Colossians 3:14 - Exposition

And over all these things (put on) love, which (thing) is the bond of perfectness ( Colossians 2:2 ; Ephesians 4:2 , Ephesians 4:3 ; Ephesians 5:1 ; Philippians 2:2 ; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 .; Galatians 5:13-15 , Galatians 5:22 ; Romans 13:8-10 ; 2 Peter 1:7 ; 1 John 4:7-21 ; John 13:34 , John 13:35 ). In 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 . "love" is the substance or substratum of the Christian virtues; in Galatians 5:22 it is their head and beginning; here it is that which embraces and completes them. They imply love, but it is more than them all together. They lie within its circumference; wanting it, they fall to pieces and are nothing. (For συνδεσμός ("bond" or "band"), comp. Colossians 2:19 .) In Ephesians 4:3 we have the "bond of peace" (see next verse). Love is the bond in the active sense, as that wherewith the constituents of a Christian character or the members of a Church are bound together: peace, in a passive sense, as that wherein the union consists. "Love" (compare "covetousness," Ephesians 4:5 ) is made conspicuous by the Greek definite article—being that eminent, essential grace of Christian love ( Colossians 1:4 , Colossians 1:8 ; Colossians 2:2 ; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 .; 1 John 4:16 , etc.). "Perfectness" is genitive of object, not of quality: love unifies the elements of Christian goodness and gives them in itself their "perfectness" ( Romans 13:10 ). (For "perfectness," see note on "perfect," Colossians 1:28 ; and comp. Colossians 4:12 .) Against Galatian teachers of circumcision, and Corinthian exalters of knowledge, the apostle had magnified the supremacy of love ( Galatians 5:6 ; 1 Corinthians 8:1-3 ); and so against the Colossian mysticism and asceticism he sets it forth as the crown of spiritual perfection, the goal of human excellence (comp. Ephesians 4:15 , Ephesians 4:16 ).