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A HEART SET ON THINGS ABOVE (IV)
THURSDAY, APRIL 29
Colossians 3:1-3

Romans 6:1-13

 

“…your life is hid with Christ

in God.”

 

A HEART SET ON THINGS ABOVE (IV)
 
Why we are to seek. Now Paul restates the motivating factor behind the Christian’s seeking the “things above,” as opposed to the “things on the earth” (Col 3:2). It is because we are “dead,” and our lives are “hid with Christ in God” (v 3).
 
This “deadness” goes back to the thought of union with Christ. As Paul puts it elsewhere, “so many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into his death” (Rom 6:3). Thus, we are “dead to sin” (Rom 6:2), and since “he that is dead is freed from sin” (Rom 6:7), we who have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ are now “alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 6:11).
 
A transformation has taken place, in other words, as drastic as the difference between physical life and physical death. The enslaving passions of sin ought to have as much effect on the Christian, as the finest of earthly delights would have on a dead man! Ah, but the life of the Christian is now no longer below, but above: no longer under the dominion of Satan, but “hid with Christ in God.”
 
Dear reader, do you see what a blessing and a privilege it is, to have been “delivered… from the power of darkness,” and “translated… into the kingdom of [God’s] dear Son” (Col 1:13)? We are dead to those things that kept us in bondage, and alive to those things that have set us free! Dead to the enemy that sought to keep us under the power of death, and would have brought us to eternal death! Alive to the Saviour who came to “destroy him that had the power of death” (Heb 2:14), and now brings us into eternal life! O Christian, has it not truly been said, by the very embodiment of Truth Himself that “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matt 6:21)? Then if you consider life a thing to be treasured; if you cherish in Christ a Friend most precious; if you count God to be your soul’s greatest thirst and longing ‒ if your life is hid with Christ in God: surely your heart, your mind, your affection will be there!
 
THOUGHT: If my affection is not fixed on Christ, then I have no life.

PRAYER: Eternal God, I thank Thee for giving me life!

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