The New Refusal to Put Off the Old Man (Colossians 3:6-10)

Read this First Part even though It Is Exegesis

Christ is our life—physical, spiritual, and eternal.  At some point in the future, we will appear with Him in heaven.  We have the heavenly citizenship now, but then we will appear with Him, so we should live like that, and not like who we once were, children of disobedience, objects of God’s wrath, who lived according to their own desires and ambitions.  While we are on earth, we need to die to the things that will not be in heaven.

Before we became in Christ by grace through faith, we lived earthly lives heading toward our natural destination.  But now we have put off the old man, the one walking his own direction to his own drumbeat.  We’re no longer motivated by idolatry and covetousness nor by anger and wrath.  We’ve put off that lifestyle and we’re no longer that person, and we will live like it, so we should live like it.

Our minds have stopped suppressing the truth and believing the lie.  They are renewed in the knowledge after the image of God to what we’ve been restored at our conversion.  We’re not natural men thinking natural thoughts, but spiritual men with the tendency to think spiritual thoughts.  We will and can live like what God created us for.

For everything that we now are, and for the position in which we now live in Christ, we put off those things incompatible with our appearance with Him in glory.  V. 5 has a sample list of some of those and v. 8 presents another sampling.   We will not and cannot continue in anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy (slander), filthy communication, and lying as a lifestyle.

Now For the Interesting, Controversial Application (Don’t Just Skip to This)

I want to take several moments to focus on one of these:  filthy communication.  What is “filthy communication?”  To apply Scripture to present-day situations, we must know something about present-day situations.  Even believing in the sufficiency of Scripture, we do not believe that every scriptural answer is explicitly found on the pages of Scripture.  To apply Scripture, Scripture assumes we have some extra-scriptural knowledge, that there are truths that we can with certainty discern in the real world.  The Bible itself is meaningless unless it is applicable to human questions and needs.  Applying the Word of God requires a scriptural perspective on human experience.

Colossians 3:8 assumes we can know what “filthy communication” is.  And yet there is no “chapter and verse” for filthy communication.  None.  So any four letter word is acceptable, correct?  And if I make an application, I’m a Pharisee, right?  Isn’t it true that I’m just adding to Scripture?  So I’m a legalist that is attempting to be overly restrictive, by making the commandments of men to be equal with the Bible, right?  If evangelicals and now even fundamentalists are going to be consistent, they’re going to have to say this, aren’t they?  We are not told what the bad words are.

Or are we to assume that we can apply Scripture with certainty?  Do we believe that we can get guidance from the Holy Spirit on applying what the Bible says?  In this case, it is putting off filthy communication.  The one Greek word translated into the English “filthy communication” is aischrologia.  That Greek word is found only here in the New Testament.   Friberg says it is “dirty talk, filthy or obscene language or speech.”  BDAG says it is “speech of a kind that is generally considered in poor taste, obscene speech, dirty talk.”  Liddell and Scott say, “foul language.”  Thayer writes, “foul speaking. . . low and obscene speech.”

OK, can we know what obscene, foul, dirty, tastless speech is?  I believe that Scripture assumes that we can.  And Paul commands the Colossian church to put off this kind of speech.  The saved person’s mouth shouldn’t be saying it.  Let’s go one step further.  It especially shouldn’t be said during preaching, as a part of an even more sacred kind of speech, a sermon from God’s Word.

The world likes to use filthy talk and this is one way that we Christians are different than the world.  But let me speak as a fool for a moment to make a point.  A way that professing believers can fit into the world is to use the salty speech that unbelievers use.  Some might even say it is “contextual” or “missiological,” if we do.  Unbelievers might be able to relate to us Christians better if we talked like they did.   We wouldn’t seem perhaps so sanctimonious to them.  They wouldn’t have to feel so cramped and that would spur some relationship that could work out in evangelism some down the road.  And if we used it in preaching, we could attract unbelievers.  They would really be able to identify with us and feel more close and then maybe get saved.  In that sense, we are kind of being all things to all men.  You get my drift, don’t you?

