The first message I brought in our new church at Boeke on August 30 was from 1 Corinthians 2:2, “For I am determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Biblical Christianity is all about Christ. Now we’ve been in Colossians for a time and I want to reaffirm the absolute supremacy and sufficiency of Christ. Christ is the image and fullness of God, Creator and Sustainer of all things, and the Head and Hope of the Church. Paul declared in Colossians 1:28, “We proclaim Him.” We saw last week in Colossians 3:11,” Christ is all and in all.” Don’t ever weaken in your faith’s grip on Christ Himself. He is our glorious Savior and Lord. In Colossians 2:6-7 Paul says, “As you have therefore received Christ Jesus, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in your faith, overflowing with thanksgiving.” Is there any area in your life where Christ doesn’t have the preeminence?
Colossians 3 focuses on your practical walk with Christ, what we call progressive sanctification. If you’ve received Christ by faith, then you’ve been justified or declared righteous in Him. But justification always leads to sanctification or that process of becoming more and more like Christ. Joel Beeke wrote, “Justification and sanctification are like the two arms of Jesus Christ by which He embraces us to Himself.” Jesus prayed to the Father in John 17:17, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” God sanctifies or changes us by the application of the truth to our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit, but not without our obedience.
John MacArthur released a booklet this past year entitled Sanctification. At the conclusion he wrote, “A godly pastor can be satisfied with nothing less than the sanctification of his people.” Sanctification isn’t easy. We are all bundles of habits we’ve picked up as sinners over the last 10, 20, 50 years. How we react when things don’t go our way and how we handle money or conflict isn’t easy to change. But Christ has the power to change us over time, and this is what we call progressive sanctification.
A TEMPLATE FOR PROGRESSIVE SANCTIFICATION
You can see Colossians 3 as a template for progressive sanctification, a pattern to guide you, like a kid’s plastic coloring templates to draw stuff.
Verses 1-4 Know your union with Christ.
Verses 5-9 Put off the old sinful habits.
Verses 10-11 Be renewed in your mind.
Verses 12-17 Put on the new godly habits.
Verses 18-25 Be responsible in key relationships.
There is nothing automatic here, nor is there perfection in your life in this world. You and I fight and wrestle and pursue and flee deeds of the flesh. We’re hungering after pleasing God. We feel like we’re growing and doing pretty well, until we blow it and down we go. We need to be humbled, confess our sins, seek forgiveness from God and others, and begin to apply God’s Word again. That’s the Christian life. Three steps forward, two steps backward. Someone described it like walking up a stairs with a yo-yo. You’re the yo-yo, going up and down, but your overall movement is up.
This morning Paul brings us to the “put ons,” the divine wardrobe for your heart. But first he reminds us of who we are as believers by the pure sovereign grace of God.
REMEMBER YOUR HIGH AND BLESSED CALLING
Colossians 3:12 So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved…
God almost always gives good reasons for obeying Him. He doesn’t say, “Because I’m your God and I said so!” He has already told you that you are new person in Christ. But notice how God comes to you here and affirms His relationship to you. He brings out this trinity of relationships that are purely by His grace. Don’t go past these quickly. These are your incentives to deepen your devotion and love for Christ.
1. Remember, God chose you to be His. Before you chose Christ, He chose you! Ephesians 1:4 says He chose you before the foundation of the world. Election is one of the most glorious doctrines in the Bible. 2 Thessalonians 2:13 says God chose you from the beginning to be saved. 2 Timothy 1:9 God saved you, and called you with a holy calling, not according to your works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted you in Christ Jesus from all eternity. Out of the billions of human beings, God chose you to be His! Let that sink in and then wonder if you really want to be a miserable, grumbling, selfish person.
2. Remember, you are holy in Christ. When God saved you, He set you apart forever from the condemned world and put you in Christ. You are a holy one, a saint in God’s family, regardless of your past. You may have been a blood drinking Scythian or a sophisticated Athenian or a narcissistic American, but now, in Christ, you are holy. You are a saint. We should call each other “Saint Aaron” or “Saint Molly.” That’s how Harry Ironside introduced himself to a group of nuns while traveling on a train. “And what’s your name?” they asked. “I’m Saint Harry.” That ought to motivate you to put off those ugly old clothes and put on God’s beautiful wardrobe.
3. Remember, you’ve been loved from all eternity by God Almighty! “Beloved” is a perfect passive participle, “having been loved in the past and continuing into the future.” This is not the general love that God has for all mankind, but that special electing love, that love your heavenly Father had for you from the beginning. Ephesians 1:5, “In love He predestined us to adoption through Christ.” It’s that love Christ has for His people in John 13:1, “having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”
You are chosen, holy, and loved in Christ! These three truths should empty your heart of all apathy, pride, and arrogance. It should humble and motivate you to pursue this wardrobe of the heart. So let’s see what these spiritual garments look like.
THE CHRISTLIKE WARDROBE FOR YOUR HEART
Colossians 3:12-13 Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; 13 bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.
These are all relational. We have trouble with people, not things. We may get mad at a leaking water faucet, but we don’t hold bitterness toward it. If you shoot your computer, it doesn’t ultimately matter. Watch the ricochet, though. How you respond to people is what matters. These godly qualities in verses 12-13 come straight from the character of Jesus Christ through His Spirit as we prayerfully and obediently put them on.
