Colossians 3:5 [with audio]

You have died, Paul said, and are now to “put to death.”

The first part is about your objective identification with Christ in his death and resurrection.

The second part is about how you work that out in real time and how what is already done in you becomes expressed in real time.

This is the part that you are responsible for. Paul is not sugarcoating it; you are supposed to put to death (whatever in) your nature that belongs to the earth.

The first thing to do when you want to “put to death” is starve that thing of life.

When you stop blood flow to a part of the body, death is inevitable.

Stop fueling the sin nature. But the unbeliever cannot stop fueling the sinful nature, but the believer can. The believer who is not actively stopping the fueling of the sin nature may not differ from an unbeliever (James 1:22-24). And that is sad.

James wrote about the chain of temptation in James 1:14-16. It starts with

“own desires.”

You need to starve sin at the level of desire. First, recognize the presence of that desire, staring it in the face, and then commit to starving it of “life” even if it costs you your own life.

What fuels desire is time and thought. The more your mind dwells on it, the more alive it is, instead of dying.

Remember, the commandment is not that you should not have the wrong desire; the commandment is to kill it before it grows further. And you kill it by depriving it of life.

To say you must not have wrong desire is to say that you are not human and have no use for the words of Paul in the focus verse.

As you see in Jesus's words, God regards desire as a sin (Matthew 5:21-22). Whatever is potential, God regards it as actual, and the call is to see things from God’s point of view as his children.

You need to own your desire and not excuse it; that is the beginning of starving it of life. You don't starve it of life by pretending it is not there. You don’t cut something off casually. You do it deliberately and don’t stop. It’s a fight to finish between you and that sinful desire. That is the way the writer of the Book of Hebrews thinks (Hebrews 12:4). He calls it a struggle.

When desires are conceived, they give birth to sin.

Sin does not come out of nowhere; it is from the desire that has not been aborted before the sin is born. You must abort that desire. There is a time between conception and sin; and sin given unfettered expression, leads to death. If I do not want to continue in the sin, it’s back to the desire again, shutting off whatever gives it life.

This is part of the sanctification commitment that you should have as Christians. There is an objective (finished) state of you being dead, and now there is a continuing work that Paul is COMMANDING in the focus verse.

He had been arguing that you should not listen to some people who want to guide you into earthly practices because those things do not lead to victory over sin, but now he puts the ball into your own court. Stand up and do your role; Christ has done his.

This may be one of the hardest lessons to learn because people around us want to keep us as babies and keep us dependent on them and their programs for our holiness.

According to Paul, holiness is hard work for each believer that no one can do for you, a commitment to starving your earthly nature, which manifests in wrong desires. Those are my words. Paul said it differently: PUT TO DEATH. In another place, he said STAY AWAY (1 Thessalonians 5:22).

In the Old Testament, if your family member is trying to cause you to depart from God, it is COMMANDED that your hand must be the first to cast the stone against him, as a picture of what Paul is saying in the focus verse (Deuteronomy 13:8-10). It is Operation No Mercy against evil desires. That is the truth.

Paul could have said, “Follow these ten steps to spirituality that I will give you,” or “After you fast for 100 days, then you will be holy.” He did not. The devil's extreme subtlety means no ten steps will help, and he is called the tempter (Matthew 4:3, 1 Thessalonians 3:5).

Note that Paul had been writing against those he said proposed some things that he said were not helpful against the indulgence of the flesh. They may make the practitioners feel good, but the flesh continues to rage in their lives, which is what Paul is saying. He is saying that they continue in the life of sin.

So Paul comes up with the solution. He gives each believer the responsibility to “put to death.” No one can, therefore, blame their sin on others, not your pastor, not your friends, not your parents, not a book you read.

We can only “put to death” because we are dead, and the life of Christ is in us. We can “put to death” because we are enabled by Christ. The unbeliever cannot “put to death” because he is dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1). The one who is dead in trespasses and sins cannot “put to death.”

What Paul is saying in the focus verse is that we should not see ourselves as victims of sinful passions but as above them, able to do something about them.

The focus verse also tells us that our human nature and tendency to sin are still there. Any false doctrine that says otherwise is self-deception. There is no time in your life when the command in the focus verse will be behind you.

There is a deception that says you can sin, and it’s okay. There is another deception that says evil desire will cease.