Of course, all of this violates Colossians 3:5-10.  It’s not scriptural. It offends God.  It manifests a kind of Christianity that isn’t even Christian, so it couldn’t be Christianity.

This very point is what often separates professing Christianity today.  Evangelicals and even some fundamentalists today speak as though as they are on some higher spiritual plane because they don’t expect people to live what Scripture does not say.  And it does not say what filthy communication is.  Most of them apply this selectively, even as they will not apply this with regards to standards of modesty, designed distinctions in dress, separateness in music and dress, and appropriate entertainment.  And then if there’s any question beyond that, they say, “Hey, yer majoring on minors!”

For instance, right now John MacArthur and the guys in his evangelical camp are against the Mark Driscoll people for using filthy communication even in the pulpit.  They are very specific about this.   Based on their own standard of application of scripture, they are being ascetic, overly restrictive, and Pharisaical themselves.   That’s what the Mark Driscoll side thinks.  And then the MacArthur group isn’t happy about the Pipers and the Carsons and those evangelicals.  They haven’t come out strong enough against Driscoll—they still rub shoulders with him.  And to them MacArthur is way too sure of himself.  Way too certain.  Driscoll is part of the quasi-emergent variety that is more nuanced in these things.  He would say, let’s just love Jesus.  C’mon guys.  Of course, that’s how the John MacArthur guys would treat any of us that would apply this consistently all the way through.  And the John MacArthur people call someone like me and others, “fire-breathing fundamentalists.”  Hmmmm.  Good point.

In other words, we can know what fleshly lusts are, what worldly lusts are, what the garment that pertains to the man is, what the attire of a harlot is, what an uncertain sound is, and more.  We also can apply filthy communication to filthy television and movies.  Evangelicals and now fundamentalists treat that like it’s off base.  They have a different standard there now.  And I mean now.  Because Christians have historically taken a stand in these areas.  This truly is a new kind of Christianity that can’t apply the Bible any more to the actual areas of our life, so that we really are different than the world.  You can hardly tell the difference between a Christian and an unsaved person.  They listen to the same kind of music, use similar speech, dress about the same, and have about the same kind of entertainment.  It’s really an interesting deal for Christians.  They are forgiven and in Christ and all that, plus just like the world.  God isn’t glorified, but it really isn’t about God, is it?  Somehow they’ve made what is about us to be about Him, but He isn’t fooled by that at all.

For instance, John Piper is Desiring God.  Is he?  Maybe John Piper himself does.  I’ve read that he doesn’t have a TV.  He has said a few things about a certain kind of questioning about whether rock music can represent God.  He wants people to know that they can have their greatest pleasure in God.  That’s all true, but it still shouldn’t be about our pleasure.  It’s about God’s pleasure.  And if we do desire God, we desire the God of the Bible and He hates filthy communication, filthy music, filthy dress, all of that.  So if you desire that God, you also will hate what He hates.  And the Piper people don’t seem like they do hate those things, so I question whether they do Desire God.  They make a good point with their Desiring God.  David panted after God like a hart after the waterbrooks (Ps 42:1).  But it doesn’t do any good at all if the God you are desiring is the god of Hedonism.

Now there’s a kind of club that is self-authenticating that says this is all Christianity.  They point at each other and say, “Yer right.”  So they must be right.  And so many people couldn’t be wrong.  And look how it’s all working.  It’s being so missiological and so many are being brought into the church.  This is producing a great lack of discernment.  God’s Word is being disobeyed.  God is being dishonored.

I’m saying that this is a new refusal to put off the old man.  Is there an acronym there?  NRPOOM.  Maybe not.  It isn’t Christianity.  That’s what Paul says in Colossians.

Massively Exaggerated to the Point of Dishonest Applications of Colossians 2:20-23

Are separatists or fundamentalists, those who practice personal and ecclesiastical separation according to Scripture, the ascetics of Colossians 2:20-23?  Evangelicals want you to believe so.  They make this almost the entire application of Colossians 2:20-23.  Churches will get a lot bigger when they allow their members or attendees to live just like or very close to the world.  The evangelicals, like no other time in history, have stuck this kind of passage on separatists, to take away any guilt they might have for living lascivious lifestyles.  Now their congregations and evangelicalism, and Christianity really, are paying for it.  They read separatists and fundamentalists into this kind of passage to justify their manner of operation.

