And above all these things, put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. Colossians 3:14
I can still recall challenging my old friend Layton when he told me that he had been spending his summer working in the woods, peeling pulp wood and loading it onto a truck by hand. I grasped his hands, and examined them, noting that there was no sign of the balsam pitch that is such a pervasive part of the task of peeling pulp wood. ‘I don’t believe you,’ I told him. Layton grinned and pulled up his shirt. There across his chubby belly was a broad and dirty strip of balsam pitch, the result of carrying the pulp wood pieces across his body as he had worked in the woods. I laughed and replied, ‘I believe you’. Peeling and loading pulp wood by hand is one of those occupations, like painting and plastering, where it is easy to identify the work by what the person is wearing. The evidence accumulates on the body as well as the clothes. And in our text, Paul is urging the Christians in Colosse to allow love to be the evidence that displays that they are united in Christ.
We know that the word rendered ‘charity’ in our Bibles is the word for love. But it is not just brotherly love that is in mind here; it is the ‘agape’ love that we read about in the Scriptures concerning the love of God toward us. This type of love is not possible for a person who is not saved, because this type of love is enabled only by the Holy Spirit Who indwells the believer. This love is sacrificial and unconditional, the type of love that is described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7: Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. This, our text declares, is what we should wear as the evidence of what we are as the people of God.
Our text has another word that we need to define properly: perfectness. This word does not translate into sinlessness or perfect behaviour and attitude, as desirable as those things would be. No, it refers to our maturity as Christians, our development into what a Christian should be among fellow believers and before the world. This love is the bond, the uniting factor, that creates the sweet fellowship among the Lord’s people. Is it any wonder that Paul would urge the saints in Colosse – and in our day too – to display the evidence of love in our lives?
Can people tell by looking at us, that we are the loving saints that our Lord wants us to be? -Jim MacIntosh