"Seeking Heaven" Colossians 3:1-11 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Colossians chapter 3 is our passage for this morning.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

Let me invite you to follow with me as I read from the Word of God, beginning in Colossians chapter 3, verse 1.

Colossians 3:1

The Word of God says this.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry, on account of these things, the wrath of God is coming.

In these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away.

Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave-free.

But Christ is all and in all.

This is the word of the Lord.

The United States government has a very specific process for elevating an individual to the role of justice of the Supreme Court.

The person must be selected by the President, confirmed by the Congress, and then they must swear two public oaths, and only at that point can they begin to execute the duties of their new office.

Or we might say, only then, after swearing these two oaths, do they enter into their new identity.

But entering into that new identity or that new role of justice of the Supreme Court is really just the beginning.

It's not the end, it's the beginning of a process, because now you actually have to do the work.

And that'll entail all of the normal human processes of growing and learning, sometimes learning from mistakes, and doing all that you do with a sense of weightiness, of the responsibility and privilege it is to function in this office.

I think that swearing of an oath and entering into a new office is bears something of an analogy to what Paul has been describing in the book of Colossians.

Paul says to become a Christian means that you take on a new identity.

Here's a point at which the analogy breaks down, though.

The new Christian identity that we assume is one where we are united to Jesus Christ.

So it's even more robust and deep and profound than the assumption of a new office.

Paul says that your identity began in eternity past when God elected you and thought of you in Christ, Ephesians 1.4 says.

And then Christ comes into the world and achieves all that's necessary for your salvation.

And the Spirit comes into your life and provokes you to utter this confession that Jesus Christ is Lord.

And you publicly confess that in the waters of baptism and are joined to his body, the church, you assume a new identity.

You are in Christ.

The primary definition of who you are, the thoroughly, absolutely, replete definition of who you are is you are in Christ.

You are eternally, everlastingly united to the Son of God, so that all that is in the Son is yours.

You're fully identified and incorporated and participate in Jesus Christ everlastingly.

That's you.

But just as in the assumption of a new office, it's not over once you assume that new identity.

So Paul would say, once you begin to experience this new identity by confessing that Jesus is Lord and joining to his church in baptism, that's just the beginning, not the end of this new identity.

Now you actually have to live out in your practical life your new identity.

Now you have to do the work.

That's the point in the letter to the Colossians that we've arrived at this morning.

The first two chapters of Colossians, Paul was focused on helping us to understand and to wrestle with the heights and depths and breadths and lengths of what it is to know Jesus Christ and be united to Him eternally.

But in chapter three, he turns to the question of now, what does it look like with boots on the ground to actually live out your identity in Christ in your everyday life?

In other words, we could say chapter three and following of Colossians is asking the question: how do you practically live the Christian life?

That's what we're going to see in our passage this morning.

So I think a helpful outline for us would be three keys to live out your identity in Christ.

That's what this passage, Colossians chapter 3, verses 1 through 11, is all about.

Colossians 3:1–11

The three keys that you need in order to live out your identity in Christian life.

Here's the first key.

You must seek the heavenly, seek the things that are above.

Look at Colossians chapter 3 and verse 1.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

Paul says, if then you have been raised with Christ.

Now, of course, Paul presumes that you have been raised with Christ.

He presumes he's writing to people who really and truly have died with Christ, as he says in verse 3, you have died.

So you've died to this world.

This world doesn't define you, this world's values have no sway over you, and you've been resurrected with Christ.

But he places it in the conditional form, if you've been raised with Christ, in order to do the same thing we saw him doing in chapter 2 and verse 20.

To invite us to consider the implications of that reality.

If you say you're a Christian, that means that you died.

Your old self is gone, crucified with Christ on the cross, so that his death was your death, and his resurrection to a new immortal, imperishable human life was yours, and guaranteed that.

You are in the mind of God, already united with Christ in death and resurrection.

That's who you are.

If that's true of you, what are the implications for the way you should now live your life on this fallen world?

That's what he wants you to wrestle with in this passage.

And if you're really resurrected with Christ, Paul says you should seek the things that are above.

That only makes sense in light of your new identity in Christ.

This identity that you have in Christ is replete.

It describes and defines all of you.

Notice in these little verses, verses one through four, Paul says that your identity in Christ shapes your past, your present, and your future.

You see, in verse 1, you've been raised with Christ.

