Colossians 3:1,2by Dr. Grant C. RichisonTo: Colossians Main Menu To: Grace Notes Home Page Colossians 3:1"If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God."Chapter three begins the practical division of the book of Colossians. Paul now moves to the positive. Not only does the death of Christ relate to the believer but so does the resurrection of Christ. The one relates to our salvation in the past; the other relates to our future. Not only is the Christian to relinquish his pre-death life but he is to aspire to the post-resurrection life of Christ. Jesus liberated us from legalism. We have new privileges in Christ. Chapter three launches our responsibility to live up to our privilege. ---------- "If then you were raised with Christ" The word "then" picks up the argument of chapter two. Paul draws an inference based on his arguments there. The word "if" assumes reality; we can translate it by the word "since." "Since" (in view of the fact) you were raised with Christ. That God has already raised us with Christ, is an assumed fact. It is a fact that God has raised us with Christ (Eph 2:5,6). It is something already done. There is no doubt in the "if" in the Greek here. "Raised with Christ" is an advance on "dead with Christ" of 2:20. A prerogative of the Christian life is that the Christian is risen with Christ. "Risen with" means to cause to live again together with. Here God raises the believer to live together with Christ. By virtue of our union with Christ we are justified and will be glorified. Because this is a judicial resurrection, it makes it no less real. God sees things differently than we do. God's viewpoint here is positional truth. God views us as already both dead (2:20), buried (2:12) and raised in Christ. God sees better than we do but he expects us to see what he has done in Christ with the eye of faith. This has nothing to do with our feelings. We cannot taste, feel or smell positional truth. Our position in Christ is infallible, unalterable, eternal and exalted. God said it and our faith lays hold of it. Religious duck bumps do not confirm the facts. Emotions simply appreciate what God has done. All God wants is for us to lay hold of our privilege by faith. Our present resurrection with Christ is one of many expressions of our position in Christ. Positional truth cannot change. It is something we have forever with Christ. God provides our position with Christ. He establishes this position forever entirely apart from merit at the moment of our salvation. We can draw power daily from this resource. PRINCIPLE: God expects us to live the Christian life on the declared fact of our resurrection with Christ. APPLICATION: Every fact declared by God is for our taking by faith. Most people try to live the Christian life by rules. They strive to improve the flesh but flesh will never improve. They place themselves under regulations that they hope will deliver them from sinful inclinations. All these lead us away from Christ. The heretics of Colosse sought to attain spiritual freedom by asceticism that would bring them into contact with spirit beings. Paul, however, points to true conquest of sin -- our positional truth in Christ. Positional truth elevates us to the very heights of heaven. When we come to Christ we turn in our old, broken down life and in its place we gain Jesus Christ. The Christian life is living the life of Christ. ---------- "seek those things which are above" "Seek" is the first of many commands in the remaining practical section of Colossians. "Seek" means to pursue, search for, endeavor to obtain, desire to possess. If a legalist were writing this he would write "Don't ...." but Paul writes "Seek..." God wants us to apply our eternal privileges to time. Make those privileges our scope of daily living. Center our lives on the ascended and glorified Christ. God wants us to understand our rights in Christ, our position in Christ. This takes study and effort. Most Christians want fun -- "Come to our laugh and play club." Others want misery -- "Come to our rules and regulation club." God wants us to conform our position with our daily life. Everyday life is to conform to this position. The Greek tense indicates that this seeking is to continue throughout the Christian life. The word "seek" is a command. God calls us to function in relation to the fact. "Things which are above" are heavenly things -- our positional truth. A daily attitude of seeking the things of positional truth will afford daily communion with the Lord. The next verses explain how to go about seeking things above. Non-Christians are earth-bound, secular, materialists. They operate in a world of taste, see and feel. They spend all their time trying to keep body and soul together. That is life to them. They do not know that there is more to life than that. For the Christian, his life is Christ (v.4). This is far more than existence. When we center our lives on Christ, life takes on a purpose, a life worth living. The Bible is the mind of God reduced to writing. We have what we need for the Christian life in writing. We have the Holy Spirit to help us dig it our. PRINCIPLE: Every spiritual position is for the taking by faith and every spiritual function is for the action of faith. APPLICATION: God grounds our holy walk in two spheres: 1. Godly living grounds in faith in Christ's accomplishments. 