Your Life Is Hidden "with Christ"

Third in a three part sermon series about being "in Christ," focusing on the book of Colossians. Text: Colossians 3:1-11

I was invited to preach again. I had the opportunity to preach over three Sundays in close succession and so did a series that builds out the idea of being “in Christ” through the book of Colossians. These are my pulpit notes, a kind of minimalist, stripped down text with all of the important phrasing and transitions worked out. What happens from the pulpit will bear a loose resemblance to what is here. It would take 14-16 minutes to read out loud as written, but the sermon will likely be 30 minutes in length when preached. Preaching is always a live event.

Here is my reading of Colossians as a companion for this sermon series:

22. Colossians

Many of us struggle with the notion that we are not measuring up, and that includes our spiritual life. We have it in our mind that the goal of the spiritual life is to become better than we are today. We generally conceive of the spiritual life as a journey where step-by-step, little-by-little, we get better and better, more Christ like as we dedicate ourselves to the Christian life.

Much of it is based on the idea of material cause and effect which gained prominence in modernity by means of the scientific revolution. We all know how this works. Scientifically, when the universe is acted upon, there is an effect. You push an object it moves. You mix two chemicals together and there is a reaction.

There are those that take this to the extreme, who want to explain everything we see and experience as a long chain of cause and effect going back all the way to a big bang. Everything, including life itself, is the result of this long chain of cause and effect. Even human consciousness and thought, they will tell you, is based on this idea of cause and effect. Your thoughts are nothing more than atoms and molecules bouncing around in your brain tissue. Basic physics, chemistry and biology, nothing more.

These ideas filter into the broader society and, it must be admitted, can be very powerful. If you want to accomplish something, you set a goal and then break down the various steps, one at a time, cause and effect, that will lead you to the goal. This type of thinking is pervasive throughout our society and is a cornerstone of the managerial way of thinking about the world.

And so, it is only natural that we approach the spiritual life this way. We set the goal, establish the steps, and then, one step at a time begin to work towards becoming more Christ like.

The only problem with this is that it is completely wrong and misunderstands both ancient ways of thinking and how spiritual realities actually work.

We see change as something that works from the outside in, cause and effect. You change your actions and slowly it will begin to change who you are.

Additionally, we tend to see life as a series of choices. If you make good choices, then step-by-step, cause and effect, your life will get better. So, if you make some mistakes, or want to spend some time sowing your wild oats, that is fine, as long as you don’t take it too far. You will have lots of time to make good choices and get back on track again.

But spiritual realities don’t work that way. Spiritual realities deal in essences and being. Who you are determines the choices you make. Additionally, spiritual realities work from the other direction, that is from the end forward. The end of the path you choose will determine the actions you make today. We might say that the effect determines the cause.

In this regard, and you will see this all throughout scripture, is that there are not many choices, but fundamentally there is only one choice. Do you choose life or death? Do you choose good or evil? Do you choose wisdom or folly? Do you choose obedience or disobedience? They are all basically the same choice.

Here is the thing. Once you choose disobedience, you have chosen the end of that path, which is eternal death. Once you have made that choice, you are now on the path of death, and the end of that path will begin revealing itself in your life. This is why people’s lives can spin out of control very fast. Death, chaos, destruction are hard forces to contain and for some they will push through and reveal themselves with force and speed.

This is why you cannot dabble in sin. This is why God can say “that the day you eat of the fruit you shall surely die.” In our cause-and-effect way of thinking, we expected Eve to drop dead on the spot. But that is not how it works. In her essential being, in the core of who she was, she was already dead, and this death would now begin to reveal itself in her life and in the world around her.

The real kicker for us is that the decision of Adam and Eve to choose disobedience was also a choice that changed the essence, the being of humanity itself. We are all now bound over for death and there is nothing we can do to change the path we are on. That is the bad news.

But there is good news, and this good news is what the book of Colossians opens up to us.

What we need is a change in our being, in our essence. But the problem is that we are stuck on the path to death. The end is revealing itself in our present.

Here is where Jesus comes in. He is the image of the invisible God, and through him all things were made. He became man, lived, died and was raised again for us.

Here is the key thing. Paul uses this phrase “in Christ” or variously “in him” or “with him.” Everything that happens in salvation happens “in Christ.” What faith does is it takes us out of the world. We are no longer “in the world” and bound over to both physical and eternal death. By faith, the Spirit of God changes who we are at a fundamental level, at the level of our essence, our being.

We are now “in Christ.”

Everything that happens in salvation happens “in Christ” and because we are “in Christ.”

But we are still in an in between time of waiting for the Last Day. As Paul says here in verse three, your life is now hidden in Christ.

