10 Christlike Characteristics

Our focus today is going to be primarily verses 12 to 15, but as is sometimes necessary to maintain the context of our lesson, I like to read what comes before and what comes after so that we are able to be reminded of what we have learned and where the apostle is going in his lesson to us.

The title of today's lesson is a part two because I began this last week asking the question, who are you? And I noted last week that there are different ways that you can answer the question.

You can answer it in regard to your identity.

If I say, who are you? You can say, I am, my name is Keith, I'm Gary's son, I'm Jennifer's husband, I'm my children's father, and that speaks to my identity.

But you can also, when you ask someone, who are you? You can be speaking about the type of person that they are.

Are you trustworthy? Are you honest? Are you someone who can be counted on? Those are questions not of identity, but of character.

And what we noted last week was Paul deals both with our identity and with our character in this passage.

As far as identity, he's going to tell us and has told us that we are chosen, holy, and beloved.

That is who we are as far as our identity in Christ.

But then he goes on and says that that should affect our character.

If we are in Christ, if we are holy and beloved, then that should have a grand effect on our person.

So with that, let us stand.

We'll read beginning at verse 11, and we will read down to verse 17.

And the word of God says, here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free, but Christ is all and in all.

Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another.

And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Father in heaven, we thank you for your word.

I thank you now that you have given me yet another opportunity to preach your word.

You have sustained my life yet another day.

And Father, this is something for which I am infinitely undeserving.

And yet, Lord, you have shown great mercy, and I pray that you would extend that mercy even now to the time of preaching, that you would keep me from error, tie me to the post of your word, and do not let me depart.

I pray for those who will hear the word today, for the believer that they would be challenged, edified, corrected, rebuked if necessary, and for the unbeliever that they also, Lord, would hear the call of repentance.

And, Lord, that they might come to know Christ today.

Only you, O God, can change a heart.

So we pray that you would change hearts today through the preaching of your word.

May your spirit be the teacher.

May I decrease and Christ increase.

And may you be glorified in Jesus' name, amen.

Sometimes it is important to simply consider what we are in Christ.

In Christ, you are a child of God, whereas before you were his enemy.

In Christ, you are a new creation.

Having been dead in trespasses and sins, you have been made alive in him.

In Christ, you are chosen by God, not because of anything you did, but because of his mercy and grace.

In Christ, you are set apart.

Having been a part of this world system, having been part of the kingdom of darkness, you have been delivered and transferred into the kingdom of his beloved son.

In Christ, you are beloved.

Those are the things that we focused on last week.

Who are we in Christ? Chosen, holy, and beloved.

But this week, we are going to move on to what we should be, if in fact we are in Christ.

Because Paul is calling our attention not just to who we are, but what kind of person we should be.

I am convinced that one of the most insidious false teachings that have permeated the modern church, particularly in the last half century, is the idea that a person can be in Christ and there be no life change.

But hasn't that been the teaching? The teaching called by some carnal Christianity, or two-stage sanctification, where you are saved and then later, Christ somehow becomes valuable and Lord of your life.

This is a problem because we are called not only to identify Christ as our Savior and Lord, but we are called to live as if he is our Savior and our Lord.

It is supposed to be life-changing.

And what is our life supposed to be like? What is the change that is supposed to have come? Beloved, it is simple, really.

And I'm going to make this argument throughout the text today, but I often like to show my cards up front.

The change is that we're supposed to be like Christ.

Everything we are going to see today, and we are going to look at 10 different characteristics that Paul identifies that the believer should put on if we are in Christ.

We are going to see 10 characteristics that should mark the life of the believer.

And the reason why they should mark the life of the believer is because they mark the life of the Savior.

These 10 things would describe Christ if we had to describe Christ to someone.

And therefore, these 10 things should describe us who bear the name of Christ.

So when Paul says in verse 12, I'm sorry, excuse me, verse 12, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved.

When he says put on, this is a command.

It is in the imperative.

But what he's telling us to put on is very similar to what he has said in other places when he tells us to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because every characteristic that's going to be part of this command to put on, this new garment, if you will, this new person, this new man, what is it to be that we are to put on? It's Christ's likeness.

It's Christ's attitude and behavior and personality.

Those are our example.

