Words for People of the Resurrection

Colossians 3:1-10

The Real real You

Here's Sunday's sermon, and with it a few thoughts from the cutting room floor. In literary terms, Paul's ethical exhortation here, and especially the list of vices in verses 8 and 9, follows a literary form with a distinguished ancient pedigree, known as a "paraenesis." As a rhetorical device, paraenesis was pretty common among the moral philosophers of the ancient world, whereby they would exhort followers of their particular philosophical "path," by advising them on how best to follow that path. Paul seems to have co-opted the rhetoric of the moral philosophers here, though his ethical case rests not on some dead philosophy (see v. 2:8), but on the living reality that is ours through the death and resurrection of Christ.

But the thing that I wish I could have spent a whole other sermon on is the fact that the paraenetic exhortation of verses 8 and 9 focuses particularly on right speaking: slanderous talk, malicious talk, filthy talk, and deceitful talk are all listed among the dead practices of the "old self." Our everyday speech is one of the fundamental starting places where we genuinely begin to live out our new reality as people of the resurrection.

And this is not for nothing. Because Paul's paraenesis is all wrapped up in the Image of God theology that he alludes to in verse 10, the image of God theology that underlies his whole understanding of the resurrection itself and its meaning for us as Christ-followers (see 1 Corinthians 15:49). In the resurrected Jesus, we see the true Image of God, who himself fulfills the calling and reveals the destiny of humanity, in the ultimate fulfillment of what God meant when he said in Genesis 1:27-28: "Let us make man in our image." (Look at how Paul describes Jesus in Colossians 1:15ff., if you want more fodder for this canon).

Jesus is the Image of God, and in him, and through union with him by faith in him, the Image of God-- our calling and our destiny as men and women--is restored in us. This is deep stuff. But not too deep, because Paul seems to say: you want to follow this living philosophy? Then let it start with your plain, everyday, down-to-earth speech.

Because in the "Image of God" text that underlies this passage, God creates the world by speaking, and then creates humanity in his image and likeness. Without getting too technical, the idea in Genesis seems to be that somehow, as creatures made in the Image of God, we are called, in a very limited sense, to carry on and extend God's creative work in the world. And just like God created the world through speech, so too human speech has the capacity to "create worlds" -- the true or false, whole or broken, healing or hurting realities that we inhabit, and that are created for us through the everyday act of speech.

So: if the Image of God is indeed being renewed and restored in us through the creative work of Christ by his Spirit, it's no surprise that Paul says we should look for it especially in wholesome, healing, truthful and salt-seasoned speech. Because there we begin to discover our creative calling as creatures made in the Image of the Creator who brings reality into being by his flawless Word.