Colossians 3:11-13

For Reading and Meditation:     Ephesians 4:17-32

We must spend another day considering whether or not it is a condition of our salvation that we first forgive those who have sinned against us. We said yesterday that to believe this contradicts the teaching that we are saved by grace, through faith. What, then, is Scripture getting at when it seems to encourage us...

For Reading and Meditation:     Colossians 3:1-15

It is time now to focus more precisely on what Jesus meant when He said: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." Meekness, as Jesus is using the word here, refers to an attitude of heart and mind that is entirely free from a spirit of demandingness and accepts the will of God in its entirety. I...

Yes: this is God's purpose, which cannot be frustrated, that Christ shall be all. He is all in our justification and sanctification, for we are justified and sanctified IN HIS NAME.

He is all in our preservation and glorification, for we are kept by His power, and enter heaven through His merits. He should be all in our pursuits, pleasures, hopes, motives, and aims. Many put their comforts in the place of Christ, and then God puts comfort out of their reach; others put their graces in...

There is a tendency for us Christians to spend a great deal of our time looking for new spiritual experiences that will somehow guarantee permanent victory or freedom from the ups and downs of daily living. We rush around to conventions, conferences, seminars and workshops in search of the elusive magic formula that will smooth out the rough places of life. Glossy brochures assure us that Dr. So-and-So will share a great new breakthrough that will make us radioactive with the Spirit. Or some...

Colossians 3:1-15

Paul said to The Colossians what to many must have seemed surprising: "If then you were raised together with Christ." How could these Colossian Christians have been raised with Christ? Of course, it was a spiritual rising. The people really had been spiritually dead, and they were now living a new spiritual life. Everyone who truly...

The love of Christ … passes knowledge. § Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. § You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. § Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. § Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. § [Bear] with one another, and [forgive] one another,...

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother … “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” § And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.Therefore, as the elect...

There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. § I forgave you all that debt … Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will...