Colossians 3:8
What does Colossians 3:8 mean?
but now you also put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and shameful speaking out of your mouth.
The short answer
In Colossians 3:8, Paul tells believers to "put them all away"—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and "shameful speaking." At first glance it reads like a random list of bad habits. It isn't. This verse is the second half of a larger catalog. A few verses earlier, Paul named sins of desire—sexual immorality, impurity, greed. Now he turns to a different kind of sin: the sins of disunity. Notice what these five have in common. Nearly all of them live in the mouth. Anger and wrath fuel harsh words; malice sharpens them; slander and filthy talk deliver them. These are the behaviors that tear a community apart from the inside.
That matters because of where Paul is headed. Just a few verses later he declares that in this new community there is no Greek or Jew, slave or free, but "Christ is all, and in all." The church is one new family drawn from every background, and nothing unravels a family faster than the tongue. Paul isn't just policing individual tempers; he's protecting the unity that the gospel creates.
Notice also the order of Paul's logic. He doesn't say, "Clean up your speech so God will accept you." The command rests on something that has already happened: believers have died with Christ and been raised with him (3:1-3). The old self—with all its practices—was crucified. So the instruction to put these things away is less like earning a new life and more like taking off clothes that no longer fit. The word "now" in the verse carries weight: because you belong to a new reality, live like it. The imperative flows from the indicative. You put away anger, malice, and slander because that old self is already dead—and because the family Christ died to create deserves better than words that wound it.
What scholars say
Scot McKnight shows how Paul's vice list divides into sins of desire and sins of disunity, with the commands flowing from the believer's union with Christ and aiming at the unity of God's one family. Kevin Vanhoozer adds that these word-and-deed behaviors shape character over time, and that Paul targets not isolated acts but the whole old self—already crucified with Christ—that must be discarded.
“This section articulates what the gospel does to the moral life of a believer: participation in the death with Christ slays the flesh and sins that destroy and divide; in fact, it brings the Gentiles—all people ( 3:11 )—into the one family of God alongside Israel so that Christ "is all and is in all." … In the NIV there are eleven vices that Paul exhorts them to renounce: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, and then anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, and lying. The eleven can be cut into two major themes: sins of desire and sins of disunity. … Here we encounter Paul's typical theological ethics: the indicative of being in Christ leads to the imperative of Christoformity, with an eye constantly on ecclesial unity.”
“The “things” in questions are actually behaviors, actions that, if they become habitual, are formative of character, for better or for worse. Things to “put off” include “anger, wrath, malice, slander” (Col. 3:8)—things we do with words and deeds. It is not simply particular acts that Paul wants us to put off, however, but rather the whole “old self [ palaion anthrōpon ] with its practices” (Col. 3:9; cf. Eph. 4:22). Paul elsewhere (Rom. 5:12–6:8) says that this “old self” was crucified with Christ, and in context he seems to be referring to what we were “in Adam” (i.e., in an earlier stage of the theodrama, in this age rather than in the age to come). Disciples must discard their “Adam” costume.”
What it means for you
Most of us can name the moment a relationship changed because of something someone said—or something we said. Colossians 3:8 asks us to take our words as seriously as Paul does. Before you speak (or post, or text), it's worth asking: is this anger looking for an outlet? Is this gossip dressed up as concern? Paul's counsel isn't to try harder at being nice but to remember who you are. If the old self was crucified with Christ, then rage and slander are borrowed clothes from a life that's over. Putting them away is how you dress for the life you actually have—one shared with people Christ has made family.
Colossians 3 in context
Colossians 3 opens with a shift from doctrine to daily life: since believers have been raised with Christ, they should set their minds on things above (3:1-4). Paul then works through what to put off—first sins of desire in verse 5, then the sins of speech and division in verse 8—before the striking claim in verse 11 that in this renewed humanity "Christ is all, and in all." From verse 12 onward, he flips to what to put on: compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and love, the wardrobe of the new self.