Christ is Savior, but he is also our example.

He is the greatest man who ever lived, amen? Amen.

As has often been said, and I don't mean to just repeat old things, but Jesus is a man who never earned a degree and yet taught the multitudes.

He is a man who did not have a home and yet at the same time people followed him and searched after him and sought after him.

He had nothing that the world would say is something that would make someone seek after him and yet he was the man's man, the greatest man who ever lived.

Paul tells us to put on the characteristics of Christ.

He has, in our previous verses, he has given us the negative admonitions, what we ought to put off.

We ought to put off the sinful things.

We ought to put off the worldly things, the earthly things.

But now he tells us what we ought to put on.

This Greek term is also used in Ephesians chapter six.

This same word put on in the Greek is used when Paul talks about the armor of God.

Our young people just a few weeks ago, it was so cute that during church they were all wearing paper armor because in Sunday school they had taken cardboard and paper and made their helmets, they had made their breastplates, they had made their little swords and shields and they had their armor on.

They had put that on.

And Paul tells us in Ephesians six, put on the armor of God and he tells us what that armor is.

The armor of God, the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the shoes prepared with the gospel of peace, the shield of faith and the sword of the spirit.

He tells us to put those things on.

And I like teaching that because each one of those pieces of armor relates in some way to some aspect of our life of faith and we can talk about putting on salvation in the mind, setting our minds upon the fact that we have been saved, putting the breastplate of righteousness on, considering the fact that it is Christ's righteousness in fact that guards our heart because our heart is easily led astray but the righteousness of Christ protects us.

The shield of faith which quenches the fiery darts of the wicked one.

We go through that and it's easy because in our mind's eye, it's easy to picture putting on armor, especially for men because we dream about that kind of stuff.

We dream about getting ready for battle.

You know, when you're six, seven, eight years old, every stick you pick up is a sword or a gun.

My son brought me two sticks the other day.

It was a stick this long and a stick this long and he put them as a cross and I thought he was showing me a cross.

No, he wanted a sword.

He wanted his hilt and the sword.

He said, put a screw right there.

Put a screw through this and make me a sword because he wants to go to battle.

I don't know what with but he wants to go and go to battle.

It's natural.

We want to fight for good and so putting on the armor of God is a picture we can all relate to.

It's an easy picture in our mind but when I tell you to put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, nobody comes a running.

Nobody gets excited about this outfit but it's the same outfit, just different words.

In fact, I'm gonna show in a few moments how Paul comparatively uses this same language throughout his writings because this is what we are to be like.

This is what we are to put on.

This is the outfit that the believer should wear and so I said there were 10 things and there are 10 things and Lord, help me.

I'm gonna try to get through all 10 today.

There's a lot of them because some of them could be a whole sermon by themselves but I don't want us to miss the context of all of this held together because all of these, again, as I have said, are Christ-likeness.

All of this is each one, you say this, you point to Christ, you say this, you point to Christ and each one of these could be that and I don't want us to miss the forest for the trees but the first five, as we've already said, are compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience and I'm gonna come back and talk about each one a little bit more in detail but I want you to look then at verse 13, bearing with one another, that's number six.

To bear with one another is another characteristic that should mark us.

Number seven is forgiving each other.

That's another characteristic is forgiveness.

So we have five qualities and two behaviors and then we have a preeminent characteristic, love.

Notice verse 14, it says above all these, put on love.

So that's number eight and then we get to number nine, which is peace and number 10, which is thankfulness.

So if you go down the list, that's 10 things, 10 characteristics that ought to mark us as believers in Christ because they mark Christ.

10 things that we should put on because our Savior wore them well.

So let's go back now and let's begin to talk about them.

Let's talk about these 10 things.

The first one is compassionate hearts.

It says in the ESV, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts.

Now this is one of the times that the English does not always carry the full weight of the idea that is in the original language.

The King James actually does a decent job of better capturing what the original says because the King James says at this point that we are to put on bowels of mercy.

Yes, I see a few of you are giving me a look like why, you know, compassionate hearts and bowels of mercy don't seem to be the same thing but we have to understand what is being translated at this point, what's being translated at this point is the word splatna.

Now that doesn't sound very nice, it's not.

It is the word for bowels.

