You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there anything here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.
Welcome to More Than Ink. So, you know what's going to happen? Someone is going to offend you, so what are you supposed to do? Well, we're supposed to forgive. We know that, but how do you do it?
And why do you do it? Why is it important to the body of Christ? Well, it's going to be very important as Paul talks to us about our new self, and we'll look at that today on More Than Ink. Well, good morning. I'm Jim.
And I'm Dorothy. And this is More Than Ink, and I'm still suffering under a slight, I don't know what it is, a summer cold in my voice, so I'm sounding a little gravelly. Yeah, but you feel okay. But I think it gives me a wonderful deep tone as I talk. So anyway, I just have to pardon that strange voice, but we're looking at an exciting section in Colossians right now, and just last week we were looking at this section where he says, you know, put off this old garment of your old self.
And he uses language like taking on and off a coat. Well, and he says do that because of who you are. Because of who you are. Because your life is hidden with Christ in God. Right, right. So the reality of your change in Christ is real, so live that way. Right. And it's just like taking off a coat. So he had talked about cutting yourself loose, right, putting to death the sexual immorality, what?
Sexual immorality and impurity and passion, evil desire, the way you talk, don't lie to one another, cut those things loose. But here he's going to turn his attention to the positive things, the things we put on. Put on these, yes, put on these. This visible garment, this outward expression of who we are.
Yeah, yeah. And before you look at it, imagine for a section, if you were writing this, if you were Paul writing this, what would your list of good things, good behaviors to put on, would they be? I mean, and I always do this when I read the scriptures because when I come up with a list and I do it, you know, I put my hand over the page and I just make a list and go, well, I would say this and this. And then I compare that with Paul writes and I'm always shocked and amazed. Because it's a much better list.
Well, here we go. What is it you should put on in your behavior just like putting on a coat? Because the nature of your life in Christ is different. Okay, so beginning in verse 12. Verse 12.
Chapter 3, Paul says, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another, and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. Okay, we have to stop there.
Yeah, yeah. Because his whole appeal here is because of who we are. We're God's chosen ones. He's declared us holy, which means we're separated. Separated from the junk here. Set apart to Him. And dearly beloved, right? And you know, if you know you are loved, then you become much more fearless in your relating to other people because your life doesn't depend on their love. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Paul says God's chosen you, He's called you holy, and He loves you. So put on these things. Yes, these are characteristic of a God who loves you.
God Himself. And isn't it interesting that the list has nothing to do with overeating or all the negatives. You know, the positives, I expected more behavioral stuff than this when I made my list. Yeah, these are all attitudes. These are attitudes about relationships with other people. These are about relationships with other people.
I find that fascinating. So these are not things that you do in isolation like you're some kind of monk in a monastery. These are things that are transformed in how you relate to other people. Which, you know, to me makes a lot of sense because when you talk about the fact that God is love, that's a relational kind of thing. So if we are people who have been captured by God's love, then our relationships ought to be transformed. So this is on His put on this coat list. So let's look at it more carefully because it's a great list.
Well, okay, so the one that really attracts my attention is forgiveness because that comes in verse 13. And he says it three times in a breath, right? Yeah, yes.
And it's funny to me, this jumped off the page to me. He says, bear with one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, he didn't even say if they've sinned against you. No, no, no. It's just a complaint.
If you've just got your knickers in a wad. Right, right, right. Forgive them.
Right. As the Lord's forgiven you. And isn't that what gets in the way of our relationships primarily?
Oh my gosh. When we offend each other, often not intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. And even in the unintentional, we're still willing to let it divide us. Okay, so forgiveness. Why is forgiveness so important? Jesus had a lot to say about forgiveness. A lot to say. Listeners, I would urge you, get your concordance and look up forgive, forgiveness, forgiving, all of the various forms of forgive.
It's a big thing. And look for the gospels. Look for where Jesus said something about it, because you will be amazed at the power of what he said and the starkness of it, right?
