Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

1. COLOSSIAS 3 COMMETARY
Written and edited by Glenn Pease
3:1. Since, then, you have been raised with
Christ, set your hearts on things above, where
Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
1. C.S Lovett paraphrases this, Since you have risen with Christ, shift your ambitions to
heaven. Inasmuch as your Master reigns there, that's the place to invest.
2. In the first part of the third chapter of the Epistle to theColossians, we have noticed
several admonitions for living the full life in Jesus Christ :a. Seek The Heavenly (3:1-4)
b. Slay The Earthly (3:5-9)c. Strengthen The Christly (3:10-11)2.
3. Chuck Swindoll tells this story about Larry Walters. The 33 year old truck driver had
been sitting around doing zilch week in, week out, until boredom got the best of him.
That was back in the summer of '82. He decided enough was enough; what he needed
was a adventure. So, on July 2nd of that year he rigged 42 helium-filled weather balloons
to a Sears lawn chair in San Pedro and lifted off. Armed with a pellet gun to shot out a
few balloons should he fly too high. Walters was shocked to reach 16 thousand feet
rather rapidly. He wasn't the only one. Surprised pilots reported seeing Some guy in a
lawn chair floating in the sky to perplexed air-traffic controllers.
Finally, Walters had enough sense to start shooting a few balloons, which allowed
him to land safely in Long Beach some 45 minutes later. The bizzare stunt got him a
Timex add as well as a guest spot on The Tonight Show. Ultimately, he quit his job to
deliever motivational speeches. When asked why he did such a weird thing, Walters
usually gave the same answer: People asked me if I had a death wish. I tell them no, it
was something I had to do...I couldn't just sit there.
Here was a man who set his affections on things above, but as high as he went he did
not go as high as the Christian is to go. The Christian mind is to go all the way into the
presence of God.
RAISED
4. Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, LIGHT AND DELICIOUS CHRISTIANS
My wife will never let me forget one of my early experienceswith breadmaking, trying to
make pocket or pita bread. I had shapedthe small round loaves and placed them on a
cookie sheet to rise.They utterly refused. Hours later they had spread out to low

2. yellowmounds. In desperation, I finally baked them, hoping for the best.It was not to be.
They were hard. I mean really hard. So hard, infact, that my wife quoted Jesus' own words
to me: Which of you, ifhis son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Now don't get the
wrong idea. Over the years I have turned outsome wonderful breads. I've learned two
keys: first, make sure youhave enough yeast kneaded in. Second, let it rise in a warm
place.I've tried the top of the water heater and our sunny kitchencounter. But the best spot
I've found is inside our gas oven, heatedto a constant 75 to 80 degrees by the pilot light. If
theenvironment isn't warm enough, all the yeast in the world won'thelp.People rise much
the same way. I've seen people who have hadwonderful experiences with the Lord remain
stunted in their growthmuch like my stubborn pocket bread. Plenty of yeast, but they
failto stay in a warm place where they can grow and let God's leaveningchange them
through and through. They end up yeasty but hard, notlight and delicious.The church at its
best is like a warm place with the thermostatset on love. There is the stimulus of other
people who areexperiencing growth. And there is the kind of teaching and
caring,acceptance and challenge that helps us become all God made us to be.Sure, lots of
people say you can be a Christian without going3to church. And I've eaten some pretty
chewy sourdough in my time,too.What I love most is the sweet aroma of bread which fills
ourkitchen. I'll lift the bread bowl from its rising place and see thewonder worked by
yeast and sugar and warmth. Then I'll shapeloaf, put it in the oven, and out will come the
most mouth-watering,light-textured bread you can ever imagine. You have no choice but
toput aside whatever you are doing, slice a piece, and eat it stillwarm from the oven.Our
churches can be the kind of delightful kitchens where fragrance fills the room, warm
places to grow. Maybe we ought to putout a new sign: Tender Loaves Made Here.
The resurrection of Christ was also our resurrection, for we are risen with Him. When the
Head rose the whol body rose. When Jesus conquered death it was like David slaying
Goliath. He immediately set the whole army of Israel free from fear and bondage to the
giant. When Jesus rose the whole church immediately was set free from fear and bondage
to death. There is a past resurrection and a future resurrection. The spiritual resurrection
is symbolized by baptism. This first resurrection is from the dead of being dead to God.
The final resurrection is of the body. The first death was spiritual and so the first
resurrection is spiritual. The second death is physical and so the second resurrection is
physical.
For resurrection living There is resurrection power,
And the praise and prayer of trusting May glorify each hour.
For common days are holy, And years are Eastertide,
To those who with the living Lord In living faith abide.
5. SET YOUR HEART: It is a matter of the emotional commitment. It is a desire to seek
to be near to Christ. Nearer My God To Thee. The Christian who does this will be in a
spirit of praise for he will be in a heavenly atmosphere in his mind often. Jesus should act
like a magnet drawing our eyes to look up to heaven. This is a split level universe and the
Christian is to live on the upper level.
Prayer is one of the ways we seek what is above.
Prayer makes the darkened cloud withdraw
Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw;

3. Gives exercise to faith and love,
Brings every blessing from above.
Some feel it is a waste of time to focus on heaven. They say one world at a time. But
those who focus on heaven are the most useful and practical on earth. They are not so
heavenly minded they are no earthly good, but rather so heavenly minded they are the
only ones who can do any lasting good on earth.
6. THINGS ABOVE: Spence, Whether the things above be a fuller glimpse of heaven, a
clearer title to it, a higher preparatio;n for it, or a sweeter fortaste of it, Christ, now at
God's right hand is the source and certre of all. We are to focus on what will be forever
and not on what is merely passing. The long range view is the Christian view. The
temporal is not unimportant but it is not to take priority over the permanent.
O, may the heavenly vision fire
Our hearts with ardent love,
Till wings of faith, and strong desire,
Bear every thought above.
7. RAY STEDMAN, Recently I attended a Men's Retreat at Mount Hermon and
enjoyedTimHansel's wonderful ministry of encouragement. One thing he said struck me
forcibly. He declared the symbol of a Christian life ought to be thumbs up. Not only
does that mean all is well, but it also,according toHansel, is a reminder to Christians of
where our true resource lies. How beautifully it fits this passage! Twice in this short
section the apostle urges us to set our minds and our hearts onthings above, where Christ
is seated at the right hand of God. Just as the thumb points upward, so Christians are to
look to things abovefor their help in living life.
He means our affections. Think with affectionate gratitude of what the Lord Jesus has
already done for you and what he is to you now. This is not a form of escapism. It is not
something you try to keep your mind on all day long, tothe exclusion of business, family
or home. It is rather something that when your mind is occupied with your family, work
problems, or whatever, you also bring into it this extra dimension.Christ is part of that
situation.That is what Paul means when he says,your life is hid with Christ inGod.
Christ is involved with your activities. Remind yourself that whatever you are involved in
includes also the person of the Lord himself.His wisdom, power and knowledge are all
available to you. That is what Paul means. It ought to awaken our loving gratitude.
The Christian is to look beyong what the eyes of flesh can see. A man told of his
approaching the door of a building, and he noticed from a distance that there was no latch
on the door. It appeared he would not be able to enter it. On getting closer he discovered
that it was controlled by an electric eye the automatically opened it. Had he stood back
and not approached because of what he saw he would not have been able to go through
that door. He had to go forward in faith that there must be some way it would open. The
women on Easter morning went to the tomb saying who will roll away the stone? They
did not see how they could get through, but they moved forward anyway. So we need to
see above the visible circumstances and trust God to open doors if we move forward in

4. obedience to His will.
8. Have you ever wonder how the giant redwoods of California draw water to their
foliage, often more than 300 feet in the air? It is not done through pressure from the
roots, wrote Robert Collier. It is done by pull from above. All through nature the same
law will be found...... 3:2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
The heavely minded can better enjoy the things of earth for they are no longer the goal of
life but just the fringe benefits and so their is no need to become idolotrous and no need
to be crushed if you do not get all that earth offers.
It is a matter of the will. We are to choose where we focus our minds and not let them be
dominated by the things of the earth so that we neglect what is most vital and eternal. The
truly heavenly minded are most effective in their life on earth. If you set your mind on the
things of earth you will strive to attain them. But if you set your mind on the heavely
things of Christ you will seek to attain those values and you will thereby become a far
better Christian. Where your treasure is there will be your heart also. The things above are
all positive and thus Paul preceeded Peale in being the father of positive thinking.
9. B. B. Warfield has said that Paul's words here are an exhortation to us to be in life real
citizens of the heavenly kingdom to which we have been transferred; to do the duties and
enter into the responsibilities of our new citizenship. Therefore, our motivational
principle for seeking holiness is that Christ has set higher standards for us than what the
world sets. We must aim to meet and conform to his standards, not the standards of the
world. In other words, we are not only to seek heaven, but we are to think heaven. Earthly
thoughts will never sustain a heavenly walk.
10. Spuregon writes, Seek those things which are above, that is, heavenly joys. Oh seek
to know on earth the peace of heaven, the rest of heaven, the victory of heaven, the
service of heaven, the communion of heaven, the holiness of heaven: You may have
fortaste of all of these; seek after them. Seek, in a word, to be preparing for the heaven
which Christ is preparing for you. You are soon to dwell of above; robe yourselves for
the great festival. Your treasure is above, let your hearts be with it. All that you are to
possess in eternity is above, where Christ is; rise, then, and enjoy it. Let hope anticipate
the joys which are reserved, and so let us begin our heaven here below. If ye then be
risen with Christ, live according to your risen nature, for your life is hid with Christ in
God. We might render it thus: Have a relish for things above; or, Study industriously
things above: Or, Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. What
are these things above that we should set our affections upon? ...................First, there is
God himself. Make Him the subject of your thoughts...................Delight thyself also in
the Lord, and He will give thee the desires of thine heart. ...................O to love God
with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind, and with all our strength: That
is what the law required, it is what the gospel enables us to render. Next, I see Jesus who
is God, but is yet truly a man.............................Fix your mind on Him then. Often
meditate on His divine person, His perfect work, His mediatorial glory, His second
coming, His glorious rein, His love for you, you own security in Him, your union with
Him. Oh let these sweet thoughts process your breasts, fill your mouths, and influence
your lives.

