Day 5: Col. 3:1-4 Timeline: PRESENT
Your Life is Hidden
Colossians 3:1-4 (NIV84):
1″Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
2″Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
3″For you died, and YOUR LIFE IS NOW HIDDEN WITH CHRIST IN GOD.
4″When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.”
Last week, we started our timeline of these four verses of Scripture and looked at what happened in the PAST.
Today, we’re going to go to the PRESENT portion of our timeline and explore what it means for our life to be hidden with Christ in God.
I have come to refer to this hidden life “with Christ in God” as the Unposted Life.
It is no great mystery how I arrived at this analogy!
Social media posts are part of everyday life for grandparents and grandchildren alike. Most posts show us at our best, or better than our best, edited, cropped, & filtered, while some posts actually attempt to display how bad things are for us. Posts can be designed to entertain, educate, inform, praise, criticize, promote, complain, vent, enrage, or show off.
No matter the type of post,
no matter how “true to ourselves” we are on social media,
our REAL LIFE is hidden.
Even if we spend every waking moment crafting posts,
attempting to document each day of our lives via social media platforms,
our REAL LIFE will remain hidden from view.
So it is with our spiritual lives.
“Your old life is dead.
Colossians 3:3-4 (MSG).
Your new life, which is your REAL LIFE —
even though invisible to spectators —
is with Christ in God.
HE IS YOUR LIFE.
When Christ (your REAL LIFE, remember)
shows up again on this earth,
you’ll show up, too —
the REAL YOU, the glorious you.
Meanwhile, be content with obscurity,
like Christ,”
Being “invisible to spectators” is not a #lifegoal for most of us! Last year my 10-year-old informed me that he wants to be a famous movie actor when he grows up. Before that , he wanted to be a pro-athlete. (He has since changed to contractor/architect). My 7-year-old has aspired to pop stardom since she was three. Now she has added President of the United States to that — yes, added. Ronald Reagan was an actor-turned-President… you never know. 😉 How is a mother supposed to get kids with aspirations like these to “be content with obscurity”?
The same way I’ll get myself there, I guess:
“killing off everything connected with that way of death.”
That’s pretty harsh language from the apostle Paul again!
“That way of death” is mostly “doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That’s a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God” (Col. 3:5, MSG).
My feelings say:
I don’t want to be hidden.
I don’t want to be invisible (well, maybe on a “bad face” day or a day I feel-so-bloated-I-want-someone-to-stick-a-pin-in-me…).
I don’t want to be obscure.
Obscure means “relatively unknown.”
Obscure means “not prominent or famous.”
Obscure means “not readily understood or clearly expressed; also, mysterious” (www.merriam-webster.com).
Well, “mysterious” can be cool if it’s the kind that piques curiosity, but not if it’s the “mysterious/weird” kind that keeps people away.
Our culture says:
You don’t want to be hidden.
If you’re hidden, you can’t be known, can’t be loved, can’t be wanted, can’t be fulfilled, can’t be successful, can’t be connected, can’t have influence, can’t be valuable, can’t be supported, can’t be good, can’t be helpful…
So why should I invest in this hidden life, besides the fact that Paul has written that it is already my reality, acknowledged or not?
Let’s look at the sentence again:
“For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God,”
(Col. 3:3, NIV84).
Why is it a good thing to have a hidden life?
For starters, look who we’re hidden with!
We’re hidden WITH CHRIST!!!
I can’t think of any One I’d rather be with.
And the next part says, “in God.”
I’m pretty psyched about that location, too!
“The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my savior; my God is my rock, in whom I find protection. He is my shield, the power that saves me, and my place of safety,”
(Psalm 18:2, NLT).
Reflection Time
- How do you feel about the idea of being hidden?
- Do my feelings about it resonate with you?
The one that got me was the definition of obscure that says, “not readily understood or clearly expressed.” My personality type fears being misunderstood and strives to clearly express my real self.
- Do you believe what our culture has to say about being hidden?
We all want to be known and loved.
Depending on our personality type, we all want to be wanted, fulfilled, successful, connected, influential, valued, supported, good, and helpful to varying degrees.
- Which of these do you desire the most?
- Do you think it’s true that these things are off-limits to anyone in this world whose “real life” is hidden with Christ in God?
The simplest answer for me is in Jesus’ words of John 15:5:
“I am the vine, and you are the branches. If you abide in Me and I in you, you will bear great fruit. Without Me, you will accomplish nothing.”
(VOICE).
Without Jesus, I will accomplish nothing — nothing of eternal value or significance. This truth from the lips of my Lord and Savior is the prompt I need to shift my thoughts from temporary issues to eternal ones.
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is UNSEEN, since what is seen is temporary, but what is UNSEEN is eternal,”
(II Cor. 4:18, NIV).
We’ll take a closer look at II Cor. 4 in a future post, but for today, I want to leave you with this:
Are you fixing your eyes more on what is seen or on what is unseen? If Jesus Christ is your Savior and Lord, your life is already part of eternity; although that eternal life is obscured for now, mostly hidden from view, eternity is for-ev-er, nev-er-end-ing. If you haven’t been thinking much about eternity lately, I invite you turn your thoughts to it now.
Day 5 PRAYER
Father God,
Thank You for giving us eternal life in heaven with You through the life, death, burial, & resurrection of Your Son, our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ!
Thank You that, although we still walk the earth, we are already citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20).
Lord, help us turn our attention from storing up “treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal.” Help us spend more time and energy storing up “treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal.” For where our treasure is, there our hearts will be also (Matthew 6:19,20,21, NLT). And I want my heart to be with You.
Lord, help us learn & understand how life “hidden with Christ in God” is the best life, and how we can surrender ourselves to it and invest ourselves in it.
Lord, help us to think of ourselves “the way Christ Jesus thought of Himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of Himself that He had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, He set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, He stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, He lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion,” (Phil. 2:5-8, MSG).
Lord, help us, through the power of Your Holy Spirit, to live selflessly, obediently, humbly. Help us to leave our reputations up to You as we obey what You have told us to do. May our earthly status matter less to us as our status in Christ becomes clearer to us!
We love You, Lord; thank You for first loving us (I John 4:19).
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.
Thank you so much for studying the Bible with me today! Our next two posts will delve deeper into the phrases “hidden with Christ” and “hidden… in God.”