2. Godly living is governed by a continual exercise of faith in Christ's accomplishments. God wants us to rest on what Christ has done, not on what we do. Everything we have before God is because we have been incorporated in Christ at our salvation. The Christian experience must relate to our position in Christ. ---------- "where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God" Jesus is seated at "the right hand of God." This is the completeness of our position. Our status quo before God in Christ is already finished in God's eyes. Our position is complete in the mind of God. Jesus is "above" at the right hand of God. He represents us there (Ps. 110:1; Luke 22:69; Acts 2:33; 5:31; Rom. 8:34; Eph. 1:20; Heb. 1:3, 13; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2; 1 Peter 3:22). We must know where Jesus is. He is not in a grave in Palestine. He is at the summit of all existence, at the right hand of the Father. "Right hand" is a metaphorical expression of power or authority, Acts 2:33; Matt. 26:64; Mark 14:62; Heb. 1:13. Our position in Christ is a position of high status of authority. Christ's body is not laying in a grave in the Mid East. He is in heaven. That is more than you say for other religious leaders. They are dead and buried. This is what makes Christianity unique -- he is alive today. His humanity is seated at the right hand of God. If Jesus Christ is dead then Christianity is a joke, a cruel farce. The glory of Christianity is that he is alive. PRINCIPLE: The position of Christ at God's right hand carries a guarantee of our eternal glory. Our position before God is complete in Christ; he is the forerunner who accomplished the work that guarantees our coming fellowship with God. APPLICATION: Jesus has finished our redemption (Heb. 9:23-10:18). Jesus' seated is a symbol of a complete salvation. God has presently seated with Christ in a state of finished and complete redemption. There never will be a time when we are not in positional truth. The merit is all his and none of ours. No one can add to it or take from it. It is final and perfect. We sit with Christ with all the privileges, prerogatives, promises and powers of positional truth. It is not possible to ask God for more than what we already have in Christ. We have everything necessary for a vital, dynamic life in Christ. As everything in the physical realm draws to a center by gravity so everything in the spiritual realm draws to a center in Christ. Everything in our spiritual lives is to revolve around him. He is the one on whom we are to set our affections. Every experience we have in life is based on some position in Christ. Confession rests on the finished work of Christ; worship rests on the privilege of our priesthood; prayer is based on coming to God in Christ's name. Positionally, we are at the right hand of the Father with Christ. Because of that, we share his destiny, priesthood, sonship, heirship and election. He has made possible many operating assets for living the Christian life. We have the right to seek heavenly things because of Christ. When we seek Christ we do not seek a dead person. A study of Christ will lead us to positional truth. Colossians 3:2"Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth."We turn to the second command in the practical section of Colossians. We must not only "seek" things above but we are to "think" things above. We are to put into practice what God affords us by our position in Christ. Paul turns to a stronger term than "seek" of verse one -- "Set your mind." "Set your mind" places stress on the whole bent of life while "seek" emphasizes the pursuit of more concrete goals. ---------- "Set your mind on things above" If the Christian is to survive in spiritual war, his mind must focus on eternal things (II Cor. 4:18). "Seek" in verse one implies striving; this term implies concentration. "Mind" includes understanding, attitude and the will. It means to employ one's faculty for thoughtful planning, with emphasis upon the underlying disposition or attitude -- to have an attitude, to think in a particular manner as in the attitude that Christ Jesus had (Phil. 2.5). The false teachers of Colosse were pushing subjective mysticism. Paul condemned that in 2:20-23. God wants us to think about God's objective provisions. When this term is used with "things" it means to think about events, not simply material objects. God wants us to establish an attitude toward his provisions for us. This word also means to keep on giving serious consideration to something -- to ponder, to let one's mind dwell on, to keep thinking about, to fix one's attention on as here -- "Let your mind dwell on the things which are above." God wants us to love "things above." The Greek emphasizes "things above." "Things above" are the things which are ultimately