Dennis Tuuri

# Colossians 3:8-16 – New Clothes for the New Man for the New Year, Pt. 2
## Sermon by Pastor Dennis Tuuri | January 17, 2016

Um, will be used throughout the country today in many churches as they celebrate Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. January 22nd is the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, of course, as we all know. We will conduct our anti-abortion day of the Lord service next Sunday. So it’ll be a little bit different but not a lot. But this psalm, of course, is always used as one to talk about God’s omnipresence and God forming us in the womb, and it’s perfectly legitimate to do that.

But as I pointed out last week, it’s important to remember here that what we read about God is very personal. These are not abstract characteristics of him. They’re things known to us. And in addition, I think this psalm can be a little frightening, can it? Is it to you? That God knows all your secret thoughts and your ways. I’m reminded of Bob Dylan’s song. One of his lyrics was, I think it’s: if my dreams could be seen, or if my thoughts could be seen, that put my head in a guillotine.

The presence of God in everything that we do, all that we say, is a frightening thought. And apart from the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, it would be absolutely unbearable. But Jesus has come, and we already have read about him—his revelation of himself to John in Revelation chapter 1—the beautiful image used there. And what is not normally recognized is that same imagery matches up at the end with the city of God and the bride of God.

So the arc of the book of Revelation is that the beauty of Jesus and the shining forth of his character, his epiphany at the beginning, which causes us to repent and he raises us up to life. But it’s not just raising us up to life. It’s that we’ll take on these characteristics of Christ himself, and the church will be adorned like a bride and adorned much like the bridegroom as well. We have those same character qualities, and that’s what we’ve been talking about last week in this putting off and putting on.

So we return today to Colossians 3:8-16. How does that happen, going from the beginning to the end of Revelation? How is that arc accomplished? And it’s through the process of sanctification. In Colossians 3:8-16, as several other scriptures in the New Testament show us, the basic fundamental mechanism of our sanctification is putting off and putting on.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Colossians 3:8-16.

“But now you yourselves are to put off all of these: 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 and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision 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, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a complaint against another. Even 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, to which also you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.”

Let’s pray. Father, bless us by your word and by your Spirit. We thank you for the death and resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. And on the basis of that, we have been saved and redeemed, forgiven of our sins and indwelt by your Holy Spirit. And that Spirit is to lead us into all truth. Lead us into the truth that this passage contains today. Transform us by it, that we may bear the characteristics of our Savior Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

David Bowie died this last week. I was listening to a show last night. One of his great songs is called “Heroes,” and it was written in a studio, and done in a studio within sight of the Berlin Wall in the ’80s, or at least where the Berlin Wall was then or was prior to that. And the wall that’s talked about in “Heroes” is really a reference to that. So that may help you understand the song if you’ve ever listened to it.

But the reason I bring it up is there was this kind of famous guitarist named Fripp who came in for two days to record some of the guitar tracks for that song. And he made three attempts at playing the “Heroes” music for David Bowie. And the first two weren’t that good. The third one was spot on. But the producer decided, let’s try something. Let’s try taking all three takes by Fripp, overlaying them together, and see what we have. And it was a thing of beauty, you know, kind of one of those magic moments. And that’s what you hear on the studio album.

I bring it up because next week we’ll be talking about these last couple verses we talked about. And you know, I was thinking of it as we sang together this morning. You know, we have various imperfections, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and yet when we come together as those three layers of Fripp’s guitar came together, it is a thing of beauty to the Lord when we sing these songs together, and it has tremendous power and it changes the world. And I’ll talk about that next week in our sermon.

Today I want to talk more about clothing, right? Clothing makes the man. Now, I felt a little bad saying that this morning, so I wasn’t sure how each of you would have dressed this morning that would make you feel good, bad, or indifferent. But that’s an old phrase. And you know, we kind of rebel. Yeah, of course, you know, packaging is what the world is into. But in the Bible, there’s a lot of stuff about clothing.

I mean, Adam and Eve—the direct effect of the fall was a need to be clothed, and to take off their clothing and put on God’s clothing. And in a way, they had stripped themselves somehow mysteriously. The clothing thing in Genesis is mysterious. But somehow they had lost the clothing of some type in the fall, needed new clothing which they attempted to do themselves. And then God provides skin for them. What that was, I’m not sure, but it’s clothing.

