Charles Spurgeon Commentary Colossians 3:5

"Put to death therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry;" — Colossians 3:5 (ASV)

Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:

Kill all these evil things; do not let them live in you for a single moment. The command applies not only to the grosser actions categorized as fornication and uncleanness, but to everything that leads to those foul sins. It also applies not only to the fire but to the sparks, such as "inordinate affection"—a kind of softness seen in some people, men and women, too, which often leads to something far worse—and "evil concupiscence," the initial desires for what is unchaste.

May God give us grace to kill these loathsome things at once, for if thoughts of evil are indulged, they soon become acts of evil, and then who knows how far we may go in the way of unholiness? Sin, if allowed to grow in the heart, will soon take gigantic strides and come out in the life.

Be sure of this: whenever a professing Christian falls into overt sin of the kind mentioned here, he does not do it suddenly. The evil has long been festering and fomenting within his heart, or it would not have manifested itself in this way.

Oh! if he had only watched and destroyed the thief before he broke open the house, what a mercy it would have been! You notice that covetousness is listed with the most filthy sins, and it is described as idolatry. The desire to possess what belongs to others, the lust for gain at any price, this is idolatry.