Colossians 3:1-11
The other day Christy, my six-year-old, looked for me in the house calling “Daddy, where are you?” I said, “I am here in the basement.” She came down to the basement and as she approached me she said, “Well, I forgot why I came down to tell you.” She thought for a long while and couldn’t remember. I looked at her with surprise, but I also feel encouraged.
You know that I tend to forget things and get sidetracked by another task while doing one. Each time I had that kind of short term memory lost, I thought I was getting old. But seeing a six-year-old forgetting thing like that, I just feel comforted. Maybe I am not really old; maybe I am just getting younger!
In fact we forget things because we lose focus, and get sidetracked by other things around us.
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In today’s scripture lesson, Paul reminds the Christians to stay focused on who we really are and the true gospel that gives them hope, that they originally believed in, because they are sidetracked by the heresy of the Gnostic gospel. You know that the heresy of the Gnostic gospel that they were taught by a false teacher was not just in the first or second century. It recurs every now and then. In our days, it came to us powerfully as the book, “the Davici Code”. So Paul’s letter to the Colossians is very relevant to us today because many Christians, who are not spiritually mature, have been taken in by today’s version of the Gnostic gospel. Paul reminds the Christians not to forget who they are and what the true Gospel is so that they will keep on living out the transformed life rather than sinking back to the former life.
There is a Native American story of a farmer who found an eagle’s egg and put it into the nest of a farm chicken. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them. All its life, the eagle, thinking it was a chicken, did what the chickens did. It scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects to eat. It clucked and cackled. And it flew in a brief thrashing of wings and flurry of feathers no more than a few feet off the ground. After all, that’s how farm chickens were supposed to fly.
Years passed, and the eagle grew very old. One day, it saw a magnificent bird far above in the cloudless sky. Hanging with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents, it soared with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings. "What a beautiful bird!" said the eagle to its neighbor. "What is it?"
"That’s an eagle - the chief of the birds," the neighbor clucked. "But don’t give it a second thought. You could never be like him." So the eagle never gave it a second thought and it died thinking it was a farm chicken.
Isn’t that a sad story? Paul was writing to the Christians in Colossae who have been duped by some false teacher telling them that they were farm chickens not eagles. Unlike the story, Christians are not the eagles that were hatched from eagles’ eggs, but they were transformed from chicken to eagle by the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Maybe using the image of caterpillar and butterflies would describe it better. Christians are butterflies transformed from a caterpillar through its death in the cocoon, and resurrection out of the cocoon, but what Paul is dealing here is that a group of Christians or Butterflies that are crawling like a caterpillar because some false teacher came and told them that you are caterpillars not butterflies.
How do we know that we are butterflies, or eagles? As human beings, we don’t have any special wings that look different from others. What is the symbol of a life that is transformed by Jesus Christ? It is hope. Hope is our wings. In 1:23 Paul says tells us not to shift from the hope promised by the gospel. The symbol that distinguishes a Christian and a non-Christian is their hope. Of course a Christian can forget about their hope and behave like a non-Christian, just like an eagle running like chickens.
In this morning passage, Paul gives some important instructions for the eagles to fly like eagles rather than running like turkeys. We will look at the three most important ones.
1 – Seek the things that are above
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
The word for seek in Greek is zeteite, which means put your heart on. So it literally means put your heart on the things that are above. What is that place above? “Where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.” The place above, where Christ is, is, to simply put, the kingdom of God.
Jesus gave a similar instruction, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” Mathew 6:33. Jesus described the kingdom of God in the present time as a fruitful living. A fruitful living is a Christ-like living. We are created to be fruitful, and until we live out a fruitful life, we will never find satisfaction and fulfillment in life.
But this kind of life is for the eagles only—those who have been raised with Christ. Paul says, “So if you have been raised with Christ...” That is to remind us that we were spiritual death before we met Christ, and now we are spiritually raised with Christ, and looking forward to the future manifestation of bodily resurrection. That future is our hope. That future is our wings that can make us fly high. So, Paul is saying that, since your have this new life, live like someone with a new life, put your heart on the things that are above.
To put your heart on the things above is the same ask the Hebrew concept of “to wait for the Lord.” The Prophet Isaiah said:
“Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
(that means even a six year old can forget things!)
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:30-31)
2 – Set your mind on the things that are above
“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,” (v. 2)
“Set your minds on” is translated from the Greek word that literally means “think on.” The previous verse says, we need to put our heart on the things that are above. Now we need to put are minds on the things that are above. Sounds familiar? Love the Lord your God will all your heart and all you mind, and all your soul?
In think, sometimes, WWJD is just not enough. We need to ask WWJT, what would Jesus think? Because what you do comes from how you think. And what you think and do is from who you are. Who are you? You are an eagle. Paul says, set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth. To put it in John Maxwell’s word, “If you want to fly like an eagle, don’t run with the turkeys.”
Paul continues, “for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Your turkey life is dead. That was your previous life. Your life now is hidden with Christ in God. The word “hidden” here means that you are securely protected. Sometimes we don’t want to fly because we feel insecure. As a resurrected being we are in fact secure, and we can fly like an eagle. So don’t believe is someone tells you that you should not give it a second thought because you will never be able to fly like it.
Remember your wings are your hope promised by the gospel. Paul says in the next sentence, “When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.” Notice it says that Christ is our life. Without Christ, there is no life. Even though, for now, this new life can only be perceived in our inner self, one day Jesus Christ will be manifested and we will “also be revealed with him in glory.”
John Lightfoot said, "The veil which now shrouds your higher life from others, and even partly from yourselves, will be withdrawn. The world which persecutes, despises, ignores now, will then be blinded with the dazzling glory of the revelation." That is the hope promised by the gospel; that is our wings; and that is what enables us to live a fruitful life.
3 – Practice the New Self
“... seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.” (v. 9-10)
We can see there is a tension between “indicative” and “imperative,” that is the tension between what God has done for us and what we need to do as the result. Previously Paul said we have died and resurrected with Christ, but not he is saying put to death the practices of the old self, which includes from fornication, to greed, to lying.
We have died and resurrected in Christ, but it demands and also enable us to bury the practices of the old self and live a new self. What is the new self like? Paul says, it is above the barrier of races, religions, refinements, and ranks. Verse 11 says, “In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!”
The church is a place that we put this new self in practiced. So you are eagles and live like eagles, seeking things that are above, set your minds on the things that are above and practice your new self. May God bless you all!