But you say, "But I can just put it to death, and it is dead” I would say yes and amen to that, but if you start fueling the wrong desire, what you think is dead, you will see it is not really dead.

Any attempt to not watch and pray (Matthew 26:41) means that we would not survive the temptation wind of the devil. But through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the righteous may fall seven times but would rise up again (Proverbs 24:16, Romans 5:20-21).

We see clearly that God's vision for you is reflected in the focus verse. Again, God did not say that we need the Holy Spirit to help us put to death our sinful passions. Do you know why he did not say that? Because he wants you to realize that anytime you sin, it is your choice.

Again, I would refer you to James. He said the one who sins should not blame God. Don’t say God made me do it. Don’t impugn the death and resurrection of Jesus as if something is remaining for God to do.

What God wants are sons of God who take responsibility for doing the will of God.

Remember that Adam blamed God and Eve when he rebelled (Genesis 3:12). Therefore, any excuse you give for sin becomes an echo of the fall in Eden. And God would not listen.

I am not saying sin is your end, but it could be if you don't start with a clear understanding that you are responsible. Let's start with no excuse, not even a little excuse for sin, no justification whatsoever.

Since the bible says you should put your earthly nature to death, sin is an expression of your lack of putting to death. With that foundation, I believe a life of victory over sin is built, according to the scriptures.

In the list of things that Paul wants to be put to death, he starts with the act of sexual immorality and then progresses to things that build up to sexual immorality.

Impurity: corruption from an outside influence 

Shameful passion: consumed by the desire for the wrong things: wrong feelings

Evil desire: Wanting the wrong thing; harmful desires because it harms others

Greed: Wanting more than you have, what is not legally yours. (taking from others, cold calculating)

Paul wanted to dig below the act of sin to the impurity, shameful passion, evil desire, and greed that undergird it.

How do I put it to death? It's simple. Act contrary to it. Remember that the sexual passion that you allowed to fester in your heart, even while you are an unbeliever, is still reflective of your earthly nature and is still a seed that may want to rear its head later.

Be aware of that and put it to death. Turn off that sex scene on the TV, confront that friend who makes crude sexual jokes, and don't listen to sexually explicit music. Take even the smallest action against it. But do something contrary to that desire to starve it of life. And you can because of the life of God in you. But don't think it is a one-time thing, it is a lifetime thing. You are to keep putting it to death.

Put to death:

1. sexual immorality.

It is not by mistake that this is the first on the list. Any pulpit that does not address sexual immorality is suspect.

We are sexual beings. Our distinctive is our sex. And it is not just sex outside of marriage that Paul is writing against; it is also all forms of sexual deviance, sexual excitement because we are not ignorant of the principle of sin progression explained by James: desire-sin-death. Sin, at the least, wants to damage you.

With James, the progression is desire, sin, and death. Paul does not mention a progression but rather the interplay of the five things in that list.

Being a virgin before marriage is the ideal, as we see the premium God places on virginity with the repercussion of being a nonvirgin in Israel (Deuteronomy 22:20-21).

God wants virginity before marriage, and you are not going to convince him otherwise.

And it is for both the male and female since God shows no favoritism (Galatians 2:6). God prohibits homosexuality (female or male) and any man who sleeps with someone he is not married to (Romans 1:26-27, Exodus 22:16-17, Hebrews 13:4). That is the plain reading of scriptures.

It's not just avoiding the sex act (negative vision); it is a mind set on things in heaven that Paul commanded in Colossians 3:2 (positive vision).

2. impurity

There is impure language; there are impure thoughts and impure relationships. Contamination of the soul filled with sinful impulses, pornography literature, videos, sounds, and fantasies that are private indulgences of self-pleasuring, pornography. But the one who does not want to be called names and be removed from evil company would not listen to these words.

3. Shameful passion

The element of shame is always in sexual sin. But the worst thing we can do is to give a pass to shameful passion, to claim we cannot do anything but act it out.

4. Evil desire

Wanting the wrong things, such as the children of Israel wanting meat (Numbers 11:4-6), just as the sons of God desired the wrong things (Genesis 6:1-4).

5. Greed

We may not easily link greed with sexual sin, but do you remember the commandment that says, do not covet your neighbor’s wife (Exodus 20:17)?