Doesn’t it seem a bit ironic that after telling them to avoid people who have lists of rules to obey he would then create a list of rules of his own for us to follow? Paul was a teacher and teachers often depend on lists – especially lists that people can easily memorize and use as guides for their behavior. Of course, the shorter the better but sometimes Paul had fairly lengthy lists that we often had to recite in Sunday School. There are negative lists:

Romans 1:  They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.

1 Corinthians 5: But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

1 Corinthian 6: Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5: The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Ephesians 5: But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.

But there were also lists of positives as well:

Galatians 5: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Colossians 3: Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

There were lists of gifts: 

1 Corinthians 12: The Holy Spirit is given to each of us in a special way. That is for the good of all. To some people the Spirit gives a message of wisdom. To others the same Spirit gives a message of knowledge. To others the same Spirit gives faith. To others that one Spirit gives gifts of healing. To others he gives the power to do miracles. To others he gives the ability to prophesy. To others he gives the ability to tell the spirits apart. To others he gives the ability to speak in different kinds of languages they had not known before. And to still others he gives the ability to explain what was said in those languages. All the gifts are produced by one and the same Spirit. He gives gifts to each person, just as he decides.

Romans 12:  For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

Yes, there are lists but we are not to live by lists and rules. We’ve talked about this before when Paul took the rules he was given by the Council in Jerusalem and modified them for the church.  What were their rules?

Abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.

What were the rules that Paul delivered to the Galatians?

“All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor.”

He was not interested in their having to conform to Jewish rules, was he? Yet, he made his own lists of rules for believers. Did that mean he was actually still thinking that lists of rules were essential? Are we constantly to be checking ourselves as if we were still under the Law with its long lists of rules and regulations.

Think about it this way.

First, people who are new at something need more lists than people who have been working toward maturity for a long time. Most of Paul’s converts were new to faith and to this different way of life. He could actually have had even more rules but he tended toward a few that were in every list – including sexual immorality, greed, slander and dissension. Those were not only fatal for individuals but were infectious for the whole. Paul saw the positive lists as the equivalent of playing the scales for someone new to the piano. It is often tedious, uncreative, and laborious but we cannot move to the next level unless we have mastered those few things. Think of Paul’s lists not as comprehensive – whether good or negative – but as scales that we play until they become second nature to us. In fact, that is exactly how he puts it. They become part of a nature that is not our original nature but the nature of Christ.

Second, in time when they become almost second nature we understand that our life in Christ is not simply avoiding certain things and putting on other things. It has changed – sometimes imperceptibly – from individual rules to a life that Paul describes as being under the rule of Christ. We move from deliberately avoiding the negative attitudes and behaviors Paul lists to being focused on exhibiting and practicing the attitudes he describes as those that show evidence of the Spirit in our lives.

But there is a third step that is somewhat like muscle memory. We have done something for so long that we no longer have to think about it consciously. Those lists have become a part of us. What is the Boy Scout oath? “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.” Underneath that were 12 points that were a goal for every Scout and the object was that the Law and the daily goals would become such a part of the boy that they would stay with him as part of his nature for the rest of his life. He would not have to recite them each day. He would simply begin to live in a different way without even thinking about it as a set of rules by which he had to abide.

Great athletes work toward that. They do not have to think about how to react. Their body has been wired over time to do something that took years to develop. They do it naturally. It has become second nature to them. That is what Paul is after but he knows that we start with lists that over time become an almost unconscious way of life. Remember what C.S. Lewis said about a truly humble man? He is totally unaware of his own humility.

“He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.”

But there was something else about these rules that is important to notice. They were specific rules intended to keep the believers from becoming the heretics we looked at last week – the Gnostics and those who considered themselves special. While they were weighted down with their own rules and regulations they considered themselves above the standards of others. They had their minds on things that were incomprehensible to merely ordinary people. They had their minds on “things above” and could not be bothered with the normal life of the uninitiated. So, certain things were permitted to them that were not to others. Among them was sexual immorality, impurity and evil desires. Their physical life was inconsequential and unimportant. What mattered was the life of the mind, the intellect, the great thoughts and actions of important people. Their self-imposed disciplines were making them into superior people who did not need the restrictions Paul imposed.  So, Paul’s list is not random or just a general list of things to avoid. It is a way of becoming someone other than the heretics.

