Colossians 3:1-7 - How to Live a Transformed Christian Life (Session 17)

This episode is a verse-by-verse Bible study of Colossians 3:1–7, exploring the historical context, theological meaning, and faithful application of the passage within the Christian faith.

Ever pondered about the timeless wisdom in Apostle Paul's teachings to the church at Colossae? Brace yourself for revelations on the transformative power of focusing on heavenly matters, and how it holds the secret to navigating the complexities of our modern world. This episode is a deep dive into the Apostle's advice for setting our minds on spiritual goals, and the recurring concept of being raised with Christ in the New Testament.

Beware though, for all is not rosy. This episode also unpacks the severe consequences that await those who turn away from God's love and reject Jesus Christ as their savior. We peel back the layers on the impending Great Tribulation period, its implications for believers and non-believers alike, and the wrath that God reserves for those who deny Him. But fear not, for the silver lining is that as Christians, we are shielded from God's Wrath. Not by virtue of our own worth - which is impossible to prove - but through our faith in Jesus Christ, which presents us as blameless and protected. Join us on this enlightening journey that promises insights and hope in a world often shrouded in chaos.

Transcript

Speaker 2 0:43

The Apostle Paul, when he's writing to the church at Colossae, told them to set their minds on the things above. That's good advice for us today, because the world around us is generally nothing that we want to set our minds on, but there's a lot of good things above that. If we just set our mind on those things, it will help us get through the everyday things of life.

Speaker 1 1:06

Yeah, and what I think and hear that set your mind is what I think of is at some point in our lives we usually get to the point where we might have a goal that we put before us and we say I want to achieve this before a certain time. You focus your life around it, you make arrangements so that you can maybe learn more about the subject, but that setting of the goal, setting of it, that drives your life and you to purposefully keep looking at that, and I get that picture here. When Paul says set your mind to the things above, that's something that we should have a focus on. Is that exactly?

Speaker 2 1:45

So in the book of Colossians he does tell us to set our minds on the things above. That helps us to get through these messes that we find around us. So if you have your copy of the Word of God, open it to the book of Colossians. We're going to start in chapter 3. And, as a bit of review, paul is writing to this church. He's in the section where it's the common everyday section of how to live your life.

Speaker 2 2:11

As is Paul's custom in many of his letters, the first half of the book deals with doctrine and theology, and the second half of the book deals with how do you apply that theology on an everyday life. And that's where he is here in Colossians, chapter 3. He dealt already with the unique deity of Jesus Christ and he also dealt with this great and wonderful transfer, this radical transformation from the state of the lost person, that's apart from God, to the state of the saved person, which is in fellowship with God. Here in Colossians, chapter 3, he's going to tell us just how do we get through this everyday life that's full of a lot of messes. And so, steve, if you could read the first four verses of Colossians, chapter 3.

Speaker 1 2:57

Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

Speaker 2 3:20

So that first verse starts off with therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ and we know that he is writing to people that are already Christians, he's writing to people that are already fully and completely and entirely in good fellowship with God that their sins have been washed. We know that because he's already told us that in the first part of the book these were people that were already transferred from darkness to light 113, that were raised up with him through faith 212, and made alive with him 213. So he already told us this, that his audience in Colossae were already raised. He told us that in chapter 2, verses 12 and 13. Plus, in chapter 1, verse 2, it's written to the saints and brethren in Christ. These are people that are already Christian, but he says here in verse 1, if you have been raised in Christ, so that is therefore since you have been raised in Christ. What does it mean on a practical level to be raised in Christ?

Speaker 1 4:28

I think what he's talking about there is that we have the picture of baptism, of death, burial and resurrection being raised up with Christ. Our hope is in the fact that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Paul's making that equation there. If we've been raised up with Christ, we have these things, and here's what we should do. We should keep seeking the things above, where Christ is. Christ is not dead, he's not in a grave. He has raised up and he is alive and he's in heaven. That's where we should focus everything that we have, because we're with him in spirit.

