Put On Love

Scripture: Colossians 3:12–17

Read Colossians 3:12–17 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

And to all these add love, which is the perfect bond.

Colossians 3:14

The Elect of God, Holy and Dearly Loved

Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with a heart of mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. (3:12)

The previous passage was the negative side of the ethical exhortation: the putting-to-death of the sins of desire, the putting-away of the sins of relationship, the putting-off of the old man. This passage is the positive side. The believer is to clothe himself (the same garment-language that gave us the new man, with which he has been clothed) with a particular set of virtues that Paul will list in detail. The Christian life is not only the laying down of the old; it is the putting on of the new. The two motions belong together, and Paul gives them equal weight.

But before the list of virtues, Paul names who the Colossians are. As the elect of God, holy and dearly loved. Three titles, three names that identify the people who are being commanded to put on these things. The Colossians are the elect of God: the Greek word is eklektoi, the chosen, those whom God has selected to be his own. They are holy: hagioi, the same word the letter opened with, the set-apart ones. They are dearly loved: ēgapēmenoi, the perfect passive participle, the ones who have been loved and continue in that loved state. Each of these names places the Colossians in a particular relation to God. They are chosen by him. They are made holy by him. They are loved by him.

The Lutheran reading of these titles has been careful. The Confessions have always insisted that the doctrine of election must be preached as gospel, not as terror. The election that Paul names is not the Calvinist double predestination, in which God decides from eternity to save some and to damn others. It is God’s eternal, gracious choice of his own in Christ, made “before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4). The Formula of Concord (Article XI) confesses that this election is a cause of our salvation and of everything that belongs to it: our calling, our faith, our justification, our preservation, our final glory. But the Formula also warns us not to go looking for that choice in God’s hidden counsel, as though we could climb into the secret mind of God and check our names on a list. Election is to be sought in Christ, whom the Formula calls the true “book of life,” and in the Word and the Sacraments through which God carries out in time what he purposed in eternity. The believer who hears the gospel, who has been washed in baptism, who is fed at the Lord’s Table, is not guessing about his election; he is holding it where God has put it. So the doctrine is taught for comfort, never for despair. The believer who looks at his own faltering faith is pointed away from himself, to the Christ in whom he was chosen before the world began and to the promises God has spoken to him. His faith is not the reason God chose him; it is God’s gift to him.

And the believer’s identity, named here in compact form, is the basis for the ethical exhortation that follows. Paul does not say try to become the elect of God by putting on these virtues. He says put on these virtues, because you are already the elect of God, holy and dearly loved. The order matters. The identity precedes the ethics. The ethics flow out of the identity. This is the same indicative-before-imperative structure that defines Pauline ethics throughout, and it is one of the deepest Lutheran insights into how Christian formation works. The believer is told who he is before he is told what to do, and the doing is the natural expression of the being.

A Heart of Mercy, Kindness, Humility, Gentleness, Patience

The five virtues Paul lists are worth walking through one at a time. They form a portrait of Christ-shaped character, and each one stands in deliberate contrast to the sins of the previous passage.

A heart of mercy. The Greek is splanchna oiktirmou, literally bowels of mercy. In the ancient world the bowels were considered the seat of the deepest emotions, particularly the visceral compassion that moves a person to act on behalf of one who is suffering. The Greek expression points to a compassion that is not surface-level pity but a deep, embodied feeling that responds to the suffering of others. The Colossians are to clothe themselves with this kind of mercy. It is not native to them in their old selves; it has to be put on. But it is the kind of feeling that characterizes God himself, who proclaimed his own name to Moses as “the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6).

Kindness. The Greek word is chrēstotēs, related to the word chrēstos, which sounds nearly identical to Christos (Christ) in Greek. Early Christians sometimes punned on the resemblance. The kind person is the Christ-like person; the Christ-like person is the kind person. Kindness here is not mere politeness; it is the disposition to do good to others, to act with gentle generosity, to soften the edges of relationship with practical goodwill. The kind person is easy to be around because his impulse is always toward the good of the one in front of him.

