A. The basic principle 3:1-4To encourage his readers to turn away from their false teachers, Paul reminded them of their union with Christ. He also urged them to continue living in keeping with their position in Christ. read more
IV. EXHORTATIONS TO PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN LIVING 3:1-4:6Paul moved from doctrine to practice, from the truth to its application in daily living. He began this next major section of the epistle by setting forth a basic principle. Then he explained the proper method of living. This led him to discuss the Christian’s fundamental relationships. He concluded this section by summarizing the essential practice. read more
Our life is hidden away with Christ. This statement that the believer died with Christ in the past (aorist tense in Greek) and continues to live with Christ in the present (perfect tense) suggests three thoughts. Our life draws nourishment from secret springs (cf. John 14:19; Philippians 3:20). Our life is as safe as a deposit locked in a bank vault. Our life is one with Christ who is in the bosom of the Father. [Note: Johnson, 479:212-13.] "The aorist is simply a powerful metaphor for the fact... read more
The Christian’s Risen Life and the Duties it entails1-4. Resurrection with Christ and the heavenly life.Paraphrase] ’(1) Seeing then that at your conversion you shared not Christ’s death only, but His resurrection, go on to participate in His heavenly life, in that heaven where He is, and where He sits at God’s right hand. (2) Let your whole thought be set on heavenly, not on earthly things. (3) For you died with Christ, and your life in union with Him is a hidden life in God. (4) It is not... read more
III.(1-4) As the partaking of the death of Christ taught the negative lesson of death to the Law, so the partaking of His resurrection teaches the positive lesson of the spiritual life. We observe that this celebrated passage occupies a place at the close of the doctrinal portion of the Epistle, exactly corresponding to the even greater passage on the unity of the Church in God in the Epistle to the Ephesians (Ephesians 4:1-16). It is unlike that passage, because, summing up the main teaching... read more
(3) Ye are dead.—Properly, ye died. See Colossians 2:20, and Note there. The phrase here is to be taken in its whole sense, both of “death to sin” and “death to the visible world.”Your life is hid with Christ in God . . . Christ who is our life.—In these two phrases, again, we pass from a lower to a higher expression of the same truth. (1) First, “our life is hid with Christ in God.” The spiritual life in man is a “hidden life,” having its source in God; the full conviction of it, as distinct... read more
On the Heights Colossians 3:1 What are the things that are above? Does the Apostle mean the things that belong to the future life? Well, they do belong to the future life, and it is well for us to think of that life, and to think that we shall live in it, and that these things are the things that are current coin there. But he means the present life, for he exhorts us to seek these things, and to have them now, the things that abide, of which death cannot rob us, the things which belong to... read more
Chapter 3 THE PRESENT CHRISTIAN LIFE A RISEN LIFE Colossians 3:1-4 (R.V.)We have now done with controversy. We hear no more about heretical teachers. The Apostle has cut his way through the tangled thickets of error, and has said his say as to the positive truths with which he would hew them down. For the remainder of the letter, we have principally plain practical exhortations, and a number of interesting personal details.The paragraph which we have now to consider is the transition from the... read more
III. THE PRACTICAL RESULTS: LIVING AS RISEN WITH CHRIST (3-4) CHAPTER 3 1. The life hid with Christ in God (Colossians 3:1-4 ) 2. The contrast: The old man and the new man (Colossians 3:5-11 ) 3. Manifesting Christ (Colossians 3:12-17 ) 4. Relationships (Colossians 3:18-25 ; Colossians 4:1 ) Colossians 3:1-4 Risen with Christ; such is the believer’s position. “Ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.” These are the great truths of Christianity: The believer dead with Christ;... read more
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Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible - Colossians 3:3
3. The Greek aorist tense implies, "For ye have died once for all" (Colossians 2:12; Romans 6:4-7). It is not said, Ye must die practically to the world in order to become dead with Christ; but the latter is assumed as once for all having taken place in the regeneration; what believers are told is, Develop this spiritual life in practice. "No one longs for eternal, incorruptible, and immortal life, unless he be wearied of this temporal, corruptible, and mortal life" [AUGUSTINE]. and your life .... read more