Colossians chapter three. Colossians chapter three, we say for the tape, verses 12 to 17. Let's read that together as we begin this one. Colossians chapter three, verse 12. So as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. Let peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God The text that we're opening this morning is about what it's like to live together as a church when Christ is all and is in all. Now, to see that, we need to back up and kind of review a couple of things. In verse 9, Paul says that Christians have laid aside the old self with its evil practices. That's what happened at conversion. Our old, unbelieving self died. And we just stripped it off, like a butterfly strips off its old, worm-like cocoon when springtime comes. In verse 10, we see the positive counterpart to this stripping off of the old self. We have put on the new self. who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him. So in conversion, what happened was that we stripped off the old self and we put on a new self. What Paul describes here is true of everyone. who has come to trust in Christ, everyone who has been regenerate and made a new creature. We didn't just decide to do this and make it happen ourselves. Verse 12 makes clear who was the initiating power behind this metamorphosis and this new birth. Paul refers to believers in verse 12 as those who have been chosen by God. holy and beloved. And the reason we experienced the stripping off of our old self and the putting on of the new self was that God loved us and He chose us and He set us apart to be holy to the Lord. We are elect and holy and loved, verse 12 tells us. In other words, God took the initiative with us. He chose us and He makes us holy and He loves us. Now that's important. Because God was up to something when he did all of that. He had a purpose in mind. What he was up to was this, creating new people in his own image and by his own power. He was obliterating the distinctions by which we could boast. Distinctions that had separated us and made us suspicious and distrustful and puffed us up. His aim in creating new people was that they would stop boasting in their distinctives that Paul lays out in verse 11, and start boasting in Christ who unites them. Remember what we said about verse 11? There's a renewal that happened. There is no distinction now between Greek and Jews, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarians, Scythians, slaves and freemen, but Christ is all and in all. In other words, God is creating a new community out of people who have stripped off their old selves and put on new selves. And the mark of this new community, this community that is chosen and holy and beloved, is that the people in it stop cherishing the things that separate them. and rather celebrate the things that bring them together, Jesus Christ. The number one primary mark of newness in this new community, in these new people, is that Christ is all and in all. That's the mark. Christ is everything. That's the all-important climax of verse 11. Christ is all and in all. And if you ask what's new about this new self of verse 10 and what's new about this new community of new persons, the answer is, for these people and for this community, Christ is all. And he is in all. Once we boasted about our culture and our intellect like the Greeks, but now Christ is all. That doesn't matter anymore. Once we gloried in our tradition and our religious rigor like the Jews, but now Christ is all, and he's in all. Once we got our strokes from our ethnic pedigree, but now Christ is all, and in all. Once we reveled in not being like the barbarians and the shabby Scythians, but now Christ is all, and he's in all. Once we struggled to find our significance and our happiness and our security in who we were in relation to other people, But that doesn't matter anymore. We're Jews. We're Greeks. We're circumcised. We're free. We're Americans. We're rich. We're smart. We're strong. We're pretty. We're witty. We're cool. Paul says that doesn't matter. Christ has made a new community. He's made a new community out of new people. And what makes them new and what makes them different is that for them, Christ is all. It is no longer I who live, Paul says, but Christ who lives in me. No matter what the issue is, no matter what the activity is, no matter what the idea is, no matter what the subject is in school, no matter what the vocation is, no matter what the TV program is, it exists for Christ or for nothing. Those are the only two options. It rests on Christ or it rests on nothing because Christ is all and in all. He is all that matters about everything. Pretty inclusive, isn't it? It doesn't say it's part. Paul says Christ is all and in all. And I stress this because the world never stresses it. Of course, the world doesn't believe it. You spend most of your time in the world, and there is a lot of the world in the church. We need to get back to what Paul is telling us. I stress it because it's the very heart of the Bible, in the heart of the new community, in the heart of the new creation in Christ, the new Christian self. That's the flow of the passage, and it's compelling. In verse 9, we put off the old self. In verse 