09/13/09 - God's People Love Each Other Colossians 3:12-17
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There is a phrase within American Evangelicalism that has been used for so long and is so commonplace that it has become a kind of trademark among Christians. It is the phrase “personal relationship”. In sharing the gospel, Christians often tell people they need a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. I’m not sure where that phraseology started, and I don’t want to throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water, but I believe over use and over-dependance upon that terminology has created a problem that no one ever anticipated.
The personalization of one’s relationship with Jesus has inadvertently created a mindset in some Christians, and I think it may be in more than just some, that has resulted in a disdain for, or a distrust of corporate worship with other believers. Formal membership in a local church is often avoided. The personal nature of one’s relationship with Jesus has morphed into a private relationship with Jesus that practically excludes everyone else. Sometimes you hear that attitude expressed with words like, “I don’t believe in organized religion” or “I don’t need to go to church in order to be a Christian”.
That is a very serious spiritual problem. The reason it is a serious problem is because the Jesus with whom we have a personal relationship DOES believe in organized religion. It’s called the “local church” and He expects His disciples to participate in it.
Now, admittedly, “local church” is not a phrase you will find in the Bible. Neither will you find the phrase, “a personal relationship with Jesus” in Scripture. However, both concepts are clearly taught in the New Testament. When a person is born again, that is certainly a personal experience. As individuals, we hear the message of the Gospel. The Holy Spirit applies the truth of the Gospel to our hearts and minds as individuals. We are personally and individually brought under conviction by the Spirit of God because of the guilt associated with our own particular sins. God deals with us as individuals, saves us as individuals, and in that sense every Christian does indeed have a personal, individual relationship with Jesus as his Lord and Savior.
In addition to this personal relationship concept, so-called “organized religion” is found in the New Testament also. Every individual believer is a part of a larger entity referred to as the Body of Christ. We are all individually members of His organized body, and we have all individually been granted various gifts by the Holy Spirit for the good of the rest of the Body and for the edification of the saints.
But probably the clearest indicator of organized religion, or a local body of believers which the Bible refers to as a church, has to do with the multitude of passages that speak of our relationships as Christians to one another. In Colossians 3, Paul speaks repeatedly of believers in “one another” relationships. You can’t really be biblical and maintain the conviction that it doesn’t matter if you are part of a local church body. The Bible assumes relationships among believers in addition to our “personal” relationships with Jesus. Look at our text for today and let’s read it together:
12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.1
According to a 1972 movie based loosely on the life of a man who lived in the late 1800’s nicknamed Liver-Eating Johnson, Jeremiah Johnson was a hermit, a recluse, a mountain man who lived most of his life alone except when he was fighting with Indians. Jeremiah Johnson did not need compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Hermits don’t need to be concerned with bearing with one another or forgiving each other because there is no “other”. If you are stranded on a deserted island, or you live in total isolation, or if you don’t believe in organized religion or corporate worship and stay away from those hypocrites for fear of becoming contaminated by them, if you don’t associate with other believers and never attend church, then you can just skip these verses. They don’t apply to you.
The problem with that is God hasn’t given His children permission to be spiritual hermits, Christian monks tucked away in a monastery in the mountains living all alone, isolated and insulated from fellow believers. All Christians belong to a family of believers: the Church. And in these verses, we see a description of corporate church life, how the Christian family is supposed to live with each other. If the Christian life was intended to be lived out privately and individualistically, then these verses are meaningless and unnecessary.
But according to the New Testament, there is no such thing as a private, secluded, individualistic, sequestered, non-interactive Christian life. As much as we’d sometimes like to be left alone in the mountains to live with the only Person we could possibly ever get along with because of my personal relationship with Him, . . . if we did that, we would soon hear the Lord telling us that our “just Jesus and me” Christianity is unacceptable. According to Scripture, Christians are members of one another.
Romans 12:5
so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
1 Corinthians 12:24b-26
But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
Ephesians 4:25
Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
We’ve had this discussion before, but it bears repeating because the Scriptures repeat it again and again, apparently to make the point very clearly. What are to be our attitudes toward one another in this family, this corporate Christianity we’re all part of? How should we behave as brothers and sisters towards one another? Look at the text:
• With compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
• With forbearance, forgiveness, and love above all else.
• With thankfulness (mentioned 3 times!), and teachableness.
• We are to sing together (very interesting!), and submit everything we do to God for His glory.
I am convinced that the vast majority of churches are strangers to this kind of co-existence within their fellowships because they do not have a firm grasp upon the greatness of salvation. As believers, we are the totally undeserving recipients of the compassion, kindness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and love of God. In our Savior, we see the greatest example of humility and meekness the world has ever known. This is how God has acted toward us! Love and mercy and grace have been extended to us in infinite measure and sometimes some of us allude to that fact when we’re asked how we’re doing by replying, “I’m better than I deserve!”
To some degree, probably a relatively small degree, we understand that we do not deserve even the slightest blessing from God. We are not, we have never been, and we will never be in a position to make demands upon our Creator to do things for us. On the contrary, we who are in Christ, who have been chosen and loved by God, at the very least, we have a grasp of the outer edge of an understanding of our deserved condemnation. We understand to a small degree that when Christ hung upon the cross, He hung there in our place. He received the wrath of God which was supposed to be ours.
