The New Man's Clothes - Colossians 3:12-14

0:57Maybe some of you have heard that. I was given this book to help. This is a book by Milton Vincent. You should write it down. One of my favorites called A Gospel Primer for Christians by Milton Vincent. And he just goes over the gospel. It's really short and sweet. You could probably read it in an hour or two. And it's a blessing. And repeating the gospel is valuable for a Christian. And I think that that's what David is doing in Psalm 103, if you remember. Remember one of the verses in Psalm 103, he says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases. He's reminding himself of all that the Lord has done in his life. He's reminding himself of all the blessings from the Lord. And when we do this as believers, I think the first benefit is it gives us assurance. It reminds us of all the promises in the New Testament and the Old Testament that we can depend on, the promises that we can cling to. But it also does something else. And this one is maybe a little more unexpected. When we are repeating the gospel to ourselves, when we are remembering who we are in Christ, it also changes the way we act. Yes, it gives us confidence before the Lord. Yes, it drives us to his throne, but it also changes the way we act. When we remember God's forgiveness, it makes us want to be forgiving to others. When we remember that our lives are hidden above, like Colossians says, where Christ is, that makes us want to set our minds on the things above. These things are tied together. When we remember that our old self has died, that's the key to putting to death the deeds of the old self.

2:58Well, in chapter 3 of Colossians 2, Paul is making this connection between knowledge and practice. Throughout most of the letter, if you remember, Paul keeps saying over and over that it's so important for Christians to get knowledge. We need to grow in knowledge. We need to be renewed in knowledge. We need to keep working on our knowledge. And the first reason why he says this is because we need to defend against false teaching. These false teachers have come into the church and they are attacking the church. And so we need to have knowledge, but this knowledge is also practical. If we're thinking correctly, if we've renewed our knowledge, then it changes the way we act. That's the transition that Paul is making in Colossians chapter 3. In the first two chapters, he's talked about knowledge. In chapter 3, now he's making the transition between knowledge to practice. What does that look like? And really, this is something that all of us want to do as Christians. All of us want to not just have the knowledge. We don't just want to be scholars that are mean or something like that. We want to actually have a real change in our life. How do I break this sinful habit? How do I get past this vice?

4:19Well, Paul's answer in the book of Colossians is that first we need to fix the way we think. We need to think how God wants us to think. Think on heavenly things, then we act accordingly. We need to understand who Christ is, and we need to understand who we are in Christ after we become believers. And once we do that, then we just need to act according to reality. What are the truths about ourselves now that we're in Christ? Now we need to act according to that.

4:55For example, in chapter two, Paul said that we have died in Christ. Then in chapter three, he says that since we died, we need to put to death the deeds of the body. We have a fact about ourselves as believers, and then something we should do about that fact. And in our text today, we're going to follow that same pattern. We have a fact about ourselves, then something we need to do about it. And what we need to do in our text today is to put on the right clothes. That's what we need to do. Put on the right clothes. We need to put on the clothes that match the reality of who we are in Christ. Not external clothes. He's not talking about church clothes, but clothes for our hearts. And in our passage, he's going to give three instructions about our new clothes. Three instructions about the new man's clothes. First, dress appropriately. Second, act accordingly. And above all, love. Dress appropriately. Act accordingly. Accordingly, and above all, love. Follow along as I read, verses 12 through 14. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Pray with me. Father, as we come to this simple text, as we come to this text that has plain instruction, I pray, Lord, that we'd treat it that way, that we'd have a plain and ordinary time this morning of looking at this text.

7:04I pray that you'd help it be clear to us so that we can simply apply it, even today, even this week. I pray, Lord, that as we step through this text, that you would convict our hearts of where we need to change, that you'd open our eyes to see the areas where we're failing, and that you'd help us have the resolve to. Put the right clothes on. We pray for your help this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.

7:40Well, the first instruction that Paul gives in verse 12 is to dress appropriately. Dress appropriately. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Put on. In Clyde's translation, he translates that, clothe yourselves. And I think that's exactly what Paul is saying. He's saying, you need to clothe yourselves. There are certain clothes you need to put on. And if you remember, the last time we studied Colossians, we looked at how our old man has died. And so it would be silly for us as believers, if our old man has died, it would be silly for us to put the clothes of the old self back on.

8:29If the old self has died, then we need to put away those old clothes. They don't belong. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, lying, those are all of the old clothes. And we shouldn't be putting those back on. If we have them on at any given moment, something's wrong. It doesn't fit. We need to take it back off and keep those old clothes off. And they don't belong because there's a real change that's happened. Look at verse 9 and 10.

