Throw Them Away

“But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” 

—Colossians 3:8.

Do you remember the first person you ever fell in love with? We all do. I was smitten with a certain girl. We dated for a period of time. We attended different events, hung out with friends, the simple stuff that couple’s do. In the end, the relationship crumbled. It wasn’t a healthy relationship, although at the time I didn’t know that. I just hurt. I wanted to fully love someone and be fully loved in return.

After the relationship ended, I found myself going back and looking at photos of us together, wondering what occurred and why I felt so much pain inside. However, time passed and the Lord my God eventually brought me the woman of my dreams. We talked, laughed, and simply enjoyed being in one another’s presence. The more time that we spent together, the more time we wanted to spend together. She became my best friend and eventually my wife. Needless to say, after we started dating and once we were married, some thing’s needed to change. The photos of my past relationship needed to be discarded. My wife wanted nothing around to remind me of her and I couldn’t blame her. After all, who wants to look at the love of your life with someone else? It’s painful to see. I didn’t want to see any photos of my wife with other guys so why would I keep photos around of me with another girl? It was hard to throw the photos away, but there was also a joy in doing so. My love for my wife motivated me. I love her and knew that she loves me. I didn’t want or need to be reminded of anyone but her. Ours was a much purer, healthy, and joyous relationship and I wanted to live my life in the knowledge of that, not in the prison of pain and memories of my past.

When we come to enter into a relationship with Christ, we bring the photos and memories of our life with sin. But, as a husband and wife are jealous for one another, so too is Christ jealous for us, jealous in a good way.

He yearns to have all of us and for us to hold on to the photos of our life with sin is a great insult to Him. We must “put them away” as our text today says. We are to “put off the old self with its practices” and “put on the new self” of Christ. We are to tear up and throw away the vestiges of our previous life, and put up the new photos that show our relationship with Him. And the photos of our old life are anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, and lying. We throw each of those practices and habits in the trash and we put on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and love (cf. 3:12-14). Each of them displays Him who is our heart’s desire. So, loved one, do not delay! Throw those photos of sin away and put up the photos of the great Lover of our soul! Amen.