Matthew F. McKellar, Professor of Preaching and George W. Truett Chair of Ministry at Southwestern Seminary, preached from Colossians 3:12-17, in SWBTS Chapel on March 6, 2025.
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The Harvard Business Review did a series of articles on businesses that had undergone a major change in leadership, either in their executive leadership or in new ownership, and they were tracking those businesses over a period of time to try to understand what led to the transformation under those new leaders. And they mentioned new metrics. They mentioned all this business stuff, like new market shares, blah, blah, blah, but at the end of the day, even in a secular situation, listen to what they concluded. In the end, they concluded it is the infusion of a higher purpose that guides decision making and clarifies every day task that has propelled these businesses to new levels of success.
I want to talk to you this morning about being under the new ownership of Jesus and in particular, modeling the gentleness of Jesus, and really what secular pundits acknowledge, the thrust of that in an even higher, spiritual, more significant way, is found precisely in the little book of Colossians. So turn with me there to chapter three, the book of Colossians. We’ll look at the background of verses 12 through 17. But really, as I said, the whole thrust, the whole thrust is Colossians, is the idea that in Christ, we become new creatures, right? We are identifying with him in his death and in his resurrection, he infuses a new and a higher purpose, not just a purpose, but a power, the power of the Holy Spirit. And by the power of the Holy Spirit, we live this new life for His glory. Now, when you go back and look at the chapters in this letter to the church at Colossae, you think about chapter one, and it’s that sweeping celebration of the supremacy of Jesus.
You might say that whole chapter is allotting of the ownership, or of the lordship of the of Jesus Christ. And then you get into chapter two. There’s the Colossian heresy. People are caught up in externals. And do you remember what Paul says? He says, Hey, as you have received Christ, Jesus is Lord. Continue to walk in him. So it’s that idea of identification. You’ve received Christ, you’ve identified with him on the basis of His death and His resurrection. Now continue to walk in light of that new identity. And then you get to chapter three, an awareness and an application of the new ownership of the Lord Jesus results in the fact that there are virtues to put off. There are vices to put off, and there are virtues to put on. It’s like this massive wardrobe makeover for the person that’s under the ownership of Jesus.
Well, then when we move to Chapter three and the first 11 verses, the immediate context, notice with me for a moment the expansion in these verses of that thought in Colossians, two, six and seven. So then, just as you have received Christ, Jesus as Lord, continue to walk in Him, being rooted and built up in him and established in faith, just as you were taught and overflowing with gratitude that whole idea, those verses are going to be amplified, magnified in the rest of chapter three, for instance, look at verses one through five, and there we are reminded of the new perspective that believers have. If you’ve been raised with Christ, then seek the things that are above, set your mind on the above things and then put to death. Put to death all those vices of your former life. It’s pretty good model, isn’t it? How should I live?
Seek, set, put to death. That’s worth memorizing. What’s my perspective in following Jesus, seek, set focus on the above things and put to death anything that displeases Him, interesting. And then when we get beyond verse five, you’re introduced to this. Put off and put on. Idea that makeover for those who are under the Lordship of Jesus. And so that sets us up as we come to our focal text today, verses 12 through 17, new ownership. We’re under new ownership, new Lordship, the Lordship of Jesus. And then we’re going to take a special look today at this idea of the gentleness of Jesus.
But I want you to think with me about two key words, because really this sums up what’s going on in the next few verses in 12 through 17. First, think with me about the word cultivate, and then the word climate, cultivate and climate, we are to cultivate certain virtues, certain aspects which, by the way, are reflections of Jesus. Think about the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such thing, there is no law. Dr MacGorman used to remind us in Greek class that society does not have to pass legislation to protect citizens from the outgrowth of the work of the Holy Spirit. Isn’t that great? Can you imagine getting pulled over and someone saying, Sorry, you’re busted for gentleness. Got to take you to the police station. Sorry, we got to take you in for kindness too kind. Can’t do that anymore. No.
Society is blessed. Society is encouraged by the light of God’s love and the power of the Holy Spirit. And so think about with me for a few moments, this idea of cultivation. Now, as we look at the text, notice there’s a five fold putting on here. And all of these five virtues, they function in conjunction. Okay, they all fit together. They are all connected. And notice what Paul writes on the basis of your conversion and your current status as believers, Colossians. What is that current status? Well, your elect. That’s a wonderful doctrine. It’s too bad we argue about the concept of election so much. It’s really a family doctrine, isn’t it? Oh, how I love Jesus. Why? Because he first loved me. He was thinking about me before I thought about him. And these believers, you’re chosen, you’re set apart, and you are greatly loved.
