He is all, and He is in all. Mark and Luke, although they were not apostles, were surely prophets. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. Though we are made free from the obligation of the ceremonial law, it does not therefore follow that we may live as we list. Our affections should not be fixed on houses and lands; on scenes of fashion and gaiety; on low and debasing enjoyments. We may be content to be hidden while He is hidden; but He is not always to be out of sight. And above all these things put on charity [love], which is the bond of perfectness [completeness] ( Colossians 3:12-14 ). And that is, I've seen fathers sometimes tease their little babies until the baby screams in frustration. He gets cold.Two rules: wives submit, husbands love. And then, verse sixteen: Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; [And that's why we're here tonight. He must say, "This is God's business. But is this all? But the great basic Christian virtues are those which govern human relationships. 2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. Here he gives prominence, it is true, to their being "brethren." Were He among the Jews, it would be the introduction of the promised earthly glory. And now the apostle would recall them: "Walk in him, rooted and built up in him." III. Every Christian is crucified unto the world, and the world is crucified unto him,Galatians 6:14. It remains, however, that He is the first-born of all creation, because he is the Creator of all things, above or below, material or spiritual: "For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible." In Christ the saint is above them, and leaves them to God without anxiety or envy. After this follow particular exhortations, on which we need not at present dwell. ( Matthew 11:30). Paul takes these three precious words which had once been the possession of Israel and gives them to the Gentiles. Does not this still abide true? How He would have been exalted, if He had consented to shed the halo of His own glory on the race as such! "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing here into heaven, this same Jesus is going to come again" ( Acts 1:11 ). And this the apostle was doing, and particularly for one that came from them. You're living in a new dimension of life, the spiritual dimension of life. (iii) Paul then turns to the greatest problem of all--the relationship between slave and master. Every thought of man is vain in the presence of His wisdom. We very often evade the truth on which the New Testament insists, that a Christianity which does not change a man is most imperfect. Mortify them, kill them, suppress them, as weeds or vermin which spread and destroy all about them. Nevertheless, he lets the Colossians know what he went through for their sakes and other saints who were before his heart, even though unknown in the flesh. Thus the fact of prying into that which God has not revealed, and man has not seen, such as speculations about angels, is the patent proof that the heart is not really satisfied with its portion. The word we have translated foul talk is aischrologia ( G148) ; it could well mean obscene language. The Christian never stood on any such fleshly ground. If a man says he abides in Christ then he ought to be walking as Christ walked. As Rev., set your mind. Also the reason seems obvious. It is as if Paul said, "For you the treasures of wisdom are hidden in your secret books; for us Christ is the treasury of wisdom and we are hidden in him.". They are in nowise the same, but may be viewed each as a supplement to the other. 2.Not the things that are on earth. And what is he then entitled to see? Macho, "I know what I'm doing. Under both Jewish and Greek laws and custom all the privileges belonged to the husband and all the duties to the wife. His grace has qualified us now for His glory: such, as far as this goes, is the clear meaning of the Holy Ghost. We can readily understand that the Spirit did not bring out the fulness of the glory of Christ then, but as it was needed. And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans." Christian speech must be kind and pure and honest to all men and in all places. The whole of the Christian life is lived in Christ. The most cursory reader discerns at once that the epistle to the Colossians is the counterpart of that to the Ephesians. This makes it so much the more striking, the epistle to the Colossians being the complement of an epistle so full of the Spirit, that there should be in the former so marked an absence of Him, that He is only referred to once, and only as characterizing the love of the saints. There is the forbearing and the forgiving spirit. It is not too much to say that everything that has been done for the aged, the sick, the weak in body and in mind, the animal, the child, the woman has been done under the inspiration of Christianity. This change was effected by Christianity." Thus we are "strengthened with all might, according to the power of his glory, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness. Not a prophet, not even the smallest shred of any prophecy, reveals such a truth. To the Colossians the Holy Ghost has to speak about their state, and along with this to present the truth of Christ as a remedy for it; not so much as the centre of blessedness and joy in the communion of the saints, but as supplying the true and only divine corrective to the efforts of Satan, who would drag them down into tradition on the one hand, and into philosophy on the other, the too common snares of human nature, and the latter more particularly for cultivated and reasoning minds. How blessed! I take the liberty of rendering the verse correctly, as is well known to most of my brethren now present. It is a liberty founded on death, displayed in resurrection, known in the Spirit. Continual opposition must be made to all corrupt workings, and no provision made for carnal indulgences. No one, no thing, can add to Christ's power, lustre, or value in any one respect. That is, he brings in His authority, for there can be no mistake for the Christian more profound than to suppose that the presentation of the Lord as such is the more elevated for the saint. Blasphemia is insulting and slanderous speaking in general; when that insulting speech is directed against God, it becomes blasphemy. Brethren, the Christ that God has made known to us is the Christ that man scorned, cast out and crucified. this was the serious question, and this it was which God was waiting to solve. It is of this Christ is the objective centre and Head. Knowledge