10, we put on the new self. And in verse 11, we stop getting our meaning by comparing ourselves with others. Why? Because Christ is everything. We don't need anything else. And that means that the new thing about the new self is that Christ and not the self is all. No matter what people tell you about your need for self-esteem, it's not what your need is. Your need is to recognize that Christ is everything, not your own self. What's so precious about the new self is that for the first time in our lives, we can forget ourselves and get swallowed up in Christ. For the new self and the new community, Christ is our success. Christ is our significance. Christ is our fulfillment. Christ is our satisfaction. Christ is our security. Christ is our peace. Because Christ is everything. He is all and in all. And it's not enough to simply say Christ is all. If that were enough, then the rest of the book of Colossians would never have been written. God would have stopped right there at the end of verse 11. He might have created in you a new self that was so complete and so perfect that you would intuitively act in purity and love and justice and holiness without ever praying a prayer or ever reading a Bible, never having to be in process. But that's not the way God did it. God made you a new creature. He made you a new person. And he made us a new community that is still in process. And so we go from the end of verse 11 through the rest of the book of Colossians because we need it. The new self could have been created with such an unbroken focus on Christ as all that it would have had no need for a preacher to cry out, Christ is all. But we need that. Because we don't have an unbroken focus. Because we are still fallen individuals. We would have had no need to belong to a group where we struggle with questions such as, how is Christ our all when a baby dies? How is Christ our all when the marriage is tottering? How is Christ my all when I keep on doing, like Paul, what I think? How is Christ my all when I tremble that God is calling me to leave my security and this nice suburban American existence and go to the mission. The new self could have come into being with no need for preaching and no need for any kind of gathering of this new community. It could have come with all the garments in place, but it didn't. There are things that Paul says we need to put on. So instead, it comes in the process of being made new. It is born becoming. It's new in order to become new. Christ is all that he might become all in all. We are made new, and this is one of those strange things that the scripture says to us. You know, things like, in order to live, you've got to die. The scripture is full of all those kinds of things that just don't sound right. Well, this is another one. You're made new, but you've got to become new as well. And so in verse 12, we're told, even though you are new, you've still got some things that you have to put on. put on the new self. As those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on, and he goes on a list, the garments of newness. This is what you have to put on. You have come to know and experience that Christ is all, and now Paul wants to show how people relate to one another when Christ is all. All of these garments that Paul is about to tell us we have to put on are relational garments. They do us no good. apart from relating to other people in this new community. Verses 12 to 14, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another, and forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. all relational qualities. When Christ is all, that's the way we will live with each other. We will evidence these qualities and people will know that Christ is all when they see us living that way with each other. We will be the living evidence that Christ is all and in all. You can't do that in isolation. It's not easy to live out these precious realities with each other. In fact, it's impossible if we're disconnected from each other. All the scripture, and all of Colossians, and all of this passage in particular, is written to believers living in community, not people who are isolated from one another. You can't do the kinds of things that Paul speaks about in isolation. You need to be living in community with other believers in order to put on what Paul tells us we are to put on. These are positive qualities of Christian living. As Paul lays out these instructions for living the Christian life together, he hangs them on three hooks. He tells us that in order to live together in Christ, we must first put on, and then we've got to permit, and then we've got to praise. Let's take each of them as we find them. Verses 12 to 14, we're told to put on. That's the first hook on which we can hang what Paul has to tell us. We're told that there are a number of things that we've got to put on. The first is compassion. Clothe yourselves with compassion. Literally, the word is the bowels of sympathy. It's much more visual, isn't it? The bowels of sympathy. The ancients believed that the emotions originated in the bowels. and you can understand why they thought so. You get upset about something. If you're anxious, if you're anxiety-ridden, it turns up in your