-Paul says we are to bear with one another, literally to hold ourselves towards them, present tense, constantly, consistently, ongoingly, hanging in there towards those persons and the things they are doing which otherwise irritate or offend us. And the root of forgive here is not actually ‘to let go’ but ‘to give grace’, undeserved favor. God’s people as forgiven people of all people should be able to freely forgive and give undeserved favor to others. The Lord has certainly showered grace, undeserved favor, undeserved forgiveness on us, on His people. We must do the same for our fellow Christ-followers. People have warts and gaps. They will make missteps and mistakes and will wound us, perhaps even intentionally. We may actually have legitimate complaints against certain other believers. This grace we are to extend to one another extends to actual sins as well. Everybody messes up. Even those who follow Christ mess up. Yes, folks will even transgress against us. And yet, we’re not very good at this hanging-in-there-and giving-grace thing, are we? We get offended or irritated or exasperated and we either lash out or we leave, looking for something or someone less unpleasant, for greener pastures that don’t exist this side of heaven. That’s certainly what the world does. But it should not be this way for those who profess to follow Christ. We are supposedly the people who have received amazing wonderful lavish grace. Perhaps our deficiencies in this arena reflect an emaciated understanding of how much we’ve been forgiven in Christ.
-It is important to remember that Paul was writing to the body, the community of believers in Colossae. So let’s be clear about where Paul and we are going with all this. Unity (next verse). One body (verse after). If a family or a marriage or in this case a church, a local expression of God’s family, is to stay together and live into and live out the love of Christ which will show to all that we are truly His disciples, it is paramount that we get really good at these things and stay committed to them and to one another. Gentleness. Patience. Bearing with one another. Forgiveness/giving grace. Leaving is not an option. Believers in the early church with its localized one-gathering-for-a-city assemblies did not have the luxury of being able to just up and leave to find another assembly in town. The believers in Colossae only had this one body - they HAD to work it out and work things through and stay together - that was the only option. That was the plan, God’s design for the body of Christ, displaying unity and love and peace in the midst of diversity and even adversity. Forgiveness. Commitment. Long-suffering. That’s what God wants. And doing what He wants, following His plan and design is always the best, the only option, and really the best (and only?) path to glory. Disunity and separation was not an option in Paul’s day. The existence of other local assemblies for us today unfortunately is a type of safety net that can be somewhat akin to the safety net of grace for when we rationalize sin. Sometimes we tell ourselves that it will be ok to sin because God will forgive us. Obviously that’s not the way He designed it. We leave an assembly and tell ourselves that it will be ok because we can just find another one, but this is not how God designed it. And while this is tolerated-ad-nauseum in modern Christendom (post Great Schism) and it seems oh-so-easy-to-do in the so-called Bible belt because there is a church on every corner, it is a luxury that perhaps we can ill-afford today and which for Paul no doubt would have been inconceivable. It is irreconcilable to be irreconcilable.
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