Again, this is God's holy word. Take heed how you hear it. If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is. Sitting at the right hand of God, set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. But now you yourselves are to put off all these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another. Since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all." And now verse 12 which begins our sermon text. As the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection. again thus far God's holy word. You can spot certain people from a very long distance. And the people I have in mind are uniformed personnel, whether they be a police officer or a park ranger or a soldier or airman, marine, sailor, et cetera. You can spot them from a mile away because of what they're wearing. They're marked out with clean haircut, shiny boots, a beret, or depending on who they are. But if they're doing what they're supposed to be doing, and of course, many times they are, they're also marked out, whether they're on duty and wearing uniform or not, by their conduct. Take my experience, soldiers. Soldiers are disciplined. They're respectful, certainly respectful to their superior. They're motivated. They're marked out by their conduct. Now Christians follow only the second part. When you become a community member of this church, or even baptized, you don't receive a robe. You don't get a hat that marks you out as a Christian. But you are to put on certain things. You are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. You are to strive to live like Christ. If I, and I will never do this, nor could I, but if I was to videotape you and audio tape a 24 hour period of your life this past week, would it be evident from those who see that video recording and hear that audio recording that you are a Christian? that you are like Christ, certainly though not perfectly, that you live your life in a certain way, that you've put on Him. Now this is exactly what Paul is getting at with the church in Colossae. He, as we just read, perhaps you will recall from last week, he's called them to put to death their sin, which is the first part of sanctification. The process to be like Christ more and more in holiness begins with putting to death our sins. We are to pick the weeds of our soul. But we're also to plant the seeds of Christ in our soul. This is what he's getting at in this section. This chapter is full of commands, exhortations. He's going to continue this all the way through the end of the chapter. Wives, submit. Husbands, love. Children, obey. Christians, put to death. Christians, put on. These are all commands. He has spent a lot of time speaking about gospel truth. And with that in mind, he turns to gospel living. And I want to bring to your attention these three verses, verses 12 I want you to see that God's chosen people, in the midst of all these other things that they are to do and they are unable to do, God's chosen people strive to live out the mercy, forgiveness, and love of Christ. That's their uniform. That's how they're marked out. That's their conduct. God's chosen people strive to live out the mercy, forgiveness, and love of Christ. I want to bring this lesson to you under four points. The last three are mercy, forgiveness, and love. But first I want you to see, my first of four points is who these people are. who are striving to live out Christ's likeness. The people of this striving, Paul begins, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, he once again calls to mind to the church in Colossae who they are. Very important for us to do that as well. We can fail to understand something very important. Perhaps you can fail to see that you cannot be Christ-like without a relationship with Christ. Paul says, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved. This is Old Testament language. He is using language that Moses, for example, in Deuteronomy 7 used about Israel, and he is applying that to the church. Very useful for us to see that. In another place, he says that the church is the Israel of God. The church has replaced Israel as the people of God. Deuteronomy 7, verses 6-8, this same language. Moses says there, for you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. Verse seven, the Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people. for you are the least of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you." You're beloved. You're an object of God's love. That's what he's saying here. Therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved. God's people are holy in two ways. They're holy objectively. They, through their baptism, have been set apart. That's what holy and very just basic meaning has. It's set apart. We're holy. We've been marked out. Even our children objectively have been marked out. We're not Philistines. We're Israelites. We're God's people. But also by faith in Christ, operated by His Holy Spirit, we can subjectively become holy. We can become more and more like Christ Jesus. And all of this is because God has set his love on us and he chose us to be his own people. And I want you to think about this just at the very beginning fairly briefly. Who are you? Now you can fall into a ditch spiritually. One of those ditches, there's several ditches we can fall into as God's people. You can think to yourself, well because I'm chosen, then it doesn't matter what I do. Young people, perhaps you can think to yourself, well, if God is the God of election and God chooses His people, then if He chooses me, then I'll become a Christian like my parents. Or perhaps some other version of that. But I want you to see here that election does not demobilize. God's people. Paul uses it as a mobilizing force, whether it be in the context of salvation, or in this case, sanctification. You can think to yourself, well, if God wants me, if He's chosen, if He's predestined and put it out into His decree that I would be like so-and-so, and that I would put off this sin, then I'll do it. And so you can sit back and you can say, well, God is in control and if it works out for me, if it's convenient for