Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. (Col 3:1-5)Tell me, does that sound reasonable to you? I would say, for the vast majority of humans, that sounds absolutely nonsensical. “Set your mind on the things above.” Yeah, right. “You have died.” Really? “Consider the members of your earthly body as dead to …” That’s just crazy. But Paul is often thought of as … counterintuitive … or just crazy.
That last verse says that something “amounts to idolatry.” What does it refer to? Well, the scholars tell me it uses a definite article and refers certainly to the term that precedes it. So Paul is saying that greed is idolatry. How is greed “idolatry”?
Greed is defined as “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (such as money) than is needed.” Is that idolatry? Paul says it “amounts to” it. How? Several ways. Greed says, “God has not given me what I want, so I want more.” It says, “God is not reliable; the things I want are.” God says to love Him with our whole being and we say, “I love these more than Him.” God says, “Love your neighbor as yourself” and we say, “I love myself more than anyone else.” Greed worships the created rather than the Creator.
But when you think about it, isn’t greed behind the rest of that list? Sexual immorality is the pursuit of pleasure apart from God. Impurity is the contamination of desire. Passion is desire ungoverned by God. Evil desire is desire directed away from God. Greed is desire that enthrones something other than God. All these sins are predicated on the selfish desire for more. Therefore, all these sins amount to idolatry.
Paul’s solution, then, is “consider the members of your earthly body as dead.” We have died with Christ; live like that. We think our lives are wrapped up in this world, but Paul says our life is in Christ and is yet to be revealed. Paul says, “You have 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” (Col 3:9-10).
Dead to sin. Dead to this world. Alive in Christ. It’s counterintuitive and it is certainly countercultural. However, it’s biblical. So, will we choose to pursue “your best life now” or will we “keep seeking the things above”? You’ll have to ask yourself that question.
Very early in my Christian life, “keep seeking the things above” and “set your mind on the things above” became my “life verses” of sorts, supplemented later with “seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness ….” These admonishments convicted me as a new creature in Christ that my mindset, priorities, ambitions, and values must change drastically from the worldly focus I had developed up to that point in my life. (I have, of course, been working on that shift all these decades.)
ReplyDeleteI can definitely see greed behind a host of sins, as it teams up with a pride of life and a sense of entitlement to seek ultimate self-indulgence outside of the good gifts from our Provider and Caregiver--in complete opposition to “deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me.”
Yes, the Christian life is counterintuitive and countercultural, as you say--and I rejoice that it is, for my former life without Christ was not set to end well.
I would have assumed that "which amounts to idolatry" would have referred to the whole list because the list is what amounts to idolatry, not the individual items in the list. Maybe if the application of idolatry was written in parenthesis after greed I could see it applying only to greed, but not in my reading of the English language as written.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I fail to always live as dead to sin as I am. Curse this old man hanging on like the molted skin of a reptile.
David, I thought the same thing you did, but I realized long ago that the sentence structures, punctuation, grammar, etc., throughout the Bible do not match modern standards (and definitely not the proper style I was taught 50 years ago at Katie Gibbs!). Therefore, I accept Stan’s explanation clearing up the ambiguity. I also found this brief commentary on Col. 3:5 (which uses “covetousness” in place of “greed”):
DeleteGod lists the first four sins without comment but provides “covetousness” with a short commentary following it — “which is idolatry.” The essence of covetousness is idolatry. We substitute something other than God in his place and worship it.
P.S. I had to laugh at the mind picture from your final sentence! :)
Every now and then I have a way with words. Thank you.
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