Living the New Life in Christ.

As you guys are navigating back, I can introduce myself. I know we have quite a few new faces pretty consistently nowadays, which is super exciting. That means I haven't maybe met some of you guys. So hello, I am Ashley.

I am not the pastor of New Culture, but I am going to be speaking today. Something unique that we really love about our church is we do have a teaching team, so there are multiple people. It's me, we have two Nathans, we have a Sean, we have an Abbie, we have a Nicole. I'm super excited. I do project management full-time at Epic, but throughout these past few years in my faith walk I feel like the Lord just put on my heart a lot for teaching and missions specifically. I'm excited to be here today and share what I feel like the Lord's put on my heart, and hopefully it'll speak to you all.

If you haven't been here yet, this season we are going through Colossians. This morning, we're going to be in Colossians 3, focusing on verses 1 through 17. Let me read the scripture first, then I'll pray and we'll get started.

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 also 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 have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge, in the image of its creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all. Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace, and be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father through him.

Colossians 3:5-17

Lord, we thank you for another morning getting to worship you and praise you and seek you and just get to know you deeper. We thank you for your word that is active and present, and I just pray that your Spirit be present in the words today, that open hearts and open minds are available to hear what you're speaking to us today. In your name we pray, amen.

That was a hefty chunk, but it's a good chunk. I'm actually going to jump back for just a second because we start off this section with "since we were raised with Christ." If you aren't familiar with some of the sermons we've been going through or these verses, it's actually a continuation of Paul's thoughts.

Raised with Christ

In Colossians 2:13, he's saying:

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins. Having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us, he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Colossians 2:13-15

I jumped back there because we were raised with, from what, you know, raised from what? We were raised from the dead with Christ. Previously we were dead in our sin and then God forgave us in his ultimate display of love with Jesus. Jesus died with that. Our sins died. Our flesh died. And we are raised in new life with Christ.

Because of that, we'll see in the first few verses, we no longer seek what our flesh seeks out. We seek heaven. We seek Jesus. We seek where he is and things above the earth. And our life is secure with Jesus. He's hidden in our hearts, but with him being hidden in our hearts we have active fruit and actions and words that come from that and flow from that.

So our "so what" is that God chose us. He died for us in the ultimate display of love and sacrifice to make us alive again. And now what? We live our new life in Christ by actively letting Him and His message rule in our heart. As I was reflecting thinking of what to speak, I just felt like it's so active what he's asking us to do. There are active pieces of this message that he wants us to partake in with our life.

I think a lot of times as we're going through Colossians we've been talking about the context. We've been talking about what the people in Colossians are struggling with that Paul is writing to, and they're struggling with Gnosticism. They think they can find our salvation in these otherworldly thoughts or worldly ideas, and that Jesus isn't the fulfillment. But it's pretty clear here, we've already tackled that Jesus is the fulfillment. He died. That is all we needed for that salvation.

With this passage, it's really just clear instruction from Paul outside of the context. For today, there are active next steps that we have in this. I was just really struck by that. There are active pieces here, and it's very clear what Paul's intending. That's what I'm hoping we can go through together today.

Setting Our Hearts on the Things Above

So with that, I mentioned verses 1 through 4. Since you have been raised with Christ and set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, this leads us to our first active step. It's setting our mind on the things above, setting our hearts on the things above. We have been raised with Christ and in the verses it says he's hidden in our hearts. He's our spiritual guidance. He's in our hearts now, hidden, but that has outward impacts on our words and our actions.

What we need to do is take that into consideration. We need to consistently renew ourselves of what it is and who it is the Lord is and what He's done for us. It's an active thing to set our minds on that.

As I was reading this, I was thinking of 2 Corinthians 10:5:

Take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:5

It's kind of the same vein. We're taking what we're receiving and we're filtering it through the lens of Jesus and who he is, and we're making the truth come out of that and being obedient to that.

When we're setting our mind on the things above consistently, when we're focusing on God, we're able to take whatever it is we're consuming, whether that's at work, whether that's social media, whether that's our friends and people we surround ourselves with, we're filtering through what actually is aligning with Jesus and his desires and his thoughts and what he sees through that. That is an active way of following Jesus: actively setting our minds on Jesus consistently.

