Colossians 3:12-13 gives more practical advice on becoming more like Christ. “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.” We can see here even more about our relationships with other people because how we interact with other people is extremely important in our Christian walk. It’s part of our testimony to the world about the life-changing Gospel and the hope it brings.
These verses once again give us our reason for why we need to do this, and at the risk of sounding repetitive, I’ll say it again: we are to do this because we have been saved, not so that we will be saved. This verse tells us that we are to “put on” these things because we are “God’s chosen ones” and “holy and beloved.” Anyone who’s been reading my blog for a while already knows my whole predestination spiel, so I won’t go on about that here. I’ll simply say that “God’s chosen ones” simply means Christians; it means real, true Christians who are “holy and beloved” by God. Just think of that! This passage talks about being nice and forgiving to people. “But they did this to me!” we say. Well, guess what? We sinned greatly against a God who is perfect and doesn’t deserve to be disrespected, hated, and disobeyed like we do. We are evil by nature (Matt 7:11; Luke 11:13). God is good by nature. And He has forgiven us undeserving Christians for every sin we have committed, are committing, and will commit. We sin constantly. People sin against us sometimes, and it’s not nearly as bad. So why can’t we forgive and be kind to others who don’t deserve it when we really think about the fact that we have done nothing to earn the perfect love and forgiveness of God?
With that little intro in mind, let’s dive in. “Compassionate hearts.” I think this is pretty self-explanatory, especially with the other components in the text. I’ll give two Biblical examples here, the first from Matthew 9:36-38: “When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Jesus saw all these people, helpless to save themselves and undeserving of salvation, and felt deep compassion for them. They couldn’t save themselves, only He could do that. So he tells His disciples to pray for them to be saved even though they’ve done nothing to earn it. He’s saying, “There are so many people who need salvation, but so few people to tell them about the Gospel. So pray for people to be saved so we can send them out to bring more people to salvation.” Jesus knew He wouldn’t be on earth forever, and his disciples were few. In order for the Gospel to spread, they needed more people so that it could grow and be passed to the next generation and the next and the next. We can assume the disciples did pray, whether it was now or later, because the Gospel has survived for 2,000 years and has spread to virtually all corners of the world! Jesus asked for prayer for the masses because He loved them and wanted them to be saved, knowing full well they couldn’t do it themselves.
Another passage showing Jesus’ compassion playing out is Mark 8:1-10. I won’t quote the whole passage, but this is the story of Jesus feeding the four thousand men (not counting their wives and children, so the actual number is probably much larger). He has compassion on the people who have been following Him and listening to His teaching for three days without eating any food. He knew they couldn’t make it back to their homes because they are all very hungry and would “faint on the way.” He didn’t want that to happen, not after they’d traveled so far to listen to Him. So he tells His disciples to get the bread and fish and He feeds them all. He loved these people and just gave them food because they were hungry. How great is that? It’s such a simple thing to do coming from the compassionate heart of Jesus.
There’s a very important thing to emphasize here: Colossians 3:12-13 says specifically to have “compassionate hearts,” which I take to mean as this: we should not simply just be compassionate because it’s what we’re supposed to do (though it is), but we should earnestly desire to be compassionate because we want to. Our hearts should long for it. We’ve already talked about sin coming from the heart and manifesting in our actions. That’s
the old self, the unsaved self. The new self has genuine, honest compassion in his or her heart manifesting in real, loving action. Jesus, in the passages we
just looked at, wasn’t simply compassionate because He was supposed to be. He was compassionate because it was His nature to be, because He really loved
these people who needed Him. The verses could have all just said “He saw this so he did this.” No, they go into what He felt. “I have compassion on the crowd” (Mark 8:2). “He had compassion for them” (Matt. 9:36). He loved these people! He wanted to fill their spiritual and physical needs and still wants that today. As His people, shouldn’t we desire the same? Doesn’t God work His plans through His people? So, rather than just begrudgingly and dutifully being nice or something, we should be genuinely compassionate because it’s in our nature to be, because God is compassionate and has made us compassionate. And remember Jesus’ ultimate act of compassion when He died on the cross to pay for our sins. Nothing we can do can measure up to that.
Somehow I expected to cover the entirety of verses 12-13 in one post, but I guess considering my previous posts, it’s not surprising that this is so long already. What's great about this is that I'm learning so much more than I expected through writing this series, and hopefully you're learning too! So next time we’ll talk about kindness. I think I’ll close this out with a great verse from Luke as a reminder to be compassionate:
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:36)
Read the rest of this series:
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