Yeah, yeah. When he taught us to pray in Matthew 6, he said, you know, forgive one another. Forgive us our debts as we've forgiven one another. Big deal. Oh, and when he was done with that, he said, and if you don't forgive, then your father will not forgive you.
Oh, oh. So, you know, and in that parable in Matthew 18 that he tells all about forgiveness, he says, you know, if you don't forgive one another from your heart, then your father will not forgive you. And remember, that whole parable started when Peter came up and said, how many times should we forgive someone if they keep offending us? How about seven? That's pretty good, right, Jesus? How about seven? And Jesus says, no, how about 70 times seven?
And then he tells the parable. So, forgiveness is a gigantic issue when it comes to our relationships with other people, because we will, I guarantee, we will offend people, and people will offend us. So, what are you going to do with that offense? Are you going to allow it to separate you, or are you going to do something to remove it so the separation can stop? Yeah, and here's something I would add to that, and that is the offense may not be sin. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It necessarily isn't sin. Absolutely. They've just done something that has crimped your knickers.
Yep, yep, yep, yep. And, you know, even if you can't determine whether it's sin or not, it doesn't matter when it comes to our call to forgive. In fact, there's a misconception on forgiveness that we have to wait until the offender comes crawling to us and basically begs for our forgiveness, and they say, oh, I was so wrong, and I shouldn't have. And we say, well, okay, now I guess I'll forgive you.
That's totally wrong. That is not what you see in scriptures. What we see in forgiveness is being offended by somebody, and then you take the initiative, you're the one that moved, you linearly say, am I going to allow this to harm our relationship?
And you say no, so I'm going to let it go. So, you know, Paul says, forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven you, you must forgive. So how does the Lord forgive us? He does it not on the basis of our deserving it, but on the fact that he absorbed the cost of our sin by the blood of Jesus. So this is really comes to the core of why we don't have to wait for someone to repent and apologize. We absorb the cost of their offense and we simply release them because we can't make them pay it back. Well, and the intention here, too, is not to render people guiltless who are guilty.
That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about how it devastates your relationship because the person offends you. And I guess what you do when you're doing a forgiveness contemplation in your heart, you're asking yourself, is my relationship with this person more important than the offense that I'm willing to hold onto?
Can I let go of that offense at the gain of relationship? And so even when Paul writes in another letter, he says that while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us. So the whole idea about waiting for us to turn before he does something to be able to release the sin that separates us, it's an ungodly thing for us to wait for people to beg for forgiveness, for us to give forgiveness. Is it worth it to you to restore the relationship?
I guess that's the point. Because many times, like you say, the offense cannot even be sin, it can just be inadvertent. And I don't know how many people I've seen who've separated from somebody else because an unintentional offense has happened and then they write that person off and they don't talk to them for a decade until someone says something, oh, I misjudged. Because God will sort out their motivations, God will deal with their sin. But I just want to insert something here, and that is that because sometimes the sin is egregious and it damages us, the burden, the weight of the sin does not free us from the demand to forgive it.
But God does not command us to then immediately trust the person who so damaged us. Those are two different things. Those are different issues. And so I just wanted to put that out here, we're not going to spend any time on it right now when we come back to another day.
But it is, it's a much bigger issue than we have time to look at just in what he's saying right here. But when he says that phrase, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive. So his standard for our forgiveness is God's forgiveness of us.
His own release. And again, we are in Christ, we should be creatures who are, our behavior is characterized by hearts that are quick to forgive. Because we're God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, that's what he just said. Right. And we are made in his image, and the more that we display that kind of forgiveness, the more you see God in us.
So that's what he's saying, it's just a big deal. And I just want to point out a little before the forgiveness section when he talks about passionate hearts and kindness and humility and meekness and patience, one that stuck on me was the humility one. Because the humility seems to be kind of the foundation for the next two things. The foundation for meekness and patience. Especially for patience. So when you get impatient with somebody, it's because you feel like your time is more important than your time.
That's right, that's right. And so you're above them and so you lose patience with them. Humility seems to be the basis on which we can be patient. And we can be meek.