9:00Colossians 3, verse 9 and 10, do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator. So, this is a change that's already taken place. This is a reality in the believer's life that we have put off the old self, put on the new self, and so we should take off the old clothes day to day and put on the new clothes day to day. That's what fits. And this is what he reminds us in our verse. Look at verse 12 again: put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. That's our new reality. That's the truth about ourselves: is that after we became believers, we were God's chosen ones, holy and beloved.

9:56You are chosen by God according to his perfect will that can't be thwarted. You're his choice. You're holy, set apart for purity. This isn't something that he says is happening more and more in your life. He's not saying you're becoming holy or something like that. No, he's talking about your actual status as a Christian. In the heavens, God has set you apart for his purposes. He has made you holy. This is a done deal. Already chosen, you are already holy, you are already loved is the last one. God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. You are genuinely loved. So, God chose you, He made you holy, and now He has a special love for you as one of His holy chosen ones. This is your new reality, this is the fact about you, and that new status that you have, it comes with a new uniform.

11:01If a mechanic became a businessman, he would trade in Hoveralls for a suit, right? He wouldn't keep wearing the same thing to work every day. If a football player became a basketball player, he certainly would change his uniform. He would be silly to be out there playing basketball in full pads. He has to change in the same way. Your new identity, chosen and holy, and loved, it comes with a new set of clothes. So, what are these clothes? What is the appropriate way to dress for the Christian? Paul lists five things in verse 12: Compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. We're going to go through each one of these just to make sure we understand them. And as we do, I challenge you to keep your ears on high alert and. And look and see, okay, which one of these am I weakest in? Which one of these sounds the least like me? Which one of these have I forgotten about? The first one is compassionate hearts, or in the King James Version, bowels of mercy. Bowels of mercy.

12:18You might remember that we say we feel things with our hearts, but back then they used to say they felt things with their bowels. So this says bowels of mercy, and we say compassionate hearts. In Luke 36, Christ commands this: to be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. So I think we need to remember that we can't assume that this mercy, this compassion, is only an emotion. It's not just something we feel in our bowels, we feel in our hearts, but it's also a duty. Jesus commanded it. He said, be merciful just as your father is merciful. It's a duty, a command to be followed. But it's unmistakable in our passage today that this is also something we need to fix about our hearts. These are not just deeds that we need to do. He's not just saying do deeds that are merciful. He's also saying we need to fix our hearts, fix our attitudes. Something with our emotions is involved. So a Christian can't let his heart grow calloused. We need To keep it raw, we need to keep it, like Christ, ready at a moment's notice to show mercy, to show compassion when it's needed. We need to foster this desire in ourselves, and of course, we should act on it, doing deeds of mercy. So, that's our first item of clothing. The second one is kindness. Put on kindness. If you remember in Paul's letter to the Galatians, this was one of the fruits of the Spirit. kindness. We'll see a few of those today. So, this is something when the Holy Spirit is working in your life as a Christian, this is something that's going to come. Kindness is going to come. It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit in your life, but it's also an expectation for us. It's something for us to put on. Again, this is a duty for us, something for us to do.

14:23And this tension, that idea that God is working this in our life and it's something that we're responsible to do, we see that all over the New Testament, right? We see it over and over and over. Paul says in Philippians 2, to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it's God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. So we're to work because God is working in us so that we will work.

14:51God is working, and we need to work. And here we need to work to put on kindness. Put on kindness. Be conscious of the fact that. That you need to do acts of benevolence. You need to be good to other people. You need to be kind, not rude and harsh. So we should be people that are marked by kindness. Third and fourth, we see humility and meekness. Humility and meekness, these are super similar. These are really similar words. We need to put on humility, is the first one, or submission. We need to be thinking about ourselves less. It's the opposite of arrogance, humility, to have the attitude of a servant. But we also need to put on meekness, meekness.

15:40This is the same idea, but also includes gentleness. It's the opposite of being harsh. And it's also the opposite of what the false teachers were. If you remember, we've talked about these false teachers over and over that have come into Colossi. And they are imposing these rules and regulations. And Paul says that they're doing this. They have these rules. They have these extra legalistic things to earn salvation. They go on about visions, and he says it's because they are puffed up without reason. That's Colossians 2:18. Puffed up without reason. So that's the wrong kind of clothing. That's the kind of clothing that goes with the old man, to be puffed up, to be arrogant. Instead, we should be humble and meek. The last one is patience. Patience, patience.