Colossians is about new creation. He said that in the opening chapter, and if you’ve listened to this text the last two weeks, we’ve read it. You’ll see there’s a direct reference to all of this being related to the creation of God, of who we are. So it’s a creation arrangement, so to speak, to this book, and it began in chapter one with the imagery of growth and expansion, et cetera. We’re new creations in Christ.

This is the season of Epiphany. And after the Epiphany—the revelation of Christ to the Gentiles, symbolically by the coming of the magi—this whole season is a reminder to us that Jesus has a revelation to the nations, and we’re to be that revelation to the nations as well. And character is essential to that. And in our text, Paul talks about character as a putting off of certain kinds of character and a putting on of other kinds of character. And it’s directly our clothing reference that second term. So clothing is quite significant.

You know, we want to be good gnostics and say, “Nah, it doesn’t make any difference what I wear.” Well, you know, clothing is significant. The high priest had to have particular clothing. I won’t go into all the rest of it, but think about it. Think how often clothing is referred to in the scriptures. So clothing is very important in terms of the development of Christian character.

This kind of clothing that we’re talking about in Colossians—putting off and putting on practices that are really quite filthy and ugly to behold, and replacing it with character that is beautiful to God. And so that’s what we’re talking about. We talked last week about the things we’re to put off. And so today we’re going to focus on things to put on.

I wanted to mention—I also saw this last week. I mentioned The Revenant last week on Monday. I saw The Hateful Eight. And probably most of you don’t want to see that. It’s a Quentin Tarantino movie. And of course, you know, I’m thinking, well, I just preached about putting off malice, hatred, and so this movie is interesting to me from that perspective. And I thought, among other things, the movie shows the kind of world it would be in the fallen state if it wasn’t for the grace of God and very particularly the common grace exhibited by his people in the world that restrains evil. Strip that off and you end up with The Hateful Eight—no, the hateful fifteen or so characters that there were in the movie. Everybody’s hateful. And malice is one of these central things that we’re to put off one toward the other.

And along with that malice, there is this idea of blasphemy or slander. I didn’t read this verse last week, and I wanted to. I don’t want to let another—even though we’re moving on to putting on—I do want to read this reference. I remember last week I said that one of the things we’re to put off is slander. Malice is then followed by blasphemy or slander, any kind of vilifying speech toward other people. And really, it’s this kind of heart of malice that leads in that progression. And malice is enhanced by irritations, provocations, anger—whether it’s wrath or anger, those first two terms. There’s this progression that goes on. And the way we express that in polite society is slander.

Now, here’s the word blasphemy. Remember I said the word is blasphemy, which we normally think of toward God. Revelation 13:6 says this: “Then the opposition, he opened his mouth in blaspheming against God to blaspheme his name, his tabernacle and those who dwell in heaven.”

Okay, so there it is. When you blaspheme against your brother or sister, when you slander your brother or sister, what does James tell us? We’re speaking evil of the law. But that means to be speaking evil of the one that gave the law. So Revelation 13 ties together this word blasphemy and shows that it’s this bad speech toward image-bearers, those in heaven, the people, the martyrs in heaven, but it’s also blasphemy toward God. And at the center of that is blasphemy toward his tabernacle, which is always a reference to the church.

So that’s some of the things that we’re supposed to be putting off. And today we want to talk about putting on. And at the middle of putting off and putting on is something that’s critical to doing the putting off and putting on in a godly way that isn’t just plain moralism or isn’t bound to failure or pride either way. And that is these verses in verse 9b through 12a that says the reason you can do this, continuing in your life—the reason why we can put off and put on today, tomorrow, make resolutions into the new year—it’s tied to the definitive fact that we have put off the old man and put on the new man.

Here’s what it says: “Don’t lie to one another, since you have put off. So now it’s a statement of fact: you have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.”

And there’s the creation image. But before we move to that, you see what he just said. The reason why you’re to stop lying about people or lying to one another is because of a fact: when you came to faith in Jesus Christ, and when you believe that there was no way out of your sinful state except from the death of Jesus for your sins, and when you believe that God would provide for you righteousness, that he was your only Savior.