me today to read my Bible, then I'll read it. Because God has appointed it to happen. What I want you to see is that Paul actually evokes this as a means, as a motivation rather, to sanctification. You have been chosen. And God has not only chosen the end, your salvation, your justification, your sanctification, but He's chosen the means to that end. I've always been encouraged by the account of Paul in the book of Acts, though it would be a slightly different topic, it's the same thing. Christ tells Paul one night, I have many people in this city. I've chosen them. They're my elect people. What does Paul do? He goes out the next day, the next couple of days, and he preaches. It's a mobilizing force, the election of God. We should draw great comfort from the fact that God has not just chosen us to be forgiven, but he's chosen us in him that we should be holy, holy and without blame before him in love. I want you to think about this also because what we're looking at in this section is in the context of a vibrant relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the mistakes that you can make, in addition to the one I just mentioned, is you can go about being religious, not knowing the Lord Jesus Christ. And you can't do that. It's impossible. It's impossible to do any of this without Christ Jesus, but knowing Him intimately through faith. I want to ask you, do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you have a relationship with Him? I want you to think about something. You may not experience this yourself, but perhaps you can identify with it. It's impossible, unless you're very, very gifted. There's always exceptions. It's impossible to learn a language not being taught from a master. I was told in seminary, listen, don't start trying to learn Greek yourself. Just wait to the class. Let your professor walk you through it. It's really hard. You have to have a master. You have to know someone who's holy in order for you to be holy. Christ is that person. Do you know Christ? Do you have a relationship with Christ? Because without that, you can't be holy. You can't put him on. Who are the people that strive after Christ's likeness? Well, there's people who know him. And that's very important for us to settle. The people that are striving are God's chosen people. But what is it that they strive after? In every case, God's people are looking for spiritual realities, marks of the soul. Yes, God wants you to do certain things and to say certain things, but all of these are attributes, they're character attributes. And the first one can be summarized under mercy. Verse 12, therefore as the elect of God holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering. So secondly, I want us to see striving after mercy. Now, Paul uses a metaphor that I've already touched on a little bit, and it's the metaphor of putting on clothes. You walk into your closet, all of you, including myself, you walked into your closet or went to your chest or drawer, as it were, and you put on clothes. And that's a metaphor. It's meant to connotate something. There's obviously some disconnect. We're not to put off kindness. Once we put it on, we're supposed to keep it on. And it doesn't wear out, like our clothes can wear out. It's to grow and be shinier, if you will. So there's a disconnect here, but the sense of what's going on with this put on is twofold. It's we are to be these things. We are to live in this way. But it's more than just that. It's the striving after it. You could make much about the Greek verb here. It's be putting on, just as we were to be killing sin. If you notice from last week, if you recall from last week. We don't just kill sin and we're done. We continue to kill sin. This side of heaven will continue to kill sin, just as on this side of heaven we will continue to put on Christ more and more. To be more and more like Him. And to live like Him. But what are these things we are to put on specifically? All these things are perfectly embodied in the Lord Jesus Christ and exemplified by him. First, he mentions tender mercies. It's that emotion of condolences. You go to a funeral, especially a funeral that's, you're not personally, intimately connected to the person who died, but you're there to support other people. What do you do? You have pity for your friend who's weeping. Think of the Lord Jesus Christ, John 11. Lazarus is dead. And he knew Lazarus very well, but certainly Mary and Martha, his sisters, knew him even better. And they were weeping when he gets before them. If you read John 11, when he gets around them and they're weeping, that's when you hear the shortest verse in the Bible. Kids, perhaps you haven't memorized. Jesus wept. He has tender mercies. It's that, if you have the King James, it's interesting the way they translate it. That feeling you get when you're sad, it's just right there in your stomach. It grabs you. And we are to have this. You want to have a tender heart. I like the word tender. When you see someone in pain or in misery, does it bother you? Does it bother you? You want to have a tender heart. And the best way I can can encourage you to that end. If you're kind of a stone-cold kind of person, not affected by a lot, we're all different, made different personalities and such, but pray that God would give you a tender heart. Pray. You want to have tender mercies. And you want to go beyond that to kindness, which is the next thing mentioned. Now kindness is the action of condolences. You can have pity on someone and not do anything about it. Think of the Good Samaritan. It wasn't that he just said, look at that Jew who is really in pain. He actually did something about it. I think of John chapter 2 verse 15 and 16. If a brother or a sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them to part in peace, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?" Now in James chapter 2, James is talking about faith. But the point is, live out your faith. Don't just have compassion for someone, but do something. Act it out with an act of kindness. This is something that we are commanded to do. Something that