5. 11. Barclay writes, The greek word for man is on anthropos, and in popular etymology
the Greeks declared that anthropos literally means The upward looker. Man's very
physical form is the proof that he was designed by God to look up. None the less, the
fact is that there are many men who become so immersed in, and so concerned with, the
things of this world that they cease to look up; there thoughts and plans and ambitions
become limited to this earth.
Someone tells how a visitor to a great art gallery saw one of the cleaners at work
polishing the floor. Good morning, He said, There are some very wonderful pictures
in this gallery. I suppose there are, the cleaner answered, If a body had the time to
look up. Surrounded by beauty, she was so busy with the floor that she never looked
up. Bunyan paints the picture of the man bent double, eyes on the ground, scrabbling
among the small dust of the earth, while all the time an angel stood above him offering
him a golden crown--and he never saw it, because he never lifted his eyes.
12. Barclay, The most impressive thing of all about this life of the Christian is the way in
which every part of it is connected with Christ. It is lived in Christ 2:6; it is lived with
Christ 2:13; it is instructed by Christ 3:16;......................wives are to be subject to their
husbands, As is fitting in the Lord 3:18; Children are to obey their parents, For this
pleases the Lord 3:20; Slaves are to obedient, Fearing the Lord 3:22; Whatever task we
have in mind, we must do it as Serving the Lord 3:23. It is the Christians relationship to
Christ that dominates and dictates every other relationship in life. In his home, at his
work, in his church, in his pleasure, in his friendships, in every contact with life at every
point, the life of the Christian is in Christ.
13. BARNES, If ye then be risen with Christ - The apostle in this place evidently
founds the argument on what he had said in Col_2:12; see the notes at that passage. The
argument is, that there was such an union between Christ and his people, that in virtue
of his death they become dead to sin; that in virtue of his resurrection they rise to
spiritual life, and that, therefore, as Christ now lives in heaven, they should live for
heaven, and fix their affections there.
Seek those things which are above - That is, seek them as the objects of pursuit
and affection; strive to secure them.
Where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God - Notes, Mar_16:19. The
argument here is, that since Christ is there, and since he is the object of our supreme
attachment, we should fix our affections on heavenly things, and seek to be prepared to
dwell with him.
14. CLARKE, If ye then - Ειουν· Seeing then that ye are risen with Christ; this refers
to what he had said, Col_2:12 : Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen
with him. As, therefore, ye have most cordially received the doctrine of Christ; and
profess to be partakers of a spiritual religion, that promises spiritual and eternal things;
seek those things, and look to be prepared for the enjoyment of them.
14B. CALVIN, To those fruitless exercises which the false apostles urged, (429) as
though perfection consisted in them, he opposes those true exercises in which it

6. becomes Christians to employ themselves; and this has no slight bearing upon the point
in hand; for when we see what God would have us do, we afterwards easily despise the
inventions of men. When we perceive, too, that what God recommends to us is much
more lofty and excellent than what men inculcate, our alacrity of mind increases for
following God, so as to disregard men. Paul here exhorts the Colossians to meditation
upon the heavenly life. And what as to his opponents? They were desirous to retain their
childish rudiments. This doctrine, therefore, makes the ceremonies be the more lightly
esteemed. Hence it is manifest that Paul, in this passage, exhorts in such a manner as to
confirm the foregoing doctrine; for, in describing solid piety and holiness of life, his aim
is, that those vain shows of human traditions may vanish. (430) At the same time, he
anticipates an objection with which the false apostles might assail him. What then?
“Wouldst thou rather have men be idle than addict themselves to such exercises, of
whatever sort they may be?” When, therefore, he bids Christians apply themselves to
exercises of a greatly superior kind, he cuts off the handle for this calumny; nay more, he
loads them with no small odium, on the ground that they impede the right course of the
pious by worthless amusements. (431)
1.If ye are risen with Christ. Ascension follows resurrection: hence, if we are the
members of Christ we must ascend into heaven, because he, on being raised up from the
dead, was received up into heaven, (Mark 16:19,) that he might draw us up with him.
Now, we seek those things which are above, when in our minds (432) we are truly
sojourners in this world, and are not bound to it. The word rendered think upon
expresses rather assiduity and intensity of aim: “Let your whole meditation be as to this:
to this apply your intellect — to this your mind.” But if we ought to think of nothing but
of what is heavenly, because Christ is in heaven, how much less becoming were it to seek
Christ upon the earth. Let us therefore bear in mind that that is a true and holy thinking
as to Christ, which forthwith bears us up into heaven, that we may there adore him, and
that our minds may dwell with him.
As to the right hand of God, it is not confined to heaven, but fills the whole world. Paul
has made mention of it here to intimate that Christ encompasses us by his power, that
we may not think that distance of place is a cause of separation between us and him, and
that at the same time his majesty may excite us wholly to reverence him.
15. GILL, If ye then be risen with Christ,.... The apostle having observed in the
former chapter, that the believing Colossians were dead with Christ from the rudiments
of the world, were buried with him in baptism, and were risen with him through the
faith of the operation of God, argues from hence how much it became them to regard a
new and spiritual life, and to seek after superior and heavenly things, and treat with
neglect and contempt carnal and earthly ones. For he does not here call in question their
being risen with Christ, but takes it for granted that they were, and makes use of it as an
argument for his present purpose. They were risen with Christ as their head, and as
members in union with him representatively, when he rose from the dead; and
emblematically in their baptism, when having gone down into the water, and being
baptized, they emersed from it; and spiritually in conversion, when they were raised
from a death of sin, to a life of grace, by Christ, as the resurrection and the life, the
efficient cause of it, and in virtue of his resurrection from the dead: wherefore being thus
raised again in every sense, it highly became them to

7. seek those things which are above; the better and heavenly country, the continuing
city, which is above the heavens, whose builder and maker is God; Christ, who is in
heaven, and salvation alone by him without the works of the law; all spiritual blessings,
such as pardon, peace, righteousness, life, and glory, which are in heavenly places in
him; doctrines and ordinances, which come from heaven, and are the means of
supporting a spiritual and heavenly life; especially that bread of life which came down
from heaven, and gives life unto the world, and of which if a man eats, he shall never die,
but live for ever; and particularly glory, honour, immortality, and eternal life, the crown
of righteousness laid up above, the kingdom of God, and the righteousness of it; which
are to be sought for in the first place with all affection, earnest desire, care, and
diligence, not by or for works of righteousness, but in Christ, and as the gifts of God's
grace through him.
Where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God: which contains other reasons and
arguments to engage believers to look upwards, and seek after heavenly things; that as
Christ, when he died and rose again from the dead, did not stay long on earth, nor
minded the things of the world, but ascended up to heaven, where he now is, and will
remain until his second coming; so they, being dead and risen with him, should, in their
thoughts, desires, and affections, in the exercise of the graces of faith, hope, and love,
ascend heavenwards, like pillars of smoke perfumed with frankincense; and the more
should their hearts be where he is, and intent on things above there, from the
consideration of that great honour and dignity in which he is. He is on the right hand of
God; in human nature, an honour which none of the angels were ever admitted to: here
he sitteth, as having done the work of redemption, and entered into his rest, beholding
the travail of his soul with satisfaction, though he continues to be an advocate, and to
make intercession for his people; which is another reason enforcing this exhortation.
16. HENRY, The apostle, having described our privileges by Christ in the former part
of the epistle, and our discharge from the yoke of the ceremonial law, comes here to
press upon us our duty as inferred thence. Though we are made free from the obligation
of the ceremonial law, it does not therefore follow that we may live as we list. We must
walk the more closely with God in all the instances of evangelical obedience. He begins
with exhorting them to set their hearts on heaven, and take them off from this world: If
you then have risen with Christ. It is our privilege that we have risen with Christ; that is,
have benefit by the resurrection of Christ, and by virtue of our union and communion
with him are justified and sanctified, and shall be glorified. Hence he infers that we must
seek those things which are above. We must mind the concerns of another world more
than the concerns of this. We must make heaven our scope and aim, seek the favour of
God above, keep up our communion with the upper world by faith, and hope, and holy
love, and make it our constant care and business to secure our title to and qualifications
for the heavenly bliss. And the reason is because Christ sits at the right hand of God. He
who is our best friend and our head is advanced to the highest dignity and honour in
heaven, and has gone before to secure to us the heavenly happiness; and therefore we
should seek and secure what he has purchased at so vast an expense, and is taking so
much care about. We must live such a life as Christ lived here on earth and lives now in
heaven, according to our capacities.
17. HENRY, If ... then — The connection with Col_2:18, Col_2:23, is, he had
condemned the “fleshly mind” and the “satiating to the full the flesh”; in contrast to this
he now says, “If then ye have been once for all raised up (Greek, aorist tense) together

