Colossians 3:12: the five garments you put on every day
12Therefore, clothe yourselves like the elect of God: holy and beloved, with hearts of mercy, kindness, humility, modesty, and patience.
The verb is clothe. None of the five qualities listed is presented as temperament: they are garments you put on, and therefore put on again tomorrow.
Short answer
Colossians 3:12 addresses its readers as chosen by God, holy and loved, and on that basis tells them to put on five things: a heart of mercy, then kindness and humility, then modesty and patience. The command comes after the identity — the text says who they are first.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 2 min read
The clothing image runs through the whole chapter: three verses earlier the readers are described as people who have already stripped off an old way of living. Here the movement goes the other way, and it is daily — nobody gets dressed only once.
Where this verse appears
Colossians pushes back against a religiosity full of rules and observances. Chapter 3 changes register and starts describing what life looks like for people taken out of that.
The previous verse lists divisions that stop counting — Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, slave and free — and concludes by making Christ everything, present in everyone. Our verse opens with "therefore": the five qualities follow from that levelling.
Straight afterwards comes the hardest instruction in the sequence, about bearing with and forgiving one another, and then the close about love as the bond of perfection.
What it says
The internal order matters. First come three titles — elect, holy, beloved — and only then the demand. It is not "behave this way in order to become that"; it runs the other direction. Reversing it turns the verse into a list of targets, which is precisely the religiosity the letter is arguing against.
The five garments form a set for living with people, not for the inner life. Mercy and kindness face outward; humility and, in the edition published here, modesty govern how much space a person takes up; patience is what holds the other four together when the company drags on. None of them can be practised alone.
The clothing metaphor is also an honest concession. Clothes come off, crease and get dirty. The text does not promise a change of temperament or say that an irritable person will stop being one: it says these five things are put on, which implies repetition, and implies days of leaving the house without them.
What to do with it today
The practical use is modest and daily: choosing, before a hard conversation, which of the five you will put on for that particular conversation. This is not a project to become someone else. It is the decision to get dressed again after a day when none of it showed up.
A prayer to carry with you
Lord, I left the house today wearing none of this. Dress me again, patience especially, and especially around the people I live with. Amen.