Your White Clothes
Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature … You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these … you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self Colossians 3:5-10
It was apparently the practice in many early churches to give someone being water baptised a new set of white clothes as they came up out of the water. The person would take off the wet clothes they had been wearing and put on their new clothes.
The practice helped reinforce the new standing of the Christian both in relation to their old life and their new. The old was taken off and the new was put on.
Paul picks up on the truth behind the practice. There are ways of behaving typically of the life of the world. These have to be put aside. And there are ways of behaving typically of our new life in Christ. These have to be put on.
You wouldn’t wear a wedding dress to a birthday party or wet suit to a wedding. We pick what we wear to fit the occasion.
In living our everyday life we have a lifestyle choice.
We used to live out of the old life but don’t have to any longer; so why act that way?
We can now live the new life out of the life of Christ in us; so it’s completely normal to dress in accord with our new life, to live godly in Christ.
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