At the outset of this post, I must offer the caveat that what I have heard and what I was taught may be two different things. The Christianity that I have ingested in my church experience may not be what was intended by those who were teaching.

I have often heard part of Colossians 1:10 quoted where it says, “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.” When quoted, the emphasis was on the Christian behaving in a “Christian” manner.  The test being external conformity to a standard of behavior for the purpose of keeping rules and looking good.

To understand what Paul intended by this phrase, we must look at the context of this saying to get the full meaning.

In the preceding verse, Paul writes:

“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,” (Colossians 1:9, ESV)

From the context, we see that “walking worthy” is a result of spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding. But this is not the only result. As I read it there are eight results that all work together and can be found in verses 10-12:

1. We walk worthy of the Lord (Col 1:10)
2. We become pleasing to God (Col 1:10)
3. We bear fruit in every good work (Col 1:10)
4. We increase in the knowledge of God (Col 1:10)
5. We are strengthened with all power (Col 1:11)
6. We have endurance and patience with joy (Col 1:11)
7. We give thanks to the Father (Col 1:12)
8. We share in the inheritance of the saints (Col 1:12)

Like the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5:22-23, these traits should all be operational, we cannot pick out just one of the results and emphasize it to the exclusion of others. If you are going to encourage someone to “walk worthy” you must also encourage them toward the other items on this list.

If you look at the list, many of the results are primarily internal. Endurance and patience are internal rather than external traits. While the absence of patience can sometimes be detected in another, the presence of it is more difficult to assess.

The point is that any external manifestation of the spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding should be evidence of an internal reality that makes the external manifestation a true one. We can’t fake it until we make it. The passage in no way encourages us to merely external conformity to a set of rules or a standard of behavior. It is internal transformation that is pointed to as the result.

Without this internal transformation, Christianity is reduced to another form of behavioral modification. While changing the external behavior may have positive benefits, without the internal change, the benefit is temporary and will not bring about the change that the Apostle Paul desires.

So, it is not wrong to encourage someone to “walk worthy of the Lord” as long as we understand that the “worthy” is determined by God and is gauged by the internal and not the external reality. This verse is not a club to be used to bash people into conformity to a list of do’s and don’ts. It is not to be wielded in this way to squelch behaviors that make us feel uncomfortable.

We need to create church environments where it is OK for the outside of a man to reflect what is going on in the inside. We are all a mess and Jesus is in the process of making us less messy. But we should not subvert God’s cleanup process by forcing our self or others into a disingenuous external conformity.

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 6:1

From what I can see of myself and the rest of humanity, I conclude that Jesus made this statement precisely because we have a tendency to try to appear more “spiritual” than we really are.

How honest are you really when someone at church asks you how you are doing?

We can use the excuse that we cannot wear our hearts on our sleeves and tell everyone around us about all of our concerns. Yet there has got to be something better than feeling pressured to respond that everything is fine when it is not.

Pride is the primary motivator to give people the impression that things are good, even when they are not. The desire to be liked and respected can cause me to misrepresent how I am really doing.

Another factor is that there are some (and the church has its share of them) who will indeed look down on the one who is honest about his struggles and failures. My guess is that we all know at least one person who’s speck meter is working much better than their log meter (see Matthew 7:3-5).

When we encounter a lack of grace and acceptance, it really hurts. The first time someone gets slammed for their honesty is perhaps the last time honesty is practiced. If grace is not a part of the group culture, then superficiality will rule the day.

The antidote for this can be found in Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians.

“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4)

When Samuel was before Jesse’s sons to pick a king for Israel, he was impressed with Eliab, but God had other plans. God told Samuel, “God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance,  but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 26:7). I may fool some of the people some of the time, but I will never fool God.

For the Christian there should be no incentive to try to appear more holy than we are. Our salvation is entirely by faith and we contribute nothing to it. Why then the pretense? If I cannot earn my salvation and there is nothing I can do to lose it, then why would I want to make people think that I am better than I am?

It keeps coming back to pride. Pride is what drives me to put on a pretense of being all squared away. Pride is the reason that I cannot be honest about my failures. Pride is the reason I maintain a willful blindness to my own faults and weaknesses.

As indicated above, the antidote is humility, but where does this come from? For me, the best way to foster humility is the reading of Scripture. Scripture is the most accurate mirror for my soul. Through the reading of Scripture I can see how far short of spiritual perfection I fall. Through the reading of Scripture I see the standard by which I should judge myself.

But is also through the reading of Scripture that I learn of grace. God has grace for me, the one who so desperately needs it. I can then channel that grace into the lives of others.

Rather than putting on a pretense of a holiness I do not possess, I can operate in a grace that is given to me for distribution to others. When grace is operational, the motivation to pretense should be at its lowest.

I’ll close with the chorus of a familiar hymn:

Grace, grace, God’s grace,
grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
grace, grace, God’s grace,
grace that is greater than all our sin!