{"id":2020,"date":"2016-11-28T09:00:36","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T14:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielgoepfrich.com\/?p=2020"},"modified":"2022-08-29T17:07:29","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T21:07:29","slug":"colossians-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/colossians-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Colossians 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Chapter three<\/strong> introduces the practical steps believers can take to make sure we do not get caught up in these other foolish things that take us away from Christ. The most important step is to keep our minds focused on Christ himself, rather than on other things (Colossians 3:1-11). Truly spiritual things are higher than the earthly things Paul\u2019s enemies focused on. Since our life is found in Christ, our focus should remain solely on him. Secondly, we can work to <em>\u201cput to death whatever in [our] nature belongs to the earth.\u201d<\/em> This includes any <em>\u201cfleshly desires which do battle against the soul\u201d<\/em> (1 Peter 2:11). These things bring God\u2019s wrath against unbelievers (Ephesians 5:6), so we should not be surprised that he hates them in believers as well. We are to <em>\u201cput off the old man with its practices\u201d<\/em> and replace that sinful nature <em>\u201cwith the new man that is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the one who created it\u201d<\/em> (see Ephesians 4:22-24). This is possible for every believer, no matter one\u2019s background, ethnicity, or social status.<\/p><p>Because of our new status in Christ \u2013 <em>\u201celect of God, holy and dearly loved\u201d<\/em> \u2013 we should live out Christ\u2019s love for our fellow believers (see Philippians 2:1-11; Ephesians 4:1-3). As he wrote in Ephesians 5:18-21 about submitting to the Holy Spirit, Paul encouraged the Colossians to build up one another with encouragement from Scripture. Ultimately, no matter what we do, we should do it as agents of the Lord Jesus. Assuming that the Colossians would read the other letter (Ephesians) as well, Paul gave a shortened version of his list of example relationships found in Ephesians 5:22 \u2013 6:9, giving only one line each to wives, husbands, children, and masters. He did write a longer encouragement to slaves, possibly due to the situation of Onesimus returning to Philemon in Colossae along with his letter at this same time.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chapter three introduces the practical steps believers can take to make sure we do not get caught up in these other foolish things that take us away from Christ. The most important step is to keep our minds focused on Christ himself, rather than on other things (Colossians 3:1-11). Truly spiritual things are higher than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[19,30,31,29],"class_list":["post-2020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-studies","tag-1peter","tag-colossians","tag-ephesians","tag-philippians"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"gutentor_comment":0,"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"widget-thumbnail":false,"rpwe-thumbnail":false,"woocommerce_thumbnail":false,"woocommerce_single":false,"woocommerce_gallery_thumbnail":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Daniel Goepfrich","author_link":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/author\/dgoepfrich\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Chapter three introduces the practical steps believers can take to make sure we do not get caught up in these other foolish things that take us away from Christ. The most important step is to keep our minds focused on Christ himself, rather than on other things (Colossians 3:1-11). Truly spiritual things are higher than&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theologyisforeveryone.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}