Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Colossians 3:12-13
## “Affirm, Share, Serve – The ‘One Anothers’ in the Church: Serving via Forgiveness and Reconciliation”
**Pastor Dennis R. Tuuri | September 6, 2015**

It’s delightful to sing these songs of praise to God and encouragement, edification to each other in community. What a delightful way to build community with singing together praises to God and encouragements to one another as we talked about a couple of weeks ago from Colossians. We’re returning to Colossians today for today’s sermon text. This is our eighth in the series of “Affirm, Share, Serve”—the one anothers about the church or in the church.

And today we’ll talk about serving one another through forgiveness and reconciliation. We’ve kind of focused on a lot of things we should be doing: affirming, sharing our space, sharing our understanding of the word, and serving each other through admonishing each other. And now we get to when things get balled up. That’s what today is about—relationships in the context of the church.

So we go back to Colossians chapter 3. These are just the two verses that come right before the verse we talked about a couple of weeks ago. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Colossians 3, verses 12 and 13.

“Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another, and forgiving one another if anyone has a complaint against another. Even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. Bless us by your Holy Spirit. Enlighten our understanding—not just our intellect, but bring this word into the depth of our being. Transform us, Lord God, by the work of the Holy Spirit. May we be matured through this word today, and may we be continually growing as a community of forgiveness and reconciliation. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

N.T. Wright in his commentary on this particular text—Wright writes for the “For Everyone” series of commentaries—it doesn’t say N.T. Wright on it; it says Tom Wright, supposed to be accessible. But in this particular commentary on this section of Colossians, he begins by saying, “You know, if you look at Colossians, this section we’re in now, and if you look at the two lists that are given to us, just think about what sort of town you would want to live in: a town characterized by the first list or a town characterized by the second list.”

And so as we talk about community building practices in the church of Jesus Christ, that’s a good question to ask. What sort of town are we working to accomplish? So if you turn in your Scriptures to Colossians 3, verses 5-9, we have a list—and this is a list of things that characterize the fallen man.

So in Colossians 3, starting at verse 5, we read this: “Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth. And here’s the list: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things, the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. But now you yourselves are to put off all these things: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with his deeds.”

Now, it would be a good thing to meditate on those characteristics and think about it. What if we built a town and this was the kind of people that were in the town? These were the sorts of things going on—wrath and malice, anger, sexual desires left unchecked, passionate anger against one another, murders, etc. Lying was the common deal. That’s how a town would look with this given list of human characteristics. And that is our old nature, fallen in Adam. That’s what the Bible tells us.

On the other hand, in the section we’re in a little later in the chapter, we’re also given some lists and some characterizations of what this new man is. What’s this old man, new man stuff? Well, from one very important perspective, the old man is Adam. The new man is Jesus. We’re going to make the point as we get to the end of today’s sermon that you can’t just do this stuff. This is not about moralism. This is not about trying to affect these changes without looking at the Lord Jesus Christ as the engine that drives everything else. We’ll talk about that later.

But the point here is: what does the new man look like? What is a different list of characteristics of how a town could be populated? And we have those beginning at verse 11. Colossians 3:11 says, “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all—unity.” In other words, if we look at the world around us, it’s tearing itself apart in all kinds of directions between all kinds of people. But here, the characteristic of being in the new man is unity across class lines, cultural lines, racial lines. That’s what this is all about—this beginning of this list of what it would look like to live in a town like that.

Okay, verse 12: “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on what? Tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another, forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things, put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts. It’s the decider, right? The peace of God—Jesus—rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly and in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

Now, imagine a town where all these characteristics are present in the people all together. We’ve made this comparison before, but if you want to think of it in terms of one illustration instead of all these long lists, the first town is about lying. That’s what it is—deceit, all kinds of forms of deceit. The other town is about speaking the truth. Not just speaking the truth to each other—it’s a town that sings all the time. They come together in corporate worship to sing and encourage each other. They sing in their families. And even their speech is songlike because of the delightfulness and the grace that exudes from one to the other.

Now, that’s two images. These aren’t just abstract lists of virtues. These are two kinds of towns you can live in. Which would you choose? Unfortunately, today many people would still choose this one with the lying, because there they get to be boss. Over here they have a Lord—Jesus. Because of that, they would trade out all those virtues. They would mock those virtues. I look at meekness—”Well, you meek Christians, you know, they interpret meek as weakness.”

Meekness is not that. Meekness is strength. It was the term used—as most of you know—for a wild, powerful horse that had been tamed. Not that his strength was gone, but it was now under control of the rider, right? Bit and bridle. As we sang about a few minutes ago, meekness is a powerful person. And in fact, a meek person is more powerful, being harnessed under the Lord Jesus Christ, than he would have been otherwise, because he just flails about in his power apart from Jesus.

One illustration: but people want to live in this town where they can do whatever they want to do, have sex with whomever they want to have sex with, lie about other people and slander them, and all this stuff. They’d rather choose that because over here they don’t want the Lord. And then they mock the virtues of this town. Don’t misunderstand these things. These are two realities. Okay? This is a tale of two cities being presented to us here. And ultimately, it’s a tale of what sort of city we’re going to try to help build. What are we going to do here at Reformation Covenant Church? How are we going to go about building our culture together?

