Colossians 3:12-17 –
12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Introduction
If you are a Christian, at some point God graciously opened your eyes to the facts that you were “alienated [from Him] and hostile in mind [toward Him], doing evil deeds [against Him],” that “on account of these the wrath of God is coming,” and, ultimately, that you were “dead in your trespasses.”
But if you are a Christian, at some point the “word of truth, the gospel, [also came] to you.” “You heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.” You understood that Jesus offered Himself as a ransom “by the blood of His cross” and “in His body of flesh by His death.”
If you are a Christian, at some point you responded to this gospel, this good news, this offer of the grace of God in Jesus, by placing your faith in Jesus.
And at that point, you were “raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God.” God “made [you] alive …having forgiven [you] all [your] trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against [you] with its legal demands.” You were “reconciled” to God. You received “redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” And you were rescued from your alienation, hostility, and evil trespasses and brought into a life of “peace” with God as His sons and daughters, having been “delivered…from the domain of darkness and transferred…to the kingdom of His beloved Son.”
And then, if you are a Christian, you began to be “filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual understanding.” You began to be “strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy.” And you began to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him.”
“Here,” as Paul wrote in v.11 and Pastor Colin explained so helpfully last Sunday, “here” in this place of salvation in Christ, “here” in this place of newness of life and nature in Christ, “here” in this place of divine grace and strength, “here” in this place of understanding that “Christ [alone] is all and in all,” “here” you must recognize that there are two critical aspects of seeking to live as God intends you to live.
First, as we saw two weeks ago in vs.5-10, you must put off all your old ways of thinking and living. You must put off the perspective and appetites and actions that defined and motivated and shaped you before you knew of your sin and death and the grace of God in Jesus. You must “put to death [all that is] earthly in you.” You must give yourself to putting away all sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, idolatry, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, lying, and every other thought, word, and deed that do not conform to your new nature in Jesus. You must put them to death, because Jesus was put to death for them.
In other words, if you are a Christian, you have determined, with God’s help, to turn away from your old life and stop living in rebellion to God and contrary to your design. And you have accepted the fact that doing so means actively and continually searching for and fighting against every aspect of ungodliness that remains in you.
The second critical aspect of seeking to live as God intends is found in our passage for this morning. Godliness is never less than getting rid of the bad, but it is always more. We must never let up on killing the sin that remains in us, but we must also never let up on seeking the righteousness that yet eludes us. We must be vigilant in our efforts to eradicate the darkness in ourselves, but even more so in our efforts to live in the light. We must put off what is earthly in us and put on Christ.
In other words, the Christian life is a life of faith and action—faith in what Jesus did and promises and action in response to His example and commands. More specifically, the Christian life is a life defined by faith in God’s promise that Christians “have [already] put off the old self with its practices and have [already] put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator” (that we have been given new natures in Jesus). And, therefore, the Christian life is also defined by the constant action of putting off sin and putting on Christ.
The big idea of this sermon is that Christians are in Christ and so we must put on Christ; and especially those aspects of Christlikeness that foster unity and peace within the church. The main takeaway is to do exactly as Paul commands, seeking God’s help to believe we are who He says we are and then clothing ourselves with all the things he lists as a means of glorifying God and strengthening His church.
Having considered the first half of a godly life (putting off earthly things), let’s now consider what Paul wrote about the second half (putting on Christ).
Put on Christ in Identity (12a)
In this passage, Paul helps us see that putting on Christ is like the four legs of a chair. We need to understand and make use of all four legs or we will be tippy at best. If we are to put on Christ, then we need to put on His nature (first leg), we need to put on His attitudes (second leg), we must put on His actions (third leg), and we must know how to put those things on (fourth leg). We’ll consider each leg in turn (the first two this week and the second two next week).
With that, let’s consider the first leg of the four legs of putting on Christ: Putting on your identity in Christ.
As I hope to have made exceedingly clear already (for Paul has made it exceedingly clear already), putting on Christ is about who you are before it is about what you do.
I remember a friend, who had just graduated from nursing school and started a new job in a hospital, telling me that he felt mostly incompetent to do the things he was supposed to be doing. More to the point, I also remember him telling me that he was told to just act like he knew what he was doing until he did. The hospital motto, apparently, was something like, “Nursing is about what you do before it’s about who you are.” Practically, he was told to give the appearance of competence before he was actually competent.