and faith make a soul rich. In it there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free man. They do it with a great spirit. Indeed we may say that Paul presents the gospel as the display of divine righteousness beyond all, while he alone develops in his epistles the mystery of Christ and the church. To me to live is Christ,Philippians 1:21. He calls him Christ our life. But the actual result demonstrated beyond doubt that never before Was witnessed such hearty, universal, and causeless hatred as against Jesus the Son of God. 3:9b-13 Strip off the old self with all its activities. Commentary on Colossians 3:1-11 Karl Jacobson Your best life nowis hidden. III. The Revealed Jesus, the treasury of all wisdom and knowledge (2:2-3). For really you are dead to them, and that's the principal he is teaching. He is answerable to God, just as his workmen are answerable to him. As also, looked at individually, the Christian is a son of God, so there should be a growth up to Christ in all things. One of the best tests of any word is: "Can we speak it and in the same breath name the name of Jesus? But now the work is done, and the atonement is accepted before that new life is given me in Him risen. If it is the desire for a person, it leads to sexual sin. Constructively, to my mind, this points to the great sign of His death. This is the doctrine of the epistle to the Ephesians. (i) The wife is to be submissive to her husband; but the husband is to love his wife and to treat her with all kindness. One of the best tests of any action is: "Can we do it, calling upon the name of Jesus? Here the ethical part of the letter becomes more and more practical. Thus the believer can look round full of joy upon his brethren; he can count up souls from every tribe, tongue, and station. . Is it merely that all the universe has thus, in the cross of the Lord Jesus, a foundation laid for their reconciliation? The word he uses is the word for putting off clothes. Falsehood, too, is judged as it never was before, "Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." All work is done for God so that his world may go on and his men and women have the things they need for life and living. "You that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind," says he (for the full truth is brought before them as to their condition), "enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death." 81-82; and John F. Walvoord, Jesus Christ Our Lord, pp. Have you not proved it? The significant thing is that every one of these three words originally belonged, as it were, to the Jews. This remains for the day of Christ's glory, and will fill a most important part in the purposes of God. 1. Observe, To seek heavenly things is to set our affections upon them, to love them and let our desires be towards them. I could imagine that, feeling as he did, his rifle and equipment must have been like a ton weight. Colossians 2:20). 1 If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. (iii) It destroyed the barriers between the cultured and the uncultured. In this passage Paul speaks of the things of which the Christian must divest himself, and in Colossians 3:12 he will continue the picture and speak of the things which the Christian must put on. Different nations, who either despised or hated each other, were drawn into the one family of the Christian Church. CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES. Observe, (1.) Ought I not to wait to enter the same glory with the Christ of God? The apostle exhorts us to set our hearts upon heaven and take them off from this world, ver 1-4. Such is not the Christian life, which is really the life of Him that died and rose again. It is an effort to become dead to what is wrong; to cultivate what is felt to be glorifying to God; to avoid what is contrary to His will, and injurious to the soul. If the latter, it had got to Laodicea, whence the Colossians were to procure it in their turn. I know he is, because I don't know if he loves me or not." . Away, then, with every pretence to add to Him; away with all possible expedients to give lustre to Christ! It was just because Montgomery combined discipline and encouragement that a private in the Eighth Army felt himself as good as a colonel in any other army. There is still another thought here. For you have. Second, on the human side, it is based on the belief that all men are the sons of God; and there is no room for arrogance when we are living among men and women who are all of royal lineage. But if I am dead, what have I to do with those things that only affect men as long as they live? That may be putting bread on the table, but your life really is bound up in Jesus Christ. Can we speak it, remembering that he will hear?" It is never an ethic on which all the duties are on one side. All the saints belong to us, as we belong to all of them. Lit., be minded, think. I. Doctrinal Teachings, Ch. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ." Actually, I have seen something that I think is a terrible evil. Paul returned to his thought about the believers union with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection (Colossians 2:9-15). Bible study tool. He was proverbially the savage, who terrorized the civilized world with his bestial atrocities. '. Our Lord says that as He was "from above," so His disbelieving hearers were "from beneath," which He interprets as "of this world" ( John 8:23 ). Yet He has absolute peace, never broken or ruffled for an instant. There is no new means of grace; there is no development, still less supplement to Christ. These are alas! Compare Philippians 3:19, Philippians 3:20. Thus the most perfect harmony reigns between all the apostles; but Paul was emphatically minister of the gospel, and minister of the church. "And let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another." It may be added that what is said of the same truth is in Colossians attributed to Christ, or that life which we have in Christ. No matter how clever and religious those laws may appear, they will not succeed in controlling the desires of the body (20-23).Because they have died to sin, Christians are not in bondage to things of the world as the Gnostics are. For the Christian and the church must sing their own psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. It is not a question of the lower ranks of creation only, but takes in the highest "whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him." (ii) It destroyed the barriers which came from ceremonial and ritual. 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