So these are two lists, two cities, and it’s a list that reminds us about what is the objective. You know, I used to live over here in this town—the first town—when I lived in San Francisco for several years. Sounds very dramatic, right? Very romantic maybe to some people—you know, the libertine lifestyle in San Francisco, late ’60s, early ’70s. Let me tell you something about that life. The list that we just read of all the sins of the fallen nature were on display, and it is not fun. Not knowing who would have sex with who, including your girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever it was. Not knowing what illicit things were going on. Knowing that you could never really count on anybody to tell you the truth. And in fact, you would discover regularly that different things were being said, and you’re being deceived, you’re being ripped off.

My earliest experiences—the only times, it’s not quite true, but the times that I’ve really been most devastated by people betraying and stealing from me was in that culture. How could it be any other way? That’s who we are in Adam. You see, I’ve been there. I’ve lived there. And I want this town. And I want to put all my efforts into building—you know—a community, a church that looks like this and looks less and less like that over there.

And that’s what this is about.

One last thing before we move beyond lists. From last week—and actually we had a couple of sermons on admonishing one another—here’s another list, and this is a bit off subject, but it’s important and actually it’s right on subject. 1 Thessalonians 5:14 and 15. So these sermons are, of course, necessarily incomplete. Whenever you preach on the Scriptures, you’re sort of addressing this and you’re not addressing all kinds of other things. You could mistakenly leave last week’s sermons thinking the most important thing you should do with your brothers and sisters in Christ who are struggling is to admonish or warn them.

Now, we’re to do that. We know we’re to do that, and we’re to become competent to counsel in that way, to admonish people. But here’s another list of other ways to treat people. Okay? 1 Thessalonians 5: “Now we exhort you, brethren, warn those who are unruly. That’s the admonish word—warn those who are unruly. Comfort the faint-hearted. Uphold the weak. Be patient with all. See that no one renders evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good both for yourself and for all.”

So that list is quite important because it says there are different states of people—not states like Oregon or Nevada, but different places people find themselves in. And as you move through your life, these are not life-dominating states, but there are times in which we’re weak, there are times in which we’re frightened, there are times in which we’re unruly. So as we go about this one another series with each other, let’s keep this list in mind in our community groups too.

You have to have some discernment. What state is a particular person in? Are they unruly? Admonish them. Are they faint-hearted? Comfort them. If they’re weak, uphold them. Stiffen them up. Make them stronger, but uphold them while they’re weak. Don’t beat them down. And be patient with everyone. And don’t render evil for evil.

So another list reminding us that as we go through these nine sermons on one-anothering each other, we’re touching just those verses where these specific terms are used, and it’s not meant to be comprehensive. And this verse particularly is a very important verse—a big verse that’s frequently used in evidence in biblical counseling classes, for instance. Because you know, these aren’t the only states people find themselves in. None of these lists are comprehensive in that way. But people can—these are some states that people will be in your community group. And the point of this is to have wisdom dealing with people, discern where they’re at, and bring the proper cure—old Puritan idea—the cure to the person’s soul that they need: comfort, strengthening, admonishing sometimes, right? Patience with all different states.

So you community group leaders—very important. I don’t want you just to go back to your groups and crank on admonishing. It’s important, central text. But there are these other states that people find themselves in, and we have to deal with them accordingly. Okay?

Back to the topic at hand. First, for you children, I have decided I’m going to be very directed today and try my best not to skip by the questions. So we’ve said that we’re talking about a letter that Paul wrote to Colossae—C-O-L-O-S-S-A-E. Number one on your handouts.

Why do I say this? Okay, Pastor? You need another question. What’s the deal? Colossae, Rome, Ephesus. Well, these are real letters to real people. That’s the point. And they’re written to regional churches. That’s another point. They’re written to people in a particular region. Okay? This is just, you know, so often we can read the Bible and it just becomes these kind of vague principles that are just sort of abstracted out from reality. He was writing to real people in a real area of the Roman Empire. That’s the point. And we should know our Bibles well enough to understand that.

Secondly, Pastor Tuuri began by talking about two lists. I just talked about two lists. And so we’ve moved on from that. And the next thing I want to say is to remind us what we said a couple of weeks ago. When we deal with texts in Colossians, what are we dealing with? Well, we’re dealing with a tale of two cities operating within the church, right? Remember Colossae? This church was a very divided church. Had lots of troubles going on. And so Paul’s epistle is trying to bring them together. He always does this, but in a church that has warfare and disunity, he’s really stressing and cranking on the unity that they’re to have in the Lord Jesus Christ.

So this particular set of verses we just read are very important verses, particularly when dealing with two cities, the two towns. “It was the best of towns, it was the worst of towns. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The tale of two cities.” And really the point in the novel is that at some points we really have two cities going on at the same time. It is the best of times and it’s the worst of times.