So on the basis of that, here’s what you do, you put on compassion. I always like to pronounce that Greek word. It sounds so important. It sounds really powerful. Isn’t that great? It means entrails, guts. Bows of mercy, deep, heartfelt emotion. There is a place for heartfelt, emotional feeling. And by the way, everything that’s going on this text is very much in a corporate context, in a community context, listen, Satan cruises the high seas looking for professing Christians who are attempting to travel solo, and he aims to take you out far too much today We emphasize individualism, isolation. I can hide behind my keyboard in my home. No, we live the Christian life in community with one another, and in that context, there’s got to be a place for heartfelt compassion.
Closely connected to that is that that kindness that’s been covered this semester, the kindness, the graciousness, the charity reflected in the Lord Jesus, then that word humility, basically self forgetfulness, focusing so much on others, I forget about myself. Don’t think about myself. And if you think about it, it fits beautifully with gentleness, doesn’t it? When you hear the word harsh, you think about the word arrogant. Arrogant people are harsh. Humble people are gentle. And then there’s this word patience. I’ll come back to gentleness in just a moment. Patience a compound Greek word macro Tomas, long heated. Sometimes we say long fused. Isn’t that a beautiful idea?
In most cases, not all this word is used with connection to the relationships we have with people, and too often in our relationships with other people, we’re not long fused. We’re more like a hair trigger. We pop off at the slightest provocation. Somebody ruffles our feathers and boom, it’s an all out verbal assault. Well. Paul, this concept of patience, I want you to see, is really connected to gentleness, generous, sometimes translated meekness. In Numbers, 12, three Moses is meek, isn’t he? In Second Corinthians, 10, one. What does Paul do? He’s dealing with those troubled, difficult Corinthians, and he says, I entreat you, according to the fact that I’m an apostle and I have authority over you. Nope. I entreat you according to the gentleness of Christ. I look in my Bible and I find the Lord Jesus Himself. What does he say? Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart. Almost 200 years ago, George Bethune wrote,
There is no grace so under appreciated, so under applied, less prayed for, and less cultivated than that of gentleness too often. He went on to write, it’s treated as an extension of external manners or basic societal kindness. Seldom, if ever, do people think about the fact that failing to be gentle is to commit sin. Isn’t that stunning? When’s the last time you asked the Lord to make you more gentle? When’s the last time you hit your knees and said, Lord, I gotta confess. I committed, I committed verbal homicide. I committed a relational wreck. There gentleness is so neglected. What is it? It’s a word that speaks of harnessed strength, of strength under control. It’s a picture of the beautiful balance of the Holy Spirit of Almighty God. You know, I was reading one commentator, and basically what you discover, with gentleness in the Bible a lot of times when it’s used, it’s used in a context of conflict.
And let me tell you, if you’re in ministry for any period of time, you’re going to deal with conflict. You’re going to deal with people in ministry that are messed up, broken up, divided, that are dealing with a plethora of problems. And you’ve got to address those things with gentleness. You know, this morning, I said both to our provost and to our president, one thing I appreciate about those men is that they modeled this virtue of gentleness. One commentator says, gentleness, when it’s expressed, comes in this package, a person goes to his fellow believer, and he addresses and criticizes the behavior of that fellow believer in such a way that the criticism is not viewed as condemnation. Instead, it’s viewed as constructive help.
I’ll try that one on for a minute. I’m afraid too often when it comes to this virtue of gentleness, we have just succumbed to the status of our society. I don’t have to tell y’all there is a crisis of civility in our culture. Just drive the freeways in Dallas Fort Worth. But here’s what’s even more pathetic about it. Just get on Twitter or social media for a little bit and watch the Christians bite and devour each other. I mean, what’s up with that? I’ll tell you what’s up with that, a failure to apply and to obey the Word of God. You got a problem with somebody? That’s going to happen, we’re going to have conflict, we’re going to have misunderstanding, we’re going to have disagreements. Those things are inevitable.
But look modeling the gentleness of Jesus speaks of a harnessed control. Strength under control. I don’t have to say everything. I don’t have to fix this in a nanosecond. I can speak to it in the power of the Holy Spirit, with a balance that comes from the Holy Spirit that is gentleness. Now notice what happens in our text. You’ve got two participles that expand and amplify how we exercise those five fold and. Uh, that five fold list there, including Jonas. Look at it, bearing with one another. A good translation would be putting up with one another, tolerating one another. Let’s just put the cookies down here on the bottom shelf. Maybe it doesn’t sound spiritual, but some days in ministry and some days within the walls of your own family, you’re just having to tolerate each other. You’re putting up with one another, you’re bearing with one another. That’s the idea. And then look at that other word literally in the Greek New Testament, gracing one another Isn’t that beautiful? Forgiving one another.