This is not that. In fact, it’s the opposite. Paul is not commanding Christians to “fake it until you make it.” He’s not telling them to act contrary to their nature. He’s telling them what it looks like to live in light of the reality that their entire natures have already, definitively been changed in Christ.
This is more like someone who just received a surprise inheritance of $10,000,000 being told what it’s like in the new tax bracket. Or like someone just brought up to the varsity basketball team being told the new expectations. Or like someone who was just promoted at work being given their new job description.
Again, then, putting on Christ is about who you are before it is about what you do.
So, who are we in Christ? What is our new nature that we’re supposed to live consistently with?
Throughout the portion of the letter that we’ve already covered, we’ve seen that Christians are saints, faithful brothers, qualified to share in the inheritance of the saints, citizens of the kingdom of Jesus, redeemed, forgiven, reconciled, buried and raised with Jesus, alive in Christ, forgiven, and debt-free.
In our passage for this morning, Paul adds three more descriptions of our new nature in Jesus.
12 … God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved…
Christians are God’s chosen ones. Christians are holy. And Christians are beloved.
God’s Chosen Ones
If you are a Christian, you have been chosen by God.
This tends to be a controversial doctrine. As best as I can tell, there are two main reasons for that. People tend to recoil at the idea of God choosing people because (1) it sounds like some kind of merit-based/favorite system and (2) because it sounds like we have no say in things.
Regarding the merit-based objection, it was always an anxious thing to wait around to get chosen for recess teams as a kid. Playground rules meant people were picked based on some captain-specific combination of talent and depth of friendship. In that way, if you weren’t particularly talented or you weren’t a close friend of one of the captains, then you had to face the embarrassment of being picked near the end or, worse still, not at all. If God’s choosing is like that, it’s not hard to understand why people are concerned by that.
And regarding the no-say objection, we’re particularly susceptible to being frustrated by the thought of not being in ultimate control of things since our culture is so deeply individualistic. Virtually everything around us tells us that we are in ultimate control of everything from our food and clothing preferences to our purpose and gender. It’s not hard to imagine how/why we don’t like the idea that the most significant thing of all (our eternal destiny) isn’t ultimately ours to choose.
To be clear, there is a measure of mystery concerning the exact nature of God’s choosing and its relationship to our wills. But to be equally clear, the Bible is unwavering in its teachings that (1) Christians are Christians because we’ve been chosen by God (Acts 13:48; Ephesians 1:4; 1 Peter 2:9; Romans 8:33; John 15:16; Deuteronomy 7:6; 2 Timothy 1:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:4; 2 Thessalonians 2:13), and (2) because we’ve chosen God (John 1:12, 3:16; Acts 16:31; Romans 10:9), and that (3) God’s choosing is a good and loving thing (John 10:28; Ephesians 1:5; Romans 5:8, 8:28; 1 Thessalonians 1:4).
Many years ago, a man in our previous church asked me if I believed in predestination. I remember sharing with him that since the Bible repeatedly teaches the doctrine, the question cannot be whether or not we are chosen by God, but what it means that we are.
Grace, the bottom line is that our sin is so deadly and destructive that “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot” (Romans 8:7). In other words, our sin means that if God did not first choose us, we would/could never choose Him and we’d be forever stuck in our sin and death.
And, at the same time, our sin is such that if God’s choosing were based on our worthiness, God would never choose anyone and, once again, we’d be forever stuck in our sin and death.
It is an indisputable biblical fact and an act of amazing grace that Christians are God’s chosen ones. Be amazed by this, Grace. Delight in this. Be humbled by this. Rest in this. If your hope is in Jesus, this is who you already are.
Holy
If you are a Christian, you are chosen and you are holy. You have been set apart as God’s people. You are distinct from the world, which is why Paul commands, (since you are already holy,) “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human traditions, according to the elemental spirits of the world…[unholy things]”. And it is why he asks, “If with Christ, you died to the elemental spirits of the world [that is, since you are holy], why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations [that is, act as if you were not holy]?”
To be a Christian is to have already been made holy.
What’s more, as Paul wrote in 1:22, you are holy so that you will be holy. We see the same idea in 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify [holyify] you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.”
You are holy and you will certainly be holy, Grace Church. Together, today, we are set apart so that one day we will be presented to Jesus “in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing…holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27).
Grace, you will never be able to do what Paul calls you to do, if you don’t first believe you are who Paul says you are. You are holy and you will certainly be made holy.