8. with Christ” (namely, at your conversion and baptism, Rom_6:4).
seek those things ... above — (Mat_6:33; Phi_3:20).
sitteth — rather, as Greek, “Where Christ is, sitting on the right of God” (Eph_1:20).
The Head being quickened, the members are also quickened with Him. Where the Head
is, there the members must be. The contrast is between the believer’s former state, alive
to the world but dead to God, and his present state, dead to the world but alive to God;
and between the earthly abode of the unbeliever and the heavenly abode of the believer
(1Co_15:47, 1Co_15:48). We are already seated there in Him as our Head; and hereafter
shall be seated by Him, as the Bestower of our bliss. As Elisha (2Ki_2:2) said to Elijah
when about to ascend, “As the Lord liveth ... I will not leave thee”; so we must follow the
ascended Savior with the wings of our meditations and the chariots of our affections. We
should trample upon and subdue our lusts that our conversation may correspond to our
Savior's condition; that where the eyes of apostles were forced to leave Him, thither our
thoughts may follow Him (Mat_6:21; Joh_12:32) [Pearson]. Of ourselves we can no
more ascend than a bar of iron lift itself up’ from the earth. But the love of Christ is a
powerful magnet to draw us up (Eph_2:5, Eph_2:6). The design of the Gospel is not
merely to give rules, but mainly to supply motives to holiness.
18. EBC 1-4, THE PRESENT CHRISTIAN LIFE A RISEN LIFE
We have now done with controversy. We hear no more about heretical teachers. The
Apostle has cut his way through the tangled thickets of error, and has said his say as to
the positive truths with which he would hew them down. For the remainder of the letter,
we have principally plain practical exhortations, and a number of interesting personal
details.
The paragraph which we have now to consider is the transition from the controversial to
the ethical portion of the Epistle. It touches the former by its first words, If ye then were
raised together with Christ, which correspond in form and refer in meaning to the
beginning of the previous paragraph, If ye died with Christ. It touches the latter
because it embodies the broad general precept, Seek the things that are above, of
which the following practical directions are but varying applications in different spheres
of duty.
In considering these words we must begin by endeavouring to put clearly their
connection and substance. As they flew from Paul’s eager lips, motive and precept,
symbol and fact, the present and future are blended together. It may conduce to
clearness if we try to part these elements. There are here two similar exhortations, side
by side. Seek the things that are above, and Set your mind on the things that are
above. The first is preceded, and the second is followed by its reason. So the two laws of
conduct are, as it were, enclosed like a kernel in its shell, or a jewel in a gold setting, by
encompassing motives. These considerations, in which the commandments are
embedded, are the double thought of union with Christ in His resurrection, and in His
death, and as consequent thereon, participation in His present hidden life, and in His
future glorious manifestation. So we have here the present budding life of the Christian
in union with the risen, hidden Christ; the future consummate flower of the Christian
life in union with the glorious manifested Christ; and the practical aim and direction
which alone are consistent with either bud or flower.
I. The present budding life of the Christian in union with the risen, hidden Christ.
Two aspects of this life are set forth in Col_3:1 and Col_3:3 -raised with Christ, and ye
died, and your life is hid with Christ. A still profounder thought lies in the words of

9. Col_3:4, Christ is our life.
We have seen in former parts of this Epistle that Paul believed that, when a man puts
His faith in Jesus Christ, he is joined to Him in such a way that he is separated from his
former self and dead to the world. That great change may be considered either with
reference to what the man has ceased to be, or with reference to what he becomes. In the
one aspect, it is a death; in the other, it is a resurrection. It depends on the point of view
whether a semicircle seems convex or concave. The two thoughts express substantially
the same fact. That great change was brought about in these Colossian Christians, at a
definite time, as the language shows; and by a definite means- namely, by union with
Christ through faith, which grasps His death and resurrection as at once the ground of
salvation, the pattern for life, and the prophecy of glory. So then, the great truths here
are these; the impartation of life by union with Christ, which life is truly a resurrection
life, and is, moreover, hidden with Christ in God.
Union with Christ by faith is the condition of a real communication of life. In Him was
life, says John’s Gospel, meaning thereby to assert, in the language of our Epistle, that
in Him were all things created, and in Him all things consist. Life in all its forms is
dependent on union in varying manner with the Divine, and upheld only by His
continual energy, The creature must touch God or perish. Of that energy the Uncreated
Word of God is the channel-with Thee is the fountain of life. As the life of the body, so
the higher self-conscious life of the thinking, feeling, striving soul, is also fed and kept
alight by the perpetual operation of a higher Divine energy, imparted in like manner by
the Divine Word. Therefore, with deep truth, the psalm just quoted, goes on to say, In
Thy light shall we see light-and therefore, too, John’s Gospel continues: And the life
was the light of men.
But there is a still higher plane on which life may be manifested, and nobler energies
which may accompany it. The body may live, and mind and heart be dead. Therefore
Scripture speaks of a threefold life: that of the animal nature, that of the intellectual and
emotional nature, and that of the spirit, which lives when it is conscious of God, and
touches Him by aspiration, hope, and love. This is the loftiest life. Without it, a man is
dead while he lives. With it, he lives though he dies. And like the others, it depends on
union with the Divine life as it is stored in Jesus Christ- but in this case, the union is a
conscious union by faith. If I trust to Him, and am thereby holding firmly by Him, my
union with Him is so real, that, in the measure of my faith, His fulness passes over into
my emptiness, His righteousness into my sinfulness, His life into my death, as surely as
the electric shock thrills my nerves when I grasp the poles of the battery.
No man can breathe into another’s nostrils the breath of life. But Christ can and does
breathe His life into us; and this true miracle of a communication of spiritual life takes
place in every man who humbly trusts himself to Him. So the question comes home to
each of us-am I living by my union with Christ? do I draw from Him that better being
which He is longing to pour into my withered, dead spirit? It is not enough to live the
animal life the more it is fed, the more are the higher lives starved and dwindled. It is not
enough to live the life of intellect and feeling. That may be in brightest, keenest exercise,
and yet we-our best selves-may be dead-separated from God in Christ, and therefore
dead-and all our activity may be but as a galvanic twitching of the muscles in a corpse. Is
Christ our life, its source, its strength, its aim, its motive? Do we live in Him, by Him,
with Him, for Him.? If not, we are dead while we live.
This life from Christ is a resurrection life. The power of Christ’s resurrection is three
fold-as a seal of His mission and Messiahship, declared to be the Son of God, by His
resurrection from the dead; as a prophecy and pledge of ours, now is Christ risen from

10. the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept; and as a symbol and pattern of
our new life of Christian consecration, likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be indeed
dead unto sin. This last use of the resurrection of Christ is a plain witness of the firm,
universal, and uncontested belief in the historical fact, throughout the Churches which
Paul addressed. The fact must have been long familiar and known as undoubted, before
it could have been thus moulded into a symbol. But, passing from that, consider that our
union to Christ produces a moral and spiritual change analogous to His resurrection.
After all, it is the moral and not the mystical side which is the main thing in Paul’s use of
this thought. He would insist that all true Christianity operates a death to the old self, to
sin, and to the whole present order of things, and endows a man with new tastes, desires,
and capacities, like a resurrection to a new being. These heathen converts-picked from
the filthy cesspools in which many of them had been living, and set on a pure path, with
the astounding light of a Divine love flooding it, and a bright hope painted on the infinite
blackness ahead-had surely passed into a new life. Many a man in this day, long familiar
with Christian teaching, has found himself made over again in mature life, when his
heart has grasped Christ. Drunkards, profligates, outcasts, have found it life from the
dead; and even where there has not been such complete visible revolution as in them,
there has been such deep-seated central alteration that it is no exaggeration to call it
resurrection. The plain fact is that real Christianity in a man will produce in him a
radical moral change. If our religion does not do that in us, it is nothing. Ceremonial and
doctrine are but means to an end-making us better men. The highest purpose of Christ’s
work, for which He both died and rose and revived, is to change us into the likeness of
His own beauty of perfect purity. That risen life is no mere exaggeration of mystical
rhetoric, but an imperative demand of the highest morality, and the plain issue of it is:
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body. Do I say that I am a Christian? The test
by which my claim must be tried is the likeness of my life here to Him who has died unto
sift, and liveth unto God.
But the believing soul is risen with Christ also, inasmuch as our union with Him makes
us partakers of His resurrection as our victory over death. The water in the reservoir and
in the fountain is the same; the sunbeam in the chamber and in the sky is one. The life
which flows into our spirits from Christ is a life that has conquered death, and makes us
victors in that last conflict, even though we have to go down into the darkness. If Christ
live in us, we can never die. It is not possible that we should be holden of it. The bands
which He broke can never be fastened on our limbs. The gates of death were so warped
and the locks so spoiled, when He burst them asunder, that they can never be closed
again. There are many arguments for a future life beyond the grave, but there is only one
proof of it-the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, trusting in Him, and with our souls
bound in the bundle of life with our Lord the King, we can cherish quiet thankfulness of
heart, and bless the God and Father of our Lord who hath begotten us again into a lively
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
This risen life is a hidden life. Its roots are in Him. He has passed in His ascension into
the light which is inaccessible, and is hidden in its blaze, bearing with Him our life,
concealed there with Him in God. Faith stands gazing into heaven, as the cloud, the
visible manifestation from of old of the Divine presence, hides Him from sight, and turns
away feeling that the best part of its true self is gone with Him. So here Paul points his
finger upwards to where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God, and says-We are
here in outward seeming, but our true life is there, if we are His.
And what majestic, pregnant words these are! How full, and yet how empty for a
prurient curiosity, and how reverently reticent even while they are triumphantly
confident! How gently they suggest repose-deep and unbroken, and yet full of active

