Colossians 3
1 If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.
Verse 3 is so stark – “ye are dead”. What a different perspective that should give us on life! You’re dead. If that’s the case, then so many things are so unimportant now. What does a dead man care about?
I remember in college at the end of each semester I would clean out my notes, papers, books, etc. Once my roomate and I had a huge paperwad fight with all our notes from a few classes. The pile of wadded up notes was huge! And these notes had been so precious to us just a few days before. But now, by and large, they were utterly worthless. We were done with the class. And that is nothing compared to the feeling I had when I finished my last final at the end of college. I was _done_. None of it mattered anymore. I was starting a job and getting married, and I had a completely different perspective.
I have some cousins several years younger than I am, who are in jr high and high school right now. I remember dealing with all that junk. And I keep trying to tell them, 10 minutes after graduation none of it will matter anymore. Nobody will care who was cool, who was a dork, who played football, etc. It’s just irrelevant. I wish that it was possible to lift these kids up for just an hour or two into the better perspective that I have now. It would make a tremendous difference in how they approached school, and how they evaluated what was and was not important.
Precious few things are important enough to survive graduation or the purging at the end of each semester. I did care about a handful of friendships. I also kept a handful of notes and books. But very few.
But _death_ is different. You can’t take any material things with you.
I have some idea how my school time would have looked if I’d viewed it from the perspective I have now. But how should my life look if I view it from the Biblical perspective?
The Bible teaches me that I am dead now, but when Christ returns then I will be alive. But more than that – I will appear with Him in glory (NAS says I’ll be _revealed_ with Him in glory). The things that are important in this world will all disappear, and the truly important things will be revealed. I am dead now, but I will be glorified later.
How does a dead man, who will be glorified later, live now? Paul outlines several things.
First, in verse 2, he tells us “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”
It would be easy to twist this into Gnosticism, but it would be twisting the scriptures. The problem is not with material things. God tells us in Ecclesiastes that it is good “to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labour that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him: for it is his portion”. Jesus came eating and drinking and was disparaged as a winebiber and a glutton.
The problem is not with enjoying the good blessings God has given us. The problem is worldliness and materialism. John Eldredge in Wild At Heart defined the world (I’m paraphrasing here) as the whole system of rules, rewards, standards, etc., that is generated by a society formed of a bunch of unregenerate sinners.
Enjoying the good gifts of God is not worldliness. Striving for and measuring yourself by the world’s standards is the epitome of worldliness. Paul is telling us to serve God and ignore the world’s standards and opinion.
Why do we want to impress the world? As far as I know, we’re only to be concerned with what the world thinks of us in a few areas: our unity, our love for one another, and our faithfulness to God. I think in some cases we’ve decided the best way to “influence the culture” is to compete with it _on it’s own terms_. We seem to think that we’ll advance the kingdom by impressing the world with our art, our academics, our football playing ability, our computer programming ability, or our business success. The Bible does not support that approach. Nobody has ever said to me “Wow, Robert, that is really nice code. What must I do to be saved?”
We get caught up in the world in so many ways.
We get caught up in entertainment. My wife the other day mentioned something about Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s divorce. Why in the world do we care about that? And lest you think I’m looking down on her, I actually knew more about it than she did!
We get caught up in materialism. I’m memorizing Philippians 4:11-13. It struck me that I absolutely do _not_ know “how to get along with humble means”. I’m quite wealthy when measured by any reasonable scale. Maybe not compared to doctors and lawyers, but my income is over 4 times the average per capita income in this area. I take pride in that. I shouldn’t.
We get caught up in worldly activities. I feel like I’ll be depriving my kids if they are not invovled in sports and Boy Scouts. I think it’s my duty to take them to Disneyworld and Sea World.
Few of these things – especially not the last few I mentioned – are inherently bad. But they certainly expose that my mind is _not_ set on things above.
Paul continues with more concrete examples.
5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry
I’m glad that this is the first specific set of things Paul gives, because it’s the first set of things that entered into my mind and it makes me feel like I’m not much more vile than other men. Sensual and sexual immorality are at the top of the list, followed by greed.
Fornication is a gimme. It brings momentary pleasure and eternal pain. According to Strong’s, uncleanness is “the impurity of lustful, luxurious, profligate living”. It’s all temporal and temporary. It’s unbecoming of a dead man. It’s foolish. These are followed by evil passions and “concupiscence” which means “desire, craving, longing, desire for what is forbidden, lust”.
We can’t see from the perspective of a dead man. What does a dead man care about sinful, fleshly indulgences?
Greed is similar. A dead man doesn’t own anything. He’s not covetous.
So we see that part of “ye are dead” means that the only reasonable thing to do is to put away all these ungodly desires and fleshly indulgences.
In verse 8, Paul also mentions eliminating anger, wrath, and malice. How are these related to being dead?
In my experience, when I am unjustly angry at someone, or when I feel malice, it’s due to my own pride. Maybe they wronged me. Maybe I feel like I should tear them down for some kind of political reason. Maybe someone is challenging my legitimate authority on a matter. In most cases, it stems from pride.
What does a dead man have to be proud of? If I’m alive in this world, I have a reputation to maintain. I have to retaliate for wrongs done to me, because I must make sure justice is served.
But my life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ returns, I will be revealed with Him in glory. And _then_ I will be vindicated when I have done what is right. That’s the perspective a dead man should have. I don’t need to worry about my reputation, because it’s not up to you or to me to judge me. Christ will judge me as a faithless or a faithful servant, by His own criteria. Nobody but Jesus decides whether I am a good and faithful servant.
The natural way of looking at our lives is that we are born, live a little while, and then are dead for a very long time. The Biblical perspective is that we are _dead_ for a little while, and we will be alive for a very long time. If we could get that perspective it would change our lives. We would not trade eternal rewards for ungodly temporal pleasures. We would not let our pride cause us to become angry. We would not “play politics”. Instead, we would live as people who will be judged. This is both positive and negative. The negative side is that we will be held accountable for our sins. But it also has a positive side – we know that Jesus will rightly judge us when we are faithful, so it takes all the pressure off of making sure others think highly of us.