Colossians 3:12-17 | All You Do, And All You Are, In Jesus

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Father, I thank you for such a cause of rejoicing this morning.

We rejoice certainly with Skylar in coming to know you and acknowledging his need for you and recognizing that you are there to meet that need.

That you are a God who responded even before we were aware of our need.

That you anticipated the problem before we knew we had it.

And that you offer us more than just freedom from sin and death and condemnation under the righteous wrath of a holy God.

You offer us life beyond that, that in saying yes to following Jesus, we are saying no to death.

And yes to life.

And a new kind of life.

A life that makes our lives hopefully look more like your own.

More like the life of Christ.

And we need help in that.

And so I ask Lord that you would help us by your Spirit as we unpack that this morning, as we look at this passage of Scripture, and then the harder thing perhaps to live that out in the world this week.

In our relationships, in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, even in our church.

That you would help us.

We are a people in great need of help.

And so we know that we can come to you.

We know that you are there.

We know that it is your desire to see us glorify you in our lives, and that your spirit stands ready to help us and dwells us to help us.

And so, God, we come to you this morning with a confident prayer.

We approach the throne of grace with confidence because of who you are.

And say that we are glad in you and glad in your word this morning.

Speak to us in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Is it just me?

This has nothing to do with the sermon, but I just kind of realized it as he was speaking on the video.

Is it just me or is that Gospel Coalition scholar the Geico spokesperson?

Isn't he?

I think it's the same guy.

I think he's the little Geico.

Is it a lizard?

What is it?

A Gecko?

Yeah.

I think he's the Geico Geckard.

So next time you listen to the Geico commercial, be like, is that, what's his name?

Michael Haken or something?

Anyway, might be the same guy.

Just wanted to throw that out there.

That's for free.

That has nothing to do with the sermon this morning, but remarkably similar, I think.

Well, we are back in our study on Colossians this morning in chapter 3, looking specifically at verses 12 through 17.

The heading for the sermon this morning is All You Do and All You Are in Jesus.

I would ask you first to listen with me to the wisdom of author Jerry Bridges, who's now with the Lord, but for many, many years wrote some wonderful books that are a great help to the church.

And this is what he said about this passage of Scripture.

He said, sometimes we get the impression that the Christian life consists mainly of negative prohibitions.

Negative prohibitions.

Don't do these things.

These are definitely an important part of our spiritual discipline, as attested by the fact that eight of the Ten Commandments are prohibitions.

We need the prohibitions set forth not just in the Ten Commandments, but in all the life application sections of the New Testament.

Indwelling sin needs the constant restraint of being denied its gratification.

The Christian life, however, should also be directed toward positive expressions of Christian character.

All of Paul's ethical teaching is characterized by this twofold approach of putting off the old self and putting on the new self.

I like to think of this two-fold approach as represented by the two blades of a pair of scissors.

A single scissors blade is useless as far as doing the job for which it was designed.

The two blades must work in conjunction with one another to be effective.

And we must work both at putting off the characteristics of our old selves and putting on the characteristics of our new selves.

One without the other is not effective.

Some believers seem to focus on putting off sinful practices but give little attention to what they are to put on.

Too often their lives become hard and brittle and probably self-righteous because they tend to equate godliness with a define list of don'ts.

Other believers tend to focus on putting certain positive traits such as love, compassion, and kindness, but they can become careless in morality and ethics.

We need the dual focus of putting off and putting on, each should receive equal attention from us.

Well, this morning I am talking to Skylar, Lucas.

I do know your last name.

There was just a lot going on.

And I was wet, so there you go.

Talking to Skylar, talking to each of us, I guess as if we were a new believer.

We talk a lot about what salvation saves us from.

Sometimes we don't do as good a job of talking about what salvation saves us to, right?

What is this life supposed to look like?

What are we supposed to look like in light of what Christ has done?

Well, if you've been tracking with us in our study of this wonderful letter, you'll remember that we've just come through some rather off-putting territory, pun intended, in verses 5 through 11.

Paul's been calling us to put to death the old toxic ways of sin and self-worship, to put on, put off the old self we had before Christ or that we have without Christ.

But notice where he takes us now.

Now he's focusing on the other blade of the scissors.

He's telling us about the new self what to put on.

But before Paul issues a single instruction about how you are to behave, he roots everything in who we are in Christ.