I know he’s talking about two geographical cities, but you get the point. Operating in the context of any church you go to, you’ve always got these two kind of things going on. Now, hopefully if you’re in a church that’s working hard at it, the first list of bad things are going down, down, down. They’re still going to flare up. Don’t freak out. We’re all sinners here. Okay? But those things are diminishing, and you’re building a city—a second city—which is one that represents the culture and community and humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, getting back to the kids’ outline: from another list, we see that there are different states of people—not Oregon, Washington, places—where people find themselves, states of people. Sometimes we warn, sometimes we comfort. Those aren’t the only two options. There are all kinds of things that we do.

All right. So in Colossians, we remember we said this. Now, the center—we said this a couple of weeks ago. If you look, we’re talking about Colossians a lot and we’ll be talking about it a whole lot. Beginning three weeks from today, I’ll be getting into a sermon series through the book of Colossians, probably about ten sermons. So you know, to me, some of this is sort of seguing into that, but I think it’s important.

I’ve been looking at the structure of Colossians, and if you look at this particular section—the verses we read today and the one we read a couple of weeks ago—there’s a center to that section. Okay? And it’s important when the Scriptures lay out text a particular way to sort of see what the center emphasis is. And the center is verses 10 to 12. “You have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.” Emphasis upon Jesus. But then to what end? “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies.” And the other list goes on.

So these lists are around the center. You know, our new man is Jesus. Put on his characteristics. And the middle of the section, the very middle, is this verse about unity. And so as we build a unified church here at Reformation Covenant, that’s how we’ll do it: if we focus on Jesus and then we focus specifically about having his attributes manifest in our lives.

All right. So let’s talk now about reconciliation and forgiveness. So this is sort of, you know, this sermon—as I said—unlike the others so far in this series, is about what happens when you get in a jam. What happens when things, you know, mess up? What happens when you get sideways with people? And I want to talk about reconciliation in relationship to that. Right?

So reconciliation is the first activity. How do we effect reconciliation? Let me ask you something. How do I fix that like it was before? Well, I guess I could tape it. Going to look pretty crummy. Maybe I could put it together and photocopy it with up close, but not if it was a good photocopier. Maybe I could glue it. Maybe I could ask my son-in-law Jonathan to come up with some kind of cool algorithm that might fix it. I don’t know. Point is, you can’t really—it’s never really going to be like it was before.

So in terms of reconciliation, the first thing we should want to do is try to avoid the need for reconciliation, right? We should try to, you know, we’re going to talk about what you do when you get into struggles. But the first thing on your outline is to avoid the need for reconciliation. Right? How do we do that?

Well, Galatians 5:26, and we’ve talked about these verses lots in this church. What does Galatians 5:26 say? “Let us not become conceited, provoking one another or envying one another.” Interesting verse. It gives us all kinds of information. The first way to avoid the need to reconcile is what? One: be humble. Don’t be conceited. Two, what does it say? It says, “Don’t provoke one another.” You know what that word means? That word means that you’re looking down on people—okay?—disdaining them. That’s kind of the root word here: you’re looking down on people, and that provokes them, you see.

So be humble. Don’t look at people and say, “Well, you’re not as smart as me. You’re not as rich as me. You’re not as tall as me. You’re not as beautiful as me. You don’t know your Bible as well as I do.” Make these comparisons and then look down on them or despise them or, in the words of the New King James, provoke them in that way. Okay? So if you want to avoid fighting with people, stop doing that. Stop having too high an opinion of yourself. And I speak to myself too. I preach to me, I preach to you. Don’t be proud. Be humble. And specifically, when you find yourself thinking less of other people in the church here, don’t do it. Don’t, you know, despise them is another way to translate this particular verse.

And it says the second thing. It says don’t provoke one another, and avoid envying one another. This is the opposite. Envy says, “Gee, you’re smarter than me. You’re richer than me. You’ve got a more beautiful countenance than I do. Maybe you have possessions that I don’t have. Maybe you’re smart and I’m not smart.” And so I envy you and I want to be like you. And so, you know, it’s this comparison thing again, and it ends up producing fights. Envy means you’re smarter than me. I can never be as smart as you. I’ve got to make you feel dumb. In fact, I’ve got to do more than that. I’ve got to make you look dumb to other people because I don’t want you smarter than me.

This can reach incredible levels. You know, we’ve had cheerleaders, for instance, who would throw acid in another cheerleader’s face. “I can’t be as beautiful as you, so you’re not going to have it either.” We have, you know, people in thuggish neighborhoods who—cars. “I can’t have this kind of car, so I’m going to make your car look bad too.”

So it comes from this comparison to where you’re better than me. And we all sort of swing that way sometimes, right? Feeling pretty bad about ourselves. But we then envy other people. We want what they have. God hasn’t given us what they have. We become bitter, malicious, angry, etc. And what do we have? We have fights. We have tears in two between relationships.

Now, nobody’s going to, you know, you’re not going to key somebody’s car outside. You’re not going to punch somebody in the face here. We’ve said close to that once or twice. You’re not going to do that kind of thing. But what you’re going to do is what I tend to do. We all tend to do this. In our conversations with one another, we put down people. And it’s either because we think they’re despicable—we’re despising them—or maybe we’re envying them and we need to cut them down to size, right? We do that in our speech all the time.

