The Wearable Christ

Fashion advice from Paul tells us exactly what to wear each day.

You may have noticed that things we wear are getting smarter.

Not in the sense that our clothes know how to match our socks and shirt — we’re still on our own there — but smarter in the technological sense. Watches track our heart rates. Rings and wristbands monitor our health and sleep patterns. Glasses can display directions or translate languages. You might even wear devices that measure blood sugar or remind you to stand up and move around. It won’t be long before things we wear know more about us than our doctors do. Your watch will tell you how well you slept, how many steps you took, and how stressed you were during the church board meeting.

Our clothes may not talk to us (yet), but things we wear are increasingly connected, responsive and full of information.

In other words, what we wear is doing more than telling the time or helping us pass an eye test when we renew our driver’s license. These accessories tell stories about who we are.

And it’s not just technology. Every day we choose what we’ll wear — clothes, jewelry and symbols that communicate something about us. A sports jersey says one thing. A business suit says another. A clerical collar says something else entirely.

We do the same thing online. We curate identities on social media the same way we assemble a wardrobe. We present a version of ourselves to the world.

So, before we walk out the door each morning, we decide, “What am I going to wear today?” Some mornings, that decision takes longer than we’d like to admit.

This makes the apostle Paul’s words sound surprisingly modern. Writing to the Christians in Rome, Paul says that instead of living for yourselves, seeking pleasure and gratification, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 14).

Put on Christ. It’s a striking image. Paul speaks about faith the way we speak about clothing. Just as we choose what to wear before stepping into the world, Paul suggests that the most important decision we make each day is not what but who we put on.

 

The Identities We Wear

Paul’s command to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” might sound unusual at first, but the more you think about it, the more familiar the idea becomes.

Clothing has always communicated identity. No greater authority than Shakespeare says so. In Hamlet, Polonius — the king of unsolicited advice — sends his son Laertes off to Paris with a bit of fatherly counsel. He reminds him that his outward appearance signals something about his inner character (and his bank account):

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

A uniform tells you something about the person wearing it. A firefighter’s coat signals danger and courage. A judge’s robe signals authority. A wedding ring tells a story about commitment. What we wear shapes how we move through the world.

If you are wearing work clothes, you expect to work. If you are wearing formal clothes, you behave a little differently than you would in sweatpants and a T-shirt. Clothing doesn’t just express identity; it reinforces it.

Paul understands that. That’s why he talks about faith using the language of clothing.

When he tells believers to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” he’s not talking about fashion. He’s talking about identity.

Earlier in this chapter, Paul speaks about everyday responsibilities: respecting authorities, paying taxes and living peaceably with others. These aren’t heroic acts that make headlines. They are the ordinary habits of daily life.

His point is that discipleship doesn’t usually exist in dramatic YouTube adventures. It shows up in the way we conduct ourselves in ordinary situations. The life of those who follow Jesus isn’t something they keep tucked away inside their hearts. It is something worn out into the world where people can see it.

Every day, we step into the world wearing something. Paul simply asks: What identity are we wearing?

 

Love: The Debt We Always Owe

From there, Paul turns to what he calls the one debt that never disappears. “Owe no one anything,” he writes, “except to love one another” (v. 8). The phrase is striking because most of us have debt. We pay the mortgage, car loan and credit card bill, and celebrate when the balance finally reaches zero.

But Paul says there is one debt that never reaches zero: Love. In tennis, “love” means you have absolutely nothing. Yet in life, the Bible — and enormous worldwide poetic tradition — says love is the only thing worth having. It’s a cruel irony, isn’t it? Every day, the balance remains outstanding. Love is the one obligation that can never be fully paid off because every new day presents new opportunities to practice it.

Paul then reminds his readers of several commandments: do not commit adultery, murder, or theft and don’t even think about coveting something a friend of yours might have. These familiar instructions, he says, all point toward a single reality: “love your neighbor as yourself” (v. 9).

Why? Because love does no harm to a neighbor. So love, like onesies, wet suits, long johns or overalls, sort of becomes the garment that holds everything else together. Without love, morality becomes a checklist. With love, it becomes a way of life. Love shapes the way we speak to people who disagree with us. It shapes how we treat those who have less power than we do, like the teenager at the second window of a burger joint drive-through, the cashier at the grocery store, the person answering customer service when we’re already frustrated, or the neighbor who sees the world very differently than we do.

