Church Ruled by Christ: Colossians 3:14

[ESV] Colossians 3:14. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Following the external application, a supreme exhortation was presented with, “And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. “ Above the applied five qualities, one is to ‘put on love’. The phrase “above all” indicates that love is the “crowning grace” of the new self in Christ, a grace to be put on “in addition to” (as indicated by the dative preposition ejpiv). The love used in the Greek is the noun form of the verb used to describe God’s love for His ‘recipients of special privileges’ in verse twelve. The love that Christians are to “put on” above all other qualities is a form of generous “devotedness” and “kindly concern”. The result of obedience to this exhortation is that this love binds together the individual parts into a cohesive whole. What has been translated to English as the verb ‘binds’ is in the Greek a noun referring to a “band of union”. The English Standard Version of the Bible translates that cohesive whole that is bound together by love as a state of “perfect harmony”. The source for this translation is the noun teleiotētos, defined as “completeness, perfectness”.

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