it's the reason I can say it to you because I know if you begin to judge me, I simply say, "You've got to be honest with yourself. "You judge me. "The Bible tells me you're struggling with it. "What do you mean judging me?

"I know it's in you, because the Bible tells me so. "This is a fight. "We will have to fight. "If you don't believe you have to fight, "you've already lost the battle."

You hear me? If you say, "This is no problem, I don't have to fight," you've already lost.

There is a fight. It's based upon the knowledge of who you are, the privileges you have, but there is a fight.

We engage in the victory first by knowing there has to be a fight. Secondly, we engage in the victory and have it by faith.

Why does the apostle say to us, "Put to death these things. "You must rid yourselves of these things." Why does he say these things? Because, verse 10, "You have put on the new self."

You're different now. Do you remember that?

Christ is in you.

Satan comes along and he says, "You can't help it." God says, "That's a lie.

"You are a new creature in Christ Jesus. "You are made new. "You have new desires." People say at times, "I can't tell that I'm a new creature. "You know, I can prove it to you. "I can prove it to you." How do you know that you are different? There was a time for almost all of us, there was a time that when we sinned, we did not care.

I'm not telling you don't sin now.

But the mark of the spirit in you is when you sin.

You hate it. You hate it.

And the glory and the goodness of the gospel is the very evidence of the presence of the spirit.

I hate sin, I hate what happened, I hate, praise God. That's the evidence of real spiritual life in me. I feel like because I failed that I'm not a Christian, but the mere fact that I feel this great burden of shame, not just of the sin that I have hurt my heavenly father, I've sinned against him again, I've betrayed my savior. If the spirit were not alive in me, I wouldn't feel any of those things.

The work of the spirit in my heart is to make me feel the awfulness, the hate of the sin that's there. It's the wonderful confirmation of the spirit, my hatred of the sin.

I'm new, I'm different. And if I'm really different, different enough to hate sin, then I also have the ability to fight it. That's part of what faith is telling me to do. Remember that Puritan walk of faith?

The greater is he that's in me than he that's in the world.

God has showed me these things, he told me about them, but he's also told me how precious I am and how powerful I am. When I know that, I begin to have some ground to stand on to fight. If I believe, I can't fight. If I believe, I can't win. If I believe that tomorrow is going to be like yesterday, I've already lost.

But if I actually believe what the Bible says,

Jesus' power is in me and Satan's lies tell me it's not so. If I actually believe that,

that faith is the beginning of the victory.

We have victory by fighting, by faith,

and finally by love. I know it sounds small, see, but I mean it, by love.

People say, "Oh, love."

You know, there goes that Christian preacher again.

Listen, you can make fun of it. I will tell you the truth. There is no more powerful force in the world than love. What drives the mom back into the burning building?

It is love. What drives men to seek security of their families again when their wives are so angry at them for their failures? It is love beyond my guilt, beyond my shame.

And what makes us want to fight the fight of purity for the savior? It is love for him. Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." He is not saying, "If you keep my commandments, I will love you." He has said, "You are already raised. You're already seated. You're already a prince of glory and coming again in glorious purpose. Now that you know that, what will you do?" You'll say, "God, you really love me that much.

You love me that much. You know all about my sin, my weakness, my despondency, my anger, my love. You know all that and you love me so much. I love you, God.

I love you.

Help me to love you as I ought."

And it is that compulsion of love that is so powerful that all of these principles of grace are pushing, supporting, and building. It's the reason the apostle starts with the indicatives before he ever goes to the imperatives. And believe me, if you pastors, elders, officers, men, if you will look at your scriptures, you will find it is always that way. Wherever there are commands in scriptures, there are statements of how much God loves you first.

You just check me on that. You look anywhere you look in the Bible. It never says you do this and then God will take care of you and love you. It says, "I have loved you. I am the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. I am the God who brought you out of the house of slavery. Therefore, follow my commands." He never says, "You obey me, I'll get you out of slavery."

Love comes first because God knows that when we know his love, we will love him. And it's that love that will make us willing to fight.

And fundamentally, it is that love

that will be the formation of our faith.

He loves me. He loves me. I will believe what he says.

There is a fight.

Faith says we can win.

Love says we will fight.

Remember that movie "Cinderella Man" had a couple of years ago?

James J. Braddock, once a prize fighter, not a very good one.

Get out of the business. Tried other business. Depression came.

Couldn't take care of his family.

Got back in the ring.

And through this kind of amazing set of circumstances,

gets a shot at the title.

One little problem.

The heavyweight champion has already killed two men in the ring.

He is vicious and brutal, and Braddock has to fight him for the championship.

He's scared.

His trainers are scared. Managers don't want him to do it. He's going to fight.

But on the night of the fight, he's down in the dressing room getting ready. Everyone's nervous, hardly talking.

And in comes his wife.

Managers try to keep her away.

She withers them with a glance. You get out of my way.

Lay back away.

She goes to her husband and looks him in the eye.

You just remember who you are, James J. Braddock.

You're the bulldog of Bergen and the pride of New Jersey.

You're everybody's hope and the kid's hero.

And you are the champion of my heart, James J. Braddock.

Now you get out there and fight.

Men, there is a fight.

But God sends us with a wonderful assurance of who we are. You have to remember that.

You are the pride of heaven.

You are the glory of God's own Son, precious to Him,

and made powerful by His indwelling Spirit.

You know that.

You love Him because of it.

Now you remember who you are and fight.

Fight with the confidence of the God who fills you,

the glory of the Son who saves you,

and the love of the Father who has loved you eternally,

and always, always will.

Father, give us the knowledge of your presence, we pray.

In our strength and in our weakness,

in our moments of great glory,

and in our times of deep despondency over failure,

remind us who we are, that we might live for you in the reality of the threat of sin and the confidence of the presence of the Savior.

Give us this great victory of your grace, we pray,

for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Thank you, Brian.

Take a 10-minute break. We'll come back, hear some music from Red Mountain Music, and then we'll have a question and answer and tie things up. I may not have mentioned earlier that there's an evaluation sheet in your packet,

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