Col No.24 Applied Theology

Now let me read to you from Colossians 3, from the 5th to the 11th verses, and as some of the words are a little complex, in the AV I am reading from the NIV. Colossians 3, verse 5 through to the 11th verse. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.

Because of these the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived, but now you may must rid yourselves of all such things as these, anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.

Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all. I remember sharing with you some while ago, I may have been at a YPF, my memory is not that good, a story that I read of two doctors who were man and wife. One was a medical doctor and the other was a doctor of theology.

And somebody wanted to inquire of one of these two one day and went to their large house and rang the bell. The housekeeper came to the door and the inquirer said, can I speak to the doctor please? And the response was, do you mean the doctor who preaches or the doctor who practices? And if you think that through, there is quite a point that you and I can lift from that human illustration. Because in the world in which we live today, people are not so much concerned with what we believe or what we preach, more than they are concerned with what we practice or the way that we live.

The Apostle Paul was a great theologian, of that there can be no doubts. We have spent twenty odd and more Sunday mornings going through the first couple of chapters of this epistle. And we have seen how point by point he refutes heresy, those who have deviated from the truth.

And he had an incisive brain that was inspired by the Spirit. He was a great systematic theologian. But Paul was not just engaged in the pursuit of theology for its own end.

He was not just a preacher. He was a practicer, a doctor who preached and also practiced. In our universities today, you could, if you had the required A-levels, offer yourself for a course in pure mathematics or applied mathematics, in pure physics or applied physics, in pure sciences or the applied sciences.

And the distinction is a very important one, because the latter, the application, really speaks about how you take knowledge into the laboratory, into the industrial complex, and you apply what has been learned to the industrial or the economic situation. Now, I want to say this, that the Old Testament combined with the New never gives a right to study theology or doctrine in, quotes, a pure way, or in other words, in not an applied fashion. What you believe must control how you live or what you are is certainly not a Christian, because the Christian faith will not allow for those who preach without practicing.

And this is what Paul is demonstrating here most carefully in the third and fourth chapters. He is particularly dealing with the practical application of all that's gone before in the opening chapters of this epistle. Now, we got a good illustration when we looked at the first five verses of this third chapter.

You remember how I spent at least four, or was it five Sundays? I apologize if it was too long. No, I don't, because I got the burden of that message and I felt that it needed to be spelled out before us. But there, if you recall, the essence of what Paul is directing at is that Christians should allow their theology to control their lifestyle.

So he says in the opening verse, seek those things which are above. And in the second verse, set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. And then he goes on to tell us of a great truth which would enable us to look from the world to glory and be controlled by all that's going to happen in the future.

Because he refers to Christ who is our life appearing and bringing in a new and a wonderful age. And I'm to live on a Monday through to a Saturday. I'm to control my family affairs.

I'm to control my business life. If I am a Christian, always with the thought in mind that Jesus from glory shall appear and take me into a new vista, a new way of life. You see, that's my preaching, controlling my practice, my daily living.

And you get a similar sort of thing bound up in this sixth verse through to the, or rather the fifth verse, through to the eleventh of this chapter. Now, these are not easy verses for us to assimilate in one Sunday morning, in one period of 25 minutes or so. And I've poured time hour upon hour into these verses during the week to try to, by the grace of God, get some system whereby I could give you some hooks to get the Apostle Paul's teaching and to be able to go away and reflect upon what he has to say in this particular passage.

And so let me offer for those of you who take notes, or for those of you who find it easy to memorize something if you've got two or three words which match one another, let me suggest to you that within this passage, as Paul is spelling out the practical application of the Christian gospel, there is reference made to the international character of the Christian community in the eleventh verse. And then from that community, Paul argues for its unilateral pursuit for a holy life. And then he adds in these verses the unequivocal reasons for chasing after holiness.

International, unilateral, unequivocal. You'll see how those are key words if you are going to fully comprehend what the Spirit of God by the Apostle Paul has to say in this passage. So for starters, let's take that first one, which actually is undergirded by the eleventh verse in this chapter, the international character of the Christian community.

