The Clothing of Christian Community

As I was reading in Colossians last month, I came across this intriguing passage where the Apostle Paul says to “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.” (Col. 3:12-14). The literal word here is to dress ourselves (ἐνδύω ĕnduō) in these qualities.

These are the qualities of the heart; of the inner person. And we aren’t automatically “wearing” them just because we’ve been saved and are now in Christ. If we are automatically wearing these clothes once we get saved, then we would never have this command to put them on! But we are given this command to encourage us to walk in obedience to the “new life in which we’ve been called” (Eph. 4:1; 1 Tim. 6:12). Jesus has broken the power of sin over our lives through salvation so that now we are free to put on the clothing that followers of Christ ought to wear.