Colossians 3

We live on earth, and earth is quite a place to be. There is so much to see here, and so many people to enjoy. This is also a place with a serious problem. Sin and the judgment of God have taken a toll on the earth. There is something within us that longs for some other place, some other age, some other person or God who will make things right. We are told that God “has put eternity into man’s heart” in such a way that man “cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). There appears to be a universal yearning for something more, though we perhaps suppress this desire in our denial of God. But for those who have the wonder of Christ in us, the hope of glory, there is no need to deny Christ, and no sense in ignoring glory.

There is a realm of glory, an age of eternity, and a person who is the Lord of both. We have been raised with Him, and it is our great privilege to seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father. For so many important reasons we should set our minds on things that are above in heavenly realms, rather than longing for things on the earth, where the most durable treasures still decay. It is a true principle that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). In our union with Christ in His death, in some sense we have truly died, and yet we live. Not only do we still have as many days remaining here as the Lord wills, but more than that, our life is even now somehow above in heavenly realms, where Christ the Son of God lives and reigns. He will return from that place as He has promised, and we will appear with Him in His glory. This is something we should be thinking about regularly and specifically.

It is not as if men have nothing else to think about on earth. We can think about all the pleasures that this world affords, many of which may involve immorality, and might be an offense against our God and against our new life that we have been granted in Christ. We need to see these kinds of idolatrous lusts as something of our old life that is now dead through the death of Jesus on the cross. There is a way of thinking, speaking, and living that must be put off now, and there is a new way of honest love, a new way of heavenly society that we need to pursue more fully here below. As we hear the Word of God, the self is being renewed with resurrection life, and we are made by the Spirit of God to be more like Jesus Christ.

Whether we are Jew or Gentile, or any other way that we might define ourselves according to the categories that the world uses to segment people, these things are nothing compared to the eternal fact of our citizenship in realms of glory as God’s chosen people. This realization has great earthly significance. The root of our lives has been planted in the soil of heaven in Christ’s ascension, and the fruit of Christ-like meekness and love should fill the earth wherever we go. As the church lives in the world, we should leave our Savior’s fingerprints of life on everything we touch. This is the way to live out heavenly peace in a place that seems to be far too ready for a fight.

We have also been called to have unusually thankful hearts before the Lord who saved us by His blood. When we refuse to be thankful, we unnecessarily invite trouble into our lives. The alternative to that kind of disorder and disappointment is to let our hearts be filled with the Word of our ascended Lord, who is singing to us in the Scriptures of the glory of that realm above. In the voice that comes from the heavenly Word that rings in our hearts we have the message that we need, a message that not only corrects our idolatrous immorality, but also teaches us about a better way of life, a life of thankfulness to which we have been called.

This way of life does not resist that structures of authority that we have here on earth, but joyfully submits to the pattern of husband and wife, parent and child, superior officer and obedient foot soldier. Whatever our position may be, we can live it out in appropriate respect for those who are in some sense above us, and with generous love toward those who are in some sense below us. This life is a gift from God for us, an opportunity, and if we have to suffer in it for a time, we know that in just a little while we will be in that other realm with Jesus Christ. It is our joy to please Him now as we consider what He has reserved for us above.

In every opportunity for honest work and gentle service, the wounds that we bind on earth are somehow an expression of our care for the One who was wounded for our transgressions. There is some mysterious representation between the ones we love and care for here, and the One who loves us forever in the heavens. He feels the kindness of a gentle embrace. He hears the word that is spoken in love. He receives the gifts that we give to the weak and the poor, and none of this is forgotten in the heavens. We serve the Man of Sorrows when we serve the weak. He has already given the full measure of His love in winning heaven for us through the cross. He knows how to repay us for any act of resurrection love to which we give ourselves in His Name today.