What does it come from? It comes from being conceited, being prideful, being self-centered, thinking about ourselves all the time.

So the first way we avoid the need to fix the ripped paper—which you can’t do—is to not be conceited and specifically not to despise other people, to look down on them, or to envy other people, look up to them, and respond sinfully because of that. Okay.

The best way to reconcile is to keep the peace. Don’t have a need to reconcile. Keep the peace. That’s an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure. Okay. Don’t look down on others. Don’t look down on others. Be thankful for others’ blessings. How do you avoid envy? Thanksgiving. I can’t wait till Thanksgiving because I’m going to preach a sermon on thanksgiving in community, and it is absolutely a key foundational element of what all these things are—is thankfulness. And you’ll find it tapping lists all the time in the New Testament.

How do you avoid envying somebody? Their riches, their blessings, their relationships, whatever it is, their friends. You thank God for those things. You say, “God has blessed them. That’s a good thing they have—that they’re beautiful or intelligent or can sing well or play a musical instrument or have lots of friends or be whatever it is. Thank God for those blessings to that particular person.”

And you know, it’s not an exercise in will here. Because what have we said all along? The reason why we’re doing these things is we’re one body. Well, that pancreas, boy, that thing sure works efficiently. “I wish it just didn’t work at all.” You don’t do that. You say, “Praise God that the pancreas seems to be so effective in our body. That’s great. The blessings God gave our pancreas, right?” You don’t say, “Well, that center fielder, boy, he’s sure good at catching those fly balls and hitting. I wish he didn’t do it so well.” I mean, if you want to win as a team, you don’t do that. You’re thankful you got a center fielder that can make the catches and hit the ball out of the park.

So here in the church, we avoid envying each other by being thankful for the blessings that God gives to people that we’re going to be tempted to envy. Okay?

So, avoid the need for reconciliation. Two, avoid it with your tongue. James 4:11, “Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.” It’s a complicated verse, but the truth is simple enough. And it’s related to what we just said, of course. It says, “Don’t speak evil of another.” It’s that simple. You know, you think you’re telling somebody who’s going to hold it in confidence. Not normally the case. You think people aren’t going to find out what you’re saying. Not normally the case. And plus, you and the person you slandered—your brother to or your sister to—you know, you both know what you’ve done. You both know you’ve set up this relay. You’re starting to tear the paper, right?

So to avoid the need for reconciliation, use our tongues very carefully. Do not slander someone in the church. Now, nobody would just come up and say, you know, “That so-and-so, he’s a jerk.” But what they would do is they’d come up to you and say, “Yeah, too bad that guy—this is happening with him,” or “Gee, do you notice how he just isn’t very sensitive? Or do you notice how insincere he is in his flattery?” You know, that again, we probably wouldn’t hear those overt things, but those are the things alluded to in our speech. We start to slander one another, you see, and we start to tear the paper, and we’re going to make it very difficult to get the paper unto nearly impossible.

So use your speech to help other people. Again, you know, there’s this—Jesus tells the parable of the man who has a demon cast out of him and he sweeps the floor clean and then seven worse come back. Nature abhors a vacuum, right? If you have a vacuum—I mean an actual vacuum—you’ve evacuated a bell jar or whatever it is, things tend to get sucked up into there. Vacuum is not a stable environment. Well, I’ll probably be told by my son-in-law that’s not true, but it seems to me that vacuums are not stable environments. It’s an illustration.

You can’t just stop envying people. You have to put on Jesus’s attitude, thankfulness for their blessings, right? You can’t just stop speaking ill of one another. You really should put on words to help one another, to build up each other’s reputation, not to tear it down. Right? So that’s the basic idea. That’s the basic model of Christian sanctification. That’s how we build the kind of community over here with all those virtues: we put off certain things, but we put on other things. We put off lying—not good enough—put on singing. You see? Put off anger—put on sinful anger. Some anger is good. Put on patience. Right? So this put off, put on thing is the model.

And remember, it’s not putting off and putting on a new set of moral characteristics that results in that. But it’s putting off Adam and our fallen nature, and it’s putting on the Lord Jesus Christ and building our vital relationship to him.

So use your speech to help others.

Seek to be reconciled. So, okay, so the paper’s ripped. Problems have happened. You’ve sinned against somebody, they sinned against you. What do you do? And the first thing that I want to say here is the ball is always in your court.

And we don’t have to read the verses, do we? No. Matthew 5:23 and 24, Matthew 18:15. We should know this. Well, people, if you’ve been here any length of time, you know that if your brother—if you’ve sinned against your brother or he thinks you have, he’s upset with you—you’re supposed to go and reconcile with him. Now, maybe it’s his fault. Maybe you’ve done nothing wrong. It doesn’t make any difference. If you know there’s a breach, okay? If you know there’s a disruption in relationship, whether it’s caused by him thinking you sinned or you thinking he sinned, it doesn’t make any difference. The ball is always in your court. Always.

