CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Colossians 3:3. Your life is hid with Christ in God.—You are much more likely to have it kept pure by having it in Christ than by setting round it a hedge of “Thou shalt” and “Thou shalt not.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Colossians 3:3-4
The Present Condition and Future Glory of Life in Christ.
The Christian life has a twofold aspect. Outwardly it is shorn of all splendours, and to the eye of the world appears a life of weakness, ignominy, and suffering; but inwardly it is radiant with divine light and pervaded with a heavenly peace. The believer is often as a monarch in the disguise of a beggar. The world knows nothing of the new life of which he has become possessed, and the new life must know nothing of the world. Its aspirations are directed towards higher things. The relish for earthly things is gone.
I. That the present condition of the believer’s life in Christ involves a new relation to outward things.—“For ye are dead” (Colossians 3:3). There was a time when he not only lived in the world, but to the world and for the world. He was wholly captivated and absorbed in the pursuits and enjoyments of the carnal mind. But now, while still in the world, he is dead to its charms and to its ordinances. All the mainsprings of activity are changed. He is risen with Christ and shares the power of His resurrection life. Man lives where He loves, and, having experienced so complete a change, his affections are now fixed on things above, and his life is bound up in the love and service of Christ, who sitteth on the right hand of God. He is dead because he is crucified with Christ, and hath put off the old man—the old fleshly nature—with his deeds. This death involves a renunciation of all the ceremonial observances against which the apostle so faithfully warned in the preceding chapter—the Mosaic ritual, the vain philosophy, the angelolatry, the pride of the fleshly mind, the traditions and commandments of men, and all the pernicious doctrines of the false teachers. He is dead to the past, and realising the beating of a new life within him, he enters upon a brighter and loftier career.
II. That the present condition of the believer’s life in Christ is one of concealment from the outward world.—
1. It is hid. “Your life is hid” (Colossians 3:3). All life is hid. Its origin is a profound mystery. The botanist fails to discover it as he picks his plant into microscopic atoms. The scalpel of the anatomist has not pierced its dark domain and laid bare its hiding-place. Its presence is known only by its effects. So is it with the new life of the soul. It is hid from the world. It has a glory and a power of its own; but the world is incapable of appreciating either. It is not a life of vulgar display and noisy demonstration. It is gentle, quiet, and retiring, sometimes obscured by a tempest of persecution and suffering. It is sometimes partially hidden to the believer himself when assailed by temptations and oppressed by the weight of heavy chastisements. Yet that hidden life is the power that shall shake and transform the world.
2. It is hid with Christ.—“Your life is hid with Christ” (Colossians 3:3). Christ Himself was hidden when on earth. To the undiscerning He was as a root out of a dry ground, possessing neither form nor comeliness. Even now Christ is hidden to the worldly mind; and the believer’s life is hidden with Him, as a river, concealed for a time in a hidden channel, flows on beneath and out of sight. This hiding of the believer’s life with Christ indicates
(1) Dependence. It is not hid with the believer himself. He derives it from Christ, as the great fontal source of all life; and on Him he depends for its constant supply and nourishment. The springs of this life abide when every other channel of supply is dry and its fount exhausted. We must wait on Christ for daily supplies of living water. It indicates
(2) Security. Our life is safer in Christ’s keeping than it could be in our own. Man was once entrusted with the gift of a glorious life, and he lost it. But in the hands of Christ our life is out of all danger. It is secure amid the conflicts of time, the subtle temptations of the world, and the wild rage of demons.
3. It is hid in the depths of the Godhead.—“Your life is hid with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). A grand but unfathomable truth! It is not lost in the abyss of Deity, as the mystic or pantheist would teach; but it is so hid as to retain its own conscious individuality, while sharing in the boundless life of God. It is a gift from God, bestowed through Christ the great Mediator, created by the power and energy of the Holy Ghost; so that the nature, manner, and destiny of the gift are hidden in God through the mediation of His Son. “God hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.” The exercise of faith brings the soul into living union with the glorious Trinity.
III. That the believer’s life in Christ will, in the future, be manifested in ineffable glory.—
1. There will be a signal manifestation of Christ in the future. “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear” (Colossians 3:4). Christ is now invisible to His people and to the world. He withdrew from the scene of His suffering ministry, entered the serene heights of heaven, and there, all-potent, is carrying on His high purposes of grace and salvation. But by-and-by—not at the bidding of the impatient prophets, who dare to fix the Lord a time, and, in their too realistic interpretation of His word, consider His second coming as the grand and only specific for the world’s evils—in His own good time, to the joy of His people and the dismay of His foes, He will come in overwhelming glory.
2. The believer will share in the ineffable glory of that manifestation.—“Then shall ye also appear with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:4).
(1) This implies public recognition. The believer, obscure and despised on earth, is acknowledged before the universe as related to Christ by the dearest ties and as deriving his life from Him. All the ends of secrecy are answered. The hidden is revealed. The baffled, persecuted, unappreciated, afflicted people of God are for ever vindicated.
(2) This also implies a personal participation in the splendour of Christ’s triumph and in the bliss of His character. “With Him in glory.” Glory is a comprehensive term, and not easily defined. But whether we regard it as expressive of external and visible splendour, or as describing a condition of unutterable and endless felicity, in either sense, or both, the believer shares it with his exultant Lord. Rapture of raptures! to see Jesus, to be with Him, and to live in the sunshine of His smile for ever!
Lessons.—
1. The believer’s life in Christ is a hidden, but a real life.
2. Bear patiently the trials of the present life.
3. The glory of the believer’s future life will more than recompense him for the troubles of the present.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Colossians 3:3. Death and Life with Christ.
I. Ye are dead.—
1. In your original state of unconcern and unbelief ye are dead.
2. By the Holy Ghost you are made to recognise this death as real and to acquiesce in it as just.
3. You continue to be thus dead with Christ.
II. Your life is with Christ.—
1. As partakers of His right to live.
2. In respect of the new spirit of your life.
3. Your life being with Christ must be where He is. In God as its source, its centre, its pattern.
4. This life with Christ is hid. For security; in its intimacy; as separated from the world; is not to be always hidden (Colossians 3:4).—R. S. Candlish.
Colossians 3:4. Christ our Life.
I. The vital principle recognised.—“Christ who is our life.”
1. The life is spiritual in its nature.
2. Eternal in its duration.
II. The splendid spectacle predicted.—“Christ shall appear.”
1. The manner.—In the glory of His Father, with His angels.
2. The purpose.—To judge the quick and the dead.
III. The glorious hope awakened.—“Then shall ye appear with Him in glory.”
1. The great hope of the Christian life is that one day we shall be with Christ.
2. That we shall participate in Christ’s glory.
3. These words are full of comfort to those drawing near to death.—J. T. Woodhouse.