Open your Bibles, if you would, to Colossians chapter 3. Colossians chapter 3. This is the second part of our Easter sermon from now two weeks ago. The first part of the passage describes what to put off. Paul lists ten sins to get rid of if you have been raised with Christ. The second part of the passage that we'll look at this morning then describes five virtues to put on if you've been raised with Christ. It's the counterpart, the positive counterpart to you get rid of these things, you put off the old man, and then you put on the new. We'll read on the first 15 verses of the chapter. If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting on 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 also once walked when you lived in them, but now you must 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. For there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, 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, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you were also called in one body, and be thankful. Let's pray. Father, we need your help to put on the compassionate guts, the kindness, the humility, the meekness, the long-suffering that you call for out of every one of your children. Father, help us to put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge. We thank you that you have given us knowledge and community. We pray that you would help us to preserve that knowledge and that community by doing what you tell us to do as resurrected people who have been raised with Christ and therefore need to put on these five virtues and forgive and forbear with one another. Father, it's a high calling. It's hard. but we know that it can be done, that we can do it because your son did it, and that he empowers us to do it too. Help us then to look to Christ as the one seated at your right hand, giving us these instructions for what we must do, and the grace accompanying the instructions that helps us to do all of these things. Help me to speak boldly and powerfully. Help us all to listen. to be a church that is truly forbearing and forgiving, that's full of compassionate guts. I pray in Jesus' name, amen. This is our sixth sermon in our series on your changing body, the sixth and final sermon about growing up to maturity as a church. We talked about growing in size. Growing in size is not the same thing as growing in maturity. There are big, immature people. There are big, immature churches. We don't want to be a big, immature church. We want to be a mature church, whatever size God makes us to be. What does a mature church look like? We look first at Ephesians 4 and Paul's statement that the church needs to grow to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. We also looked at Matthew 18, the Lord's instructions for life in the body, and Him telling us, forgive one another, go after the lost sheep, care for children within the body. And we looked at Colossians 3, and last week we had a bonus sermon on Philippians 2, the mind of Christ. He humbled himself. And we are called to show that same mind, humbling ourselves to one another. Well, our passage this morning, we wind up this series, speaks further about maturity and especially of what preserves maturity within the church. How do we keep our community from rotting away? Paul tells us that Our identity in Christ, our attitude toward one another, and our actions toward each other is what preserves that mature community. Our identity, our attitude, our actions. We have five virtues that counteract the ten vices of the old Adam. We'll look at those in just a minute, but the main point here is that because you have been raised from death with Christ, your identity has been transformed. You need to dress in love. You need to follow peace. You've been raised from death with Christ. Your identity is therefore transformed such that you dress in love and follow peace. So verse one, if you were raised with Christ, we talked about this two weeks ago. Paul doesn't say you have been raised with Christ. He says, check yourself. Have you been raised with Christ? This is an if. Don't come in here and say, yeah, I definitely have new life. Look at the passage. It describes what you do when you have new life. Are you putting off the 10 sins? Are you putting on the five virtues? If not, if these sins don't sound like sins to you, if these virtues don't sound like virtues to you, there's a problem. You may not be raised with Christ. So if you aren't sure whether you've been raised with Christ, cry out to Him. Ask Him to save you. Lord, resurrect me from spiritual death. But if you say yes, broadly I'm familiar with these things. This is how I want to live. Paul encourages you, do it more. Commit harder, live that way more thoroughly. Put on these clothes all the way. Dress in the old man, or dress in the new man, put off the old man. I spoke last time about the corporate sense of that, the old Adam, the old humanity. represented by our first federal head, and then Christ, the new Adam, the new humanity, represented our second federal head. That's true. But I unfairly denigrated last time the individual component of that identity. I gave my rant against The translation self, some of you no doubt remember that. The translation probably says, put off the old self, put on the new self. There is some value in that. And I misspoke last time. There's a new self in a real sense, an internal renewal when you believe in Jesus. That renewal is elsewhere described as resurrection. For instance, in Romans 6, which we read a few minutes ago. You have been raised with Christ. That means, Paul says here, you are renewed in knowledge according to the image of your creator. The