Created Anew

In 1883, an Italian author wrote
a book designed to shame lying as a caution to young children.
The name of that book was The Adventures of Pinocchio. And
that story, as you likely know, is a tale of a wooden marionette
puppet who desires to become a real boy. One of the unique
features of this boy is that his nose grows whenever he tells
a lie. It was intended, as I said, as
a warning to children. And in the book, that is in the
original story, it does not end well for Pinocchio. But as is so often the case,
the story in that book was turned into a children’s movie, a cartoon,
in 1940 by Walt Disney. And it was instantly received
as a classic, one of the greatest animated movies of all time. In the Disney version, Pinocchio
is characterized by relatively innocent mischief, complete with
that classic Disney cuteness, those large childlike eyes that
blink slowly and sweetly, and happy if impish little facial
expressions. The cartoon version of Pinocchio
is an amusing and beloved character at the same time. He learns from
his mistakes and corrects his course and ultimately enjoys
a true Hollywood ending. And the intent of the original
story of the adventures of Pinocchio, that of a severe warning to children
about lying, is almost completely glossed over and forgotten in
living color. We find ourselves again in Colossians
chapter three. Would God’s people begin turning
there? Here in chapter three, we are
transitioning from Paul’s second practical exhortation to his
third, and we come rather gingerly, tiptoeing toward this third practical
exhortation by Paul, because the sins addressed there in that
second section indicted many, if not all, of us. Even if the
more unseemly vices missed us, the sins of the flesh enumerated
in verse 5, certainly the relational sins of verse 8 indicted the
rest of us. Anger, wrath, malice, slander,
abusive speech. But as delicately as we can possibly
approach Paul’s next exhortation, here in verses nine through 11,
we quickly discover that it is one of the most common sinful
tendencies of humanity, that of lying. And in this sense,
we are never more like fallen humanity than when we lie. Lying was so common, so much
a part of the fabric of society in first century culture, that
it was hardly even seen as sinful. It was to be expected. It was
widely practiced, so widely in fact, that people had no idea
what was and what wasn’t true. And so it is to this mindset,
to this culture that the Apostle Paul writes. If you would, would
you just follow along as I read verses 9 through 11 of chapter
3. Do not lie to one another since
you laid aside the old self with its evil practices and have put
on the new self who is being renewed. to a true knowledge
according to the image of the one who created him, a renewal
in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised
and uncircumcised, barbarians, Scythian, slave and freemen,
but Christ is all and in all.” Well, lamentably, lying is still
woven into the fabric of our culture today. And when it comes
to lying, we have even developed a broad continuum, haven’t we,
in our minds of the kinds of seriousness of the lies that
we tell. At one end of the spectrum, there
are what we call white lies that almost nobody would consider
them as lies. At the other end of the spectrum,
there is what is called the boldface or the bald-faced lie. And I did look it up. It’s known
as both. That extreme example of lying
that is just so repulsive, anybody would consider it a lie. As we’ve
seen many times in our study in Colossians, there are a great
many sections that are mirrored in Paul’s contemporary epistle
to the Ephesians, and this is another case where that is so. In our passage in Colossians
3, we have it again, and because I’ll be referencing several phrases
from Ephesians this morning, I would like to go ahead and
read that passage as well. Ephesians chapter 4, if you would
turn there briefly. Keep a finger in, Colossians.
We’ll be right back here. But Ephesians chapter four, I
wanted to review this passage as well. And I’d encourage you
here to listen for some of the same exact themes or phrases
that we have in Colossians chapter three. They are here in plenty,
and you’ll know why we consider this a parallel passage. Ephesians
chapter four, and we’ll begin in verse 20. where Paul says,
but you did not learn Christ in this way, speaking of the
heathen culture in which they were immersed. You did not learn
Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard him and have been
taught in him, just as truth is in Jesus. that in reference
to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which
is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and
that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the
new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness
and holiness of the truth. Therefore, laying aside falsehood,
speak truth, each one of you, with his neighbor, for we are
members of one another.” In both passages, Paul addresses some
of the same exact things. At the front of his passage in
Colossians, he addresses lying, which is dealt with at the very
end of the passage in Ephesians, what he calls falsehood. And
he urges there in the positive in Ephesians to speak truth.
Well, he also addresses the old self, our former life, and the
new self. And then he addresses renewal,
which we probably will not get to this morning, but all of it
is predicated on the fact that we are called to Christ’s likeness.
This is addressed at the very end of the passage in Colossians.
Christ is all and in all, but it’s addressed at the very start
of the passage in Ephesians. You did not learn Christ in this
way. And so I wanted to take some
time this morning just to remind us that we have been, if we are
in Christ, if we placed our faith in Christ, if we are believers,
Christians, we have been created anew. We are a new creation. God has done this work in our
lives, and what we have here in this passage is observations
of a person who is reborn. Observations of what a Christian
looks like. And the first thing that Paul
addresses here in our Colossians passage is the speech of a new
person. The speech of a new person where
he just says, do not lie to one another. Paul’s command here,
not to lie, comes as a bit of a shock in a number of ways.