And the reason why splatna is used here by the Apostle Paul is because Paul is speaking here in the idea of the emotional.

And understand this, in the ancient world, they didn't talk about emotions of the heart.

They talked about emotions of the bowels.

The heart was actually more considered to be an intellectual thing.

We believe with all of our what? Our heart.

So the heart was more tied to the intellect in the ancient world and the bowels were tied to the emotion.

And the reason the bowels were tied to the emotion, at least in my limited knowledge of how things worked in the past and how things work even today, is because our bowels are often affected by our emotions.

Have you ever gotten butterflies? Where do you get them? Do you get them in your head or your stomach? You get them in your stomach, right? When you're nervous, where do you get upset? You get upset in your stomach.

Your emotions can affect your body and often your emotions affect your body and your bowels.

And everybody's like, okay, pastor, we get it.

Quit saying bowels.

But it's important to understand that the seed of the intellect is the heart in the ancient world, but the seed of the emotions is the bowels.

And Paul is here speaking of an emotional quality that should mark believers.

That we should actually be compassionate.

Or as the King James says, merciful in our bowels.

Merciful is the idea that's here.

Compassionate is the idea that is here.

And beloved, I am sad to say that it is very often the case that even as believers in Christ, we have the problem of lacking compassion.

We often lack mercy.

Because you know what we want? Justice.

We want mercy for me, but we want justice for thee.

And when we wrong someone, we want that person to forgive us.

I said I was sorry, what else could you possibly want? But when someone wrongs us, boy, they gotta paint our house and wash our car, and they gotta pay us back tenfold.

And then we might, if the weather's right, give them an inkling of mercy.

Paul says as believers, we are to be merciful.

And again, I'm gonna keep going back to this, so just be prepared.

Why? Because Christ has been merciful to us.

This should mark us, beloved.

Mercy should mark us.

And sadly, it often doesn't.

I was thinking about this a lot last night as I stayed up late after the kids had gone to bed, and I was rereading my notes, and I was adding in a few thoughts here and there.

And I began to think how often people will jettison relationships in the body for reasons that are really unreasonable and ultimately unmerciful.

The church has two doors.

The church has the entranceway where many come, but sadly, there is a backdoor where many go.

And the exit door is almost always lined with the same sign.

I'm tired of it.

I'm tired of this person.

Or I'm tired of that preacher.

Or I'm tired of this.

Or I'm tired of that.

And we no longer want to extend mercy or understanding, but we want to get out.

I'm gonna jump real quick.

This is what kept me up last night as I was thinking about this one.

Go with me just very quickly to verse 13.

We'll come back.

But notice the first word in the verse 13 here.

It is the word bearing with one another.

Now, Brother Andy and Brother Mike did several weeks on the one another's in Sunday school.

Those are still available on Sermon Audio.

And if you want to hear their teaching on this, they both did some teaching.

And the bearing with one another and forgiving each other is an entire, I think Mike did a couple lessons on forgiveness.

So there's more that can be said about these things and certainly should be.

But I want you to understand that the first five things we see are actually consumed in the sixth one.

Because going back, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience are all consumed in the idea of bearing with one another.

Because what does it mean to bear with one another? To bear with one another is to endure a difficulty or a difference between you and someone else and continue to love them through that difference.

This doesn't deal necessarily with sin because sin is what brings about the need for forgiveness.

But this isn't the same.

Even though forbearance and forgiveness are similar, they're not necessarily the same.

Because you can be doing me no sin and yet I could still have to put up with you.

Thank you, Mike, thank you.

Somebody amen that.

Because the strong have to bear with the weak.

Isn't this what the Bible says? You who are strong bear with those who are weak.

The introvert has to bear with the extrovert.

And I won't mention any names, but there are some of you who don't like the way I am because I'm like this and you are not.

And you have to bear with my extroversion, with your introversion.

The organized have to bear with the disorganized.

We're gonna get there.

I'm gonna go through a few more of these and see which one really just strikes you.

The intellectual has to bear with the simple.

I'm not saying stupid.

No one in here is stupid.

But there are those who are a little more intellectual, there are those who are a little more simple, and those, they have to bear with one another.

The logical has to bear with the emotional.