bowels. Your stomach starts churning. You get butterflies. We talk about having a gut feeling. Compassion is what we call a heart of pity. It's a sense of sympathy. It's a sense of empathy with someone. When you come to the breakfast table, come to the breakfast table with compassion. Come with compassion for that strange-looking creature with all those big round things in her hair. Come to the breakfast table with compassion for that gruff and stubble-faced creature, isolated behind his morning paper, ignoring everybody else in the house. Or those children trying to get everything together before they go to school. Approach life with compassion. That's what Paul's saying. Put it on when you get up in the morning. You're a new man. You're a new woman. Therefore, put it on. Live this way. And after that, he goes a step further and he speaks of kindness. Put on a heart of compassion and put on kindness. Kindness is the action that reveals the compassion. Compassion is where the kindness originates. You've got to have the compassion first, and then the kindness flows from that. It arises out of that sense of sympathy. It can take a lot of different forms. It can be just a smile. It can be a kind word, a pat on the shoulder, an invitation to lunch, an offer of help. We put on compassion and kindness as we start our day and throughout the day. Many centuries ago, A certain young man from a rural setting went to live in a large city, and he fell in with the wrong crowd. And he lived a very wild and dissolute life. He became involved in many things that were hurtful to himself and to others. He almost destroyed himself. But he heard a preacher one day. And though he didn't particularly appreciate the content of what the man was preaching, he was struck by the man himself, as well as the way he preached, and so he went to hear him again and again, and soon that preacher was able to lead him to Christ. The man turns out to be Saint Augustine. And this is what Augustine wrote of that preacher, Bishop Ambrose, pastor of the cathedral in Milan. He said, I began to love him not at first as a teacher of the truth, he didn't believe it was the truth at first, which I despaired of finding in the church, that's but as a fellow creature who was kind to me. Kindness opened the door to the truth. So we are, as new creatures, desiring to communicate the truth to people, many times walk behind kindness in order to do that. The kindness comes first, and then the gospel receives a hearing. This is one of the reasons why we have a food pantry. It's one of the reasons why we have a fellowship fund that we use not only for our own body of believers, but for people outside the body as well. We demonstrate the love of Christ. We demonstrate the kindness of Christ. We demonstrate that we are new creatures in Him. And as we do that, along comes the gospel with us. We are to be compassionate. We are to be kind. The third quality is humility, which John Stott rightly calls the rarest and fairest of all Christian virtues. The chief Christian virtue is humility because it's the exact opposite of the worst of sins, which is pride. Pride's the thing that got everything started in the first place. Satan said, I will be like the Most High. Bingo. First sin. Satan passed out, and then he came after us. We are to be humble. We are to put on humility. Think humbly of ourselves. As the Apostle puts it in another place, we are to regard others as better than ourselves. We are not to consider ourselves in any way superior to others. As a matter of fact, we are to consider ourselves as not as worthy as others, so that we will then put them first and sacrifice ourselves for them. And so the questions that we are asking as we go through the day and we put on humility are not what I can get, what I can deserve, what I prefer, but rather, what does this person want? What can I do for him? How can I put someone else above myself? That's putting on humility. And that comes into the church. So when we're talking about various issues that arise in the life of the church, like colors of carpet, shoes versus chairs, how we worship, the ultimate issue, there are a lot of issues that come into play, the ultimate issue is not, what do I like? The ultimate issue is not, what do I want? The ultimate issue is how do I glorify God, but leading up to that is what can I do for my brother? How, in this situation, do I put my sister before my son? That's humility. Fourth quality is gentleness. A familiar word, it's oftentimes translated meekness. Not weakness, meekness. I like the definition that says meekness is strength under control. And that's exactly what you see in Christ. Strength under control. Christ could have done away with his enemies in a split second, but he kept his strength under control, and he endured what he needed to. This is what the Lord beautifully displayed. He described himself as being meek and lowly in heart. We must do what Jesus said, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Why? For I am meek and lowly in heart. When Jesus said that, he wasn't just throwing it out there as some brute fact about who he was. It was connected with how we are to live. Be like me, he says. Well, OK, what are you