Right? When you believe in Jesus—Jesus means the one who would save us from our sins—and Christ is Lord. When you believe and have faith in Christ, he is always a Christ who is your Lord. And so when you have this relationship, hopefully we all here have it, where we’ve repented and turned away from our old man, our sinful state, our sins, and say we can’t pay the price for those, no matter how good we might be, it’s tainted.

And when you’ve come to faith in Jesus as the one who paid the price for those sins—the wages of sin is death, eternal death—and when you then become a disciple of Jesus, that provides the foundation for the putting off and the putting on. The definitive putting off, the definitive putting on, which the Bible regularly links to baptism. And so in Colossians, same thing. It talks about baptism as this transitional point.

So whether you came to faith as an adult like these Colossians did and then were baptized, or whether you were a child, an infant here, and were baptized, you were joined to Christ. And in that joining and union, you have what’s required to put off and put on in the power of the Holy Spirit. And we believe that God gives those little infants faith, a recognition. They grow up not coming to a transition point necessarily like some of us in adult life did, but they grow up at the same understanding of Jesus Christ: He’s our Savior. I can’t do anything about my sins. I can’t pay the price for them. I’m going to hell if I have to do it myself. He’s my Savior. He saved me from sins and death and hell, and he’s given me eternal life and he’s my Lord. He’s Christ. He’s Jesus Christ. He’s my Lord.

Who makes the best disciples? Adult converts or little babies born to Christians? I’d say little babies. And I think the evidence—the statistical studies show that to be true. And our Savior says to embrace children as disciples of his and don’t keep them back from becoming disciples. So whichever way it happened for you, if it’s happened for you, this is the driving engine behind the ability to move forward in sanctification.

Do you want to have your life be a revelation of the character of God to the world and to your family and to your friends and to the church and to your neighbors? Well, you really can’t do that in a Christian way without being vitally linked to the Lord Jesus Christ. And this baptism is nothing less than a new creation, right? Baptism replaces circumcision. There’s other things that could be said, but that’s pretty much a one-to-one correlation. Circumcision was the eighth day, right? The eighth day after Christmas is New Year’s Day. The day when Jesus was circumcised, the Bible tells us he was circumcised on the eighth day. The picture is humanity coming into new creation through the rolling back of sinful flesh.

Now, Jesus wasn’t sinful. He was not—he was—but still the imagery is there of new creation. And so when Paul talks—that the whole reason you can do these things, to put off lying to and about one another, is because you have definitively put off the old man and put on the new man. He immediately talks about that in terms of creation. He says that this is happening: “You put on the new man. This new man is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him.”

So he links this transition to creation: “Where there is neither Christ or Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all in all. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved.”

So that’s going to lead us into the put-ons. But you’re the elect of God, holy and beloved. Three terms used of Israel in the Old Testament. We are Israel. The church is Israel. Now, this text is saying that, and the text is saying that our definitive union with Christ—having put off and put on, putting off the Adamic fallen nature and being joined to Christ—this is who we are. This is reality.

I mentioned that for an Oscar. Reality—what is it? And reality for you and I, brothers and sisters, assuming you’ve come to faith in Jesus Christ, believe that only he can save you from your sins, and believe that you’re a disciple of his and everything that you do now results in your being an evident and committed disciple of Jesus. Assuming that’s true of you, Paul says that’s the definitive new creation, and now you’ve got the power and strength to do these continual putting offs and putting ons that he talks about.

So it’s a creation deal, all right. So having definitively put off and put on union with Christ, coming to faith, which is the centrality of Christ, then we can move forward into actually putting on. Then in Paul’s way, he looks at this. I wanted to read another text, Galatians 3:

“For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. Now, what he just told us as well is he talked about the definitive putting off and putting on. He said that’s new creation. And he says that because we’re all now linked to Jesus’s body, there’s none of these divisions that exist in the world. Now, there are still, you know, nations. There are still nationalities, citizens, et cetera. But what Paul is saying is that those divisions which once were very bad, warlike divisions filled with malice, they’ve been done away with. There’s unity now because we’re all united to Jesus Christ.”