Love shapes how we respond when patience runs thin and irritation begins to rise. And people notice. They watch how those who claim to love God treat not only their friends but strangers or those in need. They watch how disagreements are handled. They watch whether kindness shows up when things get difficult.

In other words, they watch what we are wearing.

 

Dressing for the Coming Day

Paul’s argument then takes an interesting turn. After speaking about love, he suddenly shifts to the language of time.

“You know what time it is,” he says in verse 11.

Every culture lives by a clock. We schedule our lives according to the time of day. But Paul believes Christians live according to a deeper timetable. “The night is far gone,” he writes. “The day is near” (v. 12). Paul imagines history like a long night beginning to give way to morning. The resurrection of Jesus is the first light breaking over the horizon. Believers, therefore, are people who dress for the morning.

Paul says we should “throw off the works of darkness” and “put on the armor of light” (v. 12). Night has its own wardrobe. Darkness prefers clothing suited for secrecy and excess. Creatures of the night like vampires or zombies come alive in the darkness and dress accordingly. They hide from the light. They move through the shadows because daylight exposes what and who they are. Paul names some of those habits plainly: drunkenness, sexual immorality, quarreling and jealousy. These behaviors belong to the darkness of night.

This contrast recalls the way night is portrayed in The Phantom of the Opera, the famous musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. The Phantom loves the darkness. For him, night is where the music swells, where passion deepens and where hidden genius finally finds expression. Darkness, he argues, allows people to feel more intensely and live more freely. Raoul, on the other hand, sees the night very differently. For him, the darkness is something dangerous, that conceals rather than reveals. He needs to lead Christine out of the shadows and back into the safety of daylight.

Paul would understand that tension. The night can feel seductive. It promises freedom from restraint and the thrill of secrecy. Sex, wine and women, loud disputations and barroom brawls, as well as the more insidious sins like envy, backstabbing, idle gossiping, etc.

But Paul insists that believers are not people who build their lives in the shadows. They belong to the daylight that is already beginning to dawn.

So we who follow Jesus belong to the morning. We dress differently. We begin living now, according to the daylight that is coming. The church, then, becomes a community already dressed for the sunrise, while the rest of the world is still waking up.

 

Putting on Christ

All of this leads to Paul’s central instruction: “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 14).

Notice Paul doesn’t say to simply admire or agree with Christ. He says, “Put him on.”

Christ becomes the garment. To wear Christ means allowing his character to shape our instincts and reactions. Clothing affects how we move. Heavy boots change how we walk. A uniform changes how we carry ourselves. In the same way, putting on Christ begins to shape how we live.

Even popular culture understands that clothing can shape identity. In the Kingsman film series, Colin Firth plays the lead character Harry Hart, who also goes by the codename Galahad. In the movie, as he locks a door to prevent a gang of hooligans from egress, he says, “Manners maketh man.” While the quotation focuses on manners, the film heavily emphasizes that “the suit is a gentleman’s armor,” which may be why it is often associated with the “clothes maketh the man” idiom. In the Kingsman universe, there are specific, ironclad rules about being a gentleman, for example, “Oxfords, not brogues.” There are others, of course. The point is that both manners and the manner in which one is sartorially attired are of utmost importance in the world according to Harry Hart.

But also in the world according to the apostle Paul. Manners and clothes. For having already addressed the issue of clothes, he now goes on to discuss manners by providing the following instruction: “Make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (v. 14). Bad form, indeed! The phrase “make provision” means planning ahead. We make provisions when we pack food for a trip or prepare for a storm.

Paul’s warning is simple: Don’t organize your life in ways that quietly make room for the very things that undermine the identity you claim to wear.

You cannot put on Christ while keeping another outfit ready in the closet. Discipleship means deciding which identity we will actually live in.

Before we leave the house each morning, we make a simple decision: what are we going to wear?

Sometimes the choice is easy. Sometimes it takes a little thought. But one way or another, we decide. Shirt or hoodie? Boots or sneakers? Jacket or cardigan? Sweatpants or pajamas? Do I need a pocket for my sunglasses and phone, or is my smartwatch enough today? Earrings or AirPods?

But Paul is talking about something deeper. He says the most important decision we make each day isn’t what we wear on our bodies, but who we wear in our lives. “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” he says.

• Wear his patience when tempers begin to rise.
• Wear his humility when pride starts whispering in your ear.
• Wear his compassion when someone else’s burden crosses your path.
• Wear his courage when doing the right thing becomes uncomfortable.

