It is intriguing what people want written on their tomb stones. This is one rather gloomy inscription: ‘Pause now stranger as you pass by / As you are now, so once was I As I am now, you soon shall be, / so prepare yourself to follow me.’ But beside it was a rough wooden plaque with these words: ‘To follow you, I’m not content, / until I know which way you went.’

That is a much more positive and compelling question for our lives: which way are we going? To heaven or to hell? To life with Christ for ever, or life without Christ for ever? (And how grim must life be for ever without Christ?) Which way are we going? What kind of life are we living now and where are we focused? Is it a life as Paul says in Colossians 3.3 *now hidden with Christ in God* a life integrated in the light and love of Jesus Christ a life that makes us more and more fully human *being renewed in the knowledge of its Creator*

Or is it a life that is getting more and more dehumanised as what we do and say and think steadily alienates us from each other and from God? Tom Wright remarks on the misery of life without God: ’Those who make evil a way of life begin to lose their humanity, begin to die while they are still alive: witness the dead eyes of the miser, the torturer, the prostitute. Paul’s constant emphasis on full, genuine Christian humanity casts a shadow over non-Christian existence. Those who choose to live without God will one day find that they have forfeited their likeness to him.

Look at v 5, the activities of the ‘earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Paul says starkly about all such behaviour ‘the wrath of God is coming’ God is justly angry with all idolatry which doesn’t just mean bowing down to a statue, it includes all the devotion that is given to created things rather than to the creator; it includes making money or sex or power or sport or anything that takes God’s place as our all consuming desire. and just in case we think v 5 is a bit lurid and does not apply to us in v 8 Paul includes some more supposedly respectable sins What about ‘anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language’? What about anything that puts up a barrier of deceit or discrimination against other human beings? Who of us is not liable to those more ‘respectable’ sins?

Whatever the sin, the answer is short and simple: get rid of it, put it to death, have nothing to do with it, root it out. It is the same as Jesus’ own teaching (Matthew 5.27-30) ‘if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away’ Jesus did not mean that we must mutilate our bodies but he did mean that we should have nothing to do with attitudes and behaviour that are plainly inappropriate for those who claim to follow him and everything to do with the old life without Jesus. He was speaking of a spiritual and moral surgery from which we flinch as we flinch from physical surgery, but we know we need it.

Or perhaps we should think of it as pruning: Christians can be seen as crab apple trees with fruit that is sour and stunted on to which is grafted a shoot of e.g. golden delicious apples Out of the new tree, above the place of grafting comes lovely fruit but lower down below the line of grafting sprout out wild crab apple suckers and they need rigorous pruning.

Living as a Christian should mean living the life of Christ in us not any more as a crab apple but as something much sweeter. How do we do that? Paul answers: ‘Set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above not on earthly things. for you died and your life is now hid with Christ in God.’ And that means that we keep looking to not what we have been, alienated from God and each other, sinful but to what we shall be and what we now are -- alive in Christ!

What about our continuing sin, then? What if 5 minutes after this service I get involved in a row at the traffic lights or I find myself gossiping about someone or I find I’m back into some other unChristlike pattern of behaviour? We have 2 choices. 1 We can reproach ourselves and condemn ourselves and call ourselves hypocrites, shams, failures, no hopers but if we say that, we are saying that when Jesus died he died alone; 2 or we can acknowledge that what we have done was wrong and untypical of the new person that we now are through Jesus Christ and we say that in faith in Jesus I died with him and was raised to new life and this sin therefore is wrong and grievous but it is not a reflection of who I truly am as God’s child.

(as we sang earlier) Behold the amazing gift of love / the Father has bestowed on us unworthy as we are / to be the children of God. Concealed as yet this honour lies / by this dark world unknown, -- a world that knew not when he came, / even God’s eternal son. High is the rank we now possess; / but higher we shall rise, though what we shall in future be / is hid from mortal eyes. We shall, we know, when he appears / reflect Christ’s image bright; for what he really, fully is / shall be our glorious sight. A hope so great and so divine / may trouble well endure; and make our lives clean from all sin / as Christ himself is pure. Those words based on a passage in the first letter of John echo our theme today in Colossians We remember who we are, children of God through faith in Christ we remember how precious we are to God because his Son died for us and we look forward to what we shall be, clean, purified in the presence of Jesus Christ, no longer believing but seeing

Isn’t that worth the pain of putting to death the expressions of the old nature which are not to be typical any more? And isn’t it good to have these lovely attitudes also to put on like a suit of new clothes, or a smart uniform? Paul writes in vv 12 ff. again affirming who Christians are ‘God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved and he says in effect, ‘dress like the people you are’ ‘clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience’ and like a belt holding all the lovely clothes together, he urges 14 ‘over all these virtues put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity.’

When someone joins the army, even before he gets to hold a rifle he is told to put on his new uniform; soon the sergeant bellows at him not to disgrace the uniform he wears. He may be a raw recruit, his marching may be deplorable his weapon handling may be dangerous, but he has put on the uniform and he is in the army and he is being trained and he does in time change. Do you see the application? These lovely virtues that Paul highlights compassion kindness humility gentleness patience, love are the uniform of the Christian. Let’s put them on! We may feel awkward about them, feel they don’t fit us well, that we don’t suit them but this is our uniform, it is how Christians are known when we live a life like Christ’s.

The choice is clear. We can live in vv 5-9 in practices which dehumanise which set up barriers between us and God, us and other people. whether it is sexual lust or slander it should be easy to see that such behaviour distances us from each other and from God. Or we can choose to cut those things out and live in the new life, putting on that which removes barriers and brings us closer to God and to each other

Which way is your life going? Remember who you are and how much you matter to God and remember where you’re going; then take out the pruning hook against anything that would deny that and put on the uniform that will show that we are Christ’s and by his help Christ like

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing praise with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.