Raised, Hidden, Revealed

I had just told you that mere rules cannot tame the flesh — that "touch not, taste not" has a show of wisdom but no power to check the indulgence of it (Colossians 2:23). So now I do not begin with a rule. I begin with a fact: "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above" (Colossians 3:1). You died with him; you were raised with him. That is not a goal set before you but a grave behind you. And because it is done, I can say: seek what is above, where Christ is seated. Set your affection there. The heart follows what it treasures, so I am not scolding your desires — I am redirecting them upward, to the place where your King already reigns.

See where the passage locates you: "your life is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). Your life is not in your grasp, where it could be lost, nor on display, where it could be shamed. It is hidden — safe in Christ, sealed in God. And it will not stay hidden. "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory" (Colossians 3:4). What you are will one day be seen. That is the ground of everything that follows.

Only now, on that ground, do I say: "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth" (Colossians 3:5). Put them to death — fornication, uncleanness, covetousness, which I call plainly what it is: idolatry. And with them the sins we excuse more easily: "anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication" and lying (Colossians 3:8-9). Notice the "therefore." I do not ask a corpse to kill sin so that it may live; I ask the living to kill sin because they already do. You put off the old man and put on the new — so live as the man you now are, not the man you were.

And that new man is "renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him" (Colossians 3:10) — Christ himself, being formed in you. In him the old dividing lines fall: "neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all" (Colossians 3:11). Whatever you were, whatever the world ranked you, he has become the whole of it.

So bring it home today. Do not fight the flesh with fresh rules and gritted teeth; that road I already closed to you. Fight it by faith in what is true: you are dead to it, raised above it, hidden in Christ, and one day revealed with him. Set your heart there this morning — and let the hand follow the heart down into the grave of every sin that would rise again. Grace and peace to you.