Grace and God's Loving Choice

Colossians 3:12-14 (GNT): God Chooses Us

You are the people of God; he loved you and chose you for his own. So then, you must clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Be tolerant with one another and forgive one another whenever any of you has a complaint against someone else. You must forgive one another just as the Lord has forgiven you. And to all these qualities add love, which binds all things together in perfect unity.

There were many years in my life that were spiritually empty. During those years, however, I would never admit I was missing anything. But there was something under the surface of myself that lacked; there was an indiscernible emptiness. If asked, I could not identify it. Through grace, however, God reaches out to us. And one day, I experienced the burning desire to discover Jesus in my life. For some time, I felt like I chose to embrace Jesus, and there is truth in that statement. It was my decision, for example, to open the scriptures, pray, and seek a church community during that time. In Paul’s passage to the Colossian church, however, he reminds us that God loves us and chooses us for his own. This makes so much sense: Why would any of us experience the need for Christ in our lives? What is the catalyst? Is it our life experience and context; or is it something else, something deeper? The answer is simple: It is God’s grace.

Through grace we are reminded of God’s love for each of us. We are called, Paul says, to “clothe [our]selves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” We are to be tolerant and forgiving of each other, for God himself became human frailty so that he could die in our place, taking on our umpteen faults and failures. And if that is not enough, Paul proclaims that God’s forgiveness, care, and concern for each of us are bound in the same way that we are bound to each other, in the perfect union of love.

As we begin a new week, let us go out into the needy world knowing that we are each chosen and loved by our great God. And as we bask in the warmth of his love, let us soak it in and reciprocate it to the world through forgiveness, “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”

I pray that God’s blessings be upon you and those you love and encounter.

In Christ,

Stan