And Galatians says the same thing. And then Galatians goes on to say: “For as many as you were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. So there’s the definitive connection. And then what does he say? There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

So the being one in Christ Jesus and the elimination of these divisions between male and female is tied to our union with Christ, having put him on in baptism. And so he’s not saying ultimately he’s not saying that there are no male or female. Clearly there are. But he’s saying that those distinctions are now sub-distinctions under the great unifying factor here, which is that we’re one with Christ. There’s a unity to who we are, and that’s pictured to us every Lord’s Day at the Passover meal, the New Testament equivalent of the Passover meal, which we’ll talk about again today.

In Genesis 1:27-28 it said: “God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him male and female he created them. The Lord blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea,’ et cetera.”

So what we can infer then is that now that we’ve been united to the new man, the new creation, Jesus, now we have true righteousness, knowledge, holiness, and dominion in him. We’ve been created male and female for one purpose. That overriding purpose is to be the revelation of Christ in the world and to exercise dominion, to care for the world, to bring it to maturation and development. So these truths we’re talking about then are linked to dominion. And to exercise dominion in the world means that you’ve got to put off the stuff we’ve talked about, the bad clothes, and you’ve got to put on these new clothes that are then described for us.

Now, I want to say one other thing before we get to that list. Who is he writing to—put off the sexual sins or to put off malice, uh, blasphemy or slander against? Who’s he writing to? He’s writing to the Colossians. Okay? He’s writing to you and me. They, like you and I, have definitively put on Christ. They were united to Christ, right? We read as the book of Colossians opens up. Listen what it says about him.

So, you know, Paul’s an apostle and he’s writing to them, and we talked about this early in this series of sermons: “We give thanks to God the Father, Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints. That’s practical working out demonstration of love that he can hear of and see. Because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you have heard before in the world of the truth of the gospel which has come to you as it has also in all the world, is bringing forth fruit, creation imagery, as it is also among you since the day you heard of it and knew the grace of God in truth.

So you also learned from Epaphras, our dear brother and fellow servant, who is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf, who also declared to us your love in the Spirit. And for this reason we also, since the days we heard of it, do not cease to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with all the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding that you may walk worthy of the Lord.”

So Paul says that the people he’s telling to put off malice, sexual sin, uh, anger, sinful anger and wrath, slander, foul speaking—these are Christians. These are members of the body of Christ. You can get to this list and say, “Boy, I should have been putting those things off, but I still see them evidenced in myself. This is horrible.” No, it’s not horrible. This is the way of sanctification. You’ve been definitively joined to Christ, and now Christ will work it out. You—your identity. You’re not in Rome. You’re not in the fallen world anymore. You’re not in your old man anymore. You’re a new man in Jesus Christ. That’s who you are.

Now, you also sin. And you’re supposed to be putting off those sins, right? God came so that we might not sin. But when we sin, we have an advocate with the Father. So first of all, you know, in terms of how you do this, you do this by not becoming so guilt-ridden because these things are so true of you and you feel like it’s just horrible.

Secondly, and maybe more importantly, the person in your family that you may be feuding with right now, or did this last week, or the person in this church that you may engage in some of these things relative to—and I think that’s what his focus is, because he’s talking about the body of Christ and trying to get rid of the stuff that’s very damaging to the body. That means that everybody in this room, okay, needs to hear this verse about putting off sin.

That means the person next to you is a sinner just like you. And more importantly, the person next to you has definitively put off the old man and put on the new man. You are not to think of them as with their identity being that sinful action. That’s not who they are. They’re believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. They’re Christians. They’re a revelation of Christ to the world. That gets messed up sometimes because of their sin. But don’t you misidentify yourself as a sinner primarily, or misidentify them as people that are hateful or malicious or slanderous or whatever it is. That is an anomaly to their character. Okay? That’s an anomaly to their character.

Now, if you don’t understand that—churches, I mean, it really is. Because here’s where we’re supposed to be really nice and kind and Christian and all that stuff, or the Christian family, same thing. And yet you see sin and you see flare-ups and you think, “Wow, this church is filled with all kinds of people that are basically angry people, or, you know, nasty people, or slanderous people, or people that are doing bad things.” But it would be very difficult to live in that kind of community. But recognize that because Paul is telling this to the Colossians whom he’s already praised—like I praised you when I preached on chapter one, right? All kinds of love going on in this church and all kinds of directions both within the church and without the church. All kinds of deeds going on all the time. That’s who we are.

