COLOSSIANS (22) Relationship with Church Community (2)

“Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” (Col 3:13-14)
 
Review
Last Sunday, we mainly talked about God’s purpose in building the churches in the world. Just as the reason God chose Israel was that He loved them and remembered the covenant He had made with their ancestors, God’s reason for choosing His people in the New Testament was also based on His love and promise.
 
We focused on God’s purpose in choosing His people. His purpose was the same in both the Old and the New Testaments. It was to make them His holy people who reflected His holiness so that they could serve as vessels through which all people on earth would be drawn to Him and join in His blessing as well.
 
I believe God created churches to carry out His mission. The church is meant to be a community that not only gathers together, but also goes to every corner of the world to show God’s holiness and lead people to Him. I believe that must be the foundation of every church.
 
In order to carry out this purpose, it’s essential that we live differently from the rest of the world. We are to live holy lives, following God’s will, not the ways of the world, and showing His characteristics such as “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Col 3:12).
 
In other words, the church is meant to exist as an “alternative” community in the world. That’s how God builds and expands His kingdom on earth.
 
So, as the body of Christ and members of His holy church, our lives need to reflect the principles and values we follow.
 
Then, if we are faithful to living by the principles of the kingdom of God, we’ll see those around us being naturally drawn to the true life we have in Him. I believe that’s one of the reasons we gather as a church community.
 
Thus, it’s important how we treat one another because our relationships with each other in the church is one of the best ways to show God’s love and holiness to those outside the church. That’s what Paul emphasizes.
 
So, how should we treat each other in the church community? Paul gives us some important advice regarding this.
 
1) Forgiveness
First, Paul said, “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (Col 3:13)
 
The church is the most diverse community in the world. Many people from various backgrounds gather in the church under the name of Jesus Christ. This means that different perspectives and mindsets can co-exist in one community.
 
We also know that the church is not a place where only the righteous gather. Even though we believe in Jesus, we’re not completely transformed into His image yet. Both our sinful nature and our new, divine nature from the Holy Spirit co-exist in our hearts.
 
That’s why the church is also often called “a community of sinners,” because we’re all sinners who are in the process of becoming righteous in Christ. Martin Luther puts it this way:
 
“The saints in being righteous are at the same time sinners; they are righteous because they believe in Christ whose righteousness covers them and is imputed to them, but they are sinners because they do not fulfill the law and are not without sinful desires. They are like sick people in the care of a physician” (Luther, Romans Commentary).
 
The coexistence of different views and the sinful nature that is still alive in Christians often create conflicts in the church. They are the main things that divide the united body of Jesus Christ. That’s the reason we need to learn to “bear with each other and forgive one another.”
 
But, it’s not easy to do so because it’s against our wills. It’s much easier to criticize someone than to put up with them. It’s much easier to take revenge than to forgive. That’s our natural response when someone does us wrong.
 
So it’s always important to remember what Jesus did for us and try to follow His example. That’s why Paul adds “as the Lord forgave you,” after saying “forgive one another.” It means that we should let Jesus’ life and His example be the standard for how we treat others.
 
Forgiving each other as the Lord forgave us has two meanings. First, it shows where the power for us to forgive comes from. As I said earlier, it’s really hard to bear with or forgive others because it’s against our nature. We can’t do this on our own.
 
But, when we’re empowered by Jesus and filled with His compassion and love, we’ll be able to see others the way Jesus would see them and treat them the way He would.
 
When we’re filled with Jesus’ love and power, we’ll realize that it’s actually easy to forgive others because of the One who is working in us. That’s why it’s always important to have a close, good relationship with God. Our relationship with God naturally affects all the other relationships we have.
 
We should remember that at the center of every relationship is our relationship with God. In other words, every relationship we have with others is dependent on the kind of relationship we have with God.
 
If we have a proper relationship with Him, we’ll be nourished by and filled with His love, and it will naturally overflow from our hearts, which will enable us to love even those who hate us and are against us just as He loved us when we were His enemies.
 
That’s why Paul urges us to “be reconciled to God” (2 Co 5:20) when he talks about “the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Co 5:18) and “the message of reconciliation” (2Co 5:19)
 
Second, the fact that we’re to forgive others as the Lord forgave us also shows the level of forgiveness believers are to seek.
 
Forgiveness is not a concept that only exists in Christianity. Nonbelievers also consider forgiveness an important virtue in society.
 
But the question is to what extent should we forgive? There are faults that we can easily bear with or forgive but there are also serious sins that are hard for us to forgive. So, we think there are unforgivable sins. But when we think about Jesus’ forgiveness, we know that He doesn’t have such a concept.
 
What we see from Jesus’ example of forgiveness is that there’s no limitation in it. There’s no sin that the blood of Jesus Christ can’t wash away. Jesus forgives all kinds of sin no matter how serious they are.
 
When Peter once asked Jesus, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” (Mt 18:21), Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”  (Mt 18:22)
 
Seven times was the maximum number that Peter thought he could forgive someone. It is actually great to forgive someone seven times.
 
But that was still too few compared to Jesus’ standard of forgiveness. Here, seventy-seven times can also mean seventy times seven, which means that Jesus put no limitation on forgiveness.
 
Paul said that that’s the range and the level of forgiveness we’re to seek as Christians. We’re following Jesus’ standard of forgiveness, not our own concept of it. But it’s impossible for us to keep this standard on our own.
 
So, we’re to remember the fact that the power to forgive doesn’t come from ourselves but from the power of the blood of Jesus Christ that covers all sins and breaks every wall of hostility.
 