16:33This also is one of the fruits of the Spirit. If God's working in your life, you will show patience. But it's also something for us to put on, something for us to work at, to be patient and long-suffering. Impatience belongs with the old man. That's something we can take off, but patience is something we need to put on. So that's our list. Compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience. That is what God expects of us. And I think that that's something that we all want, right? All of us would say we want to do those things. We want to do those things. And one of the things about the New Testament lists of these vices and virtues that we see is that they are a blessing to us because we get to view them from two different angles. On the one hand, we get to say, we get to view them all together, kind of as a cluster. Compassionate hearts, kindness, meekness, humility, patience.

17:39We get a well-rounded picture of this godly person or an ungodly person, slanderous, angry, lying, wrathful. And we see that those kinds of people, we can think of people like that when they're in a list like this. And we can see. That those are two far-apart ends of a spectrum, right? A godly person is meek and humble. An ungodly person is angry and impatient and unforgiving. And you can see that this takes a major heart change to get from this kind of person to this kind of person. That's a lot of work. That's a big difference. When we think of people that are like this, that are angry and wrathful, we think, you know, they're never going to be like this godly person over here. And maybe we think about that for ourselves. And we can get discouraged and say, how can I change everything about who I am? How can I go from ungodly to godly? How do I go from the old man to the new man?

18:49But that's the other angle. On the one hand, we do, we can think of these as clusters, as groups of characteristics. But on the other hand, it is a list made up of individual things, which is also a blessing. And we can narrow in on one thing. And so if we think, I can never be this kind of patient and compassionate person, well, we can just focus on one at a time with joy. Today, I'm going to work on having a compassionate heart. I know that that's something that fits my new self. God has changed my reality forever and hidden my life with Him. In heaven. And so, fitting with that, I'm going to work on one of these things. Maybe today I'm going to be more patient.

19:39So, that's our list. These are the kinds of things we need to put on, the things that fit the new man. We need to dress appropriately. The second instruction that Paul gives is to act accordingly. Act accordingly. In verse 12, he gives us the command to put these things on. And now, in verse 13, he's going to show us what it'll look like if we have the right clothes on. If we've put these new clothes on, what is it going to look like? Verse 12, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Verse 13, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against one another, forgiving each other. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

20:33As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. So, if we've put on the right clothes, if we have our hearts in the right place, then it's going to show in our actions. These things that he's telling us in verse 13, there are no new commands there. The only command in this passage is put on. That's the only command he gives is clothe yourselves in these things that he's putting. And listing. But it's also bearing with one another, forgiving each other. Those also aren't just another part of the list.

21:09Instead, these are outworkings of what happens when you put the new clothes on. If you put on the clothes, you'll be doing these things. The first one is bearing with one another. We are going to put up with one another if we've got the right clothes on. We're going to be patient with one another. Again, like last time we studied Colossians, this is assuming that you're spending enough time with each other for this to make sense. Right? Last time we looked at how we shouldn't be angry and wrathful with one another and how easy it is to do that if we're never together. And so I just repeat the challenge to you again: make sure you are spending enough time with this church body to make these commands make sense.

21:59He's giving you a command to say, bear with one another, endure one another. Well, if you're never around each other, that command doesn't even make sense. So make sure you're spending enough time. You're called to fellowship with each other and encourage each other. And while you do so, make sure you bear with one another. This word can also be used of endurance and a trial. So he's calling us to endure one another. He's not trying to paint the church. In these rose-colored glasses. He's not trying to say this is going to be easy.

22:38He knows we'll have to put up with each other. We'll have to endure one another. He even knows that sometimes we will legitimately wrong one another. Look at what he says next. Bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. Now it's jumped to a totally different level. We're not just putting up with each other. Now we actually need to forgive one another. There is a legitimate complaint. That's what he says. If one has a complaint against another. So he's saying there's actually something to forgive. There's blame now. Your brother has wronged you personally. You need to forgive them. And we have to ingrain this into our mind because when the moment comes, it's harder to deal with. It's easy to think, I've been putting up with so-and-so in this church for a long time. They bugged me, but I've been putting up with them. But now he's actually wronged me. How can I continue to fellowship with him? Or how can I continue to be around him? I need to find another church. That's what our automatic response can be. When we're in the moment and we feel slighted, when there's a blame against our brother, Brother, because he's wronged us, we need to have already taken a stance of being ready to forgive. That's how we should think about our brothers and our sisters in the Lord. We need to say, even if they do hurt us or wrong us, even if there is legitimate blame, I want to be quick to forgive.