Okay? So reconciliation—it’s always your job to make the first move. You. In this church, what would be nice to see is people bumping into each other—both trying to make the first move—because that’s what the Bible says we should be doing. Is this understandable? Right? You understand this, right? No matter if somebody’s offended you or you think they have or they think you think they’ve sinned against them, whatever the direction it goes, you’re supposed to go to your brother to work it out.

Now, you don’t do that in everything, and we’ll get to that in a couple of minutes. Small matters. But when there’s a breach in relationship, the ball is always in your court. Don’t sit back there and say, “Well, I’m not going to do anything. They do this. That’s ungodly. That’s Adamic hatred stuff going on. Don’t do that. You take the first step. It will hurt your pride maybe sometimes to do this. Good. We need to put that kind of selfish pride to death.

So in reconciliation, you know, the job is always yours to make the first move. Very important. When you sin, go to somebody you sinned against and repent. When they sin, when they sin against you, go to them and seek peace. Both times you’re seeking peace. You’re going to them. Whether you sin or they sinned—people think somebody sinned—doesn’t make any difference. The paper starts to get ripped or has been torn. The way you start to reconcile is you take the initiative.

Peace means restored relationships—restored relationship. Sin breaks relationships. Peace doesn’t mean everybody just bypasses it and you no longer have a relationship with this other person. You’re both kind of just, you know, putting up with each other. You don’t really care about each other anymore. You’ve sort of had it. That’s not peace, right? That’s the peace of the absence of conflict. Like the whole put off, put on thing: we put off certain kinds of conflict, but we’re to put on restored relationships, healed relationships. It’s difficult, takes years in some cases, right? But our mind should be to seek reconciliation, to take the initiative—knowing that sin breaks relationships—we want to work hard at rebuilding relationships.

Do you see the importance of this talk in light of this series on how we go about building community? What are the community practices? Because all the other stuff is mostly about when things are okay, but this one’s about when things go wrong. It used to be, you know, I used to have these pin-fed paper printers, right? Printers that had paper—big, long reel—and they had these little pin holes. And you know, sometimes a paper jam would be a real jam. Well, these things are flying through their fast, high-speed printers, and all of a sudden, bam, there’s a big wad of paper.

Better you’ve gone fishing, right? And you’re going to cast the thing and somehow it’s like a miracle. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it—the amount of tangle that can happen just like that. Right? When you’re when you’re—well, maybe not with you guys. When I try to cast sometimes, that’s what happens. And in a church situation it can happen that fast—things can get tangled very quickly. So try to work hard at avoiding it. And secondly, you’ve got to reconcile. You’ve got to initiate it. And you’ve got to know that tangle just leaving it alone isn’t going to do it, okay? You want the restoration of relationships. That’s biblical peace.

All right. Forgiveness then—bearing with one another. That’s what our verse just read, right? So we’re going through our verse. Based on these virtues, he then tells us to bear with one another. I’ve lost the verse. You think about what I’ve said. Review your handout. I will find the verse. Maybe here it is. Okay. So to have meekness, longsuffering, etc.—these characteristics of Christ. And then verse 13, “bearing with one another, forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another.”

So I think that third phrase—this complaint happens—you’ve got a problem and some kind of jam is starting to happen. How do you handle it? Well, first of all, there’s a bearing with one another. Right? We read the same thing in Ephesians 4:1-3: “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called. See, you heard this in Colossians, you hear it in Ephesians. He’s not asking you to bootstrap some form of moralism. He’s telling you this is who you are in Jesus if you believed in him for salvation, if you’re a follower and disciple of Jesus. This is now who you are—this is your identity. Don’t try to create an identity out of your own will without Christ. Never. That’s not what this is about. This is not about building a town where we have some sort of pluralistic morality going on. No, this is about building a community where we’re all called and elect by God. And that’s what Ephesians, Colossians both say.

We’re prisoners too. So he beseeches us to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called “with all loneliness and gentleness. We get that over and over again. Pride is the killer. With longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.”

So an important characteristic, a court community building practice, is to bear up. And I think what this means in context is there are these things that happen, and maybe look—somebody looks at you the wrong way. Maybe it’s got nothing to do with you. Something else is going on in their life. You catch a little of the blowback from it. You know, you’re in a little boat going down the river. There’s some waves, but it’s got nothing to do with you. Some speedboat has just driven by. The guy might have looked at you, but really it’s not about you. Frequently, that’s the way it is in our relationships. It’s about things going on in their life. We’re so self-centered, we always think they’re trying to tell us something about ourselves. Sometimes they are. Most of the time, they’re not.

So problems come up in any event, right? You get a little sideways with people. They do something that you don’t think is right. But in many of those small things in life, we’re supposed to bear up under it. Even if it’s a big thing, you’re still supposed to bear up. The word means to stand erect. Don’t let yourself be bowed down by the thing. Okay? So to bear up with one another—bearing with one another in love.

