+III. The glorious hope awakened.+--"Then shall ye appear with Him in
glory." 1. _The great hope of the Christian life is that one day we
shall be with Christ._ 2. _That we shall participate in Christ's
glory._ 3. _These words are full of comfort to those drawing near to
death.--J. T. Woodhouse._
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 5-9.
_Mortification of the Sinful Principle in Man._
Practice follows doctrine. The genuineness of a precept is tested by
its adaptability to the practical working out of life's problem. The
apostle has laid down his doctrine clearly and emphatically, and now
he proceeds to enforce the use of the best methods for securing the
highest degree of personal holiness. These methods are in perfect
harmony with the exalted experience into which the believer is
introduced when he is risen with Christ and participates in that
glorious life which is hid with Christ in God.
+I. That the sinful principle in man has an active outward
development.+--1. _It is mundane in its tendencies._ "Your members
which are upon the earth" (ver. 5). It is earthly, sensual, depraved.
It teaches the soul to grovel when it ought to soar. It is in
sympathy with the whole mass of earthly things--riches, honour,
pleasure, fame--which stand opposed to the higher aspirations of the
soul, whose affection is fixed on things above.
2. _It is manifested in acts of gross sensuality._--"Fornication,
uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence" (ver. 5). A
revolting catalogue, a loathsome index to the festering mass of
corruption within! A rake's progress has been portrayed by the genius
of a Hogarth; but where is the pencil that can delineate the dark
progress of evil? For there is an order observed in its abhorrent
development. The mischief begins in evil concupiscence; yielding to
the first unholy impulse, it goes on to lustful and inordinate
affection; proceeds to uncleanness--pollutions which follow on the
two preceding vices; and ends in fornication, both in its ordinary
meaning and in that of adultery. Possibly the apostle had reference
to the rites of Bacchus and Cybele, which were wont to be celebrated
with many peculiar impurities in Phrygia, of which Colossæ, Laodicea,
and Hierapolis were cities, and which so deeply depraved the morals
of the people. The outgoings of evil are not less rampant and
shocking in modern times. Evil is the same in principle everywhere.
3. _It is recognised by a debasing idolatry._--"And covetousness,
which is idolatry" (ver. 5). Covetousness is a sin that comes the
earliest into the human heart and is the last and most difficult to
be driven out. It is an insatiable lust after material
possessions--the greed of getting more for the sake of more, till
often the brain is turned and the heart withered. The apostle brands
it with the significant term "idolatry." With the covetous man his
idol is his gold, which, in his eyes, answereth all things; his soul
is the shrine where the idol is set up; and the worship which he owes
to God is transferred to mammon. Avarice is the seed of the most
hateful and outrageous vices. The exhortation to mortify the flesh is
pressed home by reminding them of the certainty of the Divine wrath
which would overtake the contumacious and disobedient.
+II. That the active outgoings of the sinful principle in man call
for the infliction of Divine vengeance.+--The wrath of God is not a
malignant, unreasoning passion, like that with which we are familiar
among men. Nor is it a strong figure of speech, into which the
maudlin philosophers of the day would fain resolve it. It is an awful
reality. It is not merely a thing of the past, to the terrible havoc
of which history bears faithful and suggestive testimony. It is the
wrath to come and will be "revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." It is not inconsistent with
infinite love, but is an impressive form in which the Divine
righteousness expresses itself against all disobedient and impenitent
workers of iniquity.
+III. That the indulgence of the sinful principle in man is
inconsistent with the new life he has in Christ.+--There was a time
when the sins here enumerated formed the atmosphere in which the
Colossians lived, moved, and breathed; they represented the condition
of their life and the character of their practice; they lived and
walked in sin. But that time was past. A great change had taken
place. They were surrounded by a purer atmosphere; they lived in
another world; they aspired to a nobler destiny. To return to the
vices and idolatries of their former life was utterly inconsistent
with their exalted character; it was unworthy of the high and holy
vocation wherewith they were called. It is salutary to be reminded
now and then of our former life of sin. It magnifies the grace of God
in the great change He has wrought. It warns against the danger of
being drawn into old habits and associations. It stimulates the
heavenward tendencies of the new life.
+IV. That the sinful principle in man is the source of the most
malignant passions.+--The former classification embraced sins which
related more especially to self; this includes sins which have a
bearing upon others.
1. _There are sins of the heart and temper._--"Anger, wrath, malice"
(ver. 8). There is an anger which is a righteous indignation against
wrong, and which is so far justifiable and sinless. It is the anger
without cause or beyond cause, and which degenerates into a bitter
feeling of revenge, that is here condemned. Wrath is the fierce
ebullition of anger, expressed with ungovernable passion; and is at
all times unseemly and unlawful. Malice is anger long cherished,
until it becomes a settled habit of mind. It involves hatred, secret
envy, desire of revenge and retaliation, and universal ill-will
towards others. It is altogether a diabolical passion. If anger
exceeds its bounds, it becomes wrath; if wrath lies brooding in the
bosom, it degenerates into malice.
2. _There are sins of the tongue._--"Blasphemy, filthy communication
out of your mouth. Lie not one to another" (vers. 8, 9). Blasphemy in
a lower sense includes all calumny, evil-speaking, railing,
slandering, scoffing, ridiculing--all vile insinuations, whether
against God or man. Filthy communication refers to all foul-mouthed
abuse, indelicate illusions, details of vicious scenes, and whatever
hurts the feelings and shocks the sense of propriety rather than
injures the character. Lying is also here condemned. Wherever this
vice prevails society is rotten to the core. The almost total want of
truthfulness is one of the saddest features of the moral condition of
heathendom. Lying basely violates the gift of speech, saps the
foundation of human intercourse, and overturns the first principles
of morals. That which is spoken in ignorance, though untrue, is not a
lie; but to equivocate, to speak so as to lead another to a false
conclusion, is to lie as really as if the speaker deliberately stated
what he knew was a falsehood. All these sins are directly opposed to
that ingenuous sincerity which is the leading characteristic of the
new life in Christ.
+V. That the sinful principle in man, and all its outgoings, must be
wholly renounced and resolutely mortified.+--"But now ye also put off
all these" (ver. 8). "Mortify, therefore, your members" (ver. 5).
There is much force in the word "therefore." Since ye are dead with
Christ and are risen with Him, since ye possess a glorious life hid
with Christ in God, _therefore_ mortify--put to death the members of
your earthly and corrupt nature, and encourage the expansion of that
pure, beauteous, and exalted life which ye have received through the
faith of the operation of God. Not that we are to kill or mutilate
the members of the body that have been the instruments of sin, but to
crucify the interior vices of the mind and will. It is wholly a moral
process; the incipient inclination to sin must be restrained,
deadened, crushed. In order to this there must be the total
renunciation of all sin. "But now ye also put off all these." The
verb is imperative and the exhortation emphatic. There must be not
only an abstinence from open vice--heathen morality insists on as
much as this--but there must be the putting away of every secret evil
passion--removing it out of sight as we would remove a dead body to
burial. As the prince casts off the coarse garment in which he has
been disguised and stands forth in an apparel befitting his rank and
dignity, so the believer is to divest himself of the unsightly and
filthy garment of the old man and allow the new man to appear adorned
with heavenly magnificence and bright with the inextinguishable
lustre of a Divine spiritual life.
+Lessons.+--1. _The sinful principle in man is a great power._
2. _The new spiritual life in the believer is in ceaseless antagonism
with the old._ 3. _The constant duty of the believer is to subdue and
destroy the sinful principle._ 4. _In fulfilling this duty all the
powers of good are on his side._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._