Speaker 2 5:08

He's playing here in 3-1, on this theme of we were dead and now we're raised in Christ. That is a theme that gets repeated in many places in the New Testament. For example, jesus told the Pharisee in John, chapter 3, the Pharisee of Nicodemus said you must be born again. That theme there is, that we are dead, we're separated from God and we have to be born again. Ephesians 2, 6 say Christians have been raised to sit in heavenly places in Christ. Titus 3.5 says Christians have been washed, regenerated and renewed. So that's again this theme of being made right again. Second Corinthians 5.17,. We are a new creation. Old things pass away. Behold all things become new. So here in Colossians 3.1, he plays on this theme you've been raised in Christ. Our bodies are going to be raised in the last days when Jesus returns.

Speaker 2 6:06

1 Corinthians 15, verses 42 to 44, and Philippians 3.21. Our bodies are going to be raised out of the grave. It says that very clearly and glorified again. What it's saying here is a little different. We are raised now. We are raised in Christ because we have been born again. Our spirits have been renewed, our spirits have been made alive again by the Lord. He's saying again. Look at the verse therefore, if he means, since you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is. Keep seeking the things above where Christ is. And I think, steve, if we will just but do that, remember, in the last part of the previous chapter he went through these things Don't get caught up in all these rules and regulations. Instead, keep seeking the things of Christ. What does that get us if we keep seeking the things of Christ?

Speaker 1 7:01

And that exactly what I was thinking is where he had left off, in the latter part of the middle part of chapter two, where he spent time talking about hey, you're dead to these worldly things. If you're dead to these worldly things, don't let these legalists come in and steal your prize. Those were all things that are happening here on the earth, here in the world, and then he goes into therefore, seek the things that are in heaven. That's where our mindset should be. Are things of where we're going. Where we're living now is temporary. We're not going to be here. We have a finite amount of time for this earthly body to be here, where our spirit and our glorified body is going to be forever in eternal life, and it's going to be in the new Jerusalem. We have a great and glorious future in front of us and Paul I can just hear Paul saying is don't waste your time on all of these things here on earth that are going to perish and they're just shadows of what actually is there in heaven.

Speaker 2 8:01

Look at the middle of verse one Keep seeking the things above, and then, in verse two, set your mind on the things above. He said it twice, which is one of those reasons we better pay attention. So if I ask myself, what type of things are the things above? I think of heavenly things, I think of things about Jesus Christ. I think of the things that he's already told us here. Remember we were in chapter one, chapter two.

Speaker 2 8:29

There's some very heavenly things that he told us there about the Lord Jesus. Jesus is above all things. He's the Creator of all things, he's the sustainer of all things. He is all the fullness of deity. If you just read some of the Old Testament Psalms about the Lord and His greatness, if we just focus on the attributes of God, how loving he is, how knowledgeable he is, how he is the Creator of all things, how he gives us great blessings, then I think we can focus on those things That'll tell us how to live. We will then know we don't have to worry about all the rules and regulations that he talked about at the end of chapter two. Rather, if we just focus on who Jesus is, all the how to live life, things will take care of themselves.

Speaker 1 9:17

And we're also presented as being blameless. Where is that we're presented to God? In heaven, that's where we're presented as blameless. So Paul clearly is saying change your mindset now. Get off of this earthly stuff. Start thinking about all the great things that you have in heaven, and I would much rather think about heavenly things than all the mess that's in the world.

Speaker 2 9:41

So he's repeating this idea again twice, in verse one and again in verse two. We should think of heavenly things, not earthly things. We're in the world, but we shouldn't be of the world. We should have our minds on the Lord. Keep seeking. It's a command to keep on doing these things. Keep seeking the heavenly things and not the earthly things. Keep learning about God's attributes. Keep learning about the character of Jesus.

Speaker 2 10:06

Read through the gospels once again. Every time I read it I learned one more thing about the character of Jesus and how he acted in certain situations. Keep thinking about the finished work of Jesus Christ and what that means to me and you. Keep thinking about the doctrines of God and the doctrines of theology. And, at the end of verse two, keep thinking about heavenly things, not on things that are on the earth. We should therefore not dwell on earthly things, such as riches or earthly recognition or what we should eat or any of these things. And it seems all too much, steve, that we spent way too much time thinking about earthly things and not near as much thinking about heavenly things.

