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Welcome to Day 2 of our Look Through Colossians 3 in Daily Drive Time Devotions.
We're going to focus on verses 3 to 11. I said yesterday as we began our study
of this chapter that it's a chapter all about how do you live this new life that
Jesus Christ has given you, and we talked yesterday about setting your heart,
setting your mind on things above.

Once you've done that, what do you do next? Well, verses 3 and 4 tell us, "For
you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is
your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

" How do I live out this new life that God has given me? Well, first, I set my
heart and mind on things above, and then second, I see myself, well, the Bible
says here that I see myself as dead and alive. I died to some things, but I also
am alive to some things now.

I'm both dead and alive. For you died, and your life, your new life, is now
hidden with Christ in God. Now, what do these verses mean?

When you begin to understand them, you begin to understand how to live out this
new life. What does it mean for this new life to be hidden with Christ in God?
Well, it means simply this.

It means that when God sees you now, He sees you as in Christ. He doesn't see
all your sins and faults and failures. No.

The moment you accepted Christ as your Savior, and if you haven't done that yet,
you can. There is no time in any of our lives in which God has abandoned us.
Sometimes we turn our back on Him, but He has not abandoned you.

There is still time for you to accept Christ as your Savior, and once you accept
Him as your Savior, once you begin a relationship with Him, then the Bible says
your life is now hidden with Christ in God. That's a place of great security,
incredible security. And when God looks at you now, He sees Christ.

He sees the glory and the goodness of Christ. What does this mean for your life
to be hidden? When God sees you, He sees Christ.

What it means is, well, there's two key words to understand, substitution and
identification. Two things that happened at the cross to you, substitution and
identification based on your faith in Christ. You see, Christ not only died for
us on the cross, that's substitution.

He paid the price for your sins. He substituted Himself and died for you, died
the death that you should have died on the cross. He not only died for us, but
the Bible teaches us that we also, in one sense, died with Him.

That's identification. Now, what does this mean, "for you died"? In one sense,
we all want to check our pulse and we say, "No, wait a minute, I'm still alive.

" Physically, we're still alive, but spiritually, there is something in us that
died the moment you began a relationship with Jesus Christ. What is it that
died? We're going to talk about that more specifically in a minute, but overall,
what died is this call of sin in your life that you cannot say no to.

What died in your life is the call of the worldly, selfish way of doing things
that is the only way that you know. Now you have a different way to live, a new
way to live, the new life that Christ has given you. As a picture of this, a
couple of sisters came to know Christ and they, before they were believers, went
to a lot of wild parties.

They got another invitation to a party and they sent back this response, "We
regret to inform you that we cannot attend because we recently died. " They were
talking about this spiritual death that's talked about here, "For you died, and
your life is now hidden with Christ in God. " What does this mean in a very
practical, real way for everyday life?

Let me read for you verses five and six, and I think it'll begin to become more
clear. "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.

" I want you to notice, in verse three it says, "You died," but here in verse
five it says, "Put to death. " Now wait a minute, if I'm already dead, why do I
need to put something to death? He says, "Put to death this earthly nature.

" That's the selfish way of doing things. That's saying yes to temptation and
not being able to say no because you know that that's the only thing that will
make you happy. You're wrong, but in your mind, that's the way that you think.

Now the question in these verses is, for our practical everyday lives, is why do
I have to put to death that which is already dead? I wouldn't swat a fly that
was already dead. He's telling us here how to live our new life.

You take the truth about what Christ has done in his death and resurrection, and
you apply it to the way that you think and act in everyday life. And the
motivation here is, I have died in Christ, and I'm alive now in Christ. I've
died to the old ways of doing things, and I'm alive to the new ways of doing
things.

And so I focus on the new way of doing things. My motivation for the spiritual
life that God wants me to lead is not becoming something I'm not. I don't want
to try to become a better person, try to become a better Christian.

No, my motivation is living up to what God has already made me to be. He's
already given me a new life in Christ, and he's already spiritually put to death
that old way of living. Now I know it may not feel that way to you right now.

It certainly doesn't to me and to most people that I talk to. We still feel that
old way of living, and we don't feel as much as we would like that new way of
living. But God is saying here, this is the truth about you.

Whether you feel it or not, the truth about you is I have put some things to
death in your life, and I've brought something to life in your life. And you're
going to see it when you get to heaven, when I reveal my Son in glory. But right
now you can begin to live it by faith.

