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Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry. Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self,

St. Paul slips multiple meanings into this passage from his letter to the Church at Colossae. He mentions lying to one another. There is a lot there.

We have the direct meaning, God’s commandment against falsehood. Lying is consistently condemned throughout Scripture. The prohibition against lying aligns with the character of God, who is truth, and the nature of Jesus Christ, who exemplifies truthfulness.

The Christian community was, and still is, obligated to reflect the moral and ethical standards expected of believers.

Paul is reminding the Colossians that honesty was crucial for maintaining unity and trust within the Christian community. Early Christians were under scrutiny and persecution, making integrity vital for their witness. That precept applies today because we believers remain under intense scrutiny. Evil people just wait for us to prove ourselves liars, untruthful, for if we are liars about little things we are liars about God.

The second aspect concerning lying is against lying to ourselves. If we have failed to put aside those things St. Paul warns against, immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed we have not truly removed the old and have not become the new self in Christ Jesus, we remain stuck and apart from Him and the community He created, the Holy Church.

Jesus talks about a person who deceives most of all himself. He thinks he has it made; he is set for life. The man forgets his morality and the call to live differently.

As we begin again this new week let us focus on being that new creation, living the new self we really are. Our call is to recognize not just what we must not do, what we must not be, but to understand who we really are because of Jesus. If we do that, we will truly live.