It’s surprising. The first, just the admonition
itself. As if it even needed to be said.
Do not lie to one another. Perhaps we misunderstand Paul
here. Is that what he really means?
It is indeed. The Greek word there is pseudomai. And you can hear one of our English
words there, can’t you? Pseudo, which can be used independently
as an adjective, or it can be appended to the front of another
word. Either way, it implies falseness. The Greek word is
very direct, referring to falsehoods, lies, a willful intent to deceive
others. And so, surprising as it may
be, that is exactly what Paul says here, do not lie. We’ll
come back to that thought. Secondly, it’s somewhat surprising,
unexpected, that this sin should be isolated from the greater
list of social sins in verse 8. The sin of lying is indeed
a social sin. Lies are intended to mislead
others. Paul indicates that in this very
sentence, do not lie to one another. We don’t lie in a vacuum. And
from that standpoint, it very much would fit with that second
set of sins that we considered the last several weeks, verses
five through eight. We discussed that second set
in verse eight last week. Anger, wrath, malice, slander,
abusive speech. Lies fits right in there, doesn’t
it? That short list of social sins were all nouns. And they’re all lumped together
under the command to put aside such things. And lying would
certainly fit in with those. And yet Paul here makes a special
point of separating out the sin of lying. And he does so by issuing
a fresh and rather stark command, do not lie. And from there, he
proceeds to build an entire subsection, verses 9 through 11, around that
one imperative. Everything that he says there
in those three verses is built on that one little command. And so we’re surprised, thirdly,
We’re surprised that Paul has to say this at all. We’re surprised
to find that Paul has isolated this one sin of lying away from
the rest of the social sins. But thirdly, and this is very
subtle, in verse eight, the form of the verb there indicates that
it was something that had happened in the past. Having set aside
these things, But here, Paul switches to the present tense. And essentially, in verse nine,
he says, stop lying, implying that this was an active concern
in the churches. So lying is set apart by itself,
and it’s an active concern. But there is this final alarming
aspect to this statement. The fact that Paul has to tell
both of these churches, the church in Colossae and the church in
Ephesus, he has to tell them effectively to stop lying. Paul is much more direct here
in Colossians. Do not lie to one another. Whereas
in Ephesians, he issues a positive command, speak truth. Having
laid aside falsehood, speak truth. Paul uses the verb form of lying
when he addresses the Colossians. He uses the noun form of the
word when he works with the Ephesians. That noun, falsehood, really
is even broader than just the individual verbal act of lying. It refers to falsehood in a variety
of different forms. But Paul’s intention in both
passages, Colossians and Ephesians, is to address the sin of lying. Stop lying to one another or
having laid aside falsehood, speak truth. In our fallen humanity, we sin
by lying. Your own heart is telling you
this even as I speak. We sin by lying in a wide variety
of ways. Someone has said that we lie
for basically two reasons. Either to enhance our reputation
or to protect our reputation. We have a goal in mind when we
open our mouth. And we do this in a number of
ways. A lie of commission is an intentionally false statement. A lie of omission is an intentional
misleading incomplete statement. And a lie intended to influence
or is really designed to leave a false impression with someone,
an exaggeration, an embellishment of the facts. And now we all
begin to get convicted, don’t we? Sadly, lying is one of the
most common traits of humanity. Consider just a few examples.
