Col 3:1-11 | TNotes | STEP | Summary for Col 3:1-11: 3:1-11 Paul summons the Colossians to a new way of thinking that results in a new lifestyle. 3:1 set your sights on the realities of heaven: Christians live on earth, but because they have been raised with Christ, their true being is oriented to the spiritual realm over which Christ rules. In contrast, the rules and regulations of the false teachers focused on the earthly realm (2:22 ).

Summary for Col 3:1-11: 3:1-11 ^a Paul summons the Colossians to a new way of thinking that results in a new lifestyle. 3:1 ^b set your sights on the realities of heaven: Christians live on earth, but because they have been raised with Christ, their true being is oriented to the spiritual realm over which Christ rules. In contrast, the rules and regulations of the false teachers focused on the earthly realm (2:22 ^c).
Summary for Col 3:3-4: 3:3-4 ^d you died to this life: See 2:20 ^e.

• What is now hidden will one day be revealed (cp. 1:26 ^f). We cannot now see that Christ is enthroned at the right hand of God and that we have been raised to new life with Christ. But by faith in the Good News, we know that these things are true. When Christ returns in glory, his supremacy will be evident to all and our relationship to him will be a direct experience.
3:5 ^g So put to death: Our death to this life (3:3 ^h) must be made real in the way that we live day by day.

• a greedy person is an idolater: Greedy people pursue the objects of their greed—money, sex, power, possessions—in the place of God, with the hope of finding satisfaction in those things.
3:6 ⁱ coming: Some manuscripts read coming on all who disobey him. In the Greek text, these words occur verbatim in Eph 5:6 ^j, so it is possible that an early scribe added them here, either intentionally or accidentally.
3:8 ^k get rid of (literally take off): Taking off clothes is a metaphor for ridding our lives of practices that interfere with our walk with the Lord (see Rom 13:12 ^l; Eph 4:22 ^m, 25 ⁿ; Heb 12:1 ^o; Jas 1:21 ^p; 1 Pet 2:1 ^q).
Summary for Col 3:9-10: 3:9-10 ^r your old sinful nature ... your new nature: Paul contrasts old and new identities (see also Rom 5:12-21 ^s; 6:6 ^t; Eph 4:22-24 ^u). Believers strip off their old life and put on Christ’s new life, allowing him to be Lord and to guide the way they live.
3:11 ^v barbaric, uncivilized: Literally Barbarian, Scythian. The Greeks mocked people from other cultures for their inability to speak Greek well, claiming they could only say “bar bar” (hence the word barbarian). The Scythians were tribes that had settled on the north coast of the Black Sea and were widely viewed as fierce and crude (see Josephus, Against Apion 2.38). All such distinctions do not matter in our relationship with God through Christ.