Seeds for 3/27/2023 - Colossians 3:14
Scripture: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
Observation: This little sentence sounds remarkably like an expansion of Paul’s famous “faith, hope, and love” verse in 1 Corinthians 13:13. Love is the thing that holds everything else together. Love is like a set of bookends to all the great virtues, and especially the ones listed earlier in the passage.
The first bookend is the love of God for us. The foundation and rationale for exercising “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” is love—the love of God for us in Christ. That’s the source and wellspring of these great virtues. When we know ourselves to be “dearly loved,” we are in an emotional and spiritual place to take on these virtues and channel the love of Christ in our life to others.
The second bookend is actively bringing each of these qualities together as expressions not simply of good virtues, but of love for others in Christ. Love is the thing that gathers them up and makes them greater together than they would be when only expressed as individual virtues. Much like the cords of a rope are stronger when gathered, woven, and bound together, these virtues, unified and bound together by love, are amplified in their impact. Rather than only individual monuments of goodness, in love they stand as pillars of a great building—Christlike character.
The world needs to experience Christ. When, by God’s help, we practice “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” bound “all together in perfect unity” by love, then the love of Christ Himself is made real through us.
Application:
Do you know yourself to be “dearly loved” by God?
How do these virtues help guide us in how to show love to others?
What is the Holy Spirit speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, may I drink deeply of your love for me today, then allow that love to pour through me in Christian virtues that impact others for you. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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