11. energy! For if the attitude imply rest, the locality-at the right hand of God-expresses
not only the most intimate approach to, but also the wielding of the Divine omnipotence.
What is the right hand of God but the activity of His power? and what less can be
ascribed to Christ here, than His being enthroned in closest union with the Father,
exercising Divine dominion, and putting forth Divine power. No doubt the ascended and
glorified bodily manhood of Jesus Christ has a local habitation, but the old psalm might
teach us that wherever space is, even there Thy right hand upholds, and there is our
ascended Lord, sitting as in deepest rest, but working all the work of God. And it is just
because He is at the right hand of God that He is hid. The light hides. He has been lost to
sight in the glory.
He has gone in thither, bearing with Him the true source and root of our lives into the
secret place of the Most High. Therefore we no longer belong to this visible order of
things in the midst of which we tarry for a while. The true spring that feeds our lives lies
deep beneath all the surface waters. These may dry up, but it will flow. These may be
muddied with rain, but it will be limpid as ever. The things seen do not go deep enough
to touch our real life. They are but as the winds that fret, and the currents that sway the
surface and shallower levels of the ocean, while the great depths are still. The
circumference is all a whirl; the centre is at rest.
Nor need we leave out of sight, though it be not the main thought here, that the
Christian life is hidden, inasmuch as here on earth action ever falls short of thought, and
the love and faith by which a good man lives can never be fully revealed in his conduct
and character. You cannot carry electricity from the generator to the point where it is to
work without losing two thirds of it by the way. Neither word nor deed can adequately
set forth a soul; and the profounder and nobler the emotion, the more inadequate are
the narrow gates of tongue and hand to give it passage. The deepest love can often only
love and be silent. So, while every man is truly a mystery to his neighbour, a life which
is rooted in Christ is more mysterious to the ordinary eye than any other. It is fed by
hidden manna. It is replenished from a hidden source. It is guided by other than the
world’s motives, and follows unseen aims. Therefore the world knoweth us not, because
it knew Him not.
II. We have the future consummate flower of the Christian life in union with the
manifested, glorious Christ.
The future personal manifestation of Jesus Christ in visible glory is, in the teaching of all
the New Testament writers, the last stage in the series of His Divine human conditions.
As surely as the Incarnation led to the cross, and the cross to the empty grave, and the
empty grave to the throne, so surely does the throne lead to the coming again in glory.
And as with Christ, so with His servants, the manifestation in glory is the certain end of
all the preceding, as surely as the flower is of the tiny green leaves that peep above the
frost-bound earth in bleak March days. Nothing in that future, however glorious and
wonderful, but has its germ and vital beginning in our union with Christ here by humble
faith. The great hopes which we may cherish are gathered up here into these
words-shall be manifested with Him. That is far more than was conveyed by the old
translation-shall appear. The roots of our being shall be disclosed, for He shall come,
and every eye shall see Him. We shall be seen for what we are The outward life shall
correspond to the inward. The faith and love which often struggled in vain for expression
and were thwarted by the obstinate flesh, as a sculptor trying to embody his dream
might be by a block of marble with many a flaw and speck, shall then be able to reveal
themselves completely. Whatever is in the heart shall be fully visible in the life.
Stammering words and imperfect deeds shall vex us no more. His name shall be in their

12. foreheads-no longer only written in fleshly tables of the heart and partially visible in the
character, but stamped legibly and completely on life and nature. They shall walk in the
light, and so shall be seen of all. Here the truest followers of Christ shine like an
intermittent star, seen through mist and driving cloud: Then shall the righteous blaze
forth like the sun in the kingdom of My Father.
But this is not all. The manifestation is to be with Him. The union which was here
effected by faith, and marred by many an interposing obstacle of sin and selfishness, of
flesh and sense, is to be perfected then. No film of separation is any more to break its
completeness. Here we often lose our hold of Him amidst the distractions of work, even
when done for His sake; and our life is at best but an imperfect compromise between
contemplation and action; but then, according to that great saying, His servants shall
serve Him, and see His face, the utmost activity of consecrated service, though it be far
more intense and on a nobler scale than anything here, will not interfere with the fixed
gaze on His countenance. We shall serve like Martha, and yet never remove from sitting
with Mary, rapt and blessed at His feet.
This is the one thought of that solemn future worth cherishing. Other hopes may feed
sentiment, and be precious sometimes to aching hearts. A reverent longing or an
irreverent curiosity may seek to discern something more in the far off light. But it is
enough for the heart to know that we shall ever be with the Lord; and the more we
have that one hope in its solitary grandeur, the better. We shalt be with Him in glory.
That is the climax of all that Paul would have us hope. Glory is the splendour and light
of the self-revealing God. In the heart of the blaze stands Christ; the bright cloud
enwraps Him, as it did on the mountain of transfiguration, and into the dazzling
radiance His disciples will pass as His companions did then, nor fear as they enter into
the cloud. They walk unshrinking in that beneficent fire, because with them is one like
unto the Son of man, through whom they dwell, as in their own calm home, amidst the
everlasting burning, which shall not destroy them, but kindle them into the likeness of
its own flashing glory.
Then shall the life which here was but in bud, often unkindly nipped and struggling,
burst into the consummate beauty of the perfect flower which fadeth not away.
III. We have the practical aim and direction which alone are consistent with either stage
of the Christian life.
Two injunctions are based upon these considerations-seek, and set your mind upon,
the things that are above. The one points to the outward life of effort and aim; the other
to the inward life of thought and longing. Let the things above, then, be the constant
mark at which you aim. There is a vast realm of real existence of which your risen Lord is
the centre and the life. Make it the point to which you strive. That will riot lead to
despising earth and nearer objects. These, so far as they are really good and worthy,
stand right in the line of direction which our efforts will take it we are seeking the things
that are above, and may all be stages on our journey Christwards. The lower objects are
best secured by those who live for the higher. No man is so well able to do the smallest
duties here, or to bear the passing troubles of this world of illusion and change, or to
wring the last drop of sweetness out of swiftly fleeting joys, as he to whom everything on
earth is dwarfed by the eternity beyond, as some hut beside a palace, and is great
because it is like a little window a foot square through which infinite depths of sky with
all their stars shine in upon him. The true meaning and greatness of the present are that
it is the vestibule of the august future. The staircase leading to the presence chamber of
the king may be of poor deal, narrow crooked, and stowed away in a dark turret, but it
has dignity by reason of that to which it gives access. So let our aims pass through the

13. earthly and find in them helps to the things that are above. We should not fire all our
bullets at the short range. Seek ye first the kingdom of God-the things which are above.
Set your mind on these things, says the Apostle further. Let them occupy mind and
heart-and this in order that we may seek them. The direction of the aims will follow the
set and current of the thoughts. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. How can we be
shaping our efforts to reach a good which we have not clearly before our imaginations as
desirable? How should the life of so many professing Christians be other than a lame
creeping along the low levels of earth, seeing that so seldom do they look up to see the
King in His beauty and the land that is very far off? John Bunyan’s man with the
muckrake grubbed away so eagerly among the rubbish because he never lifted his eyes
to the crown that hung above his head. In many a silent, solitary hour of contemplation,
with the world shut out and Christ brought very near, we must find the counterpoise to
the pressure of earthly aims, or our efforts after the things that are above will be feeble
and broken. Life goes at such, a pace today, and the present is so exacting with most of
us, that quiet meditation is, I fear me, almost out of fashion with Christian people. We
must become more familiar with the secret place of the most High, and more often enter
into our chambers and shut our doors about us, if in the bustle of our busy days we are
to aim truly and strongly at the only object which saves life from being a waste and a sin,
a madness and a misery-the things which are above, where Christ is.
Where Christ is. Yes, that is the only thought which gives definiteness and solidity to
that else vague and nebulous unseen universe; the only thought which draws our
affections thither. Without Him, there is no footing for us there. Rolling mists of doubt
and dim hopes warring with fears, strangeness, and terrors wrap it all. I go to prepare a
place for you - a place where desire and thought may walk unterrified and undoubting
even now, and where we ourselves may abide when our time comes, nor shrink from the
light nor be oppressed by the glory.
My knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim,
But ‘tis enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with Him.
Into that solemn world we shall all pass. We can choose whether we shall go to it as to
our long sought home, to find in it Him who is our life; or whether we shall go reluctant
and afraid, leaving all for which we have cared, and going to Him whom we have
neglected and that which we have feared. Christ will be manifested, and we shall see
Him. We can choose whether it will be to us the joy of beholding the soul of our soul, the
friend long loved when dimly seen from afar; or whether it shall be the vision of a face
that will stiffen us to stone and stab us with its light. We must make our choice. If we
give our hearts to Him, and by faith unite ourselves with Him, then, when He shall
appear, we shall have boldness, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.
19. HAWKER 1-4, (1) If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above,
where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. (2) Set your affection on things above, not
on things on the earth. (3) For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (4)
When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.
The Apostle begins with calling upon the Church, as the risen members of Christ’s
mystical body, to a suitable and corresponding frame. The Reader will do well to connect
what Paul hath here said of being risen with Christ, with what he had before said of the

14. Church’ being complete in Christ, being quickened together with Christ, and having had
forgiven to them all trespasses. See Col_2:10; Col_2:13. As such he now calls upon the
members of Christ’s body, who were once dead in their sins, but now brought forth into
a new and spiritual life in Christ, their glorious Head, to manifest the reality of this new
life, by living to Christ, and upon Christ, and causing their whole affections to center in
Christ, as the members of the body live by the head. Let the Reader mark this; and he
will then learn here, as in the other Epistles, that it is the Church to whom Paul writes,
and not to the unawakened, ungodly, and carnal world. All exhortations of this kind are
addressed to the living Church in Christ. And, indeed, common sense might plainly shew
it, if men did but attend properly to the subject. For, until Christ be received, how can he
be lived upon? What communion can an unawakened, unregerated sinner, dead in
trespasses and sins, have with a living Savior? The object must be known before we can
set our affections upon him. And, hence, when God quickens the sinner, then, and not
before, those effects follow, 2Co_4:6; Eph_2:1; Eph_2:14.
I hardly know where to begin in my observations on what the Apostle hath said of a life
hid with Christ in God. Such deep mysteries are contained in the subject. And as to
ending a Commentary upon the doctrine, this is impossible. I can only allow myself to
glance at some few of the more prominent features, which appear here and there, in the
contemplation of those deep things of God, and beg of the Almighty Author of his holy
word, to guide both my heart and pen to offer no observations but what are in perfect
conformity to his divine truth.
The Apostle begins with stating the situation of the Church, recovered from the Adam-fall
of nature, For ye are dead. Not dead in sin, but dead to sin. Neither dead in body.
For, as Adam in his transgression died, not in body, but in spirit, when he fell under the
sentence of death, at the original transgression; so all his seed, while dead in trespasses
and sins, are not dead in body, but in spirit. In neither sense, therefore, did Paul, in this
place, mean the Church was dead. But the death here intended to be understood, is what
Paul had before shewn. Dead with Christ in his death, having been crucified with him as
the members of his body; buried with him by baptism into death; risen with him
through the faith of the operation of God; and by means of which, having redemption in
his blood, the forgiveness of all their sins, according to the riches of his grace.
And your life is hid with Christ in God. Here is a depth of subject which angels cannot
explore. The life that is here said to be hid, cannot mean a natural life, for this, though
derived at first from Christ, kept up and maintained in Christ, is not hidden. And the
carnal and sinful life is too visible, from day to day, in the workings and breakings out of
it, to be called hidden. But the life bid with Christ is spiritual. And blessedly so it is. For
all, and every part of it is in, and from, Christ, from the first moment of regeneration,
when a soul is quickened in Christ, until brought home to glory, all the communications
are from Jesus. He is the life and breath, and food, and sustenance, and strength, and
support; yea, the fountain of all life; All my springs, said one of old, are in thee, Psa_
87:7. These things are plain to be understood, though not describable in all their
operations. But when the Apostle adds, that this life is not only hid with Christ, but with
Christ in God; here we have a bottom of mystery unfathomable! Our Lord hath said the
same in those memorable words of his prayer: That they all may be one; as thou, Father,
art in me, and I in thee, that they also maybe one with us, Joh_17:21. But this, though
confirming the precious truth, doth not further explain it. Indeed to faculties merely
created, it should seem it is impossible to convey adequate apprehension. All we can do,
in subjects of this mysterious nature, (which are given to us for the acceptation of our
faith, and not for our investigation,) is to follow the command, compare spiritual things