He is telling them to avoid the behavior of the elite so they do not fall into the trap of the elite. Oftentimes it is behavior that leads to belief and not the other way around. If we begin to act like others we soon begin to believe like them. We are taken captive by them.

The word for “captive” here is used in other places to describe someone who first separates a sheep from the flock and then steals them. He does not overwhelm but isolates – either through weakness or distraction but the result is the same – death. That is why Scripture is so insistent on our being part of a body of believers – even when we may not agree with everything. It is the danger of people leaving the church because the preaching is not their style or the music changes or they feel they are not being fed. When, in fact, they are sometimes being drawn away and isolated from the very thing they need most – the fellowship of other believers. It is the danger of being duped by lies and fabrications.  Did you read that 19 of the top 20 Christian Facebook pages in 2019 were run by Eastern European troll farms overseas, The data released by the MIT Technology Review shows the vast spread of Facebook misinformation is largely powered by coordinated efforts among foreign professionals working together to spread provocative content in the U.S.

These groups, based largely in Kosovo and Macedonia, have been particularly successful when it comes to targeting American Christians. Collectively, their Christian Facebook pages reach about 75 million users a month — an audience 20 times the size of the next largest Christian Facebook page.

We are to set our minds on things above Paul writes. The word for mind here is not one for mere intellectual speculation or musing about something. It is thought that results in action. It is setting our minds on things above that we fully intend to put into practice.  Our mind is not to be in the clouds or in the gutter but to be focused on what Paul will soon define as the things above.

So, the “things above” on which we are to set our minds are not the same as those of the elite. Rather, they are the things of Christ and while Christ is seated at the right hand of God he is not detached from the world of ordinary believers. We are not to escape the world or to create a pie in the sky bye and bye idea about our world. The things above for us are those things that make us even more productive and of benefit to those around us. Again, let me quote C.S. Lewis: “If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. Aim at heaven and you get earth thrown in; aim at earth and you get neither.”

One of the dangers of turning a new nature into nothing but a Christian ethic is people have different definitions of the Christian ethic and when they disagree they too often consume each other. A so-called Christian ethic is no substitute for death and resurrection. It is a weak imitation of a new life. We want to live a Christians ethic or a Christian value system but we cannot – and we misrepresent the gospel when we lead people to believe they can. We teach “possibility thinking” or some carefully chosen non-negotiables to define us instead of death, resurrection and a new nature. The life of Christ is not an ethic or humanly defined set of beliefs. It is not a value system.  How often do we hear people tell us what it means to be a real Christian? Typically, it is the same as how they have defined their own thinking. No, the Christian life is being ruled by the peace of Christ and the more we encourage people to live like “real Christians” – however we define it – the more we encourage failure, frustration and eventually anger. I read an article by Richard Florida titled “The Geography of Hate” that points out those parts of the country that are the most identified as religious and Christian are also those most filled with hate groups.

“But not all people and places hate equally; some regions of the United States — at least within some sectors of their populations — are virtual hate hatcheries. What is the geography of hate groups and organizations? Why are some regions more susceptible to them? Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, higher concentrations of hate groups are positively associated with states where individuals report that religion plays an important role in their everyday lives.”

This is what happens when we no longer teach and abide by the virtues Paul writes of here and other places – compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Instead, we have substituted a false Gospel and a definition of Christian that has infected the body of the church. It is our spiritual pandemic. We have become Christians who have attached themselves to the weak and miserable principles of the world and have lost our witness in the world. I have thought long and hard about how to describe this and the word symbiosis comes to mind. I read this definition recently in a science journal:

 “Organisms in a mutualistic relationship evolved together. Each was part of the other’s environment, so as they adapted to their environment, they “made use of” each other in a way that benefited both.”

That is what Paul was warning the Colossians about. They were not being hijacked or overwhelmed by false doctrines. They were being captivated by a false Gospel that allowed them to behave like unbelievers but to consider themselves believers while doing those very things. They were acting in a way that was symbiotic. Their misbehavior had become part of their Christian ethic.

As Paul says in Galatians, he needed a tutor when he was young but the tutor’s purpose was to bring him to Christ. He needed training wheels. In the same way we need rules and lists when we are young in Christ but the goal is always maturity. It is not scales but concerts. It is not training wheels but freedom to explore. It is always to develop a second nature that is ruled by the peace of Christ. After all, that is Paul’s whole intent in making these lists, isn’t it? It is his hope that one day he will present a perfect and glorious body of saints to Christ.