Growing Past the Mess
I have some favorite pictures of my kids doing ridiculous things. Goofy faces, messes, little bits of trouble. Paint cans, so many spilled paint cans. It’s cute. It’s expected. It’s part of growing up.
But if my kids got into a can of paint right now, it wouldn’t be cute. I’d have questions and I’d be upset. The mess stops being cute at some point, because the growing up was supposed to happen.
So I wonder: does God’s patience work the same way? Does He ever get tired of us? Is there a point where our mess becomes too much?
We Are a New Creation, So Why Act Like Our Old Self?
Recently I’ve talked a bunch about grace. Truth is, you can’t impress God with your behavior. You can’t earn a relationship with Him through the right actions. It’s His love that holds us, and we respond with faith. All true.
But taken too far, we’ll believe that God doesn’t care how we live at all. That’s not true either. We’re told to follow Jesus, to take on His character. So that means we must grow. Yes, we’re babies, but babies grow.
Paul tells the church in Colossae they already have the fullness of Christ. Their old self was nailed to the cross. They’re a new creation. And then he adds instructions, because being new comes with a shape:
So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires… But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds.
No one is exempt from that list. But in Christ, it’s not who we are anymore. Why would you go back to a nature you don’t have anymore?
Vision, Not Fear
Here’s where most preaching stops: don’t do this, or else. Fear-based religion. But meaningful change never actually starts with fear. You didn’t get married because you were afraid of being alone. You got clean because you saw a better story for yourself, not because you were scared of dying. Our human stories are rarely impacted or motivated by fear.
So why would God’s story for us start with fear? It doesn’t, even if that’s how we’ve heard it preached.
Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.
Paul isn’t just naming what to avoid. He’s casting a vision for something better. Rage or mercy. Slander or kindness. Malicious behavior or gentleness. Which one actually gives you joy, the vice or the virtue?
This Only Works Together
Look at the list of virtues and each one replaces a vice. There’s a Christ-centered attitude of life change that pushes out the harmful behavior. In Christ, the virtue is the antidote to the vice.
Greed is pushed out by humility. Anger is pushed out by mercy. Slander is pushed out by peace. This is the better vision God has for us.
Paul doesn’t stop with the individual. He shifts to community: bear with each other, forgive each other, clothe yourselves with love, let peace rule your hearts. As NT Wright put it, “the gospel isn’t the story of us getting saved from the world, it’s the story of all of us getting saved FOR the world.”
Honestly, I’d rather skip this part. People are messy and hard to trust and aggravating. My life would be easier without the church. But my life is better with it. Left to myself, I’m probably some version of the old self that moved out a long time ago. What grows in me here, with you, is what makes me look more like Jesus.
Community is the only place where we get to practice things like love and forgiveness. We can only become God’s best when we do this together. We can only achieve God’s vision for humanity when we commit to growing together.
Three honest steps for this week:
Sit with which vice has the strongest pull on you right now.
Name the virtue that might be the healing balm pulling you the other way.
Ask someone in your community to help get you there, because you cannot get there alone.
That’s the whole point. This was never a solo project. Maybe we find out who we become when we sit together at the table.