And so a lot of these things, again, characterize who Jesus was. Even kindness. This word kindness is one of my favorite words in the New Testament. And kindness in English is a very nondescript thing, it just means kind of good and nice and stuff like that.
Be pleasant. And that's not really a bad translation. But he uses this many times when he says, you know, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
That word easy is this word right here. My yoke is kind. It's kind. It's beneficial, it's not going to hurt you. It's not harsh.
And I think that's the issue right here. It's not harsh. And in fact, William Barclay, who's a commentator in the New Testament, wrote a long time, said this word is also used of wine that was aged because when wine is first made, it's kind of harsh.
Edgy. Yeah, and it bites when you drink it. But if you age it for a while, it loses that harshness so that someone would sip it that's been aged and they'd say, this is easy, this is kind.
It's mellow. Yeah, right. That's this word right here. And I think it's just a great illustration of this.
We need to be people that are not harsh, but we're kind and we're easy on people. That's a whole different kind of idea. So to me, that's just a life changing concept because that's who Jesus was.
That's who Jesus was. Oh, there's so much more I want to say about forgiveness, but we've got some more passage ahead of us. So let's just let that rest. Yeah. So let's go into 14 because although forgiveness is a big issue, the next one is even bigger. Bigger.
Because in verse 14, and above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Want to stop? Yeah, we better. Okay, love. Love. But not just a good feeling. Well, that was on my list.
That was on my list when I said, what would I ask him to do in the positive? Okay, well, this is the kind of love with which God loves, which is other oriented, self giving, purposed for the good of the beloved one. Many times at the expense of yourself. It's sacrificial. Yes. We're not talking about romantic butterflies floating around your head. No, not that kind of love. No.
On love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, when he says binds everything together in perfect harmony, I think in a sense he's talking about the list he just gave us in verse 12 and 13. Because you can do those things in verse 12, but if there's no love in those things, then they lose what they are. Well, you're really not going to do those things if there's no love. Right. But that's what he's saying. But there are different expressions of love. But that's what he's saying. Love in a sense is what binds all those things together.
Yes, these are all together. That is what's harmonizing what you just read, is love itself. Love is the core.
And that's another foundation that allows those things to happen. Because we are loved. Because we are loved. Since we are loved, then we love.
Because we are forgiven, so we forgive. Yeah. John says in his first letter, we only know love because he loved us first. Right. Right.
That's the standard because of that. So if we're his children and we have a father who is loving and forgiving, then as he makes himself in us, we should show the same behavior. It should just be an evident thing. So that in a culture that's fallen and it's biting at each other and it's just horribly divisive, they'll look at Christians and say, where did they come from that they can maintain that kind of love and that kind of ready forgiveness. And Jesus said, they're going to know you're my disciples if you love one another. By how you love. Right.
By how you love. Yeah. So this is just a big, big deal. Okay. So he's going to follow on love in verse 15, he says, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful. So let the peace of Christ rule. Let the peace of Christ call the shots. Right.
Right. Let the peace of Christ be heard. It means to arbitrate, to make decisions based on tough calls, like an umpire does in a baseball game. It really means to arbitrate. So what he's saying is let that peace of Christ arbitrate things in your heart. Now what is it that you're trying to decide in your heart that his peace needs to arbitrate, needs to rule, needs to make decisions over? And I think, I mean, a good example is the offenses we talked about in the face of forgiveness. Yeah, these are relational things.
Right. And I think someone does offend you and you're sitting there saying, well, should I forgive them or should I, you know, hold their feet to the fire and tell them they need to repent or what do I need to do here? That that's going on in your mind is fighting.
The umpire in your head is saying, what do I do next? So what he's saying is you need to let the peace of Christ make this decision. You know, Jesus said way back in the Beatitudes, blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God. Right. Right. Not peacemakers in terms of, you know, peace at any price, but peace makers, peace creators, those who actually will work for establishing a dropping of barriers, a cessation of hostilities. Right.
A cessation of hostilities. Right. Because Paul says in Ephesians 2, Christ is our peace. Yes. Yes.
