It is continually advancing
in knowledge, and tending towards perfect knowledge of Christ. It is
being fashioned, by a better creation than that of Adam, into a more
perfect likeness of God than our first father bore in his sinless
freshness. The possession of it gathers all Christians into a unity in
which all distinctions of nationality, religious privilege, culture, or
social condition, are lost. Paul the Pharisee and the Colossian
brethren, Onesimus the slave and Philemon his master, are one in Jesus.
The new life is one in all its recipients, and makes them one. The
phenomena of the lowest forms of life are almost repeated in the
highest, and, just as in a coral reef the myriads of workers are not
individuals so much as parts of one living whole, 'so also is Christ.'
The union is the closest possible without destruction of our
individuality.

IV. The final, positive consequence of the risen life follows in verses
12-15. Again the Apostle reminds Christians of what they are, as the
great motive for putting on the new man. The contemplation of privileges
may tend to proud isolation and neglect of duty to our fellows, but the
true effect of knowing that we are 'God's elect, holy and beloved,' is
to soften our hearts, and to lead us to walk among men as mirrors and
embodiments of God's mercy to us. The only virtues touched on here are
the various manifestations of love, such as quick susceptibility to
others' sorrows; readiness to help by act as well as to pity in word;
lowliness in estimating one's own claims, which will lead to bearing
evils without resentment or recompensing the like; and patient
forgiveness, after the pattern and measure of the forgiveness we have
received. All these graces, which would make earth an Eden, and our
hearts temples, and our lives calm, are outcomes of love, and must
never be divorced from it. Paul uses a striking image to express this
thought of their dependence on it. He likens them to the various
articles of dress, and bids us hold them all in place with love as a
girdle, which keeps together all the various graces that make up
'perfectness.'

Thus living in love, we shall be free from the tumult of spirit which
ever attends a selfish life; for nothing is more certain to stuff a
man's pillow with thorns, and to wreck his tranquillity, than to live in
hate and suspicion, or self-absorbed. 'The peace of Christ' is ours in
the measure in which we live the risen life and put on the n