Look, I’ve been doing this thirty years, maybe more. And early on, I’d start thinking, you know, that person here at the church—they’re sort of odd. You notice how odd they are? I think to myself. And then that person’s really different, too. And then, well, this guy’s kind of eccentric. And I realized that fairly soon, I hope we’re all eccentrics. Human beings are very complicated, very interesting people, and we’re all a little different. Okay? Now, you take that—that’s always true. And then you add sin into the mix, and we’ve got our own particular tendencies towards sin. We can lump them into categories, but we’re different. We’re all different. We’re made in the image of God. That means we’re nearly infinitely complex, doesn’t it? We’re made in the image of God. He’s infinite. I think we’re nearly infinitely complex.

And so as we have a church, there’s going to be all kinds of things we do that we wish—or that people do around us—that we wish they’d done differently because they’re not us. So in the best of times, there’s a need for forbearance. And then when things get—you can throw the sin thing into that now—you really need to just, hey, chill out. You don’t have to address everything you think is going wrong. You’re not supposed to warn everybody because they do this or that or the other thing in a fairly minor manner. May not involve you a lot. Even if it does, you’re supposed to bear up under it. Don’t make it, you know, cause you to crumble.

So reconciliation in part happens even when people—what does it say? It says we’re to do this if anyone has a complaint against another. That’s the setting that he’s describing in this verse. So I got a complaint against you, you got a complaint against me. It doesn’t mean we always have to go and work things out. Sometimes it means we just got to drop it. We got to bear it, right? We got to assume that person is a son and daughter of the Lord Jesus Christ—or God the Father, rather, in Christ. God’s going to work things out. If things continue in a bad direction, which they may or may not, there may be a time to go and talk about it. But with many things, you just let it go. You know, you go down to the mall and somebody cuts in front of you today, and maybe you think to yourself, “Well, that was rude.” You just let it go. You don’t know if it was rude or not rude. You don’t know if he saw you, didn’t see you. You don’t know what was going on. You just bear up with it.

Now, anybody that’s married knows that this happens in spades, right? Or is that just my marriage? Look, you know, marriage is two sinners getting together and two people who are imperfect, and they’re becoming more mature, but they’re becoming more mature. They put up with each other—a lot of things with each other. Now, some people don’t. Some husbands and wives don’t. You know what happens to them? They don’t have a relationship by the time they’ve been married thirty, forty years. Or if they do, it’s quite chilly. It’s bitter. You know, you could cut a knife, cut the tension with a knife when you go into these homes. Hatred happens. You know, that’s what happens to us when we sin against our spouses. When it flares up in your head, you hate the other person. You think, “How in the heck where’d that come from? That came from your fallen nature.” In Adam, I’m sure Adam hated Eve and Eve hated Adam because they looked at what had happened and they could point to each other. Right?

So that’s who we are. In marriages, you learn to either become increasingly bitter over time or you learn to love each other—which means to exercise grace toward one another, to overlook minor things, to bear up under it, to not let yourself be crushed with your own difficulties, trials, and sins, and wanting to right every wrong and all that stuff. You keep loving each other. Well, that’s the same thing in the church. Paul is telling us, and he told the Colossians, “I want you to be one. I know you’re quite divided.” And one of the ways you’re going to be one is to reconcile—by not gripping the paper over every little thing that happens. Bear up, brothers and sisters. Let it go.

Now, I’m not telling you that you should bear up under everything. Obviously, you know, I mean, your husband goes out and, you know, shoots your neighbor—you know, bear up. All right? You take care of the thing. But understand: I’m talking about the small things, the small details of life—that the complaints against one another that don’t rise to levels of being what I would call actionable where you’ve got to do something about it. What you’ve got to do most of the time is simply to bear up.

And then secondly, you’re to forgive one another. Now, this is interesting, and this is a controversial topic, and it gets a little complicated, and I’m sorry about that, but it just does, and I can’t clear up the complications because the Scriptures tell us that we’re to forgive one another as Christ forgave us. What does that mean? How did Jesus forgive us?

Jesus, speaking through John the Baptist, told people, “What are you doing out here looking for forgiveness? Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance.” Jesus says, “If you’ve stolen from somebody, stop stealing and work with your hands that you can give to people.” He expects you to change. Repentance is not feeling sorry, and it involves that. Repentance in the Bible is a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of attitude about that thing, and it’s evidenced by particular ways of being.

You know, we have an announcement to make today at church at the end of the service. We’re going to dismiss the visitors—congregants, members or non-members. But congregants of RCC can stay here. Short announcement. And these things happen in the life of the church because that’s what the Scriptures say to do. Sometimes you don’t know if people are repentant or not, and all the evidence seems to be contrary to it.

So in those cases, to tell somebody that they’re forgiven, to speak to them the word of God’s forgiveness, is not a help to them. It’s a hindrance to them. You’re forgiven anyway, in spite of, you know, you shooting three people last week, in spite of the fact that you burned down your house and didn’t care about the kids inside. No, you don’t. You don’t do that. Now, if they repent, yeah, you declare God’s forgiveness to them.

On the other hand, there’s all kinds of these minor matters that I just mentioned—that are happening, these complaints—not because of, you know, just overlooking or just casual interactions that bump up against one another. Maybe there’s some sin involved, right? Maybe you know that person should have been more considerate of you when he cut in line in front of you. Forgive him. Forgive him. He’s a member of this church. They’ve confessed their sins. They’re trying to grow and mature in the Lord. And if they’re not, whole another deal. Assuming all that’s true, he cuts in front of you in line. Forbear it, forgive him. “Lord, I know he may be a little insensitive, and I know his situation. I’m not justifying his sin. I just forgive him in grace.” You see?