Often this is the issue in a marriage.

Not because all men are logical and all women are emotional.

It can be the other way around.

You can have a man who's highly emotional and a woman who's highly logical.

It's not that, but there's often a part where there is the intellectual, or I'm sorry, the logical and the emotional have to bear with one another.

It's the heart versus the bowels, right? The tidy has to bear with the sloppy.

The free spirit has to bear with the persnickety.

The humorous has to bear with the uptight.

I could go on and on.

You understand, we do this all the time with people whom we love.

Because if I walk down all six of my children, I could say, here are things I bear with in my daughters.

Here are things I bear with in my son.

Here are things I bear with in my wife.

Why? Because I love them.

I love them, so I bear with them in our differences.

And sometimes those differences are grand and widespread.

But I love them, so I bear with them.

And then we come to the body of Christ and we refuse to bear with one another.

You say, well, I have to do it with my kids.

I have to do it with my wife.

Well, no, you don't have to.

You do it because you love them.

Beloved, this passage is about the church.

The one another passages in the Bible are all pointed to the relationship within the body.

And we are a body that is supposed to love one another.

Therefore, Paul tells us, if we are to be Christ-like in this relationship, we are to bear with one another.

What does that look like? At first, it's showing mercy.

Going back now to verse 12.

It's compassionate hearts.

Do we care for each other? Do we care? That there are people in the body who right now are suffering tremendous health difficulties.

We say we do.

But how do we show care? Do we care that certain members of our church are experiencing a blessing beyond measure? A new child, a new grandbaby.

We say, yes, we care.

But how do we show that we care? Is it mere words? Or do we have compassionate hearts? Do we long to show mercy to one another? When someone offends us, are we willing to be offended and that be all? Or must we have our pound of flesh? Must we go and ensure that that person receives the punishment due the crime? Another issue I see in the church today, and I'm not talking just about us, I see this in the church at large, but this has been an issue here.

And I was praying about, thinking about how I wanted to say things today, and I wanna be very careful.

Certainly don't wanna point out individual specific issues, but there is a reality where one of the battles that I have fought, and I believe Mike and Andy would agree, because they fight in the trenches too, is that those who are easily offended, they're easily offended.

So if something is said in a way that they don't think it should be said, or done in a way that they don't think it should be done, no mercy is extended.

I must have my pound of flesh.

I must have my word heard.

I must be satisfied.

I can't simply be merciful.

Do we have compassionate hearts? Again, I said each one of these could be a sermon.

I could spend the rest of the time talking about this.

I am gonna move on, but this is an area, I said, but when I prayed, I always pray for believers and unbelievers, and I said believers ought to be prepared today to be confronted, and if need be, rebuked.

Because if we do not have compassionate hearts, if we do not show mercy to those who are different, who have different of opinion, who have different positions on things that we can agree to disagree about, if we can have no mercy, then we are never going to see anything but a revolving back door.

The second thing on the list is kindness.

The first is bowels of mercy, compassionate hearts, splachna.

The second, though, is a little simpler in that it is the word kindness.

Now, I must mention something, and I want to be clear, and sometimes this is as clear as mud, so this is gonna be a little tough.

We often confuse kindness with niceness, and you can scour the pages of Scripture and you won't find, at least in the more, maybe you'll find it in the message or one of the passion translation, but you won't find a call to be nice, and you say, well, what's the difference between being nice and being kind? The best illustration I can give you, if you're cheating on your wife, and I say, hey, brother, it's good to see you, I'm gonna be nice to you, never say a word to you about it, that might be nice, but it's not kind.

Because kindness would actually address your sin.

Love would be kind where lack of desire for confrontation will be nice.

Love will be kind, but lack of desire for confrontation will be nice.

Now, I will say this, I like nice people.

I don't like jerks.

I don't like it when people are being jerks.

I don't like to be a jerk myself, and when somebody tells me you're being a jerk, I try to fix it.

Because there's no benefit in being the person no one wants to be around.

But when we're called to kindness, we're not being called to plain old niceness.

We're being called to action.

Because the word here, kindness, actually means to provide something beneficial.

It means to actually do an act of kindness, to act in a way that benefits someone.

See, nice is words, kindness is action.

We're doing what people need done.

