(Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Four) (Part Six)

This is the post were we move from discussing the stated centrality of the gospel in Colossians to discussing the gospel’s functional centrality. Paul has not stressed the basis for the functional centrality of the gospel in the life of the Colossian (and every) church so that our churches can then preach the imperatives of chapters 3-4 without explicitly demonstrating how they connect to the gospel content of chapters 1-2. Therefore, in Colossians 3:1-2, Paul makes that connection for us as he begins to bring out some of the ethical implications that flow out of the truth of the gospel.

Colossians 3:1-2—If [“since”] then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. [2] Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

Paul’s argument here, in part, is essentially this: since, according to the gospel, it is true that you have been raised with the Messiah, set your minds on that which you have been given in the Messiah, namely, the life of the New Creation. Why do I think Paul is calling the Colossians to set their minds on the life of the New Creation as it is found in the Messiah? This is where we need to remember a couple of Paul’s earlier thoughts. First, it is important to recall Paul’s obvious use of creation language when describing the activity of the gospel in Colossians 1:6 where he states that the gospel “is bearing fruit and growing.” Second, Paul again uses creation language when he refers to the Messiah as both “the firstborn of all creation” (1:15) and “the firstborn from the dead” (1:18). So not only is it through the Messiah that the original creation was created and is sustained, but it is also through him that humanity is re-created. It is this Messiah, Paul says—the Messiah of the New Creation—that has ascended to the right hand of God (Colossians 3:1). So when Paul calls the Colossians to seek the things that are above, he is calling them to think on the life of the New Creation as it is found in the Messiah and on their participation in it.

We need to be careful here not to think of Paul’s phrase, “the things that are above” (Colossians 3:1), merely in terms of that which is spiritual, that is, merely in terms of non-physical realities. When we consider the full context of Colossians, we are to see in that phrase a perfect wedding together of the spiritual world with the physical world. Paul, as we have noted, has been thinking in physical resurrection terms from the beginning of the epistle. He has already referred to the Messiah as “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18), and in Colossians 2:12 Paul stated that we were raised with the Messiah “through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead” (a physical resurrection). Therefore, what I believe Paul means for us to understand when we get to Colossians 3—and what we are, therefore, to set our minds upon—is that in the heavenly places, as Ephesians puts it, God’s good future for the physical creation is already a reality. In the Messiah we find a true resurrected human being who is enjoying perfect, unbroken fellowship with God, exercising dominion over the world as God originally intended, and who is totally free from every effect of the fall.

I think we find additional evidence that this is the case in verses 3-4. “Set your minds on things above… [3] for (because) you have died, and your life is hidden with the Messiah in God.” What exactly is this life that is hidden? Verse 3 says that it is hidden “with the Messiah in God.” This life to which Paul refers is entirely wrapped up in the resurrected Messiah. How wrapped up? So much so, that Paul says in verse 4 that the Messiah is himself our very life. If there is no Messiah, there is no life.

This is where things get really interesting. Verse 4 says, “When the Messiah who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). If we look at verses 3 and 4 side-by-side, we see two very significant phrases that will help us identify just what this hidden life actually is: “your life is hidden” and “your life appears.” So the life that is now hidden, the life that is entirely wrapped up in the Messiah, will someday appear. What’s Paul talking about here? Remember, he’s speaking of the physical, resurrected life of the Messiah, the true human being, the firstborn of the New Creation, who embodies in himself the perfect wedding together of the physical and spiritual worlds. Therefore, when the Messiah appears, that is, when he comes, Paul says, we “also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4) so that the entirety of his New Creation experience becomes ours in experience.

When Paul calls the Colossians to set their minds on “the things that are above,” he intends that they think on the place where God’s intended goal for the renewal of all creation is being kept in store, namely, “at the right hand of God” where the resurrected Messiah is seated (Colossians 3:1). This is, I believe, “the hope of the gospel” to which Paul refers in Colossians 1:5 and 1:23. The hope of the gospel is the resurrected life of the New Creation as it is wrapped up in the Messiah himself. Therefore, they do not need any other teaching than that which has already been given them in the gospel. They are, in other words, already complete in the Messiah. They do not need to follow the rules and practices that these false teachers were giving them in order that they might go on to spiritual maturity. Paul is in no uncertain terms exhorting the Colossians to find the totality of their identity in the identity of the Messiah. He is calling the Colossians to find their identity in who the Messiah is for them in his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension to the Father’s right hand, namely, the firstborn of the New Creation. We need to see in Colossians 3:1-4 that Paul intensely desires that the gospel and its hope of the renewal of creation be the functional center of the believer’s life. The life of the New Creation as it is found in the Messiah is to be what Christians live and breathe at all times! It is to be that which determines the Christian’s sense of identity and establishes his perspective on all of life as it is lived in the here and now.

Therefore, the commands for wives to submit to their husbands (Colossians 3:18), for husbands to love their wives (Colossians 3:19), for children to obey their parents (Colossians 3:20), for fathers not to provoke their children (Colossians 3:21), for slaves to obey their earthly masters (Colossians 3:22), and for masters to treat their slaves justly and fairly (Colossians 4:1) must be understood and obeyed within this gospel-rich, Christian-identity context. This is the garden of life for the Messiah’s people. If these commands are not understood and obeyed in this way, it will not be long until we find ourselves wandering through the barren desert of moralism.