Beloved
Finally, if you are a Christian, you are loved by God. His favor and affection and pleasure and commitment to giving you that which is best for you are all irrevocably set upon you by the Lord God Almighty.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Romans 5:8 But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Ephesians 2:4-5 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…
1 John 3:1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God…
1 John 4:16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us…
Romans 8:38-39 I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In my experience, there is a pretty dramatic bell-curve here. When you hear that God loves you, almost everyone in this room falls on one of the two sides of the bell. You either think, “Of course He does. Why wouldn’t He love someone like me?” or you think “No way. There’s no possible way He could love someone like me.”
Even though most of us fall into one of those two camps, neither rightly grasps what Paul means in declaring that we are God’s “beloved.”
Indeed, even though every Christian is entirely and unwaveringly loved by God, very few people that I’ve met are at the top of the bell and no one stays there for long; truly receiving God’s love in faith, joyfully acknowledging that it is certainly ours, but humbly admitting that it is so, only on account of Christ. To know this is to be filled with awe and wonder and gratitude and amazement and happiness and peace
You are loved by God, Grace Church.
Again, notice that these things are true of all Christians. They are true of us as individuals, but even more so as a people. And because we are those things—chosen, holy, and loved—we must live consistently with them; and especially as we come together as a church.
Put on Christ in Attitude (12b)
The more we understand and assume our new identities in Christ, the more we will want to think and feel and act like it. And the more we want to think and feel and act like it, the more we’ll see Paul’s charge as the awesome treasure it is.
Before coming to the second leg of the chair (Paul’s list of the attitudes we must put on in Christ), I want to point out three important aspects of his list.
First, as I just said, it is an awesome treasure for those who love Jesus. But we must recognize that we wouldn’t see it as such if God didn’t reveal it to us.
Imagine allowing a toddler to choose one thing to keep from a basket full of toys. In it are some plastic balls, a wooden puzzle, a xylophone, a microphone that lights up and plays music, and an uncut diamond worth $50k. I doubt that many kids would choose the diamond even though it’s worth 10,000x more than every other toy in the basket. They wouldn’t choose it because they have no use for it and no idea what it’s worth.
That’s how we are when it comes to the list of things Paul charges us to put on. It is supremely valuable, but apart from God’s help, we’ll pass right over it for relatively worthless earthly things.
Second, every part of it is inherently corporate. Every item on the list can only be done in connection with someone else. You must be compassionate, kind, humble, meek, and patient toward someone. Those things don’t exist in isolation.
In that way, in this passage, Paul helps us to see that the Christian life is corporate by nature. There are many who falsely believe they can put on Christ without putting on His people. Likewise, there are many who falsely think that putting on Christ is constant, but putting on His people is intermittent. It is tragically common for people to think of themselves as spiritually mature apart from covenanting within a local church. But in this passage, we can clearly see the essential and inseparable connection between being a Christian and committing yourself to Christians.
As strange as it might sound as you look around this room and see all the strange people in it, by God’s good design, you cannot thrive as a Christian apart from a firm commitment to being deeply involved in the lives and shared mission of these people.
We’re too prone to thinking first in terms of what we (as individuals) got out of DG this week instead of our God-given need to be shepherded, to help our shepherds shepherd us in joy, and to obey the one another commands. Or of our family’s extra-curricular schedule instead of our God-given need to join our voices with the choir of the saints each week in the corporate worship service. Or of our personal needs, desires and ambitions instead of our God-given need to love our neighbor’s needs, desires, and ambitions as our own.
Grace, in spite of the significant confusion in the Church today, the Christian life is by nature a corporate life. Christian maturity is inherently corporate. Continually putting on Christ means continually putting on the church.
The third and final thing I want to point out is that Paul’s list of things to put on assumes difficulty among Christians. Underneath every item on his list is a God-given means of avoiding or repairing conflict among the people within the local church in Colossae (and Grace Church today).
The question we need to ask ourselves, then, is this: What does it mean to put on Christ when someone you’re bound together with wrongs you? How do you respond when someone you’ve committed to following Jesus with sins against you, if you’ve put on Christ?
To really appreciate this, you really need to have a significant offense that someone has committed against you in mind. Kids, think of a time when your brother or sister took the toy you were playing with and wouldn’t give it back. Think of a time when a friend promised to help you with something significant and they bailed at the last minute. Husbands, think of a time when your wife was explicitly disrespectful to you. Wives, think of a time when your husband spoke particularly harshly with you. Christian, think of a time in which you confessed a sin to someone and they ended up gossiping about you in light of it.
