What Does Jesus' Resurrection Mean for Us? (Colossians 3:1-4)

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This section is taken from the Book of Colossians, chapter 3, verses 1 to 4.

Colossians 3:1–4

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 will also appear with him in glory.

The word of the Lord.

This is the day we celebrate the defeat of sin and death, the hope of everlasting life.

Grant that by your word and Holy Spirit we may rejoice and be glad in it.

It's in your precious name we pray.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Christ is risen.

If you've ever wondered what the good news is that Christians keep talking about, that's it.

Christ is risen.

Christians don't proclaim this like it's a nice story.

Christians don't proclaim this like it's a useful metaphor.

Christians don't proclaim this like it's just sort of jumbled in together with some nice moral axioms.

Christians proclaim it like news.

This happened.

This happened in history.

This happened bodily.

And not only did it happen in history, this is the very center, the very bullseye of our faith.

Did you notice in our gospel reading?

It's a proclamation of what has happened that captures the imagination of the women's women who are visiting the tomb.

Why do you seek the living among the dead?

Jesus is not here, but he is risen.

It's this proclamation that they bring with them.

This has happened.

And friends, I'm under no illusion that this isn't a wild claim to make.

That someone who is dead can be alive again.

Sometimes, I've said it before, I'll say it again.

Christians, uh, Christianity has this reputation.

It's not deserved, but it has a reputation of being a check your brain at the door kind of faith.

Don't think too hard about that.

Unless, you know, you really think about it and realize, wow, dead people don't really tend to come back to life, do they?

They know that's a wild claim.

And did you notice in our gospel reading as it concludes, they the uh disciples, the folks who have spent years traveling and ministering with Jesus, they hear the news that he's risen, and what do they think?

They believe it's an idle tale.

These words seem to them an idle tale, verse 11, and they did not believe them.

They know this is a wild claim.

They know just as well as us that this doesn't tend to happen.

But it's the historicity of Christ's resurrection that gets proclaimed.

It's the risen Lord Jesus, risen in a body, a glorious body, who stands before them and changes everything.

This is the very center of our faith.

Fellow named Paul, a number of years later, spends half of his life, half of his career being one of the fiercest persecutors of the church.

He thinks Christians are bad news, and bad news for the for the community.

And anyway, so he spends half of his career persecuting Christians, putting Christians to death for their proclamation, and yet he has a powerful encounter with the risen Lord Jesus that changes everything, changes his life.

And suddenly the fiercest persecutor of the church goes to the fiercest, becomes the fiercest proclaimer of the gospel, the good news that Christ is risen.

And so Paul, the once persecutor, can write this if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless, it's vain, it's pointless.

Friends, we should be under no illusion that if the resurrection isn't historical happening, there's no reason to be here this morning.

This can be a nice story, but nice stories don't.

Nice stories can only take us so far.

But in fact, Paul writes, Christ has been raised from the dead.

So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, through our first parents, through Adam, now the resurrection of the dead has begun through another man, Christ Jesus.

Do you see the hope there?

The hope isn't just that Jesus rose from the dead, and that's nice for him.

The hope is that insofar as we are united with Christ through faith, insofar as we trust in him, insofar as we are joined together with him, we will share in a resurrection like his.

That is the hope of the Christian faith.

And without that hope, we have not encountered genuine Christianity.

I'm under no illusions that that's a very wild claim to make.

And if you're still struggling with that, let me just say I'm so glad you're here.

There's nowhere else I'd rather you be on Easter Sunday morning than struggling to believe with the rest of us.

Lord, we believe, help our unbelief.

That's what we pray.

And if you're struggling with this, but you're curious and you're interested to investigate more, let me just invite you to come to our learner's exchange on April 14 at 9 a.m.

We're gonna meet downstairs.

We're gonna explore the question together: did Jesus really rise from the dead?

And we're gonna treat it like the question that it is.

We genuinely want to know if that could happen in history.

So if you're even a little bit curious, I mean, maybe you're thinking, well, this guy's a pastor, so it's his job to take it a little too seriously.

Join us.

Ask hard questions.

Let's investigate together.

Could this really happen in history?

Because that is the proclamation of the church from one generation to the next.