And so when we look at these put-offs and put-ons, understand, you know, that this is an ongoing thing. But definitively at the center of the putting off and putting on is the reality that you and the person next to you in the pew is a new creation in Christ. We want to help each other to wash our hands and to put on better clothes sometimes, but our identity is that. I hope that makes sense, and I hope you see why I’m stressing it, because I think it’s absolutely critical in terms of this dynamic.

All right. So I’ve been promising to talk about putting on, and we’re twenty minutes into this thing. Keep putting on. What are we to put on? Tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering. That’s a five, right? Now, the bad things were a five and then a sixth was added: lying. The bad sexual sins were a five and then a sixth was added: idolatry. But here it’s a five and instead of six being added after this list of five put-ons, there’s the discussion of bearing with one another and forgiving one another, which makes it into a seven.

It’s separate, you know, linguistically in terms of the structure here. There are five elements of the clothing we’re supposed to put on. And then there’s a couple of actions. And then there’s a final action which is, you know, above all of these, put on love. Number eight. Eight. Eight. Eighth day circumcision. Eighth day, sacrificial animals being ready. Eighth day, the temple’s ready. Eighth day, Jesus raises up on the eighth day. New creation. Eighth day circumcision. The point is it’s new creation stuff.

And again, just in the listing, the way he lists these things, there is beauty and there is truth. There are five things to put off. Two more actions, ongoing actions to exhibit relative to each other in the church. And then a final capstone of love, which makes it a seven. But the other lists were culminating in six. What’s six? Six is the day when man was created and man fell. Six is a falling short of a seven. Seven is a great creation number, but the new creation is eight. Okay, so that’s the list itself is useful that way.

And then you have these particular characteristics. Right now, this isn’t really difficult, but again, we don’t want to try to do this apart from union with Christ. Romans 13:14 says, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh.” So again, remember, we’re putting on those beautiful characteristics of Christ. They’re not our own to generate. The only way we can get them is with union to Christ. And we want to do that.

So what are they? Well, they’re pretty simple, right? Put on tender mercies. You know, this means kind of guts of compassion for people. You know, there’s actually a reference here to the viscera or the internal organs or digest. I don’t know what it is. But the point is you have a yearning for people that are struggling, right?

As you know, baby Titus up in Alaska struggled the last few months. Some of you that are connected and homesick and know the Machenkos—you had tender mercies, you know, for what that child is going through, and now you have tender mercies as well for what the parents and that community are going through. So this is what we’re to put on, right? Instead of wrath or anger against other people, we’re to put on mercies for other people, right? Tender mercies.

Secondly, we’re to put on kindness. What’s kindness? Kindness is doing good. It means doing acts of kindness for people. It is great to be moved with compassion toward other people, but that’s not enough, right? It’s good to affirm people. Remember our series on affirm, share, serve. But ultimately, kindness is about serving people. It’s about doing acts that are kind, right? And so, there’s tender mercies. There’s kindness.

We’re supposed to—now, the other thing is he tells us to put these on. What’s the implication? They’re not there all the time, right? Don’t feel bad if these are things that don’t readily happen in your life as you look at other people, because then you wouldn’t need to be told to put them on. The assumption is that we need to be told, oh yeah, put them on. Think about these people. Have compassion for their suffering. Think about it somewhat, right? Put it on. And then if you can be kind to them and do something for them, put it on.

See, it’s not going to be your first instinct necessarily, but we’re to put it on. So we got tender mercies, kindness, humility. You know, why don’t we do those things? Why do we have malice? Malice was the third in the slot of the five elements of clothing to put away. The opposite of malice is humility, because malice—hatred toward other people—puts us in the first place. Humility puts other people in the first place, right? And so it brings us into a proper state of mind. God, you know, exalts the humble, but he debases the prideful.

So humility is this core attribute in the center of this list of five. Having a proper understanding of who we are, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ—if you’re not a Christian, and if you haven’t done that definitive union, if you don’t believe that Jesus had to die for your sins because you can’t take care of them, then there’s no way you’re going to be humble before God or before other people. It’s going to be all about you. And what do we see increasingly in the world around us? More and more pride, humility being downcast more and more.

