Growing in Christ - Put on love.
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Intro
Intro
What is love.
Who just thought of lyrics to a song?
There are so many songs written about love spreading across all genres of music.
Love of people, animals, money, things.
Love entertains us. Many books and most tv shows and movies have some sort of story of love running in them
Love is important. We see the word love a lot in the Bible.
We see words translated to love or words that relate to love 458 times in the OT and 286 times in the NT.
That’s a total of 744 times.
In our passage today though, Paul is not speaking about any old love.
Paul is speaking about perfect love.
Love that binds.
The love of Christ.
Through our text for today we will see that it is when we put on the love of Christ we are united together as children of God.
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.
Love over all.
Love over all.
If we are continuing with the clothing metaphor that Paul begins for when in verse 9 he states for believers to put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self.
We might look at the list of virtues given in verse 12 as different articles of clothing, similar to the armor of God analogy that Paul uses in Ephesians.
Here he is a bit less specific but there is a reason for that.
The purpose for each of these is a bit different than the armor.
These virtues are to be worn under that armor.
Picture with me the shirt of compassion, pants of humility, socks of kindness.
These things are replacing old dirty garments.
Paul here in verse 14 though is telling us to put on more.
This last piece is an extremely important one because it is all encompassing.
Paul is in essence telling us as believers to now put on the outercoat of love.
We don’t often see outercoats as much anymore because modern synthetic fibers have taken their place.
The purpose of the outer coat though was to provide more warmth and protection from the elements.
Love in that sense is the thing that binds and protects.
Paul is stating here that it is overarching love that bonds each of the virtues he listed together.
It is with a compassionate heart that we are to show love, with kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
And it is because we love one another that we can bear with one another, that we can forgive each other.
Love is both the overarching and underlying connection.
This of course is not the only place Paul speaks about love. 1 cor 13?
The whole purpose of this love as Paul writes in the second half of the verse is that it binds everything together in perfect harmony.
It is love that unites people, families, and churches together. Specifically the love of Christ.
Love that unites.
Love that unites.
If we look to some of Paul’s other writings, it is difficult to speak of love without referring to 1 Cor.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love truly is the root of each of the virtues that we as children of God are to put on.
Love is not simply a further item brought alongside the others; rather it is the source from which all those qualities hitherto mentioned derive their existence.”
Love must be a, if not the priority in the body of Christ.
If we think of the church is like a big family, because as believers we are all children of God, we are to love one another.
I don’t know about your family but mine does not always get along.
There are all kinds of stressors in life that cause problems.
If this were easy Paul would not have had to write about it, and then write about it again, and again.
There are going to be conflicts, there are going to be misunderstandings.
If there is love in a family, if there is love in the family of God, it is from a deliberate effort to work through hurt feelings and disagreements.
If it were easy, if we got along all the time we wouldn’t need to be told to be patient, kind, compassionate, humble, and meek.
Who remembers their first crush?
Do you remember the feeling?
Those that are married, do you remember the feeling of love from the early times of your marriage.
Maybe you are still in it.
Has it changed?
I would hope so, I would hope that your love for each other has deepened and grown.
As children, our love for our parents changes and grows as we change and grow.
As parents, our love for our children changes as they change and grow.
The root stays the same though. Our desire is ought to be what is best for the other person regardless of ourselves.
One of the best pieces of advice I have gotten when it comes to marriage and relationships I heard from my parents. You may have heard this before yourself.
My parents told me and I saw it modeled that we may not always like each other, but we always love each other.
Love in this context is the tie that binds.
Love is the choice that is made.
Love is the promise that is kept.
This applies to more than just the marriage relationship.
This applies to our families as well as to our church relationships.
We as believers are part of the family of God.
We may not always like each other but we have a choice. We must choose to love one another.
It is the overarching love that Paul tells us to put on that unites us a believers.
We must also remember as well that Paul is not giving this as an option.
Paul is still instructing believers that you must do this.
He’s not saying, oh you can love that person if you feel like it.
No he is taking the basis for this directly from Jesus teaching.
If we look directly to Jesus teaching.
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
This just names a few.
The kind of love that is shown here is true, selfless, undeserving love. The love of the Father for His children.
Think about love from God’s perspective,
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.
God, because of His love, sent His Son to die.
If we sit and think on that for a moment.
This is a self-sacrificing, all caring, commitment.
God shows himself to be seeking the greatest good for mankind, His creation.
Jesus prays in
20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
Jesus asks for unity not for easier, better relationships, but that the world may know that God sent him and loves them.
The love of God unites, love binds, love shines.
This is the love that saves.
This is the love that unites the virtues and gives them value.
This is the love that unites believers together as well as to Christ.
This is the love that we must put on.
Put on the love of Christ
Put on the love of Christ
The love of Christ is more than a love that tolerates.
True love changes a person in a way that tolerance can’t.
The love of Christ more than tolerates us, it changes us.
This is a love that changes us both inside and out.
Inwardly, love is more than a warm fuzzy feeling.
Love is more than always being nice.
If this is our view of love, we are missing the heart of true biblical love.
Love does involve emotion, but it isn’t primarily a feeling.
I eluded to this idea a little earlier.
We can’t work up warm, generous feelings for another, especially a person who has hurt us do done wrong to us.
We can though make the choice to put on love.
This is the outward change that is produced.
When me make the choice to love others with the love that God shows for us in Christ.
This love that is shown to us is caring, self-sacrificing commitment for the purpose of the greatest good of the individual being loved.
This love is the basis for the progression that Paul writes of in verse 13.
We bear with one another but more than that we forgive one another because of the love Christ has shown us.
Paul is concerned with the reader’s corporate life and the perfection he sets before them is not something narrowly individual. It is attained only as Christians, in fellowship, show love to one another. It is by this love, one of the graces of Christ, that his body is built up.
Putting on the love of Christ is a sign maturity in the believers life.
When we put on the love that binds these virtues together, we are growing in the body of Christ.
The New International Greek Testament Commentary: The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon General Guidelines and Practical Exhortations (3:5–17)
For the point is the same, that at the end of the day it is this love (and only this love) which is strong enough to hold together a congregation of disparate individuals.
Colossians and Philemon: A New Covenant Commentary Living as the New Israel in the New Age (3:12–17)
Love seeks to protect the mind from corruption and keep the soul from perversion by outside forces. Love wants the other in the relationship to live to its fullest potential and to be true to its own identity. Love means seeking to live in wholesome communion within a family of faith, and that is why love is the bond of perfect unity.
Love, as we saw with forgiveness last week, is best understood when we realize how much we have been given that we don’t deserve.
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Did you make any time in the previous week to think on just how much you have been forgiven?
If not would encourage you to do so but now to also think of how much love you are shown in that forgiveness.
It makes me think of the song Amazing Grace.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.
David Garland writes
The NIV Application Commentary: Colossians and Philemon Bridging Contexts
A Tennessee farmer once said, “What comes up in the bucket is usually what’s down in the well.” The sexual immorality, malevolent bursts of anger, and loathsome speech in Paul’s list are all tokens of an inner wickedness. No somber list of prohibitions will ever change that wickedness; they may only suppress the ways we overtly express it. The inner wickedness remains and will probably express itself covertly or publicly in ways that may be more socially acceptable but are no less evil. The only solution is to change what is down in the well of our very souls. Only giving ourselves completely to Christ and allowing his transforming power to fumigate and permeate our thoughts and actions will solve the sin problem in our lives. Because we have been raised with Christ and renewed by Christ, living a life pleasing to him is the fruit of our new nature.
Let us all be united in Christ when we place on the overcoat of love, which pushes us towards maturity in our faith.