You'll live it by faith. I know. There's a bit of a paradox here because we
don't feel dead.

It's like the teenager who said, "I've died. I've died to the old ways of sin. I
wish God would inform my hormones because I don't feel dead to those old ways of
sin.

" Sin is still real. It's still tempting. Sin hasn't changed, but you have
changed in Christ.

This is not just a new teaching that I'm giving you here. This is the teaching
that you're a new person in Christ. Why is this important?

Because the order of how you live this new life is vital. First you put faith in
God for who you are, and then you act upon that faith. I see a lot of people
trying to live up to some new kind of way of living, be a new person without
first believing in God for who they are.

It all begins with faith. And here's the faith part while I'm on this earth. I
consider something dead in my life, that old experience, that selfish
experience, and I consider something alive, the new life that God has given me.

Now what does dead mean? It doesn't mean it no longer has any voice or
influence. It only means that it does not have the power to force you to sin.

It's somewhat like a person who has died. If an important person dies in your
life, they can still influence your life, maybe for the rest of your life, but
only if you choose for them to. Sin can still tempt you, but sin cannot force
you.

Now what died? He gives a list here. It's not an all-inclusive list, but he says
immorality died, and impurity died, and lust died, and evil desires died.

All of those things died. In verses seven and eight, he adds to the list. Listen
to these verses.

"You used to walk in these ways in the life you once lived, but now you must rid
yourself of all these things, anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language
from your lips. " There's another part of the list. Now it's interesting that
there's two lists here, one immorality, impurity, and lust, the other anger,
rage, malice.

G. Campbell Morgan called this second list "the sins in good standing. " Oh,
lying and slander, we say, those aren't quite as bad as lust and evil desires
and greed.

God puts them all on the same list right there together beside each other in
Colossians, because they all come from our selfishness. We look at this list and
we think, "Wait a minute. Can these things really be put to death?

" You cannot stop the temptation, which means the desire to do these things. It
wouldn't be a temptation if you didn't desire to follow it. You cannot stop the
temptation, but you can put to death the thinking that you need to do these
things.

Do I do that once for all? Is there some way of thinking where it will never
tempt me again? Absolutely not.

This is a day-by-day experience of faith. Let me just remind you that this
putting to death of the old way of living and beginning to live the new life of
Christ, it is not a matter of your willpower. You do have an action to take, but
it's not your willpower trying to get better.

It is God's power. It's the action of faith. You trust in what only God can do.

Here's how this works, Colossians 3, 9-11. Do not lie to each other, since
you've taken off your old self with its practices and you put on the new self,
which is being renewed in the knowledge of the image of its creator. Here there
is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or
free, but Christ is all and in all.

You want a practical picture of this, Paul says? It's like taking off the old
and putting on the new. Daily growth in my life as a Christian, it's a simple
two-step process.

Take off the old, put on the new, and it's not a one-time process. It's a daily,
throughout the day process. I do it again and again and again and again.

Repeat it throughout every day. Put off the old and put on the new. The test of
whether I'm doing this is, am I beginning to think and act in new ways?

Not am I perfect? You're not going to be perfect while you're on this earth, but
am I beginning to think and act in new ways? Put off the old and put on the new.

A child comes in, they've been playing in the mud, they need to get cleaned up.
What do they got to do? First they got to put off the old, put off the dirty
clothes, then they got to put on the new.

God's made you a new person, but how do you live that out in everyday life? You
put off the old and you put on the new. Maybe you need to do that today.

You do need to do that today. Let's do it right now. In prayer, let's just talk
to God and say, "Jesus Christ, right now, I choose to put off this old way of
thinking, whether it's anger or lust or greed or selfishness or slander,
immorality, bitterness.

Jesus, I choose to put off this old way of thinking, not by my willpower, but by
faith in you and that you've made me a new person in Christ. Lord, if I have to
make this choice a hundred times today, I'm going to come back to you again and
again and put off the old and I want to put on the new. I want to think like
Jesus.

I want to act like Jesus. I want to be the kind of person that you want me to
be. Lord, I realize you love me for who I am, so I'm not coming for you to
accept me in a new way.

I am coming to you. I want to put faith in you so I can live out the new life
you've already given me. I put faith in you, Jesus, that you can make me into
the person I never thought I could be.

I don't even think maybe I could be today, but you can do something in me that I
could never do in myself. I put faith in you for what you've done in me on the
cross and through your resurrection. In your name I pray, amen.