Clothed in Christ

When I write "put on" (Colossians 3:12), I mean it as you mean clothing yourself in the morning — deliberate, daily, a garment you take up and wear over the naked self. And the word I set at the head of the list, "compassion," carries the sense of the inward parts, the gut wrenched with mercy; it is not a pleasant feeling but a movement in the bowels toward another's need. Then "above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony" (Colossians 3:14) — love is the belt or sash drawn over the other garments so they do not fall off you.

I have taken up this same clothing image before, bidding you put off the old and put on the new (Ephesians 4:22-24), and to put on the Lord Jesus Christ himself (Romans 13:14). And where I name love as the binding thing, I have said the same at greater length — that without it, all else is a clanging cymbal, and that love alone endures (1 Corinthians 13:1-7).

The believers at Colossae were being pressed by teachers who prized visions, harsh treatment of the body, and rules about food and days — a show of wisdom with no power to check the flesh (Colossians 2:23). So I lift their eyes from that whole apparatus and set before them the plain garments of a people already raised with Christ and beloved of God. I wrote it as I write to you now, in chains, unable to come to them, sending Tychicus and Onesimus in my place — laboring in prayer for churches my face had never seen.

You may ask: how can love, or compassion, be commanded? Feeling cannot be summoned on order. But notice — I do not say feel these things; I say put them on, as you put on a coat you do not feel like wearing on a cold morning. The command lands on the will and the hand, not first on the emotion. And notice the ground beneath it: "as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive" (Colossians 3:13). You are not asked to manufacture love from nothing, but to pass on what you have already received. Go back and read verse 12 slowly — "chosen ones, holy and beloved." The garment is given before it is worn.