Daily Bible Reading 13th 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.
The apostle's insistent exhortation is very impressive and deeply challenging. 'This is your position in Christ. Now be what God has made you: You have been raised with Christ - live as if it were true. You have been crucified with Christ, you died with Christ - so be dead, put to death all that is of the earth. In Christ, the old man/the old Adam was put off, stripped off in the circumcision of His death; in Christ's resurrection the new man was put on - so put off the old man and put on the new. If we are believers at all, this is what it means to be such. We are no longer the man or woman we once were. We have been identified with Christ in His death and resurrection - so we must be identified with His death and resurrection as a constant attitude and mindset. We are to reckon it as a living/as a dying reality so that the power of His death and resurrection will be at work within us.' Let me insist, however, that it is only because we have been remade and recreated in Christ; it is only because, in Christ, the man we once were has been put off and the new man has been put on, that we are equipped and empowered and enabled to live as new men and women, it is not something of ourselves. By ourselves, we are weak and frail and sinful but 'in Christ' we are that no longer. This is the grace and power of the Gospel which prevents the divine imperatives from becoming counsels of despair for us. This is the grace and power and enabling which prevents these commands for holy living becoming heavy weights which, in the light of our weakness and frailty and sin, hang round our necks and drag us down to despair. Our weakness and frailty and sin have been crucified with Christ: It belongs to the man we once were. In Christ we are not weak nor frail nor sinful; we are, rather, mighty to the pulling down of strongholds. In Christ, and only 'in Christ', we are true and good and holy and are empowered so to be. So, says Paul, leaving no place for complacency, because you are that, be that. Walk in Christ. Live in Christ. Be true to your new nature, not to your old one.