Love Binds Them All Together (Col. 3:12-14)

Love Binds Them All Together (Col. 3:12-14)

There was a great painter whose name was Jiang Seung-Yo in China about 1,000 years ago. He drew animals and birds. Those animals and birds in his paintings looked like real and alive.
One day he was asked to draw a couple of dragons on a wall of the temple by the chief monk of the temple. He drew a couple of dragons on the wall. They seemed to be alive. They were full of liveliness in their scales and in their sharp claws. However, strangely enough, there were no eyeballs in the dragons' eyes. So, people asked the painter: "Why didn't you draw the eyeballs in their eyes?"
The painter answered: "If I draw the eyeballs, the dragons will come out of the walls and fly up to the sky." People did not believe what he said. People laughed at him, saying, "We know that you are a great painter. But, how can a dragon in a wall picture fly up to the sky?" Nobody believed him. They kept asking him to draw the eyeballs in the dragons' eyes. So, Jiang Seung-Yo placed his calligraphy brush with ink on a dragon's eye.
Then, what happened?
The dragon in the wall picture started to move and came out of the wall and flew up to the sky.
From this ancient story, drawing an eyeball of the dragon came to have a meaning of the finishing touch or the most important thing of a matter.
To a Christian who became a new and vivid creation of God in Christ is like a dragon in Jiang's painting.
As a Christian, you wear some good clothes, that is, your Christian characters-- compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and forbearance and forgiveness. These kinds of Christian clothes make you look nice. However, alone with your good Christian clothes or characters, you cannot be a live, active Christian.
You need "the eyeball of a dragon," the finishing touch to become a live Christian. That is "love"!

God led Ezekiel a prophet of Judah to the valley of dry bones in vision. It was full of dry bones there.
God asked Ezekiel: "Son of man, can these bones live?"
Ezekiel answered God: "O Sovereign LORD, you alone know."
Ezekiel was not sure what God's intention was.
God put tendons, flesh, and skin on dry bones. So, they were no more dry bones. They looked like human beings. But, they did not come to life yet. They needed breath to come to life.
Love is "breath" that makes dry bones come to life.
Before we did not know Christ, we were dry bones.
Our new clothes or new characters of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and forgiveness are tendons, flesh, and skin.
Yet, we need "love," "breath" to become alive.
Without love, we are Christians only in appearance not in deep inside.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 tells us:

    "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,
     I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
     If I have a gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,
     and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love,
     I am nothing.
     If I give all I possess to the poor
     and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love,
     I gain nothing."

The Bible keeps telling us that God loves us and God Himself is love.
Apostle John in 1 John 4:16 says: "So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him."
How can we stay in God?
We can stay in God by staying in love.

Then, what is love? What is love that we should practice in our daily lives?
Love is a kind of compound concept. It includes various virtues and excludes various vices.
Love is far away from hatred.

Apostle John in 1 John 4:20 tells us: "If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen."
Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 includes several good characters in love:
"Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Before you stayed outside of God, before you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and invited Him into your heart, you used to wear the old clothes which belonged to your old earthly nature.
Those old clothes were impurity, lust, evil desires, greed (v. 5), and anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips (v. 8).
Yet, now, as you are in Christ calling Him your personal Savior, you became a new creation who put on new clothes of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and forgiveness (vv. 12-13).
In ancient Israel, clothes are kind of pieces of textiles, gowns and robes.
Without a band, they seemed to be too much loose. A desert strong wind might have blown some clothes away. They needed to be tied by a band or a rope for a desert wind not to blow them away and to make their clothes stylish.
Love is like a waist band or a rope that makes Christian clothes not blow away and makes them stylish.
Paul in verse 14 tells us: "And over all theses virtues (that is, clothes of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and humility, and forgiveness) put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity."

Otis Skillings, a gospel song writer, wrote a song on love:

"We are one in the bond of love; We are one in the bond of love;
 We have joined our spirit with the Spirit of God; We are one in the bond of love.
 Let us sing every one; Let us feel His love begun;
 Let us join our hands that the world will know; We are one in the bond of love."

Let us have the love of Christ that binds all our good characters together!
Let us practice this love that makes us continue to be active and live Christians!