Put on a heart of compassion/mercy. This is the opposite of hard-heartedness. The ancient world without mercy exposed their unwanted babies, sick, and aged. They treated their enemies without mercy. Even a highly sophisticated modern people like Nazi Germans mercilessly murdered Jews in cold blood. Christ brought compassion or mercy into the world. He looked on the multitudes with compassion (Matthew 9:36). He changes His people into merciful people. You don’t run roughshod over other people. That Good Samaritan had compassion on the poor soul. David Harvey in When Sinners Say I Do emphasizes how couples need to practice mercy toward each other. He writes, “Mercy sweetens relationships.” Psalm 145:8, “God is gracious and merciful; Slow to anger and great in loving-kindness.” Do you show compassion or mercy to others in your family?
Put on kindness. Christ said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me. My yoke is easy, or kind.” It isn’t overbearing and painful. What does kindness mean in, “He is really a kind person.” A kind person wants your good. He isn’t full of himself. He is thoughtful and listens and does whatever he can to meet someone else’s need. Someone said, “Kindness is love in work clothes.” A card, a text, a phone call, attentive listening instead of relentless talking are a few examples of kindness. God is kind to sinners in Titus 3:4, “When the kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us.” Luke 6:35-36 says God is both kind and merciful even to His enemies: “He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
Put on humility. Humility is a lowly attitude that isn’t full of self-importance. This is the mind of Christ. Philippians 2:3, “With humility of mind let each of you regard one another as more important than himself.” In Matthew 11:29 Christ was gentle and humble in heart. Stuart Scott in his book for husbands writes, “Just as pride is the root of every evil, humility is the root of every virtue.” Humble people don’t think they know it all. They have a learner’s heart. I remember a young man telling me he didn’t really like going to his church because he already knew everything the preacher was going to teach. Uh, OK. Would this be humility?
We should never forget, “God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God and He will lift you up” (1 Peter 5:5-6). Remember the great Moses in Numbers 12:1-3. When Miriam and Aaron charged him with proud self-importance, Moses, the most humble of men, swallowed the injury in silence. Instead of reacting and lashing out at them, he waited on God. God took care of the situation. He covered Miriam’s face with leprosy! What did Moses do? He prayed for her. That’s humility.
Put on gentleness. Christ-like gentleness is definitely not weakness. It is strength under control, like a strong, fast race horse submissive to its rider. Christ was strong but gentle. Mat 11:29, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.” A gentle person doesn’t lash out, bite, and rip other people apart or treat people harshly. A gentle person is easy to live with. Dogs can snarl and snap. We insist our dog Rico be gentle when we give him a treat, “Gentle, gentle.” No snapping at it. Ministry requires a gentle spirit, not a bossy one. Scolding people doesn’t usually get good results.
Galatians 6:1, Brethren, even if a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted.
2 Timothy 2:24-25, And the Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth.
Put on patience. This is different from endurance. You endure trials; you are patient with people. Anybody have a problem here? It means having a long fuse before exploding (makro-thumia). Of course we should never explode in selfish anger. God is patient with sinners, and thank God He is.
Romans 2:4, Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?
When do you get impatient? When others don’t meet your expectations, when they get in your way, right? “I’ll show him!” We are patient when we give people space, when we don’t force the issue in an untimely way. Why does patience head the list of the love chapter (1 Corinthians 13)? Patience is needed with all the other qualities. Imagine a kind impatient person? Or a gentle impatient person? Paul lumps these together in Ephesians 4:2 “With all humility and gentleness, with patience showing forbearance for one another in love!”
Put on bearing with others. This is very practical. It means putting up with one another. Look at how forbearing Christ was with His bungling disciples. Someone very close to you does things that drive you up a wall, which would be an interesting sight in itself. But there they go again. What do you do? Often, you forbear! Guys, how forbearing your wife has been with you over the years, right? If something is clearly sin, then it must be dealt with gently. But if it’s just a different opinion, forbear! We’re all sinners and we all need to practice forbearance. We can make mountains out of mole hills and blow this gracious, Christ-like spirit! We’ve all done it. Reflect on how much God puts up with in His relationship with you and let that motivate you to forbear others.
Put on forgiveness. This is the last heart-clothing we’re going to talk about today. Forgiving each other just as Christ forgave you. How did Christ forgive you? Freely, willingly, immediately, and fully. God is ready to forgive. Do you think of God like this?
Psalm 86:5, For You, Lord, are good, and ready to forgive, And abundant in lovingkindness to all who call upon You.
While in your hearts you may struggle with forgiveness, there is never a reason for harboring hurts and bitterness. God’s will is for you to be ready to forgive immediately and not hold grudges. Forgiveness is a promise that you won’t use a person’s sin against them. Whenever you are tempted to go back and dredge up old hurts, go immediately to the cross and realize what your sin cost Jesus Christ and that He never dredges up your forgiven sins to throw them in your face again. The body of Christ should be the one group of people on earth where grudges and resentment are absent and forgiveness is plentiful. Remember that wicked character in Matthew 18? His master forgave him tons of debt. Then he went out and strangled the poor fellow who owed him a couple of bucks. As God’s child, you are to put on forgiveness. You should be known as the forgiven forgiver.
SO WHAT?
You won’t find this wardrobe at Old Navy, Target, or Kohls, or even Wal-Mart. This comes from Christ, through His Spirit. But let me repeat, being clothed with this wardrobe doesn’t happen in our lives automatically. The “put on” is an imperative, a command.
Here’s what you have to do. Take inventory of your spiritual wardrobe. What old spiritual rags need to go? What stinks in your attitude or reactions? And what godly qualities are you especially struggling with? Who have you been harsh or impatient or bitter against? Humble your heart before God, ask forgiveness. ‘He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9). If needed, seek forgiveness from others you’ve offended. Then pray over these qualities; keep them fresh in your mind. Remember you are chosen, holy, and loved by God from all eternity. You are God’s child. He wants you to clothe yourself in these Christ-like garments of the heart. Let’s get dressed.