Living Collectively
Under the rule of Christ
Col 3:15-17
15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.
This short passage is full of exhortations about how to live, act, conduct yourself in your Christian life. Living under the rule of Christ means to live in fullness and freedom. It means to behave a certain way both on the outside and on the inside. But how do we get to the point where we are capable to live as we have been exhorted to live in verses 1 – 14? How do we find the strength of character to set aside and pick up the character traits in these verses? We have to put ourselves under the authority and rule of someone other than ourselves. If we were to make the rules and do what we wanted to do, we know how bad that would be. There would be no end to the problems we could cause if we were given the right to do whatever we want. In fact, this is the history of modern man – you find nation after nation ruled by someone who makes their own rules and then kills and destroys to get what they want. We will have to put ourselves under a new Ruler. We need a different King than ourselves. We need to voluntarily put ourselves under the rule of Christ.
As humans, we tend to avoid adding authority as much as possible. However living under the rule of Christ is the only way to be free. So Paul takes another deeper look at what it looks like to live under the rule of Christ. Not only do we have a responsibility to live our private lives under the rule of Christ, but we also have a responsibility to live together under the rule of Christ. This section is about living together under Christ’s rule.
By the way, it goes without saying that this passage applies not just to each believer who attends Hobart but all believers and at all times.
Alistair Bagg divides this passage into the following traits and looks at it all as characteristics of the church –
- Verse 9 – we are a people of truth. Try doing anything without absolutes. Surgery, driving, flying an airplane, Jesus exhorted us to live by truth. We all know what happens when a human body attempts to survive in any realm other than truth. We don’t need non-truths running around in the church. I recently heard it said that Lincolns’ casket was opened twice.
- Verse 14 – We should be a community of love –
- Love intelligently. – I Thess (not emotionally but a response of the will)
- Love sacrificially – John 13 – self-giving love, only explainable in terms of what the Holy Spirit can do in the life of a person.
- Love continually – Heb 13:1 – keep the pot boiling, walk into any restaurant and they always seem to have coffee ready.
- Love increasingly – 1 Thess 3:12 – overflowing love. We find out when we overflow with love when we bump into each other.
- Love purposefully – love covers over a multitude of sins, the purpose of your love is to smooth our paths together.
- Love deeply – it is a protective and guards us against many things.
- Verse 15 – We should be a community of Peace – Letting the Peace of Christ Rule in our Hearts – this is the key that opens peace in our hearts, it is the Peace of Christ. This is the picture of an Umpire. The problem with our view of umpires is we tend to treat them like John McIntyre (the old commentator for tennis). You might remember his complaints about the line judges who called the shots on the line as they saw them and he was sure that he knew better than they did. It was liking watching a train wreck, it was hard not to watch and be amazed at his hutzpah. But this case, our Ruler, our Umpire is never wrong. Notice the area where Christ is to rule or umpire, it is our hearts. The Holy Spirit is going to let you know when your shots have landed out of bounds – and we can chose to act like John McIntyre, complaining to the Holy Spirit – “Are you blind? That was clearly the fault of the other person; that was clearly out of bounds!”, or we can respond to the Holy Spirit with the assurance that He knows how to call each and every shot.
At notice the battlefield, it is our hearts. There is not an exhortation here about using peaceful words, although that isn’t wrong but remember that – “Matt 7: 21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts “. When our words are peaceful, it does make others’ lives more agreeable with ours, but when our hearts are ruled by peace, when are on the path to find what Jesus promised, “His peace”. Your hearts is an area where no one else can see and that is the very area of the battleground. We are exhorted to have Christ’s peace there, in that hidden place that is shared by only you and God. It all begins there. And as we know, it is what comes from our hearts, from within that defines who we are. (Mark 7 21For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, 22 deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. 23 All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.”) - Verse 16 – We should be a community of the Word of Christ – letting His word dwell in us richly.
- We have to hear it, we want to hear it and we want to hear it again. – You know, most of us have some television show we make time for because we find it enjoyable. I don’t care if it is Seinfeld, or Football, or NCIS or Downton Abbey. We make the time for it and by making that time, we demonstrate something that we tend to dismiss, that we do have time for the things we value. But then if you were to ask someone if they have time to read their Bibles or do the studies that they want to do, if we are honest about it, we might say our lives are too busy. I might even be so bold as to say the same is true for coming to church. Now to say that this morning is like preaching to the choir. We are here. But I remember at one time I made a decision not to be out late on Saturday night because it impacts the time that I have at church. What decisions have we made to make sure that the Word of Christ is dwelling in us richly? What choices are we making daily to assure that we are living by God’s word? The word of God is not only going to guide you to make the right choices, but it will also direct you not to make bad choices. So it leads us away from mistakes and into makes better choices. There are a lot of verses about staying on the right path. – Ps 119:9 “How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Your word.”
- Notice the purpose of letting the Word of Christ being an integral part of your being.
- With all wisdom teaching and – there is an interactive sense of the teaching in a healthy church. Everyone is teaching one another. There is a sense in which all strive to be an influence in the lives of each other. Not with the preachy tones that sometimes come across from someone with more experience – but teaching with all wisdom doesn’t mean just what comes from live but what comes from the Word of God. It is interesting how many times we approach teaching as attempting to impart something that we learned in our youth rather than drawing on the Word of God as our source. Your source of wisdom is not that you have lived longer, but that you have seen the Word of God proved true in your live over the years of your life. It is hard not to draw upon our experiences but when we use the Word of God to understand the experiences of our lives, and we are applying the truth of God’s Word, I believe we are beginning to teach with all wisdom. It is a mistake to believe that just because you are older, that gives you the right to speak with authority. Most of us know that the older we are, the more mistakes we have made. But life, when looked at through the prism of truth and when it is understood through truth becomes an avenue to teach us about God and how He is active and living in every single moment and decision we make. My son in Law called me the other day to let me know he had passed his journeyman’s test in his trade – and we reminisced about how the Lord had led him to this point. Looking at life through God’s perspective is teaching in wisdom.
- Admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, – Synonyms for admonishing are: reproving, warning, and reprimanding. Seems a little strange to say that we are going to do that through these activities. But for me, I am warned and reproved through psalms as I examine my heart in light of the words and thoughts that we are sharing. This is why the music is such an important part of our worship.
- Singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God – So now while you are being admonished with the hymns, you are instructed to be thankful for that admonishment. You are being challenged by something and you are to be grateful for the challenge. Sounds a little like a professional athlete. Do you think that professional football players are thankful for the workouts that they endure? Not so much at the work and the practice but they understand that in order to produce the right results, they have to be put under the stress of practice during the week, so they can be more prepared for Sunday. It is often the opposite for us – we are put under the stress of rebuke on Sunday, so we can be more prepared for the week.