Colossians 3:12-15 Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering;… Because the new nature has been assumed, therefore array your souls in vesture corresponding; because Christ is all in all clothe yourselves with all brotherly graces corresponding to that unity into which Christians are brought by their common possession of Christ. I. AN ENUMERATION OF THE FAIR GARMENTS OF THE NEW MAN. 1. Let us go over the wardrobe of the consecrated soul. (1) A heart of compassion; the rendering by conventional propriety of a phrase it regards as coarse, simply because Jews choose one part of the body and we another as the supposed seat of the emotions. Is it not beautiful that the series should begin with pity? What every man needs, and most often, and yet what is so difficult to achieve in the face of obstructions of occupation, selfishness, and custom. There fore we have to make conscious efforts to "put" it "on." Without it no help will be of much use to the receiver, nor any to the giver. Aid flung to a man as a bone to a dog usually gets as much gratitude as it deserves. But if we make another's sorrows ours, that teaches us tact and gentleness. But beware of letting the emotion be excited, and then not allowing it to act. (2) Kindness. A wider benignity, with which some are so dowered that they come like the sunshine. But all can cultivate it. When we come out of the secret place of the Most High, we shall bear some reflection of Him whose "tender mercies are over all His works." This is the opposite of that worldly wisdom which prides itself on its knowledge of men and is suspicious of everybody. It is the most powerful solvent of ill-will and indifference. (3) Humility. That seems to bring a virtue occupied with self into the middle of a series referring exclusively to others. But the following graces have reference to our demeanour under slights and injuries, and humility constitutes the foundation for the right bearing of these. This is not necessarily blindness to our strong points. Milton would be none the less humble though he was sure that his work was better than that of Sternhold and Hopkins. Any unchristian fire of pride which the devil's breath may blow up should be damped by "What hast thou that thou hast not received?" and "Who is pure before God's judgment-seat?"(4) The distinction between meekness and long-suffering is slight. The former is the temper which accepts God's dealings, or evil inflicted by men without resistance, and its opposite is rudeness or harshness; the latter the long holding out before giving way to a temptation to an action or passion, and its opposite is swift resentment. While long-suffering floes not get angry soon, meekness does not get angry at all. (5) Forbearing and forgiving are meekness and long-suffering in exercise. A man may forbear and bite his lips till the blood come rather than speak unkindly, but forgiveness is an entire wiping of enmity and irritation out of the heart. 2. Is this a type of character that the world admires? Is it not uncommonly like what most people call "a poor spiritless creature"? It was a new man emphatically, for the world had never seen anything like it; and it is a new man still. It may be true that Christianity has added no new virtue to those prescribed by conscience, but it has altered the perspective of the whole, and created a type of excellence in which the gentler virtues predominate, and the novelty of which is proved by the reluctance of men to recognize it. By its side worldly "heroic virtues" are vulgar and glaring, like some daub of a soldier on a sign-board by the side of Angelico's white-robed visions. Better is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. 3. The great pattern and motive of forgiveness. "As Christ has forgiven us."(1) The R.V. adopts the reading of "the Lord" which recalls the parable about the servant who had been forgiven by his "Lord," and yet squeezed the last farthing out of his fellow-servant. The parallel passage in the Ephesians speaks of "God for Christ's sake forgiving us." Observe the interchange of Divine office and attributes. What notion of Christ's Person underlies it? (2) Christ's forgiveness is not simply revealed that trembling hearts may be made calm. A heart softened by pardon will be a heart apt to pardon. (3) This new pattern and motive make the novelty and difference of Christian morality. "As I have loved you" makes "Love one another" a new commandment. Obedience to one we love is delightful. (4) We have each to choose what shall be the pattern for us. The world takes Caesar, the Christian takes Christ. (5) This is not inconsistent with the Lord's prayer, which teaches us that our forgiveness is the condition of God's. Without the first we shall not be conscious of the second. II. THE GIRDLE WHICH KEEPS THE GARMENTS IN THEIR PLACES. 1. "Above all" is equivalent to "over." The silken sash of love will brace all the rest into a unity. "Perfectness" does not mean that it is the perfect principle of union, but is a collective expression for the various graces which together make up perfection. Love knits into a harmonious whole virtues which would otherwise be fragmentary and incomplete. 2. We can conceive of the dispositions named as existing in some fashion without love, but let love come into the heart and knit a man to the poor creature whom he had only pitied before, or to the enemy whom he had only been able to forgive with an effort, and it lifts these into a nobler life. 3. Perhaps there is the deeper truth that love produces all these graces. The virtues are best cultivated by cultivating it. Paul elsewhere calls love the fulfilling of the law even as his Master had taught him that all the duties were summed up in love to God and love to man. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; |
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