Daily Lesson for May 17, 2019

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Colossians chapter 3 verses 5 through 11:

5 Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). 6On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. 7These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. 8But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.9Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.11In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

Paul is speaking of the character of a person with new life with God in Christ. The person is to strip away his or her old self, and put on someone new. The cruel and course is put away and they become like Christ.

How disappointing it is then when in a so-called Christian nation we favor media stars, opinion-influencers, and political leaders whose rise to fame has been based on all things Christians are supposed to be taking off.  Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language and lying — these are the things we’ve come to not only expect but even demand. While at the same time we’ve turned selfishness and greed into actual virtues! Wow.  We’ve actually come to a point of baptizing decadence.

When someone puts on Christ a kind of moral reformation is supposed to take place. We are no longer to live as we did. We are to no longer live as a selfish and greedy world lives. We are to live as Christ — reshaped into the image of the one who remade us. 

I really think we ought to expect more from ourselves and one another. We ought to demand more. And we ought to quit giving so much oxygen and adulation to those who do nothing but play on our baser instincts, using and abusing the name of Christ but showing nothing of His light or way.