CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Colossians 3:5. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.—“Quite so!” the heretic teacher might say; “this is just what we ourselves advise.” “Yes,” rejoins the apostle; “but let us know what it is we are to slaughter.” It is no hewing and hacking of the body, but what is as much more difficult as it is noble—the excision or eradication of evil thoughts (Matthew 15:19-20). Inordinate affection, evil concupiscence.—R.V. “passion, evil desire.” The former of these seems to indicate the corrupt conditions from which the latter springs. Covetousness, which is idolatry.—“Covetousness,” or “having more.” There is many a man, beside the clown in Twelfth Night, who says, “I would not have you to think my desire of having is the sin of covetousness.” The full drag can afford to sacrifice (Habakkuk 1:16).
Colossians 3:8. Anger, wrath.—The former is the smouldering fire, the latter the fierce out-leaping flame. Malice, blasphemy.—The former is the vicious disposition, the latter the manifestation of it in speech that is meant to inflict injury. Filthy communication.—One word in the original; R.V. gives it as “shameful speaking.” The word does not occur again in the New Testament. It means scurrilous or obscene speech. A glimpse of Eastern life helps us to understand the frequent injunctions as to restraint of the tongue in the New Testament. Dr. Norman Macleod says: “In vehemence of gesticulation, in genuine power of lip and lung to fill the air with a roar of incomprehensible exclamations, nothing on earth, so long as the body retains its present arrangement of muscles and nervous vitality, can surpass the Egyptians and their language.” But the same thing is witnessed of other Eastern tongues.
Colossians 3:9. Lie not one to another.—“Very elementary teaching,” we should be inclined to say. Whether there was any special tendency to this vice in the Colossian converts we cannot know.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Colossians 3:5-9
Mortification of the Sinful Principle in Man.
Practice follows doctrine. The genuineness of a precept is tested by its adaptability to the practical working out of life’s problem. The apostle has laid down his doctrine clearly and emphatically, and now he proceeds to enforce the use of the best methods for securing the highest degree of personal holiness. These methods are in perfect harmony with the exalted experience into which the believer is introduced when he is risen with Christ and participates in that glorious life which is hid with Christ in God.
I. That the sinful principle in man has an active outward development.—
1. It is mundane in its tendencies. “Your members which are upon the earth” (Colossians 3:5). It is earthly, sensual, depraved. It teaches the soul to grovel when it ought to soar. It is in sympathy with the whole mass of earthly things—riches, honour, pleasure, fame—which stand opposed to the higher aspirations of the soul, whose affection is fixed on things above.
2. It is manifested in acts of gross sensuality.—“Fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence” (Colossians 3:5). A revolting catalogue, a loathsome index to the festering mass of corruption within! A rake’s progress has been portrayed by the genius of a Hogarth; but where is the pencil that can delineate the dark progress of evil? For there is an order observed in its abhorrent development. The mischief begins in evil concupiscence; yielding to the first unholy impulse, it goes on to lustful and inordinate affection; proceeds to uncleanness—pollutions which follow on the two preceding vices; and ends in fornication, both in its ordinary meaning and in that of adultery. Possibly the apostle had reference to the rites of Bacchus and Cybele, which were wont to be celebrated with many peculiar impurities in Phrygia, of which Colossæ, Laodicea, and Hierapolis were cities, and which so deeply depraved the morals of the people. The outgoings of evil are not less rampant and shocking in modern times. Evil is the same in principle everywhere.
3. It is recognised by a debasing idolatry.—“And covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). Covetousness is a sin that comes the earliest into the human heart, and is the last and most difficult to be driven out. It is an insatiable lust after material possessions—the greed of getting more for the sake of more, till often the brain is turned and the heart withered. The apostle brands it with the significant term “idolatry.” With the covetous man his idol is his gold, which, in his eyes, answereth all things; his soul is the shrine where the idol is set up; and the worship which he owes to God is transferred to mammon. Avarice is the seed of the most hateful and outrageous vices. The exhortation to mortify the flesh is pressed home by reminding them of the certainty of the divine wrath which would overtake the contumacious and disobedient.
II. That the active outgoings of the sinful principle in man call for the infliction of divine vengeance.—The wrath of God is not a malignant, unreasoning passion, like that with which we are familiar among men. Nor is it a strong figure of speech, into which the maudlin philosophers of the day would fain resolve it. It is an awful reality. It is not merely a thing of the past, to the terrible havoc of which history bears faithful and suggestive testimony. It is the wrath to come, and will be “revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” It is not inconsistent with infinite love, but is an impressive form in which the divine righteousness expresses itself against all disobedient and impenitent workers of iniquity.