In that community, says Paul, there's neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bound nor free, but Christ is all and in all. In the university of applied theology, you are not stopped from entering because you're deficient in academic achievements, because you're black and not white, because you're rich and not poor, or vice versa, because you're a man and not a woman. There is nothing that prohibits a person, as far as these divisions are concerned, from entering into the university, into the school of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You remember how in an earlier epistle, earlier that is as far as the New Testament's collection are concerned, the Apostle says to the Galatians in the third chapter in the twenty-eighth verse, something that's similar to the verse that we've just been reading, in Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bound nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you're all one in Christ Jesus. Now why is Paul stressing this? Well you see, in the opening chapters, as you might remember, he's had to deal with some people who thought that intellectually they were superior to some of those Bible-believing Christians in Colossae, and they come along with a new revelation. These were philosophers of the Gnostic school, and Paul was endeavouring to tell the Christians at Colossae not to be put off by these people who claimed a superior wisdom, a superior knowledge.

And then of course there were the Jews over against the Gentiles, the Jews claiming that because they were ethnically born Jews, they were in the redeemed community, and all the privileges of the Old Testament belong to them, and anyone who is not a Jew therefore is debarred constantly from the covenant people. Says Paul, no, the fact of birth, the instance of economic position, the overall strata of humankind, that has got nothing to do with being a member of the family circle of the redeemed. It does not in any way debar you from being a member of the school of Christ in the university of applied theology.

You see, all these distinctions, they exist outside Jesus. Take that little word barbarian and Scythian. Why does Paul make reference to these things? They're not easy words for us today.

Well, a barbarian was someone who couldn't be understood very easily by those who were gifted in the Greek language. The Greek language was a very beautiful language, so was the Latin tongue of the Romans, but when they listened to people who were not Jews, or rather who were not Greeks and not Romans, their language sounded so guttural and harsh, just like a bar, bar, bar, bar, and they couldn't understand what they were saying, so they said they were barbarians, and Paul is saying it doesn't matter whether they were a Roman, whether they were a Greek or a Jew or not, that did not prohibit them from entering into the school of Christ, for those distinctions only exist on the outside. Take the Scythians.

These were people who were known in the ancient world for their crudities, the way in which they treated others in the seventh century as they moved into the Middle East, leaving a memory of dread and horror. But says the apostle of the gospel of Jesus Christ, it can be addressed to the Scythian, and whether a person is a Scythian or a barbarian, whether he's a rich man or a poor man, it doesn't really matter. He can come into the academy of Jesus where Christ is all and in all, and he can there engage in a tremendous pursuit, the pursuit for holiness.

So in the University of Applied Theology, the international character of the student body is here described in the 11th verse, and also spilling over into the 12th verse of this chapter. But not only is the international character of the Christian community underlined by Paul, but in the preceding verses is the object of being in that academy. Why are they there? Here, I argue, is the unilateral pursuit of a holy life spelt out.

Someone has expressed this pursuit like this, forever it remains true that men obtain forgiveness and eternal life as a gift, for which the only prerequisite is faith, but they achieve holiness by patient believing and continuous effort. So here are these people, and they're in the community of the redeemed. They belong to the Lord Jesus Christ.

All those secondary distinctions of birth and influence and education and riches, they've all been completely done away with in Jesus. And you get this group of people who follow him described in terms of their life's work, what they're studying for, what they're chasing after. Well look at the fifth verse, mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, or as the NIV puts it just more clearly, put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature.

Look at the ninth verse, lie not to one another. The tenth verse, put on the new man, and again back to the ninth verse, having put off the old man with his deeds. So here is Paul describing this group of people who are concerned to pursue holiness, and I say they've made a unilateral declaration that they're going to pursue this.

