LIFE SCRIPTS

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.
Colossians 3:5 NIV

The start of this verse carries a punch. But the end of it is laced with the bottom-line message: Idolatry. The image of Idolatry in the mind of a 21st century Christian like myself is of an old fashioned traditionalist bowing down to an image made of stone, wood or possibly gold. In our eyes, an idol is one that we can see that can substitute the God we can’t see. An idol is that image we pay homage to whether in real life, in our minds or figuratively. However, in this verse, Paul the apostle turns our understanding of idolatry literally upside down! He lists some sins associating them to a so-called ‘earthly nature’. He instructs us to ‘put (them) to death’ terming especially greed as ‘idolatry’ at the end of his statement. So what makes sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed so unique? Well, they are part of a sinful nature we’ve acquired as men. They are as a result of the fall of man. But Paul tells us to ‘put them to death’. This message implies that since we’re in Christ, we have power and authority over sin. Sin cannot captivate us or hold us hostage. We have the ability to ‘put to death’ the sin that’s present in our lives and entangled us so much. Again this scripture speaks of being deliberate. Being deliberate to reject sin, to cut it off from our lives to put it to death. Infact, in Greek, he seems to figuratively alude to ‘cutting off’ those parts of the body that are literally ‘on earth’ by his starting statement. We cannot convert our sinful flesh to submit to God. We can only put it to death! To defeat sin, we must choose to be deliberate. Daniel and his companions decided not to defile themselves with the royal food but to dedicate themselves to God. Our desire must be to be deliberate’ in putting to death those parts of our lives and associations that lead us to sin. It seems like the kind of sins aluded to in this passage are those which drive us towards feeding deep ungodly cravings within us. Those cravings, whatever they may be have the potential of taking the place of God. So we must desire to put to death all those things that threaten God’s position in our lives.