In verse 3, you died with Christ.

That's your past.

On the cross, you actually died.

In the tomb, you were buried with Christ.

In his resurrection, you are united with him, so that his life is yours.

But in your present, Paul says in verse 3, your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

That defines your reality.

Right now, where is your life?

Your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Now, what does it mean to say that your life is hidden with Christ?

Does that mean that it's imponderable and you can't understand anything about your life?

No, I think rather there are probably two implications by which we should understand this little word.

Your life is hidden with Christ in the sense that Christ's life is hidden in God.

When Christ is on the earth, the human Jesus is not understood as he lives his life in the fallen world.

No one perceives that he is the radiance of the glory of God.

The world is blinded to that reality.

So if that's true of the human Jesus, it's also true of you now that your life is hidden in him.

Your life is now characterized, and now you have access to the riches of glory in Christ who is in God.

But the world doesn't recognize that.

You just look so absolutely, totally ordinary.

But then I think there's a second sense in which your life is hidden with Christ, and that is this basic sense of protection.

That's often the way the word hidden is used in the Bible.

For example, Psalm 27, 5, the psalmist says, God will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble.

Now that's true of your life.

Your life is hidden in Christ in God, which means God will give you his protection, provision, in the same way that he gives his protection and provision to his own eternal son.

Your life is hidden with Christ.

It's guaranteed and it's secure, and you will participate in the glorious realities of all that is in Christ.

Now, if your past and your present are in Christ, Paul also says your future is in Christ.

Look at verse 4.

In verse 4 says, When Christ, who is your life, appears, you also will appear with him in glory.

Now, this appearing of Christ is referring to his second coming.

When Jesus comes again to establish his eternal kingdom, he will reveal his glory before the nations.

And when that happens, you will be caught up in it, so that you will share in divine glory and divine life forever.

Paul says you have an unimaginably amazing future, past, present, and future.

Your whole life is wrapped up into Christ.

Who Christ is, that's what defines who you are.

Now, if that's true of you, of course, the way that you should live your life is what Paul says in verse 1.

Seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

If your entire life, past, present, and future, is defined by your union with Christ, you should seek the things where Christ is.

Seek the heavenly, seek the things that are above.

So what does it mean to seek the things that are above?

Does it mean meditate on some ethereal concepts that you can't even understand?

No, I think a better way to understand that is you should seek the virtues, the values, and the priorities of heaven.

You should seek the values of the kingdom of God.

The model for this is very obviously the human life of Jesus.

Jesus is from above, he's not from below.

But when he comes down to this earth, he lives out the values of the kingdom of God.

Jesus says this very clearly, John chapter 8, verse 23, he's having a conversation with the religious leaders in Israel, and he says, You are from below, I am from above, you are of this world, I am not of this world.

John 8:23

But now that Jesus comes down into this world, he lives out the values of God.

He lives out the values from above.

He lives out the virtues and the ethics and the truths of the world above on this world below.

He characterizes or summarizes his life in John 8.29.

Just a couple verses later, Jesus says, I always do the things that are pleasing to him.

That's what it means to seek the things that are above.

It means to take the things that are pleasing to God and live them out in your practical life, just as Jesus, who is from above, came to this earth and lived them out in his human life?

Seeking the things above means to ask, what is it that would please the Father in every aspect of my life?

How does God want me to use this dollar or this hour or this conversation?

How does God want me to use my body and my imagination and my creativity and my ingenuity and my endeavor?

How does God want me to use anything and everything that is at my disposal?

That's what it means to seek the things that are above, is to ask the question, what is the will of God?

So that you can say with Jesus, I always do the will of him.

I always do his will, I always do what's pleasing to him.

That's how you seek the things that are above.

You seek to do what is pleasing to the Father who is above.

Now Paul gets even more practical.

How do you do that?

Verse 2, he says, by setting your mind on the things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

So how do you set your mind on things that are above?

And Paul uses very ironic language here.

You remember in chapter 2, verse 18, he had just finished talking about people who would disqualify Christians, that is, judge Christians and say, you don't have everything you need for a fully vibrant spiritual life.

What you really need, verse 18, they were saying was asceticism and worship of angels and detailed visions.

And Paul says, in order to seek the things that are above, in order to seek heavenly things, you don't need detailed visions.

What do you need?

