Colossians 3:9-10
Thoughts from Katie Fox
Dive Deeper
“Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”
Colossians 3:9-10
Behind the Scenes
There is a scene from John Chapter 18 where Jesus is being interviewed by the Roman official Pontius Pilate immediately before his crucifixion. Jesus states that everyone on the side of truth listens to him. Pilate responds, “What is truth?”
This story has always been thought-provoking for me. We live in a world that seems to be full of lies and competing truths. It can be tough to figure out the real truth. For several centuries up until recent decades, most leading thinkers believed that both the natural world and human culture operated according to certain rules or truths. Using reason, humans could discover these truths and use them to improve the world. These thinkers believed that this concept not only applied to sciences such as chemistry but also to areas such as philosophy and history.
In recent decades, after a century of wars and conflicts over competing truths and philosophies, thinkers are increasingly abandoning this notion of truth. They believe that truth is impossible to discover. Most of what is claimed to be truth is, in reality, one group of people using power to enforce their version of truth. Using this philosophy, Pilate’s question asked two thousand years ago still stands: “What is truth?”
As believers in Jesus, we Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the truth. God did not leave us to stumble in the dark. His Word revealed in the Bible and in the life of Jesus Christ provides truth for our world. As image bearers of God and using Jesus as our example, we are called to learn this truth and live it out in our lives.
Today’s verses come from a section in the book of Colossians where the Apostle Paul is encouraging believers to embrace their new lives under Jesus. Among other things, he urges us not to lie. We are not trying to meet some legal rule so that we can earn God’s love or our salvation. We already have that! Paul explains that lying belonged to our old self. We have a new self that is being healed and renewed. Each day, with God’s help, our new self looks more and more like Jesus. Jesus is truth; there is no lie or dishonesty about Him. As we grow to be more like Him, our lives are marked by increasing honesty and authenticity.
Make it Real
Every day we have a choice. We can choose to embrace our new lives of love and freedom by following Jesus and learning to be like Him, or we can choose to live like our old self. Living lives marked by truth is part of our new life, our new identity. How often do we lie? Little white lies often turn into big lies. And we must keep track of our lies, which often lead to multiple lies.
There are many depths to this life of truth. We might not tell a bald-faced lie today, but is the face we present to the world representative of our true self? Or is it a mask? Christian author Brennan Manning explains how we often construct a false self that is based on what the world considers important instead of our true selves as known by God. Often, we buy into the lie and start believing in our false self. Why? Maybe it is because we dislike what we see as our true self.
If, however, you have an identity that is based on Christ, your old self with all its failures, all its lies, and all its sins is gone. You have a new life, a new identity, that is loved by God. That is truth. Anything else is a lie. So, living a life of truth is much more than the avoidance of fibbing. It means accepting your new Christ-given identity and living a life that is authentic, based on God’s love, and free. Our commitment to living this way everyday embraces the truth found in God’s wisdom and love.
Johnny Spence
ACF Devo Team
End in Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us a way out of the darkness and deceit into which we were born. That is a hopeless, self-fulfilling, and unsatisfying place to live. I pray that today as I pick up my Bible you would show me a new truth about your love for me that I may continue to remove piece-by-piece the stone from my hardened heart. Shine your light into the dark areas that I might put away my deceitful desires and step into the new life that you have for me. I love you. Amen!