like? I'm meek and I'm lowly. As new creatures, we are to demonstrate that in our own lives. That's what we are to learn as we go on. Here's another good definition of meekness. A willingness to waive one's rights for a good cause. That's not going to go over very well today. All we hear today is about my rights, and you've got to fight for your rights, and you've got to stand up for your rights. And the scripture says just the opposite. Be willing to give up your rights because there's something greater at stake than you holding on to them. Set aside your rights. Don't demand that you be satisfied, but for the sake of a good cause, be willing to suffer loss. Paul says the same thing in 1 Corinthians. He's talking about believers bringing each other to court. He says, don't do it. Better for you to take a loss, better for you to be defrauded, than to bring a brother to court and have the name of Christ dragged through the mud in the sight of unbelievers. is there's wisdom in the church to deal with your problems. Don't take it into a secular court. There is a greater cause at stake. And if that means that you lose, if that means that you're taken advantage of, well, so be it. Give up your rights, because the glory of Christ is more important than any temporal situation you may find yourself in. The fifth quality is patience. Literally, it is long-suffering. The enduring of another's exasperating conduct without flying off into a rage. And it's a negative term. It's a holding back. It's a restraining yourself from becoming upset or speaking sharply to someone. whether it's your mate or your child or a brother or sister in the church, whoever it may be. Link with patience is this quality of forbearance, bearing with one another. Very similar to long-suffering and patience, but it's the positive side. It's literally to uphold and to support someone. Not only to restrain yourself, but actively support someone else, encourage them. wonderful Christian quality. We need to encourage one another. We need to support one another. We need to understand that people need to hear that God's doing something in their lives. That's encouraging. Jan and Heather just last week did that for me after the service. talking about what they're seeing in the preaching ministry. That got me through the week. This is great. Not that I'm this fantastic preacher, but that God is doing something. That's encouraging, and we all need to hear that. We need to know that God is working in our lives in such a way that other people are seeing it. And they're forbearing. That's what it's all about. Jen and Heather could have come and said, Pastor, we see all this other stuff in your life that isn't so great. But they forbear with my weakness. And they encourage and uphold me in what they do see God do. That's how we need to relate to one another. The last quality, and I think the Apostle deliberately put it last, is forgiving one another. Forgive. The grievances. Forgive each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone. Just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. What a beautiful thing it is to find forgiveness in a Christian heart. It doesn't mean that we're not to air a grievance that we may feel. We're told in scripture that if we have something against another, to go to the other and tell him about the problem that exists between you. We don't have to repress every feeling of injustice or unfairness that we feel. We're to go to the person and deal with it. But having done that, and this is the point, having gotten it out, forget it. Forgive it. Put it away. Stop dwelling on it. It's helpful to remember that forgiveness means at least these three things. First, it means that we are not to bring up to the person whom we have forgiven the thing we forgave. Now, this really applies in marriage, but it applies in every relationship. You do not keep coming back to the person saying, yeah, I remember that problem we had a while back. I forgave you, but I want you to remember that's not forgiveness. That's holding on. You don't throw things in people's face over and over. The second thing forgiveness means is that we don't tell anybody else about the matter that we need to forgive. I'm going to forgive you. I'm going to make sure other people know about this. Other people deal with it. We need to get people to pray about this. No. Because between you and another brother or sister, you deal with it, and it stops there. If you do anything else, it's called gossip. And that is sin. The third thing forgiveness means is you don't remind yourself of what you've been forgiven. Now this is a little bit tougher, because as hard as we are on other people, many of us are harder yet on ourselves. And God can have forgiven us of something, and we will just hold on to that. We cannot possibly believe that God could forgive something so heinous. or something that we struggle with over and over and over again, we haven't gotten the victory over it yet, and we find it impossible to believe that God is still going to forgive me yet again. And so we beat ourselves up with this. But forgiveness means we put aside, even to ourselves, based on what Christ has done, We get into this strange situation where we