You say why use the word unilateral? Well not everyone is bothered about this sort of thing. You read the common press today and you will see that they are not concerned with a life of holiness at all. Very often the people who are placarded in front of us, the people who steal the headlines, who take all the news, are those whose ethical conduct is divorced very much from the New Testament.

And so often in the 20th century the evangelical community is ridiculed. Why are you so concerned about this practicing of Christian ethics? Why are you so concerned about Bible reading and presenting yourself before the word of God? To us this is nonsense, and of course it is nonsense to them, because they are not concerned about that one thing which dominates the Christian, the believer, the ascertaining of a holy life. Now you will notice in this, as I confess, difficult passage, there are two lists which Paul gives, and he says that here are the lines of demarcation.

In pursuing holiness, this is what the Christian community tries to avoid. It's though Paul is standing before a cell, just to change the metaphor for a moment, and in the cells are various inmates, and Paul the janitor, the jailer, has a roll in his hand, two rolls, and on those rolls are lists of various culprits, and they're going to come forward for execution. The guillotine is in front of them.

And so he reads out the first group of sins that are to be done away with by those who are in the school of Christ. Let's look at them from the NIV, and we're looking at verse 5. Put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. Says the apostle, you who are going to be successful in the international school of the Lord Jesus Christ, you've got to be really disciplined in the way that you deal with certain aspects of your nature, which left untreated would bring dishonor to the Lord.

Mortify therefore your members. That's very, very strong terminology. You imagine a man who's in an industrial complex, and there's some very dangerous machinery, although thank goodness the safety precautions are much better today than what they were 10 years ago.

And this man gets his hand trapped in the machine, and he knows ere long, unless he takes some very, very drastic action, the whole of his arm and his shoulder, and ultimately the whole of his body shall be dragged through, and he'll be crushed to death horribly. And rather than lose his whole body, he takes a knife in his left hand that's standing conveniently by the work table, and he chops off his arm so that he preserves the rest of his body intact. Not a very nice illustration, but I had to use it because that's exactly what the apostle Paul has got in mind.

Be so disciplined with yourself that you will cut off from your life anything which causes in the university of Christ dishonor to come to the president. Let's use the less dramatic language of another epistle, where the writer inspired by the spirit says, no, make no provision for the flesh. What causes you to have problems in the area of your thoughts? What tempts you in sexual behavior to do those things which you're not allowed in the new testament ethic? Well, anything that could detract you from living a clean, honorable life and following the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ, cut it off.

Make no provision for the flesh. If it's pornography or soft pornography, the newspapers that you're reading bring into your mind day by day those thoughts which you know to be alien to students who are in the university of Jesus, then cut them off. If you can't cope with your television set and some of the muck that they put through the channels these days, then get rid of your television set rather than it harm your body, rather than it harm your spiritual life.

And says the apostle, unless you do those things, unless you're so disciplined yourself, really, and this is a fantastic piece of reasoning, the sin which you are guilty of is the breaking of the second commandment, because you're allowing all these things to become gods and goddesses themselves. Your wrong thought, your wrong action, leading to covetousness, all these things, says the apostle, Paul is idolatry. And in the unilateral pursuit of a holy life, the Christian has broken with idolatry.

Ah, but you say, these things are not really my problem. Here I am, I'm an older person, and the difficulties that I had in this area, they've long gone by, and I'm not so troubled. But Paul, going back to my initial illustration in this part of the explanation of God's Word, you remember, has two roles under his arm.

He's read out the list of certain culprits which he wants to be executed, but there's another list. It seems milder, and yet the crimes that are in there, if they're allowed unqualified reign within the Christian community, they can wreak as much havoc. So says the apostle in the eighth verse, but now ye also put off all these things, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication, out of your mouth, lie not to one another.

Don't, says the apostle Paul, have a heart that's like a roaring furnace, you're so angry, and it describes a permanent condition. Don't allow yourself, and this is the distinction between anger and wrath, those spasmodic outbursts that really go back to your old nature, where you're uncontrolled in your rage, in your anger. And says the apostle, for those of us who are standing by smugly and a little far a circle, you know, we don't have problems in this area, we never really get so angry, don't really get so wrathful, we've managed to control those emotions.

