Colossians 3:11

Here, Paul continues to encourage relationships between Christians.

In previous verses, he said he wants us to move past our natural instincts of anger and lying. He mentioned the need to put off anger and not lie to preserve the bond among Christians.

• Anger can come from a misrepresentation of others.

• Lying is an attempt to misrepresent yourself to others.

We see Cain's anger against Abel. If there were people who were supposed to be closest, it should be Cain and Abel, but anger would not allow that to happen (Genesis 4:1-16).

Not only that, it led to malice (intent to harm), and Cain killed Abel.

So, at a minimum, anger is you trying to push others away and lying are you trying to push your real self away from others.

Anger and lying are what you should stop. But something you cannot end is your own ethnicity.

The call to become Christian is NOT a call to stop being part of your ethnic group. God has no problem with your ethnicity, your tribe, or your country of origin.

• Greek or Jew

• circumcised or uncircumcised

• barbarian or Scythian

• slave or free.

With this list, Paul covered the spectrum of social, religious, ethnic, and economic statuses and cultures. These are the natural ways we divide ourselves, but not according to God.

Paul is teaching another kind of thinking here. He encourages you to see people beyond their skin color, accent, Jewishness or Greekness.

Paul, a Jew himself, is asked to be an apostle to the Gentiles (non-Jews) (Acts 9:15).

He does not just want the believers to know that they are in Christ individually, which is true, something he had stressed up until this time. He is now saying that you are in Christ not alone but along with others.

God told Peter not to reject what he had accepted (Acts 10:15). And there are ways we reject people that God has accepted in Christ, people who are not less than us because Christ believed that they are worth dying for.

“Barbarian or Scythian” are people considered to be outside of polite society.

Paul is not berating the believers for the way they are treating other believers, but he wants to place the truth before them. This was not a truth that could be attained by mental exercise; Paul was speaking by revelation. He is telling us how God sees things, which is how things are in truth.

Paul's list references social status by mentioning “slaves or free people.” There may not be a more divergent group of people than slaves and free.

• The slaves, who are clearly down the totem pole, should not see themselves as less and

• the free, who are on the other end, are not more.

When our primary definition is “in Christ,” we would not be puffed up one against the other because of our bank account, education, country of origin, etc.

Another line that divides people is “circumcision or uncircumcision” (representing cultural/ethnic/social lines).

According to Paul, Christ is bringing people together from across social and economic divides; believers are coming together and connecting across natural divides, a reflection of what has now happened in the spirit between God and man through Jesus.

Christ is all

The call is for Christ to loom large, larger than social circumstances, larger than culture, larger than skin color, and larger than native language. And if Christ is all, if he is the focus, defining who we are, if he is the one holding our gaze, every other consideration fades away, and we gain his eyesight for how we see others.

and in all.

Am I seeing Christ in you, or am I thinking like other men? The call is to the latter. Am I setting my mind on things above where Christ is and not on things of the earth, like the differences of Jewishness, greekness etc.?

We are called to be different from the world, and that starts with embracing God's viewpoint. We need to learn a new way that Christ represents. He is the way, the truth, and the life (John 10:10).