If you’re not convicted already, these examples will surely find
a landing spot in your heart. Just a few example of the kinds
of lies that we tell. Oh, I had to work. Or I had to
work late. I got stuck in traffic. I had
no cell service. I really enjoyed that dish you
made. I completely forgot. It’s so
great to see you. I checked my calendar and I’m
booked. No, I don’t have any cash on
me. I will, or I did, pray for you. We lie in a myriad of ways. Think
of the great quantity of synonyms for lying. I did some research. This is a list that took about
10 minutes. Lying, and think of it in its
various forms. This begins to press into various
portions of our society and life. Chicanery. Corruption. cover-up, crookedness, deceit,
deception, dishonesty, disinformation, distortion, duplicity, exaggeration,
evasion, fabrication, fallacy, falsehood, fiction, forgery,
fraud, hypocrisy, inaccuracy, inconsistency, infidelity, impropriety,
malfeasance, mendacity, misrepresentation, misstatement, myth, perjury,
plagiarism, prevarication, shadiness, slander, tale, trickery, untruth,
just to name a few. And perhaps the saddest feature
of all of this study is the fact that there are many, many examples
from scripture of those who lied. And it produces a lot of times
a great debate about the ethics of telling the truth. Cain lied
about murdering his brother Abel. Abraham lied about Sarah being
his sister and not his wife. Isaac also lied about Rebecca
being his sister. Rebecca learned well and she
lied in the conspiracy to defraud Esau of his birthright. Jacob
and his Jacob’s sons rather lied about, to their father Joseph,
to their father about young Joseph. King Saul lied to Samuel. Peter
lied about his association with Christ. Ananias and Sapphira
lied about what they did or did not give. And this is all against
the very clear precepts in scripture about the sin of lying. Just a few. Psalm 31, 18. Let the lying lips be mute. Psalm
58, 3. The wicked are estranged from
the womb. These who speak lies go astray
from birth. Not a good heritage. Psalm 120
verse 2, deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips. Let me never
be accused of being a liar. Proverbs 6, 15, there are six
things which the Lord hates, yes, seven, which are an abomination
to him, haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent
blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run rapidly
to evil, a false witness who utters lies, and one who spreads
strife among brothers. He who conceals hatred has lying
lips, Proverbs 10, 18. Proverbs 10, 22, lying lips. I mean, it shouldn’t surprise
us. Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. And all this against the backdrop
that the sin of lying is committed against a holy God who cannot
lie. Titus 1-2, it is impossible for
God to lie. Hebrews 6-18. Well, when we read
the Ephesians passage, you may have even heard Paul states it
there in the positive, speak truth each one of you with his
neighbor. Ultimately, that’s what Paul is urging of his churches.
And it applies to every one of us and indeed every association
that every one of us has. It’s not like you’re given freedom
to go and lie to the heathen. As we learned from the parable
of the Good Samaritan, a neighbor is anyone really who is in close
proximity to us, someone with whom we meet and with whom we
have contact. And when Paul adds this very
important reason, speak truth, each one of you, he adds this,
for we are members of one another. We cannot be torn apart. We’re
part of the body of Christ. One faithful godly man, John
Eady, Scottish pastor, said it this way, Christians are to speak
the whole truth without distortion, diminution, or exaggeration.
No promise is to be falsified. No mutual understanding violated. The word of a Christian ought
to be his bond. Every syllable being but the
expression of truth in the inward parts. So in other words, the
sin of lying is wholly inappropriate for those whose Savior is truth
itself. Remember Jesus himself declared
in John 14, I am the way and the truth and the life. How fitting
it is then that his children should be of the truth. And we know that lying is characteristic
of the devil, right? As Jesus said in John 8, lying
is part of the devil’s nature. He’s a liar and the father of
lies. Lying comes perfectly natural
to him. It is who he is. And so the frightening
thing is that we are never more like the devil than when we are lying, when we are devoid of
the truth, when we’re not telling the whole truth. The bottom line
is that in our speech, we should emulate the Lord Jesus, not the
devil. So there in Ephesians 4, Paul’s
exhortation is very full. He states the maxim in the positive,
speak truth. He says that this applies to
all, to each one of you, And he specifies with whom we speak,
with our neighbor, any person in close proximity. And he even
provides the motive there, that we are members of one another,
part of the same body of Christ. But in the apostles’ exhortation
to the Colossians, he refrains from providing much in the way
of detail at all. It’s just very blunt. Do not
lie to one another. But Paul does provide an explanation
for that command, and it follows immediately in verses 9 and into
verse 10, where in addition to the speech of a new person, Paul
describes the transformation of a new person. We see it in
verses nine and 10. Do not lie to one another since
you laid aside the old self with its evil practices and have put
on the new self. Again, what I suggested is that
Paul is making observations of a person who is reborn. He has been created anew. She is a new person in Christ.
And he observes, secondly here, this transformation. Paul tells
us that the ability to speak the truth, as he tells the Ephesians
positively, or negatively, as he says it here in Colossians,
not to lie, that ability is because we have been changed, transformed. The order is important here.
It’s not as if Paul is telling us that this is something that
we should do. that we now need to affect some
kind of a change. This is a change that has already
taken place. He speaks of it as already having
been done. It’s almost as if Paul produces
a snapshot of us as Christians and he lays it down next to a
snapshot of us in our unredeemed state. What an ugly picture that
would be, right? And things have changed dramatically
since our unsaved condition. As believers in Jesus Christ,
we have laid aside the old self and have put on the new self.