Says the apostle, what about malice, slander, what about idle criticism? This which so often breaks apart Christian communities and Christian organizations, it's a sophisticated evil, it's a carefully used thing, you know, you take somebody on one side and you say, well, if I was in charge of this work, this is how it would be done. You know, they know nothing, I've got much more experience, after all, I've been a Christian for three years, I should be able to cope with something that's been going on for the last 30 years, and bring in new methods, and so on and so forth. So easy, isn't it, to engage in slander, I believe that this is the besetting sin of evangelicalism in the 20th century, it's a refined thing, I put it in one context by way of illustration, there are so many ways in which you could illustrate this, getting alongside a brother and a sister and talking to someone else, and you do it in such a self-righteous fashion, passing on a little bit of gossip, do you know what he's done? Oh, I'm praying for him, oh, and so often we use that, don't we, I'm praying for him, that makes us feel so self-righteous, then we can go along and list a catalogue of his crimes.

The devil is so subtle, you see, even our evangelical phraseology, he can cause us to use as a smokescreen for one of these sins which is not acceptable within the school of Christ, filthy communication and and so on, says the apostle, all these things are to be cut off. I was once confronted by a snake just a few months ago and I knew what to do when I was confronted by a snake in Zaire, you have to face it, you have to put your foot on it, then you get a knife and you chop its head off, I ran away, but an American missionary I was with, he didn't run, cool as anything, young fellow, he got that snake and he got his foot on it, he hadn't got a knife but he got a stick and he just concussed it and then he dealt with it, having rendered it immobile. Now, says the apostle, this is what you've got to do, you've got to cut off those things in your life which in the school of Christ bring dishonor to the president and in the name of Jesus you stamp on it and you say I cut you off in the power of the Holy Spirit and no longer will I engage in that particular practice which brings dishonor to your name.

I remind you that in the University of Applied Theology the student body is of an international character, it has a unilateral pursuit of a holy life and it also has within its charter unequivocal reasons for pursuing that objective, by the word unequivocal I mean reasons without any qualification at all. Why don't I live in such a way as the apostle Paul has prohibited in the fifth verse and the eighth verse? Well, there are three reasons, the first is in the sixth verse, such things makes God angry for which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience. If I love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength, the last thing I want him to do, the last thing I want to do is to call him, cause him hurt.

It's easy to sing that we love the Lord on a Sunday, isn't it? Some of these glorious hymns, holy, holy, holy Lord God almighty, we bring our praise before the Lord and we sing and we're emotionally moved and that's not a bad thing in itself, but my problem's a Monday. I wish every day was a Sunday, every day was 11 o'clock and the time of every day was 11 o'clock on a Sunday because I find it so easy in community with God's children to worship the Lord, to sing his praises, but it's during the week that I've got to have these things in my mind, I must be applying my theology, Lord God in the way that I respond to my dear wife, in the way that I react to any frustrating situation, may I not indulge in any of those things which you have prohibited because they bring hurt to your heart and without the blood of Jesus, they would bring your wrath and righteous indignation to bear upon my life. The unequivocal reason for pursuing a holy life on holiness disquietens God and it was for this reason incidentally that Jesus died.

Verse 14 of the second chapter, you remember how graphically Paul speaks about Jesus taking the handwriting of ordinances which was against us, taking the law which condemned us, taking our sin which eventually would have brought us the eternal condemnation of God and he died on the cross of Calvary for that and I always want to say to the Lord, my God, every hour of my life ideally, thank you Lord for allowing your wrath to be deflected from me unto Jesus and I want to live a good and a clear and honorable life, not for my reputation, not for the reputation of the church in which I am a member but because I love you and I don't want to anger you and the second reason says the apostle Paul is that that way of life, verse 7, those habits rather in verse 7, he tells us belong to the old way of life in the which he also walked sometime when he lived in them. Many here could testify that the list that the apostle makes in the fifth verse and where were we also in the eighth verse, at one time they didn't concern them at all. Well what does it matter what newspaper you read? What does it matter what you watch on the box? What film you go to? If you've got no control of the Holy Spirit to determine which way you're to go and what's right and what's wrong, it doesn't trouble you at all and you can sin with impunity and probably you've got no difficulty but you see the Christian is different from this my friend.