You already have access to them in your identity in Christ, and now you just need to seek them.

So how do you do that?

Again, we can go back to the model of the earthly human life of Jesus.

Jesus is from above.

He always does what is pleasing to the Father.

He sanctifies himself entirely in his human life.

He is set apart to belong to and be used exclusively for the service of God, always doing what is pleasing to the Father.

And then at the end of his life, in a crucial chapter, John 17, he prays that the Father would also sanctify us who believe in him.

And what is the means by which Jesus prays that God would sanctify us, so that we would likewise be able to say, we do what is pleasing to the Father.

Here's the instrument that Jesus prays God would use in our lives.

John 17, 17.

Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth.

That's how you set your mind on things that are above.

You set your mind on the word of God.

Because the word of God is a word from above.

No prophecy of scripture ever came by the will of man.

But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, 2 Peter chapter 1 says.

2 Peter 1 · chapter mention

When you implement the truths and the values and the virtues that are displayed for you in Scripture, you are implementing the values from above in your practical life.

The way you set your mind on things that are above is by setting your mind on the scripture, which is a word from above.

Now, if you are seeking the heavenly realities, if you are seeking God in Christ through Scripture, you're also going to do a second thing.

And that's what Paul leads us to in verse five.

Not only must we seek the heavenly, we must, and we will, kill the earthly.

He says this in verse five.

Put to death what is earthly in you.

So what is the earthly thing that is in you?

Well, the earthly in you is contrasted with what is from above.

So Paul is not making a contrast here between physical and non-physical, material and non-material.

The kingdom of God is going to be a material, physical kingdom, a perfect and virtuous, sinless, righteous, everlasting, physical and material kingdom.

So Paul's not making that kind of a contrast.

He's making a contrast between the virtues and the principles and the priorities of this world and the virtues and principles and priorities of God's world.

You are to put to death anything in your life that is not going to pass into the kingdom of God.

Any way that you use your body, any way that you use your mind, any way that you make decisions, any desires and impulses that you have that are not going to go into the kingdom of God, you're to put to death in this life.

You're to put to death all that is earthly in you, all that comes from below and doesn't come from above.

Now, Paul gets very specific in the next verse.

And I think it's worth just mentioning genuine Christian teaching and genuine Christian living is always going to get specific.

If you listen to enough kind of like broad American Christian teaching, you're going to encounter a lot, a lot of generalities.

Some of the most popular teachers in our country teach in these broad, vague generalities, wherein, I mean, you guys are all here at church.

You're probably most of you pro-God.

If I just tell you do the will of God and just left it there, all of you would be able to interpret that based on your own subjective desires and go out and say, I'm doing the will of God.

But the scriptures never leave us in generalities, it always gets specific.

So we, if we are going to be faithful to God and actually do his will, we have to get as specific as the Bible gets specific.

That's what Paul does in the next verse.

Look at what he does: put to death what is earthly in you sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Now, what Paul does in these verses is he works from outward to inward.

He works from external action to inward desire, and he starts with sexual immorality.

Sexual immorality would be any sexual act that is contrary to the will of God, and the will of God for sexual activity is very simple to delineate.

It would be sexual union between a husband and a wife in the covenant of marriage.

And all sexual expression outside of the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman is outside the will of God and is immoral.

In fact, Paul says it's impure.

We could even translate this word perversity.

It's something that twists what is good and holy and righteous.

The will of God is good and holy and true, but our natural desire is to twist it, abuse it, and to make it impure.

And Paul says that these external actions, look at the next two words, come from passion and evil desire, which is a way of just summing up, it's our external actions come from our inward desires, and our inward desires, even our desires, are evil.

So what Paul is saying is putting to death what is earthly in you doesn't stop at suppressing outward actions.

Putting to death what is earthly in you necessarily means you go into your heart, you find the desires, you find the latent impulses in your heart that are contrary to the word of God and you kill them.

Those inward desires are like slow burning, smoldering coals.

That if you let them lie, sooner or later, an external temptation comes along and acts like a stick that hits those coals and sparks a flame that comes out in outward acts.

It's not just the suppression of the outward acts that constitutes godliness.

Rather, it is the extinguishing even of the inward desires.

It is quenching the inward, slow burning coals.

That's what Paul says you have to do.

You have to be ruthless in going into your heart and saying, Are there any latent impulses and desires in me that are outside of doing what is pleasing to the Father?

