Daily Bible Reading 19th July 2025 // Colossians 3:11-17
11 Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 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. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And 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 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. 17 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.
We look first, then, at what the Apostle has to say about relationships between believers in the Church. Paul comes to his positive injunctions via v 11 which forms an introductory transition. At first glance it is not immediately clear why Paul makes this all embracing affirmation (v 11). He seems to be making a statement about the abolition of racial, religious, cultural and social barriers, but what has that got to do with the putting off of the old man and the putting on of the new? The significance of this grand statement is illumined by the account of the Fall recorded in the book of Genesis (ch 3). Paul seems to have in mind the picture of the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where sin first entered the human sphere and brought all these vices (vv 5, 8) in its train. This was where mankind was separated and alienated from God and, most significantly for v 11, from itself. Sin ruined Adam and Eve, spoiling the human race, bringing death, decay, isolation and separation in its train, raising racial, religious, cultural and social barriers. After eating the fruit, Adam and Eve covered themselves. They hid from God and from one another. They blamed each other, passing the buck. Sin separated from God and it separated them from each other! The fruit of this isolation and separation is epitomised in the division of the human race at the tower of Babel (Genesis 11), when man's arrogance and sin brings national and linguistic division. Christ, Paul implies, has come as the new Adam, to break down the barriers of separation, to reconcile mankind to God and to reconcile men to each other. Christ is the second Man, the Proper Man, who has appeared to renew the Creator's image in mankind (v 10), to reverse the Fall, to deal with sin and to reconcile and heal the whole of creation. Now, says Paul, in that recreation which Christ accomplished for us, in that new humanity, not only is the old Adam crucified and put to death, not only is the old humanity raised to newness of life, where there is no sin and no death, within this new humanity the barriers that divide people from one another, the isolation, the separation and antagonism of the Fall are abolished (v 11).