Daily Reading for Personal Growth, 40 Days with God

Put On the New Self

3 Therefore if you have been raised with Christ [to a new life, sharing in His resurrection from the dead], keep seeking the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.^{(A) 2} Set your mind and keep focused habitually on the things above [the heavenly things], not on things that are on the earth [which have only temporal value]. ³ For you died [to this world], and your [new, real] life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ, who is our life, ^[a]appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

⁵ So put to death and deprive of power the evil longings of your earthly body [with its sensual, self-centered instincts] immorality, impurity, sinful passion, evil desire, and greed, which is [a kind of] idolatry [because it replaces your devotion to God]. ⁶ Because of these [sinful] things the [divine] wrath of God is coming ^[b]on the sons of disobedience [those who fail to listen and who routinely and obstinately disregard God’s precepts], ⁷ and in these [sinful things] you also once walked, when you were habitually living in them [without the knowledge of Christ]. ⁸ But now rid yourselves [completely] of all these things: anger, rage, malice, slander, and obscene (abusive, filthy, vulgar) language from your mouth. ⁹ Do not lie to one another, for you have stripped off the old self with its evil practices, ¹⁰ and have put on the new [spiritual] self who is being continually renewed in true knowledge in the image of Him who created the new self—^{(B) 11} a renewal in which there is no [distinction between] Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, [nor between nations whether] ^[c]barbarian or ^[d]Scythian, [nor in status whether] slave or free, but Christ is all, and in all [so believers are equal in Christ, without distinction].