Colossians 3:12-17 Commentary

Few phrases naturally come more slowly to children’s lips than, “Thank you.” As a result, diligent parents must spend a great deal of time persistently teaching their sons and daughters to express their gratitude. In fact, few of us need to think farther back than the course of this past month to remember how often children needed someone to prompt them to thank those who’d given them Christmas gifts.

Yet this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson strongly suggests that it isn’t just children who need frequent reminders to be thankful. Paul and Timothy feel the Spirit’s prompting to repeatedly remind their Colossian readers – presumably of all ages — to be thankful. In fact, in verses 15-17 alone they do so no less than three times.

In this week during which most Christians pivot from contemplation of Christ’s first and second comings to preparations for the dawn of a new year, Colossians 3 invites us to not just look ahead, but also to look back. It suggests that God’s dearly beloved people reflect with thanksgiving on, among other things, God’s great faithfulness throughout 2024.

Of course, as we’ve already noted, as any uncle, aunt, parent or grandparent knows, gratitude is notoriously difficult to teach. It is, perhaps, more easily “caught than taught.” So preachers who have some liturgical flexibility might consider looking for ways to build testimonies of thanksgiving to God into either this Sunday’s message or liturgy.

Of course, Paul and Timothy’s summons to such thanks has a specific context. The apostles begin what we think of as Colossians 3 with a foundation for all that follows, including this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson: “You have been raised with Christ …” (3:1). This at least implies that we are, among other things, thankful to God because God has raised us to life with Jesus Christ.

By this the apostles basically mean that the Spirit has put to death and buried with Christ our sins, including our natural ingratitude’s iron grip on us. In its place the Spirit has raised in us gratitude to God. Such thanksgiving is a basic characteristic of the resurrection life with which God graces us and to which the apostles summon us.

So it’s appropriate to begin preaching about this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson where Paul and Timothy spend so much time in it: with calls to thanksgiving. In verse 15 the apostles invite the Christians in Colossae to “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be [ginesthe*] thankful [eucharistoi].”

It seems noteworthy that the apostles link their calls to thanksgiving so closely to their call to let Christ’s peace shape his friends’ desires, words and actions. They may make that link because they know that few kinds of climate are more hostile to thanksgiving than division, perhaps especially in the Church.

Disharmony drains Christians’ gratitude because, among other things, it easily diverts our attention from God’s goodness to our neighbors’ “badness.” Colossians 3 at least suggests those who experience and cultivate peace in our hearts and with our neighbors more readily recognize many of the causes for gratitude God gives us.

In fact, the ginesthe (“be”) in “be thankful” is a present participle. This suggests that the apostles summon their readers to more than a one-time expression of gratitude, such as that which flourishes around Thanksgiving time. They invite Colossae’s Christians to an ongoing gratitude. Jesus’ friends aren’t just thankful to God during this or any other season of the year. We cultivate gratitude throughout all the days with which God graces us.

Yet perhaps especially in this Christmas season that continues in the church year, if not always in our homes and local churches, the incarnation is a particular cause for gratitude to God. In this time, Jesus’ friends might deliberately choose to continue to thank God for God’s gracious choice to send the second person of the Trinity to be conceived by the Holy Spirit and born to an unwed teenager. We thank God that Jesus, what’s more, grew up to live and give his life to rescue us from our sin, sins and sinfulness.

Verse 16 strongly implies that the gratitude to God that marked the angels, shepherds and wise men’s worshipful response to Christ’s birth also characterizes 21^st century Christians’ worship, including our singing to God. “Let the message of Christ dwell in you richly,” Paul and Timothy write there, “as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude [chariti] in your hearts [kardias] to God.”

Much of verse 16 is, admittedly, at least somewhat mysterious. It seems to summon God’s dearly beloved people to let God’s Word so deeply impact us that it shapes the way we deal with each other. Verse 10 also appears to suggest that our singing is somehow part of our teaching and discipleship of our fellow Christians.

However, the apostles expect all Christian singing to be infused with gratitude. Whether we offer our praise to God, confess our sins to God, offer our intercession or give thanks to God in song, Jesus’ friends always have a spirit of gratitude to God as we sing with each other to God.

And, of course, the apostles end this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson with verse 17’s familiar and all-encompassing invitation to “Whatever you do, whether in word or in song, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks [eucharistountes] to God the Father through him.”

Here is a fitting summons near the doorway of the year of our Lord, 2025. Whether we give birth or care for the dying, we do it in Jesus’ name. Whether Jesus’ friends prepare fast food or run a corporation in the coming year, we do it for God’s glory. Whether we care for our grandchildren or research diseases and their cures, we do it in the Lord Jesus’ name.

But we also do anything and everything that is good with a spirit of gratitude to God. Christians aren’t generically thankful people who are grateful to no one or thing in particular. We constantly give thanks to God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ because we know that God is the source of every good thing we have. Jesus’ followers let the Spirit infuse not only our actions and words, but also even our thoughts with deep gratitude to God. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson might even serve as an invitation to Jesus’ followers to offer up 2025 as a year of thanksgiving to God for all God’s goodness.

Colossians 3:12-17 is what some biblical scholars call the apostles’ haustafeln. Its summons includes some of the guidelines for God’s dearly beloved people’s life before God and with each other. This Sunday’s Lesson includes, of course, the familiar invitations to clothe ourselves with Christ-like virtues, patience, forgiveness and love.

This “apparel” stands in stark contrast to Colossians 3:5-11’s list of vices that includes sexual immorality, greed, rage and lying. We might, however, also think of gratitude to God as another item of Christians’ “clothing” with which Paul and Timothy invite us to clothe ourselves during the coming year of our Lord, 2025.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

Abraham Verghese’s remarkable book The Covenant of Water includes a lovely tidbit about Big Mol’s gratitude. It speaks to the kind of gratitude to which the apostles summon us in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson.

The physically maturing Big Mol has an intellectual disability that permanently suspends her in a child-like stage of development. She repeatedly tells her mother, “Ammachi, the sun is coming up.” Verghese points out that for 28 years of Big Mol’s life, the sun has never failed to come up. Yet every morning she’s ecstatic at its return. All of it leads Big Mol’s mother to muse, “To see the miraculous in the ordinary is a more precious gift than prophecy.”