If we have been the recipients of obviously undeserved compassion, kindness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and love from God, then we should first of all be thankful for such extraordinary mercy. But secondly, we should be passing that along to our fellow believers. We MUST love our brethren. We must make it a point to do so! We are commanded to live this way with each other, and doing so creates a unity and a harmony and a oneness that causes the world to take notice. They will know we are Christ’s disciples IF we love one another.
So let’s break it down and give Grace Fellowship a spiritual check up by asking ourselves a few questions that arise from this text:
1. Do you and I live and interact with one another as God’s people with an obvious love towards each other? In other words, is our love for one another as brothers and sisters in the Lord apparent to people who may be looking on? When Jesus said in John 13:35 that the world would know His disciples because of their love for one another, He was speaking of a visible, recognizable, outwardly discernible love. Do we display that kind of love toward one another?
2. When was the last time you or I showed loving compassion and kindness toward someone else in this congregation? Maybe a word of encouragement or lending a hand to help with some need. Or some help with finances? Maybe just praying with someone about a problem. Does everyone in this congregation get that kind of treatment? Is such compassion typical or exceptional behavior among us? Is that typical for you?
3. Have any of you had an occasion to be patient with someone else here in this church family lately? Is that a silly question? Maybe the more pertinent question is, “When we were last gathered together, were you patient with everyone else, or did you take offense at other peoples’ words and actions, even though you may not have verbalized your offense? Are you tolerant of the quirks and weirdnesses and peculiarities and differences that you see in your brothers and sisters?
4. Does the peace of Christ rule in the hearts of this assembly? Is there a sense of oneness and peaceful togetherness among us? Or does strife and conflict and a spirit of unforgiveness characterize our relationships with each other?
5. Are you exceedingly thankful to God for what He has done for you? Does your own salvation move you to praise and thank God for His goodness towards you? Does that gratitude include being thankful to Him for your fellow believers in this church body?
6. Does the word of Christ dwell in us richly so that we are able to teach and admonish each other in wisdom? Are you willing to listen and be taught and corrected and encouraged and warned from the Scriptures by someone other than your pastor?
7. Love for God and for each other is part of the reason why we sing songs, hymns and spiritual songs. Do we sing songs together simply because that is our standard procedure and we like the tunes? Is our singing to God and to each other motivated by a truly thankful heart?
8. Is everything that we do and say, done and said in the name of the Lord Jesus? Do we live together as a body of believers in a manner that would above all else be pleasing and acceptable to God???
These are questions that come right out of this text. Like us, the Colossians were saved out of a miserably sinful lifestyle that is described in verses 5, 8 & 9 as sexually immoral, impure, driven by uncontrolled passions and evil desires. And we, like them, once lived our lives filled with covetousness, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk and lying. However, Paul tells us that now, being in Christ, we must live like Christ lived. The question is, “Is that happening?” Do our “personal relationships with Jesus” result in lives that look like what we read here? God calls us to live together well, to love one another deeply because we have been loved deeply by Him. Corporately, as a body of believers, we are to forgive one another because we have been forgiven much by Him. We are to live the Christian life with each other as a church family.
Let me mention one final thing. There are those, as we have already said, who develop this idea in their minds that it is sufficient to have a personal, private relationship with Jesus, and there is no need to fellowship regularly with other believers. But one of the reasons some Christians feel this way is because they’ve been burned at church. They go to church expecting better than they get. They expect, as they should, the kinds of relationships that we read about here in Colossians 3. But instead they find backbiting and gossip and cliques and hatred amongst people who all claim to be followers of the Lord Jesus. So these people often over-generalize because of one or two or three bad church experiences, and say, “The church is full of hypocrites. I’ll be better off just staying home.”
Paul writes these instructions to the church at Colossae, and to every church, to let us know that we are going to have conflicts. We are going to NEED to forgive one another. We are going to NEED to display love and compassion towards each other. It is the lack of such that causes church fights, church splits, and new denominations we don’t need. In-fighting amongst believers kills our credibility.
One more final thing [Final, part B?]: Do you find it strange that church music is one of the biggest reasons for church splits? But Paul even addresses church music here by saying at least these three things about music:
• First, we are to sing together. That is assumed. I don’t know of any church that has banned music from their worship or they don’t see the need for it. Singing is a needful and normal part of worship. It is all through the Scriptures, most notably in the book of Psalms.
• Secondly, it’s OK to sing different kinds of songs (Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs). They don’t all need to be exactly the same. Whatever the particular differences are in music that Paul refers to here, at the very least, he is saying that some variety in music is acceptable.
• Thirdly, our singing is to be from a grateful heart. It is gratitude to God that drives us to sing to Him and about Him. Our singing is to be primarily an expression of thankfulness.
We need to anticipate conflicts. In crowds of believers like the ones in the first century, conflict was inevitable. Many different kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds, with all kinds of peculiar cultural habits gathered each week to worship their God and Savior together. They needed, and we need to love each other through the inevitable conflicts that arise among us because we are individuals, and we are different from one another. But we are all loved and forgiven by God Himself. If we will stick close to these verses, and if we will be conscientious about following these inspired instructions about church life, the peace of Christ will rule in our hearts, God will be glorified in everything we do and say, and the world will know we belong to Him.
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1. All Scripture is from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.