There was a godly Christian woman who surprised her friends by saying, “There isn’t a sin of which I am not capable. I could be a prostitute; I could be a murderer; I could embezzle.” Her friends were not very impressed with her frankness. Most of them thought that she was displaying a false humility. Then she added, “you don’t believe me, but I realised that any particular sin that crops up in someone else’s life expresses itself in me but in different ways. Until I accept that. I am self-righteous, proud and arrogant.”

Even as a Christian you and I still are capable of the most gross of sins. We still have an old self that needs to be put off and a new self that needs to be put on. You need to become holy and righteous like God. Therefore You are to live a righteous and holy life.

Speak the truth.
Paul is saying here that if you are of the truth, if you have learned the truth, if you see the importance of the truth, then speak the truth. If you are a Christian then you have not been called to be deceiver or a liar. God is the God of truth and all of His people are to have a high standard of truthfulness.

Often when we read that we are to speak the truth, we automatically assume that we are to tell other people what is wrong with them. We almost never see commands like this as telling us to honest about our own lives.

There was a minister, who as a young man lived a very wild life. One day he was to preach in a town where he used to live as a youth, he received a letter. As he read the letter, his stomach turned for it recalled a series of shameful incidents from his past. The letter finished with, “if you have the gall to preach tonight, then I will expose you.” The preacher took the letter, fell down on his knees in prayer. A few minutes later he was in the pulpit. He started the service by reading the letter from start to finish. And he said, “I want to make it perfectly clear that this letter is perfectly true. I am ashamed of what I have read and what I have done. I come tonight, not as one who is perfect, but as one who is forgiven.” God used that man mightily. He was prepared to face the truth that he was not a “holy” man. He was prepared to share the truth that he was not perfect. He was humble enough to speak the truth about himself.

If you are prepared to expose your own life, warts and all, as it were, then and only then are you in a position to try and correct the sins in other people’s lives.

• Truth and love are not opposites.
• You cannot love without the truth
• You cannot speak the truth without love

Anger
Anger is a misunderstood emotion. Not all anger is sin, but all anger can lead to sin. A rugby coach may use anger to motivate his team to win the game. He might stir them up by telling them that every body thinks that they are useless, come on let’s show them that you are the best. Martin Luther once said, “I can never work better than when I am inspired of anger; when I am angry, I can write pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and my mundane irritations and temptations depart.”

Not all anger is sinful, however, if anger is allowed it’s head and not controlled by your mind then it will lead you into sin. Jesus is our example here. When He got angry at the money changers in the temple, He made a whip of cords and drove them out. He over turned tables spilling the money on the ground. He drove out the sheep and the goats. In the heat of the moment while you are full of righteous anger, when you not only have a right to be angry but in fact must be angry because of some injustice done to someone else, it is easy to over step the mark. We see this in the USA where in order to save the lives of innocent babies from being aborted, some people have blown up the abortion clinic. This is an example of someone sinning in their righteous anger. Yes abortion is wrong, but so is murder. Two wrongs never make a right. Jesus didn’t do this. When He drove out the money changers and others He did not go over board. He did not release the birds from their cages. The sheep and goats could be gathered up again, the money could be picked up, but the birds would have escaped and Jesus would have been guilty of sinning in His anger. Instead He commanded the owners to take them away from there.

How do you prevent anger from becoming sinful? Paul gives us a command from God. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. To let the sun go down on your anger is to stew over what ever made you angry. This stewing can become malicious, and can change into being resentful or holding a grudge. To counter this you are to take steps to resolve the problem. If it is a family member or a friend or someone whom you can visit that has caused your anger, then see them and tell them that you have a problem. Lay out your complaint in such a way that shows that this is your problem that involves them. Resolve your problem, even if it means that you must agree to disagree. If the focus of your anger is more nebulous like world hunger makes you angry, then deal with it through prayer. Focus your anger and plead with God to do something about it.

Hard Work
Some years back a retired minister in England said that that ten commandments were out of date. He said that it was alright to steal if you need to. But this does not measure up to what Jesus said. He told us that heaven and earth would pass away but His word will never pass away. There is no room for stealing in the kingdom of God. You are not to take things or even to covet things that belong to someone else. It is even possible to steal from God. To not give Him His tithe, to give His glory to someone else, or to take the credit for something that He has done. All these things are stealing from God.

Vs25-32 give us very concrete examples of how. For example in vs28 Paul says that he who has been stealing should stop stealing. Young people, when is a thief not a thief? When he stops stealing? Let me ask you a different question. When is a volcano safe? When it stops erupting? Rangitoto is considered to be a dormant volcano. That means that it is just sleeping and it could erupt anytime destroying Auckland city. Likewise a thief who has stopped stealing is still a thief, he is just biding his time till an opportunity presents itself.

The Biblical answer is in vs28. A thief no longer is a thief when he stops stealing and works to share things with others who are in need. This passage gives us the principle that you are to stop doing wrong or bad things and instead do good things. See vs 29 don’t talk trash, speak about things that will build people up. Vs31 gives us a whole list of things to remove from your life and mine, but it is not enough to simply try and remove these things from our life, you and I must replace them with the list of good things found in vs32.

It is not easy to live a holy and righteous life. If you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour then you cannot possibly do it. If you belong to Jesus then do not take the credit for His work in your life, praise God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit for your life.