Put to death therefore your members which [are] upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, vile passions, evil lust, and unbridled desire, which is idolatry.
Paul has just told the Colossians that they died, and that their life is now hidden with Christ in God. Then he names five ugly sins and tells them to kill those sins — so if a believer has already died, what is left to put to death?
The word "therefore" ties the command to what came before: what the believer already is becomes the reason for what he must now do. Where the ESV reads "what is earthly in you," older translations read "your members which are on the earth." The commentators below work from that older wording.
The Apostle shows them that their life is hidden with Christ in God. So they have the most perfect security. But it matches Christ's own place: hidden, not yet displayed. You are dead. You have this new life, even Christ. You are dead and risen with Him. So put to death your members which are on the earth.
The command is not to die, but to put to death. That difference decides whether the Christian struggles from weakness or acts from strength.
The apostle does not allow that we have any life here. He talks of our members: "Put to death therefore your members which are on the earth." Notice how different this is from dying to sin. Putting to death is the opposite — it is power. If I say, "I must die," that means I am still alive. Christ having died, we have died... Now I have the place of power to put to death every evil the flesh would produce. You are dead; therefore put to death your members. If you let them act, it is the flesh.
"Members" normally means hands, eyes and feet. Here the word means something else.
You have been urged to put to death — that is, a very practical matter — your members which are on the earth. These are not the parts of your body. They are the moral members of a sinful fallen nature: the ungoverned lusts and passions of the body. Given free rein, they lead to the dishonouring of the physical members of the body.
The five sins Paul names are not polite faults. Yet he addresses that list to people who are dead and risen with Christ.
What a humbling thought! People so blessed — dead, as we have said, and risen with Christ — are here told to put to death what is most shameful and shameless. It is really what man is; and that is the only nature we had as children of Adam. These are, in the strikingly forceful language of the Spirit of God here, called the members of the man.
The last item sounds milder than the rest, yet Paul gives it the harshest label. Greed is not just wanting too much; it puts something else where God belongs.
The love of money is such a deadly root of evils that one danger comes first: its power to draw people away from the faith. This may help explain the strong language in Ephesians 5:5. There a covetous person is called an idolater, just as Colossians 3:5 declares covetousness to be idolatry... The love of money is at least included in that unsatisfied greed which becomes an absorbing, idolatrous passion that shuts out true homage to the true God.
Escaping one sin on this list is no guarantee of escaping the next.
If sexual sin is no special trap for us, its twin brother covetousness may be. Let us beware. It has been truly said: "The slippery path of sin is always walked with faster and faster steps. The first sin tends to weaken in the soul the authority and power of the one thing that can stop us committing greater sins. That is the Word of God, along with the awareness of His presence, which gives the Word all its practical power over us."
Commentators differ on how the command works over time. One reads the force of the original verb as a decisive, finished act:
They are called members because they are things that cling to the flesh. Since we have crucified the flesh, let us also put to death all of its activities. The force of the Greek verb here is to have this matter settled once, not to have to keep on doing it. The child of God should judge these evils — sexual sin, uncleanness, passion, and so on — so completely that they have no influence over him at all.
Another sees an ongoing discipline, because the body and its tendencies remain:
As to the "members which are on the earth," they are not said to be crucified. The old mortal body and its members, prone to evil, are still present, and they have to be subdued... To mortify is to put to death. We cannot put to death what is already dead. Mortification, then, is a continual killing, if one may say so, of the members and of their deeds.
- Therefore — The command rests on a fact already true: dead and risen with Christ, your life hidden with Him. The order never reverses.
- Power — The command is not to die but to kill. Dying is not yours to do. Putting to death is what the new life gives you strength for.
- Members — Not hands and eyes, but the lusts and passions that cling to the flesh and will use the body if allowed.
- Idolatry — Greed puts something else in God's place: a craving nothing satisfies, which shuts out true homage to the true God.
- Vigilance — Escaping one sin on the list is no safety. The first indulgence weakens the Word's grip on the soul, and each step down the path comes faster.
On account of which things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.
Paul has just told the Colossians to put a list of sins to death, and now he gives the reason: these are the things that bring God's wrath. That raises two questions — who does this wrath fall on, and what does it mean for believers?
(Note: the ESV puts the phrase "upon the sons of disobedience" in a footnote here. The writers below quote older translations that keep it in the verse.)
The words "on account of these" tie verse 6 back to verse 5. Those sins are not just bad habits. They are the things God judges. One writer shows that being dead and risen with Christ does not soften God's view of sin.
Because you are dead, because you have this new life, even Christ, and so are dead and risen with Him, put to death what is earthly in you. And what is that? Sexual sin, impurity, uncontrolled passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry. That is what they — and what we — really are. It is a wonderfully strong and pointed way of presenting the truth. God is not mocked. Grace does not hold back His judgment — not in the verdict of His Word now, and not later, when He carries it out.
Why "sons"? One writer explains that the word points to likeness, not to birth.
Sons are those who show the typical or distinctive traits of their fathers. The Bible often uses this idea of representing a parent in moral matters. So the "sons of disobedience" (Eph. 2:2) are people whose conduct shows disobedience as clearly as a son resembles his father.
Disobedience here has a particular sense. One writer ties it to truth that has been heard and refused.
"The sons of disobedience" are those who have heard the truth, but have rejected it. The Jews in Paul's day were, as a class, the sons of disobedience in a special way, but the same is fast becoming true of the Christian world. Yet God will judge people for their wicked deeds, though the crowning sin will be disobedience to the Gospel.
That last line raises a question. Are people judged only for refusing the gospel? One writer answers no.
We think it very unsound and dangerous to teach that people will only be judged for rejecting the gospel… Scripture says the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience because of these things — and not merely because of their rejection of the gospel. (Col. 3:5-6)
This warning also answers a popular half-truth about God's love.
Scripture plainly declares God's wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people. It will surely fall on the children of disobedience. Rom. 1:18; Col. 3:6… How pointless, then, for false teachers to speak only of the love of God, and to say that because "God is love" there will be mercy for all in the end. There is grace for all now, but there is just as surely a day of wrath coming, for God is righteous.
So where does this leave a Christian? One writer points to what salvation changed.
It is because of these things that God's wrath comes on the ungodly, who are characterized as children of disobedience (v.6). These things therefore certainly have no place in a believer's life. Before being saved, we walked and lived in them, but under the wrath of God! Christ's salvation totally changes this.
Another writer puts the same truth as a matter of shame.
You walked in those things, he says, when you lived in them. But the walk must follow the character of the life. What a disgrace to walk in things in which we do not live!
- Cause. The sins listed in verse 5 are the stated reason God's wrath comes.
- Character. "Sons of disobedience" means likeness, not birth. Their conduct shows disobedience the way a son shows his father.
- Deeds. God judges people for these deeds, not only for refusing the gospel. Yet rejecting the truth once heard is the crowning sin.
- Certainty. God offers grace to all now. His Word already declares His verdict on sin, and the day of wrath is still coming, because God is righteous.
- Contrast. Believers once lived there, under that wrath. Christ has given them a new life, so the walk must now match it.