8 But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, 10 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, 11 where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. (Colossians 3:8-11)
In Colossians 3:8-11, the Apostle Paul is telling us is how to resist the sexual sins that he mentioned in the previous verses.
Truth and telling the truth to each other is what sets us free (see John 8). When we are open, honest, and vulnerable with each other, good stuff will result. It is in the context of truth that reality is best experienced and reached.
When we embrace truth, we will not fulfill the evil desires that our flesh beckons us to do. The phrase "do not lie to one another" literally means “stop lying to each other.” This posture of lying is something Paul calls the old man which has to be buried daily.
Even though we have been forgiven our sin, we still have a civil war going on inside of us. On any given day, we can choose to obey the sin that is still in us or we can choose to obey god's Spirit who has made our spirits alive to God.
Literally, Christ is the new self within us. It is He who supplies for us the ability to be loving, selfless, honest, and free. He, as we yield to Him, makes it possible for us to embrace the truth and reject the false.
But, we have been led to use the cloak of lying for so long, it is difficult for us to be vulnerable and free to be real with one another. We intentionally hide the truth about who we really are. And, apart from Christ, we are all a mess. We all have our issues depending on how we have served sin in the past. And, these past patterns are not so easy to nullify.
This explains why some struggle with sexual sins while other struggle with anger. It also explains why some have a problem with stealing and others have a problem with alcohol or drugs. And, our past of hiding from the truth explains why we have the proclivities that we have.
We are all in this boat together, and the bottom line problem that we all share is deceit, as Paul points out in v.9. The answer for us all is an invitation for us to run around in Christ's freedom.
We all experience this never-ending search for who we really are. For some of us, we have embraced deception so much that we do not really know who we are. The older we get, the more complicated this mystery becomes.
We are afraid to be ourselves, and to let ourselves be known. The truth is we all long to be real with our sinfulness, because our sinfulness points to the sinlessness of the character of Jesus.
His truth always leads to forgiveness, redemption, and healing. But, we are all accustomed to covering up our sinfulness.
So how do we put aside this old way of living that we’re so used to? We tell each other the truth. We stop lying to each other. We tell the truth because we now understand that His truth sets us free. And, the truth is He loves us. And, His love is accessed by us through faith and repentance.
I like the way Mike Yaconelli put it when he said, "The power of the Church is not a parade of flawless people, but of a flawless Christ who embraces our flaws. The Church is not made up of the whole people, rather of the broken people who find wholeness in a Christ who was broken for us."
