June: Colossians 3:1-4

This Week: Colossians 3:1

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

I once heard of a man named Jon who had a plaque on his desk that said, “Keep looking down!” It generated a lot of discussion with people who came to visit him. They would invariably say something like, “Why would you want to keep looking down? Isn’t it better to keep looking up?” Jon’s reply was always the same: “Well, it depends on where you are seated!”

“Since then you have been raised with Christ…”  Father God finished his work of creation, then sat down and rested. Jesus completed his work of redemption, then took his seat at the right hand of Father God—a position of authority as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now then, according to Ephesians 2:6, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus”—even while we have our feet planted firmly on this earth. God has given us a position of authority alongside Jesus, so that we have the capacity now to see things from that perspective and to “set our hearts” on what we see.

Since we have been seated here with Christ, it is now crucial to “set our hearts on things above.” Why? Because according to Proverbs 4:23, everything we do flows from what’s in our hearts! Before coming to Christ, we had an old identity lurking there in our hearts, formed by all of our life experiences, good, bad and indifferent. Our behavior came out of that old identity.  But now, we “have been raised with Christ” and given a new position, capable of seeing from a new perspective. We form that new perspective as we “set our hearts on things above.”

Take the seat God has given you, alongside our Lord and Savior Jesus.  Then, “Keep looking down!” from that position and set your heart on what you see…and consider the following questions:

1. Have you taken your seat yet? You do so by resting from your own efforts to earn your salvation and trusting the work of Jesus on the cross.  If you haven’t yet done so, then I urge you now to bow your knee to Jesus as your Lord and Savior…and rest in him.
2. Are you keeping your seat…or do you keep jumping back up by trying to make happen what you want to see happen?
3. Have you asked Jesus to show you what he sees from your common perspective…or are you still looking through the same old glasses you have always worn and seeing the same old stuff you have always seen? As you take time to get to know him, his perspective will become yours!

We, who come last, desire to see the first things and wish to return to them insofar as God enables us. We are like people who have come to a house that has been burnt down and try to find the original foundations. This is more difficult in that the ruins are grown over with all sorts of growths, and many think that these growths are the foundation, and say, ‘This is the foundation’ and ‘This is the way in which all must go,’ and others repeat it after them. So that in the novelties that have grown up they think to have found the foundation, whereas they have found something quite different from, and contrary to, the true foundation.

– Peter Cheltschizki, Bohemia, 1440

Just as Peter Cheltschizki wrote over 500 years ago, today’s church has “novelties” that have grown over and obscured the true foundation, and now are believed to be the foundation. Yet, they are actually “quite different from, and contrary to, the true foundation.” These “novelties” today go as deep as the very message we have proclaimed as the gospel.In our efforts to simplify the gospel and to make it “relevant” to our culture, we have ended up with several versions of the good news that are no longer that good—they lack the power to transform and integrate life. They are fragmented gospels—and they produce fragmented lives. Again, Gallup expresses it well:

Contemporary spirituality can resemble a grab bag of random experiences that does little more than promise to make our eyes mist up or our heart warm. We need perspective to separate the junk food from the wholesome, the faddish from the truly transforming.

It’s not that these fragmented gospels contain no truth; it’s just that we have taken portions of God’s truth and mixed them with spiritual “junk food.” In the process, we have changed the overall message—and the effectiveness of that message.

The above is excerpted from the Introduction to Integrated Lives: Living the Good News of Jesus. I wrote Integrated Lives because, as a pastor of 30 years, I saw the way in which the fragmented gospels we have proclaimed fails to produce integrated and mature followers of Jesus. My conclusion was that we needed to go back to the proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom that was proclaimed by Jesus and the early church. Only this way can we establish a firm foundation upon which to build mature disciples—which, after all, is what Jesus called us to do.

I leave you with two questions:

1. Am I off base? If so, where?
2. If not, what will you do about it?