24:20Pay attention to the honesty here. Paul is saying that the church body is made up of other people, and those people are people that you need to endure. Those people are people that you're going to need to forgive. And that's exactly what you need to do. But the blessing is that when you're doing this, you're modeling God's forgiveness. Look at what he says next: As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. This is the free grace that the Lord has given to us, entirely based off of his mercy and grace. We didn't earn the Lord's forgiveness. We didn't do a checklist of ten things in order to earn salvation. He freely gave it. And in the same way, we are to freely give forgiveness.

25:16We don't need to make our brothers and sisters wait. If your brother has wronged you, you don't need to make him linger in the pain of knowing he's wronged you so that he'll really learn his lesson, right? We don't need to make them pay. We don't need to make them make it up to you. Freely forgive. That's what it'll look like when we're wearing our new clothes. When we put on the things we're supposed to put on, we're going to be forgiving people, willing to bear with one another.

25:52The final instruction that we'll see is to love. Love. Dress appropriately. Act accordingly. And above all, love. Verse 12. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Verse 14. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Above all these, love. He doesn't actually repeat the verb here. I think this is just the next part of the list. He said, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and love. It's the last thing to put on. He's just adding one more thing to the list, only on this one. He says, this is the most important. He says, above all, Put on love. And some people continue to read this verse with the clothing metaphor in mind. You know, they think this is a piece of clothing that you put on above everything else, like an overcoat or a belt or something like that. It holds together the other parts of the list. But I don't think that's what he's getting at. I think he's saying that this one is the most important. Above all, supremely, put on love.

27:31If there's one thing in this list that you need to work on right away, it's this one. You need to put on love. And that makes sense with the rest of what we know from Scripture, right? Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law. Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law. And Jesus answers in Matthew 22: to first love the Lord with everything, your heart, soul, and mind. Second, love your neighbor as yourself. That's what he says. First, love the Lord. Second, love your neighbor. And in our passage today, he says, above all else, put on love.

28:13John says in 1 John chapter 3, By this we know, love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. That's a lot of love, right? We ought to be willing to lay down our life for each other. Each other. In 1 John 4, we read this this morning, verse 10, and this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation of our sins. Beloved, listen to this, this is verse 11. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

28:54No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. And so we self-sacrificially love. In the same way that Christ did, we give of ourselves to serve and to bless our brothers and sisters. And most of us don't have an opportunity to die for one another. Most of us don't get that chance in our lifetime. But we can still have that attitude. I'm going to die to myself to bless my brothers and sisters. I'm going to sacrifice. I'm going to give up things that I want to bless my brothers and sisters in Christ. And in our text today, Paul says that this agape love binds everything together in perfect harmony. Binds everything together in perfect harmony. He says it's the bond of perfection. And so that is what is going to hold this church together, this church in Colossus. That he's talking to, but also our church. Love is what binds us together. That's what's going to supremely hold us together. If we want to be a church that's marked by all of these qualities in the list, then we need to make sure that we have this one: love.

30:18Love governs everything else in this list. If you are loving your brother and sister, it's going to be easy to be patient with them. It's going to be easier to forgive them. If you truly love your brothers and sisters in Christ, you'll be humble towards them, you'll be kind, like we saw in our list. So, if we want a church that's marked by unity, if we want people to look at Immanuel Baptist and say, wow, that church is unified, that church has the right clothes on, then individually we need to put on the most important piece of clothing to love.

31:04Well, our text today is a simple text, right? There's no debates in these passages, these verses. There's nothing that makes people angry in these verses, there's no complicated words, it's just a plain and simple and straightforward passage. If you're a Christian, put these clothes on. And I think that most Americans, even non-Christians, would agree with the commands in this passage. I think that anyone in our culture, almost anyone, would agree that it's good to be compassionate and kind.

31:48It's good to be patient. It's good to be loving and forgiving. And as an unbeliever, you might be able to put on a compassionate heart for a while. You might be able to put on these kinds of clothes. But if you've never admitted the fact that you're a sinner, if you've never asked God to forgive you for your sins forever, if you've never trusted in Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross, then you need to realize that it's not the clothes that save you.

