“"Bearing with One Another"”

Sunday, May 04, 2025

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

(Colossians 3.12-13)

The second half of Colossians is the practical application section of the book. After pointing out the falsehood of the silly new doctrines beginning to divide these Christians, Paul now stresses that they must deliberately pursue unity, all of them infused with Christ (3.11). If everyone were to actually do this, then there would be no conflicts, because all Christians would behave selflessly and righteously, giving each other no cause for complaint.

However, Paul recognizes that we’re still human—after all, he asked in the previous chapter, “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to” fleshly restrictions from human sources? (2.20). He’s not disputing their conversion, their forgiveness, or their eternal salvation given by God’s grace. In fact he affirms, “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (3.3). They had “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (v10). But this renewal was incomplete! They still needed to “put on” many spiritual things (v12ff), and were beset by earthly desires and the “old self,” which they’d “put off” (v9), but which pursued them with a life of its own, hoping to catch and overwhelm them. The cross of Christ is an apt metaphor for the Christian’s life in the flesh—suspended between earth and heaven, suffering, humiliated and destined for death, yet joyful and content in the expectation of life and glory!

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

(Luke 9.23)

A cross is an uncomfortable place to be! As we strive toward heavenly perfection, we’re stuck dealing with earthly failures—in each other, and in ourselves. As a result, despite our best attempts to put on “compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, [and] meekness,” it’s a guarantee that we’ll also need a good bit of “patience” (Co 3.12), either due to our own failures, or our brothers’. A Christian may sometimes have “a complaint against” a brother (v13)! That doesn’t necessarily mean one brother has sinned against another; but that will happen, too. How are we to handle these conflicts? By “bearing with one another,” and “forgiving each other” (v13)!

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What does it mean, to bear with someone? The Greek word behind this is ἀνέχομαι-anechomai, and “bear with” is not a perfectly literal translation, but it’s about as close to it as will make sense in English. It shows up, with the same meaning, when Jesus cast out a demon after his disciples tried and failed.

“O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me”

(Matthew 17.17)

The fault has not been corrected. Jesus has not received a request to forgive their failure, nor observed repentance. He’s diagnosing an ongoing failure, and carrying more than his fair share of the burden created by that failure. Paul also used the same word in advance of his potentially offensive behavior, telling the Christians of Corinth, “I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me!” (2Co 11.1).

Of course, this does not mean Christians are to paper over each other’s sins, encouraging them to stray from Christ and court Satan again. But many of our frustrations with each other do not rise to that level. Often Christians take offense at each other’s behavior, but stop short of calling it sin—because they know it’s just not the case, or because they can’t make such an accusation stick, or even because they’re averse to the confrontation Jesus commands in the case where “your brother sins against you” (Mt 18.15). Frequently, they then feel free to go about handling their complaints by whatever methods they desire, mistakenly believing there is no divine commandment to follow, as long as no one brings up the “S” word. But Paul says a “complaint” should be handled with patience, forbearance, and forgiveness (Co 3.13). By the way, the word translated “complaint” has the same ambiguity as in English—maybe you have a legitimate grievance, or maybe you’re just griping.

Either way, Christians on both sides of the dispute are supposed to handle it like Jesus, when he bore with his disciples in their stunted faith; and like Paul hoped his Corinthian brothers would do, bearing with him in an uncomfortable exercise into which he insisted on dragging them. There are limits—just after his own appeal for indulgence, Paul used the same word in a negative sense, saying these same brothers already “put up with” distortions of the Gospel and of Jesus himself (2Co 11.4). This was taking forbearance too far! But the goal should be unity in Christ, and we should be eager to bend for each other’s sake.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

(Philippians 2.3-4)

Stephen, imitating Jesus, is a strong example of selfless forbearance. He prayed on behalf of those actively murdering him, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Ac 7.60). May we all learn to bear with our brothers and sisters, as ably as our Lord and our ancestors in the faith bore with their enemies!

Jeremy Nettles

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