To Encourage You

Colossians 3:12-14 “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 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. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

One of the most amazing statements of the apostle Paul was this one: “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).  Do you think you could say this to someone? 

For starters, one would need to know what the “example of Christ” was.  The Bible never tells us to “do what I say and not what I do” with reference to any command for God has set the example for us.  One such illustration is in the verse above in which Paul tells believers what their relationship to one another should look like. He describes it with these words:  compassionate, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and love.  But notice what he says before he gives us this list. He addresses the Colossian believers as “God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved.”  In spite of their past lives before they were Christians, in spite of their enmity against God, and in spite of their sin, they had been chosen by God, made holy by the blood of Jesus, and made objects of God’s great love.   It’s a staggering reality what God has done for those whom He has saved.  It was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).  In this greatest act of love, the Father has shown compassion toward us. Though He could condemn us all, justly, for our rebellion against Him, “He remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14), and thus He finds a basis for His compassion toward us.  He is kind toward us, showing humility and meekness as Jesus washes the disciples’ feet in the upper room just before He was crucified.  He is incredibly patient with us, and has forgiven us, though it cost Him His very life. 

All these things are a testimony to the fact that He loves us with a love that is “wide and long and high and deep” (Ephesians 3:18).  It is in understanding these things that a believer’s heart should be filled with gratitude, a gratitude that demonstrates itself in practicing, as much as we are able, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and love towards others whom God has placed in our lives. 

To realize the great love God has poured into our lives, yet demonstrate anything but that love to others, is a very great sin.  Jesus spoke about this in the parable of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18. In this parable, the Lord tells about a man who was in debt way over his head to his Master. It was a debt that He would never be able to repay.  But then the Master forgives him the entire thing. Yet, that same man goes off and has someone that owes him a very small debt locked up in debtors’ prison, showing absolutely no mercy to him.  Jesus condemns this man as a wicked servant and orders that he be thrown into prison until his former unpayable debt, be paid.  Of course, that’s forever, and such will be the fate of those who do not forgive as we’ve been forgiven, for such a heart is the heart of an unbeliever, no matter what they may tell others about their own “faith.” 

May God help us to be eager to follow the example of Christ in gratitude for the great love He has poured out on us, for anyone who truly understands that love will realize it’s a debt that is always outstanding.  Paul puts it this way in Romans 13:8: “Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”  And that’s a law that Jesus has already fulfilled perfectly towards us.