Often, we struggle with divesting our-selves of our old sinful ways because we try to do it alone and in our own strength. No wonder we often find ourselves as spiritually discouraged and tangled as I was in the dressing room. Whatever God commands, he also enables and empowers (2 Peter 1:3). God stands ready to help us in our spiritual dressing rooms, fitting us with new garments of patience, forgiveness, and love toward each other.

5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming. 7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. 11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

~ Colossians 3:5–11

• What habits in your daily life do you need to lay aside to experience more of Jesus?
• What habits in your daily life do you want to put on to experience more of Jesus?

When we purchased our first home in San Diego, we were simultaneously relieved and anxious. We were thrilled to have a home with “good bones” and great potential; however, as we looked at the amount of demolition it would take to get closer to our dream home, we were terribly overwhelmed. Before we could paint walls and hang up pictures, we had to tear down existing walls that were structurally unsound. We had to tear down before we could build up.

Paul uses a similar analogy to help the Colossians understand the path toward continued growth as a believer: the language of putting off and putting on. We must put off the old self continu­ally so that we might live out of the new self. This language of our sinful natures as the flesh, the old man, and the old nature shows up throughout the entire New Testament.

Paul encouraged the early believers to “put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22–24).

Before we can grow into the cloaks of righteousness Christ procured for us, the worn-out garments of our old selves need to be exposed, named, and removed through repentance. We must put off before we can put on. Christ exposes our anger, evil desires, malice, and falsehood so that he might clothe us in the fruit of the gospel: kindness, compassion, and forgiveness (more on this tomorrow). While this disrobing of sin happens initially in salvation, it continues to happen in an ongoing way in the process of sanctification.

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