Humility. The Greek word is tapeinophrosynē, the same word that Paul used pejoratively in chapter two to describe the false teachers’ “false humility” (2:18) and their humility “achieved by an unsparing treatment of the body” (2:23). The word can be used in two directions. The teachers were using it to describe a forced or affected piety, a humility put on display for spiritual credit. Paul uses it here in its proper sense: the genuine humility of one who knows that everything he has is gift, who does not regard himself more highly than he ought, who is content to take the lower place. Christian humility is not self-deprecation; it is the freedom to think rightly about oneself because one is not preoccupied with how one appears.

Gentleness. The Greek is prautēs, which older translations rendered meekness: gentleness, strength held under control. The word is said to have been used of a horse brought under the bridle, not weakened but trained, so that its great power could be directed by the rider. The gentle person is not weak. He has strength, but the strength has been brought under the lordship of Christ. He does not strike out in anger; he does not assert his rights with violence; he does not need to dominate the room. His strength serves rather than rules.

Patience. The Greek is makrothymia: long-suffering, the capacity to bear difficulty without complaint, to wait without anxiety, to extend grace to those who do not deserve it. Patience in this sense is one of the great fruits of the Spirit. It is the disposition that makes the long Christian walk possible. The believer who is patient can endure the failings of others, the slow pace of growth in himself, the providence of God that often unfolds slowly. The patient person trusts that God is working even when the working is not visible.

These five together are not a checklist. They are a portrait. They are the kind of character the new man bears, and they are also, all of them, characteristics of Christ himself. Mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. The believer who is being renewed according to the image of his Creator is being renewed into these. The list is, in effect, a description of what the believer is becoming.

Bearing with One Another, Forgiving One Another

Bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if someone happens to have a complaint against anyone else. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also forgive others. (3:13)

Paul now applies the virtues to the most concrete situation of Christian life: the daily friction of life together in the body of Christ. Bearing with one another. The Greek verb is anechomai: to put up with, to tolerate, to hold oneself back from retaliation. The acknowledgment is striking. Paul assumes that believers will be difficult to live with. The local church is not a community of finished saints; it is a community of sinners being sanctified, and the sanctification is not complete. People will be irritating. People will be slow. People will misunderstand each other. The command is not to expect a community without friction but to bear with one another in the friction that the actual community will have.

And forgiving one another, if someone happens to have a complaint against anyone else. And then the deeper command. Where the friction has produced genuine grievance, where one believer has actually wronged another, the answer is forgiveness. The Greek word is charizomenoi, related to the word charis, grace. Christian forgiveness is gracious: it is the extension of grace toward one who has not earned it. The forgiveness Paul commands is the forgiveness that releases the offender from the debt of his offense, not because the offense was unreal but because Christ has paid for it.

Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also forgive others. And here Paul names the deepest ground of horizontal forgiveness. It is vertical forgiveness. Just as the Lord has forgiven you. The Greek can be heard with two senses, and both are true: in the way that the Lord has forgiven you, and because the Lord has forgiven you. The believer’s forgiveness of his neighbor is patterned on the Lord’s forgiveness of him, and it is sourced in that same forgiveness. The believer who has been forgiven much can forgive much. The believer who has minimized his own need for forgiveness will find it hard to extend forgiveness to others.

This is the same logic that drives the Lord’s Prayer. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. The two are not separable. The believer who refuses to forgive his neighbor is not actually walking in the forgiveness he has received from the Lord; he is denying the gospel he has confessed. The Lutheran tradition has been particularly attentive to this dynamic. The forgiveness given in the absolution, the forgiveness given in the Supper, the forgiveness preached from the pulpit: all of these are to be carried into the believer’s relationships with his neighbors, extended outward as freely as they have been received. The grace flows. The believer who blocks the flow blocks the grace.

To All These Add Love

And to all these add love, which is the perfect bond. (3:14)

The list of virtues completed, Paul names the one that crowns them all. And to all these add love. Paul’s phrase (epi pasin de toutois) means over all these or on top of all these: love is laid over the other garments like the outer robe that holds the rest in place. The Greek word for love is agapē, the New Testament’s standard word for the love that wills the good of the beloved, the love that does not depend on the beloved’s worth, the love that gives without calculation. This is the love Christ has shown the Colossians. It is the love they are now to show one another. And it is set over all the other virtues, meaning it is the chief one, the most important, the one that completes the rest.

