And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it. Col 3:14 (NIV)
Earlier in this chapter, Paul says, “Don’t lie to one another. You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ. So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense.”
It’s easy to make assumptions about a person based on what they wear – and we all do it…Whether in line at the grocery store or while watching the Academy Awards, we’re drawn to speculate on how people adorn themselves and imagine why they wear this or that… or not. You can tell a lot about a person by what they wear or don’t wear. How wealthy they are, what their favourite colours are, what kind of fashion they’re into, conservative or showy, even what kind of lifestyle they lead. Uniforms tell us what kind of job certain individuals have – doctors, policemen and women, paramedics, firemen and women, sportspersons… Sometimes we can tell where a person is from by what they wear, what ethnicity and culture they hold to. While we don’t base someone's value on what they wear, although we often do, we can build a whole story around them from one piece of clothing. We often decide how we will engage a person long before we speak to them based almost entirely on how they look.
Paul wrote to the church in Colossae at a time when their whole world was changing dramatically. The faith was changing, politics was changing, society was changing… and he was saying the old way of doing things, how they used to wear their lives, had changed. Is changing. Clothes, ideas, religions, social status, slave or free, Roman or Gentile, Greek or Jew… those things were no longer differentiating factors in terms of value and community. Everyone is included in Christ – no matter what they wear, where they come from how wealthy they are, what they do for work, what issues plague them, how we perceive them viscerally – we are all the same, we all belong.
And in this new world of inclusion, our uniform is love, coloured with compassion and kindness, humility, quiet strength and discipline. It's not that we just dress up the outside to cover up what's within. From the inside out, God's love changes us. Or rather, returns us to our original and true selves. It’s only fitting that we clothe ourselves with what represents the heart well.
Every day, choose love. When the cloak of anger, or jacket of envy, gloves of greed, shoes of abuse, dresses of lies, hats of pride… when other garments beckon to be worn by your life and beg to represent you, deliberately clothe your life in love. Pick it up. Choose it, place in on your body, your heart and soul. Never be without this all purpose garment.
It fits you perfectly.
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