new man has knowledge. That's not just the church as an institution or as an organism has knowledge. You personally have knowledge. A mature church is one where the members of the body are renewed in knowledge. And conversely, an immature church is one where you walk up to the person in the pew and say, what does God tell us to think about human sexuality? And the guy says, I don't know. That's an immature church. You should know. A mature church is one where the people in the pew have been renewed in knowledge. This is what Paul emphasizes here in Colossians 3. Do you seek to know Christ? Do you seek to manifest God's image? The Creator has knowledge. In fact, of course, God knows everything. If you are renewed in knowledge, then you will also seek to know who God is. You won't be ignorant to the contents of this volume. You will know what they are. Paul, by the way, Paul is not saying you get better and better until Jesus can finally accept you. You're renewed in knowledge and eventually you hit that threshold where you're welcome into heaven. Rather, he's saying God has accepted you. God has raised you from the dead with Christ. Now you need to live that out. Adam could not repair and maintain his relationship with God until he was clothed in the animal skins. He could not function as a priest in the garden temple until he was properly dressed. The same goes for you. You have to put off the fig leaves of the old Adam and put on the clothes of the new man of Christ, which Paul tells us here what they are. You have to put those things on in order to be the king and the priest to God that you are called to be. When we put on Christ, when we are renewed in knowledge, then we preserve the community God has given to us. Then we are a mature church. So what do we put on? Well, before we talk about what to put on, Paul calls us three things here. He tells us our identity. Who's getting dressed? Therefore, put on as the elect of God, holy and beloved. That's who you are. You are God's chosen ones. God chose to save you. He said, I want to save that one, and that one, and that one. If you were sitting here this morning, Lord willing, the judgment of charity would be that you are the elect of God, that He has chosen you. And Paul, of course, writes to you as the elect of God. If you've been raised with Christ, you are one God has chosen. Don't let election make you proud. Oh, I'm the chosen one. But do let it destroy despair and all feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness. This chosenness is not in opposition to humility, right? I'm either humble or I'm chosen. No. Chosenness lies in opposition to rejection. I think many of you have experienced that. All of us have experienced something of it. Maybe you were rejected by your spouse. That's what divorce means. Maybe you were rejected by your parents. That's the negative side of adoption oftentimes, being placed in foster care. Maybe you were rejected by your boss, right? You got fired. You were rejected by the church. You got excommunicated. There's a bunch of different kinds of rejection out there. Chosenness is their opposite. In Christ, your chosenness swallows up every other rejection that you've ever experienced. That's why Paul addresses you as chosen ones. God wants you. Even if no one's ever asked you to play on the team, I'm the last one picked. No one's ever proposed to me, I'm always single. No one's ever... Forget those other lesser forms of chosenness. Paul says, you are chosen by God. That's God's word to you this morning. You're chosen. Even if you're fired, even if you're divorced, even if you're abandoned by your parents, the whole nine yards, God wants you. And chosenness means something. It means that you are holy. Your purpose has been transformed. No longer do you wander around aimlessly trying to find your purpose in the bottom of a glass on a bar room, or trying to find your purpose in thrill-seeking, I jump off bridges in New Zealand, you have a purpose. And that purpose is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. That's what holiness means. He changed your purpose so that no longer do you live for pleasure, you live for Him. That's your identity. It's a free gift to you. Paul doesn't say, put on holiness, exactly. Put on chosenness. He says, that's who you are. God has chosen you. God has made you holy. Now, oh, and one more thing, God loves you. Supposedly somebody asked Karl Barth after he wrote his 13 volume church dogmatic series, what's the most profound theological truth you know? And he said, Jesus loves me, this I know. Bart knew some things that maybe weren't so, but on this one, he was right. Jesus loves me, that is the most profound thing any of you could know this morning. Talk about being renewed in knowledge according to the image of God. To not know that you are loved, ultimately is to be a psychopath. Be someone who is incapable of loving, of fitting in, of living in community. But to know that you are loved, Paul says, that's who you are. God loves you. You are chosen, you are holy, you are loved. That's who's getting dressed in the resurrection body. So if you have your coloring sheet, your notes page, you can certainly take the resurrection body and write the words chosen, holy, loved on that body. That's what God has done. He chose you to be holy and He loves you. That's who's getting dressed. What are they wearing? Well, Paul describes the attitude that you have to put on. The new man When you're clothed with the new man, you have to put on these five virtues. And he lists them out. To put on Christ refers to specific attitudes and actions. It doesn't refer to put on warm fuzzies. Put on general feelings