15. with spiritual,
1Co_2:13. In this before us, where our life is said to be in Christ, we are told that this life
is hid with Christ in God. In that, by the same writer, where our reconciliation is made
with God by Christ, the words are, God was in Christ, 2Co_5:19. And what do we learn,
from both viewed together, but that every blessing relating to the Church, is in Christ,
and from our union with him, we are interested in all, and that Christ, as Christ, gives an
everlasting security to all our blessings, because Christ is in God, and God in Christ.
Here, if we rest, is enough to form the firmest assurance of faith. And what can any child
of God want more, when he calls to remembrance, that all the three heavenly witnesses
join in testimony to this precious record; that God hath given to us eternal life, and this
lift is in his Son, 1Jn_5:7-11.
When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye appear with him in glory. Here
we come in to open day-light. And this sums up all, we need to know. One with Christ,
and a life hid with Christ, and with Christ in God; assured of these great and glorious
truths, we ground all that is blessed in the exercise of hope, for all we need in a life of
faith, and grace, here below. But, when the testimony of these divine things closeth with
an assurance, that when He who is now our life shall appear, we shall appear with him in
glory; what can the utmost desire of the redeemed child of God figure to himself more
blessed, to keep his expectation alive, and to have his affection always above, in the
assured hope, of a joy unspeakable and full of glory.
I pray the Reader not to dismiss this precious portion of God’s word, before that he hath
taken with him some of the many very blessed things contained in it.
First. Let him pause, and consider the blessedness of a life in Christ. It is, to all intents,
and purposes, being made a partaker of the divine nature. So the Holy Ghost, by his
servant the Apostle, declares it. According (saith he) as his divine power hath given unto
us all things that pertain to life and godliness. And he adds, being made partakers of the
divine nature, 2Pe_1:3-4. Yea, the Lord Jesus, calls it eternal life. That 1 should give
eternal life, to as many as thou hast given me, . Joh_17:2. And how should it be
otherwise, when Christ declares, that there is an union between himself and people. I in
them, and thou in me, Joh_17:23. Reader! ponder the thought well, for it is most
blessed.
Secondly. Consider the security of this life. It is in Christ, and with Christ, in God. And
what then shall ever arise, to make it liable to loss, or interruption? Paul saith it is
hidden. Hence, it is not discoverable by any enemies; and if it be not within their
knowledge to discover, how shall it be within their reach to take away? How sweetly
Jesus speaks to this point. My sheep hear my voice: and I know them: and they follow
me. And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck
them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and none is able
to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are One, Joh_10:27-30. And
elsewhere Jesus saith: because I live, ye shall live also, Joh_14:19.
Thirdly. It’s being hidden with Christ, which secures it from the ravages of the world;
secures it no less, from their notice, and observation. It is blessed, yea, very blessed, to
eat of that bread in secret, which Jesus himself hands to his people; and which none
knoweth, saving, him that receiveth it. And who shall number up the many visits, and
love-tokens of Jesus, to his people? See some of his promises, Joh_14:23; Rev_3:20-21.
And even when at any time we lose sight of him, Jesus never loseth sight of us. Hidden
as our spiritual life in Christ may be, to our view; there is no remission or interruption
with him. The Church thought her Lord had withdrawn, when she said: the Lord hath

16. forsaken me 9 and my Lord hath forgotten me! But was it so? Read, and behold the
reverse: Isa_49:14-17. Reader! if the Lord hath in mercy awakened you from the death of
sin, to a life hidden with Christ in God; ponder over these unspeakable mercies. Life, and
union with Christ; hidden, and secure; eternal, and everlasting. Neither is it a small
sweetener of those mercies which are unspeakable and full of glory, that the world
knoweth us not, because it knew him not, 1Jn_3:1.
20. BI 1-4, Risen with Christ
There is no doubt a supposition in the “if.” The apostle takes it for granted that
Christians were raised together with Christ, and admonishes them, therefore, to evince it
in their life. The resurrection of Christ is represented as giving to His people—
I. A new aim. Man is born to aspire, and when he rises with the victorious Christ he
aspires to heavenly things. The new quest is for righteousness, holiness, patience,
devotion, love, and self-sacrifice.
II. A new heart. The affections are to be set on things above, not as in the unregenerate
state on earthly things. It might be possible to seek heavenly things merely in obedience
to authority or convictions of duty, but that we may be raised above that, we are
encouraged to set our whole heart and mind upon Divine realities.
III. A new life. Dead to the world, they have nevertheless a resurrection life hid with
Christ in God. And their earthly life of duty and endurance corresponds with the secret
fountain from which it flows.
IV. A new hope which—
1. Respects Christ—“He shall be manifested.” It is the blessed hope, the glorious
appearing. He shall come the-second time without sin unto salvation.
2. Respects Christians. Spiritually raised with Christ, they will share His revelation.
(Family Churchman.)
1. St. Paul has just been dealing with a system of repression and abstinence which
had a vain show of wisdom, but did not touch the spring of action, and was therefore
of no value in resistance to indulgence of the flesh. Would you know, he asks, how
you may be lifted above the tyranny of sense, and be initiated into the true secret of
temperance and chastity? To go back to a system of bondage fit only for the
childhood of the race is to forget the characteristic feature of Christianity, which is
the elevating of the whole man into a new region of thought and action, in virtue of
union with One who has ascended into that heaven where your true life is hid with
Him in God.
2. This is Paul’s great doctrine.
(1) He seems almost to picture a pursuit of the sinner by the Avenger of blood
which is disappointed by his reception into the City of Refuge. “That I may win
Christ and befound in Him,” so that when I am looked for only Christ is to be
seen.
(2) But inclusion in Christ is more than for safety, it is for comfort in trouble,
strength in weakness, life in death.

17. 3. This union is expressed in a retrospective way. If I am in Christ I am in Him as
that which He is now, as one who has died, risen and ascended; and when He died I
died, and when God exalted Him He set me with Him. Henceforth I must live the
risen life, and live above the world as one who has done with its cares, tails, and lying
vanities. “He that is dead is freed from sin;” he that is raised must mind the things
above, have them for his interest, employment, study, affection, so that when the veil
is removed which now hides Him we may be manifested with Him.
I. The resurrection of Christ is a fact, as much of history as of the faith of Christendom,
and attested by convincing evidence on the part of unexceptionable witnesses.
II. Our resurrection with Christ is a fact spiritual, but real, and contained in Christ’s
resurrection. To some minds a spiritual fact is a self-contradiction. But a spiritual fact is,
above all other kinds, a factor in history. It sets in motion influences which change the
face of nations, working those miracles of good in comparison with which the rise and
fall of dynasties are vanity.
III. This resurrection is effected by union with Christ. The word “union” is used very
loosely. We speak of a combination of a few thousands for a purpose salutary or
mischievous as union, little thinking what the term is which we take in vain. But this
union is one which man cannot have with man. It is a union of spirit, and such that the
spirit of the Saviour not only influences the spirit of the man from outside, as our mind
is wrought upon by speech or books, but from within. “He shall be in you.”
IV. How and when is this union realized. Paul says that all we who are baptized into
Christ, there and then put on Christ. “We were buried with Him by our baptism into
death.” If this realization of Christ has not yet been given us, let us not take refuge in
names and forms, saying, “I have it as a thing of course, for I have been baptized.” If you
have it you will know it; if you have it not yet it is yours by right. Baptism is at any rate
the promise of God, to each one, of his grace and acceptance in proportion to the need
and entreaty.
V. This union is between Christ in heaven and us. That Christ is there need not repel any
one from seeking Him. “He ascended that He might fill all things.” When He was upon
earth He did not even fill Palestine. Now by virtue of His exaltation He can fill every soul
with Himself.
VI. Therefore we must seek the things above.
1. The contrast is to things on earth—harassing anxiety, importunate vanity,
consuming ambition, exciting pleasure, shameful self-indulgence. The things above
are the realities of which these are counterfeits, the grand and satisfying pursuits of
which these are the phantoms, things which bring comfort and peace and rest to the
soul.
2. Every honest searching of the heart to root out what God hates, every earnest
effort after forgiveness, every aspiration after a Diviner life, every sincere endeavour,
is a seeking after the things above.
3. By degrees there shall be in every such seeker a change of places between earth
and heaven. From seeking he shall rise to thinking the things above, and when at last
the door opens, and he is called in to see the King in His beauty, he shall find himself
in no strange scene or company. (Dean Vaughan.)

