Colossians 3:5-7 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Mortify therefore Put to death, slay with a continued stroke; your members The members of the old man, which together make up the body of sin; inclinations and dispositions which spread themselves through all the members of the body, and draw even them into a compliance with themselves; which are upon the earth Where they find their nourishment, or which are earthly, inclining to earthly things, and wholly engaged about them. Uncleanness In act, word, or thought; inordinate affection Every passion which does not flow from, and lead to, the love of God; evil concupiscence Or desire, namely, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life. Covetousness The desire of having more, as the word signifies, or of any thing independent of God; which is idolatry Properly and directly, for it is giving the heart to a creature, putting that trust in a creature which ought to be placed in the Creator, and seeking that happiness in a creature which can only be found in God, and ought therefore only to be sought in him. For which things' sake Though the carnal and sensual regard them lightly; the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience Even on the heathen themselves, who bid the most open defiance even to the first principles of all true religion. The apostle speaks in this severe manner against the vices mentioned, because they were commonly practised by the heathen, and had been practised by the Colossians. In the which ye also walked Had your conversation, partaking with your neighbours in all their enormities; when ye lived in, or among, them Kept company with the children of disobedience. By their walking in these things, the apostle seems to have meant their committing the vices, mentioned Colossians 3:5, habitually, and with pleasure. For Colosse being a city of Phrygia, where the rites of Bacchus and those of Cybele, consisting of all sorts of lewdness in speech and action, were practised with a frantic kind of madness, the Colossians, no doubt, had been much addicted to these gross impurities in their heathen state.