of goodwill. No, when you're clothed in Christ, you put on these specific things. And the first one is compassionate guts. Now, your translation might say tender mercies, or King James bowels of mercies. The Greek word is more basic than that. It's the word compassion, and it's the word guts. Where do you feel compassion? According to the Greeks, you feel it in your guts. And if you're a Christian, you need to put on compassionate guts. Now our society loves this, in fact they love it too much. They err in defect on many of the virtues, but on this one they err in excess. Empathy, the king of the virtues, feeling bad for someone, the most important thing you could ever do. There's an abuse there, there's an error there, but that does not mean that scripture is now somehow wrong and that the true Christian is hard-hearted. Certainly we stand against the abuse of this virtue. But that doesn't mean we become hard-hearted. We put on compassionate guts as God understands them. Where are these compassionate guts found? Well, Paul uses this word elsewhere in Philippians 1. He says this, God is my witness how I long for you all with the guts of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1.8 God is my witness how I long for you all with the compassionate guts of Jesus. Now you want to see what compassionate guts looks like? The Son of God shows us what that is. It didn't stop Him from denouncing the Scribes and Pharisees, but it certainly led Him to go around doing good, healing those who were sick, casting out demons, staying up all night in prayer, lamenting over Jerusalem when it was about to kill Him. He had compassionate guts. The world has corrupted this virtue, but it's still a virtue. No one was tougher than Jesus. Very few are tougher than Paul. Yet these men had compassionate guts. They cried freely. They were not afraid of their feelings, but they directed their feelings toward holiness and love. They show us what compassionate guts look like. I was privileged, I think, to see compassionate guts in action right here in Gillette a couple of years ago. I saw a charismatic preacher in town from one of the other churches in our community. He pulled aside a new dad and said, the Lord led me to do this. Pulls out his wallet, opens it up, pulls out $500 in cash and hands it to the new dad and says, you're having children. That's a brave thing to do today. Take this. I was blown away. That's compassionate guts. We may not be charismatic. We may say, I don't know if the Lord would ever tell me to give someone $500. But that is compassionate guts in action. Paul adds, put on kindness. What does kindness mean? It means showing genuine love and care to another person. It's the opposite of aggression. care shown in humility rather than care shown in aggression and being on the attack. So compassionate guts, kindness, and humility, the central virtue in the list. What is humility? Humility means thinking of yourself less. Getting out of your own head, your own obsession with you, and being amazed at the world. I've read you this quote before from G.K. Chesterton, a British journalist in the early part of the 20th century. He says this, humility is the luxurious art of reducing ourselves to a point, not to a small thing or a large one, but to a thing with no size at all, so that to it, all the cosmic things are what they really are, of immeasurable stature. That the trees are high and the grass is short is a mere accident of our own foot rules and our own stature. But to this humble spirit, which has stripped off for a moment its own temporal standards, the grass is an everlasting forest with dragons for denizens. The stones of the road are as incredible mountains piled one upon the other. The dandelions are like gigantic bonfires illuminating the lands around. The heath bells on their stalks are like planets hung in heaven, each higher than the other. To be humble, to really get down to where you're at the ground level, not up here looking down your nose at everybody, you can see the wonder and glory of the creation of God in a whole different way. Most of you have probably noticed that if you look down your nose, you can't see very well. Humility is not looking down your nose. It is looking up in awe and wonder at all of the things God has done, including looking at your brothers and sisters in that same way. It's better to be of a humble spirit with the lowly, because then you can see the glory of Christ. Chesterton says, the sage whose faith and magnitude and ambition is like a giant becoming larger and larger, which only means that the stars are becoming smaller and smaller. World after world falls from him into insignificance. He rises always through desolate eternities. He may find new systems and forget them. He may discover fresh universes and learn to despise them. That's the proud man. I know everything there is to know and I don't think much of it. Paul says the Christian puts on humility. The thing with no size at all. You can't step on my toes. I'm a point, right? Mathematically defined as an exact place, something with no size, no extension in any direction. That's humility. The proud man looks down on creation because he looks down on the Creator. The humble man looks up to his Creator, and in so doing, he sees the glory and wonder of all creation. If you are proud, you will never love and welcome the brothers and sisters in this church. You'll be too concerned with how they might bother you." Well, in addition to humility, he says, put on meekness or gentleness What does that mean? It's not just form, but substance. In other words, it isn't very gentle to nicely inform your husband that you're leaving him