There was an old way of life and it could be catalogued but thank God it's been sunk in the sea of his forgetfulness and I don't want to go back fishing and dragging it all up again but in my new life as I am a student in the academy of the Lord Jesus Christ, I want to live in a way that brings honor and glory to the president of the college. So I don't live this way because it makes God easy, because it makes God angry, because it belongs to the old way of life and finally because I claim to have died to all this. Look at the ninth verse, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds and the tenth verse and have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.

To understand fully what Paul means by that you have to go back to the 11th and 12th verses of the previous chapter where he talks about being buried with Christ in baptism and raised with him through the faith of the operation of God who has raised him from the dead. The Christian is a new creation. The Christian faith, it controls the lifestyle of the believer in all that he does.

The apostle is making a distinction you see between the old nature and the new nature. The old man, that's not a rude word for your father young people, it's rather something that refers back to Adam, the first man. And I was born in the image of Adam as I came from my mother's womb.

I had all the traits and all the failures of Adam within me. This is the reason why I've got problems. This is the reason why sometimes I'm plagued with impure thoughts, why I have temptations to do what is wrong because I was made after Adam.

But, and this is glorious for the Christian, there's a new creation. Someone else has come in, the last Adam, even the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the sight of God I have died to the old and I'm alive to the new.

I'm a saved person, I'm bound for glory, but the holiness which I am pursuing doesn't come to me like that. I wish I had an experience that I could tell you of when one day Tony Sargent became so absolutely new that everybody knew. I had no problems at all, never any temptation into backsliding or what have you, but that's not happened.

I have found that holiness is something that my soul has longed for all these years and yet I have not finally obtained my goal, nor do I believe that I shall ultimately get there until I'm with Jesus in the glory. And my old earthly nature is completely changed and ultimately, as I was referring last week, I receive my new body. I find the pursuit of holiness the hardest thing in my life, but it's the thing which I would give all to obtain.

Says one man who used to be the professor of Magdalene College, Oxford, there are two men who stand before God, Adam and Jesus Christ, and they have all other men hanging from their girdle strings. Where do you stand? Is your professor Jesus or is your professor Adam? Have you moved into that international Christian community where all can come who confess Jesus as saviour? Are you engaged unilaterally in the pursuit of a holy life? Can you give unequivocal reasons for that pursuit? My dear friends, this is the challenge of this passage of scripture which I leave with you. And if you say the word of God has stretched you this morning, then thank God for it.

If you go from one pulpit to another pulpit only finding something which will console you and just encourage and cheer you, and you're never hurt or stretched by the word of the Lord, then I suggest to you that your Christianity will be an immature Christianity. We need to expose ourselves to the harsh teaching of scripture. I tell you before the Lord, I asked him on several occasions this week if I could skip this passage.

I got a lovely little address worked out on they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. And I think I could have sent you on your way rejoicing. What a consoling, what a balm-like message that was.

But no, the Lord directed me to this. And I believe gave me that word that I was to challenge you and challenge my own heart to apply our theology in the school of Christ, to realize that we have declared unilaterally that we are pursuing after holiness, and to realize that there are some unequivocal reasons as to why we should engage in that pursuit. As the deer pants for water, so our souls pant for holiness, O our God.

And whatever the cost, whatever self-mortification and discipline is necessary, as you have enrolled us in the academy of Jesus, may we be successful students helping one another so that ultimately we shall not just by lip but by life be like Jesus Christ, holy and pure. Amen.