Seek Above and Think Above

Remember, last week we saw from the end of Colossians 2 that Paul urged us to live in the light of our current reality in Christ. We focused on the first half of the thought, that since we died with Christ, we died to the world’s way of trying to get to God. Legalism and human philosophy and teaching might look wise, but they do nothing to stop the indulgence of the flesh.

He has spent 2 chapters laying the theological framework for Christian life. But this week, Paul is really going to begin to focus on the “so then what” of Christian life and we’re going to get some direct commands rather than just inferred positives and spiritual realities.

As Paul begins chapter three, he lays the foundation for how to live a successful and fruitful life that is pleasing to the Lord. Follow along as I read Colossians 3:1-2, “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.”

These verses lay the foundation for successful Christian living by pointing out the consequences of new life with Christ. Because of that, we seek what is above and think about what is above.

And in the coming weeks, we will see how this teaching will serve as the foundation for the specific instructions that Paul will give on setting aside your old life (3:3-11), living according to Christian virtues (3:12-17), and having proper social relationships (3:18-4:1).

Before I dive into the text, I want us to look at it from 10,000 feet and see the big idea, and it is the same big idea that has permeated the book to this point. That is the idea of being “In Christ.”

As we move into the practical application part of the book this is so important because it can be so easy for people to read for example, “Set your mind on things that are above” and think now I have the equation for a rich spiritual life with God. I just have to think about good things and then good things will happen to me and I will magically end up in heaven. But none of this happens without chapters 1-2 where we are presented with our identity firmly rooted in Christ.

Raised with Christ

If we look at the beginning of Paul’s line of thinking, from last week he begins in verse 20 by saying “Since you have been raised with Christ” now, here in Colossians 3:1 he’s going to finish the thought by saying “since you have been raised with Christ.” He’s pulling back to that same phrase used in Colossians 2:12. “having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.” Notice the means of being raised with Christ, faith, that’s going to be important in just a minute.

But first, just like last week, some of your translations like the ESV might say, “if then” instead of “since.” There is no issue here. We use this phrasing in English, it is just a bit more wordy and outdated. However, it is closer literally to the Greek. The meaning, however, is the same. This is not a question. It is a fact. As a Christian, you have been raised with Christ.

Now, if we look for other uses of the phrase “raised with Christ,” we should immediately go to the sister section of this thought in Romans. You see Paul was really a one trick pony. All of his letters say the same things basically. He just repeats them in different ways for different contexts. So, it helps to see how he told the Romans this same idea. We see it in Romans 6:4-11:

“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

In other words, sin should not reign in your bodies because you died to sin and you have new life in Christ. Being raised with Christ is the spiritual reality behind the idea of new life or being born again. This is the promise in Ezekiel 36:26, “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”

As Paul put it in 2 Corinthians 2:17, “Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature.” If you are a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, then you are something other than what you used to be. Your spirit has been regenerated so that you are now alive to God and you walk in newness of life. Your conversion from spiritual death to spiritual life is no less radical than if you were attending a funeral of an old man and suddenly the lid to the coffin was pushed open and the same man jumped out of that coffin as a young man full of new life and vigor.

Because we are raised up with Christ to walk in newness of life, then there are subsequent changes to our purpose in life and the way we think.

Seek Above

Here in Colossians is the only place this phrase, “Seek the things that are above” is used. But we can still break it down into its parts.

Seek

First, what does he mean by seek? Well, this is a command, a present active imperative. It is a simple command, if I got a group of little children together, and told them that we were going to play hide and seek, they would not need much explanation. They might not hide very well because they don’t realize that just because they can’t see you doesn’t mean you can’t see them. But the seek part would come as second nature to them.

We instinctively seek. Humans are seekers and let me let you in on a little secret, everyone in this room and everyone you have ever met is always seeking one thing. Happiness.

We even put it in our Declaration of Independence as an inalienable right to be equated with life and liberty. Notice that they didn’t say life, liberty, and happiness. It is the pursuit of happiness.