Speaker 1 10:52

Well, paul, in the previous verses, mentioned that those things are all perishable. They're all going to be gone. Why should we want to set our mind on things that are perishable?

Speaker 2 11:03

It doesn't make sense If you look at the inverse point, it says Christ is quote seated at the right hand of God and, as we made a point earlier in the book, this means when he says God here, it means Father Colossians, chapter one, verse two and one three, both refer to God as the Father, and we made a point about that when we went through it.

Jesus' Reign, Death and New Life

Speaker 2 11:24

It's because if we get to verses like this, then when it says here that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God, it means he's seated at the right hand of the Father. It is saying, yes, he is in a royal position. I submit, steve, that this is not the throne of David, and you and I did a whole session on what it meant to deal with these things, the Davidic covenant and things like that. So in where the covenant was with Jesus' throne, and in 2 Samuel 7, for example, it predicts that Jesus will be on the throne of David forever. And the theologians get into kind of an arm wrestling match over is Jesus on the throne now, or what? Well, I take this to mean he is seated at the right hand of the Father and not on the throne of David.

Speaker 1 12:13

Yeah, it supports what we believe and what we have talked about is that there's going to be a literal thousand year reign of Jesus on the throne of David, and that's going to be an earthly kingdom. That is mentioned in Revelation as being a thousand years. So, yes, and at that point he is seated on the throne. He's not seated at the right hand of a throne, he is reigning from the actual throne. So this can't be that throne of David because he's seated at the right hand of the throne at this time.

Speaker 2 12:50

At the end of verse one, seated at the right hand, is a position of a royal authority. But when it says God there, it means Father, and we made a big point of that. So it's not saying that Jesus and God are separate. It's saying that there's a distinction between God the Son and God the Father. We made a big point of that earlier in the book. So then in verse three it says you have died, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ and God. Here's a question, steve. It says we died. When did a Christian die?

Speaker 1 13:22

We died whenever we placed our faith and belief in Jesus Christ and we were declared righteous. That's when we were born again, when we were regenerated, when we were justified all of those things that happen at the time of us expressing faith and belief in the promises of Jesus Christ and who he is. That's whenever we died. We died in our spiritual sense to the things of this world and we gained new life in a spiritual sense to an eternal life in Christ and the things that we have in him.

Speaker 2 13:58

God says that we are crucified in Christ, galatians 2.20. So when Jesus died, we died. We died in Christ. When he died, then we died because he died vicariously for us. That's what it's talking about here, is that Christ died for us. The death happened when Christ died and as long as we're in Christ, then he died in my place. And that's what it's saying here is that when he died, I died. That's in what sense we died, we've died in Christ and therefore we're raised with him. Chapter 2, verse 20 is we were raised in Christ. So it's that same theme of this radical transformation from the lost person to the saved person. Not only are we pulled out of the domain of darkness and all those other things, but we're also raised in Christ.

Speaker 2 14:48

Second Corinthians 514,. Since Christ died for all of us, then we died in him. We've died to sin. That's another one in Romans 6, 2 says, quote how can we who have died to sin live any longer in it? And then, galatians 219, paul says, quote I died to the law that I might live in Christ. So when we're in Christ, our old sin nature dies and we've been reborn as a new life. In Christ, we're born again. So the word hidden here in verse 3 is a word that means we're secured away. He hid us safely in him. He kept us in a safe place. He took us and put us in a spot where we're not going to get lost. That's what he means. He hid us to keep us safe. So we're reborn, we have a new life in Christ and he's keeping us safe. And, steve, I just find that to be really wonderful.

Speaker 1 15:45

Reminds me a little bit of when Moses wanted to see God's glory. God says you can't see my face, but what I'll do is I'll put you in the cleft of the rock and I'll protect you as I pass by. I kind of get that picture right now. We're being protected.