essential, belonging to God. He wants our desire to orient around them. The wings of love soar our hearts toward eternal things. PRINCIPLE: God expects us to take responsibility for our thoughts by thinking on our union with Christ. APPLICATION: If we let our thoughts dwell on evil things, they will eventually become part of our attitude toward life. An attitude is an orientation to life. With a lustful attitude our lives will orient to evil. Some modern artists call evil "realism." The Bible calls it sin and depravity (Rom. 1:24-32). That is the attitude God wants us to have regarding evil. Our greatest need is to think about God's divine operating assets which he as provided for us. God wants us to think about Christ and what he has done for us. We need to think about our union or position with him eternally. Obviously we are not to think about evil things but we are not to daydream either. We dare not just think about anything. God does not want us to think about anything except what he OKs. We will save ourselves a lot of grief if we keep this in mind. Objective thinking will keep us from worrying about what will happen to our children. God wants us to bring everything thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ (II Cor. 10:5). This does not mean that all daydreaming is wrong but it does mean that we are not to spend a great deal of time in this sphere. God wants us to lasso every single thought and tie them to Jesus Christ. Bill Bright, after receiving the Templeton award (over one million dollars; he immediately gave it to the cause of evangelism around the world) from Prince Philip said, "After 51 years of walking with Him, I have concluded that anything that we say or do that is not directly or indirectly related to Him is not going to accomplish very much for the good of the individuals involved and for the glory of God." ---------- "not on things on the earth" "Things on the earth" is set in contrast to "things above." These are moral things, not physical things. This is not Gnostic contempt for material things. Paul is not pushing spiritual escapism such as becoming a monk or hiding from everyday life. Rather, our Christianity operates within the framework of everyday life whether in work or marriage. God created physical things for our enjoyment (Ps. 24). The body and sex are good in God's viewpoint (I Tim. 4:1-4). However, this negation is toward the legalism and asceticism of chapter two. The physical body is the environment where the flesh operates (Rom. 7). If we cherish the flesh, it will bring us down. The category to which we orient will become predominant in our thinking, then in our attitudes and finally in our actions. We ultimately become what we think about (Prov. 23:7). Philippians 3:19-20 contrasts those who "mind earthly things" with those whose citizenship is in heaven. God does not want us to focus on the trivial and self. Satan fills the earth with propaganda because he is the ruler of this world (Jn. 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; Eph. 2:3-4; I Tim. 4:1). He his out to deceive the world (Rev. 12:9). He is the god of this world (II Cor. 4:4). This is why God calls this world the "kingdom of darkness" (John 8:12; 9:5). Since the believer has been rescued from the devil's kingdom, he must think like God thinks with regard to this kingdom. PRINCIPLE: God does not want us to focus on the trivial but on the eternal. APPLICATION: Most of the things we think about are materialistic. It is not wrong to think about material things as long as material things do not become ultimate importance in our hearts. We must make a living; we must shop for groceries. God expects us to become productive members of the human race. We must educate our children and make provisions for the future. Our problem is we think about material things exclusively. If we are earthbound, we will be miserable. We will have a worm's eye view of life instead of a bird's eye view. Materialism is so insidious that we succumb to it without realizing it. If we are honest, there is none of us who are not susceptible to it. We are forced to admit that "I do have materialistic tendencies." We do not need faith when we deal in material things. We taste, feel, see and touch material things but faith takes us into another arena. Faith takes us into a spiritual stratosphere. There we can see things we could not see with a material viewpoint. Faith is the spiritual telescope that brings the things of God afar off near to our soul. We can, therefore, see things we could not otherwise see. Faith puts reality on intangible things. Eternal things are real but they are only real to those who have faith to see them. It was written of Moses, "By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible" (Heb. 11:27). God calls upon us to think about eternal things. He wants us to be heavenly-minded. However, we are not to be so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. Most of us are so earthly minded that we are no heavenly good. Copyright © 1995, Dr. Grant Richison. 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