There's kindness is an action, and this marks the believer, or should.

The third thing on the list is humility.

And again, I keep going back to Christ.

Christ had a compassionate heart.

Christ was kind.

You know Christ was even kind to the Pharisees? By calling them to repentance, by saying you brood of vipers, by saying you whitewashed tombs, Christ was actually being kinder to them than all of their followers who never said anything to them.

Christ was the kindest man who ever lived.

And thirdly, he was the most humble man.

Humility.

Now I know somebody's gonna say, wait a minute, the Bible says Moses is the most humble man, but I think in this regard, talking about Solomon being wise, Moses being humble, Jesus is the earmark for these.

And humility here.

Humility is tough, because what's interesting, this particular Greek word, Paul actually translates, this same word is used in chapter two of Colossians in the negative, because he talks about false humility.

If you go back to 2.18, he talks about, don't be falsely humble, what's the same word.

But the context is where we get the idea of whether it's false humility or true humility.

And some people have false humility.

But Paul is not calling us to false humility, he's calling us to true lowliness.

And what is humility in this context? Humility is putting yourself lower and putting others higher.

That's what humility is.

Humility is the self-abasement and doing so without arrogance.

Like the man who says, I'm the most humble man you've ever met.

Well, yeah, right there, you win the prize for ignorance.

When you say, I'm the most humble man you've ever met.

We're called to be humble, we're called to be meek.

This is number four.

And the word meekness here, the only way I can help understand this, because I have trouble with meekness.

I mean, yes, but what I mean is I have trouble defining it.

Because I think some people think that meekness is somebody who is weak.

The person who has no spine and the limp wrist.

That's not meekness, that's weakness.

They're not the same.

Meekness is power under control, not lack of power.

And so when we talk about meekness, we're not saying that we are to be effeminate men, but we are to be men whose power is under control.

We have the capacity for great strength, but that great strength is under control.

And the best way I can give you this is to give you the same word is translated in Galatians chapter five.

The only difference is this is the root.

The root is the same, but this word is slightly different, but it's the same root, it's the same idea.

And when the translators translated in Galatians, they translated as gentle.

Meekness is gentleness.

We used to have a word.

What do we call a man who was a good man? A gentleman, he was a gentleman.

That did not mean he was weak.

That meant he was a man who had his strength under control.

He was a gentleman.

He was a man who knew how to pull out a seat for a lady and open a car door, he was a gentleman.

But he was also a man who could stand between that woman and a dangerous man and be a ferocious tiger because he was a man, you see? Because I don't want you to think, I don't want you to see these five characteristics and think that these five characteristics are me telling you men to go out today and bend your wrist and weaken your back and become an effeminate little girl.

No, we're not calling for that.

We're calling for genuine manhood and genuine manhood is Christ-likeness and Christ-likeness is strong manhood.

Power under control.

And finally, number five, patience.

It's one of my favorite Greek words because the Greek word is macrothumia.

Macrothumia, macro meaning big or large and thumos meaning hot.

And you say, well, large, hot, how does that, that's not what it, the word means long-suffering or long, it takes long for the man to get hot.

That's the idea of patience.

You ever heard somebody who they says he has a quick temper or a short fuse? That's the opposite of macrothumia.

That's microthumia.

There's no fuse.

He's hot in an instant.

You see, these characteristics point to a man who has a fuse but it's long.

He has strength but it's controlled.

He has power but he also has mercy.

This is Christ, this is Christ to us and this is what we should be if Christ is in us.

We should be compassionate, kind, meek and patient and humble.

And just for a moment, I just wanna show you a comparison.

If you look at Colossians 3, 12, which is the verse we just looked at and you look at Galatians 5, 22 and 23, you will see that there are many similarities and I even color coded a few of them, many similarities between what Paul is commanding us to put on and what we have as a fruit of the Spirit when the Spirit comes to live within us.

The fruit of the Spirit is the result of the Holy Spirit coming into our heart, living in our heart and changing our lives and the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Against such things there is no law.

That's the fruit of the Spirit and Paul is telling us essentially to put those things on.

Make the fruit of the Spirit your life's description.

And you see the word meekness is in yellow and I put gentleness in yellow because it's basically the same word.

Slightly different ending but the same word.

