“YOUR life is hid with Christ in God.”
(Col. 3:33For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3).) He has gone up on high, He has entered the glory, and with Him there in God the believer’s lire is hidden. “Christ is our life” (vs. 4), and “He that hath the Son hath life” (1 John 5:1212He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. (1 John 5:12)), and we know that the simplest, the weakest child in the faith has the Son. Every one who has come to Jesus has Him for Saviour, for Peace, for Life. “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life” (John 6:6868Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. (John 6:68)), says every true disciple. Now to have Christ is to have every blessing, for we are blessed, by the will of God the Father, “with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” (Eph. 1:33Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: (Ephesians 1:3).) What a rich blessing it is, while the believer is on this earth, to have his life hidden with Christ in God! No harm, no enemy, no death can reach up there. Were the life entrusted to the believer for his own care and keeping he could not keep it; Satan, the world, yes, self would be more than a match for him; but the believer is blessed, and his life secure.
His life is hidden, because this is the day of Christ’s rejection. To see what the life is in its glory we need translating from earth to heaven. But the life will not always be hidden, for Christ, who is concealed from the eyes of men, and who is crowned with glory in heaven, is coming again. He will appear! The shining, and the light, and the glory that is His will be seen, yea, and seen by met upon this earth. Now, this day, we have the story of the sweet, calm light of His life and ways on earth, and we behold them in the four gospels; but He is coming again, and the light of His glory shall shine upon the earth He came to earth to die; He lives to die no more: He is coming again in glory. And when He so comes His people will appear with Him: “When Christ, who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory.” (Col. 3:44When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:4).) In that day will be manifested how glorious the life is that the true Christian has. None then will dispute the nobility, the splendor, the glory of the life. In this day the energy, the zeal, devoted ness, self-sacrifice of the life are misunderstood, or misbelieved. To live for God, to serve for God, to despise the seen, and to lay hold of the unseen, are to the world but dreams, for the world knows not Christ, whom God has revealed to His people, and it sees not the hidden. But oh, how real, how blessed, is the life!
Yet while the secret things belong unto God’s people, their walk and ways are patent to all. He who has set his heart and mind an things above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God, is another man from the man of the world, and as unlike him in his course as is the bird that flies through the air, from the beast that treads upon the earth. Faith soars on high; sense occupies itself with that which is below.
The pleasures of self-pleasing bring but sorrow to the believer’s soul. He is bidden, on the basis of his life being hidden with Christ in God, to deny himself here. “Mortify therefore,” says the word. The carnal desire and the natural list, he is to put to death in himself. He belongs to heaven, and is called to live like what he is — a possessor of life in Christ. The very exaltation of the believer’s affections to the things above must entail in him denial of his natural evil ways.
It is impossible to fly like a bird and to go on all fours at the same moment. “Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds” (vs. 9) — not only the old man, but also his deeds. It is poor Christianity to speak of heaven and to live for earth. “Put on therefore” — again we note the divine therefore — “as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering.” These blessed things are of “above,” where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God: they savor of that place where He is; they speak of Him. And, living thus, the life gives forth its savor, in this day of His rejection from the earth, for He who fills all things is “despised and rejected of men”now, as He was eighteen hundred years ago. But He will come again, and when He comes in His glory, all who are His, shall come with Him — the life shall be seen in its glory.