You don't just ask, do my outward actions please the Father, but you ask, do my inward desires please the Father?

And you are ruthless in saying, I want all of my affections to be at the disposal of my Savior.

Paul says, those inward desires not only are what trigger our outward actions, but even the inward desires themselves.

Look at verse 6 that he just calls covetousness, they really amount to idolatry.

Now, covetousness is some of our translations render that as greed.

Either English word is a perfectly good translation of that.

It's the tenth commandment.

And covetousness or greed is desiring what is not yours.

You know, there's something fundamental in the human heart.

This is our natural impulse and disposition.

I want more.

I deserve more.

I need more.

And Paul says ultimately that attitude is idolatry.

How so?

Godliness would be what Jesus says in John 8.29.

I always do the things that are pleasing to him.

But covetousness is I always do the things that are pleasing to me.

What's happening in a covetous heart is you are substituting the will of God for my will.

You're substituting God's desires for my desires.

You're substituting God's ends for my ends, you're substituting God's means for my means.

It's an elevation of yourself to the throne of God.

It's an usurpation of God's role and sovereignty in your life, his right place to command even your affections and impulses.

It's usurping his role and replacing it with yourself.

Covetousness is the disposition, I always do what is pleasing to me.

Killing what is earthly, then, would be going all the way to the root of your heart and removing yourself and placing God back on the throne.

I always do what is pleasing to the Lord.

I want to desire, I want to be passionate for, I want to yearn for, I want to long for, I want to have affections for what pleases the Lord.

This is what it means to kill what is earthly in you.

Now, I mentioned at the beginning being specific about the way we describe and think of our sin, and I want to mention a word at the end here.

Because I think it is so easy to be general in our personal battle with our sin.

In fact, if I could use a theological term here, I think there's a tendency among us to be really, here's the theological term, mamsey-pamsy with the way we describe our sin.

How many times have you heard in the last year, I'm a broken person and we're broken people?

Now, if you use that language, I'm not angry with you.

That's perfectly fine language, because we are, it's a true statement.

But if you stop there, I want to urge you to reconsider.

The Bible doesn't stop there.

The Bible doesn't leave the descriptions that it has for your sin in kind of generic, innocuous language.

It calls your sin evil, immoral, perverse.

And we should use the same language.

Because as long as you stay in the realm of kind of generic mambi-pambi language to talk about your sin, you are not gonna be as vicious at tearing it out as the Bible commands you to be.

In the same way that if you're in the waiting room waiting for a report from your doctor, and your doctor comes out and says, Well, you have some extraneous cell growth, you might say, All right, do you have Tylenol?

Kind of move along here.

But if the doctor comes out and says, You have cancer, you're gonna respond differently.

You're going to say, Uh, let's do whatever is necessary to kill it.

The same way we should treat our sin, not leave it innocuous and not leave it vague, but we should be specific in the way the Bible is specific about our sin so that we would be as serious as the Bible is about our putting it to death.

So, a basic self-reflection that we could have, we could just ask ourselves, like a spiritual doctor, what sin am I currently putting to death?

And what language am I using?

And what steps am I taking?

What sin am I putting to death?

What is there that is earthly in me that I am seeking to put to death?

Paul commands and urges us to take this with dead seriousness because of what he says in verse 6.

Verse 6 on account of these, the wrath of God is coming.

Paul says as the whole of Scripture says, there is a judgment.

Day in which the holy God of the universe will set this broken world, sinful world, to rights by bringing his holy and just judgment upon it.

And there's something just impulsive in the human heart that wants that.

It's natural that when we see evil in the world, we don't like it, and we want someone to judge it and get rid of it.

I think that's a reflection of the reality that Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 10 says, God has placed eternity in the heart of man.

Ecclesiastes 3:10

We know this world is not the way it should be, and we know that there should be a judgment that would expunge this world of evil and bring in a perfect and holy world.

That's a reflection of a reality that is coming.

God indeed is going to come to this world, he's going to judge it, vanquish all evil, and bring in a kingdom of everlasting righteousness.

But when he comes to bring that judgment, he will not judge according to your subjective tastes or your nation or your tradition.

He will judge according to his perfect standard of absolute righteousness, which means he will not just judge evil outside of you you don't like, he will judge evil inside of you that you do like.

So the Bible calls us to repent of our evil.