for another man. No matter how nicely you do it, it's not meek, it's not gentle. The content has to be gentle as well as the form. Leaving is ungentle, no matter how nicely you put it. Gentleness within the body refers not just to how we talk to one another, but also to what we say. Meekness is love in deed and love in tongue. Gentle, kind, yes, our culture does these things to excess, has corrupted them till they're no virtues at all. But we don't do them the way the culture does. Do them the way Jesus did. And then finally, the fifth virtue, our least favorite, the one we all hate, long suffering. I talked to some of you about this a couple of weeks ago at new members class. We all prefer short suffering. Give me the short suffering. No more than 10 minutes of suffering, please. maybe 20 minutes. When God says no, it might be months of suffering, it might be years of suffering, we say no. I don't believe in long suffering. I like short suffering, thank you very much. A Christian is known by long suffering. And that is not something that our culture sends excess in, quite the opposite. We don't believe in any suffering. It's not comfortable, it's not good. Hostile work environment, and so on. But Paul says the Christian is not afraid of long suffering. In fact, if you're clothed with Christ, you should expect suffering that lingers. You should expect pain that stays with you for a very long time. That's part of the new man. Just like being renewed in knowledge, just like being kind and having compassionate guts, all these things that we know, oh yeah, Christians do that. Christians also suffer for a long time. And guess where we suffer? Well, he tells us in the next verse. Put on longsuffering, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another. Longsuffering is exercised primarily at church. That's what the apostle says. Come in here and get some suffering. We expect our fellow Christians to show the five qualities that he's just mentioned. When I come to a church, the people there better have compassionate guts. They better have kindness. They better have humility. They better have gentleness. They better have patience and long-suffering. Or else? Brothers and sisters, you can only expect these qualities in others to the extent that they are true of you. If you demand that your fellow believers behave like this, you've got to show me some compassionate guts. You better be gentle to me. You better be humble. I can't stand those proud so-and-sos. If you hold them to this standard and reserve the right to judge them harshly when they don't live up to it, then you just showed that you have no compassion, no kindness, and no patience. How can you demand it of others unless you're showing it? And if you're showing it, you can't demand it. Paul gets you coming and going. He says, bear with one another and forgive one another. All right, what is bearing with one another? Forbearing, bearing with one another, that means refusing to be offended. And forgiving means dropping an offense. So if they're trying to offend me, I forbear, I bear with it, I put up with it, I don't get offended. And if they do offend me, I drop the offense, I forgive, I let it go. If there's no room here, either direction, for you to say, I'm sorry, I don't put up with that, I'm going to hold a grudge against you, period. I'm not talking, of course, about rational measures to protect yourself from being harmed by sin. But I will tell you right now that the sins of the world are far more dangerous than the sins of the church. All of us go to, oh, sexual abuse, blah, blah, blah. I've talked about that. It's a disease of our culture to point to the most radical exception and then say, aha, see? Rule doesn't apply. That's stupid. The rules apply. There are radical exceptions out there. Sure. But for the vast majority of the time, the vast majority of cases, the rules apply. That's why they are rules. And yes, you need to forgive the sexual abuser, too. It doesn't mean you allow Him to do His thing. You do take steps to protect yourself. But again, the sins of the world are far more harmful than the sins of the church. What is the church going to do to you? They might spill hot chocolate on your clothes. They might track mud on your floor. They might say something insensitive to you about the size of your fat gut. They might Right? Do something silly like that. They might stress your dog out. Make it freak out. That's the sins of the church, by and large. And the same people, oftentimes, who say, oh, I've got to protect myself from the sins of the church. Oh, they're offending me in there. Are the people who seem to have no concept of the sins of the world. The people who say, oh yeah, I watch HBO Max all the time. Did you see this show and that show? The same people who just suck up whatever Instagram shows to them on their phone. The same people who subscribe to this, watch that, go here, do this, travel to Las Vegas for a fun weekend. Which is going to hurt your family more? The pushy old lady at church? Or the pipeline of 24-7 content that comes in on cable TV or the streaming service of your choice. Brothers and sisters, be realistic here. Which sins are more deadly? Which sins are more harmful? Yes, protect yourself from being damaged by sin. Absolutely. But don't you tell me that the offensive guy in the third pew, or whatever pew it might be, That that guy is a bigger danger to your faith in Jesus than the big name Hollywood director who has it out for Christians. Jesus asked the father to forgive the men who crucified him. Stephen asked Jesus to forgive the men who stoned him to death. You and I have a hard time forgiving the guy at church who