Protecting what is most precious

Have you ever walked into a room and immediately felt that you didn’t belong? Perhaps everyone seemed more educated, wealthier, or culturally different from you. We naturally notice the things that divide us.

Yet Colossians 3:11–17 gives us a remarkable picture of a community where those divisions no longer have the final word.

The reason is Jesus Christ.

Christ’s pre-eminence produces and preserves a supernatural unity in his body, the local church.

Paul reminds the Colossians that their ultimate identity is no longer found in ethnicity, religious background, culture or social position. “Christ is all, and in all.” Jesus has created a new people whose defining identity is Christ himself.

The world says, “You belong with people like you.” Christ says, “You belong to me—and therefore you belong to one another.”

But this unity, although created by Christ, must be actively preserved.

Put a group of sinners in the same room for long enough and eventually someone will say something foolish, someone will take offence, someone will feel overlooked, and someone will wonder why everybody else cannot simply behave like them.

That is church life.

Paul’s answer is not to find a church where nobody irritates us. Such a church does not exist. His answer is to become the kind of people who know what to do when irritation, disappointment and disagreement come.

Put on compassion. Try to see the person behind the behaviour.

Put on kindness. Treat them as someone whom Christ is transforming.

Put on humility. Remember that you, too, are a sinner being changed by grace.

Put on meekness. You may have the power to wound with your words—but choose to heal instead.

Put on patience. Patience chooses not to be provoked while God patiently does his work in another person.

Then Paul says, “bearing with one another and…forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” Cancelling debt completely, never to bring it up again.

Church unity is not preserved by avoiding difficult people. It is preserved by learning how to love difficult people.

And above everything else, “put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

Self-sacrificing love is the thread that holds the whole garment together.

Paul then tells us to “let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.”

The word Paul uses has the idea of an umpire or referee making the call. When tensions rise, disagreements emerge and tempers begin to flare, the peace of Christ should step onto the field and make the ruling.

Not our preferences.

Not our wounded pride.

Not our desire to win the argument.

Not our insistence that everyone see things our way.

The peace of Christ gets the final call.

Because, Paul reminds us, “you were called in one body.” We are not independent players pursuing our own interests. We belong to one body, under one Head, united by one Saviour.

Paul also calls us to be thankful and to let the word of Christ dwell richly among us—teaching, admonishing and singing the truth together.

We don’t simply gather in the same room. We gather around the same Christ, under the same Word, singing the same gospel.

Christ has already done the astonishing work of making us one.

Our calling is not to create the unity. Our calling is to treasure it, protect it and live it out.

Because the person sitting beside you is not merely someone you happen to worship with.

He or she is someone Christ has redeemed and placed into his body.

So don’t casually divide what Christ died to unite.