You know, it’s the result felt in movies like The Hateful Eight. The Hateful Eight happens, malice happens, because there’s no humility toward other people. And that’s because there’s no humility toward God. So, put on humility.

Fourth, put on meekness. And we’ve talked about this before. You know, meekness has a—can be translated as gentleness. Okay, that’s okay. But meekness really ultimately, in this particular Greek word, means being broken to harness. A meek horse is not a weak horse. It’s one who is humble. He’s been trained by the master to be meek and under the power of the master. So actually he’s more powerful being meek than he was without being meek, because now his power is being directed and used properly. But it does involve some degree of gentleness in our interactions with other people. We don’t barge in like a wild raging stallion or like a bull in a china shop. We’re under the control of the master, the Lord Jesus.

We’re disciples. And so we’re remember these things we’re supposed to remember when we interact with people: bowels of compassion, looking to do kindness to people, being humble before people, right? Being gentle toward people.

And then five: longsuffering, being patient with people. You know, longsuffering is just what it means: patience, longsuffering, it’s suffering long. It means that people can be difficult and make you suffer either through things they do that aren’t sinful or through their sins. Longsuffering with people, putting up with people, right?

In a way, these attributes can sort of be seen as: the first two, you know, you kind of are helping someone that’s lower, right? You’re having compassion on somebody who’s struggling or you’re reaching out in a kind action towards somebody, right? And so it kind of—you sort of, functionally, you’re a little elevated. And the next two, humility and gentleness, you seek to sort of come under underneath people and you see them as more important than yourself, right? And you try to help them in that way by coming under.

So there’s kind of both things going on here, and these are the kind of actions we’re to put on in the context of community. And then the end result of this is longsuffering with each other. And that’s kind of like the first one. So these are the five characteristics, right? Put them on. You know, ritualize putting them on. Name your sins.

Kids on your handout—and I say kids, everybody that’s got an outline has the children’s handout as well. And the last question on the children’s handout, at least it should be if I typed it up correctly, is: what’s your resolution for the new year? You know, I want you to think about the five, yay six, of sexual sin, and the five, yay six, of sins against other people that we’re to put off. And then the five attributes here, and yay, we’ll talk in a minute about three more, making it an eight.

I want you to think specifically, and maybe adults too. And if you do more than one, great. But if you know you’ve got to be setting difficulty in a particular area or one that needs work, whatever it is, whatever the Holy Spirit brings to your mind. You know, it doesn’t do any good to stand up here and think about these things and see the cool, beautiful way God communicates and how it all works together and is intellectually satisfying to us if we don’t be transformed by it. If we don’t make commitments, right, to change. And so we need to make commitments to make these kinds of changes.

So think about those. They’re all right there on your handout. Maybe you don’t want to do it now. Maybe you do. Maybe you want to do it during the offertory time, right? The offertory is kind of our altar call, right? If you haven’t come to faith in Christ and if you come forward, want to pray with one of us, that’s great. Or if you want to put an offering in the box with really the first indication, with the first kind of intent in your own mind to actually honor Jesus as your Savior and your Lord, that’s great. It’s kind of an altar call.

For most of us, the altar call is a reminder that God’s word is transforming us and we’re to be changed by that word. And so the altar call, giving everything that we have today, means giving my clothing to Jesus, meaning our ethical standards, our ethical characteristics. And specifically, it means intending to change, to put off some stuff, to put on some stuff—maybe, I don’t know what it is for you—but to change. And that’s what this is leading us to.

Okay, so those are the five. They’re not difficult. I can take some time and show you, and you could do it yourself in a concordance study, but I can take some time and show you that these are attributes of God. Remember what I said about the arc of Revelation—Jesus to the church, Jesus to the city. These are all characteristics of God. It’s the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. God is over and over again referred to as kind. God is patient, longsuffering, full of mercy.