32:26Putting on coveralls doesn't make me a mechanic. Just because I put on his uniform doesn't mean I can go and fix my car. Putting on a jersey doesn't make me an athlete. And putting on good deeds doesn't make you a Christian. You can't just put on the clothes. You need to be born again. You need to die in Christ and be raised in Christ. If these things haven't happened in your life, then nothing's actually changed. The clothes don't matter for you. You. But if you run to him and if you beg for forgiveness, he will make the change. He will change your reality. That's what Paul is saying. You will be new, your life will be hidden above, and then you can start to focus on your clothes.

33:21As for you, Christians, you can see that this is a whole reversal of who we were before we believed. Take off anger, wrath, and malice. Put on kindness and patience and love. This is a big change, and it's hard. It's really hard for us to do day to day. We, as sinners, we have trained ourselves our whole life to sin. When people do things against us, we have trained ourselves so that our automatic response is to get angry at them. And maybe we don't punch them, but we're still angry in our hearts instead of patient. We knee-jerk to being arrogant and full of ourselves instead of being humble. We're self-centered. We're not kind. So, how in the world can we make this reversal? How can we reverse everything, all of our tendencies, and change these clothes? And remember what we saw earlier. The key is to remember reality.

34:34The key in Colossians, the thing that he keeps telling them over and over and over, is remember who you are. And he's told them throughout this book: they were transferred out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of light. That's something that's happened to you as a believer. You were transferred out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of light. That's a reality. Can you believe it? That's something that's happened to you. You were reconciled to God through the death of Christ. You were made alive by God who forgave you. All of these things are things in Colossians that he says has happened to you if you were a believer. These are life-altering realities. These are objective facts. If you were a believer, your life is hidden with God. And you might not feel like they're true, but these things are true of you. And if we really want to change these ingrained sins, if you're frustrated because you can't get past these sins, then this is what you have to do. You have to remember those facts, have knowledge of who we are in Christ. And then when we're armed with that knowledge, we dress appropriately. We put on the clothes that fit that reality. We act that way. We act accordingly and we love. This is how real change happens. So, men, maybe you've noticed lately that you're just grumpy all the time. It's kind of a nice way of saying angry. That's what he said a few verses ago. And you keep being grumpy at work, you're grumpy with your kids, you're grumpy with your wife, or you're arrogant, you keep talking about yourself, and you're sick of it, you're sick of doing those things, but you feel stuck. And you keep reading the Gospels, and you notice how Jesus is moved with compassion, how he came to serve, he came to seek and to save. And you realize how vast of a chasm there is between his character and your character. Well, what can you do? You remember who you are, the reality of who Christ has made you, and you dress appropriately. You joyfully put on the right clothes. Or, ladies, maybe you're stuck in a rut of being harsh with your children. Or you keep being impatient or unforgiving with your friends. And you see the picture, this well-rounded picture from this list of the godly person. And you think, that's not me. That's so different from my daily life. Kind and compassionate and humble and meek. That's not me. Well, how can you get out of the rut? How can you change? The answer is simple. Paul gave it to us. It might be easier said than done, but it is easily said, and we can do it. We need to fix our minds on reality, fix our minds on the things above, know what Christ has done for us, and then put on the right clothes. Stop worrying as much about our material clothes and put on the clothes of our heart.

38:01So, all of us, put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Let's pray, Father, for the unbelievers in the room, I pray that you would make them new, that you would give them new birth and cause them to flee to you out of desperation, come to you, admitting that they're sinners and that they need you. And we pray that you would change everything about them, that you would hide their life in heaven, that you would transfer them from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of light.

39:01But Lord, we pray also for the believers, for all of us. The only thing standing in the way between applying these verses is actually just doing it. We understand it. It's simple. And Paul has made it so simple for us that because of who we are, because of the way you changed us, all we need to do is put these clothes on. And yes, it's hard, but we can do it. And I pray, Lord, that you'd help us, even this week, that you give us eyes to see the areas where we fail, the areas where we are not wearing the right clothes. And I pray, Lord, that you'd give us the resolve to fix it.

39:50Lord, we're joyful to be with the saints today. We're joyful that you let us be together. You let us exhort one another and admonish one another and encourage one another and build each other up. I pray, Lord, that we would treasure being together, that we'd spend enough time with each other to where we have to endure one another and even forgive one another. I pray, Lord, that you'd make us committed to that and that we'd honor you in our fellowship and in our time together. In Jesus' name, amen.

40:23You're dismissed. Maybe in like three weeks. We have praise service, which will be the second Sunday, and after that.