The Bible is absolutely clear that those who are in Christ are hidden from the wrath to come, rescued, delivered, safe from the wrath to come, because Christ endured our wrath for us.

So if you are in Christ, it is resoundingly clear that you have passed from death into life and you are hidden in Christ.

He will save you in the day of judgment.

But the Bible is at the same time clear in this warning that if you profess that you have died and raised with Christ, but you continue to live a life of patterned, unrepentant sin, beware, because the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Just a couple verses here, a parallel passage in Ephesians says this for you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.

Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

Or Paul ushers the same warning in 1 Corinthians and chapter 6.

Do you not know?

The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

If you live a lifestyle of unrepentant sin, if your life is not characterized by seeking the heavenly and killing the earthly, you can have an expectation that there is judgment coming.

But, Paul says, if you have died with Christ and raised with him, that's not you any longer.

He says the same thing in 1 Corinthians chapter 6.

1 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

Such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

That was your reality, but you have a new reality, he says in verse 7 of Colossians 3, in these two you once walked when you were living in them, but now.

So a Christian can confess, yes, I do indeed deserve the right judgment of God.

But Christ has purchased me and redeemed me from the wrath I deserve, and has hidden me in himself, and now his spirit is empowering me to put to death what is earthly, to seek what is heavenly, and I know that I will pass through the judgment into life.

You see that the note that Paul hits in verse 7 is equal parts deadly serious, you must kill what is earthly in you, and equal part hopeful.

In a new identity that God offers to you, there is full forgiveness, there is assurance of your salvation, there is equipping by the very Spirit of God to empower you to kill your sin.

There is real change empowered by God for those who are in Christ.

So look at verse 8.

But now, Paul says in verse 8, you must put them all away anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.

So as verse 5, he worked from the outward acts to the inward desires.

In verse 8, he works from the inward desires to the outward acts.

Anger and wrath are describing that inward anger that you have towards one another.

And Paul says, even at the level of your anger, your anger is unrighteous, and those are the things that merit the wrath of God.

Jesus says in Matthew 5, 22, if you are angry in your heart towards your brother, then you're deserving of the fires of hell.

So Paul says, this is where the battle to kill what is earthly in you begins.

This is where the battle to put off the old begins, is in the heart.

What's driving anger that we have in our heart?

What's driving anger is idolatry.

I'm at the center, I want my will.

I always do what is pleasing to me.

And if someone comes into your life and contradicts what is pleasing to you, the natural response is to be angry with them.

So the way that you put it off is by replacing, I always do what is pleasing to me with I always do what is pleasing to the Father.

And is it pleasing to the Father to be angry with your brother?

No.

It violates the great commandment of love.

It's pleasing to the Father to leave anger to the wrath of God and to extend love and mercy to your neighbor.

Now, if what is angry, what if what is in your heart is anger, then inevitably, if you get pushed, what's going to come out is anger.

Just as if I knock over a cup of water, what comes out?

Water.

So Paul says, if what is in your heart is anger and wrath, what will come out is malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth, which is just comprehensively describing all kind of denigrating and defaming talk.

That is normal and characteristic of our society, but Paul says it is categorically condemned by God.

Speaking of speech that is categorically condemned by God, look at what he says in verse 9.

Do not lie to one another.

Titus chapter 1, verse 2 says that God cannot lie.

Titus 1:2

So of course, lying is categorically condemned by God.

It violates his very character.

Lies come out of a heart of idolatry.

When what matters to you is pleasing you, then you will do anything that is necessary, including twist the truth, in order to please your own will.

But if what matters to you is doing the will of the Father, then you will surrender your life over to the consequences in order to do what is pleasing to him, namely telling the truth.

Now Paul grounds all of these actions in this great reality that he spells out for us in verse 8.

Look in the middle of verse 8.

Why do you change all of these attitudes for new attitudes?

Verse 8, or verse 9 rather, excuse me, because you have put off the old self with its practices.

You have put off the old self, which is the language that he already used in chapter 2, verse 11.

So track back up in your Bibles.

Look at chapter 2, verse 11.

There Paul says, In Christ, you also were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by, this is the same word, putting off the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

What Paul is doing is grounding your behavior in a spiritual reality.

If you're in Christ, that means that you put off the body of flesh.

This perishable and mortal flesh that is characterized by sinful desires died with Christ on the cross.