Speaker 2 16:00

We're hidden in Christ, the end of verse 4, we're hidden there until you will also be revealed with him in glory when Jesus comes back. We're going to be revealed in glory and, Steve, I am really looking forward to talk about thinking about heavenly things. That's one of the things to think about is what's it going to be like when we get to be glorified with him?

Speaker 1 16:27

Oh, it's going to be great. We're going to have the glorified body when we start a new chapter in our lives. We want to also point out that this is something that's very plain. Things that Paul has been talking about in Christ, the things that we have. They're things that we have now. Even though we still have this earthly body and we're here, we still presented blameless to God. At the present time, we have eternal life. At the present time, this is something that is a future event and it's very clear that it's a future event because it says then you will also be revealed with him in glory. This is something that's still yet to happen. The text is pretty simple if you just read the text, and there's not a lot of mystery in it. Things will tell you when things are present, when things are future, and this is an example of a future event that's yet to happen.

Speaker 2 17:19

If we just go slowly through the text and unpack it as we go, then it'll explain many of these things. Well, let's keep reading to the next one. Colossians 3, starting in verse 5, says this, therefore, and again, whenever it says, therefore, you find out what it's there for. He's drawing a conclusion Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire and greed, which amounts to idolatry, for it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience, and in them you also once walked when you were living in them, but now you also put them all aside.

Speaker 2 18:01

Anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices and have put on the new self, who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the one who created him, a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all and in all. And, steve, that last passage there just takes us up to the heights. This is a wonderful passage.

Speaker 1 18:40

Yeah, we had a little bit of a reprieve from some of the deeper thoughts of Paul and theological doctrinal points in the mid part and latter part of chapter two. But now we find out here in the mid part of chapter three he's gone and gone back. We've got some really good deep things here in these verses to go into.

Speaker 2 19:00

First five says consider the members of your earthly body as dead. And I think, steve, he's talking about exactly that. It's very fleshly temptation thing that he's talking about here. Consider all the fleshly parts of us, the worldly parts of us, to be dead. This is a command, it's an imperative. He's saying consider those dead. This isn't a salvation thing he's talking about here. He's already talking to people after the point of salvation. This is in the how to live section. So he's telling us here okay, if you want to live in Christ chapter two, chapter two don't worry about all these rules and regulations, just consider your temptations, your fleshly temptations, consider all that dead. And if those things are dead, then the temptations have no power over my fleshly body, and that's exactly how I take this here.

Speaker 1 19:53

He lists off what these things, that they're dead to these earthly temptations that were dead, to the immorality and purity, passion, the evil, desire, the greed. All of that amounts to idolatry here, and I 100% concur with what you said there. We've heard also that dead is dead, and dead means that you can't respond, and so nobody, I think, would say that the dead being here is that we no longer respond to these items that Paul has listed out here. No, we all know that we have these things, these earthly temptations that are here, that are well. They wouldn't be called temptations if they wouldn't be things that would tempt us. We don't take this as being dead, meaning we're cut off from them and we can't respond to them. We know that we could respond to these things. So it's exactly what you're talking about Dead. We should consider ourselves dead to those temptations, but yet we still know that they're there and that we have to resist them.

Speaker 2 20:54

So again, look at verse 5, consider the members of your earthly body is dead too. And he gives this long list. So I asked myself why would he give that command? Why would he tell the Colossian Church this command? And I can only think it's because they were struggling with these things. They had a desire we want to please God and we had, on one hand, these religious people coming along saying we need to do all these religious things, and then we had all these legalists coming in here saying you can't have any fun. The less fun you have, the more holy you are.

Speaker 2 21:26

They were giving you all these commands and Paul in chapter 2 says don't worry about any of that. Instead, consider yourselves dead too. And he gives this list of these broad sins. Right, these are a list of rules. He's saying just consider yourself dead too. Immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire, greed. If I am dead to greed, then I'm not going to go off and have to worry about a list of rules on what to do to keep me from being greedy. That's what he's saying. And so again, the only reason to give this command to them is because there were Christians inside the church that were struggling with these temptations.