Put to Death Your Earthly Nature

So that brings us then into kind of our second active thing. It's found in verses 5 through 9: put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature. Paul loves to give us examples. He continues on and tells us exactly what that might mean. That's why I love Paul. He says sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed. He doesn't leave it there. He continues on in verse 8, get rid of anger, malice, rage, slander, and filthy language from your lips. He gives us those direct examples instead of just saying, die to yourself, let your flesh go away.

He's like, this is what things of your flesh you might need to identify. And it's from those outward flowings. What I was struck by with this was the lips piece. It's very clear in the Bible, our tongue is wild. Our tongue is so powerful too. There's so much power in words, but it really is a reflection of what it is going on in our hearts. What are we saying?

Let me get personal here for a second. I crash out so easily. I really do. That is like one of the biggest things that I notice. If I am not consistent in my reading, if I'm not consistent in filtering who God is and what he desires for my life, I will crash out so easily and I will say things and I hear myself say them. I'm like, whoa, where did that come from? That is not who I am. When I think about when those times are happening, it is in these times that Paul is calling out. It's typically in anger. It's typically in malice.

Someone cuts me off in traffic. I'm frustrated. I'm upset. But that does not mean I should crash out and say things that are not nice. I think it's just a reflection of what we say and what we do. That is tied to something in our hearts. When I am saying those things, it's tied to the fact that I am rooted in anger in that moment.

I had James 3:7-8 in here also:

All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

James 3:7-8

That's wild. But that just goes to show that it's really through Jesus and through the Spirit that that gets tamed. When I'm doing these things and I'm like, oh, I haven't been very consistent in my Bible reading, or I haven't been focusing on the Lord, in those moments of anger He will filter what my tongue is doing. He will filter my actions and he will filter my words if I just take those steps of coming back and focusing back on the Lord, because that's what it's tied to. I'm changing the root of that moment. I don't want the root of that moment to be my anger. I want it to be, how would Jesus use this?

What I also love is that in verses 9 through 11, he gives us kind of that direction. He says, since you've taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge and the image of its creator. It just hammers that point home. It's through our renewal of knowledge of who Christ is that we are going to be able to do those things.

How do we renew our images of Christ and how do we renew our understanding of Him? Through what we call daily rhythms. We have our practices of morning, midday, evening, reflection. These are not replacing our faith, but it's fueling our faith. It's building up those rhythms that will help us to tackle those moments.

We're not going to not struggle with anger ever again. We're not ever going to not struggle with lust again. But when we have our daily rhythms, when we are consistently renewing our knowledge of Christ, we are more equipped when we come into those situations. In order to actively put ourselves to death, we have to renew our knowledge of Christ and he's going to help us to do that. He doesn't expect us to do that alone. He is the one who gives us the tools to do those things.

Clothe Yourselves in Love

I also love Paul because he's not just like, hey, you do all these bad things, you need to get rid of it. He tells us what it should look like when we are following Christ. What do we do? We actively clothe ourselves in the qualities of Christ hidden within us.

In verses 12 through 14, it says, therefore, as God's chosen people. I love that. He chose us. He died for us because he loves us. And so we are now his chosen people. As God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Fun fact: I shared this with a couple people. I didn't realize this is actually the verses in my Instagram bio. I was like doing this stuff yesterday and then I was like, oh wait a minute, this looks familiar. I think that just speaks to how these verses have impact, not only on us individually but also as a community. That's what we'll get into. This is where we see Paul is telling us what this new life should look like. It's about having compassion and kindness and humility, moving out of a place of love.

This comes from renewing our knowledge of him because it's only through him that we know what those things look like. It's only through him and renewing ourselves in him that that can then become the root of our hearts. It's replacing our greed and our evil desires with the desires of his heart of love and compassion and humility.

He always ends it with love. That is the biggest unifying thing of these virtues. And that's because if we love God, he will show us how to love people. That's really where humility and gentleness come from, is from a love for others. We're going to be kind. We're going to be patient. We're going to be compassionate when we love people. It really does bring it all together.

Even though this is like an individual clothing, we are called to put to death our old selves and put on this new clothing for ourselves. It has those communal impacts of forgiving other people and living a compassionate life for other people.