So in the biblical terms, many times we misunderstand because we don't understand the biblical way it looks at. It's not kind of like the inner peace we're talking about, which is how we always use peace. Right. You know, you go to some kind of yoga class or something and you find inner peace.
This is not that at all. Well, numbness. Right. Well, yeah. The absence of difficulty is peace. No, in a general sense and not always, but in a general sense, the Bible uses peace in terms of a cessation of hostilities between two parties. Right. It's like at the end of a war you find peace. Right. So it strongly implies that whatever separated you and was causing you to war with each other, like an offense, right? Right. That those things can be brought to a peaceful end. And so what he's saying, in fact, that's what Christ has done for us when he died for us. We were at war with God and as a result we were separated from God because of our hostilities with God. Right.
So how is that war going to end? Well, God sends his son, dies on our behalf, we put our trust in him. All of a sudden the hostility from us comes to an end and we are at peace with God.
Yeah. And so I think he's extending that not only here to what Christ has done for us in bringing peace, cessation of hostility, but also the cessation of hostility within the body because that's what he says we are called in one body. So when you get a bunch of people together in one body, there's going to be friction, there's going to be offense. Well, Christ came in order to stop the offense and stop the hostilities.
That's what you need to do. We stop the offense by forgiving. By forgiving, yes. We stop the offense by loving.
By loving. We allow the final word to be peace. Yes. We will not be hostile toward one another because we are chosen ones, holy and beloved of our Heavenly Father. Right.
Right. Yeah, I just sat with a couple of people the other day about last week about a longstanding hostility between them. And unfortunately, I was old enough, you can't quite untangle that many strings in that kind of hostility. But I kept thinking all the way through this, I need to engage here as a third party, as someone who is intent on finding a cessation of hostility so that there will be peace between these two camps.
Unfortunately, we didn't get there. And I think it's going to take, God has planned many years for this to untangle. But this is really our intention. When it comes to offense and the entanglement of offense, you can go to war, which is what we do, but He says that's not what Christ would do. What Christ would do is He would aim at bringing a cessation of hostility for the purpose of creating peace between the two parties.
And that's with God, and the section in terms of behavior with one another, that's our role as well, as peacemakers. I'm glad you mentioned that passage of time in this process, because we can lay down our arms in an instant, but that process of actually ceasing to be hostile toward one another in my heart can take longer, it can take a very long time. And as we talked about earlier this week, you and I, in the case of Jacob and Esau, it took them a whole generation. A whole adult lifetime, yeah, and they were separated all through that time.
And the damage is the fact that they wasted a whole lifetime of relationship with one another. Yeah. That's what it costs you. So Paul says you don't have to do that. Let the peace of Christ reign in your hearts.
Let it arbitrate in your hearts as you're looking at these offenses. And you were called to this in one body. Your body is not at war with itself. Right. Right.
If it is, we call that an autoimmune disease. Right. Right. Well, and interesting enough, who did the calling to put us together in one room as a body? God did.
God did. So if God put us in this room together, well, then we need to seek peace with one another, because it was his design. And in the midst of that, he says, be thankful. Be thankful.
Okay, and that word is going to show up again three more times in the passage. So in verse 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. And whatever you do in word or deed, that pretty much covers everything.
That's everything. Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. What a great admonition. What a great admonition. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.
I love that. Is the word, the intelligent expression of what God has said coming out of our mouths. And he doesn't say let the word of Christ be familiar to you.
No. He says it needs to dwell. Dwell. Which means it's living there.
And not just dwell kind of shabbily, but richly, rich dwellings. And so it's partially why we do this broadcast is because for us dwelling in Christ, we're dwelling in us is just a gigantic deal. And it works its way out in behavior, but it works its way more importantly in how it changes our hearts. And we get so excited about what the word of God does in changing us and how God uses to change us. We get so excited about that, we go and we teach people and we admonish people and we do this very thing with the word of Christ itself. And there's this assumption here, the teaching and admonishing and all wisdom will take place as we're singing. As we're singing. As we're worshiping. Yeah. Psalms, those are the scriptural psalms.