There’s a text on your handout from the book of Exodus when God reveals himself to Moses. And that’s what it is: “The Lord, merciful, compassionate.” So these are really characteristics of God. These are what they call the communicable attributes of God, right? Jesus is humble. He’s meek. He says, you know, “Take upon my yoke upon you. I am meek.” He said he’s broken to harness. He’s doing the will of the Father. He’s got reins on him. Okay. So these are all communicable attributes to make us more beautiful, to make our actions shine as revelations and epiphanies of the character of Christ.

Now, the next two—and they’re not hard, they’re easy to think about, not so easy to do sometimes, but actually they’re not that tough to do if you just commit to doing them. Okay? If you just continually each week think, “Gee, I wasn’t very good at that,” you’re forgetting that you’ve got a command here that says put them on, because we need to put them on. It doesn’t just happen. Okay? I mean, some of it does, but don’t feel bad. You have a need to intentionally put these things on.

The next two are good too. Absolutely vital for having a community such as Reformation Covenant or any church or group of people. What is it? It’s bearing with one another and forgiving one another. I know the emphasis is on forgiving each other—”just as Christ forgave you”—and of course, that’s good. And Paul really hammers home on that, right?

So what does it mean? It means that people are going to sin against you all the time, right? Little ways and big ways, whatever it is. And our general characteristic should be forgiveness of them. Now, I’ve talked before about this. This means forgiving them in the sense of not holding a grudge, not wanting to take personal vengeance. Okay? That’s what The Revenant is all about: vengeance. And in a way, malice and The Hateful Eight are about vengeance—not wanting to do that, laying those things down because Christ has forgiven you.

And do you know all your sins? Do you confess all your sins every day? Not likely, brothers and sisters. You don’t even know half of them. When Christ grows brighter and brighter in our hearts, we see more and more of the sin that lurks there that he’s taken care of. So forgiveness. But maybe more important is the first one: bearing with one another. People may not sin against you, but they’re darn irritable sometimes, right? Their personality type doesn’t match with your personality type. We can think of it that way. Or we just—they’re odd. They’re different, right? Everybody should be like me and the world would be a great place. We’d get a lot of work done.

God doesn’t think so. God brings our voices together and they sound beautiful to him. Like Fripp’s guitar, beautiful in that song about response to tyranny and governmental oppression and love in the midst of war. And he brings our voices together. Beautiful to him. And he brings us as individuals together. It’s always a requirement to bear with one another in the church because you’re always going to have lots of different kind of people with lots of different kind of gifts and abilities. We tend to think our gift is best or the most important.

So the way we get from five—which is a great, half number of the Decalogue, right?—the way we get from that five and make it even better is to add the six and the seven, which brings us to a full creation week of attributes: bearing with one another, forgiving one another. Think of the list. What’s your resolution? Some of you have a hard time bearing with other people. Some of you have a hard time forgiving other people. Some of you have a hard time having tender mercies to people. I don’t know what it is with you.

So think of those two more. And then finally, what does it say? “Put on love, which is the bond of perfection.” Now, love—I’ve talked about this before. I guess after thirty years I could say that about everything I say. I’ve talked about this before. You know, the Bible just says the same thing over and over again, doesn’t it? There’s nothing new here in this text this morning of what I’m telling you. But God and Paul think we need it.

I have a verse here about love that I need to get to. And the problem with love is we are in a stage of humanity where love has been washed out of most meaning and has been turned into some kind of emotional response. But in the Bible it’s far more than that. I like this verse. We had our pastor’s prayer summit. We were praying through Philippians. We would have directed prayer times for the twenty or so pastors that were there. And this Philippians 1 was the text we would use for a lot of it.

And Philippians 1:9 says this—and we had to pray about this: “So this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and in discernment.”

Okay? So what you normally do is pray for your love to abound. Okay? But then you forget that it’s telling us that when love abounds, it’s in knowledge and discernment. You’re not loving somebody by ignoring their sin—I mean, grievous sins, significant sins, little sin, sure. You’re not loving somebody if all you do is feed them and not try to help them get work. You know, unless the only thing we care about is food. Man is made to work. Human prospering requires work because that’s what we’re made to do. Otherwise, we’re just like a machine that gets rusty from lack of use.

