“The chief business of the Christian is to maintain his relationship with Christ. When this is unsatisfactory, the other relationships of life cannot succeed.
What such a relationship will require of the young Colossians, as of ourselves, is set out in four urgent commands, to each of which is attached a logical basis to show why it is so necessary that these things be done. These ‘four imperatives of Christian spirituality’ may be set out as follows.
1. Seek the things above.
2. Set your mind on things above.
3. Put to death what is earthly in you.
4. Put away the life you once lived.
The close connection between Colossians 2:20, beginning ‘If with Christ you died’, and 3:1, beginning ‘If with Christ you were raised’, has led some students of this letter to ask whether the exhortatory section should not more properly begin at 2:20.
This is a fair question, for 2:20–23 certainly was a word of exhortation and appeal based on an exposure of the new teaching and the spurious type of spirituality it offered.
Paul has effectively shown that those precious preachers of ‘liberty’ neither enjoyed true spiritual freedom themselves nor could give it to others. His astonishment that the Colossians should think of submitting themselves to such bogus ‘authorities’ was well expressed by the anxious questions of 2:20.
We may be content, nonetheless, to leave the division as it is. The words of 2:20–23 are a fitting conclusion to the great ‘warning’ passage that began to emerge at the start of chapter 2, and was focused round the three specific warnings of 2:8; 2:16; and 2:18.
Paul had said that his ministry was one of both warning and teaching (1:28). If it was insufficient to teach without warning, neither was it adequate to warn of error without teaching the right and true way. To this Paul turns at 3:1.
It is wise, however, to recognize the extraordinarily close connection between this new section and what has gone before. The Colossians were not to lose their freedom by submitting to the new teachers. On the contrary they were to find and keep their freedom by submission to the rule of Christ.
The first imperative, ‘to seek Christ’, is grounded upon the fact that the Christians have been ‘raised with Christ’. This vividly describes what it means to be a true believer, ‘alive from the dead’. The miracle of conversion has freed the Colossians from the religious systems of their world (2:20).
The distinctive mark of the new faith is that, in the old accustomed sense of the word, it is not a religion at all. It is not a human system linked to earthly sanctuaries, regulations and rites. It has no essential centre of authority in this world, for its centre is the heavenly Christ.
Neither is it an exercise in interior spirituality, mysticism, or visionary enthusiasm. Set free from such subjectivism, the Christian is, simply, a man who has been granted a relationship with the exalted Christ at God’s right hand. This relationship he is vigorously to pursue and develop by seeking the things above.
It has been customary to speak of the concerned unbeliever as a ‘seeker’. But the normal biblical perspective is to see unbelievers, in relation to the things of God as characteristically seeking after either ‘wisdom’, or ‘signs’, as means of establishing their own righteousness before God.
These searches are not likely to succeed! In biblical teaching there is no human ‘search for God’; the story is, from the beginning, that of a divine search for those who hide from their Maker. When men and women begin their search for God and his forgiveness, it is evidence of a prior work of God. Having found that forgiveness, or been ‘found’ by the heavenly Father, the search for reconciliation is over.
But this, significantly in view of Paul’s over-all answer to the new teaching, is the beginning of a daily seeking after the things above. Thus the apostle guards his teaching against the charge of complacence. The Christian is one constantly looking upwards (spatial concepts are a sine qua non of apostolic Christianity) and drawing close to the throne of grace.
Underlying this description of Christ as seated at God’s right hand is Psalm 110:1, the messianic prophecy most often quoted in the New Testament. Christ is now victorious over all the powers and principalities that would keep us from God.
In union and fellowship with this Lord, the Christian is set free from the tyranny of the ‘elemental spirits’, and for the perennial enjoyment of God’s presence. Now, nothing can hold him to the unsatisfying shadows of ‘religion’.
It is this present access to God’s presence, in and through Christ, which is the open secret at the heart of this great verse. The believer is now acceptable to God and welcome in Christ’s name. Here he may take his stand, and here be perfectly ‘at home’.
Living in Colossae, the Christian also lives in Christ. Both are ‘home’ to him. Just as, whenever business trips might take the Colossian believer away from the Lycus valley, he would always be anxious to get back to his family, so he is always eager to approach his Lord in heaven and enjoy the blessings of his presence.
To seek the things above, then, takes us to the very summit of Christian experience in this life. It is daily to hold fast to Christ as the centre and source of all our joys. It is to enter his gates with praise and come into his courts with thanksgiving.”
-R.C. Lucas, Fullness & Freedom: The Message of Colossians & Philemon, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1980), 133–135.
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