Daily Lesson for Monday 9th of March 2026
We hear many slogans today: “End war!” “End deforestation!” “End nuclear weapons!” But one we have probably never heard is “End earthliness!” That just doesn’t fit with the sensibilities of our world. Not that any of the other slogans are wrong or what they advocate is wrong. They’re just very shortsighted, considering the nearness of eternity. Our focus needs to be higher, eternally higher.
Read Colossians 3:5-6 (see also Romans 6:1-7). How do we experience what it means to be dead to self and to earthliness and alive to “those things which are above” (Colossians 3:1)?
Image © Kevin Carden at Goodsalt.com
Even though spiritually we have died with Christ, our “members”—that is, the temptations that our body and mind present us—need to be put to death.
But we should realize two things in connection with this command.
First, in Colossians 3:1, the Greek form that Paul uses assumes that we have, in fact, been raised with Christ. Second, the command in Colossians 3:5 is a consequence of that fact (“Therefore”). We can put to death earthly things (fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, covetousness, etc.) only because we have been raised with Christ and have His spiritual life and power to put these things out of our minds and lives.
Interestingly, the only other occurrence in Greek of the exact phrase that appears in Colossians 3:6, “the wrath of God,” is in Romans 1:18. God “gives” people up to their own wicked ways, and so His wrath is also “coming” (see Revelation 6:16-17) “on those who are disobedient” (Colossians 3:6, NRSV). In Romans 1:18, Paul refers to “ungodliness and unrighteousness,” equating “uncleanness” (using the same Greek word found in Colossians 3:5) very specifically with people who indulge “the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies” (Romans 1:24, NKJV).
How do they dishonor their bodies? First, because they refuse to recognize the Creator but also by “vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful” (Romans 1:26-27, NKJV).
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How do we follow the words “mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth” (Colossians 3:5)? |
