Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:12-17
During 2026, Peachtree Church is inviting everyone into Cultivate, a churchwide discipleship plan centered on the fruit of the Spirit and the kind of life God longs to grow in us. Throughout the year, we’ll explore how love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control take shape in everyday life through the Spirit’s work. Cultivate brings together worship, Scripture, group guides, and meaningful practices designed to meet you where you are and support growth in ways that fit your season. These twice-weekly devotionals are one way to stay connected, offering reflection and grounding for daily life with God. Whether you engage in many ways or just one, you’re invited to be part of this shared journey of becoming more rooted in who God has created and called you to be.
Devotional
Whenever I read this passage, my mind is drawn to three ideas that are intricately linked together: Forgive as the Lord forgave you, let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, and be thankful. We can be thankful when the peace of Christ is in our hearts, and we can have that peace when we understand forgiveness. The challenge for so many of us is that, while we realize that these three pieces are all supposed to work together, we all too often try to short-circuit the process and skip directly from understanding forgiveness to being thankful for it.
I write these words, even as I have to admit that I’m not someone who tends to operate most of the time as a linear thinker, where point A leads to point B and continues to point Z. A great deal of my struggles within my own walk of faith have come when I’ve become convinced that if God would allow me to take the easier path, I could get where I’m supposed to be quicker and with fewer hiccups along the way.
Thankfully, in the midst of these three road sign moments of the passage, Paul also dives a bit deeper in giving more detailed directions about the “how” to arrive at the place where God desires that we would be. The “how to” is simple in design, yet for all of us who have tried to live it out, we realize that the actions themselves are much more difficult than the instruction manual suggests. We’re called to “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Colossians 3:13-14).
Paul writes that we are to bear with each other or “show tolerance with each other.” I think this means that first and foremost, when we are faced with a difficult person or situation, we need to start by believing the best. This doesn’t mean that we should be a doormat and ignore intolerable behavior, but that we should try to understand where someone is, where they are coming from, and what has happened in their lives that has shaped their experiences.
More often than not, the simple act of trying to understand (and doing so from a posture of loving tolerance) helps us move towards being able to offer forgiveness. It is in the mutual act of forgiveness that we begin to understand the peace that we should have in our own hearts and to share with those with whom we interact. This peace should dwell within us, should exude out into our every action and interaction, and ultimately should be one of the hallmarks of the way that we are to live as followers of Christ.
For Reflection
- Where do you struggle to show tolerance to others?
- What does peace look like in your life when you are interacting with those with whom you disagree?
Prayer
Loving God, we so often desire peace in our own lives, while we can overlook your desire that peace would move beyond us to be in our relationships, to guide the ways in which we interact with others, and to be the central facet of all that we do. Help us to be children of your peace this day, as we lift our prayers to you in the name of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ. Amen.
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Devotionals