says that our new baby looks like a creature from Star Wars. It's true. You forbear, you forgive. That is not optional for the Christian. And Paul says when to do this? Whenever anyone has a complaint against another. The language is purposely general. We have a huge swimming pool full of love, joy, and peace in this room. It feels really good. We have to make every effort to maintain that because the weeds of bitterness will crack the bottom of that pool in no time. and drain all the love, joy, and peace out of this room in a hurry. Root up the root of bitterness before it destroys the community. That's what Paul says. Whenever you have a gripe against someone else, Jesus explained exactly how to do that. We looked at Matthew 18. Go to them. Say, hey, I have a gripe with you. What's the deal? And seek reconciliation. Don't go around and take your jackhammer to the bottom of the pool so you can drain out all the love, joy, and peace, and then say, all right, that church has no love, joy, and peace. I'm out. Well, of course you're out. You just blew a hole in the bottom of it. How do you forgive? You forgive like Christ forgave you, ouch. If you have to take the loss of 20 bucks to forgive, would you do that? If you have to accept that someone gossiped about you, someone slandered you, someone hurt your child, will you do that? Or will you choose to hang on to your right to be offended and thereby drag yourself down to hell? We laugh at the monkey who puts his hand in the hole in the log and grabs the shiny thing and can't withdraw it and sits there and starves to death. What a stupid animal. How many Christians They're hanging on to the equivalent of one of those big concrete highway barriers. And they've got their death grip on it, and it's sinking them right down to the bottom of hell. But they can't let it go because it was a big offense. Oh, he really hurt me. Oh, he really bothered me. Oh, she's awful. I can't forgive. But there's no loophole here for the really big sins. In fact, the bigger the sin, the more important this is. That's what the Apostle says. There are no loopholes for large offenses. Absalom's bitterness against his father for refusing to deal with the rape of Tamar, that was a sin. And Absalom's sin threw Israel into civil war and just about destroyed the Lord's anointed. How did Christ forgive you? What price did He have to pay? He had to pay more than 20 bucks. He had to pay more than his net worth, right? Forget $450 million fines. Jesus paid with His life. That's how He forgave you. How much will it cost to forgive the people who sin against you? It might cost a lot. That's why Paul says, forgive like Jesus forgave, because that costs everything. It's not going to be so easy to be a Christian. That's why he said, long suffering. Don't come in here and expect short suffering. Yes, there's love, joy, and peace. Yes, there's compassionate guts. But there are also offenses. And we must forgive. We do that by dressing in love. Above all of it, put on love. It's the bond of perfection. False religions, one of you told me recently, false religions make people do things they hate in order to appease a God who hates them. If that's your religion, you're going to burn out in a few weeks. We don't do things we hate, forgiving the people we hate, because God hates us. We do it because God loves us. Because we're chosen. We're holy. We're beloved. And we act that out by forgiving one another. So he says, preserve the community you have by following Christ together. Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which you were called in one body. Not in a bunch of bodies. That's why we sit in one room. We gather here together. We don't all sit at home and watch on our screens and say, oh, we're one body. We're just one body in 15 places. It doesn't work that way, right? The old joke, blast victim taken to hospital in two ambulances. Something is badly wrong with that body. why we should gather, why we do gather, and why when we gather, ideally we all sit together as a way of saying very clearly by our actions, we are one body. Dress in love. Heed that call to peace, which is getting along, being united together, loving one another. and be thankful. Live out that attitude of gratitude. If the others in this church aren't the Christians they should be, forgive them for two reasons. The first is that Jesus forgave you. And the second is that you aren't the Christian you should be either. If you recognize your own needs, if you walk in humility, you will know the resurrection power of the Son of God. He is alive. His death kills our petty grievances. It seals up the bottom of our pool with that rubber coating so that we can swim in love, joy, and peace in here. His death preserves our community, creates it, and preserves it. And it brings us to peace, gratitude, and joy. Know that and live that this Easter season because that's what maturity is. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that we were called to peace in one body. Help us to live that out. Father, we pray against all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, malice, and slander, that they would be put away from us. Father, let us teach us to forgive. We pray that there would be no grudges, no wars and conflicts, no bitterness within this body, no one attacking the floor of our pool. Lord, we ask that this would come to pass through Christ who died and rose again. We thank you that we are God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. Don't let us reject one another. Help us to choose to love. We pray in the name of your beloved son who rose from the dead and sits at your right hand in the glory of the spirit. Amen.