Speaker 1 22:06

And what did he just said? In the verses prior to this, he said set your mind to the things that are in heaven. Well, none of these things that he's listing here in heaven. There's not immorality, impurity, passion. These things aren't in heaven. These are earthly things. These are things that are temptations to our earthly body. So when Paul says consider yourself dead to him, it's in conjunction with him saying set your mind to the things that are in heaven. And none of these things are in heaven. So therefore, consider these things dead to yourself.

Speaker 2 22:37

This is an awful list. He gives this list here immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire. Let me just pick out one of these greed, the last one. He says greed, which amounts to idolatry. My question, steve, is why is it that greed is idolatry? My first thought with idolatry is I've got some stone or wooden statue there that somebody's bowing down in front of, but that is idolatry. But what he's saying right here is greed is idolatry. What sense is greed idolatry?

Speaker 1 23:10

Well, idolatry is actually doing things in order to serve whatever that item is that you're idolizing, whatever it might be a God In this case? I think greed. What is greed? Greed drives you to buy things, to want things, to gather things. It's through those things You're looking to them and you're serving them, and you're working your life around those things that you have accumulated, rather than focusing on Christ or focusing on God.

Speaker 2 23:42

Greed worships money. Greed worships money and what he's saying here is don't do that. If you don't have the greed, then you won't be worshiping all the money and the things that money can buy. Next question, steve can you and I and all of our other Christian friends, can we fight temptation on our own power?

God's Wrath and Christian Protection

Speaker 1 24:04

No, and I'm thankful that the Holy Spirit is with us and that we have the Holy Spirit. You know, jesus said I must go so that the Holy Spirit can come. He said the Holy Spirit is going to be here to help you, to be with you, to comfort you and to guide you. And I'm thankful that we have that Holy Spirit, because it's through the Holy Spirit is how we can resist these things, these temptations of our fleshly body.

Speaker 2 24:32

I have had non-Christian friends totally non-Christian that had problems and issues. I can think of one particular friend I had that was an alcoholic and he became sober through a secular addiction program and was able to not drink again. And nothing about the Holy Spirit. So you and I don't think we're saying that people can't go out and have a problem that gets solved by secular means, but what we can't do is still take away that desire that's inside of us, the greed or whatever drove, the addiction. That's the thing that can only be taken away by the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 2 25:18

If you're not a Christian, it's just going to get replaced by something else. There's something else that's going to come in and be the idol. You take away one idol, you're just going to bring in another one. Okay, I can pick a sin and there's non-Christians that have recognized that to be a problem and walked away from it, but they always replace it with something else. It never gets replaced with the Lord, god Almighty, and they're always idolizing something else. Then if we look at this, in verse six it says because of the list of sins in verse five, the wrath of God will fall upon people. Who is it say they're going to fall upon in that verse?

Speaker 1 25:57

The sons of disobedience.

Speaker 2 25:58

The sons of disobedience. There are mentioned a couple other places in the scriptures in Ephesians, I believe it is but he says there that the wrath of God will fall on the sons of disobedience. Now, steve, is the simple question is the wrath of God going to fall on God's children?

Speaker 1 26:20

No, it's not, and this is a clear indication of who the wrath of God is going to fall on and what signifies somebody that's the son of disobedience. What are they disobeying? They're disobeying recognizing Jesus Christ as being the one who has died for their sins, buried and resurrected. That's what they're disobeying. They don't want to have anything to do with Christ or what he's done. Therefore, they're going to suffer God's wrath.

Speaker 2 26:52

When this uses the word sons of disobedience, the phrase son of or sons of means somebody that has the nature of that thing. Remember James and John in the Gospels? Jesus called them sons of thunder. It's because they had a thunderous nature. They were very angry people, very violent people, people that would get very emotional very quickly. Sons of thunder, people that like, for example, jesus, is called the Son of God. It's because he had the nature of God. So here the sons of disobedience are people that have the nature and likeness of disobedience. That's not a Christian, these are non-Christian. These are people that have the nature, the sons, of disobeying God.

