Episode 558: Ep 558 - The Art of Forgiveness

And we're in verse 13.

And I love this because Paul is, he's building on a principle that because we are chosen by God and beloved by God, and that we are children of God, and that we are made holy by God, then we should allow that to produce certain kinds of organic fruit in our lives.

and the way that we treat one another.

And basically, he's speaking here about our relationships within the church.

Now, obviously, I'm gone a bunch throughout the year.

And so we have a Wednesday night study that we have that really has become, I hesitate to even say this, but it's almost like a little house church.

And we've got about 40 or 50 people that come to this faithfully, and they're there because they want depth.

They want to study the Word of God together.

But I'm going to tell you something.

God the Holy Spirit has created a synergy, a unity, a love within this small little group of people that is very much acting out some of the things that we're talking about here in Colossians chapter 3.

So he's talking about the church here.

He says in verse 13, "...bearing with one another and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone, just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you." Now, I don't know about you, but the more you interact with people, you know, the initial meeting with meeting someone is, oh, great.

Good to meet you.

What's up, brother? Oh, everything's great.

But if you spend any amount of time with them over time, you're going to find out there's some things about them that kind of irritate me, to be honest.

You know, things that maybe I irritate them about as well.

but you're going to have conflict.

You're going to have friction in relationships with people.

And that happens in the church.

God knows that.

We're human beings, right? We're not perfect.

And he says, so bear with one another.

What does it mean to bear with each other? Well, It's a little bit similar to what he says over in verse 12 when he says to have patience.

I think he's talking about patience in a general sense, but also patience in the sense of, hey, be patient with each other.

And the idea of forbearance, translated bearing with one another, is very similar to patience, but this has more to do, I think, with interpersonal relationships.