18. Christ and the higher nature
That there is a higher life which we may and ought to live, all men, in whom there is any
religion, feel; and what is peculiar to the gospel is not the bare idea of this life, but the
revelation of its character, power, and attainment.
I. The nature of this higher life.
1. It is “above.” But is not this just what has been ob jected to—that Christianity
concerns itself with another world rather than with this? And is not this very
exaltation a weakness and a delusion. What nobler ideal can there be than to make
the present life better. But Christ’s ideal was a kingdom, in our hearts, it is true, yet
“of heaven,” not of earth. It was, in short, a higher Divine life that was to irradiate
our poor human life, and to glorify it. It was no development from below, but a
revelation from on high, and without this Christianity has no meaning. Cut away its
Divine side, and it is destroyed.
2. This life is not merely in the future, although it embraces it. It concerns itself with
another world, yet it does not despise things on the earth. The kingdom is now, and
not to be reached after death, and the things above are to be possessed now. These
are the things of which the apostle speaks presently, “kindness,” etc. Spiritual
qualities. The apostle does not contrast heaven and earth as places, nor set the future
life against the present, but the spiritual against the natural, the carnal against the
Divine. The higher life takes up the present and glorifies it, and finds its development
in every variety of well-doing. It embraces every real virtue, and beautifies and
ennobles the life that now is as well as that to come.
II. Its source and motive power. It is no process of self-culture or moral discipline. It
springs only from the living root Christ. It is a new life rising on the extinction of the old
life of self. The same Divine power which raised Christ from the dead is supposed to live
and work in Christians. But out of Christ there is no higher life in the Christian sense.
But is this so? Axe there not many beautiful characters who never heard of Christ; and
are there not many Christians far from stainless? Yes, but—
1. The Christian type of character is to be estimated by its ideal, as rendered by the
highest examples, and not by the conduct of all professors. It is true that the best
Christians but feebly represent Christ, yet where is there any list of worthies to be
compared with the roll of Christian saints? And all such have declared their strength
for good to lie in the fact that their life was hid with Christ in God.
2. If there is goodness where the name of Christ is unknown, or which refuses to
acknowledge Him, let us not deny it. If we must have a theory the true one is that all
goodness, even when seeming to be apart from Christ, has really its root in Him.
(Principal Tulloch.)
The hidden life
At the close of the preceding chapter St. Paul exposes the error of those who would bring
back Christians to the rudiments of the world; but with that rapidity of thought which is
characteristic of him, he passes on to other rudiments—everything that is loved and
cultivated by the flesh- and makes no distinction between rites and worldliness, resting
on the similarity between them.
I. The Divine life produces dying to the world. It would be wrong to hold the reverse, of

19. course. If you are risen with Christ, your life is no longer here below, but where Christ is.
Here comes a series of transformations.
1. Spiritual death. You wore dead in sins, but Christ has raised you (see Col_2:12-13;
Eph_2:5-6; 1Pe_1:3).
2. In the very act of raising you, Christ has subjected you to a new death—to the
world. These two facts correspond as the projections of a coin do with the
depressions of the mould. Resurrection is the relievo of the coin; it produces the void
which is death: for our life cannot be everywhere; if it is in heaven it is not on the
earth (Col_3:4).
II. It is true that we live here by our necessary life, but the best part of ourselves is
elsewhere. We live where our heart is. The prisoner lives nowhere less than in his cell.
You say of the person you passionately love, “She has stolen my heart.” When any one is
indifferent to his surroundings we say, “His heart is elsewhere.” It is with the heart we
live our real life; “out of it are the issues of life.” It can restrict itself to earthly things, but
it can also have its conversation in heaven.
III. We must be quite clear as to the meaning of the words “above” and “below,”
“heaven” and “earth.” Earth and heaven here are not exactly places and times, but
principles called after the place and time of their perfect realization. To detach ourselves
from earth is not to detach ourselves from activity, but to detach our hearts from earthly
principles, and attach them to the principles to be realized in heaven. To fulfil social
duties, etc., under God’s eye is not to do earthly but heavenly things. And so the
Christian becomes attached to the place and time, where the true principle finds its
realization, and detached from that where the false principle is realized. Nevertheless,
we must not be drawn into a false spirituality, a selfish separation from earth while
attached to it in affection. It is an admirable thing when he who is weaned from life
appreciates it; for he despises what in it is contemptible, and esteems in it what is really
worth esteem.
IV. The life weaned from earth is hidden from the world, and does not seem life. For life
does not consist in tile involuntary fact commonly called by the name. The world judges,
and rightly from its premises, that visible things are alone worthy of attachment, that a
man who does not attend to them does not live. And yet every thing is not obscure in
regard to the Christian. He is unknown and yet known. It is impossible to see a Christian
without saying, “There is something peculiar there! His life declares him to be a
Christian.” But because this life is not understood it is denied. The natural man sees
something, but he does not regard it as life. And yet the Christian lives; he is not an
anchorite. He has everything that others have as men, but as a Christian more.
Worldlings may consider sin as essential to humanity; but it mutilates a man,
Christianity increases him, and faith takes away sin. As a man the Christian mixes
himself up in the business of life, for the earth belongs to his God; but in spite of this he
is not understood, because the common aim which all pursue is with him only a means
of attaining a higher end. And from misunderstand ing to contempt and calumniation
the distance is not great. Whatever we may do in order to have peace with all men we
shall never succeed unless we walk on the same footing. Thus the Christian is treated as
dead, and with the same repugnance as is felt towards a dead man in the physical sense.
V. What motives has the Christian to consent to this, and to accept the consequences?
1. In reality he lives, and God knows that he lives, and that is enough. Those small
and charming flowers which bloom in the desert or on the mountain-top will fold up
their leaves without being seen by any human eye. God sees them, that is enough. In

20. the Middle Ages unknown workmen spent their lives in rearing glorious cathedrals;
some, working in positions dangerous and difficult of access, carved wonders of art
and patience which are not seen except as you climb to the tops of columns. It was
enough that God saw their work and that throughout the ages a continual hymn
should rise to Him from the midst of the stone. So with the Christian.
2. What grand compensation. Obscurity does not hinder greatness.
(1) A great work has been wrought for and in the Christian. He is a king,
although disguised.
(2) There is greatness in what he does by the strength of God, subjugation of
passions, resignation, etc.
3. But the Christian will appear when Christ appears, and under what glorious
circumstances (Php_2:10-11; Mat_10:32; Mat_13:43; Dan_12:3). (A. Vinet, D. D.)
When will the world grow better
The world is full of lamentations. The times are bad; business is stagnant. There is no
confidence, but everywhere mistrust and discontent. Everybody says that this state of
things cannot last. There are plenty of social quacks. We have been flooded with laws for
improving the conditions of life; but the confusion is only the greater. New ecclesiastical
laws have been made, but entire classes are alienated from the Church. Then when will
the world be better? When each one of us begins to grow better himself; and if any one
could devise the means of bringing about that result it would be of more use than all
modern experiments. But we have the means in the well-tried Word of God and its
Divine powers. The world will grow better.
I. When we die and rise with Christ.
1. There was a time when a great deal was said about the moral improvement of the
race. If men laid aside their grosser sins and endeavoured to live virtuously, all would
be well. The theory was not confirmed by the facts. To-day men have fallen into a
similar error. Culture is now the Saviour. All honour to it; but history proves that a
man may be learned in every branch of knowledge, and yet be utterly bad.
2. One of the most absurd suppositions which lies at the root of most modern
experiments is that human nature is good. The Scripture doctrine to the contrary,
though much decried, is a fact of which every parent can convince himself. If the
world is to be made better a commencement must be made with the inner life of each
man. The old nature must die, and a new one arise, or you may as soon build the top
storey of a house before you have laid the foundation.
3. Accordingly in Scripture this renewal is everywhere insisted upon. Ye are dead
and ye have risen, and since ye are risen seek the things that are above. It is not by
mere accident that this renewing is thus described, and in connection with the death
and resurrection of Christ. There was needed for it a spiritual energy which does not
exist in us, but is in Christ, the risen One.
4. This new life is by virtue of a personal surrender by faith to Christ (Col_2:12).
Thus we die to sin and the world. A new purpose is disclosed, viz., to please God and
enjoy fellowship with Him; a new rule of thought and action—the will of God; a new
impelling principle—the Holy Spirit; and thus we come with our whole personal life
into a higher order—the heavenly. What further proof do we need that when this

21. happens things are better?
II. When heavenly-mindedness fills all hearts.
1. That which is below is the earthly world, with its tangible but perishable things;
and the more the pursuit of them grows to a longing after them, the worse will it be
for the inner and outer life. For this lower world, however beautiful, can never satisfy
the heart, and the void is filled with base passions or wild schemes.
2. The world above is closed against the earthly mind. The natural man has no eye
for its glory, no ear for its language. Nevertheless it is the real world, where Christ is
seated, its light, life, and supreme attraction. When the mind is fixed on this the
earthly life is glorified. For though Christ is exalted He dwells on earth with His
faithful ones, and, therefore, brings heaven down below. Attachment to Him does
not incapacitate us for the business of life, but only makes us independent of what is
sinful and selfish, and teaches us to serve God in all things.
3. Who can doubt, therefore, that this heavenly-mindedness would be better for the
home, the shop, the nation.
III. When Christ shall be revealed. NOW the Christian’s life is hid. The world
understands not its nature, power, or effects. But it shall be manifest at the appearing of
Christ—and then in its full perfection. It will indeed be better then. (G. Maurer.)
Of the resurrection
I. Two suppositions.
1. Christ’s resurrection. This needs no “if.” It is a certainty. Three hundred years the
world opposed it, and ever since has supposed it. But it is not supposed by itself, and
ours inferred, but ores supposed likewise. And as they are so closely linked that one
supposition serveth for them, so they are woven together that one preposition (with)
holdeth them.
2. Our resurrection.
(1) If ye. Why only to a certain ye Concerns it not all? As Christ died so is He
risen for all, and all shall rise. Yes, but not all to the “right hand,” a good many to
the left. The resurrection reaches to all; this only to such as “seek,” and “set their
minds.”
(2) If ye “be risen.” Is the tense right? For when we hear of the resurrection we
are carried to the last day. He rose, we say, we shall rise. But here the
resurrection is already. Fall we in, then, with those who say that the resurrection
is past (2Ti_2:18)? No; but we believe that as there is one to come of the body, so
there is one which we are to pass here, of the mind’s. There are the first and
second resurrections (Rev_20:6); and all the good or evil of the second depends
on the passing or not passing the first. “Christ is risen” is not enough, nay is
nothing at all, if He be risen without us.
3. “If.” Is it so? If He is risen cry to Him to draw thee, as He said He would (Joh_
12:32); the soul first as being from above, so the more easily drawn to things above,
and then with itself the soul to elevate the flesh.
II. The double inference—“Seek”; “Set your minds.”