III. That the indulgence of the sinful principle in man is inconsistent with the new life he has in Christ.—There was a time when the sins here enumerated formed the atmosphere in which the Colossians lived, moved, and breathed; they represented the condition of their life and the character of their practice: they lived and walked in sin. But that time was past. A great change had taken place. They were surrounded by a purer atmosphere; they lived in another world; they aspired to a nobler destiny. To return to the vices and idolatries of their former life was utterly inconsistent with their exalted character; it was unworthy the high and holy vocation wherewith they were called. It is salutary to be reminded now and then of our former life of sin. It magnifies the grace of God in the great change He has wrought. It warns against the danger of being drawn into old habits and associations. It stimulates the heavenward tendencies of the new life.
IV. That the sinful principle in man is the source of the most malignant passions.—The former classification embraced sins which related more especially to self; this includes sins which have a bearing upon others.
1. There are sins of the heart and temper.—“Anger, wrath, malice” (Colossians 3:8). There is an anger which is a righteous indignation against wrong, and which is so far justifiable and sinless. It is the anger without cause or beyond cause, and which degenerates into a bitter feeling of revenge, that is here condemned. Wrath is the fierce ebullition of anger, expressed with ungovernable passion; and is at all times unseemly and unlawful. Malice is anger long cherished, until it becomes a settled habit of mind. It involves hatred, secret envy, desire of revenge and retaliation, and universal ill-will towards others. It is altogether a diabolical passion. If anger exceeds its bounds, it becomes wrath; if wrath lies brooding in the bosom, it degenerates into malice.
2. There are sins of the tongue.—“Blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another” (Colossians 3:8-9). Blasphemy in a lower sense includes all calumny, evil-speaking, railing, slandering, scoffing, ridiculing—all vile insinuations, whether against God or man. Filthy communication refers to all foul-mouthed abuse, indelicate allusions, details of vicious scenes, and whatever hurts the feelings and shocks the sense of propriety rather than injures the character. Lying is also here condemned. Wherever this vice prevails society is rotten to the core. The almost total want of truthfulness is one of the saddest features of the moral condition of heathendom. Lying basely violates the gift of speech, saps the foundation of human intercourse, and overturns the first principles of morals. That which is spoken in ignorance, though untrue, is not a lie; but to equivocate, to speak so as to lead another to a false conclusion, is to lie as really as if the speaker deliberately stated what he knew was a falsehood. All these sins are directly opposed to that ingenuous sincerity which is the leading characteristic of the new life in Christ.
V. That the sinful principle in man, and all its outgoings, must be wholly renounced and resolutely mortified.—“But now ye also put off all these” (Colossians 3:8). “Mortify, therefore, your members” (Colossians 3:5). There is much force in the word “therefore.” Since ye are dead with Christ and are risen with Him, since ye possess a glorious life hid with Christ in God, therefore mortify—put to death the members of your earthly and corrupt nature, and encourage the expansion of that pure, beauteous, and exalted life which ye have received through the faith of the operation of God. Not that we are to kill or mutilate the members of the body that have been the instruments of sin, but to crucify the interior vices of the mind and will. It is wholly a moral process; the incipient inclination to sin must be restrained, deadened, crushed. In order to this there must be the total renunciation of all sin. “But now ye also put off all these.” The verb is imperative and the exhortation emphatic. There must be not only an abstinence from open vice—heathen morality insists on as much as this—but there must be the putting away of every secret evil passion—removing it out of sight as we would remove a dead body to burial. As the prince casts off the coarse garment in which he has been disguised, and stands forth in an apparel befitting his rank and dignity, so the believer is to divest himself of the unsightly and filthy garment of the old man, and allow the new man to appear adorned with heavenly magnificence and bright with the inextinguishable lustre of a divine spiritual life.
Lessons.—
1. The sinful principle in man is a great power.
2. The new spiritual life in the believer is in ceaseless antagonism with the old.
3. The constant duty of the believer is to subdue and destroy the sinful principle.
4. In fulfilling this duty all the powers of good are on his side.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Colossians 3:5. Covetousness, which is Idolatry.
I. In its essence.—It is putting the creature in the place of the Creator, and giving it the worship due to God alone.
II. In its practice.—Body and soul are consecrated to the service of mammon.
III. In its punishment.—Idolatry is a sin peculiarly obnoxious to God—is not merely the breach of His law, but treason against His government. God deprives the covetous of his idol at last, and sends him treasureless into the unseen world, wrecked and ruined, to endure the wrath to come.—Preacher’s Magazine.
Colossians 3:6. The Wrath of God—
I.
A reality to be dreaded.
II.
Is roused by the workings of iniquity.
III.
Will overtake the disobedient.
Colossians 3:7-9. The New Life—
I.
Must break thoroughly away from the old life of sin.
II.
Is evident in temper and speech.
III.
Is the interpretation of all that is pure and true.