Both those things are articulated in the Scriptures. How do you put them together? Well, I don’t know exactly. I do know this, based on my studies, and it’s on your handout. There are two different words being used for forgiveness in the Bible. Maybe they’re talking about the same thing. Maybe they’re not. But there are two aspects of it.

What we normally think of when we hear the word forgiveness in the Bible is remission—the debt’s been paid, the announcement that person’s slate has been wiped clean. Okay? It’s a legal transaction. That’s the normal word when we pray in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” or Luke, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive our debtors,” right? It reminds us that sin and debt—sin breaks relationship; it creates debts, etc. But the big thing here is that forgive there is this legal remission of a sin, the wiping it off from the slate. That’s what that word means there.

That’s not the word here in Colossians. It’s the other word for forgiveness, which is used maybe, you know, a dozen, two dozen times. And this word is a completely different word. Charizomai or charizomai. There’s caris in there. You can hear it. What’s caris? Caris is grace. Caris is gift. Caris is a blessing from God to us to which word does it respond in faithfulness. That’s what the caris is—charismatic—the work of the Holy Spirit who gifts us. Okay? So this other word that’s used for forgiveness, and very specifically in today’s text, says give people the gift of forgiveness. You know, I’m not saying there’s a complete disjuncture between these two words. That there’s a change in emphasis. And when we talk about community building practices and being reconciled to one another, we’re to be forgiving in a gracious way. How can we give that gift to someone—of not even maybe addressing the particular sin of them being inconsiderate and cutting in line? It’s a gift you give to them, to just overlook it, to forgive it. How is that? Where do you get that gift?

Well, you don’t have the gift. It’s not your thing going on. You get that gift from the Holy Spirit. It’s the grace of God operating in our lives through God himself. And so these two different ways of forgiving that are spelled out in the Scriptures are really ways that both come ultimately from the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. And it has these two aspects to it. One is he pays the price for our sins. It’s canceled out. Okay? It’s remitted—normal word. But he does this as an act of grace—life-giving gift to us. And that’s part of forgiveness as well. And that’s the emphasis in today’s text on community building practices: the gracious gift that we’re giving to each other of life through forgiving small offenses and overlooking small complaints.

So that’s how the two things work.

Usually we should overlook minor issues. We should not hold personal grudges against people. Right? Don’t hold grudges. Overlook it. Let it go. And if you can’t let it go, go talk to somebody about it, right? Go talk to them about it. Overlook grudges.

And then we have these two words that are used for forgiveness, and that’s a community building practice that’s quite important. We could talk more about specific verses. We’re not going to do that. We will say this: in worship we repent and are assured of forgiveness. Right? So you know, we had the confession of sin here at the beginning. We confessed sin. We repented before God, and he told us you’re forgiven. Okay? That’s the normal way of forgiveness and confession or repentance. Okay? And we practice that every Lord’s day. And we mean it when we come and confess our sins.

But we don’t know all of our sins. Do you? Did you confess all your sins this last week? I don’t think I did. Too many. Too manifold. I’m not smart enough. Plus, Hebrews reminds me I’m self-deceived. I need other people to help me see my sins. But you don’t see all of them either, right? And they’re ones that I don’t even know I’m committing. But God is gracious to grant us forgiveness as we come forward seeking reconciliation with him through repentance.

Jesus forgives all of our sins. Right? It’s not as if you go through today and you have a sin, and if you don’t confess it, your sin is still against you and you’re going to hell. Jesus forgives all of your sins. You’re assured that he has forgiven you. Now, this is only true if you believe the gospel. What’s the gospel?

That Jesus paid the price for your sins. You’re a sinner. You do things wrong. You can’t through a process of self-will make yourself into a perfect person. You can’t do it. You’re sinful. That taint is upon all humanity. And the gospel says to begin with that the price for that sin is death. And Jesus Christ paid the price for that sin of yours. In fact, it’s eternal death somehow, right? It’s being sent to hell if you don’t repent, believe in Jesus. Somehow he pays the price for our sins totally.

I don’t quite understand it, but he did. I don’t understand it, of course, because it’s a deep mystery, but it’s true. He paid the price for your sins. You don’t have to die spiritually because Jesus did that for you. But that’s the first half of the gospel. That’s good news. No doubt about it. But the greater news is that you don’t then live your life as a zero or a zed. You don’t go from a minus to a nothing. He gives you his new manness, right? He not only paid the price for your race—that you ran and tripped people and punched people and got to the end, and you were a failure.

