But Now

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

There is a moment in clinical medicine that most physicians remember the first time they witness it.

A patient sits across from you — composed, already constructing their questions. You have the scan results. You have the pathology report. You know something they do not know yet, and in approximately thirty seconds, the person sitting in front of you will be permanently different.

Not because their biology will change in the next thirty seconds. Nothing changes in the next thirty seconds except the knowing. But the knowing is everything. There is the person before the diagnosis, and there is the person after. They inhabit the same body, share the same history, but the diagnosis has divided their life into a before and an after that can never be reversed.

Paul has a word for this.

The Emphatic Now

Colossians 3:8 begins with a Greek word that most translations render simply as "but now." The word is nuni — and in Greek, it carries deliberate, emphatic weight. It does not mean "at this point in the argument." It means that something has happened that makes the previous state of affairs no longer tenable.

Paul uses it the way a physician delivers a diagnosis.

In the verses preceding it, he has described the old life in clinical detail: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, covetousness — which he names as idolatry. These are not hypothetical sins. Paul says the Colossians formerly "walked in these things" and "lived in them" (Col. 3:7). He is giving them their pre-diagnosis history.

Nuni is the moment everything changes.

"But now you must also put away all the following: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self" (Col. 3:8-10, CSB).

But here is the part that is most often missed.

The "were raised" in Colossians 3:1 is passive voice — in both English and Greek. This is not accidental. The new life in Christ is not the result of human achievement. Paul is not issuing a self-improvement directive. He is announcing something that has already been done to you, and then drawing out its implications.

You did not raise yourself. You were raised.

The nuni follows from that fact.

What Changes When You Are Raised

I want to resist turning this into a checklist. The genius of Colossians 3 is that it is not a program. It is a description of what is already true of the person who has been raised with Christ — and then a summons to live accordingly.

The first thing nuni changes is your vantage point. Colossians 3:1-2 repeats the phrase ta anō — "those things which are above" — with an emphasis that borders on insistence. "Seek those things which are above." "Set your mind on things above." Paul is not asking for occasional heavenward glances. He is describing a fundamental reorientation of attention.

From time immemorial, human beings have tried to solve this problem architecturally. The ziggurats of Mesopotamia. The pyramids of the Nile valley. The high places scattered across the ancient Near East. Every civilization has had its theology of ascent: climb high enough, and perhaps you get close enough to God.

Abraham looked at the ziggurat of Ur and walked away from it. It was not a mountain he needed. It was a resurrection.

Being raised with Christ does not mean you have climbed higher. It means you have been repositioned entirely. The ta anō is not a destination you labor toward. It is a vantage point you have been given.

This is why Ellen White wrote, in The Acts of the Apostles: "The world has too much of our thought, and the kingdom of heaven too little." (AA, pp. 476-478). She was not issuing a guilt trip. She was identifying a vantage point problem. A person who has been genuinely raised with Christ should find that their default orientation has shifted. Not perfectly, not without daily renewal — Paul is clear in 2 Corinthians 4:16 that this inner renewal is ongoing — but the direction of the lean has changed.

The second thing nuni changes is your wardrobe. The clothing metaphor in Colossians 3:9-12 is not decorative. Paul uses two specific Greek verbs — apekdyomai (to strip off completely) and endyō (to put on) — to describe what conversion looks like from the outside. The image echoes Zechariah 3:4, where the angel says to the high priest Joshua, standing in filthy garments before the Lord: "See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes."

The filthy garments are not removed by Joshua. They are removed as an act of grace. What Joshua does is stand there and receive it.

What Paul adds is that the person who has experienced this removal is then called to actively put on what has been given. Tender mercies. Kindness. Humility. Meekness. Longsuffering. Bearing with one another. Forgiving one another. "And above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection" (Col. 3:14, NKJV).

These virtues are not decorations. They are the outward evidence of a prior inward event. You can see what someone has been raised into by what they are wearing.

The third thing nuni changes is your governor. Colossians 3:15 uses a word for "rule" — brabeuō in Greek — that means to act as an umpire or arbiter in a contest. "Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts." The question is not whether something governs your decision-making. Something always does. The question is what that something is.

Colossians 3:17 makes the governing standard explicit: "Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." This is the comprehensive audit. Not a religious checklist — but a governing question applied to all of life. Can I do this in His name? If not, what must change?

Where I Actually Live

I want to stay here longer than feels comfortable.

I teach this passage. I have taught it in Sabbath School, in elder training, in sermons. I can trace the Greek roots, move through the argument, and land on the application with reasonable precision.

And then I drive home.

The honest question that Colossians 3 puts to me is not whether I believe in the nuni. It is whether the nuni has actually interrupted my life. Has it changed what I give my attention to when no one is watching? Has it changed what governs me when the decision is inconvenient? Has it changed what I am wearing — not on Sabbath morning, but in the operating room at 2 a.m., or in the meeting where I am the most senior person in the room, or in the conversation with the colleague who has made my work harder for three years running?

I know what good wardrobe looks like. The question is what I am wearing in the rooms where no one is checking.

Ellen White was precise about what genuine conversion does and does not accomplish: "He who has determined to enter the spiritual kingdom will find that all the powers and passions of unregenerate nature, backed by the forces of the kingdom of darkness, are arrayed against him. Each day he must renew his consecration, each day do battle with evil. Old habits, hereditary tendencies to wrong, will strive for the mastery." (AA, pp. 476-478).

This is not pessimism. It is clinical honesty. The diagnosis does not end the battle. It names it. And naming it accurately is the prerequisite for fighting it well.

The patient who knows their diagnosis can pursue treatment. The patient who refuses to know remains sick and thinks they are well. This is the specific danger Paul is writing against — not the person who acknowledges the nuni and struggles to live up to it, but the person who assumes the nuni applies to them without actually examining the evidence.

What the Nuni Asks

I want to be specific here, because vague exhortation is the enemy of actual change.

First, locate your nuni. Not theologically — experientially. When did your before and after happen? If you cannot name it, that is important information. The passive voice of "were raised" does not mean the event was imperceptible. It means it was not accomplished by your effort. But it was accomplished. If you cannot find it in your own history, ask honestly whether you have been seeking the things above or building another ziggurat.

Second, check your wardrobe. Not your public wardrobe. What do the people who live with you, work with you, and sit across from you at 6 a.m. see you wearing? Colossians 3 is domestically audited — Paul goes directly from this passage into instructions for households (3:18-4:1). He does not allow the nuni to remain abstract. It comes home with you.

Third, submit to the brabeuō. Let the peace of Christ act as umpire in the decisions that are still pending. Before the next difficult call — in the clinic, in the boardroom, in the family room — ask: can I do this in His name? And if the answer is no, stop. Not because the rules say so. Because you have been raised. Because you are wearing different clothes now. Because someone else is governing you.

The diagnosis has been made.

The filthy garments have been removed.

Put on the new ones.

Chukwuma Onyeije is a Maternal-Fetal Medicine physician and elder at Atlanta North Seventh-day Adventist Church. He writes at Chukwuma Theology on Scripture, Adventist faith, and the life of the mind.

Chukwuma Theology — But Now

But Now

The Emphatic Now

What Changes When You Are Raised

Where I Actually Live

What the Nuni Asks