Imagine someone you love is about to lose everything because of an addiction. They owe a debt they can never repay, and the consequences are coming. You love them, so you sell your house, drain your retirement, and pay it all off. They are free. Grateful. A few weeks later you check in and ask how they are doing. They smile and say, “Great news — I’m still gambling, but now I’m just gambling for pretzels and potato chips.” You would want to pull your hair out. You paid their debt so they could live, not so they could keep doing the same thing with different stakes.
As Josh White walked through Colossians 3:5–11 on Sunday, that is the picture he held up to show what it looks like when God’s people treat the freedom Christ purchased as a license to stay enslaved. The gospel doesn’t just forgive the penalty of sin — it sets us free from the present power of it. Yet far too many believers walk through life like the friend who kept gambling. They are grateful for the cross. They are moved by the blood. And they are still doing the very thing Christ died to save them from.
Put Off, Put On
Paul’s instruction in Colossians is short and brutal: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you.” Then he gives two lists. The first is internal — sins that begin in the mind: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness. The second is external — sins that spill out onto the people around you: anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, lying. Most of us know these lists by heart. We can recite them. We can even nod along when we hear them read on a Sunday morning. The hard part is the putting off. Real change, not just awareness.
And Paul does not end with the negative. He pairs the death with a new birth. “Have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.” The Christian life is not subtraction alone. It is substitution. You take off the dirty clothes and you put on the clean ones. You cannot walk around half-dressed. Josh White opened the sermon with the picture of pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago walking 10–12 miles a day with only two or three sets of clothes, washing them every afternoon so they would have something clean to wear the next morning. He is about to do that himself for two weeks. Most of us never have to think about whether our clothes are clean. We have a magic clothes container (his wife, named or unnamed, takes care of that). But the spiritual reality is the same. Every day we have dirty clothes to lay down and clean ones to pick up.
“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”
— Colossians 3:5–10
Why? Two Reasons
Josh White pressed the question most preachers skip: why? Why does God tell us to put these things off when he has already saved us from the eternal consequences of them? Why does the Sermon on the Mount God, the forgive-the-sinner-up-to-seventy-times-seven God, the Lamb-led-to-the-slaughter God, care about what we do with our thought life and our mouth on a Tuesday afternoon?
Two reasons. First, because his wrath is coming. Paul says it explicitly: “On account of these, the wrath of God is coming.” Just as God judged the wickedness of the world before the flood — “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” — so he will judge again. This time, not with water. With fire. We have been cleansed from the penalty of these sins, but the judgment is coming on those who keep walking in them. God’s holiness does not retire.
Second, because he saved us from them. Not just from the eternal consequence. From the bondage itself. Josh White read Romans 6 to make the point: “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” God did not save us from sin just so we could keep sinning and feel guilty about it. He saved us from sin so we could be free from it. When we keep living in the very things he saved us from, we rob ourselves of the joy of the freedom he bought with his own blood.
“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
— Genesis 6:5
“For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
— Romans 6:7–11
Live Free — and Live Like It
Peter chimes in with the same doctrine in 2 Peter 1. God’s “divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” We have escaped. We have been granted everything we need. We are partakers of the divine nature. So why do we keep going back to the blackjack table?
Peter says the way to live free is to make every effort. Supplement your faith with virtue. Virtue with knowledge. Knowledge with self-control. Self-control with steadfastness. Steadfastness with godliness. Godliness with brotherly affection. Brotherly affection with love. This is partnership. God saved us, but he does not sanctify us by remote control. Whoever lacks these qualities, Peter says, is “so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.” That almost sounds like an addict, doesn’t it? So nearsighted. So blind. Going back to the very thing Christ’s death saved them from.
“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.”
— 2 Peter 1:5–9
Two Final Cautions
Josh White closed with two cautions. First, do not mistake grace for permission. God’s grace is not a permit to keep sinning. It is the power to stop. When we read a list like Colossians 3 and feel the sting of conviction, that is not God being cruel. That is godly sorrow, and the Bible says godly sorrow leads to repentance, and repentance leads to change in action. We are not being told to feel guilty so we will live in despair. We are being told to see our sin so we will run to the grace that sets us free from it.
Second, ask yourself honestly: are you free? Not “will you go to heaven when you die?” but “are you living in the freedom Christ died to give you right now?” If the answer is no, there is still hope. There is always hope. There is still the invitation to live free. But the freedom does not come by accident. It comes by battle, and the battle begins with the heart and the mind. Read ahead. Wrestle with the passage. Tell someone — bring a brother or sister into the struggle. You were never meant to fight this alone. That is why God gave you the body of Christ.
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
— Galatians 2:20
Scripture References
- Colossians 3:5–11 — Put off the old self, put on the new
- Romans 6:1–11 — Dead to sin, alive to God
- Romans 13:11–14 — Cast off the works of darkness, put on the armor of light
- Ephesians 4:22–24 — Put on the new self, created after the likeness of God
- Ephesians 6:10–11 — Put on the whole armor of God
- 1 Thessalonians 5:5–8 — Having put on the breastplate of faith and love
- 2 Peter 1:3–11 — Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue
- Galatians 2:20 — Crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live
- Genesis 6:5 — Every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually