When you lived among them, you also used to walk in these ways.
Parallel translations
- WEB You also once walked in those, when you lived in them;
- KJV In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.
- NKJV in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.
- NASB and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them.
- NLT You used to do these things when your life was still part of this world.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
They once lived in these very sins before coming to Christ. Their past makes the call to change personal.
Overview
Paul acknowledges 'you also once walked in those, when you lived in them'—these sins were their former pattern of life. The reminder is not to shame but to mark the contrast between past and present. Conversion means a real break with the old way of living.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 7
- Eph 2:2in which you used to walk when you conformed to the ways of this world and of the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
- 1 Pet 4:3–4For you have spent enough time in the past carrying out the same desires as the Gentiles: living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing, and detestable idolatry.
- Rom 6:19–20I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to escalating wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.
- Titus 3:3For at one time we too were foolish, disobedient, misled, and enslaved to all sorts of desires and pleasures—living in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.
- 1 Cor 6:11And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
- Rom 7:5For when we lived according to the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, bearing fruit for death.
- Col 2:13When you were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our trespasses,
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Christ at the center
The image of the invisible God, firstborn over creation, in whom all things hold together and all the fullness of God dwells bodily — supreme over every power.
How Colossians 3:7 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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