What’s in Your Closet?

A Reflection from Pastor Loren Regier

These weekly reminders accompany our Sunday morning series at Bible Baptist Church, Rooted in Christ. Each post offers key thoughts drawn from our journey through Paul’s letter to the Colossians.

My prayer is that these reminders will take root in your heart and bring forth fruit in your walk with Christ.

Colossians 3:10–15 will be our focus today.

“And have put on, therefore, the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.”
Colossians 3:10 (KJV)

A Clean Closet Isn’t Enough

Recently, I was able to watch a documentary about a hoarder. You know, the type of person that fills her house with stuff until the collection crowds closets, rooms, and hallways.

Finally, in the documentary I viewed, the hoarder was forced to admit—at the urging of her friends—“All this stuff is squeezing the life out of me!”

It took the firm intervention of a few good friends who literally pulled her greedy little self out of the piles and piles of her collected “treasures.” Little by little, they emptied the house of the litter of a lifetime. All the contents of the house were removed and put up for sale.

But just guess who showed up first to purchase the hoarder’s stuff? You guessed it . . . the hoarder herself! Trying to buy for the second time the very items dislodged from her own house in the first place.

Those who were trying to reform the hoarder believed that removal of the junk from the house would change the heart of the junk collector. They discovered that having a clean closet is not enough.

Just as jail cells do little more than halt a thief’s behavior by putting him away for a while, cleaning the closets of our lives doesn’t change our impulses to refill them with the same “old clothes” of sins displaced but not replaced.

Putting off must be followed by putting on.

Religion Can Be a Horrible Housemaid

I think of the strong admonition from Christ to the Pharisees in Matthew 12:44–45. They claimed to sweep and empty their houses of the demons of the flesh by mosaic traditions, only to find out that the demon they thought they exorcised came back later with seven spirits even more wicked than the first—refilling the empty spaces.

All that Pharisaical house cleaning was done without filling the void with Christ. Religion can be a horrible housemaid!

A clean closet can be an invitation for the world to fill it with even greater vices.

I know of more than one Christian parent who sent children off to college with “clean-looking closets” swept by brooms of religious activity, only to discover they came home with “closets full of demons.” What happened was that the children’s hearts were left open and devoid of Christ.

Whitewashed sepulchers. Knowing about Christ, they denied the power of God.

Of course, this cannot always be attributed to parental failure. But all the religious white-glove closet-cleaning may lead only to pride in our empty houses and not a faith-filled heart.

Putting On the New Man

Paul uses the analogy of clothing in Colossians 3, and he is very clear: putting off the vices listed in verses 5–9 is not sufficient to claim the victory over the old fashions we used to wear.

Something more is necessary. And that something more is the main thing missing in so much of our tearful confessions.

Paul tells us that the putting off has to be followed by the putting on of a “new man” (v. 10).

“Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love . . .”
Colossians 3:12–14a (NKJV)

The New Clothes of the New Man

What a beautiful wardrobe is presented for us in God’s dressing room!

As you aggressively resist sin, and as you fill your clean closets with new patterns of holy living, garments of grace, and the glorious attire from the Tailor of Heaven, you will be more loving, more patient, more peaceful, more Christlike—as you are dressed in His clothes.

Now, it is so important to note the little phrase in verse 12, “as the elect of God” that precedes this re-robing of the soul. Elect of God simply means chosen, set apart, truly saved, and filled with the Spirit’s transforming power.

All attempts to fill the empty closets of the heart with tenderness, kindness, forbearance, and love become impossible without the enabling of God.

These are fruit of the Spirit, not of the flesh. We can neither fight sin nor dress ourselves in robes of righteousness without the enabling of God.

The Lord Himself is the source of all these graces. So ask Him daily for His grace—not just to die to self, but to be dressed in the clothing of righteousness.

As you do, you will hear more and more: “You look so much like Jesus!”

Anchors upward,
Pastor Loren Regier