Ascetics added lists of rules to Scripture as an inclusion in their plan of salvation.  They add works to grace and not just scriptural works, but extra scriptural works, works not found in the Bible anywhere.   They also added extra requirements not found in God’s Word to real restrictions that were in Scripture.  We’re talking about what is mainly monk or nun like behavior.

Paul hits the ascetics with his words in Colossians 2:20-23, and warns the church not to go back to works salvation after union with Christ had removed the believers from such human religion (v. 20).  The ascetics were a kind of Gnosticism that believed flesh was evil, so their lifestyle became Pharisaical.  They kept “spiritual” by refraining from certain activities like bathing.  Someone might slip up and see your naked body.  And then as we move forward to v. 21, they wouldn’t touch people, afraid that their sin could rub off, and wouldn’t even taste certain foods that were too good to eat and might result in some pleasure.  If an ascetic were to do any of that, it would affect his spirituality.

Asceticism contradicted the sufficiency in Christ that Paul taught they had.  They had all fulness in Him, were complete in Him.  The ascetics’ regulations were made up, fake humility, phoniness, and ironically did not deny their flesh, but indulge it, what v. 23 says is ‘satisfying the flesh.’  What was supposed to be spiritual was actually flesh.  It was all about man and nothing about Jesus, which is where all of salvation dwelt.

Evangelicals label separatists or fundamentalists as these ascetics.  Do you understand what they are doing?  They are judging the motives of separatists.  It is true that some professing Christians, fundamentalists, will judge spirituality too much by external criteria.  I dealt with that in my lost post on Colossians 2:16-17.   Sometimes movements within fundamentalism have issues with this.  In many cases, the problems of these segments of fundamentalism relates to their wrong view of the gospel, but it isn’t an asceticism issue.

These evangelicals, which include John MacArthur, John Piper, Charles Swindoll, Rick Warren, and others, make absurd overstatement, like this one by MacArthur:

[The] whole orientation was that spirituality is determined by external behavior. And you get into an environment like that and I can promise you some, it’ll intimidate you. You begin to feel that if you do the wrong things or if you say the wrong things or you happen to be for some organization or for some individual in the ministry and this whole outfit is against them, boy you are really on the out.

By smearing separatists with this asceticism charge, those part of evangelicalism feel in a superior spiritual position because of their woeful under-emphasis on externals.  The Bible doesn’t shuck externals.  They come out of internals, true, but externals are all over the place, and these evangelicals have greatly abused the grace of God by sending their people this direction.   It has become a kind of left-wing legalism.  True spirituality comes from an almost complete lack of emphasis on externals, resulting in a great dearth of holiness and spiritual discernment.

Now you’re seeing some of the conservative evangelicals backtracking to keep things from sliding over the precipice—books on personal separation and against worldliness.  Those books are still anemic, and I think, because they’ve got a people who can’t handle something strong about it.  However, they see that God’s grace has been cheapened to the extent that their own gospel has been affected with eternal consequences.

The ascetics are those who did bully the Colossians church members into reappraising their own salvation experience, because they were not following extra scriptural regulations.  So let’s not do that.  However, it isn’t talking about true spirituality manifesting itself in true self-denial and holy living—men having a short hair cut in obedience to 1 Corinthians 11:14, women wearing skirts and dresses in submission to Deuteronomy 22:5, not drinking alcohol because of Proverbs 23:31, faithful church attendance because of Hebrews 10:24-25, and not listening to or using worldly music because of a host of verses which teach about abstaining from worldly and fleshly lusts.  All of that is setting your affections on things above (Col 3:1-3).

I think these lascivious ones are the biggest bullies in our culture today.  They want to live like they want and they don’t want you to say anything to them about it.  They don’t want you to judge their church as worldly. If you do, well, they’ll shoot an eisegesis of scripture at you.