So, chosen by
God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you:
compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even–tempered,
content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and
completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear
love. It's your basic, all–purpose garment. Never be without it. Let the peace
of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of
this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the
Word of Christ — the Message — have the run of the house. Give it plenty of
room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense.
And sing, sing your hearts out to God! (Colossians 3:12-16 — The Message)
Since
we are now God's people — no longer Satan's — we have the obligation to live
like God's people. We are set apart for Him, and dearly loved, and so He
commands us to clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, quiet
strength, and discipline. Now we have to care about other people and treat them
kindly. We can't be proud or impatient anymore. That belongs to the old life
when we were serving Satan. In this new life as a child of God, we’re commanded
to be even-tempered and quick to forgive an offense. As the Master forgave us,
we must forgive others.
Above
all the other attributes of a Christian, we must put on love — like an
all-purpose garment or overcoat. Love is the greatest of the attributes we can
put on. Love saved us — love gives us hope — love provides us with eternal life.
Since we have benefitted from the wonderful love of God, we must love others.
If we don't, then we really do not love God at all. Love keeps us in step with
other people in the Church.
But
to have these Godly attributes and life we need the word, teaching, and
promises of the Lord Jesus. We are commanded to let the Word of Christ — the
Message — have the run of our lives so that we can instruct and direct each
another — not with the wisdom of the world, but with the wisdom of God.
Be
careful not to misunderstand the word “love”. Love does not make you weak. True
love doesn’t allow people to walk all over you. Love at times inspires you to
be tough and hard on people for their own good. At other times it inspires you
to turn the other cheek for that person’s own good. And love always causes us
to obey God… if we truly love Him we will obey Him, especially when we don’t
understand completely, or when it’s hard.
There
is another aspect of love, though. If you love God, you have to hate the devil
and be actively fighting against him. If you don’t hate the devil and sin, you
can’t truly love God. In the same way that I as a husband have to despise any
temptation to be unfaithful to my wife, and even be rude to women that might
flirt with me, we have to despise God’s enemy the devil. It may sound like a
contradiction — having both love and hate inside the same body — but in fact it
makes all the sense in the world. In fact anyone that turns his back on God and
returns to his old life never really learned to hate his old life. — Develop a
strong love for God.
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