And, we should also remember that we, who were once unforgivable sinners and enemies of God, were forgiven by God’s grace. Jesus bore all our sins in His body and died on the cross. And the fact that all our sins were forgiven by Jesus serves as the reason we should forgive others.
 
In Christianity, we find many good examples of forgiveness. We even see Christians forgive criminals who killed their family. In Korea, there’s a memorial for a pastor. Pastor Son is famous because he showed great forgiveness.
 
One day a man killed the pastor’s two sons and was sentenced to death. Knowing that the man who had murdered his sons would be killed, Pastor Son went to the court to save him. He didn’t just say that he forgave him but he also said that he would adopt the man as his son. That was how Pastor Son saved the killer’s life.
 
These examples of forgiveness do a great job showing the essence of Christianity. We reveal the great love of Jesus by showing this kind of forgiveness to others because it’s only possible through the love and power of Christ. And following the example of Jesus’ forgiveness does a great job binding the church community as one body as well.
 
When we sincerely bear with and forgive each other the way Jesus forgave us through His love and power, we’ll be truly united in Him and can be used as God’s vessels through which people see His great love and forgiveness.
 
2) Love
After talking about forgiveness, Paul said, “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” (Col 3:14).
 
Here, “all these virtues” refers to the virtues Paul mentioned earlier such as compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and forgiveness. These are the virtues Paul said the new selves in Christ must put on to be renewed in the image of God.
 
Now, Paul is presenting the most significant value that defines the essence of Christianity—love. To put on love over all virtues means that we “Do everything in love” (1 Co 16:14). It also means that all the virtues must be based on the greatest virtue, which is love.
 
Love is considered to be the most important virtue in Christianity because that’s the very characteristic that defines who God is.
 
There are other ways to define God, but the most simple yet profound definition we find in the Bible consists of only three words—“God is love.”
 
This sentence explains everything God has done for us. His love explains His purpose in creating us. God created us because He wanted to have the same loving, intimate relationship with us that He has in His relationship with the holy trinity.
 
If there’s just one thing to say about why He chose us, it’s “because He loves us.”
 
His love explains the reasons for Jesus’ core ministries such as His incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Jesus decided to become like one of us and come to the world, laying down all His privileges in heaven because He loved us so much that He couldn’t just watch us head toward death because of our sin.
 
So Jesus took human form so that He could bear all our sins in His body and pay the ransom for them by shedding His precious blood and dying on the cross.
 
And He was raised from the dead because He loved us so much that He wanted to open the way for us to also be resurrected and have true life in Him. We find traces of His love in everything He has done for us and in His every characteristic.
 
We find His love in His compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and forgiveness. Even though these virtues are different from each other, we find one, common virtue at the heart of each one—love. That’s why love is the characteristic that best describes the essence of Christianity.
 
Then, if God, whom we believe in, is love itself, and if we believe that His plan is to create new selves in us that are characterized by His love, we should make every effort to do everything in His love.
 
We’re to let His love rule over our lives. We’re to let His love overflow from our hearts. We’re to let His love be shown to those around us. I believe that’s God’s will for us.
 
We shouldn’t let anything but His love bind us together. There are many communities in the world with different purposes. And every community has core values at their centers.
 
The main purpose of companies is to make a profit. There are various kinds of clubs in which people gather with common interests. Then, what must the core value of the church community be? Paul says that it’s love.
 
But again, this love doesn’t refer to our limited concept of love, but the love of God that’s clearly proven and shown in His sacrifices, especially on the cross where Jesus loved us to the point of death.
 
According to Jesus, love is the greatest command given to God’s people. Loving one another in church communities is the best way to show that we’re Jesus’ disciples. As Jesus said,
 
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (Jn 13:34-35).
 
Paul defines love as “the fulfillment of the law” (Rm 13:10), “for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law” (Rm 13:8).
 
The apostle Peter also urges Christians to let God’s love be the basis for all other virtues we seek.
 
"For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love” (1Pt 1:5-8)
 
So, the importance of loving one another in the church community can’t be emphasized enough. But I also want to make it clear that having a desire to love doesn’t mean that we have true faith in God.
 
We need to know that there’s a huge difference between having the desire to love and actually doing something in love. True love must be expressed in actions. It’s never enough to say, “I want to love God” or “I want to love others with His love.”
 
We’re to cherish God’s precious love that He put into our hearts. And the best way to do that is to follow Jesus’ example of love by loving God most and serving people with His sacrificial love that overflows from our hearts.
 
Then, if we surrender our lives to God and take practical steps to love others, He will surely fill us with His love and empower us so that we can reflect His great love to those around us and glorify Him through our lives. I really believe that is God’s will for each of us and for our community.
 
So, today we talked about two important virtues that we should seek within the church community as one body of Jesus Christ. We must learn to bear with and forgive each other the way Jesus forgave us. We’re to put on His love in everything we do so that it can bind us all together in perfect unity in Him.
 
Then, we’ll be able to live according to God’s will for us, show His great love to those around us, and glorify Him by leading them to Him.
 
Let’s pray. 
 
Prayer
Heavenly Father, when we remember everything You’ve done for our salvation, we can’t help but give thanks to You.
 
Lord, we want to remember that You built churches so that we could exist in the world according to Your will.
 
We want to learn from You. Please teach us how to love one another with Your love so that we can forgive each other the way You forgave us through Jesus Christ and truly act as one body in perfect unity in You.
 
Let each of us be reconciled to You so that we may be filled with and empowered by Your great love and so that we can love You, love one another in the church community, and love those outside the church.
 
We thank You and love You, Lord.
In the name of Jesus Christ, the Head of the church, we pray, Amen.