Long before wearable technology, Paul understood that identity is something people can see. When the world looks at the church, it should be able to recognize what we are wearing.

So before we step into each new day — before the first conversation, decision or challenge — the question isn’t “what am I wearing today?” but rather, “who am I wearing today?”

You can forget your watch, your ring or even your coat — but don’t forget to put on Christ.

Amen.

—Timothy Merrill and Carl Wilton contributed to this material.

 

Sources

Hanna, Katie Terrell; Yasar, Kinza. “What is wearable technology? Definition, uses and examples.” TechTarget Network, techtarget.com, April 2, 2025. Retrieved March 5, 2026.

Hill, Kashmir; Huang, Kalley; Isaac, Mike. “Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart Glasses.” The New York Times, nytimes.com, February 14, 2026. Retrieved March 5, 2026.

The Other Texts

What Is One Possible Approach to the Text?

Catching a Break. “Lindsay Lohan caught a break …” “The Yankees caught a break when …” “The cops caught a break …” Catching a break is another way of saying “getting lucky.” The metaphor makes you think that “breaks” are raining from the sky like baseballs; all you need to do is catch one of them occasionally. Have you ever been pulled over for speeding, but the officer let you off with a warning and didn’t give you a ticket? You caught a break. In the text, you could say the Hebrews caught a break if they followed the instructions Moses gave them. “When I see the blood, I will pass over you” (v. 13). The image is highly suggestive of the cross and reminds one of Ephesians 1:7, “In him we have redemption through his blood.” Because of the cross, God “passes over” us. We catch a break because Jesus Christ didn’t.

What Does the Text Say?

The institution of Passover, according to this text, establishes the order of the Jewish liturgical calendar. The annual commemoration of the liberation from Egypt was the central point in the Jewish liturgical cycle and marks the first month of the cultic year (v. 2), known elsewhere in the Torah as Abib (“new ear of grain,” Exodus 13:4; Deuteronomy 16:1), and in postexilic writings as Nisan (a loanword from Babylonian; Nehemiah 2:1; Esther 3:7). Based on the lunar calendar used in biblical Israel, both the month and the commemoration occur in March-April in the solar calendar of the West.

The name of the ceremony, Passover, is derived from the activity of the deity, who “passed over” the houses of the Hebrews on the night of the final and most devastating of the plagues against Egypt, the destruction of the firstborn (v. 13).

This text includes explicit instructions given by the Lord to Moses and Aaron to prepare the Hebrew people for the devastation. Each family (also called “household,” v. 3, probably referring to an extended family of two or three generations) was to secure an unblemished year-old male lamb (which could be a goat or a sheep, v. 5) and to slaughter, roast and completely consume it between twilight and midnight. Some of the blood of the lamb was to be smeared on the lintels and doorposts of the houses occupied by the Hebrews as an apotropaic to ward off the lethal plague. Blood had been used similarly in the strange story of the Lord’s attack on Moses (Exodus 4:24-26).

In anticipation of the horrified reaction of the Egyptians to hasten the Hebrews out of Egypt (12:31-32), the Hebrew people are instructed to eat the Passover hurriedly, prepared for flight (v. 11).

What Is One Possible Approach to the Text?

God Likes Us! We don’t expect everyone to love us. Love is an emotion for family and very close friends. But most of us — apart from curmudgeons and those who prefer respect rather than affection — want to be liked rather than disliked. That’s a fair statement, right? Recall actress Sally Field’s comment at the podium when she won an Oscar for Best Actress for A Place in the Heart (1984): “You like me, right now, you like me!” It’s pretty clear in Scripture that God loves us. You could rattle off a number of texts in support of that assertion. God loves us. The Bible says so. But does God like us? The answer is “Yes!” And the proof is verse 4 of the text: “For the Lord takes pleasure in his people.” A parent can perform all the duties for a child that love prompts — providing food, clothing, shelter and so on — but not necessarily really enjoy spending time with the child. God both loves us, provides what we need, and likes us, wants to spend time with us. God wants to be in fellowship with us. So here’s the question: We say we love God. Fair enough. But do we like God? Do we enjoy hanging out together? Hanging out with God means singing, praising, dancing, and making music with tambourine and harp.

What Does the Text Say?