Right? Hymns, those are metric poems that are set to music. Spiritual songs, well that's any kind of song with a spiritual content and purpose.
It talks about God. It is all acceptable to God. Yeah. It's so enriching and admonishing, strongly encouraging that the word of Christ dwells in us richly. Yeah. So, you know, I lead worship.
It's one of the many things that I do. And I, for many years, have been very, very careful to make sure that what we are leading our congregation in is the word of God being nestled into their minds and their hearts. If you're going to implant a jingle in somebody's head, you want to make sure that it's ground in the real, authentic word of God. Right. Right. It is fascinating that we teach and admonish in these songs. Right. And they're just extraordinarily powerful. Many times we choose songs on the basis of how they make us feel.
How they make us feel. And we sing songs about the way we feel. Right. Right. But he's saying, no, you can actually glorify and worship God and teach and admonish each other in the word of God by how you sing.
As we sing. Right. And sometimes when the corporate body is singing the words of God together, everyone is encouraged by that. That's the way music, corporate singing, is constructed by God. Yeah. Especially if people are singing it with thankfulness in their hearts.
Yes. Because it means something to them. They have a personal appreciation, a personal experience with what God has done. Well, and sometimes the thankfulness emerges as an effect of reminding ourselves together. Right. And we might not even like them, sitting together in the same pew, looking in the same direction, singing the same truths about God, and suddenly it penetrates.
Right. And we all overflow with thankfulness because we've just sung these truths to one another. That's powerful.
That's very powerful. In fact, Paul, he says the same phrase in Ephesians, too. And so it's a fascinating thing that the variety, the musical variety in the church is what he's talking about here, is a core avenue through which every one of us can teach and admonish one another. Not just the professionals who stand up in front, but we all, as we participate in that kind of worship, are teaching and admonishing each other with thankful hearts. This is a freedom that he gives us also, because he names psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Yeah, that's what I mean.
So he's not saying you only can sing hymns, or you only can sing psalms. Yeah. Right? That's where I like it. It expresses a wonderful variety. Yes, a freedom. And one of the things you're worshiping who God is, is you're expressing the word of God, and it's your personal experience and thankfulness is why you're singing. It just has a remarkable effect on other people that even preachers and pulpits cannot accomplish. So I think that's just a fascinating thing.
It's core. It was core to the life of the early church. So if you say to yourself, well, I can't get up and stand in front of people and teach them the word of God, well, you may not, but you can always sing a song. We can always sing together.
Especially a song that means something to you because of your thankfulness. So he wraps up this part of the letter by saying, and whatever you do in word or deed. Well, that pretty much covers everything we do.
Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Can we really say that we do everything in the name of Jesus as if he were here doing it? Right. Right.
But that's our goal. As a representative of him. It should be that when someone looks at you and they see what you do or they hear what you say, so that's do or hear, they should say there's something Jesus-like in what I just saw. There's something about teaching me about who God is and who Jesus is that has now been replicated in this person's life. And by the way, that's why God changes our behavior over our lifetime, not to equip us for heaven to make us qualify for heaven, but in order to glorify himself in the midst of a dark generation, because he's actually imprinting on your behavior, his heart through these things. And that causes people to ask, where'd you come from that you forgive so easily, or why do you love in such an extraordinary circumstance? You're not from around here, are you?
Well, no, I'm not actually. What you're seeing is the heart of God himself that has been placed on my behavior, on my outsides. So do it all to the glory of God, right, in his name in Jesus, as Jesus came to explain God's glory to us, to show it. And I'll just remind you, when you see the name of Jesus, the name of it, it's talking about the reputation, the known characters, identity. So do everything in order to make known who he is, and that's what his intention is for you. Well, listen, next time we're going to get together, and Paul's going to be even as practical as he's been up to this point in your behavior, but now we're going to do it in the context of marriage.
So you're not going to want to miss that. So I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy.
See you next time here on More Than Ink. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. There we go. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
