Colossians 3:12-25 - 4:1 (Part 1)
There is a lot in these 14 versus but
it must be kept in context so I am leaving the verses together and plan to
write about the pieces as I go along.
There are four topics addressed here:
1. Christian Ethical Attitudes (3:12-17)
2. A Family’s Christian Ethic (3:18-21)
3. An Employee’s Christian Ethic (3:22-25)
4. An Employer’s Christian Ethic (4:1)
These verses are to be understood in
the context of the preceding verses. The
first part of this chapter tells us what it means to be a Christian by
informing us what we need to shed from our Christian lives. The Apostle Paul’s words direct us to put on
certain attitudes of Christian living. Compassion,
kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and putting on love: All
these things are what it means to make up the Christian landscape of the
church. I in no way claim to be good at
these things but it is certainly true that if adopted these sort of Christian
conducts (ethics) would solve most problems in my life.
The point is that as Christ followers
we are expected to live by a new set of guiding ethics: Ethics which oppose the common self-focused
actions of our culture. As Christians we
are different than what we were and as Paul states next, we live ethics that naturally
bleed over into our daily lives as parents, children, spouses, employees, and employers.
However, these are topics for the next
time. For now, read through these first
25 verses of Colossians 3 and get acquainted with the Christian ethic, you may
discover that there is a deviation between the normal Christianity that we often
identify with and the Christianity that Paul is leading us to live.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Colossians+3%3A22-4%3A1&version=NIV
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