So just as when you were in the world and in death, chaos and folly were revealing themselves in your life, the end of the path was revealing itself in your present, so too now this new reality that is, for now, hidden in Christ, will begin to reveal itself in the present. The end of the path you are now on is life and this life “in Christ” now begins to reveal itself in the present.

As Paul says to the Corinthian church in his second letter, “in Christ, you are a new creation.” Not you are becoming new. No. You are already made new “in Christ.” And this is our faith, not just that Jesus died for us, but that in him we are made new.

In this letter, Paul has heaped image upon image to get the point across. Christ is the image of God that reveals the invisible God and then goes on to say that we are his body. As we reveal who we are “in Christ” we are revealing God the Father to the world. People know God because of what they see happening in us. They can see the change, that our being, our essence is different. We are “in Christ.”

In chapter two, Paul tells us that because we have received Jesus as Lord we need to live “in him” and be rooted and built up “in him.”

“In Christ” we have undergone a spiritual surgery. We were circumcised “in him” symbolized by the baptism water, which like the flood is a covering over in water, a dying, and then a coming out again, which is a rising from the dead. We were buried and raised “in Christ.”

Because of this change in who we are, because we are “in Christ” and have undergone this fundamental transformation, because we have been made new, we don’t need the law to control our behaviours.

The world is trying to convince us that we can be better from the outside in. By imposing rules, good policy, a spiritual plan, that it can make into good people.

The good news of Jesus says, no, you need to be changed by Christ from the inside out. You need to be made new by dying and rising with Christ. You need to pass through the grave with him.

Our faith is that “in Christ,” he has already done this. We are already made new. Our task now is to reveal who we already are, what is hidden “in Christ.”

On the outside, the actions may superficially look the same, but this change in being makes all the difference in the world.

In chapter three we get the payoff for all this. Since you have been raised “in Christ” …

We need to pause and really meditate on what is being said here. “In Christ” the resurrection has already taken place. You are “in Christ.” Therefore, you are already, today, here and now, living the future life that we will experience fully after the Lord Jesus returns.

“When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory.”

What is the heart of the spiritual life for the Christian, for those of us who are “in Christ?”

“Set your heart on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.”

What Paul is saying here is opposite of the advice that is often given to us, that we should not get lost in the realities of heavenly things so that you are no longer any earthly good as the saying goes. Rather, the source of life does not come from meditating on “the world” on “earthly things.” Rather, in order to experience today what is now hidden “in Christ,” you must fix your eyes on Jesus and see who you are “in him.”

Paul is teaching us that we need to be rooted “in Christ.” We grow by nurturing and meditating on who we are “in Christ.”

Now you have a list of things that we belong to “the world.” Earthly things. You are “in Christ.” You have put off the old self and have put on the new self. You are being renewed by being in the image of your Creator.

What happens when we stumble and fall? Well, because we are in this in between time, and who we are is hidden in Christ, much of what we are in Christ is hidden by all the things of the world that cling to us.

You will still sin, but you are not “a sinner.” That is not your essence. People like to say things like, “I am a sinner just like you.” That is simply not true. “In Christ” your being has changed. You are no longer a sinner. You are a new creation. You have been circumcised in Christ. You have been raised in Christ. The essence of who you are is different.

You will sin. You will still sorrow over that sin. It will cling to you until Christ returns. But this is not who you are. You are “in Christ.”

This is one of those lies that the evil one will try to tell you. You can say, “This is not who I am, in Christ and in Christ I am a new creation.” That is who we are.

We might want to think about it again like how Michelangelo talked about sculpture. He said that the sculpture was already inside the marble and his task as a sculptor was just to chip away the unnecessary bits. The spiritual life is kind of like that. Who we are in Christ is hidden inside a lump of rock. By focusing on who we are in Christ, we can let God chip away the unnecessary bits to allow him to show through what is hidden.

It is also like learning the piano. We can focus on Christ all we want. We can learn and mediate. But like the piano, we can learn all the theory, we can watch master piano players play, but we don’t become a pianist until we practice. We have to sit down and let someone teach and correct us. This is what discipleship is. But fundamentally you are a concert pianist. You are learning to be who you are.

What Paul is saying here is that if you are “in Christ” and have been fundamentally changed, and have been raised from the dead already, then at some point, you have to live who you are.

You are “in Christ.”

You have been made new.

You are already raised from the dead.

So, live like someone who is alive.

Set your heart on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above.

You have died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

Live who you are. Let that beautiful statue be shown to the world.

As you meditate on who you are in Christ, practice that. Be who you are. Sit down at the piano and know that you are already a concert pianist “in Christ” just waiting to be revealed to the world. That revelation process will involve you practicing and doing who you are “in Christ.”