Daily Bible Reading 11th July 2025 // Colossians 3:1-10
1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
Having thus exposed and refuted the false asceticism, this fleshly/carnal/unchristian piety, and having urged the believers not to be bound by such a pseudo Christianity, the Apostle moves on at the beginning of ch. 3 to advocate true Christian living. He advocates an authentic Christ-centred piety and he strongly and positively urges mortification of the flesh. From the beginning of ch. 3 Paul lays out the practical outworking, in the believer, of union with Christ. He describes 'normal Christian life' lived in godliness and holiness. The outworking of redemption, in the life of the believer, Paul says, is not to be like that of the heretics, where it looks to all intents and purposes as if the flesh has been crucified, when in fact it is alive and well and being encouraged. The outworking of redemption in the life of the believer is to be like this: The old man is to be put to death and the new man is to be put on. There is to be a real death to self and sin and a real resurrection to newness of life. If you wanted a pithy title for all that Paul says about living the Christian life or walking in Christ, it must be 'Put off and Put on'. To be a Christian at all is to put off the old man and to put on the new. This is what it means to be engrafted into Christ, united with Him in his death and resurrection.