Clean

Colossians 3:4-11 “When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.”

I read a commentary on the above Bible passage that stated that once the intense drives of the sinful fleshly appetites have been “executed,” we who have been created after God “in righteousness and true holiness” must cleanse the passions of the intellect as well. The action required is that we must “place away from” or “throw away” these ideas that are begun in the mind. These notions are sinful and harmful to everyone. 

·      Anger(orge) is an agitation of the soul that generates an impulse, a desire, that produces a violent emotion. A violent passion of the mind excited by a real or supposed injury; usually accompanied with a propensity to take vengeance, or to obtain satisfaction from the offending party. Anger may be inflamed till it rises to rage and a temporary delirium.

·      Wrath(thumos), as the word suggests, is intellectual heat, a boiling up that produces a fierce indignation. Violent anger; vehement exasperation; indignation

·      Malice(kakia) is the ill will that creates a desire to injure, even elimininating shame at breaking laws. Extreme enmity of heart, or malevolence; a disposition to injure others without cause, from mere personal gratification or from a spirit of revenge; unprovoked malignity or spite.

·      Blasphemy(blasphemia), one of the few words directly transliterated from the Greek, means any slander or speech that is injurious to another’s good name. An indignity offered to God by words or writing; reproachful, contemptuous or irreverent words uttered impiously against Jehovah. Blasphemy is an injury offered to God, by denying that which is due and belonging to him, or attributing to him that which is not agreeable to his nature.

·      Filthy communication(aischrologia) is any kind of foul speaking or low and obscene speech. Dirty; foul; unclean; nasty. Polluted; defiled by sinful practices; morally impure.

·      Lying(pseudomai) is any deliberate false information. A falsehood uttered for the purpose of deception; an intentional violation of truth. Fiction, or a false statement or representation, not intended to deceive, mislead or injure

Per Ephesians 4:22, we are to put off the old man, that nature and behavior that was bound up in the flesh, and put on the new man “which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” – Colossians 3:10. We are washed in the blood of the Lamb of God.

Along with regeneration of our spirit, our salvation brings with it transformation in both a new heart and a renewed mind. With the one we are able to “mortify” the deeds of the flesh. With the other we are to put on “the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” – Romans 13:14. 

Clean in Christ