we are, I think specifically, it's a challenge probably more so. We're in a culture where poor people, homeless people, of course those aren't the only people that Paul has in mind here. The government does a lot for such people. And if you're like me, then you kind of tend to say, well, I'm not going to give of my money and of my house and of my time to help these people and actually act upon my pity. We're to put not just the emotion of condolences, but we are to act that out with kindness. Humility is the next thing. It might surprise you that that comes next, but humility is important to think about because if you're someone who has tender mercies and you're someone who does perform acts of kindness, you can become very proud very quickly. I am the good Samaritan in your heart. And God wants you to do this with humility. Christ, of course, is the premier example of this humility. Philippians chapter 2, a place where Paul gives a similar exhortation. Verse 3, let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. That's the word. Lowliness of mind. Do you have a lowly mind? Christ, verse 8, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, became obedient to the point of death, even to the death of the cross. He showed great humility. I recall a story about John Bradford, an English reformer in England. He was martyred by Bloody Mary in 1555. He was an eminently holy man. And he's known to have said, and commonly have said, when he would see the men, the prisoners coming out to be executed, he would say, but for the grace of God, there goes John Bradford. Humility. He understood the grace of God. He understood that he was the elect of God. He is what he is, only by God's grace. And that was a mark of his life. In no case did Christ ever act proud. He had every reason to be. I mean, in the sense that he was God. John Bradford, very holy man. Yet he knew, but for the grace of God, there goes John Bradford. This is what we are to put on, humility. I find that very useful. I am what I am only by the grace of God. I have no reason to be proud. Meekness. What is meekness? Really, meekness and long-suffering go together. If you're like me, then you kind of associate meekness with weakness. Moses is said in Numbers 12.3, Now the man Moses was very humble, that's the word for meekness. Some translations just say very meek. Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all men who were on the face of the earth. But Moses wasn't weak. Moses was very strong. He was willing to rebuke, he was willing to correct, he was willing to get angry righteously about things that he needed to be angry about, like false worship, the golden calf, etc. It's not weakness, it's strength under control. I think of Galatians 6.1. It's very close to gentleness. I think of Galatians 6.1 where you have a brother or sister in Christ going to another one who's in trespass and they're with a spirit of gentleness. They're correcting them, they're speaking to them. Not from a position of the moral high ground, not with anger, but with meekness. And long-suffering is more or less the same idea, but it's specifically in those situations where the injury is to you and it's even maybe very serious, maybe very painful. Maybe you're married to an unbeliever and you have to put up with their shenanigans. Or maybe you're the only Christian in your family And getting together with family during the holidays is difficult. This is hard. What do you have to do? You have to suffer long. You have to bear with them. This is what God would have us to put on specifically. And this is what I'll say to kind of wrap this verse up. To put these on specifically in light of the fact that God has shown mercy to you. God has shown mercy to you in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's forgiven you of all of your sins. And God's people have not only received mercy, but they are merciful. They are merciful. Now, this quickly runs over into forgiveness. Verse 13. So my third point this morning to you, striving after forgiveness. You'll notice that it just naturally goes right on, bearing with one another and forgiving one another. You have to have these attributes of mercy. You have to put on these mercy clothes, if you will, so that you might suffer long and bear the sins and the difficulties and the weaknesses of others and forgive them. And that's the idea here. You put these on so that you might also forgive. Burying with one another and forgiving one another are different, but they go together. I want you to think about this for a moment. Burying with one another is is long-suffering, it's overlooking sins. You do so to the degree that it's for their own good and for God's glory. There's obviously times where you don't just ignore and overlook another person's sins, but in the life of a congregation, life of a marriage, and life of a family, there's a lot that you do want to just kind of swallow and just kind of put on your back and just bear. But bearing is one thing and forgiving another person is another thing. There are situations where you can bear with someone's sins, but not want to forgive them. Or maybe you can't forgive them. Or maybe you have to bear with their sins. God calls us to suffer long, to bear, and to forgive. To put away their sins. Charles Spurgeon is famously quoted. He gives a great illustration, and I'm going to give it. What do you do when you bury a dead dog? You bury a dead dog and you don't leave his tail hanging above the ground. You put it out of sight. It's done. You don't bring it back up. That's what forgiveness means. You don't literally forget. You don't erase it from your mind. But you don't bring it back up and use it against people. You forgive them. This naturally flows from mercy. But Paul... reiterates it. He emphasizes it. He says, if anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. See, to highlight some of the things that I'm saying to you, I want you to think about the situation wherein you would forgive a little bit more. If anyone has a complaint against another. Let me put it to you this way. If you have a just complaint against someone. Someone, even maybe sitting behind you or next to you, has done something wrong. It wouldn't be the first time that in the church a brother or sister sins against another brother or sister. And you have a just complaint. You're the one. Someone has lied about you. Someone has maybe just been unthoughtful. Maybe they said a sharp word to you. And again, we interpret Scripture as Scripture. There are cases where for their own good and for God's glory you would need to do something else. But it's in those cases that you are to bear with and forgive. Be ready to forgive. Maybe they haven't come to you for forgiveness. Maybe they aren't going to come to you. But you should be ready to forgive them. And that's the situation. And the rule is, Christ, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. I think of Christ, the Lord Jesus. What did he say on the tree? Very powerful. