Bowling Green Covenant Church

“If you are then raised up with Christ, reach out for the highest gifts of Heaven, where Christ reigns in power. Be concerned with the heavenly things, not with the things of earth. For, as far as this world is concerned, you are already dead, and your true life is a hidden one in God, through Christ…Consider yourself dead to worldly contacts…”—Colossians 3.1-3, 5 [J.B. Phillips’ Paraphrase]

Ed. Note: I need to begin with a correction. In last week’s edition I wrote:

“The evidence for the resurrection comes from eyewitness accounts, first by the three women who went to Jesus’ tomb on the first day of the week. Under OT law women were considered to be unreliable as witnesses,” (italics added).

I should have said “under Jewish law.” There is no reference in the OT regarding the unreliability of a woman’s testimony. The law referred to is found in Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, IV.8.15, “But let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex…” I apologize for the error.

Now let us “reach out for the highest gifts of Heaven, where Christ reigns in power.”

The power of the resurrection is such that by confessing faith in Jesus, we not only part ways with the way we used to live—we become dead to the way we used to think. Most, if not all, behavior begins with a thought. There is a saying: orthodoxy leads to orthopraxy. Translated this means right belief leads to right behavior. Right belief is a necessary consequence of the resurrection. Every believer must be of a sound mind theologically and doctrinally. When we are raised to new life through faith in Christ, we are also raised to a new of thinking about the life we now live by faith in Christ. Right belief starts the moment we concern ourselves with “the heavenly things, not the things of earth.”

Before we confessed faith in Christ, we were spiritually dead and unconcerned with anything having to do with the heavenly things. If there were any “heavenly things” that did concern us, they were tainted by the faulty concept of what “religious” people did to prove they were religious. However, the instant we confessed in Christ we experienced a reversal. Once made alive in Jesus, we died to the values and worldview of the prevailing culture. Once in Christ our delight became the meditation on and the practice of the truth.

Such authentic living takes hard work, discipline, humility, honesty and grace unlimited. Yet as God provides opportunities for us to reach out for the highest gifts of Heaven and to be concerned with the heavenly things we can, in fact, learn how to do these things. It starts by learning how to think and act like Christ. The more we learn to think rightly, the more we will behave rightly. We do not need to do right in order to be raised up with Christ. We need to do right because we are raised up with Christ.

True life is to know Jesus Christ. True life is to know the power of His resurrection and how it transforms how we think and live. True life is to follow Christ—to do what He says and to go where He leads. True life is to be deaf to the Sirens and attentive to the Spirit. True life is to be concerned with the heavenly things, not with the things of earth. True life is to be hidden in God through faith in Christ.

To be hidden in God does not mean that we hide from this world. On the contrary, we are called to confront it with truth. We are called to dare it to believe in the power of grace that comes to us through the life-changing power of Christ’s resurrection.

You think about that.

MM