Title: With Christ / Colossians 3:1-4
Title: With Christ
Text: Col 3:1-4
He said that if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things above. This verse means that if you become a person of Christ, you must live by seeing Christ. When a person believes in Jesus and is saved, it means that he has become the bride of Christ. Those words also mean that if you become the bride of Christ, you must live your life looking only toward Christ from now on.
Life is a search for something. This search has advanced human history. Humans have the ability to find invisible radio waves, find invisible microorganisms, find things that are unknown because they are far away, and find specific substances in things. Life looked up to the sky and searched for it, searched for what was under the sea, and searched for what was under the earth. The question of what life seeks becomes the direction of life and the purpose of life.
But there are things that people are looking for in essence. It is a possibility for the body. It is the expectation of what the body can do. People want to see the potential of the body. Sports, if you know it, drive people crazy because it shows the potential of the body. If you know your academic achievements, you will be respected by people because it shows your abilities. The same goes for skills and talents. People have respect and trust in showing even a little more of their physical abilities.
But the book of Colossians teaches us not to look for hope in the world. More specifically, it is telling us not to plant hope in people's philosophies and morals. He told us to find the above. This means that we are dealing with the question of whether we put our hope in the world or the heavenly things. It says that there is no choice but one of two things in the end of where to put hope and what to look for. It is whether we seek the things above or the things on earth.
But no one can find anything above, there is a way to find anything. It is our ears that can find sound. It is our eyes that can find color. It is the scale that can find the weight. However, to seek things on earth is to follow our body, and the only way to find things above is to follow Jesus. To seek the above means to see only through Christ.
If we want to receive God's comfort and grace, we must hold onto our actions and morals and do not go to God, but hold on to Jesus. We must keep in mind that grace from above comes to us through Christ. Many people try to interpret God's grace based on their own works and their own righteousness. They try to receive God's grace through their own works. You have to overcome this. Only then will faith be realized.
Next, I was told to think about the above. The position of a person's existence is determined by what thoughts he has in his mind. From a spiritual point of view, you need to know that you exist where your thoughts are, not where your body is. There is a saying in our proverb that the heart is in a bean field. In fact, one of the things we are deceived is that we are deceived where our bodies are. The fact is that where our thoughts are, we are there.
I was told not to think of things on earth here. And for you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. It relates the characteristics of the dead to the concept of place. Even if the body of a dead person is present at the scene, the place where the body is is not where the person is because the soul has left. Therefore, to say that the saints are dead to the world and to be hid with Christ in God means to live with that thought in the Lord.
When the people of Israel came out of Egypt, problems in their lives in the wilderness started because they could not always forget about Egypt. Their body came from Egypt, but when they put their thoughts in Egypt, they still lived a life belonging to Egypt. Their problems are always seen when thoughts of Egypt fill their minds.
We have a lot to worry about. There are many complex problems. Because, you know, we put our thoughts there. Among the songs, there is a song called Gapdol and Gapsun. It's about loving each other, but pretending not to be like that. However, it is reported that Gapdol cried at the moon after he got married. If you are married, there is no problem if you forget about it, so it is painful and difficult because you think about it.
Those who believe in Jesus Christ are completely dead before the demands of their flesh. He is dead to the requirements of the law. Only then can we look to the Lord who saved us. Because we have placed our thoughts on the flesh, we are always plagued by greed, pride and stubbornness. The mystery of faith always has an answer in the human mind. You have to think that where the heart is, the person is there.
The people of Jesus are people who think about the things of the kingdom of heaven. Even though the body is on earth, the Christian lives with the mystical heaven in his heart. And we live today, looking forward to the very glorious day that will be revealed with Christ. This is the man of Christ. Whether it is a booth or a palace, the place where the Lord is served will become the kingdom of heaven.
Everyone gets hurt not because of external circumstances, but when they hurt what they hold in their heart. The Apostle Paul was a man who had more experience of suffering under difficult circumstances than anyone else. Nevertheless, Paul was not discouraged because his heart was not set in the world. What he had in his heart was the kingdom of God. No matter how difficult the situation was, the heaven that was in the heart could not be taken away.
The book of Colossians tells us to die to ourselves. To die for himself means that man never has the morals and knowledge to save himself. There are heresies who teach these things in the Colossian church. There was Judaism. The idea of being circumcised was trying to take root in the church in Colossae. Early Gnosticism tried to replace the Holy Spirit movement. Most of all, ascetics wanted to take the place of the cross. Paul referred to this as deception.
These things look great on their own. But we have to be careful because it becomes a movement that replaces Christ, replaces faith, and replaces the Holy Spirit. We must be morally good people. However, we must make sure that it does not become a substitute for God and a substitute for the cross. We must know that the salvation of the saints is entirely by God's grace, not by our own works. A saint is one who is dead to the world and one who has died in himself.