The gospel sequence is absolute.

The indicative always precedes the imperative.

In other words, he tells us who we are before he tells us what we're supposed to do.

God accepts us in Christ, justifies us by faith alone, and then and only then says, now put on the royal garments that match your new identity in my son.

We don't put on compassion and kindness and love to become God's children.

We put them on because by his sovereign grace, we are God's children.

Your standing before Almighty God is a gift of divine providence and not human merit.

So don't confuse the order of these things.

Look at Paul begins in verse 12.

You got your Bible there, your scripture journal.

Look at that with me.

He says, put on then, and here's the clause, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved.

Before God gives a single instruction on how to treat your spouse, your neighbor, or the person sitting across the aisle, which you'll get into in the rest of chapter 3, he anchors your identity in the sovereign grace of God.

You didn't choose God.

This is what it says here: God's chosen ones.

He chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world.

You are holy, judicially set apart because the perfect righteousness of Jesus has been imputed to you, given to you, and you are beloved, eternally loved by the Father.

Let that sink in.

If you don't get anything else today, get those things.

You are chosen by God, holy, that means set apart for God, and beloved by God.

Do you know that?

Do you operate under that truth?

Because you are chosen holy and beloved by God, then be godly is basically what this is saying.

You are these things, and therefore act like it.

Be godly, be like God.

And here is a picture of God in Jesus Christ.

Compassionate, kind, meek, patient.

Now let's see a show of hands.

For those of you that are guests with us today, when I ask them to raise their hands, most of them don't raise their hands.

They're very humble and they don't like to call attention to themselves.

But I'm going to ask you to raise your hands.

So how many of you are naturally compassionate?

That's just some way God has gifted you in that.

You're waiting until we get to meek, right?

How are you?

Okay, great.

See, wonderful.

I have to work at that in my life to be compassionate.

How many of you are naturally kind?

How many of you don't know the difference between the two?

But you're compassionate or kind.

You're one of those two things, maybe both of those things.

That's really good.

Now I know who to go to if I'm ever in trouble.

How many of you are naturally meek?

Humble?

Okay, good.

I love it.

I love it.

The meek won't raise their hands, many of them.

How many of you are patient?

How many of you struggle with patience?

Okay, yeah, there you go.

Yeah, me too.

We are called to be these things because we are called to be Christ-like.

When you see these good characteristics in the Bible that we're told to be, those are pictures, characteristics of Jesus.

This is what your God is like.

Okay?

Your God is compassionate and kind and yes, humble and patient.

So know that when you're looking in the New Testament and you see all these things that we're supposed to be, every one of those, we're supposed to be like that because God is like that.

And then he says, look at verse 13.

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.

Now he's being a little more pointed.

We're having trouble getting the point.

He's just gonna tell us, he's just gonna say, I want you to forgive because God forgave you.

And I want you to forgive in the way that God forgave you.

And that will be fun to unpack Wednesday and Thursday night in our community groups, which we're starting this week.

Notice how I got that little plug in there.

But this is why we're doing those, so that we can unpack this scripture this Wednesday and Thursday night.

Okay?

Because I want to talk about that with you.

I want to go more into depth on that.

How has the Lord forgiven us?

What are the divine characteristics of God's forgiveness of us?

An undeserving people who are rebellious in our sin and yet he forgave us.

We're supposed to forgive like that.

Our human forgiveness is anchored directly in divine forgiveness.

Earlier in Colossians chapter 2 and verses 13 and 14, Paul writes that God made us alive, this is part of it here, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

What is that saying?

It says, when you break God's law, you incur a certificate of moral debt.

How does God handle it?

He paid it in full at the cross.

God so loved us that he gave his only son, right?

Right?

Because God loved us.

This is what his forgiveness looks like.

This is what it cost him to forgive you.

How are we doing at that?

How are we doing at forgiving one another?

Does our forgiveness of one another look like God's forgiveness?

Let me tell you what doesn't look like God's forgiveness.

It's when we say, I forgive you, but then we add something to it, right?

When we say, Well, look, I forgive you, but don't ever do that again.

Right?

How many of you have experienced that on either end of that?

I've done that, I've said things like that, right?

I forgive you, but you know, sometimes you can't even get it into words.

You just express your anger or frustration at it, right?