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. I mean, it's not just the Father that's gonna be forgiving them, it's Jesus that's forgiving them too. His people. Father, forgive them. I think it's easy for God's people, I say this from my own experience, for people to forget that they have been forgiven. And that because they, God's people, have sinned against a holy, infinitely majestic God, their sins against God to whom He has forgiven them, are far more serious than what someone in this room could do to you. That's a big claim, but I want to defend it for a second. I want you to think about it. Because he doesn't just say, forgive most of the time, but even as Christ forgave you. Our sins against Christ and against God are very serious because of who God is. Who's God? Well, He's your Creator. He's your Savior. He's your Judge. He's holy. And to sin against that person, to sin against God is very serious. And sinning against a brother or sister, no matter how hard it is, it's not as serious as your sins against Christ, and yet Christ has forgiven you. Christ has forgiven you. Matthew 6, 14 through 15. I want you to think more about forgiveness. Interesting verses here. Matthew 6, 14 through 15. For if you forgive men, this is Christ speaking, a sermon on the Mount. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. I read these verses to you not because I want to teach to you, nor does the Bible teach to you that you're saved and forgiven based on whether or not you forgive. That's not true. God's people are not perfect. They don't always even forgive like they should. But what Jesus is getting at is if someone has been touched by the glory of Christ in the gospel, And they've felt the forgiveness of sins. They will also be people who are marked as those who forgive. And if you never forgive, then you have to ask yourself whether or not you're a Christian. You have to really think about the gospel, whether you believe it. Is it true for you? Are you right now in a situation where you have a just complaint against someone? What are you doing? What are you doing? Are you thinking about the Lord Jesus Christ? What He's done for you? That's where you gotta go. Now, there's a lot I can say about this. Those who are unrepentant, you should be ready to forgive. You can't forgive someone who's unrepentant. They've done something terrible to you and they're gonna keep doing it. That's different. I understand there's situations here. But if someone comes to you, And they confess their sin to you? Are you going to forgive them? Will you forgive them? Will you bury the dead dog? This is what Christ is calling us to do. I will never forget, just to kind of bring this to a head here. I will never forget this. One of my first memories in the RPCNA, I think it was three synods ago. I won't tell you who it was. But there was a minister who got up on the floor of synod. And he confessed to the whole Senate. What he had done, it was a sin. He had spoken inappropriately on the floor of Senate, in front of everyone. He spoke a word that was just not appropriate. It was not kind. And he asked everyone. He confessed his sin. He named his sin. He said, please forgive me. And he was speaking to the moderator, who was Bruce Martin. If you know Bruce Martin, minister in New Jersey. I was touched by the confession, but I was also touched by the answer. Bruce Martin smiled at him and he said, we forgive you. We can't do anything else. We can't do anything else. You see, we can't do anything else. If a brother or sister comes to us and they ask us, please forgive me. You can't do anything else. You have to forgive them. You forgive them because Christ has forgiven you of all your sins. And that is the rule of our forgiveness. Verse 14, Paul goes on and he builds, he's building here. And in a certain sense, in verse 14, he mentions love. And so I want you to say, fourthly, striving after, I'm sorry, yeah, striving after love. If you're merciful, you're loving, and you could say that. If you're forgiving, you're loving. But it's more than that. There's more to love than these two things. Verse 14, but of all of these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection. Now what is in view here is the love of Christ for his brothers and for his sisters, for his fellow men. It's charity as the King James puts it, a love towards man. In the Greek it's literally the love, the love of Christ. Thoughtfulness, caring for one another, providing for one another. That's what's in view here. And this is something else that we are to put on. Again, this is a It's its own thought here, going back to the putting on of garments. Put on love. And this is preeminent. Very important for us to think about. But above all these things, put on love. It's the preeminent virtue, if you will. Jesus says, by this all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. 