Blaise Pascal said it this way, “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”

So, there is no question, we don’t need to define “seek”, it is the motive of every action of every man. To seek happiness. It is synonymous with desire. The question is not, are you going to seek happiness, the question is what is happiness and where will you direct your search?

At this point, there are some out there who would say that happiness is like the pot of gold at the end of the leprechaun’s rainbow. That you shouldn’t seek it because it is just an illusion, a mirage. A carrot that is dangled in front of us to keep us striving. Christians know this feeling. Solomon labored to discover in Ecclesiastes, that if you seek happiness in this life only that it is like chasing after the wind. It is vanity.

So, is there such a thing as happiness? I think so. Many translators take issue with the word happiness because the Old Norse word where we get the prefix hap means luck. That’s why we have other words like haphazard, hapless, happenstance, and mishap. So, even if we don’t find that particular word in the New Testament, I think that happiness, contentment, pleasure, satisfaction, cheerfulness, joy, gladness, delight, well-being, exuberance, exhilaration, ecstasy, jubilee, rapture, bliss, or whatever word you choose to get across that meaning is all over the Bible.

I think it might take a backhoe to dig out from under all the thoughts that this world has about what happiness is and how to get at it. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to do all of that today even though I would love to.

I would recommend to you Randy Alcorn’s wonderful book, Happiness. In it he notes more than 2,700 passages where happy and the myriad of terms related to it, and synonymous with it, are used. His conclusion is that God does not want us to deny pleasure as some sort of ascetic, and he doesn’t want us to give up on the pursuit and just sit on a log waiting for eternal happiness in heaven. Instead, God wants us to be happy in him and to seek ever deepening depths of happiness in him.

I will take you to Jesus’ happiness manifesto to show you this quickly. You might know this happiness manifesto by its more common but much more confusing name the Beatitudes. Matthew 5:3-10:

• Blessed (Happy) are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
• Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
• Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
• Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
• Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
• Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
• Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I think it is easy to see from this list that Jesus does not believe that happiness is tied to circumstances, and it is not an emotion. The idea instead is that of being a partaker of God or experiencing the fullness of God. God is the happiest person in the universe and our hearts long for happiness in him.

Above

So where is this blessedness that we should seek? In our passage for this morning, Paul would tell us to seek the things that are above, and he further defines that by saying, “where Christ is.” Then he explains what Christ is doing there, he’s “seated at the right hand of God.” If I walked up to your average Joe and asked hey Joe, what am I talking about if I said:

• Above
• Where Jesus is
• Sitting on a throne next to God

Heaven, right? But heaven feels so far away. How am I supposed to seek heaven? If you’re ever in a meeting and the speaker tells you to seek heaven and then passes out Kool-Aid, don’t drink it. You’re not in a church you are in a suicide cult. That’s not Christianity. But there is no reason to redefine heaven because I don't think that our final resting place is primarily what Paul is talking about.

Let’s go back to Jesus speaking in the Beatitudes to see what he’s really talking about and to figure out what the things that are above are. Do you notice anything special about the first and the last beatitude? The promise is the same right, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Did Jesus just run out of cool things to say or blessings to give out, so he had to start repeating? No. This is significant because it means that these blessings are blessings that belong to those who are in the kingdom of heaven, and by sandwiching six promises in between two assurances that such people have the kingdom of heaven, I think Jesus means to tell us that these six promises are blessings of the kingdom.

In other words, these six things are what you can count on when you are a part of God’s kingdom. This is what the kingdom brings: comfort, inheriting earth, righteousness, mercy, seeing God, and being called the sons and daughters of God. You don’t have to pick and choose among these promises. They all belong to the kingdom and those in it.

When Paul says to seek the things that are above, I think he could have been thinking about Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6:33 to “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”

So, if you’re thinking that above means heaven, you’re not wrong. But just know that the kingdom of heaven is something that starts here and now and starts small like a mustard seed and grows rapidly and expansively and will reach its final culmination in heaven.

