Colossians 3:13 · World English Bible
Colossians 3:13 Meaning Bearing with One Another
bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, if any man has a complaint against any; even as Christ forgave you, so you also do.
What does Colossians 3:13 mean?
A quarrel held onto becomes a splinter under the skin, throbbing at every reminder. Forbearing another means declining to press that splinter, letting the small daily frictions pass without lodging them in memory.
From the Cybernetics reading below.
Colossians 3:13 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Cybernetics
CYBERNETICS
Cybernetics
A quarrel held onto becomes a splinter under the skin, throbbing at every reminder. Forbearing another means declining to press that splinter, letting the small daily frictions pass without lodging them in memory. The one who does this is spared a low fever of constant grievance.
Its model is a pardon already received. Having felt his own failures wiped clean, a man knows what that release does, and he can carry the same clearing to the person who wronged him. Forgiveness practiced this way serves the forgiver as much as the offender, keeping the injury from settling into a scar.
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Live Colossians 3:13 today
- Think of the one replay you keep running, the thing someone said months ago. When it starts up today, set it down the way you would set down your phone, and do the next ordinary thing.
- Let one small friction with someone close go by without the correction, the dish left out, the late reply, the tone you did not like. Just let it be a Tuesday.
- When someone is short with you in traffic or at the counter, assume they are having the worst hour of their week. Give them that and walk on light.
Which splinter are you still pressing, and what would your day feel like without the ache?
The same truth in other traditions
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
People act badly out of their own confusion about what is good. Seeing that makes the grudge hard to hold with a straight face.
Buddhism · Samyutta Nikaya
To keep rehearsing what someone did to you is to be shot by a second arrow, the one you fire into yourself.
Tao Te Ching 79
The good keep no tally of debts owed to them. A ledger of wrongs costs the bookkeeper more than the debtor.
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