1 Corinthians 13.2 in the context of other things. He says, And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. Above all these things put on love. I want you to think about this. I think it is very useful to think about this For any Christian, especially for Reformed Christians, especially for Christians who are aware of doctrine and worship and sovereignty of God and all these different things, and we have our shorter catechism memorized, as it were, and we read Calvin's Institutes, all these things I want you to do, we need to be informed, okay? We need to renew our mind. I mean, renewing our mind informs our love. It's connected. It's not separated completely. But we need to also remember that we can have our shorter catechism memorized and not love people. We could have read the whole Bible two years in a row and not do what it says. It's just possible. I remember one author put it this way, knowledge does not equal holiness. Very insightful. Above all these things put on love. Do you express your love to other people? Maybe I'm speaking to myself. Love is the chief thing to actually live your faith, not just be able to express it. Right doctrine leads us to right living. And this function, love has a very important function. It says, which is? the bond of perfection. Love is preeminent and love has a very important function in the life of the congregation. Now some people have taken this phrase, and this is biblically true to do so, is to say that Love is the bond of perfection. It's the virtue that perfects and unites all the other virtues. Again, that's biblically true. I just read 1 Corinthians 13, 2. It talks about there's faith, hope, and love. Love is the main thing. But what I think is in view here is actually the importance and the function of love and uniting the church together. It's a perfect bond in regards to one another. It's hard to have a schism with one another, congregation, Presbyterian, denomination, when you fervently love them, and you're willing to suffer long for them, and you're willing to forgive them. It unites God's people. It's very important. And again, this is the love of Christ. And I want you to think about the love of Christ a bit more, just as we kind of draw this to an end. This is what we are to put on. How has Christ loved you? Okay. Greater love has no man than this, that he'd give his life for his friends. If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Jesus said in John 15, 12, this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. It's very important for us as God's people to keep the love of Christ fresh in our minds. I came across a story this week, it was very helpful, it really touched me. It reminded me of the love of Christ for me and I want you to hear it. Miracle on the River Kauai. Ernest Gordon. writes his account. He's a Scottish prisoner of war in World War II, somewhere in the Pacific building the Burma-Syme Railway as a prisoner with many other prisoners. Brutal, brutal environment. Brutal Japanese soldiers over them. They were pressed with the heat, tropical diseases, stinging insects, inadequate food and clothing. exposed to the elements. He describes Ernest Gordon among his Scottish unit that there was a culture of fear and hatred that began, selfishness. I mean you can imagine people living for themselves, fighting for themselves. Prisoner on prisoner crime was rampant and they were motivated by fear and hate, trying to survive. And Ernest Gordon, in that context, tells the story of the lost shovel. A group of men are working all day, and they come to the end of the day, and they turn in their shovels to these Japanese soldiers over them. And there's a shovel missing. And Ernest tells the story of how this Japanese soldier over them just went irate. Kill all, kill all, kill all. Turn it in. He went nuts. And he had them standing up. He was pointing their gun at them. He was about to shoot them all. And one man stood out, stood forward, raised his hand. He was, I believe, anonymous. Still anonymous. And standing still, that Japanese soldier took his rifle and started beating him and beat him to death. They go back to the camp. They find all the shovels. They go back to the camp and they have all the shovels. What happened? This man, he stood out and he died so that those others wouldn't die. And it changed the whole situation. That whole camp, Ernest describes, people got word that there was a man willing to die for them. And it changed the way they lived. They started caring for one another. Thinking about, hey, let's do this together. Let's share food. Let's share work. We'll survive this. And that's how it functions in the life of a church. What has Christ done for you? He died for you. Listen, you stole the shovel. You stole the shovel. You sinned. You are rightly an object of God's just wrath and Christ took it for you. Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Put on the love of Christ. God's chosen people strive to live out the mercy, forgiveness, and love of Christ. Dear congregation, I want to ask you whether or not you're striving to put on Christ. This is what you're trying to do. You're trying to be like Christ. You're putting on these spiritual things, these spiritual attributes. And I want to encourage you with this word. Christ has given you the garments. They're in your closet. You're in Christ. You're holy. You're beloved. You're the elect of God. Christ is working in you. And he calls you to go into your closet and to put on mercy and forgiveness and love. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come to you this morning and we are challenged We're challenged by your commands. We're challenged by the example of our Lord, our perfect example of love, mercy, of forgiveness. We know that we fall short in our marriages toward our kids, toward our friends, toward one another in this congregation. And we ask that you would help us to strive to live out Christ's likeness in our lives and in this congregation. To more and more to put on the Lord Jesus Christ. We ask you that. We know that we failed, we know that in many ways that we are weak in this, but we ask your help to follow your commands knowing, for we know that you have enabled us. You have provided for us a complete salvation. You have not only forgiven us of our sins, but you enable us over our sin. Will you enable us this morning more and more to put on Christ. We pray all this in His wonderful name. Amen.