And kindness and patience come into both.

These five qualities should mark the man of God.

They certainly should mark how we treat one another because this again is about one another.

So moving on to verse 13, we get again to number six which we've already talked about, bearing with one another.

How willing are you to bear with the faults of another? How willing are you really to bear with the faults of another? And then number seven, forgiving each other.

And as I said, this could be an entire sermon and we do need to learn forgiveness.

We do need to learn it better.

But notice just for a moment how it words it.

It says that we are to bear with one another and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, forgiving each other.

As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

So as I said, bearing with one another doesn't necessarily deal with wrongdoing because we can just be different and have to bear with one another.

Doesn't mean you're wrong and I'm right, it just means we're different and we bear with each other's differences.

Sometimes they're faults, yes, but ultimately they're differences.

And let me just say one more thing about that.

These things just keep flooding into my mind as I think about this.

All of the demands within the body of conformity.

My house does it this way and if your house doesn't do it that way, you're wrong and we all wanna judge each other that way.

We all want to live as the standard.

When Christ is the standard, not you and not your home.

If it's not a sin, we should bear with one another.

And if it is a sin, we should go to one another privately, bring a private rebuke with the hopes that the person will repent and when they repent, we forgive them.

What magic is that? What power is there in that? That's the model for church life.

A model which has sadly been not followed.

No forgiveness, no forbearance.

To forgive someone deals specifically with a wrong having been done.

And I wanna say this about forgiveness and I'm gonna pair it a little bit of what Brother Mike said in his lesson.

As I said, he went much longer than I will.

But it's important to understand that when we talk about forgiveness, forgiveness is not emotional.

Even though there is emotion in forgiveness, don't get me wrong, we can get emotional in forgiving someone.

But people will say, you know, I'm having trouble forgiving, I'm having trouble getting over it, I'm having trouble with the emotions of forgiving.

Forgiveness is transactional.

Forgiveness is transactional because forgiveness from a biblical standpoint, the word forgiveness deals with the idea of a debt and clearing of a debt.

And we still use that language today because you all heard about what the government wanted to do with student loans, right? What did they call it? Student loan forgiveness.

What did that mean? Did that mean that we're gonna go at everybody and say, we're glad you're sorry? No.

They're gonna say, your debt is wiped clean.

That's what the idea of forgiveness is.

No more debt.

The debt's over.

And when we forgive someone, that is supposed to be the alleviation of the debt they had against us.

They have wronged us, they have sinned us, they have done evil toward us, and they have sought forgiveness from us, and we give them that forgiveness.

We wipe the debt.

Now, I'm gonna tell you, that's the hardest thing in the world.

When somebody's really wronged you, it's easy to talk about in the, when you ain't wronged.

It's easy to talk about in the, I can't find the word, but the theoretical.

It's easy to talk about in the theoretical.

It's hard when it's practical.

And it's easy to tell someone else to do.

Yeah, that person hurt you, you should forgive them.

But then when it's you who's gotta do the forgiving.

When it's you who's supposed to be wiping the debt.

We don't wanna do that, it's hard.

So understand that I'm not saying anything today is easy.

Compassionate hearts isn't easy.

Justice is easy.

Mercy is hard.

Kindness is not easy.

Being a jerk is easy.

It is very easy to just lash out.

Being kind is hard.

Pride is easy.

Humility is hard.

You go down the list.

The opposite is easy, because it's the flesh.

It's what we want.

So we're called to forgive.

Forgiveness is hard.

And there's so much more I wanna say about this.

Let me, I wanna answer one question, because this question comes up all the time.

And someone says, well, if a person does not repent, if a person doesn't repent, or doesn't seek my forgiveness, then must I forgive them? And this may come as a shock to you.

Because the natural, the world has come to this idea that, yes, you just forgive regardless.

But the Bible actually does have a different standard.

The biblical standard is that the person should repent if there is forgiveness and reconciliation.

And if they refuse to repent, we, here's what, here's our responsibility.

We stand ready to forgive.

But until the reconciliation is done, there is not a completion in that transaction.

That's why I said it's not emotional, it's transactional.

And R.C.

Sproul said it like this, and I really like this, so maybe this will help.

R.C.

Sproul said, a man steals my watch.

