Holiness of Tongue and Temper – Sins Seldom Faced

Colossians 3:8-11 (NKV)

Gordon E. Johnson
Rio Grande Bible Institute

Without breaking stride Paul addresses a new level of sins and just as directly condemns them as not becoming the new creature in Christ (Gal. 6:14,15; 2 Cor. 5:17).  We can quite readily accept his judgment on fornication, uncleanness as unbecoming the follower of Christ, but Paul sees no difference between these sins of the past and the sins of tongue and temper.  We all have a tendency to grade or evaluate sins from the worst (Col. 3: 5-7) to the least or most commonly accepted (3: 8, 9). "But now you must put off all of these" (3: 8), a direct reference to the earlier sins to which he quickly adds a new list of sins seldom faced by the believer.

You must strip off the old rags of speech.  To appear in a wedding of dearest friends in dirty old work clothes would be our last thought.  Such attire would be totally out of place. Paul is saying that sins of the tongue and temper would equal such a cultural outrage. Anger -- the silent slow burn and wrath -- the sudden outburst –stands under the same judgment of God as the earlier sins of immorality (3: 5-7).  He follows up with malice -- revenge and secret ill will, blasphemy -- abusive and slanderous speech against others, filthy language – foul and obscene language. All these must be as decisively disposed of as filthy rags.

To these sins of the tongue can be added any hurtful language, cutting and degrading references to others, gossip, slander, self defense, gestures of the same. My Irish mothers spoke often of a "joke with a jag."  Little wonder that James says: "With it (tongue) we bless our God and Father, and with it, we curse men . . . . Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so" (James 3:9, 10).

Truth becomes the norm. To lie to one another is treachery itself, since salvation was the putting off of the old man (same word as Rom. 6:6, "knowing this that our old man was crucified with Christ"). Here is Paul's reference to the dynamic of the Cross, our union with Christ in death and resurrection where and when the old was ended and the new began.  These injunctions to put off (8) and put on (10) are not our ultimate doing, but what he did there at the Cross; we now consent to this truth cordially and fully. We take our stand in faith on that release from the old.

To this stand by faith, Paul adds the on going renewing of the new man (10). The new man is both new in time, being born again in regeneration (Titus 3: 5:1 Peter 1: 23) and new in quality of life, the risen life of Christ. This is the blessed work of the Holy Spirit that produces in us the holiness of tongue and temper, evidence of the Christ life. This is the metamorphosis that Paul defines in 2 Cor. 3:18: "But we all with open face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord."

In this very union with Christ with which Col. 3:1 began, we live in a transformed world; relationships are annulled and a new one is introduced. "Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all." We have seen in the last two studies, zero tolerance for the basest sins and for the seldom faced sins of tongue and temper.  But all of this is based not on our best efforts, however weak and doomed to failure as they are, but on an abiding reality that we died to the old and the New is operating now on the basis of the Cross and the Holy Spirit.

Gordon E. Johnson
April 8, 2006