Does our forgiveness look like God's forgiveness?

Let me say this too.

Seeing the fullness of God's forgiveness and the way that God has forgiven us will make us more forgiving people.

Rather than just saying, man, I'm going to try harder to forgive, meditate on how God has forgiven you and it will make you a forgiving person.

You can't look at what God has done for you in Christ and walk away from that picture, seeing the fullness of that picture and all the different things that He has done for you and His kindness, and then go be mean to somebody.

I guess you can.

But if you do, it's probably evidence that you're not indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, because the Holy Spirit should convict you when you see that picture of what he has done for us.

You simply can't hold petty ledgers against others when your infinite debt to divine justice has been fully canceled.

Charles Spurgeon said it this way.

He said, God does not love you because you were good, he loves you because he is good.

If you're standing before God depended on the consistency of your own heart, you would wake up every morning in terror.

But because you are accepted in the beloved, your security is as unshakable as Christ himself.

That's what he requires of us is to love in that way, is to forgive in that way, is to be compassionate in the way that he is compassionate.

Some of you, you say, what more am I going to do to grow in Christ?

I've been walking with Jesus for a long time.

I've been to every kind of Bible study, I know the Bible inside and out.

Try to love like Jesus.

Let that be your goal.

Let me know how that's going for you, because it's hard, right?

We can spend the rest of our lives, however long we think we've got left, trying to be compassionate like Jesus is compassionate.

Trying to forgive people in the way that God Himself has forgiven us.

Look at verse 14 with me.

Paul says this.

He says, and above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

What does beloved mean?

It means you beloved.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Right?

That's what it means.

You're beloved.

I'm beloved.

We're beloved, right?

We be loved by God.

So be loving other people.

Right?

Love binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Why does Paul call love binding here?

That seems like an odd thing for love to do, to bind things together.

And yet it does.

Because without real love, gospel love, God love, individual virtues quickly decay into performative moralism.

And you can practice kind of a pseudo-kindness or pseudo-patience to maintain control or look spiritually superior.

Have you ever done that?

Have you ever been really aggravated with someone and then they walk up and you put on that smile?

Are you a person who's able to do that?

You know, they walk up and you're talking to somebody and you're going, I can't believe they're late, they're just late, and then they get there and they go, you go, oh, hey, good to see you, right?

We can put on a pseudo-kind of kindness or a pseudo-kind of patience that makes us maintain control of the situation or ourselves or others, or makes us look like we're doing the right thing.

But love acts as the structural tie.

Real love acts as this structural tie that holds it all together, that holds you all together, holds me all together.

That if I can learn to love as God loves, that my day will go better.

That I won't find myself getting frustrated because it won't just be this face that I put on, it won't just be that smile that I put on when they show up.

It'll be in here, right?

It'll be real, it'll run deep.

And it holds us together, and it holds us together as a congregation, as a people, holds families together.

In Colossians 2, 2, you may remember Paul wrote about our hearts be knit together in love.

And this word knit together refers to ligaments and joints locking a body into place.

These things that are needed for us to stand upright and do all the things that we're supposed to do and be able to move.

Right?

Ephesians 4 reinforces this.

It says, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is equipped, builds itself up in love.

I love it, says, we are to grow up.

Grow up.

Grow up into maturity.

Love each other for real.

And if you find in your heart that what you're doing is fake, or it's behavior, but there's no attitude or motivation behind it, that maybe your face is showing love, but your heart is showing anything but.

Revisit the picture of the gospel.

That's the antidote here.

It's the antidote to our toxic selfishness that causes us not to look like Jesus, is to revisit the picture of the gospel.

And that's why we have four gospels, right?

That's why we have four gospels, four different perspectives on the life and ministry and death and resurrection of Christ.

It's why Paul writes over and over.

It's why we have all of these letters that he wrote to all of these churches, not just one, because Paul expresses the gospel, the fullness of the gospel, in lots of different ways.

And the other writers do as well.

Like I said, I was listening to 1 John this morning, and the way that John talks about Jesus' love for us is different than the way that Paul talks about Jesus' love for us.

Revisit those pictures, and it will cure you of not being loving like Jesus.

You will not be able to go on and on being angry at brothers and sisters in Christ, not being patient with them, not being kind to them, not being compassionate to them, not being loving to them if you are continually looking at the picture of what Christ has done.