Hallelujah, Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen indeed.

Hallelujah.

But friends, it's not the question of if Christ rose from the dead that I want to raise this morning.

We're going to explore that together in a two week's time.

It's going to take us about two weeks to recover from our Easter nap here, Matt and I.

Today I want to explore the question: what difference does Jesus' resurrection make for us?

Let's say we're struggling to believe, let's say this wild claim just seems too hard to calculate.

Well, let's just suppose.

Let's just let's just explore a possibility together.

If it were true that Jesus actually rose from the dead bodily in history, what difference could that make?

What could that change?

What meaning could it infuse into our life?

And this same Paul, who I shared from previously, writes this letter, our New Testament reading this morning, a letter to the church in Colossae.

He writes a pastoral letter addressing some issues that are in the congregation, but directing their attention to the Lord Jesus, who's Lord over all creation, through whom all things came into being, who holds all things together and secures our resurrection, and through his resurrection enables us to have the hope of everlasting life in him.

What we've read, these four verses, are four crucial verses in his letter.

It's the hinge of the whole letter.

It transitions from considering Christ in the abstract to considering the difference that Jesus, the risen Lord Jesus, makes in our life.

And that's what I want us to zoom in on today.

What difference does Jesus' resurrection make for us?

What does Jesus' resurrection mean for us?

And we're gonna let Paul be our tour guide this morning.

Three things.

Here's the difference that Jesus' resurrection makes for us.

We have been raised with Christ.

Number one.

Number two, we are hidden in Christ.

Number three, we will be glorified in Christ.

Raised hidden, glorified.

You have no idea how long I labored over trying to get three R words or something out of that.

But alas, I'm gonna stick with Paul's own language because I think you can't top that.

Raised, hidden, glorified.

This is the meaning of Christ's resurrection for us.

And this is the heart of the Christian proclamation of the Easter message.

So let's dive in together and see what difference even this possibility can make for us.

Let's open up our order of service.

Let's open up our Bible to Colossians 3, verses 1 to 4 together.

Colossians 3:1–4

What does Jesus' resurrection mean for us?

Verse 1, we have been raised with Christ.

Did you catch that?

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

The remarkable thing is Paul can talk about being raised with Christ in the past tense.

Did you catch that?

He's so confident in the reality of the resurrection that he talks about its application like it's already happened.

Now we know that our bodies are subject to decay and deterioration.

We know that.

And we know that we haven't been raised fully like Christ has been raised to immortality in an imperishable, glorified body.

We still wait for our physical resurrection.

And yet Paul can talk about the reality, the hope, the promise with such certainty that he can talk about it in the past tense.

In fact, we have been raised to new life spiritually.

The Bible talks about the human problem not as a theory, but diagnoses it as a condition of spiritual death.

Apart from God, who is the source of our life, we don't walk in life, we walk in death, and yet Christ has entered into humanity to be the life and light that we need.

And through Christ we can be raised to new life.

So what has happened spiritually for the Christian will one day happen bodily.

But Paul is so confident in this reality, he can talk about it in the past tense.

We are raised to share in Christ's new life won for us.

This is what Paul writes earlier in his letter to Colossians.

He says, You who are dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our sins, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

This he set aside.

I read a really impacting, impactful uh article just uh earlier this week.

It was called uh the title was this.

So this is in the newspaper.

Well, on the news.

Who reads the newspaper anymore?

Uh anyway, the title is this I Wanna Live So Badly.

How a young man named Zack survived for years without a bite to eat.

This fellow named Zach, who lives in the Toronto area, had a rare genetic disorder that meant his digestive system literally shut down.

And it shut down for over a decade, and he was kept alive through medical intervention, but recently received a remarkable five-organ transplant.

Can you imagine that?

Five vital organs put into Zach to give him a new lease in life.

And I watched a very moving video, you can find it online, of him eating his first meal after this surgery, going out to get noodles and dumplings with his mom.

Can you imagine that?

Imagine what it is to walk around with five organs that give you vitality in life that don't belong to you, but they supply you with the life you need.

Christians should have some idea of what this means spiritually.

The life we live is not a life that we've made for ourselves, it's a life that we have been given in Christ.