want to drag God down to our level. And we say, if someone offended me the way I offended God, I wouldn't forgive them. I certainly wouldn't forgive them as many times as I want to be forgiven. And we begin to think that because we wouldn't do it, God won't do it. And that's just heresy. That's where all heresy comes from. Heresy is bringing God down to our level, whether it deals with something practical like forgiveness or theological, like God not being able to know everything. It continues to come up. Anything you want to talk about where you get away from the scripture, the trend is we're always trying to bring God down to our level. We can't do that. God's forgiveness is infinite. I'm going to throw your sin as far as the East is from the West. in the deepest sea of forgetfulness. The Old Testament tells us that when we come to him, he casts our transgressions into the depths of the sea. And Corrie ten Boom used to say he puts up a sign that says, no fishing. It's gone. You can't bring it up again. And so we have these beautiful qualities. And the apostle tells us to wrap it all around with a bond of love. Over all these things, verse 13, And fourteen, beyond all these things, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. That's like the ribbon around everything. You are made a new creature, and you're to put on all of these great qualities of new creatures to exhibit, and around it all is love. And that ties everything together like a belt. That's, of course, the quality of acceptance of others because you're a new person. You no longer hold to the old person that you were. You've put that aside already. You treat the past as if you were dead to it. And you now become what God meant you to be. And don't miss the basis for all this. Back up in verse 12. Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly beloved. There it is. This is something God did for me. You are chosen. And you are holy. Notice, Paul says that you are holy before he ever tells you to put on all these things. Because it's what God does. And if God doesn't do it, it's not going to happen. Paul doesn't tell everyone to put on these qualities. He tells those who are chosen and holy and beloved. If he spoke to unbelievers in this way, he'd be wasting his breath. It is impossible to put on these qualities in a Christ-glorifying manner unless you are first chosen by Him, unless you are made holy by Him, unless you are beloved Jesus said, you have not chosen me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should bear much fruit. We are chosen. We are holy. This is a word that means separate and distinct. We are intended to be different. We are expected to be different, because we are different. We share a different kind of life. Paul says, we are dearly loved by God. We are dear to his heart. There is no more powerful, motivating force in our lives than to remember that we are loved by God. and what the nature of that love is. How did God exhibit that love for us? In sending His Son. And in giving His Son to die on our behalf, taking our sin upon Him, so that, not just so that we can get to heaven, but so that we could be made new creatures who would exhibit these qualities. It all ties together. God loves us and sent Christ to die for us so that his choice could be made effective and that we would be made holy. That's what we are to put on. But he doesn't stop there. He goes on and tells us to permit a few things, too. He goes beyond our lives as individuals to our life in the church and how the body ought to function in verse 15 and 16. He says, after you've put on these things, now you've got to permit some things. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you are called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell richly. What does that tell you? It tells me this. If the peace of Christ isn't dwelling in me, it's because I'm not letting it. I'm not allowing it to dwell in me. This is the terminology that he uses. Permit it. Let Christ do what he wants to do in your life. And what he wants to do in your life is to let his peace rule over your heart. Now, what does rule mean? Well, it's kind of the word that is used as acting as an umpire. Acting as an umpire. Baseball fans know that the man in black who stands behind the catcher there rules on plays, and he makes the calls. He remains, supposedly, absolutely unruffled, regardless of what's going on. Managers curse him and kick dirt on him, and fans throw things at him, and yet he is to remain unperturbed. And that's the idea here. You let the calmness of Christ rule you. Consider Jesus in the Gospels. He moves into every situation with total poise. He's not upset by others. He remains calm and collected when other people around him are panicking. He is in control. He and his disciples are out on the lake and a storm comes up and his disciples are sure that they are all going to die. And where's Jesus? He's asleep in the back of the boat. Everything's under control. That's the peace that he wants to give to his people. The problem is we don't let him off. The second thing that he talks about that we are to permit is peace, but also we are to permit him to cause us to be thankful. That comes from the peace. We are to be thankful for what he's doing in our lives, even as we permit it. And we find this exhortation everywhere in scripture. We are to be characterized by an attitude of gratitude about everything. everything. Because we know that we don't deserve anything. Anything. Christ is doing it all for us. And then we are to let the Word of Christ dwell richly within you. The Word is to be well known among the people of God. It is through the Word that God is going to accomplish everything He wants to accomplish in our lives. And that word is going to accomplish these tasks, not only as we study it ourselves in isolation, but as we put it to use in community. Notice what he says about the word. