You can listen to this message here: Lives Hidden With Christ - Put on Love
Colossians 3:5–14 is a passage overflowing with challenge, hope, and vision for what it means to live as renewed people in Christ.
Paul writes:
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Colossians 3:5-14, NIV
There is enough in this passage to preach on for months. But today I want to focus on what I believe is the heart of the whole section: verse 14 — “Over all these virtues put on love.”
Love is not just one virtue among many. It is the virtue that holds all the others together. It is the defining mark of people whose lives are “hidden with Christ” (v. 3), people who have been transferred from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son.
Paul’s question is essentially this:
What does a renewed life look like?
His answer: love—love expressed, embodied, practiced.
So how do we put on this love?
2. We Bear With One Another
If forgiveness seems hard, “bearing with one another” might feel even harder.
Bearing with others means choosing to stay in community with people who annoy, frustrate, or exhaust us. We all have a “Bill” in our lives—the person we’d rather avoid. Yet Paul says love chooses to bear up, to stay present, to walk alongside.
And bearing with one another gives us plenty of opportunities to practice forgiveness.
This is what love looks like in real life.
3. We Clothe Ourselves Daily in Christlike Virtues
Paul then writes:
“As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”
These are not traits we put on once and forget. We “get dressed” in them every day. Just as we change out of our pajamas each morning, we intentionally choose compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.
If you notice a lack of these qualities in your life, the deeper question is not “How do I try harder?” but “Do I know—deeply know—that I am loved?”
My mom, who taught for more than thirty years, used to say that the kindest students were always those who knew they were loved at home. Loved children could be patient, gentle, and kind. Those who felt unloved or unseen often acted out simply to be noticed. But when a teacher loved them well, something transformed.
The same is true for us. When we are grounded in God’s love, these virtues begin to overflow.
4. We Put to Death the Old Self
Before clothing ourselves with these virtues, Paul tells us to take off the old self:
- sexual immorality
- impurity
- lust
- evil desires
- greed (and the whole list, he says, is a form of idolatry)
Idolatry at its core is worshiping self—placing our desires at the center. These behaviors grow out of forgetting who we are and where our life is found: hidden with Christ in God.
Paul then names the destructive communal behaviors that flow from the same root: anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, lying.
These too must be “put to death.” Not in the sense of a sudden moment of divine fury—Paul is not describing God losing His temper like a frustrated parent—but in the sense of consequences experienced here and now. When we center ourselves instead of Christ, our actions bear bitter fruit.
5. We Recognize That the Gospel Is for Everyone
In the middle of this passage Paul suddenly writes:
“Here there is no Gentile or Jew… barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all and is in all.”
Why insert this here?
Because the gospel reshapes everything—not just our personal morality, but our understanding of humanity itself. Paul deliberately includes every category he can think of: ethnic, religious, socioeconomic, cultural.
Even the barbarians and Scythians—the people the ancient world feared and distrusted.
Which leads to a question for us:
Who are our Scythians?
Who do we see as too far gone, too strange, too frightening, too “other”?
Love compels us to see every person as made in the image of God, every person as someone for whom Christ died.
Love Brings the Kingdom Near
If we put on love—truly put it on—we become the living answer to the prayer we pray each week:
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
The kingdom is not something we merely wait for. It is something we bring into the world as we love, forgive, bear with, and bless.
A Final Question for Reflection
So here is the challenge:
Do you know—at the core of your being—that you are loved without condition by your Father in heaven?
Not “Do you believe it intellectually?”
but “Do you know it in your bones?”
Because when you know you are loved:
- forgiveness becomes natural,
- gentleness becomes possible,
- compassion becomes instinctive,
- patience becomes your posture,
- and love becomes who you are.
May we be a people who live from that deep, transforming knowledge of God’s love.
Amen.