What is the kingdom and what does it have to do with seeking happiness? Well, that idea of the kingdom looking like a mustard seed comes from Matthew 13 so let’s go there and see if we can’t find the connection.

Just a few verses after that illustration, Jesus says in Matthew 13:44, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

Imagine the picture, a man is walking through a field, just on a stroll and as he is walking along, he stubs his toe on something and he stoops down and brushes off a corner and sees that he has just stumbled onto something that is of inexpressible worth. So, he looks around and then covers it up quickly with a big smile on his face. Then he goes to the bank and gladly empties his savings account and holds a yard sale for all of his possessions. Then once he is done, he goes to the owner of the field and says “I want that field. Here, take everything that I have. I count it all rubbish when compared to the surpassing greatness of getting that field.”

Do you feel that way about the kingdom? Do you consider it a treasure of surpassing greatness that you are eager to get rid of everything else in order to get it? This is tough because we’re not used to kingdoms in America. It is a foreign idea to us, and we don’t particularly like it. If we dig deep down. I think that is part of the independence feeling that we encourage in America.

So, if we’re looking at the kingdom, I think we have to point out that it is primarily defined as the reign and rule of God. The kingdom has a people, and it exists in a realm, but primarily, the kingdom is the rule and reign of our God over all things. To seek the things that are above is synonymous with seeking the kingdom, and we seek the kingdom by welcoming the rule and reign of God over our lives with great joy.

Jesus spoke to this issue further in the Sermon on the Mount when He said in Matthew 6:19-21, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

In other words, the purpose of our existence is beyond what is offered in this world, which at best is only temporary. It is easy to get caught up in the pursuit of what the world defines as success – wealth, fame, power and pleasure – but all those things are fleeting.

God does not want us to be preoccupied with how to gain the stuff for daily life. He wants us to be preoccupied with Him, and so His promise is to provide the daily stuff of life if we will seek first His kingdom and righteousness. In other words, what we pursue in life should be done in relationship to His kingdom and walking in His righteousness. This means that things will look different for the Kingdom Christian.

Imagine if believers really placed the kingdom first. If Christian government officials made decisions based on what was best and right before God rather than what would keep them in power.

If our question when we moved was not about the home value or school grade but about the spiritual environment of where they will be moving and the effect it will have on them. As well as ministry opportunities within that neighborhood.

If employment was pursued based on how God could use us there as the hands and feet of the church instead of how much money can be made.

If friends were pursued not on their ability to help you climb the social ladder but how God can use you in their life.

Seeking the things above is to pursue the kingdom of God and His righteousness. It is to set the goal of your life to live for God’s glory instead of your own; to serve Him in building His kingdom instead of yourself in building your own. It is having your treasure in heaven instead of pursuing the things defined by this world as success.

Thinking Above

So much for things moving faster in chapter 3 right? that’s one verse down. In verse 2, Paul gives another command which is related to the first. “Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.”

The command in verse 1 was related to your will, your choices, your desires. Set your will to choose to search, investigate, strive, and pursue what is related to God’s kingdom and righteousness. But here in verse 2, the command is related to your rationality. You must turn your mind away from dwelling on the things of this world and have it dwell on the things of God.

I believe that this order is purposeful. So often we think about it in the opposite way; that what we think about determines what we desire. But Paul here is saying that it is precisely the opposite. Our thought life flows from our passions and desires. So, if you attempt to white knuckle Christianity like we’ve described in the last couple of weeks, it fails. It might be good for man-made religion, but it does nothing to curb the appetites of the flesh.

Paul says, you need new desires. You need kingdom desires. You need a new heart and a new passion for the things of God and his kingdom. That is not something that we do on our own, we trust in God’s promises to change our desires so the rest of our life can flow in accordance with those new desires.

As I said a couple of weeks ago, think about it as if you are an addict. You are addicted to sin because it brings you pleasure. It is all you have ever known. The only way to change the grip that an addiction has on you is to change your desires to greater desires. To trade simple desires for food or sex or money or drugs into the greater desire for health or relationships or contentment or life. The establishing of kingdom desires by your new king will lead to the thinking of kingdom things over worldly things, because those worldly things will no longer satisfy.

