Refusing to Live the Old Life
Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived Colossians 3:6,7
‘Because of these, the wrath of God is coming’ (3:6). Paul is thinking more widely than just sexual sin. God’s anger is His necessary reaction as a holy, just and good God to wickedness, exploitation and evil of every kind. This wrath begins to take effect in the degrading effects of sin itself (Romans 1:18-32) and leads to final judgement (Romans 1:32; 2:1-16). The present tense in Colossians 3:6 refers, probably intentionally, to both of these senses of God’s wrath (though the NIV has chosen to emphasise the future (‘the wrath of God is coming’). Part of the horror of final judgement is that those who consciously and continually choose sin instead of God become less and less human until all that separates them as creatures made in God’s image and likeness has by their own choice been altogether obliterated. Those who make evil a way of life begin to lose their humanity, begin to die, even while they live.
‘You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived’ (3:7). The word for ‘walk’ (as in 1:10) describes a fundamental lifestyle. Our ‘life’ was how this lifestyle played out. Paul knew only too well that the majority of the Colossian converts would have seen their former lifestyle in the list in 3:5. This is not the only place in the New Testament where Paul catalogues pagan vices before immediately following with a reminder that it was not all that long back that the lives of the readers were just like this (1 Corinthians 6:10,11; Romans 6:19-21; Titus 3:3).
It was largely for this reason that Paul’s critics thought him foolishly impractical for stressing the liberty of the Gospel where such people were concerned. Gospel liberty, they thought, should only be for Jews and God-fearers who had learned to acknowledge God’s law in their lives, but people only just weaned from pagan immorality should be subjected first of all to a period of probation before they could be properly recognised as full members of the church. Paul disagreed. He recognised that they had been pagans but was adamant they had now received a new nature. They were in Christ and Christ lived in them. If they looked at themselves as dead to their former desires and alive to God in Christ, then the Christian life now coming to maturity in them would display itself in changed behaviour.
God trusts you to live the life He’s given you. He expects you to be the person He’s made you. Just do it!