Colossians 3:1-17

Colossians 3 Sermon: Put Off, Put On, Set Your Mind Above

Colossians 3 gets preached at New Year's, at membership classes, and whenever a congregation needs to hear that faith is not just believed but worn like clothing. The text's own logic makes it hard to preach lazily: the imperatives only make sense because of the indicative in verses 1 to 4, so a sermon that skips the 'raised with Christ' foundation turns into moralism, and one that stays there never gets to the ordinary anger, envy, and unforgiveness the text names by name.

The text at a glance

Verses 1 to 4 set the ground: because the Colossians have been raised with Christ and their life is now hidden with him in God, their minds and affections are to be set on what is above, not as escape from the world but as the basis for how they live in it.
Verses 5 to 11 name what must be put to death - sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which Paul calls idolatry, along with anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk - because these belong to the old self that has been stripped off like clothing.
Verse 11 pushes the point further: in the new self being renewed after the image of its Creator, the old lines of Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, slave and free no longer determine who belongs, because Christ is all and in all.
Verses 12 to 14 turn to what is put on instead - compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another, and forgiving as the Lord forgave - with love named as the bond that holds every other virtue together.
Verses 15 to 17 move from private virtue to congregational life: the peace of Christ ruling in the community, the word of Christ dwelling richly through teaching and singing, and a final rule that turns every word and deed into something done in Jesus's name with gratitude to God the Father.

Three ways a sermon can go

Raised with Christ: the ground beneath the ethics

This angle preaches verses 1 to 4 as the hinge of the whole passage - everything Paul commands afterward is possible only because something has already happened to the hearer in Christ. It costs the preacher extra care in the middle third of the sermon: the vice and virtue lists have to keep coming back to union with Christ, or the sermon quietly turns into self-improvement with a Bible verse attached.

Put off, put on: the shape of practical holiness

Here the sermon works the two lists in verses 5-9 and 12-14 as a matched pair - holiness is not vacancy but replacement, taking off one set of habits and putting on another named one. It requires the preacher to resist picking only the comfortable items on each list; verse 5's covetousness and verse 8's malice are just as much the text as verse 12's compassion.

One new humanity: unity across the old lines

Verse 11's collapse of Greek and Jew, slave and free into 'Christ is all, and in all' opens a sermon on what the gospel does to the categories a congregation still sorts people by. This angle costs the most in application, since it asks the preacher to name real, current lines in the room rather than resting on the historical ones Paul lists.

Where sermons on this text commonly slip

Things above as escape

Because verse 2 says to set your mind on things above, it is easy to preach a passage about the here and now as though it were about detachment from it. The text's own weight falls the other way - four verses of theology open onto thirteen verses of very earthly conduct, so a sermon that lingers in the heavenly and never reaches the vice and virtue lists has preached half the text.

A softened vice list

Verse 5's 'covetousness, which is idolatry' and the opening mention of sexual immorality are the hardest items on the list, and sermons often move quickly to the safer, more relational sins of anger, malice, and slander in verse 8. Naming only the sins a congregation already agrees are wrong is not the same as reading the list Paul actually wrote.

Verses 16-17 reduced to a worship-style argument

The mention of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs invites a detour into music preference that the text is not making; Paul's point is mutual teaching and admonition and thanksgiving in Jesus's name, not a style of singing. A sermon that spends its time on that detour skips the actual command in verses 16 and 17.

Five questions to ask afterwards

Did the sermon explicitly connect the commands in verses 5 and 12 back to being 'raised with Christ' in verse 1, or did the put-off, put-on lists appear without that ground?
Did the sermon read or reference the full content of verse 5, including 'covetousness, which is idolatry,' or did it stop at the more comfortable items later in the list?
Did the sermon address verse 13's forgiveness clause with any specific reference to how Christ's forgiveness shapes ours, or was forgiveness urged only as a general virtue?
Did the sermon give any content to 'the word of Christ dwell in you richly' and 'teaching and admonishing one another' in verse 16, naming what that looks like in this congregation, or pass over those verses on the way to the lists?
Did the closing application land on one identifiable action tied to verse 17's 'whatever you do, in word or deed,' or stay at the level of 'do everything for Jesus'?

Keeping the application on the ground

A landed application on this text names one item from the put-off list and one from the put-on list and ties them to something specific happening this week - a particular conversation, a particular grudge, a particular habit of speech - rather than ending on 'walk in love' or 'set your mind on Christ,' which no one can act on Monday morning. Verse 17's 'whatever you do, in word or deed' is itself an invitation to get concrete; the sermon should take that invitation rather than leave it as a closing flourish.

Name one person you are holding something against because of verse 13, and take one concrete step toward them - a call, a text, or a conversation - before next Sunday.
Pick one item from verse 8's list (anger, wrath, malice, slander, or obscene talk) that you recognize in yourself, tell one other person you are working on it this week, and ask them to check in with you.
At one meal or meeting this week, replace a generic thank-you with a specific word of thanks named in Jesus's name, per verse 17.

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