Put on New Clothes
Scripture Reading — Colossians 3:1-11
Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self.
—Colossians 3:9-10
Do you ever feel as if your family might win the award for “most dysfunctional dinner gathering”? Every family has a story of a mealtime spoiled by a relational meltdown, featuring lost tempers and stony silences. Welcome to the challenge of sinful people trying to be family to one another—it’s difficult for us broken individuals to live in community!
Our old, selfish, sinful nature gets in the way of healthy relationships, leaving them characterized by selfishness, lies, anger, and resentment. Yet Paul encourages us to set our hearts on things above. He calls us to remove the habits of our old nature that weigh us down and hurt others.
God has a better plan for our lives. We don’t need to meet all the expectations and rules of others. But we do need to show love. We need to let Christ remake and refine us day by day. It is both his gift and command to leave that broken sinful nature in our past and increasingly reflect his giving, loving, acceptance to the broken people in our lives.
Only when we show more of Christ’s love and less of ourselves will we be able to work toward healing in our relationships. The new self gets renewed daily with knowledge of the Creator. We can’t reflect Christ if we don’t know what he looks like. Are you spending time getting to know your Creator day by day?
Lord, help us every day to look more like you and to share your likeness with the people around us. May they come to know you better because they spent time with us. Amen.
About the author — Steven and Deb Koster
Steven and Deb Koster have a passion for marriages, families, and spiritual growth in the home. Both are ordained ministers in the Christian Reformed Church in North America. Steven formerly served as editor of Today and director of ReFrame's English-language outreach. Deb leads Family Fire, ReFrame’s family ministry at FamilyFire.com and on Facebook. The Kosters have three children.
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