Let His Message Rule in Community

That's continued in verses 15 through 17, where we actively let his message rule in our hearts and community, extending it to how we treat those around us.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. So we, as the whole body, are called to peace together. He says, let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Colossians 3:15-17

As we are clothing ourselves with these Christ-like qualities, we are also then called to rule that in the community altogether. The peace and the compassion that comes from within is going to come together in community and relationship with one another. He still calls us to teach each other and admonish each other because that's also loving. When we're holding each other accountable and making sure our whole community is loving together, that is how we can welcome new people. That is how we reach people. That is how Jesus reaches people: through community.

We have that accountability on each other to do that for each other. How we do that is through discipleships, or we have community groups and small groups and foreign groups and just diving into relationship with one another and allowing space for vulnerability. Hey, I'm really struggling with this and I need help in order to shed the light of Jesus. I think Paul is very intentional of calling that out. We have to still teach each other and admonish each other. But that doesn't take away from the fact we need to love each other and we need to forgive each other. So those passages really go together there.

We sing together, we worship together and we do all in the name of Jesus as well. He says, whatever you do in word, do you do it for the name of Jesus? I think that goes also for our interactions as people with other people. If we are interacting to glorify Jesus, then those interactions are going to be loving and they're going to be kind.

But really, we also are supposed to do this with gratitude and that's hard. Forgiving people is hard. Showing kindness can be hard sometimes. People are messy. But that does not mean we're supposed to do it without joy. Jesus is the way we can do that with joy because that's where we get our joy from.

So for continuing to focus on Jesus, he will renew our hearts. We'll be able to treat people with kindness, with joy. We're able to give and volunteer and do all these things with joy and gratitude because it's glorifying the Lord.

Really, if nothing else is taken from this, it is literally just this: it is through Jesus that all these things can happen. So we have these active next steps. We have the active, put yourself to death and remove these things from your life. Treat people with kindness and do nice things, but it's all from what are we doing: setting our hearts on Jesus and setting our minds on Jesus and what it is he desires.

Reflection and Response

I kind of just want us to take a moment and kind of reflect on that. I think, especially for those who have been in your walk for a while. Maybe you have your daily rhythms down. Maybe you're reading your word. Maybe you're worshiping every day, maybe three times a day or four times a day. But maybe over time also it's gone away and you've lost that consistency.

What are the things in my life that I'm seeing that is not actually reflective of what Jesus wants? I want us to have a time of reflection on that. What is going on with me? Where am I not putting my heart and mind on God? Where am I struggling to see God in my day-to-day?

Also think about this. Maybe I've done a really good job of disciplines and maybe I've done all these things, but how can I continue to grow in removing the sin and removing the struggles that I'm having from taking root in my heart? You're not going to never struggle with anger or those things. But how are you in those scenarios refocusing and recentering on Jesus? What are the things that you might need to do? Do you need a prayer verse to go back to? I probably do breath prayer. I need a prayer verse for when I'm angry at work. But how can I continue then to put my old self to death?

How can I continue to put those to rest and just fully live in my new life of Jesus? And then secondly, what is my next step of action? In all of that reflection of where am I at, what am I struggling with, what is the next step? Is it simply just sitting with Jesus and seeing what he says and listening to his Spirit? Is it actively doing, like, maybe scripture three times a day? Or is it sharing with a friend something that I'm struggling with so that they can hold me accountable? Is it giving someone else forgiveness?

Am I harboring something in my heart that I need to let go and be giving of my love, giving of my grace? It's not an easy thing, but that's why Jesus is here for us and that's why he wants to share that with us.

Jesus loves us so much. He loves each and every one of you so much. I just feel so overcome with the feeling that each one of us in this room, He wants to use you and share that love with other people. It doesn't matter what you struggle with. I know I've messed up so many times. So many times. But Jesus uses you and uses those situations anyway. He does not actually need us to be perfect. That's the great part. He doesn't need us to be perfect. He just needs us to be willing.

I cry a lot, sorry. This is actually the first time I cried up here. If there's one thing to take away from here, it's just this: how can we continue to set our hearts and minds on Jesus? How can we continue to set the things above? How can we continue to form our daily rhythms? How can we continue to pour into this community of believers together? And how can that extend out?