This is the life you were saved for. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God” (1 John 4:7). Put on love. Not once, but daily. Not perfectly, but persistently. And watch as the Holy Spirit binds your life together in a perfect harmonious reflection of Christ.

What Will You Put On?

We’ve all had those mornings. standing before an open closet somewhere between sleep and awake, trying to choose what to wear. The choice often depends on what your tasks are for the day ahead. An electrician, for example, dresses quite differently than an office professional. Clothing does more than cover our bodies; it prepares us for the purpose of the day.

When the apostle Paul instructs believers in Colossians 3:14 to “put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony,” he’s using an everyday metaphor to teach us something profound about the Christian life. Love isn’t merely an emotion we experience or even a principle to admire. In Paul’s language, love is like a garment that we must deliberately choose to put on each day.

This ordinary metaphor of clothing runs throughout Scripture’s description of our transformation as believers. Isaiah prophesied of One who would give us “a garment of praise instead of a faint spirit” (Isa. 61:3). Paul tells us we have “put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col. 3:9–10).

Clothed with Love

But what is this love we’re meant to put on? Here we must be careful. Our modern context understands love primarily as emotion. Paul, however, is describing something altogether different.

The love he’s describing is first and fundamentally the love Christ has for his own people. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Before we could “put on” anything, we were clothed in the righteousness of Christ: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27, emphasis added).

The entire context of Colossians 3 declares this beautifully rich reality: “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). You are “God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved” (Col. 3:12). This isn’t an aspiration of who we hope to be but a declaration of who we are in Christ.

When Paul instructs us to “put on love,” he’s not alluding to a bootstrap operation but a response of love with love. Consider how John describes this: “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9). The gospel embodies love in flesh and blood, then clothes us in the very life of the One who is love.

When we “put on love,” we aren’t merely personifying a feeling or exerting an emotion, we’re putting on Christ himself—“Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh” (Rom. 13:14).

Getting Dressed

Since we are permanently clothed with the righteousness of Christ, who is love, what does it look like to “put on love” in the mundane reality of a Monday morning?

You don’t put on clothes once and consider yourself dressed for life. Jesus taught us to take up our cross “daily” (Luke 9:23). And so it is with love.

Putting on love is a daily conscious choice, often against the grain of our natural inclinations. Your spouse forgets to do something. Your child complains about dinner. A colleague takes credit for an idea you had at work. In each moment we’re faced with this question: “What will I wear in this situation?” Will I put on impatience, frustration, and retaliation? Or will I, by the power of the Holy Spirit, put on the love of Christ? Love that is “patient and kind” (1 Cor. 13:4–5). Love that forgives one another (Col. 3:13). Love that counts “others more significant” than myself (Phil. 2:3).

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