That's the antidote.

Bottle it up and just drink it.

It doesn't work that way.

You've got to read it, right?

You've got to read it in God's word and meditate on it and think on these things.

I can't tell you the value, what a value it has been for me to take these long walks.

I posted a picture on Facebook this week of a deer, a video of a deer, a baby deer that I saw.

It's maybe five, six feet away from me.

That kind of stuff is cool.

I love that.

I love seeing wildlife, I love seeing the plants, I love getting the exercise.

But the real value of making those appointments to take long walks and pray and meditate on scripture is that that picture just gets gigantic.

It just over, it almost overwhelms the picture of what Christ has done for us, the way that God loves us.

And it is the only cure that I know to meditate on these things, to pray to God on these things, to ask him to change us, to look like him, to ask him to let us see the fullness of what he has done for us.

It is the only antidote that I know to my own natural selfishness.

In verse 15, Paul turns to the internal dynamic of the local church.

Look what he says there.

He says, Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful.

Well, how do we let the peace of Christ rule?

Peace seems like a passive thing.

Ruling seems like a very active, dominating kind of thing.

The word for rule there is an athletic term meaning to act like an umpire or an arbiter in a situation, a mediator, right?

In our natural hearts, in our sinful hearts, self-justification and pride and fear act as the umpire.

It works like this.

When someone crosses our preferences, fear kicks in and demands that we fight for our rights.

My mother, she's with Jesus.

She would not mind me sharing this with you.

But my mother, after she and my father got a divorce, my dad did some bad stuff, she was pretty broken in the middle of that process.

She went to a thing called assertiveness training.

Gotta stand up for yourself, right?

Assertiveness training.

I don't think that it really benefited her very much.

What it did was it made her kind of prickly, okay?

And if you'd say something to her and she didn't like it, or it felt like you Encroaching on her territory, she knew how to come back at that.

Okay?

She wouldn't mind me saying this.

It's okay.

I love my mom.

We have a good, good relationship.

I look forward to seeing her one day.

She's with Jesus.

But I think a lot of us are worried about in the relationships we have.

Now, I'm not talking about abusive situations.

I'm not talking about criminal situations here.

I'm just talking about the relationship that we have with people that we love, the people who love us in our church or in our family.

I'm just talking about normal, everyday kind of relationships.

And some of us, sometimes, we let our pride or our fear act as the umpire.

I cleaned the table last night, I'm not cleaning that table tonight.

Right?

I emptied the dishwasher last night, I'm not emptying the dishwasher tonight.

And then when they don't come to do it, our resentment grows, right?

They don't appreciate anything I do around here.

Right?

I don't know who they are, but they don't appreciate anything I do around here.

I do so much and they don't even see it.

You know?

And still nobody's empty dishwasher.

It's three hours, nobody's empty dishwasher.

How am I supposed to load the dishwasher when nobody's empty the dishwasher?

You know what I mean?

You've been there?

Yeah?

This is another thing, those of you that are guests with us today, sometimes I talk to them and it's like I'm the worst person in this room because they don't do any of this stuff.

It's just me who has these bad attitudes or bad behaviors, right?

Some of you, thank you for the acknowledgement.

I appreciate that.

Some of you are, no, no, I'm bad too.

Colossians 1.20, Paul reminds us that Christ made peace by the blood of his cross.

Philippians 2.3 commands, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

And this is the truth.

Because Christ has established your peace with God, you no longer need to win every interpersonal dispute to protect your worth.

Your worth doesn't come from winning.

And we live in a world that is convinced that worth comes from winning.

From winning the championship, from winning the game, from winning the who's got the most competition, from winning the who's best looking competition.

Okay?

Whatever it is, we think that worth comes from winning, and worth doesn't come from winning.

Worth comes, your value comes because the king of the universe loved you so much that he died for you.

You don't need any other ground for boasting, do you?

He loves you that much.

That's where our value comes from.

That's where our worth comes from, because he has declared us worthy, not because of anything we've done.

Praise God, because tomorrow I'll do something dumb and then I'll be unworthy again.

No, it's because of his great love for us that he counts us worthy.

Of knowing him, being completely known by him, being completely loved by him.

Look at verse 16.

And this is a curious one in this passage.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly.

We've talked about that.

Teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, we've talked about that.

Here's the interesting one to me: singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

Well, we know that we should let the word of Christ dwell in us richly.

I've just been talking about that.

That's important to read God's word and meditate on it, understand it, comprehend it, see the continuity of it, talk about it, memorize it, admonish one another in it.

You say, How are you doing?

Somebody comes to you and says, I'm not doing very well.

Everything in my life is going wrong.

And we should come back to them and say, wait a minute, everything in your life is going wrong?

Because I'm pretty sure you've told me that Jesus died on the cross for your sin and your eternity is secure.

Everything in your life is going wrong?

Well, not everything.

Not the big thing.

Just little, little stuff, right?

We're supposed to admonish one another in these things, remind one another of the truth.

But then he makes this distinction about singing, and he says here, and in Ephesians 5.19, he also refers to psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.

Three different types of singing.

Singing's obviously pretty important.

Psalms would refer to the Old Testament Psalter, the canonical hymn book of Israel that Jesus himself sang.

We know what the Psalms are, and they're not just in the book of Psalms, there's some in other parts of the Old Testament as well.

We've got a few in the New Testament that are newer Psalms.

And then we've got hymns, which are Christian songs of praise focused specifically on the deity and redemptive work of Christ.

We sort of know what hymns are, but we see hymns in Scripture like the hymn in Colossians 1, 15 through 20.

Spiritual songs would be sort of everything else, broader spirit-prompted expressions of testimony and exhortation and personal worship, and we we sing a lot of those as well.

But Paul stacks these terms to show the richness of corporate worship.

But why do we sing every Sunday?

You got me thinking this passage: why is this so important to God that we sing?

Why did Jesus sing with his disciples in the upper room before heading to Gethsemane?

He says, after singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Singing is really important, and here's why I think that is.

God designed human beings such that truth set to melody penetrates the affections of our heart in ways that logic can't always do.

When Jesus sang Psalms with his disciples on the night he was betrayed, he was fortifying his own soul with the truth of God's covenant faithfulness.

And when we sing songs together on Sunday mornings, we are preaching the gospel to one another and to ourselves in ways that we will later remember throughout our day.

Right?

And so if we sing, He holds all things, all things, sing it with me, all things together.

He holds all things, all things, all things together.

We may remember that in the car when we get the bad news, right?

Singing is powerful.

It's not just filler till we get to the sermon.

And it's not just something for us to do here, it's something for you to do throughout the day.

When I lived in Atlanta and I would do counseling with some of our men, and come to find out they have hour and a half commutes into downtown Atlanta, three hours a day, they're on the highway, and it's not pretty drive either.

It's not like driving around Billett County.

Pretty, pretty scenery, you know, and lakes and ponds and hills.

It's just wall-to-wall traffic, 18 lanes of traffic in Atlanta.

If you've been there, don't go again.

It's pretty bad.

But anyway, be glad you don't live there.

Praise God.

See what God's done for you?

You don't live in Atlanta.

But they would do that, and then I'd say, well, what do you listen to on your commute in?

And they'd say, talk radio.

All commute long, three hours a day, people fighting with each other, people arguing, people talking conspiracies, people upset about something that's happened in government or the economy or whatever else.

The world's going to hell in a handbasket, right?

All that kind of stuff.

This is what they're listening to three hours a day, and you wonder why they need counseling.

You wonder why their life isn't going as they hope it would.

Singing's important.

Listen to these truths in your car when you're driving around in your home.

We've even got this thing at our house, I'm telling you, things you don't even want to know here.

But when we bought our house, there's this little music thing in the bathroom.

So it comes on, you're in the shower, you know?

Singing at the top of your lungs.

These great truths.

He holds all things together.

He made peace.

He made peace.

He made peace by the blood of his cross, right?

And these truths are permeating our hearts and minds.

The fact that Paul talks about singing and that Jesus stresses the importance of singing and sang with his disciples says to us that we need to do whatever we need to do in order for truth to get through and change us.

If we put it to music, great.

If you write scriptures on post-it notes and put them on your mirror as you're getting ready in the morning, great.

If we say them to each other here, if we gather in Bible studies and study through those truths together, if you buy Bibles and commentaries and helps of all kinds, if we catechize our children and have special classes for them down the hall, whatever it takes for Scripture to permeate our hearts to change us to look like Jesus, we need to be willing to do.

