IN THE SERMON on the Mount, Jesus punctured the pretensions of those who considered themselves more righteous than others because of their obedience to religious rules, both the do’s and the don’ts. God’s people are supposed to give alms, pray, and fast? Check, check, check. God’s people are supposed to obey the Ten Commandments, and therefore not commit murder and adultery? I can check those off too. The Pharisees prided themselves on their religious superiority, and the average Jew would have considered them to be the spiritual superstars, the gold-standard of faithfulness.

Thus, it must have been shocking to hear Jesus tell his listeners that if they wanted to be truly righteous, they had to be more righteous than the Pharisees (Matt 5:20). And having said this, he gave the people one illustration after another of the religious rules they had been taught, and the deeper truth the Pharisees had missed behind them. Think you’re innocent of murder because you’ve never taken a life? he taught. Well, think again; anyone who’s ever been angry enough to call someone nasty names is guilty. Think you’re innocent of adultery because you’ve never cheated on your spouse? Not so fast; anyone who’s ever lusted covetously after someone else is guilty (vss. 21-28). He insisted that his listeners love, not hate, their enemies — which meant that Jews had to love the Romans who were oppressing them and forcibly occupying their ancestral lands (vs. 43). And he capped off that part of the sermon with this intimidating statement: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (vs. 48).

Is it any wonder that people down through the centuries have considered Jesus’ words to be an unreachable ethical ideal?

The teaching of Paul, moreover, doesn’t seem to be any easier. It wasn’t long after that Paul told the Colossians to stop living the promiscuous pagan lifestyle common to many in the Roman Empire. He tells them that this isn’t who they are anymore, and lays some stringent moral requirements on them. It’s not just about their sexuality and greed, as we looked at last time, but about their attitude and behavior toward one another:

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 must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other… (Col 3:5-9, NIV)

Who is innocent of such a list? Who hasn’t been angry or quick-tempered? Who hasn’t wanted to lash out and hurt someone, including slandering them with our words? The word that the NIV translates as “filthy language” is only used this one time in the New Testament, and suggests any kind of disgraceful or shameful speech. In the context of the rest of the list, Paul may be pointing to various forms of verbal abuse.

Moreover, Paul tells them not to lie to one another. That doesn’t mean that the Colossians are generally a truthful bunch, and Paul is warning them just in case; the form of the verb Paul uses can imply that lying is already habitual with them and therefore they need to stop.

Again, the moral landscape is broad: it’s not just what you do, but what you want to do; it’s what you feel, what you think, and what you say. If these verses were read in isolation from the rest of the letter, their effect would likely be similar to Jesus’ shocking teaching about true righteousness. How can anyone put these things to death?

But we must read these verses in context, for as we saw previously, what Paul says here assumes what he’s already said earlier in the letter. To put such ways to death means to embrace the fact that in Christ we have already died to them and have been raised to new life.

Yes, we still lust and covet. Yes, we still get angry. Yes, we still say things that are hurtful, ugly, and untrue. Yes, we sometimes look an awful lot like the way we were before we gave our lives to Jesus.

But the deeper truth of who we are in Christ is that we’re no longer the people we were. I didn’t give you the whole of verse 9 before. Here now is the rest of it, together with verse 10:

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. (Col 3:9-10)

You have “taken off your old self,” Paul says. The verb is only used twice in the New Testament, both times in Colossians, and may have been an original coinage by Paul. In Colossians 2:15, Paul uses it to describe how Jesus “disarmed” the powers and authorities; here, it suggests stripping something off, as one might emphatically remove an infected or disgustingly soiled piece of clothing.

But wait. Paul says we’ve already stripped off the old self (literally, the old or former “human”) and its way of life and put on the new. The verb tenses suggest actions that were completed in the past, not an ongoing, back-and-forth vacillation between the old and new. Vacillation, however, may be a better description of how we experience the daily struggle to be faithful. How, then, should we understand what Paul says?

It’s possible that Paul is referring once more to the one-time and definitive event of baptism, through which the Colossians were spiritually united with Christ (Col 2:12). If so, then putting off the old and putting on the new is another way of looking at our participation in the death and resurrection of Christ.

For some of us, this may require a fundamental shift in perspective. We know that we’ve been saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, but sometimes, in our struggle with sin, we may still see ourselves as lost souls needing to be found. But that’s not who we are in Christ. We have been made new, even if sometimes we give ourselves over to the old ways. What’s more, as Paul says it, we are continually being renewed to be more like God.

Christianity is not a religion in which one strives to be a better person. It’s a way of life rooted in faith and hope: the faith that we have been made new, the hope that the process of renewal will one day be complete. That renewal, again, includes how we think and what we desire, how we act and speak. And as we’ll see, it also includes breaking down the prejudice and distrust that divide us from one another.