And he comes to me wearing my watch.

And he says, I'm sorry for stealing your watch.

And he walks away wearing my watch.

He's not forgiven.

Because he's still got my watch.

Now, I thought that was funny, but here's the point.

We are called not to be bitter.

And bitterness is a sin.

So I'm not telling you to hold a grudge.

But what I am saying is the forgiveness, the full act of forgiveness, which includes reconciliation, is not done until the reconciliation is done.

So what, what do we do? We stand ready to forgive.

And the best story in the Bible is told from Jesus himself.

When he said a young man took his father's inheritance, and he went and squandered it in a faraway land.

And he ended up in the pig slop.

And remember the story? If you don't, look at Mike's van.

It's printed on the side of his van, prodigal son drywall.

And the prodigal son comes back.

And what does the prodigal son meet when he comes back to his father? Does he meet a man who wants his pound of flesh? Does he meet a man unwilling to take him and return him to where he was? Does he meet a man who's gonna force him into the slave quarters? No, he doesn't even get to meet the father.

The father meets him, and mercy came running.

Used to be a song, mercy came running like a prisoner set free, remember that? Mercy came running.

When that person comes to us in repentance, we should embrace them in forgiveness.

We should embrace them in forgiveness.

This is a printout of something Mike gave me.

And he told this story in Sunday school.

So I won't belabor it, but this is a story which happened, and it was told at a Southern Baptist convention a few years ago, and it's the story of Chris Carrier.

Chris Carrier, at the age of 10 years old, was kidnapped.

He was stabbed, shot in the head, and left for dead in the Florida Everglades.

He survived, miraculously.

Miraculously made it.

Two decades later, his attacker confessed, and Carrier went to him, not to get his pound of flesh, but to share the gospel with him.

Now, most of us have been wronged, but few of us have been stabbed and shot.

He didn't want his pound of flesh.

He wanted the man who did it to know Jesus.

That's the heart that Paul's calling us to.

Paul is calling us to a heart that says, yes, I've been wronged, but I stand ready to forgive.

Do we really do that? Do we stand ready to forgive those who have wronged us, or do we seek justice? The last three, I'm gonna go through very quickly, as I do wanna show you how all these 10 hold together.

He says, in the next one, he says, above all these, put on love.

Everything I've said today is based on this.

Love.

Love shows mercy.

Love is meek.

Love is kind.

Love is patient.

Love forbears and forgives, and beloved, love brings peace and thankfulness, which is what it says, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

You know what doesn't bring peace? Demanding your way.

Demanding that you're always right.

Demanding that you receive justice rather than giving mercy.

That doesn't bring peace.

It brings drama and turmoil and anger and hatred.

12 years ago, there was a family in the church.

Some things happened.

Some disagreements were had.

Anger against me personally.

Byron Starkweather was one of our elders.

He acted as a mediator to try to fix the problem because there was some disagreement.

So we met at Richard Taylor's house.

Richard Taylor was another elder.

We met at the house.

The family sat across from me, and we talked through the issue, and I'll never forget, it wasn't that night.

That night, I thought we settled it, but it didn't.

Just a few days later, a member of the family said, I will never forgive you.

I wanna tell you, I didn't.

If I told you what it was, you'd probably think it was very small, but on this person's radar, it was very big.

And to have somebody look you in the face and say, I'll never forgive you.

Beloved, that's not the heart we're supposed to have if we're in Christ, and that's not who we are to be if we are the church.

We are to be long-suffering, love one another as Christ has loved us.

Are we perfect? No, it's why we need Jesus.

It's why we need salvation.

It's why we need the gospel, because every week, we fail, and every week, we need to come back and be reminded of what has been done for our sin.

So now, we're gonna turn our attention to the table and be reminded of why we can never hold back forgiveness, because Christ has not held back forgiveness from us.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for your word, and I thank you so much for your forgiveness, that while we may hold back forgiveness here, you have not held back forgiveness from us, and you've taught us to forgive and to forbear and to be meek and patient and kind and loving and compassionate.

And Lord, I pray that this would mark us all as followers of Christ.

And Lord, where we fail, Lord, where we fail, please correct us in our hearts.

And give us your mercy.

In Jesus' name.