Christ is our life, Paul writes.

His life flows into us through his Holy Spirit, and we've been given a new lease on life precisely because Christ has been risen and we are raised with him.

And one day our bodies will catch up to what has happened to our souls.

This is the transplanted life of Christ in us.

We are raised with Christ.

So what do we do with that?

Paul says, seek the things that are above.

If you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above.

What Paul is calling our attention to is to pursue those things that belong to Christ's kingdom.

Christ is the king.

So pursue the kingdom.

Pursue what's of eternal worth and value.

Pursuing things above where Christ is means it means our behavior is going to look markedly different, perhaps, than it might otherwise.

It's going to look markedly different, perhaps, from the world around us.

Paul goes on to elaborate in verse 5.

Living a life set above means putting to death what is earthly in you.

He writes, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness.

All of this he writes is idolatry.

It's a false God that we choose to worship, and it disorders and disrupts our life from the inside out because we're created in God's image, and we are meant to participate in the life and love of God.

Any substitute for that, and we discover idolatry.

That disrupts our life.

So we order our life rightly by setting our minds on things above.

That's what Paul calls us to.

But you'll notice this that the Christian life is not, seek the things that are above, and then Christ will raise you to new life.

Did you notice that?

If then you have been raised, then seek the things that are above.

The point that Paul wants to make is that the Christian life is a gift.

It is a free gift of new life, a free gift of grace that we do not have to earn, but we are raised up to new life just as Christ is raised up to new life.

And being raised up, what else can we do but pursue those things that belong to our King?

That's the point Paul is making.

That's the hinge of all Christian morality.

If your experience of Christianity has been something like moralism, something like if I do all the right things that make God happy, then I can expect a good outcome.

You haven't encountered genuine Christianity.

Genuine Christianity understands that our life is a free gift of God that we receive by faith.

And having received the gift by faith, therefore we live out the new life in Christ.

Do you see that?

That's so crucial, so crucial for us to catch this morning.

We have been raised with Christ.

Christianity is not advice, it is good news, and it's good news of new life.

We have been raised with Christ, number one.

Number two, we are hidden with Christ.

Notice past tense, we have been raised.

Presently we are hidden with Christ.

Set your mind, verse two, on things that are above, Paul reiterates, not on things that are on earth.

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Don't set your mind on things on earth, Paul says.

Does that mean things on earth are bad?

Earthly things are icky, so just, you know, do away with them.

That is not Paul's point here.

Paul's point is that there are things on earth that compete with the kingdom.

Verse 5 elaborates on some of that.

If there are those things, those idols that compete with the kingdom, then put those away, because that's not where life is to be found.

Seek the things that are above, because that's where life is coming from.

For you have died, Paul writes, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

The old order is passed away.

Behold, the new has come.

Your life is hidden with Christ in God.

If you've been to Sunday school, maybe you've got a picture of our first parents hiding in the garden.

And maybe we read that and we wonder, is that the kind of hiding that Paul is talking about?

You know what I mean.

Our first parents disobey God's commandment, and then for shame and guilt they go scurrying away.

And it takes God's pursuit of them.

Where are you?

To call them back to himself.

Our God is a God who pursues, by the way.

Our God is a God who pursues us by grace.

And there's nowhere, no we cannot run, outrun his grace.

We cannot run too far to be found by him.

Is that the kind of hiding Paul's talking about?

Shame and guilt?

I don't think so.

Paul's drawing on imagery we find in uh elsewhere in the Bible, in the Psalms and in the prophet Isaiah.

Listen to this.

The psalmist writes, For the Lord will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble.

He will conceal me under the cover of his tent, and he will lift me high upon a rock.

And the prophet Isaiah echoes this, in the shadow of the Lord's hand, he hid me.

What's Paul's point here?

Paul's point is that we are hidden in God with Christ, and that is security.

There is no more secure place we could be in all the universe than to be tucked away, hidden away, bundled up with Jesus.

One of my favorite uh action movie cliches, uh, or tropes, or, you know, those things that just repeat from movie to movie to movie, right?

A lot get very old very quickly, but this one is never aged on me.

