Colossians 3:9 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Colossians 3:9

Comments

Integrity is vital to the Christian. ‘Whosoever loveth and maketh a lie will not enter the city,’ we read in the final chapter of Revelation. If God is so indignant and filled with hatred at the lie, don’t you think it will reduce, take away your blessings and your assurance, if you allow the lie?What is a lie? Well, it is deliberately misleading. It is an act of deceit; it includes hypocrisy, concealment, the dishonesty, flattery for gain, slander of course, excuses. All these things are lies. Unreliability, unmeant promises, exaggeration. The lie occupies such a broad spectrum and the devil will try to turn us into liars gradually. A little exaggeration here, a small excuse there – get us use to uttering lies, until we become hypocrites, dishonest, false people. A lie grieves the Spirit and he withdraws, says the Scripture. A lie betrays trust. We insult the one to whom we may lie. Your conscience won’t work if you are lying persistently. There is reasoning here is that the liar is cheating the Lord. At conversion in your repentance, you put off the lie, you repented of it, you pledged yourself to God. Now you are going back on that pledge. You have renounced dishonesty: stick to it. It comes in different shapes and sizes – boasts are lies, untrue boasts; excuses are lies; exaggerations are lies; superficial promises that you never meant are lies; denials are lies; there are white lies, outright lies. And yet, as with all these things, we can swallow them back, put it away, seek the help of God and switch it off.

Application

Lies are used by Satan, and every betrayal in marriage or in friendship, every betrayal involves lies, dishonesty. Every occasion of spiritual coldness, if it should envelop us – what is happening to us? There are lies somewhere at the bottom of spiritual collapse always. Lies undermine everything and God hates lies. We know the 9th commandment, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness,’ the Hebrew word ‘bear’ including even looking upon, considering a lie.

It was a lie that came in in the Garden of Eden and brought the fall in the first place. It was lies that have brought about the fall of our great, historic denominations in this country from that wonderful situation that they were in in the 19th century when virtually every Protestant church was Bible loving – the Word of God and the gospel was proclaimed, and souls were saved every week. What happened to bring about a tiny fraction of people who now really believe in the Word of God? It was lies. It was people who came in who did not believe these things but they made out they did, and they acted the hypocrite and gradually they worked their way in and took over and polluted and corrupted.

Questions

Why does Scripture tell us to put off these things, and then say that we have already put them off at conversion? It seems to be a contradiction. Both are true: I have put it off, and yet I still have to put it off. At conversion, I renounced the old nature. I repented of these sins, I, as it were wept, before God and renounced them, and God put them away. He forgave me those sins forever. They have gone, he now views me clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And yet, the old nature is still there. Though I now have a new nature, residual sin, the old nature it is still there, and it cries out to express itself. The motions of sin, the motions of the old nature, remain in me. So while I have put it off at conversion, I now progressively put it off day by day. Both are true.

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Introduction

Colossians 3:9 Commentary and Bible Study