I. "Seek things that be above." This is the business first of all of a man's understanding, of the understanding of a Christian who is risen with Christ. Seek those things that be above, seek the conversation of the wise and the instructed. Study if you will the masterpieces, the highest masterpieces of literature: make the most of whatever enlarges and ennobles your conceptions of nature and of human life; in all the higher and purer regions of thought you are nearer Christ even though His name be not uttered. But as you think let your cry be ever "Excelsior." Rest not in the highest regions of earthly excellence, do not be satisfied until you have struggled upwards beyond literature, beyond science, beyond nature into that world which human thought may enter under the guidance of revelation; into that kingdom of heaven which, since the Redeemer died and rose, has indeed been opened to all believers.
II. Yes, seek those things that be above, for it is the business not merely of the understanding, but of the affections. The affections are a particular form or department of desire, and desire is the strongest motive power in the heart of man. St. Augustine said, " Quocunque feror, amore feror." If I am borne upwards, it is by the love of the highest good; if I am being carried downwards, it is by corrupt or perverted desire, by desire which has attached itself to false or unworthy objects, but which, nevertheless, has the control of my movement as a spiritual being, and in this sense St. James says that desire, when it is finished, bringeth forth sin: sin is the act by which perverted desire attains its object. Seek then, as with your understandings, so with your affections, things above.
III. Here is, lastly, an effort for the sovereign faculty, for the will. "O will of man," the Apostle seems to say, "seek those things that be above." Grant that the will is weakened by the inheritance of moral disease, this weakness has been corrected at least in those who are risen in Christ. Natural disposition may make things easy or difficult. It cannot either prompt or arrest the onward, upward movement of a free, because regenerate will. We have been made masters of ourselves by Christ. We cannot shift the responsibility which attaches to us by putting it upon the very circumstances which are placed within our control. "Seek those things that are above."
H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 225.
Christian Advance.
I. First, I would have you notice the basisupon which St. Paul puts forward his view of the life of the Christian, as a life of advance. The basis is this: he maintains, and maintains earnestly, to those to whom he wrote, that their life had passed through a crisis. He warns them that there has been a special time marked by a special external witness, when that life had advanced out of one sphere of being into another, when they had stepped off one platform of thought on to another; and therefore, because upon the fact of this momentous charge he based his view of their life, the exhortation of the text had real force. Christianity is not a mere matter of feeling and emotion. Christianity has indeed in its keeping forces capable of drawing forth the warmest emotions, and kindling the most glowing feelings of the human heart. But Christianity in its very essence is something deeper than that; and as Christian life, on its subjectiveside on the side of the soul is something more than feeling, so that on which it rests objectivelyis something more than mere idea. The basis of it all is fundamental fact.
II. If you have turned to God, have listened to His call, if you have taken Him at His word and submitted to Jesus, the platform of your life is changed, the sphere of your activity is altered, and you start not merely to a life of labour, but to something higher, better, greater, than labour an advanceupward and onward on a new and glorious course. There are minds which are apt to look upon the Christian life as a life of mere stagnation. On the contrary, we must remember that there remains before us the advancing life.
III. Christianity in urging us to that advance is falling in with the fundamental fact and experience of our nature. It does not need regenerating grace, it does not need a converting call, to tell us men that there is within us a yearning and a longing for higher things. Ye are "risen with Christ," and therefore do not merely have yearnings, and indefinite longings, but "seek those things that are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God." (1) Those who do "seek the things which are above," as a matter of fact, become elevated in tone and temper. (2) It is not only true that the tone of life is changed by "seeking" them, but also that the sphere of thought is enlarged. (3) "Seeking those things which are above" helps us not only to reach towards, but gradually and steadily to attain to virtues purely Christian. To grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ is a possibility to every soul young and old.
W. J. Knox Little, Characteristics of the Christian Life,p.,26.
I. It is on the great fact that Christ is risen that the whole attention of faith is concentrated. When we have grasped this, then all the other truths which are emphatically doctrines of faith, the Atonement, the Incarnation, the Pre-existent Godhead of the Lord Jesus Christ, unfold themselves in their right order. For we come to know Him in the very power of His resurrection, and so we are able to rest on His Word when He tells us, "I came to give My life a ransom for the many."
II. The Resurrection of Christ is not a dead fact of the past; it is a living fact, which looks on to the future; it is the type and earnest of our own rising again. He is the firstfruits of the great harvest, which shall be reaped at the Judgment Day, gathered safe into the garner of God. Wherever we go, the shadow of death falls upon this life. That shadow has already swallowed those whom we honour, reverence, love; it is so near ourselves, that it must at times cast, in thought and anticipation, some shadows on our own path. We must have light upon it, if we are really to live as true men, and if we are to know anything of a living God. It is the knowledge of the great truth of Easter, which alone lights it up.
III. But it is not on the Resurrection as a fact in the past St. Paul dwells; this is now accepted by all as one of the first elements of Christian truth. It is not even on the future hope of our resurrection through it, for that also is taken almost for granted now. It is on the eternal life in and through Christ, actually given us in the present. The regeneration in Christ and those who are made His, is spoken of as a present resurrection in us a resurrection of the spiritual life, from the bondage of the flesh, and from the death of sin: it is not, therefore, that we shall rise, but that we are risen in Christ. Faith is not content even with the saying, "I am the Resurrection"; it goes on to the still deeper utterance of the Lord, "I am the Life"; he that liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.
A. Barry, First Words in Australia,p. 145.
References: Colossians 3:1. Homiletic Quarterly, vol.iv., p. 269; Ibid.,vol. vi., p. 216; Scott, University Sermons,p. 42; J. Vaughan, Sermons,nth series, p. 189; Plain Sermons,vol. iii., p. 61; Liddon, Easter Sermons,vol. ii., p. 37; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. viii., p. 88; A. Barry, Cheltenham College Sermons,p. 203; H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty,vol. i., p. 201; H. P. Liddon, Church of England Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 217; Homilist,4th series, vol. i., p. 362; E. Johnson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxv., p. 34 2 Chronicles 3:1; Colossians 3:2. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvi., No. 1530; Plain Sermons,vol. x., p. 133.Colossians 1:1-3. Preacher's Monthly,vol. v., p. 202; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., pp. 87, 224; W. Wilkinson, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. xxx., p. 109. Colossians 3:1-4. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xiii., p. 129.