I wonder if it's never aged on you as well.

It goes something like this.

I've seen it in Spider-Man, I've seen it in Transformers, I've seen it in all these action movies.

It goes something like this.

The hero who's been fighting the villain with all he's got has just been knocked down for the count.

He does not look like he's getting up.

And perhaps the villain is just starting to gloat over the victory that they've won.

And the villain is, or the hero is hopeless, apart from some intervention, but some someone, someone with the power that the hero does not have in that moment, steps into the gap, and what do they say?

If you want him, you're gonna have to go through me.

I don't know why.

That's never gotten old for me.

That is always satisfying, isn't it?

Why is it so satisfying?

Because we've been cheering for the hero the whole movie, haven't we?

We've been identifying with the hero if it's a good movie?

You know?

Why is it that in that moment we celebrate the fact that the hero is powerless and helpless to save himself, and yet it's someone else who stepped into the gap?

Is it because we know that apart from a power greater than ourselves intervening in our own lives, we're vanquished.

We're done.

There are powers in this world greater than us, aren't there?

If nothing else, statistics on death are pretty convincing.

It's about a hundred percent success rate.

And we know that one day, no matter how healthy we are, no matter how well we take care of ourselves, we'll have to face that final breath, won't we?

We know that we'll be down for the count.

Except that a hero stands in the gap and says to the power of sin and death and hell, if you want Tony, if you want Adrian, if you want Kaylee, you're gonna have to get through me.

That's our Lord Jesus.

That's what it means to be hidden with our Lord Jesus.

If you want them, you're gonna have to get through me.

And you better believe there is no getting through the Lord Jesus.

Why?

Because he's risen.

He's vanquished the powers of hell and sin and death in his resurrection body.

There is no safer, more secure place we could be in all the universe, but with our risen Lord Jesus.

And that, friends, is the reality of the Christian life.

You are hidden with Christ in God.

If your trust is in Jesus this morning, this is not something you have to try real hard to do.

It is something that has already been done for you.

And I feel so burdened for so many folks who check out the Christianity and want to learn, but feel like, ah, it's just another scheme of doing your best and God does the rest, or another sense of, ah, I gotta live to moral principles that I just know I can't live up to.

You've yet to encounter genuine Christianity.

Genuine Christianity is being hidden with Christ and God.

It is knowing the security and the assurance of the Lord who stands in the gap and says, if you want them, you're gonna have to get through me.

That is the Christian message.

That is the hope of our Lord Jesus, and that is the hope that we can take to our dying breath and beyond.

We are hidden.

With Christ in God.

We have been raised, we are hidden, and we will be glorified with Christ.

Verse four.

I get going, I'm sorry.

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

When Christ, who is your life, appears, remember our life is a transplanted life.

It is a life from Christ through the Holy Spirit flowing into us.

It's a gift we've received.

But Paul reminds us that the resurrection of Jesus, the coming of the Holy Spirit, is not the end of the story.

The end of the story is a glorious end.

It's an end where our risen Lord Jesus returns from heaven to reign on earth, to bring his kingdom and his glory with him, that things on earth and all the violence and deterioration and destruction which we know so well will be brought completely under his Lordship, and everything wrong will be made right.

He will return and see it happen.

Because there is no power greater than him to overthrow him.

When Christ, who is your life, appears, the Lord is coming.

Are we ready to receive him?

If your life is in Christ, if you are hidden with Christ, then Paul says, you will appear with him in glory.

The thing that makes Christ most radiant, most splendid, most beautiful, is exactly the thing that Christ wants to share with us.

I grew up in a church where we talked a lot about God's glory, and we talked a lot about how the chief purpose of being human is to glorify God, and I thought, boy, God must be a big narcissist.

Because all he wants us to do is glorify him.

And that seems like a narcissistic thing to do.

But here's what I failed to understand.

The end of the story is not God looking in the mirror going, look how glorious I look.

It's God looking at you and looking at me and saying, Look how glorious we look.

Christ wants to share his glory with us.

The glory he has won through his cross, his resurrection is the exact glory he wants to share with us.

His victory becomes our victory by grace.

I'm going to use a football illustration, and I don't want to give you the impression that I'm a football fan.