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another. That's what we're to do. J. Adams wrote a book entitled Competent to Counsel. And the basis of this entire book is the premise that Christians who know the Word of God are competent to counsel one another. Because the scripture is sufficient for the man of God to make him, um, able to accomplish every good work. And so if I know the word of God, you should be able to come to me and we should get together over the scriptures and say, here's what the scripture says about the situation you're in. And we should be able to apply that word one to another. We are, with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another. with, it's not only in the scriptures, but also in worship and in song, with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Have you ever been admonished or taught by a song? Yeah, I hope so, because that's part of the way God does it. We take his word and we put it to music. And sometimes, in that form, it's going to affect us in a way it wouldn't if it's just somebody up here speaking the words. There is something about music that God uses in order to deal with us. Let's go on, because Paul finishes up this passage by talking about praise. Once we have put on what Paul says we are to put on, and we have permitted Christ to do in us what He desires to do, we read in verse 17 that whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks or praise through Him to God the Father. I hope you'll memorize this verse. Repeat it to yourself frequently. Whatever you do, that means the whole of life is to be related to the Lordship of Christ. Whatever you do, everything in life, every activity can become an act of worship, an act of praise. Even routine things can be done and offered to Christ. In the name of the Lord, wash the dishes. In the name of Christ, take out the trash. All of those things, in the name of Christ, do your homework. Do everything in His name and for His glory, praising Him that He has given you what is necessary to accomplish those things. What a difference of motivation this makes to the believer. You do things you don't like because you offer them willingly to the Lord as a sweet sacrifice to Him. If you love someone, you will do things for that person that you don't particularly like doing. And that's the point here. There are things that money could never pay us to do, but love will motivate us. We love the Lord. We offer to Him all the activities of our day. We do everything with a view to His glory. You fill out your income tax forms with that in mind. You meet with your boss or your employees with that in mind. You buy your groceries with that in mind. You labor not for the world and for its benefits, but for Christ. This is why you hear of CEOs. to go to the mission field for a short-term mission experience and clean the trees. Couldn't pay him enough to do that. And yet, he does it. Why? Because everything he does, he understands the authority of God in the name of Jesus. In the next section, Paul's going to expand this into various relationships of life. Here, meanwhile, is his marvelous exhortation to us. Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. We do that, and every aspect of our life will be praised. Everything that we do in the name of Christ is worship. and only a new creature. Let's pray. Our God and prophet, we desire that you would make these qualities true in our lives, cause them to be evident. We are new creatures. Make us your preachers. We are holy. Make us holy. We are your children. Cause us to live like your children. That everything we do might be an act of worship. Everything we do might be evidence of the praise of our hearts reaching up toward you. Glorify yourself in us. We ask you in Christ's name. Amen. ♪ To whom, O God, all we cry ♪ ♪ With life in excelsis Deo ♪ ♪ Live from our lives ♪ ♪ Host, blessed past, glorious day ♪ ♪ Ancient of days ♪ ♪ Almighty victorious ♪ ♪ Thy great name we praise ♪ ♪ God rest thee, God keep thee ♪ Our walking, our waiting, Thou who lifted high, Thy justice, Thy covenant, Thy story, Thou alone, Thy countenance a fountain of good news and love. Through all life's agonies, through storm, rain, and storm, in all life's gladness, God's true life abhors. We blossom and flourish, as bees on the tree, and wither and perish. Leave this morning with this admonition ringing in your ear. Let the word of Christ dwell richly within you, with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. Lord, make it so. Amen.