Those are the kinds of things Paul has in mind. He knows what Christians are like in our hearts and our relationships. And because of that, he knows we will have conflict. But he also knows that putting on Christ means having all we need to handle conflict in a manner that is pleasing to God, good for the church, and a light to the world.
God’s good design is that when someone sins against us, we would go directly and lovingly to them (Matt 18), that they would humbly and immediately repent and ask for our forgiveness (Luke 17; Matthew 18:21-22), that we would lovingly and humbly forgive them, and that the relationship would be quickly and warmly restored.
But that’s not really what this is about. It’s about when it doesn’t work like this. Sometimes we are wrong in our assessment. Sometimes when we’re right, people don’t repent. Sometimes those who sin against us repent, but only for a small percentage of what we think they ought to repent of. What do we do then?
Paul’s list is an awesome treasure for the members of every local church to know how to put on Christ in such a way as to prevent and restore conflict in a manner pleasing to God.
12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience…
Once again, Grace, draw to mind a conflict you’re currently in or imagine being in, remember who you are (God’s chosen, holy, loved) and consider how you will put on, in faith, the things Paul commands as a means of honoring God, serving the church, and being a light to the world.
Compassionate Hearts
Our tendency when people hurt us is to react in kind or to quietly suffer in hurt and bitterness. But Paul says that to put on Christ is to put on a compassionate heart toward that person. In its most basic sense, this means that instead of mainly being grieved by them (for the hurt they caused us), we are grieved for them (for the fact that their hearts have wandered from God). To put on Christ is to realize that every sin against us is always the act of someone who is on a path of rebellion and danger. How much conflict would be prevented and restored, if we felt more compassion than anger for those who are in such a bad place.
To put on Christ is to put on compassion toward Christians who hurt you.
Kindness
If you were to make a list of everyone you’ve sinned against and their responses to it, I wonder how many times you’d have to write down “kindness.” I don’t imagine you’ve experienced that often (if ever). But that’s just what Paul commends as us to do as a church. When another member of our church sins against you, put on Christ and respond not in kind, but with kindness. Treat them with dignity and respect. That’s not the same as minimizing their sin or pretending it’s good, but it’s also not the same as we would do apart from the Spirit in us.
To put on Christ is to put on kindness toward the members of Grace who hurt you because you are chosen, holy, and loved by God.
Humility
When you’re sinned against, be humble. You might not have read the situation just right. You might have misunderstood something. You might have been off on their motives. You might have contributed to the problem in ways you hadn’t realized. God alone knows the situation perfectly. God alone knows what a perfect response entails. God alone can respond in perfect holiness. You are not God. Put on Christ, remember who you are, and be humble in your response to those who sin against you.
Meekness
In similar fashion, putting on Christ in conflict means being meek (or gentle). One definition is “Not being overly impressed by a sense of one’s self-importance.” Arrogance, pride, and a false sense of importance process sins against us as if our comfort and justice were the main point of everything. To be meek is to recognize that even if you’re right in your assessment of the other person’s sin, you are still not the center of the story. As we saw earlier, a person’s sin is always against God before it is a sin against us.
To put on Christ is to be meek in the face of hardship caused by the sinful actions of another.
Patience
Finally, to put on Christ as Paul commands is to be patient as well. Think about your own sinful desires and practices, Grace. How many of your own sins were you blind to for a long time before you first saw them? Once you saw your sin, how often have you stubbornly refused to fight against it for some time? And once you did begin fighting against your sin, how long have you tried to put it to death with little if any relief? Even more to the point, how patient has God been with you in your sin? You are chosen by God, you are holy, and you are loved by God even in your sin against Him, so put on Christ and be patient with others in theirs against you.
Conclusion
Grace, if you are a Christian, you are chosen, holy, and loved. Therefore, at all times, but especially when you are wronged by God’s people, by the people in this room, put on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience toward them.
The big idea of this sermon is that Christians are in Christ and so we must put on Christ; and especially those aspects of Christlikeness that foster unity and peace within the church. The main takeaway is to do exactly as Paul commands, seeking God’s help to believe we are who He says we are and then clothing ourselves with all the things he lists as a means of glorifying God and strengthening His church.