22. 1. The two acts jointly; for disjoined they my not be. One is little worth without the
other.
(1) There ve that “seek,” and be very busy in it, and yet savour (Mat_16:23, same
word) not the things of God. Some possessed with false principles fall a seeking;
zealous, but without the true knowledge to fix their minds aright (Pro_19:2). “the
mind misled will set the affections awry.” Look but to the close of chapter
2. Then they seek so as they will not taste, handle, or touch. Some seek as to worship
angels, and spare not their own bodies, and yet with all their seeking not “risen with
Christ.”
(2) On the other side there be that “savour Christ, but seek themselves” (Php_
2:21). They have knowledge competent, but no endeavour; they sit still and seek
not.
(3) So that both may be kept together, “seek” and “set your minds” both. As in
the body a rheumatic head spoils the stomach, and a distempered stomach the
head, so here. The mind mistaking misleads the affections, and a wrong-set
affection puts the mind out of frame.
2. The acts severally.
(1) Seek; he shall not stumble or hit upon it unawares. If the Saviour knew the
way well, it is hard to hit (Mat_7:14). Pains and diligence are requisite. It were
great folly when we see daily things without travail wilt not be come by, to think
that things above will drop into our lap. Pilate asked, “What is truth?” and went
his way before he had the answer. He never deserved to find what truth was.
(2) But we shall never seek as we should unless we “set our minds.” For a man
will never kindly seek that he hath no mind to. That we may seek things above we
must prize them as a silver mine (Pro_3:14), as a treasure hid in a field (Mat_
13:44), and sell all to compass them. Then, he that seeks should have as well eyes
to discern, as feet to go about it, i.e., have knowledge. To seek we know not what
is but to err, and never find that we seek for. Four things are in this.
(1) To set the mind, not the fancy, and seek as many do with no other ground but
their own conceits. Yet seek they will, and have all the world follow them, and
have nothing to follow after but their own folly. So as being very idiots they take
themselves for the only men who ever had wisdom to know what to seek or how.
(2) But it is not an act of the understanding alone. It is to set our mind not only
to know, but to mind it; not only to distinguish tastes, but in and with the taste to
feel such delight as will lead us to seek it again more earnestly.
(3) So to savour it that to seek it is our wisdom (Deu_4:6). To think when ye are
about the things above that you are about the wisest action of your lives.
(4) Not the contemplative wisdom only, but the active. To show that not only our
grounds for judgment, but our rules for action, are to be set thence. What will He
who sitteth at the right hand of God say or think of what I am about? May I offer
it to Him? Will He help me forward with it, and reward me for it?
3. The order. “Seek” first—
(1) To teach us that it is the first thing we are to have a care of (Mat_6:33).
(2) Because there is more need of diligence in this business than aught else.

23. Always we have more ado to quicken the affection than to inform the judgment.
III. The two references or objects of hope. Rest—“sitteth”; glory—“at the right hand of
God.”
1. The things we are to seek, etc., are “above.”
(1) To do this we shall be easily entreated. We yield, presently, to seek to be
above others in favour, honour, place, and power. All would be above, “bramble”
(Jdg_9:15) and all, and nothing is too high for us, not even the right hand (Mat_
20:21).
(2) The apostle saw clearly that we should err here, hence he tells us that “above”
is not on earth, but in heaven. So the fault he finds is that our “above” is too low.
(a) The very frame of body has an upward tendency, and bids us look thither.
And that way should our soul make. It came from thence, and thither it
should draw again, and we do but crook our souls against their nature when
we set them to seek nothing but here below.
(b) And if nature would have us no moles, grace would have us mount up as
eagles—“Where the body is” (Luk_17:37). For contrary to the philosopher’s
sentence, “things above concern us not;” they chiefly concern us.
2. “Above” is Christ, and with Him the things we of all others seek for.
(1) Rest (Psa_4:6). And it is not the body’s concern so much as the soul’s. The
soul is from above, and never finds rest but in her own place (Psa_116:17; Heb_
3:11; Heb_3:18-19). But we seek glory more, and for it we are content to deprive
ourselves of rest, which otherwise we love well enough. For no rest will give us
full content but at the right hand. Where are they to be found? Not here, and
therefore it is folly to seek them here. In this troublesome tumultuous place there
is no rest (Mic_2:10) nor glory, for in our gardens of delight there are worms,
and spiders in kings’ palaces. And whatever we fancy we have of either it is at the
expense of the other. Rest is a thing inglorious, and glory a thing restless.
3. But both are united above, where we “sit at the right hand of God” with Christ;
and then we have them not so that our rest may be sometimes broken, and our glory
sometimes tarnished, but both perfectly and for ever. (Bishop Andrewes.)
The resurrection of Christ an argument for seeking things above
I. The duty to which we are exhorted. Affirmatively, to seek and set our affections on
things above; negatively, not on things on the earth.
1. The act. In “seek” and “set your affections” are comprehended
(1) An act of the understanding. Heaven and the way of getting there should be
much in our thoughts.
(2) An act of our affections, that we love and desire the things above
proportionately to their excellence.
(3) Activity and industry in the prosecution of these things, if by any means we
may attain them. When our understandings have dwelt long enough on our
heavenly treasures as to work on our affections, these, like so many springs of
motion, will set our endeavours on work for the obtaining what we so much love

24. and desire.
(4) A clear preference of the things above to the things of the earth when they
come in competition. “Set your affections” is often used for taking part with one
side when two parties or interests come into competition. So when heaven and
earth, the interests of your souls and of your bodies, a holy and a sinful course
come into competition, choose the better part (Col_3:5).
2. The objects of this act.
(1) God in Christ.
(2) The blessed state of glory in the next life.
(3) The dispositions to be acquired and the duties to be performed as necessary
qualifications for the obtaining this happiness.
II. The force of the arguments used to persuade us to it.
1. “If ye be risen ‘with Christ, seek,” etc., i.e.,
(1) If ye believe in the resurrection of Christ. This was the great seal of His
ministry and confirmation of His doctrine: and one great branch of His doctrine
was that we should lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven.
(2) If we resemble Him in His resurrection. He is our pattern in His saving acts
as well as in His virtues. So as He died for sin we must die to it; if He rose we
must rise into newness of life; if He ascended so should we in our hearts (Col_
2:12; Rom_6:4-5; Rom_6:9-11).
(3) If we are partakers of the power of His resurrection (Joh_11:25; Eph_1:19;
Php_3:10; Col_2:13).
2. “Seek the things which are above where Christ sitteth” (Luk_24:26; Eph_1:20-
22).
(1) The force of this argument is from the relation between the head and the
members. The members have an affection for the head which makes them aspire
heavenwards; and the head has an influence upon the members (Joh_12:32-33).
(2) The gift of the Holy Spirit is the fruit of Christ’s ascension, and it is by His
operation upon our hearts that our affections are fixed on heavenly things, as
against the counter allurements of the world.
3. The transcendent excellence of heavenly things above things of the earth, which
the apostle intimates by the opposition, “Set your affections,” etc. (Archbishop
Tillotson.)
Following the risen Christ
I. Our spiritual rising with Christ. The “if” is used logically, not theologically, by way of
argument, and not by way of doubt.
1. We were dead in sin, but having believed in Christ we have been quickened by the
Holy Ghost, and we are dead no longer. We remember the first sensation of life, how
it seemed to tingle just as drowning persons when coming back to life suffer great
pain. Conviction was wrought in us, and a dread of judgment, and a sense of
condemnation, but these were tokens of life, but that life gradually deepened until

25. the eye was opened, and the restored hand stretched itself out, the foot began to
move in the way of obedience, and the heart felt the sweet glow of love within.
2. There has been wrought in us a wonderful change. Before regeneration our soul
was as our body will be when it dies.
(1) Sown in corruption. In some cases it did not appear on the surface; in others
it was something fearful to look upon. Now the new life has overcome it, for it is
an incorruptible seed, and liveth for ever.
(2) In dishonour. Sin is a shameful thing; but “behold what manner of love”
(1Jn_3:1). “Since thou wast precious in my sight,” etc. “Unto you which believe
He is an honour.”
(3) In weakness. When we were the captives of sin we could do nothing good;
but “when we were without strength in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Now
we know the power of His resurrection” (Joh_1:12; Php_4:13).
(4) A natural body. Aforetime we were natural men, and discerned not the things
of the Spirit of God. Now a spirit has been created in us which lives for spiritual
objects.
3. In consequence of receiving this life and undergoing this change the things of the
world become a tomb to us. To a dead man a tomb is as good a dwelling as he can
want; but the moment he lives he cannot endure it.. So when we were natural men
earthly things contented us.
(1) A merely outward religion satisfied us; a dead form suited a dead soul.
Judaism pleased those who put themselves under its yoke; traditions, ordinances
make pretty furniture for a dead man’s chamber; but when eternal life enters the
soul they are flung off. A living man demands such garments as are suitable for
life.
2. Merely carnal objects become as the grave to us, whether sinful pleasures or
selfish gains. They are as a coffin to the renewed man: he cries for liberty.
4. We are wholly raised from the dead in a spiritual sense. Our Lord did not have His
head quickened while His feet were in the sepulchre. So we have been renewed in
every part. We have received, although it be in its infancy, a perfect life in Christ
Jesus; our ear is awakened, our eye opened, our feet nimble.
5. We are so raised that we shall die no more. “Christ being raised, death hath no
more dominion,” etc. So we.
II. Let us exercise the new man in suitable pursuits.
1. Let us leave the sepulchre.
(1) The vault of a mere outward religion, and worship God in Spirit and in truth.
(2) The vault of carnal enjoyments. These ought to be as dead things to the man
who is risen with Christ.
2. Let us hasten to forget every evil as our Lord hastened to leave the tomb. He made
the three days as short as possible;. so let there be no lingering and hankering after
the flesh.
3. As our Lord spent a short season with His disciples, we are to spend our forty days
in holy service.