This psalm is a national victory dance, similar to something you might see at decisive moments in the life of a nation-state. In the United States, such a national-scale occasion occurred — right or wrong — with the death of Osama bin Laden. This psalm is about the celebration in the streets when the enemy has been conquered. The structure of the psalm goes 3-1-5. In the first three verses, Israel is told to sing and dance using instruments. In verse 4, the explanation is provided: the LORD “takes pleasure in his people,” and special notice is taken of the humble. In verses 5-9, Israel is again urged to celebrate, to “exult,” and while they’re at it, to feel the heft of the “two-edged” sword in their hands, which was used to “execute vengeance” and to “bind their kings” and “nobles with chains of iron.” The psalm concludes as it began: Praise the LORD!

What Is One Possible Approach to the Text?

The Sin of Taking Offense. If another member of the church “sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone” (v. 15). In our culture, it’s almost a mortal sin to offend someone. Do whatever you want, but don’t offend someone. If you do, you will quickly be made to feel guilty and ashamed. How this devolution of communication skills happened is a discussion for another time. The sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond, thrived on this single problem: The dysfunctional Barone families could not communicate honestly, especially when dealing with the matriarch, Marie. In our text, Jesus says that among “brothers” (the Greek), i.e. in the family of believers, if someone is sinned against, the one with the grievance must confront the wrongdoer. The sermon, however, should not be directed at the victim: It should be aimed at those to whom the wronged person is sent. Believers should not take offense when confronted about behavior. The church values love and unity so much as to often be paralyzed by inaction — not wanting to offend. The sin against which we may preach is not the sin of offending, but the sin of taking offense.

What Does the Text Say?

Jesus advises the disciples about what to do when disciples sin against each other. A specific three-step process is outlined. The offended initiates a meeting between himself and the offender. If he doesn’t get satisfaction, he is then to convene a small meeting with the offender and two “witnesses.” If the offending party still does not “listen,” the offended may then convene an intervention with the entire congregation. If the offender does not listen to the church, then the congregation has every right to regard that person as a “Gentile and a tax collector.” Jesus then says that “whatever you bind on earth” or “loose on earth” will likewise be bound or loosed in heaven. He also makes the extraordinary statement that “if two of you agree on earth about anything … it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.” The pericope ends with the well-known verse heard so often in invocations: “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Worship Resources

The night is far gone. The day is near. May you go from this place to lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Salvation is nearer now than when we first believed!

—Based on Romans 13:12

Call to Confession

When we do not get the things we want, we may be tempted to protest, to call the situation an injustice. Whether or not we are victims, Jesus cautions us against greed, and against defining ourselves by what we have. Let us confess together the times when we have failed to heed his warning.

 

Prayer of Confession

God of grace, so often we fall into the trap of letting our possessions define our purposes. Our cars become more important than the people who ride in them. Our homes seclude us from the world rather than open up to welcome strangers. Our utensils and appliances, tools and technology serve our own selfish purposes before serving you and others.

God of blessing, save us from all we own. Help us to live in the truth that what we have is not important to you, nor should it be to us. Teach us not to hoard, but to share, trusting in your providence. Free us to live in the sufficient abundance of food, clothes and shelter you intend for all of your people, that we might free others to live accordingly. In the name of your Son, our gracious teacher. Amen.

 

Assurance of Forgiveness

Brothers and sisters in Christ, God loves us not because of what belongs to us, but because we belong to God. In this truth, Jesus offers us new life, ways that invite us to new living! Know that we are forgiven by God’s love and called to new living in God’s grace.

Youth: What’s new?

Voice 1: First, it was the internet.

Voice 2: Then it was email.

Voice 3: Then Facebook.

Voice 4: Then Twitter, then X.

Youth: What’s new?

Voice 1: It was cell phones.

Voice 2: Then texting.

Voice 3: Or FaceTime.

Voice 4: Or Zoom.

Youth: What’s new and doesn’t change?

All voices: Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, today and forever.

All: Come, let us worship Jesus Christ, the One who, in his love, mercy and grace toward us, never changes!

Hymns
Awake, O Sleeper
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
And Can It Be, That I Should Gain?

Worship and Praise*
Put on Love (Jernigan)
To Be Like You (Ligertwood, Crocker)
Grave Clothes (Fowler, McWhirter, Gerdis)

*For licensing and permission to reprint or display these songs on screen, go to ccli.com. The worship and praise songs suggested by Homiletics can be found in most cases on Google by using the title as the search term.

COMMENTARY

on Romans 13:8-14