So as Christ put off his mortal and perishable flesh and was resurrected to immortal and imperishable, everlasting, sinless human life, because you are united to him, you died on the cross and you raised from the tomb, and you too will live everlastingly in imperishable, immortal, sinless human perfection in the kingdom of God forever.

That's the real you.

Verse 10, he says, You put on the new self, being renewed in knowledge after the image of the Creator.

That's the real you, so live like it.

What defines you isn't your desires, what defines you isn't your goals.

What defines you is your identity in Christ.

Your old man is dead, your new man is resurrected, and he is coming.

So live out the values of that coming man today.

What Paul is saying is your entire life is a little bit like a layover at an airport.

Recently, my family had the privilege to go visit, my wife's family in Guatemala, and we had a layover.

I think every flight to Guatemala from this part of the world has a layover in El Salvador.

And we were there for a little while, and you could imagine in this little layover, if I looked around and I said, you know, I like it here.

I could get comfortable here.

Looked in the gift shops, saw the flags, saw all of the garb and the food, and said, you know, I got a credit card.

I know what to do here.

And I pulled up my credit card and I just started blowing through our spending, buying up all of the souvenirs in the shop and getting comfortable.

My wife would look at me and she wouldn't just be shocked, she'd probably be deeply offended.

This isn't your home.

This isn't where we're going.

Your family isn't here.

This isn't your destination.

What are you doing?

Now, there is a difference.

I don't know if you know this or not, but El Salvador and Guatemala are not the same.

They're very similar in many ways, but they are definitely not the same.

And if I began to make my home there in the middle of the airport, it would be absurd and probably even offensive that I don't want to go see my wife's family.

Now, the the difference between Salvador and Guatemala is significant.

Now, if that's true in this little silly layover at an airport analogy, how much more true of it how much more true is the difference between your earthly life and your heavenly destination?

That's where you're going.

Everything that you're doing here, everything that's going on in your life, all of your ambitions and all of your trials, all of them, they're fleeting and momentary.

And what is real about you, what is true about you, is what will carry over into the new heavens and the new earth the resurrected you, the sinless you, the righteous you, the united to Christ you, the you that always does the will of the Father.

That's the defining reality of you.

Paul is saying the only thing that matters in your life is putting off the old, putting on the new, and living out who you are in Christ.

Now there's one last thing he says here in verse 11.

Here there is not Jew and Greek, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, sit the enslaved free, but Christ is all and in all.

What is the word here supposed to refer to?

Where's the here?

The here is the body of Christ.

You have an identity in Christ.

You live out your life as identified with Christ, but you do it in the community of all those who are in the body of Christ.

And in the body of Christ, you have a community of people who are collectively putting off the old, putting to death the earthly, and seeking the heavenly.

And the way that you regard one another is not according to your old value registers.

There used to be a time in your life in which you would begrudge people who are either lower or higher than you on the socioeconomic status, or are different from you in all of these various ways.

You used to look at people and you would see that serving you or serving me is kind of a zero-sum game because your interests and my interests aren't the same.

But now that you are united to Christ and you're in one body with all those who are united to Christ, the difference between serving you and serving me vanishes.

Because if I'm serving you, I am serving me because we're in one body.

So what benefits you benefits me because your identity is in Christ and my identity is in Christ.

And what Paul is saying is the sovereign Lord of the universe, who is over all and in all, is now in you and in everyone else who is in his body.

So the way that you seek the heavenly and kill the earthly and put off the old is not a solo endeavor.

It is an endeavor in which we are struggling to live out our identity in Christ together.

Where else would you want to live your life?

What else would you live your life for?

There is a reality in this world that is passing away.

But there is a reality in this world that is, Paul says, an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.

That's your identity in Christ.

And every time you put off what is old and kill what is earthly and seek what is heavenly, you are enacting in your present life eternal realities.

You're living out your identity in Christ.

Father in heaven, we do worship you and praise you that we know that we have identity because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and this is the way you regard us.

So we ask that you would help us to think of you and to think of ourselves in ways that are consonant with reality.

We ask that you would help us not to think of ourselves through our achievements.

We ask that you would help us to regard ourselves as in Christ.

Lord, we ask that you would help us to put to death what is earthly in us.

By your spirit empower us to be ruthless in our evil desires and to seek with abandon that which will last forever.

His name, amen.

And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.