Clothed in Grace: Challenging, Transforming, Beautiful

Today I want to teach you a little Bible interpretation tool. Our GPS reading starts: “Therefore, as God’s choice, holy and loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience” (Col 3:12). Any time you see a “therefore,” you ought to ask yourself, “What is the therefore there for?”

Easy to remember, right? The verses of the Bible–especially those that start with “therefore”–exist in a larger context. Paul has been constructing an argument before this verse, so we should consider what he’s said up to this point. With that in mind, let’s see if we can figure out what the therefore is there for. If we look just a few verses back, here’s what we find:

“Take off the old human nature with its practices and put on the new nature, which is renewed in knowledge by conforming to the image of the one who created it. In this image there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all things and in all people.” (Col. 3:9-11)

Paul encourages us that, like clothing, we “take off” the old version of ourselves and “put on” the new version crafted by Christ himself. This new, better version is marked by a spirit of unity and love among all people. We all must consciously choose to “put on” that new self.

Therefore, in light of the new self that Christ has made in you, the verse we started with prompts us to “put on” the new wardrobe that comes with our new self: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Pretty cool, right? That’s what the therefore is there for.

Pastor Adam has been teaching us in this series on forgiveness that many people struggle to forgive themselves, finding it even harder than forgiving others. Part of the reason we struggle this way is because we forget that Christ loved us enough to forgive us. Jesus, as Paul’s metaphor goes, loved us enough to give us new “clothes”–clothes that, as Paul says in 3:14, bear the design of love, whereas our old wardrobe bore the brand of selfishness. Being able to accept this gift of love is a precursor to forgiving ourselves and then others.

But this passage is not the first time in the New Testament in which a clothing metaphor is used to describe forgiveness. In the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus is arrested in the garden, there is a strange mention of a young man. We don’t learn his name. When he tries to escape, a soldier grabs the linen cloth he wears. The young man wriggles away, fleeing naked from Gethsemane. This young man, like Adam and Eve, found himself in a garden fleeing from God naked and ashamed.

Later, as Jesus is buried, the text says Jesus is wrapped in a “linen cloth” (the only other use of that term in Mark). We’re meant to ask–was Jesus buried in that young man’s garment? And then, when Mary Magdalene, Salome, and Mary the mother of Jesus went to Christ’s tomb on the third day, they don’t find an “angel” by the empty tomb like the other Gospels. Here, it’s a “young man”–the same term used for the earlier deserter. But this “young man” is no longer naked. He is in a “white robe” and is the first to announce the news of the risen Jesus.

The text never says it directly, but the implications are powerful. A young man was stripped of his clothes as he fled from Jesus. In his death, Jesus bore the young man’s old clothes on himself, and now the young man who was afraid and vulnerable in the garden has been given glorious new clothes.

I imagine that Paul tells us, “Jesus is the one who gave you your new clothes. You can forgive yourself and put them on, not because you did anything to deserve them, but because Jesus loved you before you were even willing to love yourself.” So what will it be? Your old life of selfishness? Or your new life of love made possible by Jesus himself? If you truly want to forgive yourself and others, meditate on Jesus’ love for you and accept your new wardrobe free of charge.