I don't mind football, but if you try and talk football with me downstairs, I will give you a blank stare.

So just want to put that out there.

But I've been thinking about uh this story.

Uh a fellow named Carson Wentz.

Does anyone know that name?

He was a uh quarterback, I gather, for the Philadelphia Eagles.

And in the 2017-2018 season, uh he was uh set, I mean, he was the star quarterback, and there was high hopes for whether he was going to take the Eagles for that season.

But in December, he tore his ACL and was out for the rest of the season.

And so Nick Foles took over as quarterback for the Eagles, and they went on to win the Super Bowl.

And having won the Super Bowl, Carson Wentz with a torn ACL, still recovering, is on the sidelines.

And yet, the same Super Bowl rings that the winning team earned, let's say, on the field is the same Super Bowl ring that Carson Wentz left or went home with that day.

See, Carson Wentz was he was down for the count.

There was nothing he could do or contribute to the field in front of him, and yet, for the fact that he was wearing the same jersey, that he was on the team, he shared in the team's glory and victory.

Do you see that?

The fact that Jesus has won the victory and glory through his cross and resurrection, the fact that we are hidden with him, means we share in his glory.

That is what he is pleased to do for you and for me.

So Christianity can be summed up like this.

This is one of my favorite thinkers in the church named Athanasius, who lived over 1,500 years ago.

He sums up Christianity like this.

He says, The Son of God became human so that we humans might be united perfectly with God.

Christianity is becoming by grace what God is by nature.

It's a sharing, it's a union, it's an invitation to come further up and further in, and that is genuine Christianity.

If we are not sharing with God by grace, then we have yet to encounter genuine resurrection Christianity.

And this being the case is an invitation to participate in the life of glory through the church.

Here's an interesting note in Greek, where Paul's writing in Greek and it's now been translated into English, there is a second person plural, and we don't really have a second person plural in English.

If you're from Texas, we lived in Texas for a little while.

You know there's the word y'all, which comes pretty close.

Maybe there's use.

I hear Canadians say that sometime.

When Paul says, you also will appear with him in glory, he's using the second person plural.

Y'all will also appear with him in glory.

Use will appear with him in glory.

Who's he talking to?

He's talking to the church.

He's talking to the church hidden together corporately in Christ.

Friends, when we come to church, it's not just a nice idea to get together and have some baked goods with some like-minded people.

That's nice.

We're actually coming to participate in the life of glory.

And glory is a strange thing sometimes because church seems so simple, and in some ways it is, isn't it?

We come and we open up scriptures together.

We come to the Lord's table together.

These are very ordinary things, and yet our God is pleased to reveal his glory through ordinary means.

From the manger at Christmas to the cross at Easter, God is revealing his glory through the most ordinary things, and we have only to go where God promises to meet us to encounter his glory.

So when we gather as the church, we're gathering as folks being shaped by his glory and into his glory, so that we can enjoy his glory for all eternity.

That's why we gather.

And that's why we gather every Sunday to be shaped into glory by word, by table, by grace.

So, friends, what does Jesus' resurrection mean for you?

That's a question really only you can answer, right?

What does it mean for you?

If you are just checking out Jesus today, if you're just figuring out what this Christianity thing is all about, let me encourage you.

Let me encourage you to consider this.

Let me challenge you maybe.

Are you sure you know genuine Christianity?

Or do you just know a Christian reputation?

Do you know the message of Jesus?

Do you know Jesus Himself?

Is Christianity wrapped up in moralism?

Is it useful?

Is it a story?

Or is it a proclamation of good news in history?

Be curious.

Investigate.

Come to the Learner's Exchange on April 14.

Bring your questions with you.

If you're a growing disciple in Christ, we've been talking a lot about what it means to be a go and tell people, haven't we?

But we cannot go and tell until we ourselves are grounded in this reality.

Until day for day we preach to ourselves this reality that we are raised, we are hidden, and we will be glorified in Christ.

That's your hope.

That's my hope.

This is what Jesus' resurrection means for us.

Alleluia.

Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen indeed.

Hallelujah.

Thank you for listening today.

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God bless you and keep you today and every day.