Speaker 2 27:36

All Christians may at some point fall down and disobey, but we don't have the nature of disobedience. We have the nature of obedience because when we disobey it bothers us so much that we're going to go confess and get back right with God again. So again, the end of the verse there says that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, the wrath is not going to fall upon Christians and since the Great Tribulation Period, this is where we're going with this. The Great Tribulation Period is, by definition, the pouring out of God's wrath on the sons of disobedience, as it says here. So Christians will not go through the Great Tribulation Period. By definition, the Great Tribulation is the pouring out of God's wrath and, steve, I just find this strange that well-meaning Christians could think that God's going to pour out his wrath upon his own child, when everything in Scripture? This is why we made such a huge deal about this radical movement from a lost state to a safe state. Christians are not like non-Christians, because we're not under God's wrath anymore.

Speaker 1 28:48

Here's what I liken it to. I liken it to everything that Paul has been talking about. He's been talking about if you're in Christ, you have all of these attributes of in Christ and you're presented as being blameless. Therefore, don't be deceived, don't be taken away by all of these false teachers and the ones that are giving judgment to these things that have to do with earthly and the self-abasement and the self-denial, because those things don't amount to anything, because if you're in Christ, you're in Christ and you have all the great things and protection by being in Christ.

Speaker 1 29:25

I believe that the people that believe that we're going to go through this tribulation period and experience the wrath or it may be part of the tribulation period, and some say that we won't experience the worst part of the tribulation period I think it harkens back to the nature of man that we're not good enough to be protected from that. I really do. It kind of goes directly to what Paul is talking about. Sure, we're going to go through the tribulation period. What gives us the ability to think that we're not going to go through it? Why are we too good to go through it? That's exactly what Paul is talking about in everything here in Colossians. You're in Christ. Therefore, you're not going to have the wrath poured out upon you and the people that believe that.

Speaker 1 30:15

No, no, the church is going to go through the wrath. That's one of the things they say. It's going to be a point whenever we can prove who we are, and it's going to be a glorious moment for Christians because they can prove their worth to God. I've actually heard that it put that way. That brings it all back to the very thing that Paul is teaching against. You can't prove yourself. You can't do it on your own. Everything was done by Christ. You need to know and have confidence that when you're in Christ, you're protected and you're given all of these attributes. One of the attributes is you're going to be saved from the wrath of God.

Speaker 2 30:56

The end of verse 6 and into verse 7,. The wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience. In them you once walked when you were living in them Verse 8, but now you also put them all aside. He's making again this very clear, very radical statement about you once were, you once walked in disobedience, but now you're different. You've been made alive. You once were dead. Now you've been made alive. Now you're not a son of disobedience, now you're a children of the king, where he made us good enough, what do you think we did? He made us good enough to appear before him. Steve, I just seem to think that I come back to this idea, that I really don't think the people that come up with these doctrines do a careful exegesis of the book of Colossians, because God, through the apostle Paul, just keeps hammering home this same idea over and over again. Many of these theologies just skip over all of this.

Earthly Persecution vs God's Wrath

Speaker 1 32:02

Let me add one more part to it. In part of the argument is that, well, look at the early Christian with Rome and Nero. They were being thrown to the lion, they were being put in Colossians and killed. They were being put on poles and they were being lit, and they lit the way of the road into Rome. There were all these awful atrocities.

Speaker 1 32:24

Look at all the martyrs through the years of Christians that have been killed through the years and even in our day there are still Christians that are being killed and beheaded all in our time. And they looked at that and they say if all of those Christians are going through that in the past and currently, what makes us believe that we're not going to go through it in the future? A big difference. Everything that is happening today is being impressed upon the earthly persecution that's coming from Satan. It's earthly persecution, and the tribulation period, it's the wrath of God. That's what's being poured out on the earth and on the nations at that time. So we're being protected from the wrath of God at that particular time. That's the difference. There's a difference between the wrath of God being poured out on the earth versus what has been poured out today and in the past of the persecution by Satan on the Christians.

Speaker 2 33:25

Excellent point, excellent point, and we'll stop there for today simply because of time. But there's more great things in the book of Colossians that we're going to get to next time, as we keep reasoning through the Bible.

Speaker 1 33:37

Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.