Living differently

In the second part of his study, the Very Rev Dr Martin Fair considers Colossians 3:5-11 and the ‘then’ and ‘now’ in journeying to faith.

OUR writer is not one for pussyfooting around when it comes to what it is to live the Christian life.

What is offered to us in this passage (Colossians 3:5-11) is a set of stark choices and marked differences. You’ll find shades of grey in all kinds of places in life but not here. In short, we’re told that there are two ways we might live and that there are oceans of difference between the two.

There’s an old saying that goes something like this: If you were arrested and charged with being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Imagine you were put in a line-up of ten people, selected randomly from the population. And imagine that video footage had been gathered for all ten – from the home, the workplace and so on. Would it be obvious to someone watching theses scenes that there was a difference; that you, as a Christian, were living differently?

This is what Colossians demands of us; that we live differently.

Which is challenging in the extreme.

Why? Because it requires of us that we ‘put to death whatever belongs to our human natures.’ It requires of us that we make definite choices regarding both our major moral stances and our day-today conduct.

The language of ‘putting to death’ speaks of the discontinuity between what was and what might be. This idea is found throughout the New Testament; that we die with Christ that we might also live with Christ (2nd Timothy 2:11.)

And yet is it possible that we want to skip the dying part? Might it be that we’re rather comfortable with our lives the way they?

The other language that our writer uses involves clothing; we are to take off the old clothes and put on new clothes (Colossians 3:9-10.) But might it be that we quite like those old, well-worn, comfortable clothes and so we put new clothes on OVER these old clothes, rather than taking them off?

That won’t do.

It’s worth noticing two more things.

Firstly, that this letter reflects a time and place when there was no such thing as assuming that anyone was a Christian by birth or by default. This was a time when individuals – sometimes whole households – chose to become followers of Jesus. They weren’t people of ‘The Way’ – they became people of ‘The Way.’

Given the paltry numbers of children who are raised within Christian settings nowadays – within the framework of a worshipping community – fewer and fewer are those who will say of their faith: ‘I was raised that way.’ More and more, therefore, will speak of ‘becoming Christians.’ They’ll acknowledge that in terms of their lives there was a change from the ‘then’ to the ‘now.’

And all the more therefore, will there be a recovery of the language of ‘putting to death our old ways.’ There will be more talk of ‘I used to live this way…but now.’

Regardless of how each of us got to where we now are in Christ, there should be a sense of ‘but now.’ Each of us should be able to look back and see the difference between how we used to live and how we are now.

As daily we are being raised, so daily the old you and me should be dying.

The Very Rev Dr Martin Fair is minister at Arbroath: St Andrew’s.