Cause for Obedience

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.

 Colossians 3:4-8

Over the years, I have heard all sorts of arguments for both legalistic and licentious living. Both err in that they fail to see the Gospel beyond justification. Legalism says “you must be this way to be acceptable to God,” and license says, “it doesn’t matter how you live because after faith, you’re acceptable to God.” Both make the terrible mistake of failing to see that justification does not equal sanctification. If I may go further, though, what I believe is so seductive about both legalism or license is that they are two forms of dealing with a dirty conscience: either we try to live by standards that calm our conscience or we tell our consciences that we are justified and have no need to feel bad about what we do going forward. Neither addresses the fact that we are to take the Bible’s principles as our cause for consolation in Christ and that we are to submit to His Lordship daily.

We are justified solely by faith, but we are not sanctified exclusively apart from living a life that denies sin and pursues righteousness. Colossians 3:4-8 shows us a cause-and-effect relationship between the effect of active (chosen) sanctification by obedience and the cause being our unification with Christ. Our tie to Him both in being made alive and in having the hope of appearing with Him in glory are meant to stir us on to our daily death to the sin within us. Clearly, the call of this passage is not passive but is an active struggle against the sin that remains. It also implies that yes, though we may be saved, we still have sin. This sin that we wage war against is the very sin which God’s wrath stands against in all who do not place their faith in Christ. These sins are all too common if we look at the list; not out of the ordinary, grievous mars on society, but the sins that come from within all of us. How often are we prone to making excuses for our anger, our language, our evil desires rather than admitting they are inexcusable before our holy God? While we won’t be perfectly sinless before Heaven, to dismiss or diminish our sin is to harm our good.

Sin is two-fold: sins of commission (doing stuff we shouldn’t) and sins of omission (not doing things we should). In 1 Corinthians 4:3-4, the apostle Paul says, “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I know nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this; but He who judges me is the Lord.” Paul is saying that the opinions of others towards him doesn’t make him or break him in his standing with God. Paul is also saying that his own opinion, his own conscience which may be at rest in the moment, does not make him justified. Only God has the right and the understanding of Paul’s, or your, justification before Him.

We are called to live obedient lives not simply for the sake of being good moral people, but because we are spiritually united with our Lord by faith. Unity with Him is paramount to overcoming sin and having an eternal hope. Paul does not erase any obligation to obedience because of the cross, but ties that obligation to the cross, the people Jesus died for living in harmony with the Savior and reflecting Him in their lives. If you’re a believer today, take your cues from these verses because the very sins that Paul mentions here are yours to wage war with and the hope of Christ is yours to cling to as well. Be braver than lions in your walk today.

Sam Stringer

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

*Sanctification: the process of being set apart from our sin