Listen to me. God has so much more to forgive in you and me than we have to forgive in the person who has done us the greatest wrong. So one of the reasons that people don’t model and practice gentleness is because they take for granted the great grace in God’s forgiving of them. Look at it forgiving one another. If anyone has grievance against another, just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also are to forgive. And then notice the belt that ties it all together, putting on love, the perfect bond of unity. So we are to cultivate these things. All right, let’s move to the next word, climate. If you were to ask me, okay, Matthew, in what climate can these virtues you’ve just talked about, be best cultivated. Where can they flourish? Glad you asked, because Paul gives us a series of what amounts to imperative commands that give us a picture of that proper environment. We are to let the peace of Christ rule.
We’re to let the word of Christ dwell. We’re to do all that we do in the name of Christ. And you see how that’s connected to gentleness. It gets pretty practical. I remember reading years ago a great little book. If you haven’t read it, you need to pick it up, Memoirs of an ordinary pastor. It’s D A Carson’s book about his father, who was a Baptist pastor in Quebec, French speaking, pastored small, seemingly obscure churches for many, many years. Was very faithful. Listen to what he wrote about his dad. Dad was never very famous. Dad never pastored a large church, but dad was a gracious man. He wasn’t good at putting people down, except on his prayer list. Isn’t that sweet to be known as that kind of person?
He wasn’t very good at putting people down, except on his prayer list man. I think about the, the picture we have in Scripture, the stooping sovereignty of God. I think about the the shepherd who leads his flock gently in Isaiah, chapter 41 I think about Jesus, the Shepherd, who looks upon the masses of people and acknowledges that they are like sheep without a shepherd, and he has compassion on them. Well, in what climate is that kind of mindset cultivated? Well, let’s look at it. First of all, it’s, it’s a, it’s an arbitrated climate.
Let the peace of Christ, let it rule. That word rule is an athletic term. It means to preside as Judge, to adjudicate, we might say, to umpire, you see, what we want to do is to be control freaks, and we want to manipulate and and fine tune all of the circumstances and situations so so they work out like we want them to. And the Word of God says, Let the Let the peace of Christ adjudicate and umpire. Let it be the determiner. What is the peace of Christ? Well, it’s what Jesus has achieved in your behalf and mine, through His finished work on the cross, through the shed blood of Jesus, there’s a cessation of hostilities. The Lord is no longer at enmity with me. And not only is there a cessation of hostility, what else there is the assurance of pardon and moment by moment, presence through the filling of the Holy Spirit in my life.
Let that peace the ongoing, moment by moment, awareness of the peace that’s been achieved by Christ. Let that be the determiner that. In your relationships with people, yes, well, notice how you have this repetition in these last few verses of the concept of being thankful. You’re going to see it again and again and be thankful and be thankful and be thankful. Listen to me. Gentle people are not thankful. Prideful people aren’t thankful. They think they did it all on their own. Gracious and gentle people are thankful people you want to work with, thankful people you want to be around, people that are garrisoned in their lives by a spirit of gratitude that manifests the Spirit of God. So it’s an arbitrated rule. And then I want you to see it’s a saturated rule. Look at the second command here. Let the word of Christ. What’s the word of Christ?
Well, we know it’s a synonym for the gospel. Look at chapter one, verse five and verse 25 the word of Christ, the Gospel, everything that relates to the good news in Jesus, everything it’s inexhaustible. Let the word of Christ dwell, not just come for a visit, not just stay overnight, but dwell, be at home, permanent lodging and house it to dwell richly, overflowing. It’s interesting here that the focus of the imperative in the text is on the fact that believers are to allow themselves to be acted on by the word of God. They are to open themselves up to this cultivation. Well, how am I going to be a gentle person? I’ve got to be saturated with the Word of God. That means that you may need to shut down social media and take a pause from Facebook so that you can saturate yourself in Holy Scripture, because apart from that kind of saturation, you’re never going to live out the gentleness commanded here.
40 years ago, this summer, I was enrolled in theological German It was hot that summer. It was in the basement of Scarborough Hall, and I was down there one day, and there’s this pretty big guy. Looked like he could have been a football player, and he’s talking. And we talked for a little bit, and ended up spending that whole summer in German class, which was an experience in itself. No kidding, we started with about 55 people, and by the end of the summer, we were under 30. I mean, it was shrinking down. But you know, one thing I noticed about that guy, when we had a break or if we went to lunch, he always has had these index cards in his back pocket, and he was thumbing through them. And so I finally stopped and asked him one day, I said, What are you? What are you doing with those cards? Are those German cards? You working on vocabulary? And he was a little reticent.