Which is the perfect bond. The Greek phrase is rich. The word translated bond (syndesmos) names what holds things together. The word behind perfect (teleiotēs, perfection or completeness) names a state in which all the parts are working together as they should; Paul’s phrase is literally the bond of completeness. Love, Paul says, is what binds the virtues into the kind of completeness that makes the Christian life what it should be. Without love, the virtues are scattered tools. With love, they cohere into a life.

This is not a sentimental claim. Paul is not saying that love is a feeling that makes everything nice. He is saying that love is the actual structural element that holds Christian character together. Without love, mercy can become condescension. Without love, kindness can become a way of putting others in one’s debt. Without love, humility can become a way of advertising one’s humility. Without love, gentleness can become passive aggression. Without love, patience can become resentment. The other virtues need love at their center, or they curdle into their counterfeits. Paul knows this. The Colossians need to know it too.

Lutheran ethics has held this with care. Love is not the opposite of doctrine. It is not the soft Christian virtue that replaces the harder ones. It is the bond that makes the harder ones actually work. The believer who is being renewed into the image of his Creator is being renewed into love: the love of God for the neighbor, the love of God for the brother, the love that flows from the cross and reshapes the believer who has received it.

Let the Peace of Christ Be in Control

Let the peace of Christ be in control in your heart (for you were in fact called as one body to this peace), and be thankful. (3:15)

Paul moves now from the inside-out virtues to the inside-state that the virtues operate within. Let the peace of Christ be in control in your heart. The peace Paul names is the peace of Christ: the peace that Christ has made, the peace whose making the hymn of chapter one confessed, making peace through the blood of his cross. That peace, made on Calvary, is now to be in control in the hearts of the believers. The Greek verb is brabeuō, from the world of athletic competition: to act as the umpire, the one who calls the decisions. The peace of Christ is to function as the umpire in the heart of the believer, deciding the disputes, settling the agitations, ruling on what to do next.

This is one of the most pastoral verses in the captivity letters. The believer’s heart is not a calm place by nature. It is a contested field, with competing voices clamoring for attention: anger, anxiety, ambition, fear, regret, longing. Paul says: let the peace of Christ be in control. When the voices clamor, the peace that Christ has made is to be the deciding factor. When the heart wants to lash out, the peace of Christ rules and pulls it back. When the heart wants to despair, the peace of Christ rules and holds it up. When the heart wants to grasp, the peace of Christ rules and opens the hand.

For you were in fact called as one body to this peace. And Paul adds the corporate dimension. The believers were called as one body: not as scattered individuals, each seeking his own private peace, but as members of a single body, to which the peace of Christ has been given. The peace is not just for the individual heart; it is for the body. The Colossians’ peace is meant to manifest itself in the bonds of the local church, the way they speak to each other, the way they handle their disagreements, the way they carry one another through difficulty.

And be thankful. The last command of the verse is small but consequential. Eucharistoi ginesthe: become thankful, develop the habit of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the natural breath of the heart in which the peace of Christ rules. The believer who is at peace gives thanks; the believer who gives thanks deepens his peace. The two work together. And the Lutheran tradition has known this. The ancient church called the Lord’s Supper the Eucharist, the thanksgiving, not because our thanks make the Sacrament (Christ’s gift of his body and blood does that) but because thanks is how the forgiven receive it. The Christian life is at its deepest a life of thanks-giving. The Christian who has stopped giving thanks has lost the thread of his own gospel.

Let the Word of Christ Dwell in You Richly

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and exhorting one another with all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, all with grace in your hearts to God. (3:16)

We come to a verse Lutheran piety has cherished for five centuries. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. The Greek is striking. The word of Christ (ho logos tou Christou) means the gospel, the apostolic teaching, the Scriptures that bear witness to Christ. Dwell in you: the Greek verb is enoikeō, the same verb used of God’s indwelling presence. The Word is to take up residence among the believers. It is not to be a visitor; it is to live there. Richly: plousiōs, abundantly, lavishly, with the kind of plenty that overflows. The Word of Christ is to dwell in the believers the way wealth dwells in a wealthy household: abundantly, present in every room, available for every purpose.