So, so love, according to Philippians 1:9, there’s other texts that are just like this: when we put this capstone virtue of love on in terms of community, this capstone virtue of love according to Philippians 1:9 is directly linked to knowledge and discernment. How do we know what’s best for somebody? How do we love somebody if we haven’t discerned what they would be useful to them? Whether it’s just, you know, a hug, whether it’s money, whether it’s instruction in some aspect of vocation, whatever it might be.

Don’t think you’ve capped off this list of seven, making it a new creation eight, by just having warm feelings about people. That’s not what this is about. Biblical love has intelligence, knowledge, and discernment attached to it. Lenski, the Lutheran commentator, always talks about agape as the love of intelligence, comprehension, and of corresponding purpose. There’s a purpose. The discernment and the intelligence is to the end that we might actually serve people in love.

And see, in order to do that, you’ve got to know people. In order to discern things you’ve got to know them to some degree. All right. So these are the characteristics that we would put on.

I want to bring us to a conclusion, and we’ll talk about the last item in the outline next week when we talk about the corporate community and the knowledge of Christ and the word and peace. But I want to conclude with a poem that you may not like. It’s an old-fashioned poem written by a guy named Edgar Guest. Some of you have heard me read this before over the years. Some of you have groaned when I’ve read it probably, but I like it.

Guest was an odd sort of fellow. He has various poems. He actually is referred to in a series of unfortunate events. What is it called? A Series of Unfortunate Incidents, the Lemony Snicket books. In one of the last books, I think it was called The Grim Grotto or something like that, there’s a submarine. Olaf has these submarine crew bad guys. And they all have these patches on their uniforms of Edgar Guest’s picture, and derogatory things are said about Edgar Guest in that book.

Edgar Guest—some of his poems were quoted by Edith in All in the Family, for you old people like me. Kind of, you know, moralistic, maybe, but still he has this poem, and I’m going to read it, and I kind of want you to sort of just say, “Yeah, Lord, make a regular man out of me.”

What’s a regular man? It means a man who is man as he was created to be. That’s a regular man. Irregularities are fallings short and sins and stuff. A regular man. It’s an old way of speaking. But a regular man just means a solid man. Boy, you teenage boys, you know, listen to this. Appropriate this stuff. Okay. The rest of us as well. Okay. This is the poem:

This I would like to be—braver and bolder,
Just a bit wiser because I am older,
Just a bit kinder to those I may meet,
Just a bit manlier, taking defeat.
This for the New Year, my wish and my plea,
Lord, make a regular man out of me.

This I would like to be—just a bit finer,
More of a smiler, and less of a whiner,
Just a bit quicker to stretch out my hand,
Helping another who’s struggling to stand.
This is my prayer for the New Year to be,
Lord, make a regular man out of me.

This I would like to be—just a bit fairer,
Just a bit better, and just a bit squarer,
Not quite so ready to censure and blame,
Quicker to help every man in the game,
Not quite so eager men’s failings to see,
Lord, make a regular man out of me.

This I would like to be—just a bit truer,
Less of the wisher, more of the doer,
Broader and bigger, more willing to give,
Living and helping my neighbor to live.
This for the New Year, my prayer and my plea,
Lord, make a regular man out of me.

Those are words that have no scriptural citations, but the scriptural allusions abound. It came out of a moralistic period of our country, probably as we were slipping away from Jesus and his word, but the values, the virtues were still there. They’re gone now. This poem is seen as sort of stupid by most people today and certainly not something to think about and pray to God about relative to how we change into this new year.

But I urge us to think about this as sort of a practical way to take these five attributes, talked about them in terms of helping people and not being censorious. May the Lord God make regular men out of me, and man of course stands for the race—men and women together. May God make regular men and women out of us today. May he make us better. May he make our boys and girls better, more sanctified. May we be able to put off the bad stuff that we do and put on the attributes of Christ so that we might shine and be effective for ministry here in Oregon City and the places we go to where we work and live and where God has placed us to be epiphanies of the character of Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray. Father, I do pray particularly for the young men and women that they would be intentional about these characteristics that are essential to Christian sanctification—things to put off, things to put on. Thank you for the driving center of this text being the definitive putting off and putting on of coming to faith in Christ. And we thank you that is the way to accomplish these things. Bless us, Lord God. Help us not to be discouraged with ourselves or others, but help us simply to move forward, becoming more regular in terms of your word.

In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.