He pays the price for your sins, but he ran the race perfectly, completely. He gets to the end of his race, dies for our sins, raised up. He’s given the victor’s crown, right? He’s given the gold medal. And he sees us over there in the mire at the end of our race. And he forgives us of that. He pays the price, but not just pays the price and gets us out of that mud. He comes over and takes his medal, puts it on us. By which I mean, his person—the Holy Spirit—comes to minister Jesus to us. He’s patient. We’re to be patient because that’s who we are now. That’s our identity. If you believe that Jesus Christ is the Lord God, the second person of the Trinity who took on human flesh to die for your sins, you’re on the way. And then if you believe that he lived for your life, that he gives you his new manness, okay?—his characteristics—that’s the gospel.

You acknowledge him. He’s the savior. A savior who doesn’t just save you out of something. A savior who saves you to something. Now, with that kind of savior, what can we—how could we do anything but follow him as our Lord? He’s our Lord. George W. Bush used to say, “I’m the decider.” And in terms of civil policy, I suppose he was. Jesus—he’s the decider. He’s the Lord. His word tells us how to live. His word tells us that with these minor things that come up in the life of any community—because of sin, and also just because of our inability to understand one another—bear up, forbear with one another. Don’t let it get to you. Don’t hold grudges. Overlook minor offenses. Forgive them. Grace them. Because God has graced us through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s what the text says. Just as God—Christ forgave you. And the word there is this richly giving this thing, not remittance. It involves that. But he’s graciously giving us this gift of new manness. Just as he’s given that to us, let’s minister that to one another. Community building practice, right?

This is what we have to do because things are going to get clogged up here at times.

So Jesus Christ both paid our debt and he gave us his life. How much does the Father love Jesus? Ask yourself that. Think about it. He’s the beloved son. How much does he love him? Jesus exists in the bosom of the Father. And you know, it’s interesting because in John, where it says that, it actually says he’s moving ever closer to the Father. That’s interesting. That’s the sense of the verb tenses. They’re always growing closer. The Father loves the son, his beloved son, with a love that is incomprehensible to us.

Now, how much does he love you? Well, if you’re in Christ—if you’ve accepted that he paid the price for your sin and he’s given you his life and you become a follower of Jesus, if you’re in Jesus in that way—part of his new body, his new man. The Father loves you with the same love that he has for the Lord Jesus Christ because you’re in him now. How precious does the Father treat the son? Great preciousness. How much honor does he give him? Great honor. And because we’re in Jesus, this is the key to being able to be powerful enough to gift people and to give gifts to one another—because of this deep sense, an understanding of how much the Father loves the son, how much the son loved us to die for our sins. And not only that, to give us his victor’s crown, to give us his new manness, his characteristics of who he is, to give us those things through the Holy Spirit.

What a wonderful truth this is, brothers and sisters. Right? Can I get an amen? This is wonderful stuff. And this is what is the engine that drives community building practices here at RCC. This is where the rubber hits the road. We work that out with one another.

We avoid having to reconcile. We try to be very careful not to envy, to despise people, to use our speech to slander one another. We try to avoid that. But if problems come up, whether it’s our fault, somebody else’s fault, we’re not sure who it is—if there’s a breach in relationships, we’re the person that’s got to start the process, right? And so, if we all do that fifty percent of the time, at least somebody’s going to take care of it or get the ball rolling.

We do that, and we reconcile in part by this exercise of forgiveness—this serving one another through forgiving each other, through bearing with one another, to overlooking some things, to forgiving some sins that we see in other people’s lives. How can we do it? Because God has been gracious to us, and he’s been gracious to that person, and all we’re doing is lining up with the reality of the situation. And we can do that, and we can minister life one to another in the context of the church of Jesus Christ.

This is probably the most important—oh, should I say that? I don’t know. But this is of central significance to building a community that can withstand the sorts of things that our world, which is ripped apart and ripping each other apart more and more and more. You know what I heard in the news this morning? Okay, real quick. That lady in Kentucky that was jailed because she doesn’t want to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples. They can’t fire her because she was elected by the people. In any event, so I’m listening to ABC News this morning. “We found new information about the woman jailed in Kentucky for refusing to give marriage licenses to homosexuals.” Yes. And they go on-site. Yes. She’s a member of this white clapboard little church in Kentucky. And this church actually teaches that when women have little children, they should stay home and take care of them, and that divorce is the last resort, or the last option. It’s the final thing you have to do. You can’t go there first.

Oh, that’s earth-shattering news, apparently. I mean, you know, things are getting bad when that’s put forth as some sort of weird, cultish, kooky group. Homeschooling is under attack again. Did you know this? Brad sent me a link. Haven’t listened to the article yet. And then I was listening myself to philosophy talk this last week, and homeschooling being attacked.

Listen, this homosexual thing—but don’t worry. Honestly, don’t worry about it. Exercise these community building practices. We’ll be strong in the Lord as a result of that. We’ll be effective for ministry into this world. We’ll be able to proclaim the gospel, and see, our lives will demonstrate the truth of the gospel to the people that we speak to and get into contact with. We’re the victors in this long term because Jesus is the victor, and he’s put his crown on us.

Let’s pray. Father, bless us as we continue to listen to and think about and apply these truths of your Scriptures about our community—how to build it stronger and stronger and how to be effective as the body of Christ to take your word, Lord God, into all the world and see it transformed by the gospel. Bless us, Father, in Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.