This is the Lutheran instinct for the Word in compact form. The Confessions name the Word of God, together with the sacraments, as the means of grace through which God works to create and sustain faith (AC V). The Reformation slogan sola scriptura (Scripture alone) was not a denial of tradition but an insistence that the Word of Christ must dwell richly in the believing community as the source from which everything else flows. Where the Word dwells richly, faith is created and sustained. Where the Word has become thin (present in the church but not really at home, recited but not received, heard but not let to settle in), the church withers.

Teaching and exhorting one another with all wisdom. The Word dwelling richly is not only for private devotion; it is for the mutual ministry of the believers. They teach one another: they pass the gospel back and forth in conversation, in instruction, in the patient work of helping each other understand. They exhort one another, and Paul’s verb carries a note of admonition: they call each other back from drift, gently correct each other when they wander, hold each other to what the Word has said. The Greek verb is noutheteō, which the NET renders instructing in 1:28, where Paul used it of his own apostolic preaching; it means to set the mind right, to warn, to admonish. The believers, in their life together, are now to do for each other what the apostle does in his preaching. The body of Christ is a mutually-teaching, mutually-admonishing body, with the Word of Christ dwelling richly at its center.

Singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. And the Word dwelling richly produces song. Paul names three categories of Christian singing. Psalms: the inspired songs of the Old Testament, which the early Church inherited as its own hymnbook. Hymns: songs of praise composed by the Church for worship, perhaps including the Christ-hymn of Colossians 1 itself. Spiritual songs: likely the more spontaneous compositions of the believing community, songs given by the Spirit for particular occasions. All three were sung. The Church that received the Word of Christ richly was a singing Church.

The Lutheran tradition has loved this verse with particular intensity. Luther himself was a hymn-writer, and his great hymns (Ein feste Burg, Aus tiefer Not, and the rest) were composed to put the Word of Christ on the lips of the people. Bach, two centuries later, wrote his cantatas and Passions and chorales out of the same conviction: that the Word of Christ dwells most richly in a congregation that sings. The German Lutheran tradition produced perhaps the greatest body of congregational hymnody the Church has ever known, precisely because verse 16 was taken with full seriousness. The believer who sings the gospel learns the gospel in his bones. The Word of Christ dwells more richly in the singer than in the silent hearer. Singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, Paul says, and the Lutheran tradition has done so, joyfully and at length.

All with grace in your hearts to God. Paul’s phrase is en chariti, and charis can mean either grace or gratitude: the favor God gives and the thanks that answer it. Many translations render it with thankfulness; the NET says with grace. Either way, the singing has its inner counterpart in the heart, and the heart that has received grace answers with thanks. The Christian singer sings with thanks. The two are inseparable. Worship that is not thankful is performance; thankfulness that is not expressed in song will eventually go silent. The Christian life rises into singing because it rises out of gratitude, and the gratitude rises out of the Word of Christ that has been dwelling richly within.

Whatever You Do

And whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (3:17)

The section closes with the broadest possible application. Whatever you do. Not just religious activities, not just the gatherings of the body of Christ, not just the explicit acts of worship: whatever the believer does. In word or deed. The two are exhaustive. Whatever the believer says, whatever the believer does, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.

To do something in the name of the Lord Jesus is to do it as one who belongs to him, on his behalf, under his authority, with his approval implicitly sought. The merchant’s transactions, the parent’s discipline, the worker’s labor, the citizen’s vote, the friend’s conversation, the spouse’s tenderness: all of it is to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus. There is no compartment of the believer’s life that escapes the Lord’s name. Every word and every deed is offered up under his name and for his glory.

This is the Lutheran doctrine of vocation pressed to its conclusion. The believer is not called to a holy life in distinction from his ordinary life; he is called to live his ordinary life as a holy life. The mother changing a diaper is doing something in the name of the Lord Jesus, as fully as the pastor preaching a sermon. The carpenter sanding a board is offering his labor in the name of the Lord Jesus. The student doing his homework, the farmer planting his field, the doctor seeing his patients: every station has its holy work, and the work is done in the name of the Lord Jesus because the worker belongs to him.

Giving thanks to God the Father through him. And the final note returns to the dominant key of the passage. Giving thanks. Once again, thanksgiving is the air the Christian breathes. Through him: through the Lord Jesus, the mediator, the one through whom the Father is approached. The believer gives thanks to the Father, but always through the Son. There is no other access. There is no other channel. The thanksgiving the believer offers is offered, like everything else in the Christian life, through the Christ who is all and in all.

