things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him.” And the list which follows closely com pares with what we have here in the eighth verse of Colossians 3. “Anger” represents a chronic state of existence. The Lord was angry, and righteously so. He was able to separate the sin of anger, however, from the sinner upon whom He be stowed His divine love. We need to follow this pattern in our lives, too. Next comes wrath. We might de fine this as a quick temper. Too many people have tongues that get into high speed before their minds ever go into gear! The third word is “malice.” Some one has described malice as the men- SHEEP OF HIS HAND It may seem sometimes that the lambs Of pastures green and fair— Are favored more than those who seek The Shepherd's daily care. But no! For all the sorrowing Who bring to Him their woes— A table is before them spread, Each cup He overflows. These are the sheep of His kind hand, They know and love His voice; He gathers them so close to Him Their very hearts rejoice! — Esther Belle Heins tal brew which remains after anger and wrath have completed their task. In other words, it is the bitter dregs in the cup of life which become the stimulation for our p o i s o n o u s thoughts about others. It is a strong desire and urging “to get even.” The fourth thing is “blasphemy,” both against man as well as God. A person may say, “Well, I never swear.” But have you ever said any thing malicious about someone else that was unnecessary? The Word of God says, “With the tongue there with bless we God, and therewith curse we men.” The fifth thing to put off is filthy communication. Why do we wear the rag of criticism, fault-finding and
have continued in such lascivious sins of thought or deed will have to pay for them. Some day it will mean con signment to hell because of their re jection of Jesus Christ as Saviour. Look at verse seven of Colossians three, where we read, “In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.” In other words, Paul is telling believers, “Don’t fool your self. We weren’t any better than the rest of the world; we have been sub ject to the same passions.” This is why we are exhorted in ‘Proverbs, "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” If the lake is muddy, the streams which issue from the lake likewise will be polluted. Verse eight of Colossians 3 gives us a listing of the things we are to put off. Glancing back, we see the five things we are to kill in verse five, while here there are six things we are to put off in verse 8, and then, later, verses twelve through fourteen tell us in a positive sense what we are to put on. There are seven of those. We recognize six as the num ber of imperfection while seven is traditionally the number of perfec tion, and we are to put on that exact number. The five things which are to be killed represent man’s rela tionship to himself. In this next cate gory of six things to put off, we find that which represents man’s relation ship to others. First of all, we were talking about the sins of passion; now we are talking about the sins of disposition. “But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.” You see, while we may not be able to kill these things, the Spirit of God reminds us that we need never wear them. In the original the words put off have an even stronger connotation: put them clean off. In other words, there’s not to remain one single evi dence or indication of these things in our lives! In Proverbs 6:16 through 19 we are told, “These six
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