The false teachers in Colossae were promoting earthly solutions arising from false spirituality which fail to produce godliness. Paul also gave a strong warning against false teachers in Philippians 3. He called them enemies of the cross of Christ in verse 18, then in Philippians 3:19 he begins this way, “Their end is their destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” This is a sad state which leads to destruction. And Paul says, it’s not that way with you. What is the contrast that he uses?

Let’s read verse 19 again then roll into verse 20, “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”

Rolled into that phrase, “Our citizenship is in heaven.” is the assumption that we will be different. Why? Because citizens of the kingdom have different desires. Our end is glorification, Our God is our Savior Jesus Christ, our glory is in our reflection of his glory, with our minds set not on things of earth but on things of the kingdom.

This is tricky, because we can so easily get things backwards. We get this wrong all the time especially in Evangelical Christianity. We tell people that they need to renew their minds by thinking on the things of God. That they need to spend a certain amount of time reading Scripture and praying and if they do this then their desires will change. This is completely backward!

Think about a little baby. When he is first born, do you think that he comes out pondering in his little baby mind, I think I might like something to eat. Should I get a salad or maybe we’ll just stop in at a drive through. Of course not. He is just hungry. He craves milk. His desires come before thoughts. That desire for food is like the newborn desires of our hearts for things that are above.

When Paul tells us to Seek the Things that are above or think on things that are above, he’s not turning to salvation by works. Instead, he’s saying you have salvation. You have a new citizenship and life in Christ. Now, because of that new life you should naturally walk a certain way.

Don’t get me wrong, the mind is very important. In Romans 12:2 we see that that it is only as our minds are renewed, changed by God into greater godly thought patterns, that we can discern the will of God. We refine our desires and our palate through our thoughts. We move on from milk to meat as we think on the things of God. But we’re unable to even think on the things of God if at first, we haven’t been given a new nature and new desires by the Holy Spirit in salvation.

These godly thought patterns are a marker of the inner change that has already occurred by the Holy Spirit. When the Spirit brings life, our new desires spring forth and our minds are renewed. But we continue to set our minds on the things of the spirit, not to renew our minds, but because our minds have been renewed.

We still must deal with the flesh, the remnant of our old earthly desires, the old man as Paul calls it. You are a new creation as a kingdom citizen with new kingdom desires and new kingdom thoughts in Christ, but that old man is still hanging around.

Like the Israelites who had been freed from the bondage of slavery in Egypt and had the promise from God of a great kingdom. Instead of living in the reality of that promised kingdom, they got caught up in their current situation and longed for the slavery that they came from.

We will look next week at how Paul practically tells us to deal with the old man, how to deal with the fleshly desires that war within us. But for now, he just wants us to understand the reality of who we are in Christ and how we are to walk in him. Through desiring the kingdom and thinking about the things of the kingdom.

Conclusion

One final thought in conclusion, what happened to those Israelites who did not act like citizens of God’s new country? They perished in the wilderness. When Jesus saw a fig tree that wasn’t producing fruit what did he do? He cursed it.

In John 15:5-8, Jesus talks about this reality of abiding in him, he says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”

If you were thinking like I did for a few years that Christianity is just easy believism and once you’re in you’re in. Just say a prayer and then you can live however you want to and still go to heaven when you die. That is foolishness. Jesus, Paul, and all the rest of the Bible testifies to the truth that God will not be mocked. If you desire like the world, and think like the world, and walk like the world, but think that you are a citizen of the kingdom of heaven you are mistaken. You are ready to be bundled up as a dead branch and burned.

Once again, your works don’t save you, your thoughts don’t save you, your desires don’t save you. Jesus saves you. And when he does, he gives new life and new desires and new thoughts and new actions. If you don’t see the new growth, then it is evidence that you aren’t connected to the vine. See it as his grace that you can see that and seek him in faith. Come to Jesus for newness of Life. Then one you have it, Walk in it.