The Peace of Christ or a List
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. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.
Colossians 3:12-15 ESV
When there are a lot of things going on in the world and in your house, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. You might make a list in your head or even on your fridge that looks like this.
Wash the bathtub
Clean up bookshelves
Solve the problem about peace in the middle east
Join a group
Finish reading my book
Is it any wonder people feel so busy and crazy so often? Then you are reading your Bible and you can hit a list like this and it feels like another long list of things to do.
Put on:
Compassionate hearts
Kindness
Humility
Meekness
Patience
Bear with one another
Forgive complaints against one another
Put on love
Be thankful
But obeying a list is against everything Jesus came for, lived for, and died for!
Look what is hidden in the middle of that list.
as the Lord has forgiven you, so also you must forgive
and then at the end
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts
If anybody was going to spend a lot of time being mad, or holding a grudge, or losing patience, it would be God against us. There’s been a zillion times we’ve been aggravated at some precious person that He has made, and He didn’t light us up with a lightning bolt or make the earth open up and swallow us whole. That’s not His character. Jesus died for all of those sins.
Now the compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and forbearing love of God has been shown to us in Jesus, so that we can experience the full peace of God.
If every time you struggle with compassion or bitterness, you are drawn back to the compassion of God instead of a list, the list will take care of itself. It doesn’t say MAKE the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. The peace of Christ is already submitted and offered to you, like the chance to sleep in front of a boring TV show in a soft chair after a hard day’s work. See the Lord’s forgiveness and let Christ’s peace take over.