He said, No, no, he said. He said, Actually, I’m just trying to do this to to memorize more Scripture. And I write out a few verses a day on a on a card, and I just carry him with me. And when I have a moment, you know, I just thumbed through that guy’s name was Steve Gaines. And Steve, of course, went on to pastor in Gardendale, Alabama, and now Bellevue, Baptist Church in Memphis, has been a friend for many years, and one of the keys, one of the strengths, to his ministry, I don’t know a pastor who’s more saturated in Scripture, and as he has grown in grace over the years, you see the sweetness of disposition that’s connected to the saturation with Holy Scripture. You know, it’s not chewing the cud, isn’t it? I grew up on the farm. You watched a cow chew its cud.
You know, they’ll chew it for a while. They’ll swallow it, and then it comes back up. It’s like they’re gonna, they’re gonna extract every last ounce of nutrition from it. Listen, we’ve got the inexhaustible resources of the Word of God. We gotta saturate ourselves in Scripture, extract every single ounce we’re going to need it in these difficult days living for Jesus. Well, notice in that passage, how do we do this? It’s corporate, again, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing and then singing and thanksgiving. Isn’t that a beautiful picture of worship? The Word of Christ, teaching and admonishing, singing and thanking, that’s it. That’s it. And then finally, look at it, whatever you do in word or deed. Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. There it is again, giving thanks to God. So it is an arbitrated climate. It’s a saturated climate, and it’s a regulated climate, okay? You got a thermostat in your house. What does it do? You set the temperature to 7271 or whatever it is, and that thermostat regulates the temperature.
What should regulate my life? The name of Jesus, the name, the name of Jesus names hugely important in ancient times, the extension expression of one’s character. We are to go under the name of Jesus, and whatever you do, the Greek language there is very clear in every minute, miniscule detail of your life. Ask yourself, can I attach the name of Jesus to what I’m about to do, or to what I’m currently thinking or where I’m going? Can I attach the name of Jesus to that? And if you can’t do it, don’t think, act or go there. It’s real simple. It’s being dominated by the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s it, a regulated climate. Lord, aware of your cleansing. Lord, aware of your commissioning. Lord, aware of your enabling. I want to do what I do. Say what I say, I want to go under your name.
So let’s wrap it all up. So what? So what good passage about cultivation of these virtues and the climate in which they’re developed. Well, here’s your takeaway, because you are under the new ownership of Jesus, cultivate radical conformity to him. Because you are under the new ownership of Jesus, cultivate radical conformity to him. And you know, this conformity, it takes energy and it takes time. I remember reading Alexander McLaren some years ago, and he was lamenting the disservice done to young ministers for the rigors of pastoral ministry, because, as he wrote, too soon they are pitchforked into places of prominence. And I think he’s right, because, you see, gentleness doesn’t happen overnight. These are things the Holy Spirit works into us and then through us. It’s like Greg Laurie said, we’re into microwave. God’s into marinate. And that’s what that’s what we see in this passage.
So commit yourself to marinating in the will and the truth and the Holy Spirit inspired virtues of Almighty God. You know, several years ago I remember, and I’ll date myself, I remember hearing a commercial on radio, then seeing stuff on TV. Now, at our offices, we have MRIs magnetic resonance imaging. You can come and have an MRI and it will show what’s going on the inside of your body, it will show what is there as well as what is not there. And as I look at this passage, I think about that, what if there was an MRI done on the inside of you and on the inside of me this morning? What would it show I that is there that ought to be there. What would it show that’s not there, that should be there. And I think about the 139th Psalm, Search me, oh God.
And I think it behooves us before we pop off, before we steamroll a fellow Saint with thoughtless words or a careless attitude, it will do us well to stop and say, Lord, you know me well do an MRI of my heart And my mind, my inside right now, make me see where I really am in modeling the gentleness of Jesus. And there’s no one gentle like him, Frederick Faber, in that great tomb, there’s a wideness and gotten mercy. God’s mercy says, oh, oh. Who is like our our. Kind Shepherd. Is there one half so gentle, half so sweet as the Lord Jesus, who bids us come and gather round his piercing feet? No, there’s not another one like the lowly Jesus. No, not one. So therefore live in light of your new ownership, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, go and grow more like Jesus, Father, we’re grateful.
We thank You that You are so long suffering, that you are so gracious to us and father grant that increasingly at Southwestern, with our faculty, with our students, in our classrooms, in the hallways, in all of our relationships and in all our lives, Lord, we might model the gentleness of King Jesus, all for His glory and in His name, we pray amen you.
