Colossians 3:1-4

Here is the Word .doc for the following lesson. Colossians Study 10

Undead

Chapter 3 read apart from chapters one and two is incredibly dangerous.  I say dangerous because someone may hear Paul’s commands in this chapter and seek to boot-strap their way to becoming more like Christ.  Of course this is the American way isn’t it?  Rugged individualism, self made men and entrepreneurship?  This is how we live the American dream.  We see something we want and we work for it until it’s ours.  Those who go this route inevitably find the road blocked, sometimes after a week, sometimes a month or a year later.  The really determined ones will continue this work of self sanctification for their entire lives never coming to an understanding of true joy in Christ or worse, covering over the fact that they’ve never experienced the new birth at all and their self will has been their substitute.  Seeking righteousness apart from the empowering work of Christ is a dead end road.  Consider the commands coming up in the next several verses.

  • Keep seeking the things above
  • Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.
  • Put to death what is earthly in you (sexual sins)
  • Put them away (sins of the tongue)
  • Do not lie
  • Put off the old self
  • Put on compassionate hearts
  • Bear with one another, forgive one another
  • Put on love
  • Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts
  • Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly
  • Do everything in the name of Jesus

It is no accident that each of the NT epistles follows the pattern of the indicative leading to the imperative.  Put another way, we are told a lot about Christ that serves as the foundation for us living for Christ.

Coming out of an oppressive legalist system can cause a pendulum swing that can be easy to ride over into antinomianism where one rejects all “law” or instruction in their life.  Both legalism and lawlessness are an affront to Christ.  Nor are we searching for a middle ground between two entirely man centered systems.  Living a life that in Paul’s words is “worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” is entirely different and difficult and satisfying and agonizing.

The beauty and supremacy of Christ has been made plain to us by the awakening work of the Holy Spirit.  We have been released from the bondage and mastery of sin to love and serve God.  So why do we need to be told to flee fornication or to stop lying to one another?  Doesn’t our new love override our old ones and compel us to live it?  Boy if that were always true.  Augustine remarked about this dilemma in his own life.

“I was astonished that although I now loved you . . . I did not persist in enjoyment of my God. Your beauty drew me to you, but soon I was dragged away from you by my own weight and in dismay I plunged again into the things of this world . . . as though I had sensed the fragrance of the fare but was not yet able to eat it.”

Do you understand his frustration?  Do you identify with loving God yet living like you hate him?  Or feel the bitter sting of hypocrisy as you wax eloquently about your passions for God all the while knowing the wretched life you lead?  It’s not that you are content in this spot or wish to live a life of duplicity.  You struggle, seek, savor, sin, repent and repeat.  Always looking for the right book or regimen to unlock the mystery to not only rightly desiring God, but remaining there.  Not that identification with someone helps, but sometimes it makes me feel less alone.  John Piper wrote:

Manageable, duty-defined, decision-oriented, willpower Christianity now seemed easy, and real Christianity had become impossible.  The emotions—or affections, as former generations called them—which I was now free to enjoy, proved to be beyond my reach. The Christian life became impossible. That is, it became supernatural.

When I first read this quote from John Piper a few years ago it made me shout “YES, THAT IS IT!!!”, immediately followed by a somber “yes, that is it”.  There is an initial exhilaration in discovering the problem to be sure.  It’s the relief of knowing, “hey, I’m not crazy after all”.  But the ease is short lived because you know the solution is out of your grasp.  It’s the equivalent of living under the sentence of a deadly disease then to be told that there is a cure.  But the cure involves an operation that is beyond the capability of current medical abilities.  So what now?

“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. ” (Colossians 3:1–4, ESV)

Has everybody seen a zombie movie at one time in your life?  What are some of the characteristics of a zombie?  Here is a definition.  A zombie is a dead body that has been brought back to life by a supernatural force to be controlled by someone else by use of magic.  Well you all know where I’m going with this by now don’t you.  Have no fear, I’m not gonna take it any further.  I mention it only because of the frequent use of death and resurrection language that Paul uses not only in this epistle, but throughout all his letters.

  • “even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ” (Ephesians 2:5–6, NAS)
  • “having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. ” (Colossians 2:12, NAS)
  • “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, ” (Romans 6:8, NAS)
  • “But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. ” (Romans 7:6, NAS)
  • “I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died; ” (Romans 7:9, NAS)
  • “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. ” (1 Corinthians 15:22, NAS)
  • “I affirm, brethren, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. ” (1 Corinthians 15:31, NAS)
  • ““For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. ” (Galatians 2:19, NAS)
  • “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. ” (Philippians 1:21, NAS)

So we’ve got all of this death talk that should serve as a real clue to the happy clappy, God has a wonderful plan for your life people that union with Christ is a death sentence to all we once knew.   We don’t just continue on as we were.  Everything changes, and I mean everything, from how we view work, relationships, money, hobbies, vacations, car tires, fishing poles and green bean casseroles.  Nothing should ever be the same.  We have been crucified with Christ to this whole stinking world of filth and corruption.  We don’t see it all that way immediately.  The corruption grows more vivid as Christ grows more vivid.  One of those light shining on darkness things.

So Paul begins the portion of his letter about the ethics of the believer by stating what should seem like an obvious instruction.  Since you were made partakers in Christ’s resurrection, KEEP GOING!  It’s really, that simple.  You came to Christ because you desired Him, why would you stop now?  I love the feeling of coming up for air after having been under water for sixty second.  In fact I love it so much I might just take another.  But the point is plain, you have been justified therefore search, since it’s in the perfect tense, would mean continue to search, for that which is heavenly.  And to seek after heaven is to seek after the One who reigns there.

Paul doesn’t just tell us to seek after those things, but also to fix our minds upon them.  What’s the difference?  The difference is between running a marathon and reveling in the finish.  The runner can chase the clock and envision the ecstasy of the finish line.  When Ashley and I ran our first ½ marathon, we focused a good deal of the time on our time.  I checked the watch every mile to see that we were keeping a good pace in our pursuit of the finish.  But as mile 4 & 5 turned into 9 & 10 we started to mumble and gurgle incoherent words to one another about what the finish line would feel like.  So in the midst of the seeking Paul tells the believers at Colossae to think about the eternity they are heading for.

Paul gives us the reason for his two previous statement by the use of the conjunction “γάρ” in vs.3.  We can translate it “for” or “because”.  Paul tells us to seek after and think upon things above because you died, aorist tense or easier understood as past tense.  But he doesn’t stop with them being dead, remember how I told you Paul used this dead but not really language all over the place.  Look here.  He says you’re dead, but your life is protected.  Sounds very similar to Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”  But notice the big difference here in vs.3 between old death and new life.  Sure my first life ended, why couldn’t my second one end too?  It can’t!!!  This life is hidden!  It’s protected from death by He who conquered death.  I believe there is some imputational language here in “hidden with Christ in God’.  Christ has clothed us in His righteousness and hidden us in God from God.

But we will not remain hidden.  To grasp the meaning of this we must understand why we are being hidden in the first place.  Each of us has committed what RC Sproul calls, cosmic treason against deity and stand condemned to die.  Christ imparts unto us His righteousness that protects us from the justly deserved wrath of God.  But at Christ’s return we will be changed.  “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. ” (1 John 3:2, NAS).  And I presume from this text we will no longer be hidden but revealed alongside the rest of the elect as we take our place and are presented by the Father to the Son as the bride of Christ.

Questions:

  • What does it mean to “seek things above” in our lives?
  • What does it mean to “set your minds on things above” in our lives?
  • What does death with Christ look like?