The Things Above

Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Colossians 3:1-4 NASB

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been dismissed by Christians on the basis that they find it impossible to always think about heaven or heavenly things. Wow, is that what I meant when I talked about this miraculous life … or is that the best the natural mind could imagine when defining phrases like “seeking the things above”? The objection that many Christians project onto the life of grace is that it requires too much mental effort! Mental effort? Is that what we think it means to seek the things above where Christ is? No wonder so many people talk about the difficulty of living the Christian life.

If we really want to talk about effort, we might reconsider that which makes up the “things of the world”:

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” Colossians 2:20-21 NASB

While the decrees mentioned by Paul might relate to us as well as they did the Colossians, they were merely examples of the decrees that confront us in our everyday lives. You see, the things of the world are the elementary principles or forces. In other words, this refers to the basic operating principles upon which all man’s rules are built.

The physical stuff is not the problem, for it is not what Paul referred to as the things of the world. No, the problem arises from the earth-bound logic or rationale of man. It is earth-bound in that it reasons according to that which is infected by the dead mind of sin. It is sin-conscious, and so it defines and interprets everything it sees and feels and touches and wants according to its own mortality. It looks for its meaning in that which has no meaning apart from the one through whom it was made.

Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Colossians 3:1-4 NASB

The things above, where Christ is — where are they found? how are they to be understood? Are we supposed to imagine them in terms of those hoped-for streets of gold and mansions in the sky where we will forever exist in perfect god-like bodies? Yeah, I’m sure none of us Christians have pictured our heavenly future as looking a little bit like models of Hercules or Athena, for that would be non-Christian! Somehow though, I’m thinking that most of our ideas regarding the things above are merely fleshly projections of the things that are on the earth.

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: Colossians 3:9-10 KJV

The things that are on the earth? The old man with his deeds. The things above? The new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. The difference between the two is the difference between death and life.