26. (1) In greater seclusion from the world and greater nearness to heaven.
(2) In testimony, even as He manifested Himself, to the resurrection power of
God.
(3) In comforting the saints.
(4) In setting everything in order for the furtherance of His kingdom.
4. Let our whole minds ascend to heaven with Christ; not a stray thought.
(1) Because we need heavenly things, prize them, and hope to gain them.
(2) After heavenly things, faith, hope, etc.
(3) Heavenly objects—the glory of God, not your own; the good of man.
(4) Heavenly joys. Your treasure is above, let your hearts be with it.
5. What a magnet Christ should be. Where should the wife’s thoughts be but with
her absent and beloved one?
(1) Christ is sitting, for His work is done; rise and rest with Him.
(2) At the right hand of God, in the place of honour and favour.
III. Let the new life delight itself with suitable objects. “Have a relish for things above”;
“study them industriously”; “set your mind on them.” What are they?
1. God Himself. “Delight thyself in the Lord.” What is all the world if He be gone; and
if you have Him, what though all the world be gone?
2. Jesus who is God, but truly man. Meditate on His Divine Person, His perfect
work, etc.
3. The New Jerusalem of the Church triumphant.
4. Heaven, the place of holiness after sin, of rest after work, of riches after poverty,
of health and life after sickness and death. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Risen with Christ
I. Christ is risen. This appears—
(1) From the Holy Scriptures.
(2) From eye-witnesses.
(3) From the testimony of the Spirit.
II. Christians are risen with Christ. What is this? (Eph_2:5-6; Col_2:12; Col_2:20.)
1. Christ is our Head, and a public Person (Eph_5:23).
2. Whatever He did, He did it not in a private but a public capacity, and therefore we
are looked upon as doing it in Him (Isaiah ]iii. 5).
3. Hence, when He arose, we arose in Him and with Him.
4. Metaphorically we rise from sin.
III. Being risen with Christ we are to seek the things above.

27. 1. What things?
(1) The perfection of graces.
(2) The society of angels.
(3) The vision of Christ (Joh_17:24).
(4) The enjoyment of God; consisting
(a) in our clear knowledge of Him (Joh_17:3).
(b) Perfect love to Him.
(c) Infinite expressions of love from Him (Zep_3:17).
2. How seek them? It implies—
(1) Our knowledge of them.
(2) Our love for them.
(3) Our labouring to be instated in them (Mat_6:33).
IV. Why should they who are risen with christ seek the things above?
1. Because now all things else are below them.
2. Their inheritance is there.
V. USE.
1. Motives.
(1) The things below are unsuitable, the things above suitable.
(2) They empty and deceiving; these full and satisfying; nay, there is more
happiness in seeking heaven than enjoying earth.
(3) They uncertain to be attained; these certain if sought for.
(4) They mixed with troubles, these pure comforts.
(5) They transient end fading, these perpetual and everlasting.
2. Means.
(1) Exercise graces—repentance, faith (Heb_11:5-6).
(2) Perform duties. (Bishop Beveridge.)
The Christian risen with Christ
I. A glorious truth supposed—that believers are risen with Christ. This involves—
1. A firm belief in His resurrection. This doctrine is of paramount importance as the
principal evidence of Christianity. Every other doctrine hangs upon it. If Christ be
not risen, where—
(1) Our access to God.
(2) Our success in prayer.
(3) Our hope of pardon.

28. (4) Our holy aspirations.
(5) Our bright prospects (see 1Co_15:14-19).
2. A personal experience of its power.
(1) In the renewing of the mind.
(2) The changing of the heart.
(3) The quickening of the spirit.
(4) Newness of life.
3. A well-grounded anticipation of conformity with His resurrection.
(1) Spiritual life with Him now in heaven.
(2) Completeness of bodily and soul likeness to Him by and by.
II. A momentous duty required.
1. The superiority of its object—“the things above.”
(1) The glorious state of happiness in reserve for believers in heaven.
(2) The sublime realities of religion that belong by way of preparation to the
heavenly state-growth in grace and knowledge; spirituality of mind, holiness,
devotion to God, love to His people. How superior to the pleasures of the
ungodly.
2. The extent of its application. It implies more than a belief in things above, and
includes—
(1) A persuasion of their value. We shall not be induced to seek what we do not
value. Worldly men underrate them: but rising with Christ brings spiritual
perception, by which they are viewed in the light of eternity.
(2) A fixing of the mind on them—choosing them in preference to sublunary
things. The wisdom of the Christian’s choice will be seen when the universe is in
ruins. “The things which are seen are temporal.”
(3) A diligent pursuit after them in the use of the appointed means. Beware of
the fascinations of the world. Cultivate heavenly dispositions.
3. The power of its motive.
(1) In general. The principles we profess call for it; the profession we make
demands it; love, gratitude, our own interest and God’s glory, all urge us to it.
(2) In particular. Mark the Person—Christ. He is over all. Mark the posture—
“Sitteth,” etc.
one of dignity and authority. This was the joy set before Him, and is the joy set
before us? (Ebenezer Temple.)
The risen life
I. “risen with Christ.”
1. In the earliest Christian teaching the resurrection dominates over all other
Christian doctrines. It is the palmary proof of the truth of Christianity. It rested upon

29. the evidences of the senses, and accordingly the first ministerial effort of the apostles
was to publish the fact, and let it do its proper work in the understandings and
consciences of men (Act_4:32, etc.). The resurrection is equally prominent in the
teaching of St. Paul. But here the apostle teaches us its relation, not to Christian
belief, but to Christian living. It is not pressed upon us as a “detached and unfruitful
dogma”; it is a vitalizing principle in the living soul. Indeed all Christian doctrine in
the Christian soul is inseparable from Christian practice. The practical relation
between the two is observable in St. Paul’s Epistles. They are not separated in the
two sections into which he usually divides his letters. With him the moral element
interpenetrates doctrine, and rises spontaneously out of it; while the dogmatic truth
is continually reasserted as the motive or basis of the morality. In the text the
resurrection is a germinant principle out of which the soul derives its new life, and by
which the laws and obligations of that life are determined. This is not a mere
metaphor (Eph_1:18-20); but if it were, a metaphor surely means something: it
conveys a truth under the form of an illustration. What, then, is the truth latent
beneath the metaphor?
3. This resurrection with Christ is not merely a movement, a shifting of spiritual
position from a lower to a higher point in the same sphere. That would be an
elevation.
(1) It is necessary to mark this distinction, because the one is often confounded
with the other. Individuals, families, populations, are often “elevated” without
being “risen with Christ.” A certain mental and moral elevation is the natural
result of contact with a Divine religion; may be received unconsciously; comes as
if from some subtle element afloat in the atmosphere; passes unnoticed into a
literary school, philosophical system, or political society; and may thenceforward
be detected in half-formed ideas, and fitful currents of thought, or turns of
expression. It comes to men as they gaze on the fair form of the Church, or as
they mark a Christian who is seriously living for another world.
(2) But what is this elevation worth? Felix underwent a certain “elevation” of
conscience; Agrippa was raised above his natural level; but in each ease the moral
pulsation died away. The Emperor Alexander Severus underwent a certain
elevation when he assigned a niche in the Imperial Pantheon to the statue of
Jesus; so did Julian, who in his letters applauds the love and discipline of the
Church. The same may be said of Rousseau, who enhanced the beauty of the
French language in expressing his sense of the gospel, and of those modern
writers of fiction who lavish their encomiums with no sparing or graceless hand
upon the religion of our Lord, and who yet apologize for the errors which His
teaching condemns. But these were not risen with Christ.
(3) We here touch on a distinction that is vital, and which is based upon the
deeper difference which parts nature from grace. Moral elevation lies within the
sphere of nature, and may be accounted for by the operation of natural causes;
spiritual resurrection belongs to nature just as little as does the resurrection of a
corpse.
4. Resurrection with Christ is a supernatural thing. What is meant by this? Any idea
of the supernatural—
(1) Presupposes belief in God as a personal agent. Clearly, therefore, it must be
rejected by those philosophers which deny the primary truths of theism.
(a) The Positivist must see in it a stupid phantom to be relegated to “the

30. theological period” of human development.
(b) The Pantheist will object to it as implying a distinction which, if it be
admitted, must be fatal to the essential principles of his philosophy.
(c) Nor does it approve itself to the sensuous materialism which is sceptical
of all that lies beyond.
(d) But no serious Theist can deny its possibility. He who made the world
which we touch can superadd another world which we cannot touch.
(2) As the term enters theology it is concerned with the relations which God has
established between Himself and man in the higher sphere, such as, e.g., that
union with Christ, part of which is expressed in rising with Him. The lesson of
our text is often not learnt; because the difficulty of learning it is spiritual rather
than intellectual. To understand it we must be living the life of the supernatural
resurrection. The apostle elsewhere explains what he means (Eph_2:3-6; Eph_
1:17-20). What wonder that all around us in the Church is supernatural, if it be a
continuous exercise of the power which raised Jesus from the dead? Or that in
Christian souls we behold graces of which nature is incapable.
II. “seek those things which are above.”
1. Seek, above all, communion with God, work for God, rest in the felt presence of
God, and the final reward in God; and then all that is highest and purest in the
sphere of nature.
2. What a rule for conversation. All may do something to raise or degrade it. Each
may insist that in his presence it shall keep a pure tone; and a few men who are
simply determined to maintain an elevated standard of social intercourse can affect
for good an entire society.
3. What a rule for making friendships! How much depends for time and eternity on
the choice of one whose affections shall be entwined in ours.
4. What a motto for a library, and even for sacred studies!
5. What a solemn word for those who are deciding their line of work for life,
particularly if they are seeking the ministry of souls.
6. But above all, the text is a rule for the regulation and employment of secret
thought. (Canon Liddon.)
Believers risen with Christ, and their duty in consequence
I. A fact admitted: the resurrection of Christ.
1. That He was dead cannot be questioned.
2. He was buried. What became of His body?
3. He rose, and in the providence of God many circumstances transpired to render it
obvious and undeniable.
II. The privilege supposed. Christians are risen with Christ.
1. Professedly, by joining the Church; coming to the Lord’s table; confession with the
tongue.