Love Binds Us Together - D-now - Colossians 3:12-14

Introduction

Have you ever noticed how you can tell something about a person’s interests and associations by the way they dress? If a person is wearing camouflage at the bank, don’t you assume he’s either robbing the bank or a hunter? If someone is wearing boots, a leather vest, and a bandana, that’s a person who digs motorcycles. If someone is wearing Brooks shoes, short shorts with cleanly shaven arms, that’s a runner or a cyclist. I bet that for most of us, at least, if we think about the things that we wear that most of our closest friends dress similarly and that they reflect a lot about what types of things we associate with ourselves. There’s a self-imposed dress code for who we understand ourselves to be so that we become recognizable with those things and people we want to be recognized with.

What’s interesting is that Jesus says that his disciples ought to be recognizable in a similar way. In other words, our identity is to be found so solidly in him that our association with him and his kingdom becomes the most recognizable aspect of our lives. The shape of togetherness in the real world.

God’s Word

Read Colossians 3:12-14

Bookended with love

v. 12 - “God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved”

To reframe this in a way that we might understand: “as God’s adopted children, whom He decided to set apart for himself as the objects of his love.”

v. 14 - Put on love

“put on” God’s family is supposed to dress like him. God has made us a family, siblings of the Kingdom. He has connected us together by a common adoption. So, we’re supposed live that way.

God’s love for us establishes the pattern for how we are to love one another.

Only love can bind us together, not preferences or personalities.

Church growth - preferences & personalities (appeal to self-centeredness)

Preferences & personalities = fault-lines (self-centeredness can’t last)

Love = perfect harmony - If everyone is placing others before themselves, it cannot divide. Marriages would never divorce. Friendships would never end. Churches would never split.

God gives us a pattern for love in the real world:

Love one another up close.

v. 12 implies that you are close enough to know them.

compassion - moved inward to alleviate suffering/kindness - can’t be kind to people whom you never relate/humility/meekness/patience

Implied is a relational closeness, people who really know one another.

Our Savior is the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us.

Immanuel - “God with us”

Holy Spirit dwells within us.

“I am with you always to end of the age.”

God has not loved us from a distance!

Our connection with each other is not optional if we are to emulate Christ.

ILL: Sara - Sometimes I pretend the TV is my friends when I’m lonely.

Don’t settle for TV when God has purchased you a family.

Warning: Online church

Meant to be spurred on/Meant to hear one another sing/Meant to be inspired

ILL: Justin and Megan singing “He will hold me fast.”

I’ll never forget it. It’s pushed me forward during some dark days.

APP: Incarnate Christ —> Show one another the closeness of Jesus —> Christ’s body + ambassadors —> fill the gap between “knowing” and “feeling”

Do your friends “feel” the closeness of Jesus because of how you love them?

Love one another through pain.

v. 12c, 13 - patience/bearing with, if one has a complaint/forgiving

Implies hurt, doesn’t it?

This is so real life!

If you get close to each other, you’re going to hurt each other.

Sinners always step all over each other.

teenagers at camp - lots of conflict (dnow)

sinners are dramatic/easily offended/offensive/self-centered/hypocritical

Want to sympathize for Austin? Think about how you are and then multiply it by 60.

When God came and dwelt among us, we crucified him.

God has painfully loved us, and if we’re to put on his clothes, we must love them.

He talks to the victim, not the offender.

“be patient/forgive”

Why? It’s the victim that’s in the best position to show the glory of Christ. We have perpetually put God in a position of patience/forgiveness/forbearance

Our pain is an opportunity for us to show Christ.

Love in real life is painful. The more real and valid the pain in your life the real and valid the opportunity you have to demonstrate Christ.

APP: Get so close to one another that it hurts. Seek the opportunity to show Christ to those who hurt you.

Love one another to the end.

“patience” “bearing with” = Loving with endurance.

Jesus didn’t stop. “It is finished.”

“I am still here. I’m with you every step.”

There’s a lot of quit in us these days.

3 covenant relationships (relationships of supreme love!)

Jesus

Marriage

Church

When life gets hard or life gets busy, these are the first three relationships we back down from — we’ve bought into hollywood romance (we aren’t ready for hard so we bail — not love)

Quitting is easy, but it isn’t love

6th hour d-ship - Jesus stayed to the end

love presses through and leans in

Olive Garden verses Your grandmother’s kitchen

OG: “We treat you like family.” Treated like a first time guest every week. Write your name down every time because they don’t know you. You never meet with CEO. You come in and eat and go home. Every exit on the interstate has one just like it. No mess. No drama. No commitment. No discomfort.

Grandmother: come through the back door, not the front. Immediately hugged and kissed. You help her cook and set the table and clean up. You get aggravated hearing the same stories and dealing with the same issues. But, this is family. You've said things to each other and forgiven one another. You've been through things together and stood by one another. You're family; you've got heritage. You've got history. At the table, you can talk about hard things and past struggles and things that you're facing. You're family! Nothing will separate you. One generation sits together, and reminisces about the stories of what used to happen, and just one wall over is the next generation dreaming of who all of them are going to become. The younger love the stories of the older, and the older love the admiration of the younger. This family has seen men off to war, and sent their children off to college. They’ve sat at weddings together and cried together in funerals. They’ve ooed and ahhed over new babies that were born, and they’ve wept over babies that passed too young. There have been years in which the marriages have been shaky or someone’s health hasn’t been good. Oh, but then there’s that kitchen. That beautifully ordinary kitchen, where the family gathers with all of her scars and all of her baggage and all of her troubles to come together and laugh again. And find strength again. And to remember again that we aren’t alone and that we’ve been called to be a part of something greater and grander and more beautiful. Oh restaurants just won’t do!

Austin is working to build a family here. Go all in! Commit! Be there to the end.