Everything has changed. That’s the underlying reason
that we ought not lie to one another. It doesn’t fit. We’re
not to lie because our lives, every facet of our nature has
been changed. This laying aside and putting
on, it’s really just, we think of it as two transactions. It’s
one transaction. It’s presented as a two-step
process, put off, put on, but it’s really part of the same
event, a single act. We can think of repentance and
faith likewise as two sides of the same coin, right? You can’t
repent without placing your faith in Christ and you can’t place
your faith in Christ without repentance. Same here, as we
lay aside the one, the old self by our repentance, we take up
and we put on the other, the new self by faith. Now, just
last week in verse 8, we saw that Paul used a very similar
metaphor. There he urged his readers to
put aside these sinful behaviors. And I told you last week that
Paul frequently uses this illustration as if a person is taking off
a garment, a filthy garment of clothing. That’s the image that
Paul uses. And he basically employs the
same image here, but he uses a different word. We’ve seen
this particular word before and that very recently. In Colossians
2 15, if you want to flip there, fine, but you’ll remember it. You’ll recall that Paul is describing
there how Jesus had vanquished his enemies, remember? And in
verse 15, he tells us that he made a public display of the
rulers and authorities after disarming them. He stripped them
of their weaponry, and then he put them on display. Well, in
the passage before us, he imports this very word into his current
discussion, and he pictures the Christian as having disarmed
themselves of, as having laid aside what he refers to as the
old self, literally the old man. But mind you, Paul’s reference
here is not to age. He’s simply speaking of this
man, this person, this self as former. And given the clothing
aspect of this metaphor, Paul presents his former self as a
soiled garment, a filthy, raggedy article of clothing, unfit to
be worn in public. His use of this illustration
in the Ephesians passage is even more direct. There he says, we are to lay
aside the old self, listen to this, which is being corrupted
in accordance with the lust of deceit. This thing was filthy
when you took it out of the closet and it’s getting worse by the
moment. The garment is gross and getting grosser all the time. He personifies our former nature
here by calling it a self, a person, a man. He’s referencing our former
depraved, unregenerate self, the condition in which we found
ourselves prior to salvation. Paul adds in Romans 6 that this
old self was crucified with Christ. All in all, this image of the
old self is representative of a person’s pre-Christian state. Paul says that as believers,
we have laid aside this old self. We put it off from us like dirty
garments. Well, that’s only the initial
phase of this one transaction. Because immediately as we lay
aside the one we put on, Paul says, the other, the new self.
As the one is laid aside, the other is put on. We get that.
There are not two phases, only one. And here, this is the other
piece of that put off, put on metaphor. We considered this
last week, that idea of putting on. One of Paul’s favorite illustrations. I provided a few of these last
week, but here’s a more complete list. Romans 13, 12, put on the
full armor of light. Romans 13, 14, put on the Lord
Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 1553, put on the
imperishable and put on immortality. Galatians 3.27, you have clothed
yourself with Christ. What a beautiful image. Ephesians
6.14, put on the full armor of God. 1 Thessalonians 5.8, put
on the breastplate of faith and love. Well, you get the point.
This is a dawning, a putting on of a certain element. And here he says, putting on,
it just completes his illustration here. Having pulled off and laid
aside the old self, Paul says that the Christian has already
put on the new self. If the old self represents our
former, unregenerate, sinful nature, the new self that we’ve
already put on as believers must refer to our redeemed, our regenerated
state as Christians. It’s a beautiful image. Salvation by repentance and faith
has been granted. Here the believer has placed
his or her faith in Christ. God’s Spirit immediately begins
the work of sanctification in them. This is the new self in
which is all new, new affections, new aims and goals, a new manner
of living. And this is precisely an echo
of Paul’s very language in 2 Corinthians 5.17. Therefore, if anyone is
in Christ, he or she is a new creature. The old things have
passed away. Behold, new things have come. Now, in our parallel passage,
Ephesians 4, which passage we just read, Paul elaborates on
this new self. He says of it that, in the likeness
of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth. What a
profound statement. When Paul speaks of being created
in the likeness of God here, he’s not saying that we are created
when we become Christians. Even in our original state, We
bore the image and likeness of God. But here, Paul goes further
by saying that in Christ, we begin to realize the original
design of creation. We become what we were created
to be from the very beginning. We are created in the likeness
of God. We are designed to reflect His
glory that is in righteousness and holiness of truth. We are
remade in a very real way. Just, we are righteous, just
with regard to others. We are holy, reverent with regard
to God. See, after the fall of mankind,
these divine qualities were only restored to us in our relationship
with Christ. John 1 17 says it this way, grace
and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. What a fantastic
thought that is. For our purposes we’ll end there
today, but basically Paul says here that having laid aside the
old self and having already put on the new, that speaking in
half truths Speaking out and out lies, being untrustworthy
in that regard is completely out of character. It’s completely
unbecoming of us as a Christian. And my challenge to you this
week is to try to think through and to catch yourself at the
lip gate before any of these lies leak out this week. Catch
them in the mind, in the heart. Catch them before you verbalize
them and see how plentiful this dissimulation is, this tendency
that we have to utter falsehoods. Would you humble yourself before
our loving Savior? Oh Lord, it’s in passage.