Do you struggle daily with personal sins? Have you ever wondered how to overcome your personal sins and be able to live the risen life? You must first understand that there are parts of your old life that are going to try to hang on. You have to make a continuing daily practice of bearing your cross and slaying the parts of your old life. You must eliminate every aspect of your life that is against God. Romans 8:13 I think says it quite well “For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” You must kill the sinful deeds of the old man to be able to live a risen life. When you are saved your spirit is made holy and the only thing left that Satan can use is your mortal body. Romans 6:11-14 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. DO NOT render your body as an instrument for sin but render it as an instrument for righteousness unto God. So it really boils down to one thing and that is those parts of my body which tend to sin, I must prevent them from sinning and redirect my members for working righteously through Christ. This is the main text that I want to focus on look at Colossians 3:5-9 5 Therefore put to death your members which are on earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, 7 in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. 8 But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds,” Look at verse 5,Paul is saying to put to death or kill the sinful acts that your members partake in because he wants us to understand that it is our bodily members that get us into trouble. Let’s look at verse 5 and 8, these are the most troublesome sins verse 5 talks about unholy kinds of love and verse 8 talks about wicked kinds of hate. Notice in verse 5, Paul lists these sins backwards from the actual sin itself to the motive. Fornication meaning sexual sin, fornication happens because of uncleanness, uncleanness meaning an unholy affection, uncleanness coming from a perverted passionate heart and an evil desire and that all comes from the core of a man’s being which is covetousness and covetous is man wanting what he wants and not what God wants and that is idolatry. When you say “I want what I want” you are no longer worshiping God you are worshiping yourself and that is idolatry plain and simple. How do you stop this? Well you have to control your thoughts. If you control your thoughts you control your body! It is your mind that controls your behavior, sinful thoughts produce sinful deeds and righteous thoughts produce righteous deeds. That is why Philippians 4:8 says “ Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there anything praiseworthy –meditate on these things.” To help train your mind you must read Gods word, study it, just like Colossians 3:16 say’s “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly…” The bible is the most influential thing there is, you just have to read it and study it. Once you start getting closer to God you will find that the way you kill your covetousness is with contentedness. You become content with what you have and what God has given you. You have to realize there is nothing you can do in and of yourself to control your mind. You must train your mind to think on the Kingdom of Heaven, think on the word of God and about our Lord Jesus and before you know it even your involuntary thoughts will be pure. Now before we get to the second list of sins Paul gives us reasons why we should want to kill our old sinful man, so look in Colossians 3:6 to see the first reason and it is "Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience". The way God will react to those sins in verse 5 is He will pour judgment out upon you. Now look at Colossians 3:7 to see the second reason “in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.” Right there that’s the way you used to live, that was your old sinful man’s way of living. Why as a Christian should you want to do these kinds of things because these sins are the reason people are damned not blessed. If you still allow yourself to chase the thing that you want in spite of God and you give way to covetousness you better get ready for the consequences. Hebrews 12:6 “For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.” Here is another one Proverbs 3:12 “For whom the Lord loves He corrects, Just as a father the son in whom he delights.” God reacts against sin; He always has and always will. Look at the life of King David and his personal sins, the man had a broken heart the rest of his life. Every one of his children went bad and broke his heart, his own son tried to steal his throne and kill him. You have been delivered from sin, so don’t mess with it. Now for the second list of sins in Colossians 3:8-9 8 “But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds,” Paul says these are thing that have to go, he says put them off and the words “put off” is referred to like clothing. Like at the end of the day when you take off dirty clothing, so you should discard the rags of your old life. Imagine an unbeliever is like a beggar clothed only in rags and he becomes a believer and gets a beautiful white robe but then he goes back out and puts his rags on over his white robe. It just doesn’t make since that anyone would do that but a lot of the time that is what we as Christians do. And Paul says don’t do that, throw off those filthy rags. Look at the list of sins, Paul starts with anger, like a smoldering anger that all it needs is for someone to fan it. Have you ever said “any time I think of that it makes me so angry”? Don’t hold anger in, it’s not good at all. When someone does what is wrong or you don’t like you need to call it out. I’m not saying to fly off the handle at someone but to call it out so that it is out in the open and that there is no need to bottle it up. Now when you bottle up anger it gives way to wrath. Wrath is a raging short lived act, like setting fire to a pile of straw, it rages for a little bit then it goes back to smoldering. Then when a smoldering thing leads to a flaming thing it leads to malice, and out of the mouth it comes blasphemy, foul language and lies. Paul is saying there is a smoldering anger deep within every man and we must get rid of it. Have you ever called someone a name or made fun of someone? Driving down the road in road rage or to someone’s face, we have all done it in one form or another. But any time you slander a man you slander God and that’s a form of blasphemy because God made us in His own image. Look at James 3:9 this verse is talking about the tongue “With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the similitude of God.” Just think of it this way when we slander a man we blaspheme God. Learn to love everyone no matter what the cost. Only say what is gracious or don’t say anything at all, and do not lie because Satan is the father of lies. Live a Christ filled life and die to yourself and chase only the things which are holy.
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