“Get dressed!” It is spoken in a variety of tones and intensities especially if you have children. Usually determined by an allotment of time and their rate of progression. “Get dressed” is an evasive command because it doesn’t include for what. “Get dressed” for a date, school, church, bed, swimming, sledding, scuba-diving, football may all look different but if they are confused, create some crazy memories that will be recited for decades. We all need a context or perspective in life and in Christianity if we are expected to “getting dressed.”
Paul instructs the church in Colosse to “Get dressed” in a different way than we might expect: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Colossians 3:12). Not only was the church to get dressed on the outside, but now they are to get dressed on the inside so that they would be ready for the day – ready with compassion, ready with kindness, ready with humility, gentleness and patience.
I can imagine that Paul dealt with mismatched socks, wrinkled and stained clothes, and clothes that once were the right size did not match. I can imagine that the fashion-match’n-police were called more than once when the color coordination rules were broken, but isn’t that were Christianity begins and the Love of God applied? “Get dressed” did not mean put one or two items on, it meant to put on each garment that was necessary, both on the outside and on the inside, to cover the entire body. Sure the impact of a hostile world; were wrinkled stained and torn, the same happens when get dressed with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, but we have a Savior that is able to redeem these qualities within us.
Imagine for a moment if the church assembled on a Sunday morning in our Pajamas or night clothes. It would be somewhat unthinkable and perhaps embarrassing. Now imagine if the church showed up and did not get dressed as Paul prescribes with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Would our response be unthinkable and embarrassing as those who claim to be in relationship with Jesus?
“And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Colossians 3:14).
May we love one another as Christ has loved us.
Blessing,
Jim