Gathering the Threads

The passage we have walked is the warm pastoral counterpart to the harder passage that preceded it. Paul has named the Colossians as the elect of God, holy and dearly loved, and on the basis of that identity has called them to clothe themselves with the five virtues of Christ-shaped character: mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. He has applied those virtues to the friction of life together: bearing with one another, forgiving one another just as the Lord has forgiven them. He has crowned the list with love, the perfect bond that holds the rest together. He has commanded the peace of Christ to be in control in their hearts, and thanksgiving to be their habitual response. He has called for the word of Christ to dwell in them richly, with mutual teaching and exhorting, with the singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. And he has summed it all up with the broadest possible scope: whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

For the Lutheran reader the passage is a feast. It grounds the believer’s identity in election by grace, not in human achievement. It names the virtues of Christ-shaped character as gifts to be put on, not products of unaided willpower. It anchors horizontal forgiveness in vertical forgiveness: the believer forgives because he has been forgiven. It centers the Christian life on the peace of Christ, made by the blood of the cross. It honors the Word of Christ as the means of grace, dwelling richly among the people of God. It celebrates the singing of the Church, which the Lutheran tradition has prized more than perhaps any other. And it presses every word and every deed into vocation, the broadest and most ordinary stage on which the Christian life is to be lived.

If Session 6 was the hard pivot (the putting-to-death and the putting-off), Session 7 is the warm rising. The believer who has died and risen with Christ is clothed with the new man, and the new man looks like this. Mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. Love over all. Peace in control. Word dwelling. Singing rising. Thanksgiving overflowing. Every word and deed in the name of the Lord Jesus. This is what Christ in you, the hope of glory looks like when it is being lived.

For Discussion

The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.

1. Paul names the Colossians as the elect of God, holy and dearly loved before he gives any commands. How does it shape your daily Christian walking to know that your identity in Christ comes before any of the things you are called to do?
2. The five virtues (a heart of mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience) are not natural; they have to be put on. Which of the five do you find most lacking in your own life, and what would it look like to be clothed with it?
3. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also forgive others. Is there a person in your life right now whom you are finding it difficult to forgive? How does remembering your own forgiveness reshape the difficulty?
4. Let the peace of Christ be in control in your heart. When the various voices in your heart clamor for attention, what does it look like for the peace Christ has made on the cross to be the umpire among them?
5. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. What does it mean in your daily life for the Word to dwell (not visit, but dwell), and what would it look like to make it more at home?
6. Whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus. Where in your ordinary life (your work, your home, your friendships) do you find it hardest to remember that what you are doing is being done in the Lord’s name?

Looking Ahead

Next session takes up Colossians 3:18–4:1, the household table of the letter. Paul applies the gospel he has been confessing to the most ordinary and consequential of human relationships: husbands and wives, parents and children, slaves and masters. This is one of the so-called Haustafeln, the household codes of the New Testament epistles, and it has been a particularly fraught passage in modern Christian reading. The handling will need to be careful. The passage is brief but rich, and it carries important Lutheran themes about vocation, the estates God has ordained for human life, and the way the gospel reshapes ordinary relationships without abolishing them.

Before next session, read Colossians 3:18–4:1 at least twice. Pay particular attention to how Paul addresses each pair (not only the one in the subordinate position, but the one in the dominant position as well) and to the repeated grounding in the Lord. As is fitting in the Lord. Pleasing in the Lord. Fearing the Lord. From the Lord. Serve the Lord Christ. A master in heaven. The passage is shorter than it sometimes seems, and Paul’s framing is more careful than it sometimes appears. The reading rewards careful attention.

Closing Prayer

Father in heaven, You have chosen us in Your beloved Son before the foundation of the world; You have made us holy and dearly loved in Him. Clothe us, by Your Spirit, with the mercy, the kindness, the humility, the gentleness, the patience that mark His character. Above all, clothe us with love, which is the perfect bond. Let the peace of Christ be in control in our hearts, ruling between the voices that clamor in us. Let the word of Christ dwell in us richly, teaching us, exhorting us, putting songs on our lips. And whatever we do in word or deed, let us do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to You through Him, who with You and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.