And thankfully, he has provided these songs and these tools and these resources for us to do that together.

Well, the last verse this morning, verse 17, let's look at this together.

Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Well, again, Paul is speaking in really big terms.

Whatever you do, sweeping words, do everything.

Whatever you do, do everything.

And this echoes 1 Corinthians 10, 31.

Some of you know that verse.

Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.

So eating or drinking or loving our relationships together, even singing, all of these things due to the glory of God, due in the name of Jesus.

Really hard to watch pornography in the name of Jesus, isn't it?

Right?

Hard to do that in the name of Jesus.

Really hard to scream at one of your kids in the name of Jesus.

Right?

Or fuss at your spouse.

Call people names.

Right?

Really hard to tell dirty jokes in the name of Jesus.

Right?

Or cheat on your taxes.

Really hard to do those things.

Don't try.

I'm not recommending it.

Don't go home and go, I got a challenge.

The pastor put a challenge in front of you.

No, no, no.

Don't do it.

It's really hard to do those things for a reason.

That's why one of the reasons why we're told to do things in the name of Jesus.

Everything that you do, you are a sacred being.

You are set aside.

You are holy as a follower of Jesus Christ.

Just like as we read in the Old Testament, the instruments of the temple were holy, the candlesticks were holy, the table was holy.

Everything on the table was holy, set aside only for God's purposes.

That's you.

That's me.

We are holy.

Everything that we do, we do in the name of Jesus.

I'm about to quote a police song, Shane.

I'm about to quote Sting over here.

Every breath you take, every move you make, I'll be watching you.

Everything we do in the name of Jesus, everything we do to the glory of God.

Paul doesn't leave a sacred secular divide here.

He doesn't say you got church stuff over here, and then over here do whatever you want.

Everything in the name of Jesus.

You live as an authorized representative of Jesus.

Paul clarifies this in Colossians 3, 23 and 24, we'll get there soon.

Whatever you do, he's going to say, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.

You are serving the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so if you're sitting at your desk, you're preparing a meal, you're filing a tax return, you're caring for an aging parent or child, you don't do it to earn an identity or secure human applause.

You do it as an ambassador of King Jesus as an act of worship.

Your inheritance is secured by grace.

Those tasks will not save you.

But if you are saved, you can do those tasks to the glory of God.

So I would ask you this morning: are you living in the defensive isolation of the old self?

Are you trying to justify yourself through legalistic performance, the list of things that you're not doing?

Now it's important.

We have to obey Scripture.

It's important to put away those things, to put to death immorality in our lives.

To push away from anything that would tempt us or cause us to sin.

But if that's your whole life, that's not a very joyful one, is it?

Just not a very joyful one.

That all throughout your day you just wake up in the morning and your mantra is, I'm not going to sin today, I'm not going to sin today, I'm not going to sin today.

Right?

It's no way to live.

Remember, if we're not doing those things, it creates a hole.

There's a hole there for reasons.

It's supposed to be filled with the things that He's told us to do.

The relationships that he wants us to do in the name of Christ, to be compassionate and find ways to express godly compassion, to be kind and find ways to express godly kindness, to be loving and find ways to express his kind of love.

Jesus Christ did that for us.

He came into a world of darkness.

The light of men.

He paid our debt in full of the cross so that we could be clothed in his righteousness.

And if you're outside of Christ today, if you don't know Christ today, I would say to you, no amount of achievement is going to make you right with God.

Your own self-righteousness is not going to make you right with God.

Your own church attendance is not going to make you right with God.

Jesus has made you right with God.

You can't make him the Lord of your life.

The question is, will you acknowledge it?

Will you know it's true?

Are you relying on that truth?

Are you putting your trust in him alone?

For those of us who belong to Jesus, put off the old rags of anger and pride, put on the robes of compassion and love.

Let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, do everything in the glorious name of King Jesus, and help one another to do that.

Help each other to do that.

Let's be accountable to one another, to encourage one another to walk in a manner worthy of Christ.

But if someone says to us, you wouldn't believe what so-and-so did, you say, Well, I wouldn't believe it because you're not going to tell me because I don't want to listen to you.

You got a problem with them, you go to them.

I don't want to hear it.

If you tell me, I'm just going to review you for it.